• @[email protected]
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    454 months ago

    This rocky planet is in another solar system 137 light-years away

    From millions of light-years away, we can only see this distant world as a dark dot

    🤔

    • @psychothumbsOP
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      364 months ago

      Haha probably meant to write “miles” the second time

      • FaceDeer
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        164 months ago

        Which is funny because that would have been even more inaccurate. “Millions of light years” is off by a factor of 15,000 or more. “Millions of miles” is off by a factor of 400,000,000 or more (2 million miles is 0.00000034 light years).

        • @[email protected]
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          74 months ago

          Reading your comment is the most I have ever felt the “wow, space is incomprehensibly large” feeling.

          • @SkybreakerEngineer
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            24 months ago

            You might think it’s a long way down the street to the chemists, bur that’s just peanuts to space

        • @psychothumbsOP
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          54 months ago

          I guess you could argue it’s many many millions of miles, doesn’t have to exclude the total being in the billions, trillions or beyond.

          Though now I’m trying to think if there is any unit of measurement that it would be literal millions of away. Light seconds maybe?

          • FaceDeer
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            34 months ago

            There’s ~31 million seconds in a year, so that’s getting closer.

            • @psychothumbsOP
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              54 months ago

              Hmm so that overshoots a little into billions of light seconds.

              I’ve got it: millions of light minutes away! (70ish million if my math is right)

  • MxM111
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    284 months ago

    I don’t get it. We found lots of planets, including super earths in goldilock zone. What makes this planet unique to deserve a separate article? The article does not explain that.

    • Flying Squid
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      584 months ago

      Those other planets were jerks. This one’s cool.

      • MxM111
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        184 months ago

        If it’s cool, it isn’t in Goldilocks zone.

        • @AbouBenAdhem
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          114 months ago

          It’s in Goldilocks’ cooler sister’s zone.

        • Flying Squid
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          94 months ago

          I beg to differ. The baby bear’s porridge was too cold. I posit that the mama bear’s just right porridge was cool.

          • FaceDeer
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            54 months ago

            I regret that the more accurate “Mama Bear Zone” wasn’t the term that became popular, instead of naming it after the character who sampled the whole range of temperatures.

          • circuitfarmer
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            24 months ago

            Some were hot before they were cool. That should mean something.

    • @[email protected]
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      144 months ago

      The best time to start that journey is 1.37 million years ago. The second best time to start is today.

    • Flying Squid
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      44 months ago

      I volunteer to send the world’s billionaires to check it out in person.

      • @gnomesaiyan
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        24 months ago

        So, like the end of Don’t Look Up?

        • Flying Squid
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          14 months ago

          I haven’t seen it. I just want to send all the billionaires off into space where we never have to deal with them again. And hopefully the space ship will do about as well as that Titanic sub.

    • @[email protected]
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      44 months ago

      Okay so all we need to do is invent light speed travel and then figure out how to live for 200 years, you’ve got this!

    • @not_that_guy05
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      154 months ago

      Why? Give them a new planet so can live peacefully while everybody else has to deal with what they did to this planet? Nah bro send them to Mercury and enjoy the burning entry.

    • @psychothumbsOP
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      104 months ago

      Ugh so fucking long unfortunately. I kind of doubt squishy biological humans will ever make it to another star system, we are so much closer to immortal machine minds that can make the trip much more conveniently than we are to interstellar travel.

      • FaceDeer
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        24 months ago

        Maybe they’ll create some humans in other star systems when they get there, as an art project or something.

        • @psychothumbsOP
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          24 months ago

          Yeah humans being built on the spot is the best shot for us existing in other systems. Maybe if we have a reallllly pro-biological human ideology by that point it’ll be something like an automated probe arriving in the system, building an industrial base, and then birthing and raising a new generation of biological humans to inhabit the system.

    • RandomStickman
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      44 months ago

      I’m in the middle of reading A City of Mars, by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, who goes over their take on the feasibility of long term habitation off world. Short answer is, it’s going to be a long time. There are a lot of questions, physically, biologically, legally, logistically, unanswered. At best, it’s going to be like building a cathedral. It’s a project for multiple generations.

      I also like watching Issac Arthur’s videos on YT, and fantasize about the future. He gives a more positive spin on stuff like that.

      • @psychothumbsOP
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        24 months ago

        Yeah thinking about the giant challenges of building a settlement on Mars really puts in perspective the much much much harder problem of sending people to another star system.

  • @AbouBenAdhem
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    34 months ago

    They found it in a pool of water that dries up when you try to drink it?

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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    24 months ago

    I managed to grab a TESS poster at the last Goddard Space Flight Center open house. It’s hanging on the wall behind me, and it’s awesome to read some news about it because I got to meet some of the folks on the team.

  • @MeekerThanBeaker
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    4 months ago

    What if NASA just makes this stuff up to get more funding? .

    NASA scientist: See that dot?

    US Government: Where? There?

    NASA scientist: No. The other one.

    US Government: That?

    NASA scientist: Yuuuup. Totally a Super-Earth.

    US Government: Really?

    NASA scientist: Dude. Trust me, bro.

    US Government: (sighs) Make a color computer render to show the press by Thursday.

    . pops champagne cork

    EDIT: WOW… people seriously need the /s for this? Damn. This was complete sarcasm.

    • @MJKee9
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      144 months ago

      That’s a key component of the flat earth ideology. They are idiots. Don’t be an idiot.

      • teft
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        84 months ago

        Also the data is public. Anyone can go look at the data and if they have good enough science and math skills they can get to the same answer.

    • queermunist she/her
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      -24 months ago

      Independent astronomers and agencies and other countries verify this stuff, so it’d be a complicated conspiracy.