New "super-Earth" found in space

From BBC Online: New 'super-Earth' found in space

The team of astronomers that discovered this planet all work with the European Southern Observatory, which has its headquarters in Garching, near Munich. A few of the Garching ESO lot read TT. Judging from the press release, however, none of them were involved in this particular research project.

The Times says it'd take 5 billion years to get there. Now, if it's 20.5 billion light years away that assumes travelling at 4 times the speed of light to get there. That's Star Trek speeds.

Not that it makes much difference to us.

It's about 20 light years away. The Times article makes no sense at all unless they mean it'd take 5 billion years to get there using current technology. Methinks the editor and/or author are clueless.

If you travel at one-times lightspeed (faster isn't possible) you'd be there instantly. From your own perspective, that is. It'd take you 20.5 years from the perspective of the people back home. You could fly there and back and only age a few minutes. Your friends on Earth, in the meantime, would age 41 years.

thats funny, I would have thought it would take 20.5 years to get there if you are travelling at the speed of light and of course if you are doing star-trek speeds then about 4 years!

1 Light year = distance travelled by light in one year, innit?

I reckon you would get a bit dizzy as it happens.

1 light year ~ 6,000,000,000,000 Miles,
Therefore this planet is ~ 123,000,000,000,000 Miles away,
Divide by 5 Billion years (assuming the now standard Billion = 10^9) = 24,600 Miles / year or 24,600/(365*24) = 24,600 / 8,760 MPH

The Times believes we could only average 3MPH over the journey, I suspect that they made a mistake in their maths...

To confirm, simply google for "20.5 light years / 5000000000 years in mph"

(20.5 light years) / (5 000 000 000 years) = 2.74952818 mph

If using the old UK billion (10 ^ 12), it would be 0.0027... mph, so it is not an issue of units, it's just bad maths (or the times is talking about another planet).

Or, perhaps the Times are suggesting we walk?

Glad I have the Diesel. That'd be fierce expensive with the Super Unleaded.

Fixed.

Hope they give you plenty of warning of traffic lights, braking at lightspeed is tricky.

Ed Bob knows his general relativity

You don't really think you can criticize a well established, respectable and professional news source like the Times, do you? You didn't convince anyone with your math-o-jibberblabber.

Fair enuff, I tried to dassle you all with maths, I'll get my coat, and start walking...

I wonder what episode of Father Ted they are on.

disambiguated.

I'm not saying he doesn't, but still, general relativity is a theory, and therefore it is theoretically impossible. Which is slightly different than impossible. It's very very very hard to "prove" scientifically that something is impossible. Somewhat like proving you don't have a sister.

Even so, general relativity doesn't prohibit faster-than-light travel in wormholes for example, but that's another issue.

You can't do irony at lightspeed, it melts all over the freem thrusters.

I use thrusters made out of reinforced irony.

pft! Typical humans, as soon as you find a nice place in the universe, the first thing you want to do is go there and ruin it. Do the universe a favor, stay home and pave your own damn planet.

Who said anything about paving?

That place could be a great dirtbike/mountain biking place.

Deflate your tyres before embarking though.

Works for me, quick someone throw Yeti's panties on the stage. They're ironyed I presume.

In space, no one can hear your panties.

You can once you've paved the damn place. I say we use that hippy Chicago for glue. Sacrifice to the space gods and all that. BTW, I totally call shotgun on the space ride.

They should at least be ironed, he's been at it since yesterday.

It's yours, as soon as we figure out which side they drive on.

whiloe you lot've been babbling away I'm actually on my way there right now...just passed Pluto in fact. you lot must be ancient by now!
got my LiverBird flag ready to plant!

Except that you have to accelerate to light speed. Assuming an acceleration of 3g or 30m/s^2, it would take you 10^7 seconds or 115 days to reach light speed. You'de feel pretty squashed after 115 days at 3g.

And actually I might have over simplified the problem. As you approach light speed your mass increases, so for a constant accleration your weight increases. Assuming your resting mass times 3g is the max weight you can endure, would you have to reduce the acceleration to keep constant weight as you got close to light speed? Keeping constant thrust would acheive exactly that.

