50 Billion Planets!

[Gargamel]

In the miky way alone! Raises the hope of actually having colonies in the future, not mention the possibility of finding life (intelligent or otherwise).

http://news.discovery.com/space/milky-way-stuffed-with-50-billion-alien-worlds.html

[breadcatcher101]

50 Billion. I wonder who counted them all.

Talk about job security.

Think we will evolve our tech abilities in time to reach them before the next great impact and the start of a new age?

Presently we can't even seem to be able to afford another trip to the moon.

Best perhaps if those distant from us make the trip.

[Castout]

You know what there is a lot of gold bars in Fort Knox.

It doesn't mean any one of us could come to get it.

:DL

There's even perpetual happiness in heaven . . . . . so they say . . . . but it's out of reach. What we can go to at maximum is death.

I'm just saying that those numbers are meaningless unless mankind develop technology to reach and colonize them. Which we don't have and will not have in the immediate and even rather long future.

There are type 1 civilization which population could harness all the resources of their planet
Type 2 civ if they can harness the resources of their solar system
and Type 3 civilization or galactic civilization if they are able to harness the resources of the galaxies.



The catch is we are not on the list we are type 0 if you can say that. And more catch is the transition from type 0 to type 1 is the most dangerous of all.
We must survive from ourselves and our petty egoistical and selfish pursuit to reach it. We need to revolutionize our culture that is to revamp our mindset.
By the rate we're going we probably will end up destroying each other sooner or later. The environment will provide a background or convenient excuse for that. In short unless we evolve from our primitive and primal tendencies to dominate other people mankind will have NO FUTURE whatsoever.

The fact is we are taking things without hardly contributing anything positive to our planet. We do not even produce the gas we need to breathe and live because nobody could profit from doing that yet. We are pathetic. Our endeavor is to collect some mathematical digits or paper notes called money the currency of insanity which in all objectivity is VALUELESS. We are so busy with ourselves that we forget to move on and reach higher things. Then again nature will ask us to choose and like it or not we will and we have and nature will hand us what we deserve and that if we prove not worthy of a future we shall be given none. Easy, simple. This planet and everything in it don't need us, we need them. And nature always makes sense and if people start to think they are being handed too much or if nature is being unfair then they are not making sense,

[TLAM Strike]

You know what there is a lot of gold bars in Fort Knox.

It doesn't mean any one of us could come to get it.

:DL

If you had a thermonuclear bomb you could...
cue Goldfinger...
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/1566/goldfinger415x275.jpg

:rock:

And if you had enough of them you could go to other planets...
http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/420/orionblastoff.jpg
Screw you guys, I'm going to Rigel Kentaurus...
^Where can I get that on a T Shirt? :hmmm:

Studies in the 1960s-1970s calculated than an Orion drive spacecraft could reach speeds of 5-10% of c. That makes a flight to Alpha Centaruri a trip of ~30-40 years.

Think I'm making this stuff up? NASA really considered such a mission! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Longshot)

[Castout]

Studies in the 1960s-1970s calculated than an Orion drive spacecraft could reach speeds of 5-10% of c. That makes a flight to Alpha Centaruri a trip of ~30-40 years.

Think I'm making this stuff up? NASA really considered such a mission! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Longshot)

Well even if we reach 100% light speed many galaxies are million of light years away :D we better hurry because the space is expanding and distancing themselves :O:

I'm sure pre-historic men too once wonder if he could go to the sun to take a look. Now we can wonder the same too but still unable to do so :DL

[Gargamel]

Studies in the 1960s-1970s calculated than an Orion drive spacecraft could reach speeds of 5-10% of c. That makes a flight to Alpha Centaruri a trip of ~30-40 years.

Think I'm making this stuff up? NASA really considered such a mission! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Longshot)

On topic too!
http://news.discovery.com/space/tau-zero-project-daedalus-icarus-110119.html
http://news.discovery.com/space/project-icarus-target-exoplanet-star-110207.html
http://news.discovery.com/space/wide-angle-project-icarus-110208.html

[Raptor1]

Well even if we reach 100% light speed many galaxies are million of light years away :D we better hurry because the space is expanding and distancing themselves :O:

I'm sure pre-historic men too once wonder if he could go to the sun to take a look. Now we can wonder the same too but still unable to do so :DL

Well, technically, if you somehow reach 1 c, then it won't take you any (proper) time to get there at all. The problem is knowing when to stop...

