New "super-Earth" found in space

I think that the blue lights are to stop you fixing, they have them in the pub toilets around Piccadilly Circus, you cannot find a vein with the blue light.

Some of the posts here have confused me - I always thought that if another solar system was say 20 light years away then it would take twenty years travelling at the speed of light to get there? (assuming you could travel at that speed and ignoring time to accelerate to that speed). And because of the theory of relativity people on Earth would be older than you when you return.

The ingenious druggies found a way around that one.

Bic biro.

just popped back to get a few provisions, there's room for a few more in the Moonboot Enterprise if anyone's interested?
any subsequent kilos of baggage after 20kg must be paid for.

Yawn...enough physics lessons for us poor TT's, how can you expect us to understand such complex ideas, I guess this new planet must be at least a Google away.

You can suck a fart out of my ass. You know people who have confirmed I talk about this shit in great detail even after I'm completely pissed at a TTT, Curry Night or some other event. Pay a little more attention to the Space topic or just ask our resident rocket scientist, DW, if I sit and google or actually know what I'm talking about.

woof.

Oo! Celestial handbags on an interstellar dawn, is it?

If a fart is sucked out, is it still a fart? Science is hard.

PS: I'll take a ride on the moonboot express

a. While the sucker is at 3/4c?
b. While the sucker is at 3/4c and the sucked is at 1/4c?
c. While the sucker is at 3/4c and the sucked is at 3/4c?

That sounds a bit rude.

what? she said she's got a few spaces left. you can come too, as long as you bring your pot of gold. we might need it for bathing.

The photons we emit travel to everywhere in space all the time, we're just not conscious of it.

No pot of gold but a couple of crates of Augustiner, will that be ok?

The pair of you bathing, ach sure it gets better and better. Lemme just grab me shillelagh (Irish lightsaber).

Translation = Stick with a torch tied to the end.

To be more precise, the research team used the facilities of the European Southern Observatory, but none of them actually works there. According to the press release, the team members are from institutes in Switzerland, Portugal and France.


That's how it would appear if you didn't take relativity into account.

If you travel a distance of 20 light-years at very close to the speed of light, your own impression will be that you cover that distance almost instantly, while to an observer back on Earth you would seem to take just over 20 years. Not sure where you get the value of 40 years from, unless you're also counting the additional 20 years it would take for a signal from you to travel from the new planet back to Earth. But that isn't an effect of relativity, that's like if you get on a plane to London, and as soon as you arrive you send a postcard back to your friends in Munich, and they get it a few days later, but they know it didn't take you several days to fly from Munich to London.

The effects of relativity would make it theoretically possible for humans to travel distances which could otherwise not be covered within a human lifetime, precisely because time runs much more slowly on board the spaceship than it does from the perspective of an observer. So you could in theory take a tour all around the Milky Way galaxy which (IIRC) is something like 100,000 light-years across. But don't expect any of your friends to still be alive when you get back home.

Those who read German might find this interesting:
Spektrum der Wissenschaft Spezial 3/2005: Die relativistische Welt in Bildern
Spektrum der Wissenschaft is the German version of Scientific American, and this was a special issue devoted to exploring the visual effects of relativity, travel at near-light-speed, wormholes, warping of space and time, and other mindbending phenomena.

Anyway, why bother debating the theory? Let's just ask Moonboot what it's like out there.

"TT to Moonboot: Have you landed yet? What's the weather like? Any decent Biergartens?"

Ed Bob is a proper geek and has said that already :-)

Well I'm not volunteering to go. Imagine getting 10 years into the trip and pulling in to a interplanetary gas station to find the bar full of miniaturised versions of don riina, all running around waving light sabres at each other.

I had a bad dream last night. Or was it in the future? Can one get pre-deja vu?

EDIT: I suppose that mathematically, you could have sex as soon as you took off, and then 41 years later return to the same spot and cum before you go.

So you could pull out before you actually go in? What ho chaps.

it was great weather was fab, moony every day, not a cloud to be seen and no meteor showers!
grr the intergalactic moonloungers by the Sea of Tranquility were always occupied by some strange hostile beings with square heads.
I did manage to have a great big bang one night which is always nice on holiday.
didn't find any beergardens but lots of Starbucks!
only been back a day as well and my moontan's already fading

I like the title...new super Earth found in space...is there anywhere else we would have found one? the collar of me friends cat perhaps?!

I would have started looking in a recycling container, people are always putting in wrong stuff.

does it go in re-cycleable or in some other labelled in?

Yeah if you are doing drugs, you can always find many new super Earths...Maybe even a whole new galaxy

Blame it on the Beeb, not on me.

My friend did find one totally new galaxy...no one had ever been there either was brand bloody new

then we woke up the next day and it was gone...I hate warp speed!

In fact, according to a theory, everyday thousands of new galaxies are created in other dimensions, however they are not stable enough and they collapse on each other.

Yes, I noticed that Ed Bob had already made that point, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to - ahem - add a little clarification to BadDoggie's post. Notice also that, from our stationary perspective, BadDoggie's post appeared after Ed Bob's, although in reality Ed Bob was most likely in his spaceship going at timewarp speed and already a million years into the future when he posted.


Moonboot is back already! But then ... that means we have all grown 40 years older! (*counts grey silver hairs*)
Do people moon each other on the beaches there?


As soon as you took what off?

A gentleman astronaut (and what else could Sir Sin be?) reveals not the secrets of his interstellar trysts.

@Yeti: That was actually a subjunctive (or is it a conditional) "took", cos I was intrigued by the mathematical theory. I wasn't asking about any specific adventure - although I do wonder what happens to Marmite at warp speed.



Yes, that's how it starts ... some kid chucks a Mars wrapper in the wrong bin, and next thing you know people are dumping their used planets all over the place. Bloody nuisance it is.