Earth 2? Nasa thinks they have found one.

Because - as I understand it - there aren't any "pictures" exactly. Just numbers from radiometric telescopes that tell them there might be something there. Astronomy has to fund itself somehow. Piquing curiosity and stimulating the imagination is a popular tactic. The actual data is boring as fuck.

Well then, is there at least a place I could go to where they show the numbers and talk about them?

That sounds uncomfortably similar to Kessler....

Here you go. Facinating right? :)

edit: Theres alot to read about Earth 2 and other space stuff at www.nasa.gov

@rethla: I google searched that image and the subject of it is a comet named the Siding Spring. Where is Kepler 452b in this?

@aegon: You would have to ask someone alot smarter than me to point out the little white dot that has kepler in orbit. That image is the part of space they are focusing on right now and where Earth 2 is located and you are right, this particular picture highlights that a comet passed by.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html

Pure scifi, but I feel like we'll have a more likely chance of terraforming and adjusting environmental situations on solar planets to be suitable for human habitation than we will at finding a perfect extra-solar Earth clone. The sheer, stultifying distances in space make land wars in Russia seem downright reasonable in comparison.

Hell, we'll need that eco-terraforming technology just to continue living on this rock.

@itwastuesday: Nooooo I don't approve of what you did here.

Is Earth 2 the one with the Injustice League or the one where all the superhero and villains swap gender?

@brodehouse said:

Yeah. Even then terraforming is about as far away from our capabilities as traveling to an Earth X somewhere in the galaxy. Building initial bases and then building upon those bases though.

@honkalot: I think terraforming is alot more realistic than faster than light travel, it will however take a long time to terraform a planet. We will need to plan ahead, stay focused and keep the peace for several generations to do it. Big chance for that to happen.

@rethla said:

More realistic most likely, but probably still far fetched. :/

Just shoot rockets at mars filled with oxygen and nitrogen until it turns green. Terraforming made easy.

If mars can already hold a thin atmosphere we just need to fill it with the good stuff, right? #NotBillNyeTheScienceGuy

@mikemcn: Essentially - but how much of it. Mars is slightly smaller than earth but that's still a massivs amount of material.

That's sort of why I think FTL and terraforming are about equally realistically ideas.

FTL requires someone to find an immensely smart work around (if one exists at all).

Terraforming requires more energy and resources than are realistically obtainable.

@honkalot: you just have to find comets with the right stuff and smash them into mars.

@rethla said:

That is true in the same sense that "then we just have to invent warp drive" is true.

@honkalot: well comets do exist and we have landed on them. Warpdrive is a thing only in sience fiction.

@zolroyce said:

For reference, Voyager 1 has the record for fastest man-made object to leave the solar system with 17,1 km/s (38.000 mph). If we traveled at that speed toward that planet, it would take us 24,5 million years to reach it (which is about 1 million "kids" in that sentence)...

@bartok: I believe it is the one where superheroes *do* age...

@hermes: @honkalot: @ll_exile_ll: @hh: @tits_matador: @oursin_360:

Thanks for the knowledge/science lessons duders, it's sad that it is so mind messingly far away. But I guess the good news is, if we ever build the technology to travel fast enough to get there that humanity managed to pull itself together to get on the right on the right track and didn't like... blow itself up.

@rethla said:

What I mean is that "just" smashing comets into Mars is about as true a description as "just" inventing a warp drive.

First you need to find what are good comets to use - probably not every comet. You get so and so many opportunities to intercept it - maybe once every 100 years or less. You need thrust in order to divert the course, thousands to millions of tons of fuel most likely. Is there a point to smashing one comet and then waiting 50 years for the next shot? The dust settles and nothing happens except there is now 1 gram of H20 sprinkled across every 5 square kilometers. Solar wind then again blows away what you accomplished with the atmosphere. Do you instead put them in a rotating orbit that will - in 5000 years make several comets impact closer in time span so as to actually affect the atmosphere in a meaningful way.

Etc etc. So just smashing comets into Mars is about as feasible as saying just invent warp drive in my book.

@honkalot: Smashing comets into mars is perfectly doable within our lifetime. A warpdrive aint even defined what it is outside of fiction.

There is already plenty of water on mars so we dont need to add any more, infact if we manage to heat it up somehow almost all land will be covered by water.

Hoarding comets in orbit around mars sounds hilarious. It will take crazy amounts of fuel to get them into orbit instead of smashing them right into it but i love the idea. In 1000000000000 years the duders at Earth two is gonna wonder where all the comets went.

@hermes: Just need that cryo tech and we're set! Nothing could happen to the Earth in 25 million years meanwhile (not even Vagrant Story 2); sounds perfectly reasonable.

@rethla said:

It is technically doable today - in the sense that we know how to make rocket engines and we know how to calculate trajectories. Also aware that warp drives are strictly science fiction at this point. My point is that terraforming Mars is as remote a possibility as starting from scratch to find the magic trick behind making a warp engine today.

67P as an example has a mass of approximately 10 billion metric tons and a peak velocity around 135000 km/h. Even at a maximum efficiency point nudging that enough to change its orbit significantly would require more than we are capable of. And space is large, unless there is a candidate that would basically just near miss Mars this might as well be impossible. Even then, smashing a comet into Mars doesn't suddenly give it a desirable atmosphere to start with. And causing a cataclysmic event like that you would still have to sit patiently and wait for, guessing, a couple million years before things calm down enough to see what the result ended up being.

In that case, sending a generation ship to a nearby star today, at speeds we are capable of today, would likely be able to make a return trip before Mars is terraformed were we to start working on that right now. I might be a bit pessimistic. :P