[Sailor Steve]

Fifty billion? I've never seen one. Therefore they don't exist. :O:

[razark]

I've never seen one.
Walk outside. Look down.

There's one!

[Sailor Steve]

Walk outside. Look down.

There's one!
I just did. All I saw was dirt. I don't get it.

[razark]

I just did. All I saw was dirt. I don't get it.
You need to look under the dirt, I guess.

[TLAM Strike]

Well even if we reach 100% light speed many galaxies are million of light years away :D we better hurry because the space is expanding and distancing themselves :O:

Not a problem if you can reach 1 c (well you can't but you can reach something like .9999 c in theory) when that happens a wonderful little thing call Time Dilation occurs. Time for the crew of the Spacecraft in flight will change. At .9999 of c it will change by a factor of 70! Basically for every day on Earth the spaceship's crew will travel the distance of 2.59x10^10 km x 70 (approx 1/5th of a light year per day) because from their perspective the universe is traveling 70 times faster, in essence they are traveling though time as well as space.

[Sailor Steve]

You need to look under the dirt, I guess.
:rotfl2::yeah:

[Castout]

Not a problem if you can reach 1 c (well you can't but you can reach something like .9999 c in theory) when that happens a wonderful little thing call Time Dilation occurs. Time for the crew of the Spacecraft in flight will change. At .9999 of c it will change by a factor of 70! Basically for every day on Earth the spaceship's crew will travel the distance of 2.59x10^10 km x 70 (approx 1/5th of a light year per day) because from their perspective the universe is traveling 70 times faster, in essence they are traveling though time as well as space.

. . . . . .:hmmm:

[get back]

. . . . . .:hmmm:

[get back]

. . . . . . .:hmmm:

i'm afraid I'm too dumb to understand that :haha:

[Gargamel]

Just finished reading "Ender's Game" and "The speaker for the Dead" (sequels). They do a decent job of describing the relativistic effects of time dilation on the human person. And they're really good reads too.

[TLAM Strike]

. . . . . .:hmmm:

[get back]

. . . . . .:hmmm:

[get back]

. . . . . . .:hmmm:

i'm afraid I'm too dumb to understand that :haha:

oooo-k... Let me try explaining it to you a different way...
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/6756/doctorwho3d460.jpg
... Planet of the Apes... yes the movie (not the actual planet)... No the original one! You travel at the speed of light around the universe and come back to Earth and billions of years have passed, but you are just a few months older. Got it now?

[Castout]

oooo-k... Let me try explaining it to you a different way...
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/6756/doctorwho3d460.jpg
... Planet of the Apes... yes the movie (not the actual planet)... No the original one! You travel at the speed of light around the universe and come back to Earth and billions of years have passed, but you are just a few months older. Got it now?
Umm I got that idea from the beginning but how I just couldn't understand it logically speaking. I can grab the idea but not understand why it is so.

[kiwi_2005]

we will probably never reach those planets. Maybe in our solar system but not beyond

We would need to figure out or find a

Worm hole.
Black hole - then we would have to suvive the black hole according to scientist eveything breaks up inside the black hole.
Warp drive - speed of light travel.
Gravity.

To travel from one end of the milky way to the other traveling at the speed of light would take 100,000 years.

A worm hole would be the best way to travel we would get to our destination in seconds. Im sure thats how the Aliens do it. :DL

Mass Effect 2 game got me thinking about this.:DL

[TLAM Strike]

To travel from one end of the milky way to the other traveling at the speed of light would take 100,000 years. Again time is Subjective. For a travel going about the universe at c the time it takes to travel is a lot less. For the Objective observer here on Earth it takes the full 100,000 years to travel make the trip.

I don't pretend to understand it but that is how Relativity works in its counter-intuitive way.

We would need to figure out or find a
...
Black hole - then we would have to suvive the black hole according to scientist eveything breaks up inside the black hole. I don't see how a Black Hole would help you get anywhere except the great here after. Unless you are talking about harnessing it for power or something.

There is nothing at the bottom of the singularity. Unless you start talking about quantum physics and the destruction of information.

