Is it possible for us to discover habitable planets close to us?

[Catastrophe]

VPE Looking at the question and subsequent comment, there is sufficient latitude in length of journey and distance of planet to make the speed of travel a minor factor.

Cat

 

[Catastrophe]

Another point which I have made elsewhere:

Not only does it take enormous energy to approach FTL speeds, but you also have to slow down when you approach your destination. How do you carry the source of such energy?

Cat

 

[voidpotentialenergy]

VPE Looking at the question and subsequent comment, there is sufficient latitude in length of journey and distance of planet to make the speed of travel a minor factor.

Cat

Sure answers the oddity of gravity instant communication and wave speed.
Now for the minor problem of making empty/nothing large enough to do something useful with.
I have a sneaking suspicion that once you try the quantum world will resist with trying to fill it in.

 

[Catastrophe]

VPE "Now for the minor problem of making empty/nothing large enough to do something useful with."

Not sure what you mean. There are plenty of planets to be found given the wide travel parameters. Don't forget this is set in the future.

Cat

 

[voidpotentialenergy]

VPE "Now for the minor problem of making empty/nothing large enough to do something useful with."

Not sure what you mean. There are plenty of planets to be found given the wide travel parameters. Don't forget this is set in the future.

Cat

I think the trick to traveling at whatever speed you like is to travel in that region of space between quanta orbits.
In the nothing that exists between a quantum jump.
Time and space have no meaning in nothing so manipulating that nothing would create a location out of space and time.
IMO the mechanism that gravity uses to instant communicate/freaky action at a distance and reason we orbit the sun at it's true location.
3 methods of travel ,Wave, Particle and Void.

Changing quantum mechanics to allow nothing to be big enough to do something useful with is a tiny problem.
If you could do it i think nature will try to fill it in with quantum fluctuation and i think the same reason everything exists.

Jmo

 

[Advent Guard Life]

Look at how Big the Universe and Cosmos are, with Life so old their age would be a number this big 1 and the number would completely fill a solar-system, so Life would be able to quickly travel around the entire Universe and Cosmos, they just keep away from Earth because Earth is being birthed by an advanced race that owns the Milky Way Galaxy that lives in the center of The Milky Way Galaxy the point of most energy.

 

[Dragrath]

Helio:
"An incredible amount of energy is needed to achieve higher speeds "

What is often forgotten is not the energy to get up to speed
but the energy to slow down again!

Cat

One useful resolution for this is the halo drive proposed by Dr. Kipping where a laser is fired at the right distance around a black hole (close enough to the photon sphere for the laser to partially orbit around the black hole and return to the ship that fired it allowing its light to be reabsorbed) to accelerate or decelerate a spacecraft using the angular momentum of the black hole as a sink or reservoir of energy. The first catch is that to use a black hole to accelerate it needs to have angular momentum to spare but since angular momentum is conserved any black hole formed from a collapsed star this is unlikely to be a problem. The second is a bit more tricky as you need to have a black hole at your destination with a known mass and spin. Acceleration is done by firing the laser prograde to the blackholes spin whereas deceleration is done by firing the laser retrograde. Third catch is you better aim true since if you screw up its a one way trip into the black hole

The best advantage of this is that as long as the Ships mass is much less than the black hole the mass of the ship is largely negligible so you can have a ship as massive as a gas giant or low to mid range mass star if you want assuming we are restricted to natural astrophysical black holes. A system of binary blackholes is the easiest to use since it is easier to steal orbital angular momentum than rotational angular momentum.

And as there isn't a limit aside from the angular momentum of the black hole and the round trip laser efficiency you can go anywhere so long as their is a well known black hole at the destination. Luckily feeding black holes out across the universe happen to readily broadcast their location, mass and spin values. Want to visit Andromeda M87? So long as that galaxy isn't receding faster than the max relativistic speed your local black hole system is capable of supporting you can go all you need is that suitable black hole to launch yourself at hyper relativistic speeds. Well there is the pesky biological complication of maximum survivable g forces which unfortunately limits the useful functionality to the maximum distance you can aim your laser precisely but compared to other methods of travel it is easy... (sadly this requirement of needing a black hole limits the potential for habitable planets of course but O'Neil Cylinders and the high mass capability sort of counters that problem as you can bring your planet and perhaps star with you.

