/sci/ - Science & Math

We have found many Earth-sized planets in their star's habitable zone with potential to sustain life on them. We just have to wait until the next generation of telescopes before we can try to analyze their atmospheres to see if there's anything funny going on

>>10427172
Because it's incredibly hard to detect exoplanets, let alone relatively small planets, like Earth analogs.
Wait for the James Webb. Although, despite our lacking technology and the magnitude of space, we've still found a fair few.
Also, remember that we haven't even mapped 1℅ of the Local Group, let alone the observable universe.

>>10427183
We can only see earth-sized planets around very small stars. For more sunlike stars we can't even detect them in Alpha centauri (which is actually one of the most sunlike stars we know of).

>>10427172
Because a lot of scientists, particularly physicists are idiots and probability is a scam.

>>10427172
We have actually found dozens of earth like planets.

We just can't confirm them because our instruments aren't high resolution enough to confirm every single facet of the planets.

JWST that will launch in 2021 will actually have high enough resolution to confirm that these planets are habitable to humans as we can actually see the atmospheric makeup such as H2O, O2 and CO2. And if a planet contains all 3 and is calculated to have a surface temperature between -30 to 50 degrees Celsius then it will be officially habitable for humans.

So you only have to wait 3 years to get an answer. From our data there are about ~100 known Earth Like planets that fit everything except for the fact that we can't see their atmospheres.

So yes as far as we can detect with our technology of 2019 it seems that a surprisingly lot of planets fit in the definition for "Earth-like" at least as far as we can confirm.

>>10427172
what do you mean with "earth planet"? A planet with water? We have found planets in habitable zones where water would presumably exist in fluid form on the surface. The problem is that all we know about them is based on the dimming when they pass in front of their star. We cannot see them ever and all you will see is artist's renditions. Unless we'd send a probe.

a close exoplanet 5 ly away
fastest probe so far: 0.0006393312 c
will take 5 million years to get there
+ 5 years to send back data at an abysmal data rate

>>10427200
At least actually google the shit you are spouting.

There is a literal Earth-like planet in the habitable zone around Alpha Centauri that we have already discovered and confirmed. We have hundreds more of these types of planets

I'm seriously wondering if this is just a troll thread because you say almost the opposite of the truth making it seem more like trolling than retardation.

For example it's easier to find earth-sized planets around small stars. Especially around sun-like stars. Of which we detected the one in Alpha Centauri relatively easy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b

>>10427218
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b
>Proxima Centauri b (also called Proxima b[3][4] or Alpha Centauri Cb) is an exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri
>red dwarf star
>dwarf star


Around the bigger stars of the Alpha Centauri systems, the ones that are actually sun-like, we wouldn't see planets in the habitable zone even if they were 8 times the size of earth.

>>10427225
The Alpha Centauri system is a binary star system you retard.

That planet is classified as being a part of the Alpha Centauri system and life being born in such a system is close to 0 because of the double amount of radiation that comes with binary systems.

>>10427225

>>10427233
That's not true, the suns are so far away from each other that the climate of planets in each habitable zone would barely get affected by the other star. What would happen is that for half of the year they would be no real nights, it would look more like twilight, and the heaven would look like a full moon, just the moon being considerably brighter than full moon on earth is.

>>10427235
I don't know what exactly you don't understand. Proxima Centauri is a dwarf star, so there we can detect earth-sized planets. Sun is a much larger star, for stars of that class we can't detect planets in the habitable zone.

>>10427240
>for stars of that class we can't detect planets in the habitable zone.

Ok dude now I know for sure you're just trolling.

It's a G2V star. The exact same type as our sun

>>10427200
It's a start. It's not clear yet if red dwarf systems can sustain life or not

>>10427267
He is also plain wrong. We've found 2 other habitable zone earth-like planets around Sun type stars.

>>10427267
>It's not clear yet if red dwarf systems can sustain life or not
No reason it couldn't. Especially when you think about the increased lifespan of a red dwarf with a much less erratic solar cycle.

>>10427264
Once again, you are proofing me right. That planet has 5 times the mass of earth, so it is not earth-like. We can not detect earth like planets in the habitable zone around anything besides dwarf stars.

>>10427280
There are some problems like the fact that many red dwarfs are flare stars and that the planets tend to orbit so close that they are tidally locked, in which case keeping an atmosphere would be difficult. But not totally impossible

>>10427183
>We just have to wait until the next generation of telescopes
What exactly do you think would be a next generation telescope? Optics can only be so good because of the laws of physics and radio astronomy afaik cant really get that much better unless you made an absolutely gigantic radio telescope. Just curious.

>>10427280
red dwarfs solar systems most likely do not have the atoms necessary to form complex molecules to form the basis for life.