[Raptor1]

Black hole - then we would have to suvive the black hole according to scientist eveything breaks up inside the black hole.

It's quite the opposite, actually, everything is compressed inside a black hole due to the infinite gravitational pull in the singularity, so nothing would quite break apart. Not much use for interstellar travel in either case, though.

[Growler]

Speculation is fun n' stuff, but I've held to this concept:

Not only is the Universe capable of more than we imagine, it's capable of more than we can imagine.

[Gargamel]

It's quite the opposite, actually, everything is compressed inside a black hole due to the infinite gravitational pull in the singularity, so nothing would quite break apart. Not much use for interstellar travel in either case, though.

I think they do 'break apart', but not in the way being used above. The electron bonds get broken when the atoms get crushed under the immense gravity, therefore releasing the bonds. Since it is a singularity. then the structures of objects no longer exist. The debate in physics continues though over if the information of these structures remains, ie Hawking radiation and all the associated issues.

[Sailor Steve]

Umm I got that idea from the beginning but how I just couldn't understand it logically speaking. I can grab the idea but not understand why it is so.
Actually it works both ways. The faster you go the longer it takes the light from your starting point to reach you, hence the slower things there would appear to move (assuming you could see them). Unfortunately relativity works both ways, so the light from your spaceship would have the same problem, so the reality is that time would seem to slow down on earth if you could see it.

Or at least that's the way it would work for two spaceships, since neither one is travelling at all except when compared to the other.

Buuuut...

Gravity seems to throw that all out of whack, so to a person in a gravity well (such as a planet like earth) the spaceship, which has no gravity of its own (none to speak of anyway) really would appear to be passing time more slowly. Here's a simple explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

And this one's a little easier to understand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox

[Schöneboom]

Looks to me like we either get one of these or we ain't going very far:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/Sg1stargatefront.jpg

[krashkart]

So many new places to go and no way to travel to them.

[Armistead]

Space is amazing, even if you don't believe in God, space itself proves time and space itself are eternal. To think no matter how far you look backward or forward, it's non ending.

We don't have the technology or sources to travel space to use any planets. Unless life comes from another planet, we'll be here using earth up.

Course the year 2012 is coming soon and it will all be over. :woot: I just hope it's not another ice age, I hate the cold.

[TLAM Strike]

Space is amazing, even if you don't believe in God, space itself proves time and space itself are eternal. To think no matter how far you look backward or forward, it's non ending. Well according to most accepted theories if you look far enough back you will eventually see nothing because you will be seeing the universe before the big bang in which time at matter didn't exist. As for the end it depends on what theory you subscribe to, but most either way end with all matter in the universe coming to and end, with out any matter measurement of time becomes nearly impossible.

We don't have the technology or sources to travel space to use any planets. Unless life comes from another planet, we'll be here using earth up. Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to my self. Everyone seems to underestimate humans, and what they are capable of. When I build my Orion for my Rigel Kent flight none of you can come along...

...except maybe Oberon, ML, Luftwolf and Vendor.

[Armistead]

Well according to most accepted theories if you look far enough back you will eventually see nothing because you will be seeing the universe before the big bang in which time at matter didn't exist. As for the end it depends on what theory you subscribe to, but most either way end with all matter in the universe coming to and end, with out any matter measurement of time becomes nearly impossible.

Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to my self. Everyone seems to underestimate humans, and what they are capable of. When I build my Orion for my Rigel Kent flight none of you can come along...

...except maybe Oberon, ML, Luftwolf and Vendor.

Nothing...is still something, emptiness is still space. The big bang may have happened out of thin air....but thin air is something. Time and space is non-ending.

I don't underestimate humans, I expect them to do what they've always done, take over and destroy civilizations and then rebuild again, it's just now the damage we can do can set us back to the dark ages.

Humans...humbug..

[Tchocky]

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars, it's a hundred thousand light years side to siiiiiiide

[Platapus]

It is kinda sad that there will be places in the Universe that humans can never explore.... or it may be a good thing, depending on your perspective. :D

[Skybird]

Well even if we reach 100% light speed
100% light speed means the object travelling that fast has infinite mass. So much for linear travelling at super-dooper speed.

many galaxies are million of light years away :D we better hurry because the space is expanding and distancing themselves :O:

Make that "most galaxies" and "billions of light years".

