Launch what at it??? An ICBM? A cow? Kirstie Alley?

Two words: B Ark.

LAUNCH ALL THE THINGS!

Rev.K: Is it weird that I love to try and imagine what it would be like to be on that planet?

Can you even imagine stepping down on to another Earth? It's mindblowing.

Of course, at 2.4 times the size of the Earth, I'd better get my spine shaped up so I don't get crippled by gravity.

I was thinking of that as well. If we colonized that place, our colonists would come back looking like freaking weightlifters and snap our puny necks.

We should send bankers and politicians. All of them.

Clearly that planet is harboring a species of malevolent aliens who are hell-bent on destroying us and consuming Earth for its natural resources. I suggest we nuke it from orbit just to be safe.

Kepler-22b or not to be? Or, in other words, should we attempt to rationally analyze the first habitable planet confirmed to possibly have water, or should we just start launching whatever the hell we can at it?

confirmed to possibly?
confirmed ... to ... possibly ...

whatthefarkamireading.jpg

"Astronomers have confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet in the "habitable zone" around a star not unlike our own."

Hmmm, sounds good so far. But then...

"However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid."

Ahh, so that opening should read "Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a planet in the "habitable zone" around a star not unlike our own." Sorry but unless you can verify that the planet is rocky with the presence of liquid water and an oxygen / nitrogen atmosphere, you can't really call it "Earth-like" with any sense of verisimilitude, can you?

Send it smallpox or ebola.

Myrdinn: Um. Six hundred light years is a bit of a... well... schlep. I'm fairly certain that anything we launch today will not pass a half of a percent of that distance before we get around to figuring out a FTL solution. (That gives us over three hundred or so years to work on a FTL option, roughly.)

A little over 12 years at 1G constant acceleration. If you're on the rocket ship.

The rest of us have to wait 600 years, though.

BigLuca: Kepler-22b or not to be? Or, in other words, should we attempt to rationally analyze the first habitable planet confirmed to possibly have water, or should we just start launching whatever the hell we can at it?

confirmed to possibly?
confirmed ... to ... possibly ...

whatthefarkamireading.jpg

They confirmed that it's at the right distance from its star that it COULD have liquid water (i.e. it's in the "Goldilocks zone"). However, it's not yet known if it actually DOES have any liquid water.

It would be highly anomalous if it didn't have water. We've found water of the frozen variety everywhere we've looked so far that wasn't boiling hot. There's even many frozen chunks of water flying through space, you know them as comets.

At what point do we just say water is abundant and stop this nonsense?

MasterAdkins: We better get to work getting humans off this planet if we want the human race to survive.

We've got some growing up to do first.

AdolfOliverPanties: We should wait until 2039, and then send out some volunteers. I figure by that day, the lands will be few, and maybe 20 brave souls inside can sail across the milky seas and return, say exactly 100 or 200 years later.

XD +1

Myrdinn: Um. Six hundred light years is a bit of a... well... schlep. I'm fairly certain that anything we launch today will not pass a half of a percent of that distance before we get around to figuring out a FTL solution. (That gives us over three hundred or so years to work on a FTL option, roughly.)

I'm going to guess that within that same time frame we will have the ability to image the planet from here with the same kind of detail possible by our best current spy satellites thus making the trip unnecessary. Some currently undiscovered branch of space warping time travel really is about our only hope of ever visiting another habitable planet but I think we will have the whole interstellar voyeur thing nailed in another century or so.

Rent Party: A little over 12 years at 1G constant acceleration. If you're on the rocket ship.

The rest of us have to wait 600 years, though.

Then another 600 years for any report to come back to Earth. So a good-sized chunk of recorded history just waiting for "nope, dead gas ball."

AdolfOliverPanties: We should wait until 2039, and then send out some volunteers. I figure by that day, the lands will be few, and maybe 20 brave souls inside can sail across the milky seas and return, say exactly 100 or 200 years later.