Warning: Black holes sold separately. Likewise intergalactic Halo drive travel networks are not responsible for damages taken due to the high radiation environments of actively accreting target black holes. Acceleration limits are advised to be kept below the binding energy of your system else loss of integrity of ship systems may result. The Universe is a cold uncaring place and failure to aim correctly is your fault not the Universes likewise the universe is not responsible for damage taken in transit by intervening baryonic matter striking at relativistic limits.

 

[Catastrophe]

I have just been watching Stargate SG1, where they materialise close to a black hole.

Enough said,

Cat

 

[Gline]

I also thinking that before

 

[Catastrophe]

Is it possible for us to discover habitable planets close to us?

Seems the best answer may be "only if they are there".
Seems the second best answer is "discover, maybe - reach, not quite yet".
Seems the third best answer is "colonise, possibly - terraform, probably never"

Cat

 

[IG2007]

Just teleport from here to there, why the hassle with FTL travel?

 

[Catastrophe]

IG Good point, except that if we are about to discover it, who put the teleport there or how would we know that there was one there?

Cat

 

[IG2007]

IG Good point, except that if we are about to discover it, who put the teleport there or how would we know that there was one there?

Cat

I guess we will just have a teleporter and it will create a small black hole, we will wear a suit which will let us pass through it with no harm to ourselves, we will state where we want to go, it will do some maths that and will make the blackhole as powerful as it would take to take us to there, and we will reach there. Now, this is purely sci-fi. I'd like to request you to pardon my imagination, please.

 

[Catastrophe]

I guess we will just have a teleporter and it will create a small black hole, we will wear a suit which will let us pass through it with no harm to ourselves, we will state where we want to go, it will do some maths that and will make the blackhole as powerful as it would take to take us to there, and we will reach there. Now, this is purely sci-fi. I'd like to request you to pardon my imagination, please.

No problem.

 

[plvto6]

I’m a writer and currently writing a book that involves space travel to a potentially habitable planet. I’ve done lots of research of potentially habitable planets that we are already aware of and I am aware that scientists believe there to be billions of planets in the Milky Way alone.

What I’m curious about is how likely it would be to find one or more of these potentially habitable planets in proximity closer to the ones we have already found?

Is it possible that scientists haven’t discovered everything near us? Or would I have to be setting my book somewhere much further afield?

I essentially want to create a planet so as to not get too deep into technical issues of impossibilities with already known existing planets.

And yes I am aware that we can’t reach those planets as of now, but I’m setting the book in the future and will invent technology advances to accommodate this issue.

Hope to hear from someone who might have an answer for me.

Thanks,

Malibu.

Although we would very much like to believe that there is life in our very own solar system, there is theoretically a 0.000000000000001% chance that other life exists (not only including intelligent life, but other microorganisms). It is possible that life can exist in other galaxies or with the multiverse theory, but that is unlikely to be proven since human technology cannot travel light years yet, and all galaxies and planets we see now are millions if not billions of years in the past. The singularity that created us was the Big Bang, and it took billions of years for us to form. Life can definitely exist, but it's most likely we won't experience other life in our life span since time in the universe goes by soooo much slower than our time on earth. Remeber that time is all relevant and 1 Trillion years in our time might be 20 seconds in space time, relatively and theoretically of course, not literally.

 

[History Of Earth]

Not sure if it is close but some where in this vast universe
when we have a history of earth like this

More than 4.5 billion years ago the Milky Way galaxy collided with a nearby dwarf galaxy ,
this encounter hastened the formation of stars our solar system is a part of the Milky Way galaxy
within the solar system material circulation had been progressing...learn more here
Long History Of Earth

History Of Earth

 

[Thomas Likes Space]

Hello! Our tech has found some that we Might get somewhere to Keplers habitable zone found planets. Kepler is basically a camera that we watch on earth.

