A host of earths
 

Amazing results from a new telescope...




http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...est=latestnews

Fascinating... http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/3479/vulcan.gif

Good to see such promising results from the Kepler mission.

Go NASA! :salute:

I call shenanigans because its fox news LMAO :doh::doh::doh:

Just 700?! How about getting closer to get a good view :O:

Heh because 'closer' is a relative thing. In order for us to get closer at this point in time we are talking 100's if not 1,000's of years :03:

Nuts to that, get your ass to Mars NASA!

Hmmmm that's where Relativity rears its ugly head... At speeds near c the ship will take 25,000 years to reach say the galactic core from the perspective of those on Earth but for the crew time dilates so it only takes 20 years.

That's much better than it taking 25,000 years for the crew as well. Means that if one has to leave the system in a hurry, it's possible without making something that accomodates travel for many thousands of years.

We are not building a ship that can go .9+ c in a hurry. Also it needs to be a speed greater than .9 c because this effect dosn't become useful for interstellar travel until a speed of around .999 c is reached.

(FWI: for those who don't know c = the speed of light in a vacuum.)

Building such a ship would be a massive endeavor both in terms of building the ship and R&D. The drive would need to be some kind of Fusion drive (Like the "Impulse Engines" in Star Trek) or a massive Antimatter Boosted Fusion Orion drive (Super H-Bombs injected with Antimatter). Both would require a huge investment in R&D and infrastructure (especially for Anti-matter production) to be developed.

Yes, but the fact that it's possible to do something like that without breaking the laws of physics helps, regardless of the current level of technology.

Space travel will not be truely possible untill the 'folding' of space is realized.

Its all about the spice :up:

Indeed. Even with just a "Super Orion" we could visit Alpha Centauri and some of other nearby stars like Epsilon Eridani, 61 Cygni or Tau Ceti in a crew's lifetime.

Agreed, the Spice Must Flow. :salute: