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Planet found orbiting Alpha Centauri B


Speed

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http://www.space.com/18089-earth-size-alien-planet-alpha-centauri.html

 

Summary:

As you probably know, the Alpha Centauri system is the closest star system to the Earth (4.3 ish light-years)

Alpha Centauri system consists of two sun-like stars and a distant red dwarf star

The planet orbits one of the sun-like stars (Alpha Centauri B)

 

Planet characteristics:

~ 1.1 earth masses, which is, AFAIK, the smallest planet ever found using radial velocity method (where they measure the Doppler shifts of the host star's light as the planet's gravity tugs on the star)

 

The "bad" news:

Orbital period: 3.2 days

Oribtal radius: 6e6 km

Expected surface temperature: 1200 degrees C

Expected composition: "rocky" ("lava" may be more like it)

 

The "good" news:

They say that the habitable zones around Alpha Centauri A & B are stable, and where there's one planet, there are very likely to be more. However, detecting any such planets and determining if they might support life will be highly difficult, at least until some government finally approves funding for a planet-imaging space mission :music_whistling:

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Cheers for the info, good stuff.

 

Just a shame any habitable planet will be beyond even the dreams of our grand kids. :(

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Cheers for the info, good stuff.

 

Just a shame any habitable planet will be beyond even the dreams of our grand kids. :(

 

You mean, beyond their dreams in terms of being able to visit personally? Yes, but we have several good ideas that should work on how we could build an interstellar spacecraft. Our grand kids could be the ones to build the first unmanned interstellar probe.

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You mean, beyond their dreams in terms of being able to visit personally? Yes, but we have several good ideas that should work on how we could build an interstellar spacecraft. Our grand kids could be the ones to build the first unmanned interstellar probe.

 

Interstellar travel? Err any links to info would be appreciated. I didn't think we even had theoretical methods for interstellar travel.. even radio messages seem beyond us...

 

Hmm will have to have a google... :book:

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Solar sails are good for something like 5-10% c. (Assuming laser help.)

Ion drives with scoops can go even faster.

There's probably some more as well. There's testing in labs of warp drives being started which, if confirmed, makes warpdrives theoretically possible - previously the models required planetary-mass or more worth of energy, but there's been developments in the theories there that seem to "fix" this down to manageable (but still way beyond current tech) levels.

 

The big problem right now is shielding from impacts with particles in interstellar space, but as far as actual propulsion goes there's plenty of workable methods as long as we assume you don't want to get back home within your lifetime. (Dealing with impacts at relativstic speeds is... fun... :P )


Edited by EtherealN

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Solar sails are good for something like 5-10% c. (Assuming laser help.)

Ion drives with scoops can go even faster.

There's probably some more as well. There's testing in labs of warp drives being started which, if confirmed, makes warpdrives theoretically possible - previously the models required planetary-mass or more worth of energy, but there's been developments in the theories there that seem to "fix" this down to manageable (but still way beyond current tech) levels.

 

The big problem right now is shielding from impacts with particles in interstellar space, but as far as actual propulsion goes there's plenty of workable methods as long as we assume you don't want to get back home within your lifetime. (Dealing with impacts at relativstic speeds is... fun... :P )

Personally, I do not think that warp drives will ever be practical. Warp drives would violate causality, I believe, and I think the universe has a hidden "no cheating" law. :D But that's just my belief based off of the "trends" we see in the physical laws where it appears that the universe tries to prohibit, or at least make exheedingly difficult, any kinds of casaulity violations/faster than light travel. So, I think a full "theory of everything" would probably show that causality violations cannot occur. But, the universe has shown many times that it doesn't have to play by the rules that we think make sense.

 

I don't think ion drives are feasible for interstellar flight. The acceleration is far, far, too low.

 

Laser (or maser) boosted light sails are a good possibility, however, especially if we one day construct space-based microwave power stations for beaming power down to Earth. One of them could be taken off the power grid and used to propel a sail.

 

Actually, you missed perhaps the most promising potential technology for interstellar travel- nuclear pulse propulsion.

 

A fission pulse propelled spacecraft is possible right now. Basically, we would take a significant fraction of today's nuclear stockpile and break it down into tens of thousands of mini nuclear bombs. These are ejected behind the spacecraft and then detonated. There is a shock absorbing pusher plate behind the spacecraft that absorbs the shock, and transfers some of the explosions momentum to the spacecraft. One of these spacecraft could potentially reach 0.05c or so- so a trip to Alpha Centauri would take ~100 years. See "project Orion" for more info.

 

A fusion pulse propulsion spacecraft ignites nuclear fusion in small pellets of deuterium-tritium fuel user laser confinement fusion, a technology under development right now at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Anyway, the fusion explosion plasma is supposedly channeled and directed using some kind of magnetic nozzle. See "project Daedalus" for more info. With velocities possibly exceeding 0.1c, you could conceivably use such a spacecraft for a manned flight to Alpha Centauri, but it would be a long ride (~50 years).


Edited by Speed

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You're right, I got some mixum going in there. It's the wrong propellant type to "scoop", to begin with. I was thinking about the fusion one where it scoops the fuel - like Daedalus but with reduced need of bringing the fuel along.

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You're right, I got some mixum going in there. It's the wrong propellant type to "scoop", to begin with. I was thinking about the fusion one where it scoops the fuel - like Daedalus but with reduced need of bringing the fuel along.

 

Yea, I think though, didn't they calculate that the interstellar ram scoop wouldn't work? Not a high enough matter density? I think it was either that or the ram scoop would have to be hundreds of km across.

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Not sure about that. I remember something about a more standard scoop being waaaay too ineffective, but there being some trick with using a magnetic field as a scoop. Beyond my knowledge whether that is feasible though. Besides, you can use both, but have the scoop grant you a greater effective fuel tank without having to accelerate all that mass already at the start. Whether there's enough to scoop for it to be worth the bother though... Beyond me.

 

Either way, I suspect that when we finally do fly to other stars it'll be with methods we haven't thought about yet. :P (The classic sci-fi theorem of always overestimating short-term advancements but underestimating long-term applies, I think.)

 

EDIT:

Oh, and regarding warp drives, I remember something about a "side-effect" of the bubble being that the inside of the bubble rising to a couple billion Kelvin, destroying the apparatus that created the warp in the first place... That might be the anti-cheat mechanism right there. :D But then again, Einstein said the same about Black Holes - a mathematical curiosity but surely there's a mechanism in the universe that prohibits them from actually existing. Will be interesting to see what comes of those warp experiments.


Edited by EtherealN

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Call me a party pooper but corporations owning just countries is enough for me. Besides - one of the Voyager probes has traveled to the borders of our Solar System since the 70's. Reaching the AC star will take him another 4000 (or 40,000) years. I've learned it recently. It was the day I stopped holding my breath :D But hey, the views! The views are still awesome! :P

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The voyagers werent made for interstellar travel though... Pure gravity assist pretty much.

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The voyagers werent made for interstellar travel though... Pure gravity assist pretty much.

I know, but what will 'meant for interstellar travel' get you? 400 years instead of 4000? :) The ability to accelerate continuously seems pretty promising though...

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Voyager is 40k to 60k if i remember right. And continuous acceleration is HUGE. Daedalus wed talk 40-50 years. You could take off at 25 and still have several decades of living in AC.

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I don’t think that the interstellar travel by means of propulsion in terms of equal and opposite reaction will ever be a breakthrough.

Even if you reach the speeds close to the speed of light and age slower without impacting cosmic dust, that achievement would worth a try but still a peanut.

I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.

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Why so? We have plenty of examples in our history of people setting out on voyages of years and decades to explore, even in the full knowledge that fatalities will be huge.

 

If I was offered, right now, to step aboard a ship that had a reasonable chance of making it to Alpha Centauri, I'd go. I'm not up for a suicide mission, but I could accept plenty of risk for something like that. And knowing that I wouldn't ever make it back to earth would be no problem. Earth has it's good points, but being among the first to travel the stars... Hell yeah!

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Earth has it's good points, but being among the first to travel the stars... Hell yeah!

 

 

Indeed. Sign me up. :thumbup:

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I have to chuckle often when I read how people talk about interstellar travelling and how you can get the necessary speed and how long this would take....

 

But I almost never see them discuss how to decelerate and where to get the energy for this manoeuvre .

 

A deceleration is a negative acceleration and needs the same energy(and time).

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I have to chuckle often when I read how people talk about interstellar travelling and how you can get the necessary speed and how long this would take....

 

But I almost never see them discuss how to decelerate and where to get the energy for this manoeuvre .

 

A deceleration is a negative acceleration and needs the same energy(and time).

 

I'm not sure anyone has questioned this. It's just so obvious no-one needs to mention it. (Though as far as solar sails it might be a problem.)

 

Deceleration with a Daedalus: rotate 180 degrees, continue normal operation.

Deceleration with an Orion: rotate 180 degrees, continue normal operation.

(EDIT: And of course, deceleration with a Warp Drive, if they do end up practical: turn off warp field. :P )

 

You are of course aware of the fact that the quoted 4-5 decades for a Daedalus includes deceleration? ;)

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Why not ! Maybe the energy that is needed for interstellar travelling is already around us - so we don't have to take the sun with us when going on a journey.

But we can't see it up to now...

...and maybe I will heat-up my morning coffee also with dark-matter in 20 years....

^_^


Edited by PeterP

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However, detecting any such planets and determining if they might support life will be highly difficult, at least until some government finally approves funding for a planet-imaging space mission :music_whistling:

 

I think not unless we find a way to travel at half the speed of light. ;)

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(And while time is spent figuring that out, we stand still. What if the Apollo program had been canceled because "well, we ain't got large enough computers right now".)

 

Not just computers, a great many things fell into that category.

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Aye, and a lot of things came into the "this could be done a lot cheaper IF" category as well.

 

I don't remember the name of the author, but there's a great Sci-Fi series about a colonisation effort where the colonists of the first ship, within their lifetime, get to experience arrivals from several hundred years of earth history (time dilation fun etcetera). But that first ship was still the first ship, and would the other ones have been sent if the first one didn't happen first?

 

...and of course, would I like to be on the first one? Oh yeah. :)

 

That said, I think that if I were to get a chance to be on the first one of anything, it would be Mars colonisation. If I remember right it was calculated that relative to a there-and-back mission with a couple weeks or whatever on mars, a mission where you send people there and then sustain them for the rest of their lives on mars (but never get them back) is in the order of single-digit percent... So then people wonder "well, who would be up to go there one-way?"

 

*see's every astronaut ever raise their hands, and me too of course. :P

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In order to help keep threads somewhat organized, I have split the quantum entanglement discussion to it's own thread, which can be found here: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=95872

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