More info on this video. Also check out the channel: Bright Side that made the video.

 

[serhiy1635]

I found an article that claims that researchers found that if a theoretical twin of Earth were placed into a binary star system – where two stars orbit each other – up to 87% of them should tilt on their axes in a way similar to Earth’s. What’s more, the tilt should be as stable as Earth’s: not perfectly stable, but not wildly unstable, either. https://earthsky.org/space/exoplanets-axial-tilt-evolution-of-complex-life-earth

 

[serhiy1635]

I`ve read on the website of space industry news about the Ariel space telescope mission and about James Webb Space Telescope- the most expensive telescope ever. I guess that such missions will open us some more information about these exoplanets or will open some new

James Webb Space Telescope - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Catastrophe]

Is it possible for us to discover habitable planets close to us?

This was a sensible question which may have been taken over partly by sf speculation.

I think the key word is discover. The question is not asking us to get there -merely to ascertain their existence.

Leaving aside FLT or even speeds approaching that of light, we only have to consider discovering any such planets from our present position in the Solar System.

That leaves us with the word close, which may have implied reachable by space travel, or perhaps wihin communication distance (and I mean close enough to communicate in real time - minimum delays so small distance).

So your guess is as good as mine. Just a few light years?

So that brings us to habitable. This presumably means "Earth like" in terms of atmospheric temperature, pressure and composition.

And that leaves us with a guess. I would say that Earth like is probably unlikely within a few light years. If the questioner is suggesting going there I would suggest totally improbable. If you want to extend the distance to 10 or 20 light years, I would answer "Maybe, who knows". I would defy anyone to give a better answer than that.

Cat

 

[Helio]

I read that TESS should have perhaps around 10,000 exoplanet candidates within the next few years. This should give us a lot of information to improve our guess as to what percent of all planets for a given type of star might have planets that are in habitable zones. This usually means liquid water - so not too hot or too cold.

But we think of habitable as having enough oxygen to breath, which strongly suggests life forms producing oxygen. It's only a guess if any of the 10k or 15k exoplanets found will qualify. But it's all happening in our life time, so stay tuned!

 

[Catastrophe]

I read that TESS should have perhaps around 10,000 exoplanet candidates within the next few years. This should give us a lot of information to improve our guess as to what percent of all planets for a given type of star might have planets that are in habitable zones. This usually means liquid water - so not too hot or too cold.

But we think of habitable as having enough oxygen to breath, which strongly suggests life forms producing oxygen. It's only a guess if any of the 10k or 15k exoplanets found will qualify. But it's all happening in our life time, so stay tuned!

Helio, do you have a figure for how many within 5-10 light years, or anything relating to 'close'? Cat

 

[Helio]

Helio, do you have a figure for how many within 5-10 light years, or anything relating to 'close'? Cat

I must give you, and some to Rod, credit in pushing me past TDC in writing a VBA Excel program to generate exoplanet counts by incremental distances. [I finally elected to learn to write code in Excel to help inventory stocking.] Here is the result:

[If others would like to see results using their own increments and maximum distance, I will generate them.... probably. ]

 

[serhiy1635]

I wanna add something more. I`ve recently found ( a few hours ago ). According to Kepler Data, there are about 40 billion Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars, with similar sizes to our own, just in the Milky Way.
Then consider there are hundreds of billions to trillions of galaxies. Judging by this statement intelligent life can really exist somewhere

 

[Helio]

I wanna add something more. I`ve recently found ( a few hours ago ). According to Kepler Data, there are about 40 billion Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars, with similar sizes to our own, just in the Milky Way.
Then consider there are hundreds of billions to trillions of galaxies. Judging by this statement intelligent life can really exist somewhere

The MW doesn’t have 40 billion Sun-like stars, and the odds are against them having Earth-like planets. What is your source?