Awesome!

/Maybe write some letters in the sand too!

Subby: confirmed to possibly

Absolutely perhaps.

/definitely
//I guess

Rev.K: Is it weird that I love to try and imagine what it would be like to be on that planet?

Can you even imagine stepping down on to another Earth? It's mindblowing.

Of course, at 2.4 times the size of the Earth, I'd better get my spine shaped up so I don't get crippled by gravity.

Depends how rich in heavy metals it is. It might be like Robert Silverberg's Majipoor - a vast planet with Earth-normal gravity but metal-deficient meaning a low-tech sort of lifestyle.

Fish in a Barrel: Rent Party: A little over 12 years at 1G constant acceleration. If you're on the rocket ship.

The rest of us have to wait 600 years, though.

Then another 600 years for any report to come back to Earth. So a good-sized chunk of recorded history just waiting for "nope, dead gas ball."

They'll be able to tell if it's a dead gas ball from here eventually. When they get the "Yep, that's a rocky-world-with-liquid-water-o-meter running, someone might get to see it in person.

GAT_00: This assumes FTL is possible, though the recent discoveries at CERN suggest that it might be. The more logical solution is a fusion drive with a ramscoop, which could easily be 50 years from production.

Fusion has been "viable in 50 years" for 60 years now.

Before anybody gets too excited about these "other earths" we're discovering, please remember that we have a nearly exact match to the Earth as our nearest planetary neighbor. Mass is almost exact, rocky surface, substantial atmosphere... it's called Venus.

By nearly all definitions it sits in the habitability zone, but with slow rotation and massive atmospheric density the greenhouse trapping from a CO2 dominated atmosphere cooked all the water allowing photo dissociation in the upper atmosphere and turned it into an acid oven.

GAT_00: Myrdinn: That gives us over three hundred or so years to work on a FTL option, roughly.

This assumes FTL is possible, though the recent discoveries at CERN suggest that it might be. The more logical solution is a fusion drive with a ramscoop, which could easily be 50 years from production.


Ramscoops don't work, even in the right interstellar environment -- there's no way you can gather fuel and burn it in fusion reactions to give yourself a net acceleration -- the scoop slows you more than the burn can speed you -- its a fundamental flaw.

We launch the nukes now and in the millions of years it will take to get there,they have time to develop into a space race, we will declare war and BAM nuked! or if not we just sent them back to the stone age

Uzzah: Two words: B Ark.

Arf arf, ruff bark, arf arf.

OhioKnight: Before anybody gets too excited about these "other earths" we're discovering, please remember that we have a nearly exact match to the Earth as our nearest planetary neighbor. Mass is almost exact, rocky surface, substantial atmosphere... it's called Venus.

By nearly all definitions it sits in the habitability zone, but with slow rotation and massive atmospheric density the greenhouse trapping from a CO2 dominated atmosphere cooked all the water allowing photo dissociation in the upper atmosphere and turned it into an acid oven.

Virulency: We launch the nukes now and in the millions of years it will take to get there,they have time to develop into a space race, we will declare war and BAM nuked! or if not we just sent them back to the stone age

Or their much more advanced than us and it does nothing but piss them off...

No. Let's say we get there and it's habitable. Undoubtedly it will have other life living on it. We can't just land a probe and risk contaminating the whole planet. One microbe could turn the it into a festering pile of rotten detritus in rather short order.

OhioKnight: Before anybody gets too excited about these "other earths" we're discovering, please remember that we have a nearly exact match to the Earth as our nearest planetary neighbor. Mass is almost exact, rocky surface, substantial atmosphere... it's called Venus.

By nearly all definitions it sits in the habitability zone, but with slow rotation and massive atmospheric density the greenhouse trapping from a CO2 dominated atmosphere cooked all the water allowing photo dissociation in the upper atmosphere and turned it into an acid oven.

The temp of Venus is a hell of alot higher than 22C im afraid. Its around 450C.