However, the theory of the fluctuating universe gives hope that in a far away future things will move together again - so close that finally all existing matter and energy and gravitation and space-time collapse into one singular point again, causing the show to start from new with Bang.


:smug:

[Rhodes]

Get one of this: http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/4420/thetardiswhoohoo1.jpg (http://img510.imageshack.us/i/thetardiswhoohoo1.jpg/)

[Gotland]

Yeah the Big Crunch, probably the most famous endgame scenario of the universe, but every piece of evidence we've gathered since that theory was proposed has pointed towards an ever expanding universe, and, depending on the nature of dark energy, might result in Heat Death or the Big Rip.

Kinda depressing, entropy takes its toll, galaxies move away from each other and become lonely, stars burn out their nuclear hydrogen fuel, hydrogen gas decreases after many star cycles, and also the massive hydrogen clouds that form new stars become to dispersed for star formation to occur after some stellar generations. So what's left is lonely galaxies, with the former galaxy neighbours competely out of sight, only stellar remnants and planets remain, completely dark (no stars) and the galaxies themselves disband.

So this dark phase with stellar remnants and such goes on for a LONG time. Eventually, protons decay into subatomic particles and photons and black holes "evaporate". So that means the end of matter. In the last phase, comes the age of the photon. What will remain is an extrenely low-density soup of photons.
Low-energy photons i might add (= high wavelength, up to the radio range).
And this phase could go on truly forever (you never know though, given an eternity, amazing things could arise if quantum fluctuations happen).

That's the summary of the heat death scenario anyways.
Pretty dim, that means we'll go out with a whimper.

I prefer the big crunch, because that gives the possibility of a cycle/rebrith, and also, it ends in a last big blaze of glory, or out with a bang! instead of a whimper.

[Skybird]

Wikipedia sums up the new theory from 2007 nicely:

This more recent cyclic model of 2007 makes a different technical assumption concerning the equation of state of the dark energy which relates pressure and density through a parameter w.[5] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-Baum.2C_Frampton_2007-4)[8] (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/#cite_note-Baum.2C_Frampton_2006-7) It assumes w < −1 (a condition called phantom energy (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Phantom_energy)) throughout a cycle, including at present. (By contrast, Steinhardt–Turok assume w is never less than −1.) In the Baum–Frampton model, a septillionth (or less) of a second before the would-be Big Rip (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Big_Rip), a turnaround occurs and only one causal patch is retained as our universe. The generic patch contains no quark (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Quark), lepton (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Lepton) or force carrier (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Force_carrier); only dark energy (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Dark_energy) – and its entropy thereby vanishes. The adiabatic process (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Adiabatic_process) of contraction of this much smaller universe takes place with constant vanishing entropy and with no matter including no black holes (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Black_holes) which disintegrated before turnaround. The idea that the universe "comes back empty" is a central new idea of this cyclic model, and avoids many difficulties confronting matter in a contracting phase such as excessive structure formation (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Structure_formation), proliferation and expansion of black holes (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Black_holes), as well as going through phase transitions (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Phase_transition) such as those of QCD and electroweak symmetry restoration. Any of these would tend strongly to produce an unwanted premature bounce, simply to avoid violation of the second law of thermodynamics (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics). The surprising w < −1 condition may be logically inevitable in a truly infinitely cyclic cosmology because of the entropy problem. Nevertheless, many technical back up calculations are necessary to confirm consistency of the approach. Although the model borrows ideas from string theory (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/String_theory), it is not necessarily committed to strings, or to higher dimensions (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Higher_dimensions), yet such speculative devices may provide the most expeditious methods to investigate the internal consistency (http://www.subsim.com/wiki/Internal_consistency). The value of w in the Baum–Frampton model can be made arbitrarily close to, but must be less than, −1.

I always found the singular Big Bang theory and the idea of the heat death of the universe - or a final freeze - being unsatisfactory, for these models open more questionsand leave more things unanswered, than they do provide answers for. I am also attracted by the similiarities of ancient Hindu mysticism, and this physic's theory of an oscillating universe. Both seem to talk about the same basic idea: the one being kind of artistic prose, the other being mathematics - an irresistable, poetic combo.

