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Space exploration: Where do we go from here?

Kepler said:
Come on, baby, be a Dyson Ring.
Click to expand...

Interesting that they are finding stuff in habitable zone. But there's a lot a planet needs to bring to be actually habitable. Like a really freaking huge moon that affects multiple items on a planet.

We all understand how the moon is the main driver of tides, which is a huge contributor to weather, which, theoretically, is one of the sources to go from simple proteins to life.

What we hint at is how the moon is a driver to plate tectonics. Which helps keep our core hot and moving. Which gives our planet a magnetic field. Which keeps away the solar wind, leaving us a thick atmosphere and the ability to have life.

In our solar system, the common idea is to move to Mars to live- even though there's no real chance of turning that planet into a habitable one- since there's no atmosphere, and w/o a magnetic field, there will never be another significant one.

Venus is far closer to our planet in terms of having an atmosphere. And given enough time and the right chemicals- it's more likely to turn that into a habitable planet than trying to have one on Mars.

Alas- that's a massive tangent to the discovery of a planet in a habitable zone of a white dwarf.
 
Of course, we will probably be wildly wrong about what the requirements are for life, because we are still extrapolating from only one data point. We are the South Pacific islanders saying, "well, obviously first thing you need is a volcano..."
 
dxmnkd316 said:
What the hell? My previous post is "Unapproved"...?

Ok, fine... Here's the gist:

So I have questions.

Completely ignoring the "ALIENS!!!!" stuff... White dwarfs come after red giants, right? Typically, I mean. If this star is? relatively? similar to our sun, how the hell did something survive the red giant phase to land 1.7% the distance from Earth to the Sun?


Oh

Read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf#Debris_disks_and_planets
Click to expand...

Admittedly, none of those explanations for planetary accretion at that distance seem very conducive to life, unless fire can become self-aware.
 
Everywhere in the solar system you could stand:

60aqo7jbhnh81.jpg
 
I know that it's pretty old news now, but Ingenuity is STILL flying. https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/

Over the past almost 300 "days", it's flown only 18 times. Which is still more than they planned. And it's still going. The one interesting thing now is that flights in the summer are shorter due to the less dense atmosphere. And flight 19 was delayed due to weather. At least that part, we are all used to here....
 
Apparently the new LOFAR (European low frequency array telescope) maps being released were a surprise and showed that the universe has a density of at least 25% more galaxies than previously thought. Obviously there is no way to wrap our minds around that but currently we think there are between 100-200 billion galaxies, each with between 100-200 billion stars in it.

This is a reminder that the God of all creation cares about what you do with your winky.
 
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Kepler said:
Apparently the new LOFAR (European low frequency array telescope) maps being released were a surprise and showed that the universe has a density of at least 25% more galaxies than previously thought. Obviously there is no way to wrap our minds around that but currently we think there are between 100-200 billion galaxies, each with between 100-200 billion stars in it.

This is a reminder that the God of all creation cares about what you do with your winky.
Click to expand...

Whoa. So the universe is only 99.999999999% empty space after all? Did not see that one coming!
 
Kepler said:
Apparently the new LOFAR (European low frequency array telescope) maps being released were a surprise and showed that the universe has a density of at least 25% more galaxies than previously thought. Obviously there is no way to wrap our minds around that but currently we think there are between 100-200 billion galaxies, each with between 100-200 billion stars in it.

This is a reminder that the God of all creation cares about what you do with your winky.
Click to expand...

That project is really amazing, if you are an astrophysicist. The amount of data they have gathered is staggering, so if you have something anywhere in the area that they looked at, there's a very different view of it.

Add that to some of the other data gathering projects around the world- there's more than enough data for many, many papers and PhD's for probably over a decade.
 
Hey Kep

Still have your Dad's lunar lander files? It appears Northrup/Grumman is thinking of going at it alone:

Northrop Grumman's Rick Mastracchio says the company has done work on its own for the lunar lander in addition to working with Blue Origin. It's now deciding which way to go. "Hopefully, that will be a decision that comes out in the next few weeks."
Click to expand...
 
Oh, we gotta land on this guy. Put an observatory on it and give it 5G.

It's 80 miles wide and it's in an orbit that swings out to 1.5 lightyears from the sun.
 
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