Good News, Everyone! Scientists Discover A Triplet of Crispy Exoplants

A team of European scientists have discovered 45 new exoplanets, including the most recent discovery of three in especially close orbits around a single, Sol-like star.

Marvelous! It will make them easy to find, then, because you're going to deliver them 20 metric tonnes of sunblock!

Sounds pleasant! Though I'd probably have to keep you damned kids away from the air conditioner to keep it warm enough! BAAAHH!

Silly Europeans, still using optical telescopes. The would have found them much sooner if they used my Smell-o-scope! Damned insufferable Swiss!

Here's your lead-lined, asbestos suits. I don't have any replacement crews lined up, currently I mean, I wouldn't want you to be roasted alive from the heat and radiation, now.



Professor Farnsworth scylis would like to state that he would have had this done before Bean had he not had to recapture all of his nuclear mutants after they trashed his lab lost the original link.

consider it done.

for your consideration.

the drake equation is actually a very interesting concept, and that article makes it very approachable.

Wow, I thread jumped without even trying!

I am like a GOD!!!

oh, i agree. but it's still interesting as hell, and it gives you a sort of framework to think about how probable intelligent life really is.

whether it's out there right now or if there is any chance we will see it, is of course, the real question.

I'll say it again . . . that is a LOT of math that I can't comprehend.

agreed. it's more symbolic logic than math.

i do believe that rewriting (or modifying) the Drake Equation using what we know now would prove very satisfying and might be very helpful for the future, though exactly in what fashion, i'm not entirely sure.

and, i admit, i would have made this hours ago had i not been caught up in not working today. my more powerful laptop (which i use for gaming) seems to have been lobotomized somehow. memory parity error. damned Vista, too.

anyway, these planets might very well be good sources of raw materials, should we ever develop FTL drives. also, using the extreme inner planets (such as Mercury or ones like these) as hubs for power generation is an intriguing theme that i've seen pop up in several sci-fi things recently (
warrenellis's Transmetropolitan is, of course, the one that most readily leaps to mind, because it's awesome. i'm also eagerly awaiting those glasses to be developed).

Why go down into the gravity well? Better to find asteroid-type masses to cannibalise. Much less energy cost.

I wonder if having huge ass solid planets like that would mean less asteroids, on average.

probably not. there's a lot of space outwards from that star if it's got anything like the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud of the Sol system.

now, a few Jupiter-sized or larger planets spread throughout the system might do the trick. of course, they could pull just enough to prevent other rocky planets from forming, causing there to be more asteroids.

well, they're supposed to be pretty large, and they could be a rich source of minerals rare here on Earth or elsewhere. wouldn't know until we check it out.

It was their gravity wells I meant.

And TBH, if humans ever manage FTL transport, rare minerals are not likely to be among their worries. (Not that we'd see them as human anyway.)

i do believe FTL will come about before mater rearrangement technology or the theoretical evolution to non-corporeal beings.

I saw something on the History Channel not too long ago where they have fairly good evidence to suggest that faster-than-light particles such as tachyons do, in fact, exist and achieve superluminal velocities due to a warping effect of space-time around them.

it's pretty well agreed that faster than light 'communication', in fact even instantaneous communication, can exist between two sub-atomic particles (or at least a friend of mine who is currently working at the CERN Large Hadron Collider tried to explain how and why it could, but then again, i forgot i hated physics after quantum mechanics and statistical thermodynamics), but the real problem is that there is no evidence that complex, multi cellular (fuck, even atomic particles) can survive any such form of transport/communication.

whatever, the world is ending in 2013, so it's all moot.

Yeah, unfortunately, I agree with the postulation in the wiki article you linked, that most civilizations will destroy themselves long before they reach the level of technology required for superluminal travel.

*sigh*

you just don't get it...

Well, I assume by the 2013, that you're referring to the mistaken interpretation of Mayan traditions that the world will end ~2012 or 2013.

hehehe. ansibles. up until recently, they thought those impossible.

now i just want me a Dr. Device.

oh, and as to the gravity wells of the three planets and asteroids, they're nothing compared to Jupiter's, and we have plenty of asteroids roaming around the Solar system.

That sums up my current appreciation for Drake.