So while they CAN sustain life. They most likely can't have abiogenesis on them. So life needs to go to them through panspermia or high-tech colonization.

But yeah humanity could easily live on such a planet if it was close enough to the star.

>>10427272
It really all depends on the method you're using to detect them. Transit and orbital oscillations of the star have strengths and weaknesses.
I have an infographic somewhere that highlights each method's wheelhouse but I can never find an image when I need it.

>>10427286
James Webb

>>10427286
JWST can detect the atmospheric makeup of exoplants and will be launched in 2021. That is good enough to calculate the surface temperature as well as the presence of water, oxygen and carbon to see if it's habitable for humans.

>>10427183
>to see if there's anything funny going on
stop it! clownworld is not real!

I'm worried
What are the odds that (what humanity has become by that time) lives past the death of the sun? Can we make it to the closest star, which has a vastly longer life expectancy, by then? Or do we have the means to push Saturn into Jupiter and have them become a red dwarf?

>>10427305
You don't need the sun to survive as long as you have some kind of other energy source.

>>10427305
If humanity hasn't gone interstellar billion years from now then we deserve to go extinct anyway

>>10427301
>>10427300
Kind of forgot about it, lol. It's becoming a meme since it was supposed to launch in 2019 originally right? (correct me if I'm wrong) I don't know a ton about telescopes, could one of you tell me what wavelengths it actually uses to observe things?

>>10427286
Gravitational lensing. If you could get a hubble tier telescope with a good star shade and send it out far enough you can use the Sun's gravity to have the effect of a giant telescope.
If I was king for a day I'd start off with a satelite network of telescopes that range from deep IR to hugh UV and use interferometry to combine the multiple sources to get what is effectively a much larger viewing area.
You could also build a VLA on the dark side of the moon and and have a moon sized radio telescope.

>>10427286
For exoplanet search specifically, you can use star shades. E.g. you would place a giant shade far away in front of the telescope in such a way that it blocks out the light of the actual star so that you can detect the light of the planet you want to observe.

>>10427319
It was supposed to launch in 1998....

It will observe visible light to mid-infrared. it was originally designed to see redshift but has the ability to also see the atmospheric contents of planets.

>>10427305
Even if somehow there was an alien forcefield outside of our solar system so that we were forever locked here. We would still last a lot longer than you think.

We could use a process called "star-lifting" which is where you slowly remove the pollutants from the surface of the star such as Helium and metals which could enlarge the lifespan of our sun from a couple of billion years to trillions of years.

In theory we could actually outlive all the other stars if we engineered and correcty starlifted our star.

We will never do this though because in reality there isn't a magical forcefield between our solar system and the rest of the galaxy and instead we'll just spread slowly throughout the galaxy.

>>10427385
well, I looked it up and it says 2007 was the first predicted launch date. Now it's 2021... Nice, 14 years. It's also been 22 years in the making.

>>10427744
It started development with the idea that it would launch in 1998 but was redesigned and final launch date was determined to be 2007.

It's been a complete meme at this point.

>>10427813
That's a bit of a pisstake. There were many concepts floating around about space telescopes. The actual JWST design was approved and startied development in 2010 and was originally scheduled for 2018.

>>10427201
>Because a lot of scientists, particularly physicists are idiots and probability is a scam.

Firstly sci-fi is a human construct so it is a reflection of what we already know, which is life can exist on a planet like ours. How else do you move the plot along without featuring conviently nearby, Earth like planets?

The reality is that Earth like planets certainly do exist but the term, "space is vast" isn't some romanticized sci find trope. It is vast. We haven't even explored the majority of our own planet's oceans, let alone scour the deep reaches of space for Earth like planets. The closet thing we have to decting Earth like planets is looking at the "wobbles" of distant starts similiar to ours. By the way not even present day wobbles but starts 1000s, 100,000s, and in some cases 1000,000,000s of light years away, so in essence we are looking at wobbles that were there so far back in the past in some cases that humanity didn't even exist when the actual wobbles occurred.

So asking why humanity hasn't found Earth like planets yet is like asking why an ant can't find and needle in the middle of the ocean. (And that's putting it mildly.).

In the grand scheme of things we are a species of young, under advanced, flesh bags, who lack the mental copacity to percieve let alone understand and the scope of stars, planets, and dimensions that make up our universe.

We use a the Scientific method to explore and test the bounds of a reality of which only 2 percent is made up of actual matter so go figure.

>>10427183
We already can look at other planets atmosphere's. It's called spectrophotography

>>10427202
>JWST that will launch in 2021

>>10427172
don't you love being told all this stuff is out in space by people who have never even been there?