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The "anything" thread

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Saw this a few days ago
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16040655
Discovering earth-like planets is all good but the main problem will always be the distance. Unless scientists discover major break-throughs in space travel going to a planet like that will take around 200 milion years.
However, sending fully automatic voyager-like probes to such planets might be completely useless for us but if such a planet has intelligent life (in 200 milion years) think about the impact that probe might have when it lands on one of those planets. Probably in 200 milion years humans will have gone for a long time but we would give that planet certainty that there is (was) alien life. Ontop of that our species won't be completely forgotten.
 
Upvote 0
Saw this a few days ago
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16040655
Discovering earth-like planets is all good but the main problem will always be the distance. Unless scientists discover major break-throughs in space travel going to a planet like that will take around 200 milion years.
However, sending fully automatic voyager-like probes to such planets might be completely useless for us but if such a planet has intelligent life (in 200 milion years) think about the impact that probe might have when it lands on one of those planets. Probably in 200 milion years humans will have gone for a long time but we would give that planet certainty that there is (was) alien life. Ontop of that our species won't be completely forgotten.

I don't think the the main motivation for scientists is to find habitable planets so some day someone can send a space ship with settlers up there.

Main reasons for that are:
Faster than light travel will most likely never be possible.

The idea that humans can destroy the earth is simply hubris. So there is actually no need for a "back up" planet which then can be destroyed too.

If there is intelligent life out there, why do you assume humans will be extinct when the probe arrives at their planet and not the other way around?

The main research goal for as I understand is that the scientist want to understand how a solar system forms, what type of planets are there, their distribution etc. There is only one solar system we know fairly well (not too well actually) and it seems to be rather unusual and special but maybe it is not, we simply don't know. Looking for a second earth simply makes good headlines (aka money for research).
 
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I don't think the the main motivation for scientists is to find habitable planets so some day someone can send a space ship with settlers up there.

Main reasons for that are:
Faster than light travel will most likely never be possible.

The idea that humans can destroy the earth is simply hubris. So there is actually no need for a "back up" planet which then can be destroyed too.

If there is intelligent life out there, why do you assume humans will be extinct when the probe arrives at their planet and not the other way around?

The main research goal for as I understand is that the scientist want to understand how a solar system forms, what type of planets are there, their distribution etc. There is only one solar system we know fairly well (not too well actually) and it seems to be rather unusual and special but maybe it is not, we simply don't know. Looking for a second earth simply makes good headlines (aka money for research).

Yea, visiting earth-like planets will probably never happen and if we would send a probe to such a planet it might be devoid of life, perhaps life went extinct or its just not capapble to have life. But if we would send 50 probes to 50 planets and one of them had life they know there is alien life. Our gift to them would be a message from another world. It's mostly based on pure luck, perhaps none of the planets have life and we just wasted lots of money on making a ton of probes. But we humans have been wondering if there is other life in the universe, maybe other species on other planets wonder about it too. Or they're still in their version of the stone age and they would worship the probe as a gift from their gods. Or they're just animals that can't be bothered by some junk of metal. Either way, if by pure luck one of those probes ends up on a planet with intelligent beings it would be one of the most important events in their history. And we would be remembered. Maybe humans aren't extinct by then but that doesn't matter.
 
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