[TLAM Strike]

I am also attracted by the similiarities of ancient Hindu mysticism, and this physic's theory of an oscillating universe. Both seem to talk about the same basic idea: the one being kind of artistic prose, the other being mathematics - an irresistable, poetic combo.

I always thought the Hindu theology had a strangeness to it. Like someone tried to explain cosmology and astrophysics to a child, and the child interpreted it as best they could. :hmmm:

[Armistead]

Know little of space. I know many think the world ends or some harsh event. Many use the Mayan calendar. I know in 2012 planets line up in some way, pretty amazing stuff, but they've done that rather recently.
Maybe some strong solar flare activity...

What do you guys think of these events or maybe someone can explain what events in the heavens happen in 2012. Still, fairly smart of the Mayans to figure this stuff out.

[Raptor1]

Know little of space. I know many think the world ends or some harsh event. Many use the Mayan calendar. I know in 2012 planets line up in some way, pretty amazing stuff, but they've done that rather recently.
Maybe some strong solar flare activity...

What do you guys think of these events or maybe someone can explain what events in the heavens happen in 2012. Still, fairly smart of the Mayans to figure this stuff out.

As far as I know the Mayans never figured anything out, even if there was something to figure out. 2012 just happens to be the end of the current cycle of the Long Count calendar usually associated with the Maya.

As for what would happen...probably nothing, unfortunately.

[ReFaN]

Quite epic to think theres that many, and that they all are spinning around earth! Breathtaking.

[Gargamel]

Know little of space. I know many think the world ends or some harsh event. Many use the Mayan calendar. I know in 2012 planets line up in some way, pretty amazing stuff, but they've done that rather recently.
Maybe some strong solar flare activity...

What do you guys think of these events or maybe someone can explain what events in the heavens happen in 2012. Still, fairly smart of the Mayans to figure this stuff out.

Or maybe they just ran out of rock?

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/9558/186152012calendar.jpg

Occams razor FTW!

[TLAM Strike]

Know little of space. I know many think the world ends or some harsh event. Many use the Mayan calendar. I know in 2012 planets line up in some way, pretty amazing stuff, but they've done that rather recently.
Maybe some strong solar flare activity...

What do you guys think of these events or maybe someone can explain what events in the heavens happen in 2012. Still, fairly smart of the Mayans to figure this stuff out.

There is no planetary alignment in 2012 nor for the next few decades. plus the planets don't really align anyways because they all don't orbit on the same plane.

You will hear some talk of the Sun being in alignment with the super massive black hole in the center of the Milky way. Thats total bull. First the Earth's orbit causes the sun to eclipse Sag. A and second it happens every year!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJjQMwEjC1I

[Gargamel]

You will hear some talk of the Sun being in alignment with the super massive black hole in the center of the Milky way. Thats total bull.

Well duh.... :D Any two points always form a straight line.

[Armistead]

As far as I know the Mayans never figured anything out, even if there was something to figure out. 2012 just happens to be the end of the current cycle of the Long Count calendar usually associated with the Maya.

As for what would happen...probably nothing, unfortunately.

I don't even think the Mayans think the world will end or change in 2012. Seems I read something, some heavenly bodies may line up, or some crap as Plat said, but never seen any real evidence, so who knows.

[krashkart]

It is kinda sad that there will be places in the Universe that humans can never explore.... or it may be a good thing, depending on your perspective. :D

That's a dichotomy that I always have trouble with. On one hand I want to believe that we will evolve and become better caretakers of the domain we live in. On the other... well... we know the vagaries of our current evolutionary form all too well. :rotfl2:

As long as we don't go extinct we still have a fighting chance. :arrgh!:

[Gerald]

There is no planetary alignment in 2012 nor for the next few decades. plus the planets don't really align anyways because they all don't orbit on the same plane.

You will hear some talk of the Sun being in alignment with the super massive black hole in the center of the Milky way. Thats total bull. First the Earth's orbit causes the sun to eclipse Sag. A and second it happens every year!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJjQMwEjC1I Nice Vid, :cool:

[Sailor Steve]

Well duh.... :D Any two points always form a straight line.
So the Earth is always lined up with itself?

OMG WE'RE ALL DOOMED!!!

[Dowly]

Cosmic Journeys episode 17 (release date February 21):

Alien Planets & Eyeball Earths: The Search for Habitable Planets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9375q7erYY