So in a nutshell, go before you put on your spacesuit?

(And for anybody interested I was not ironing my underwear yesterday, I always walk like this, no I do not want to sit down, thank you, and I was planning on buying that anti-burn salve for ages.)

With or without Mickey Mouse?

I wonder how many Toytowners you need to stack on top of each other to get to the new planet?

Probably good training, as the gravity on this planet would probably be higher than on earth... (possibly not 3* though, depends on the density).

Physics lesson time:

1) Relativity and Travel at the Speed of Light:
If you're on a spaceship traveling just under the speed of light, inside the ship things will look blue and weird, everything in front will be speeding toward you too fast to notice, and everything behind you will have slowed to a crawl. If you you have a teleconference with the people back home, you'll be moving slower than a redwood grows to them while to you they'll be so sped up that everything they say will be a high-pitched squeal.

It'll take you 20 years. It'll look to them at home like it took at least 40 (providing you don't dally anywhere with extreme gravity on your way).

Of course, getting to an appreciable percentage of the speed of light is damned near impossible for objects with mass of even an electron, and the faster you go, the heavier you get. Nigel Calder's book, Einstein's Universe is an excellent and simple explanation of General and Special Relativity and doesn't get too dry or technical.

2) Planetary Physics:

The star this planet is orbiting is a red dwarf, a dim and relatively cool type of star about 1/10 the mass and diameter of the Sun. It's also the most common type of star in the sky; if red dwarves can support habitable planets the chance of life elsewhere in the universe increases tremendously. While the cycle of a red dwarf is slower and more stable than an M-type star like our Sun; in order to warm a planet to life-supporting levels the planet has to be very close; closer than Mercury is to our own Sun. Paradoxically that means that the cool, redder star looks larger in the sky of such a planet than the sun looks in our sky (making it look like a giant star from the planet). It also means such planets are likely to be tidally locked.

The Moon is tidally locked with the Earth: it's rotation and revolution periods are the same, so the same side always faces us. Bump that up to planetary scale and you're looking at a planet with is baking on one side, freezing on the other, and on which little could survive except on the thin border between the two. Worse: red dwarves are notorious for sending masses of ultraviolet radiation out. This is a start but it's nothing our descendants will be calling home.

woof.

I don't agree with this. As everything inside the ship is travelling at the same speed as you, there'll be no doppler shift, hence no blue shift.

There is also no difference between behind and in front. The speed of light as measured by a moving observer is always the same. thats the core principle of special relativity, which is relatively graspable, in comparison to general relativity which is a dog.

Of course Lorenzo contraction will ocurr, and I must admit to being unclear how this will manifiest itself. Everything looks closer?

It's just that BadDoggie has installed weird blue lighting in his spaceship. He got them on sale at Saturn.

Let me get this straight, its a long ass way away, I'll get squattier, heavier, and be exposed to all sorts of UV rays. None of this involves a mexican beach and ODing on fruity drinks and room service. I bet you dont even get frequent flyer miles. Turn back moonboot, turn back!

...and the assorted brains on here still haven't come up with a decent lightsaber. It's really just not worth the effort making the trip.

Do they do shirts too?

Our teams are negotiating a deal with them as we speak. Shirts, cheap blue lighting and relativity theory textbooks, all buckled with reinforced irony.

I've slept all the way through longhaul flights before, but I feel odd about missing my faster that lightspeed salty snacks. Should I stay awake until the trolley comes around or should I run like mad down the aisle thus travelling forward in time to before they get to my seat?

if you beat them by too much they'd likely be stale by the time they caught up to you.

What about my frequent flyer parsecs?

You can exchange them for parsley.

In deep space parsley will not save you. You need nukes, knives and sharp sticks.

OK, nukes obvious, knives to chop the parsley, wth do you need the sticks for?

To play mikado to while away the time?

Parsnips, people, parsnips.
You clearly have no idea about relativistic space travel. Sheesh.

Parsnips. Edible, tradeable and can be sharpened to a deadly point for er making things dead. Also can be used in lieu of sticks for the mikado. Well done sir, well done.