Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Wobble73 on April 25, 2007, 10:17:39 am
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..................not destroyed by the Lucifer after all! (http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21618354-5001021,00.html)
:lol:
Nobody here has mentioned this so I thought I would post it and see what peoples opinion was! :yes:
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i cant tell if they're just joking. what does everyone else think. (srry if it is a joke and i just dont get it)
anyway, its cool.
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It's no joke, apparently this Earth-like planet has been discovered!
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Isn't Vasuda a very arid desert planet, though? I seem to remember that from fs1
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That's not the correct board for such a discovery...
I was a bit surprised when I heard of it. I know that our current telescopes don't enable us to discover planets of small size. The star of this planet is, however, little compared to our sun. I think the formula works well.
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actualy, its on the real live news. and i heavily doubt we found vasudans. life on other planes could very well be bizzare compared to our own. they dont know whether its H2o in the oceans or not yet. as far as we know, the life could be silicon based.
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Here journalists said that the planet we're talking about (does it have a name?)might be habitable. We're not sure if there are life forms, however.
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Nobody here has mentioned this so I thought I would post it and see what peoples opinion was! :yes:
It's not the Vasudan homeworld, Vasuda Prime is actually Beta Hydri. This one orbits Gliese 581, and it's name is Gliese 581c. But you already knew that. :blah:
actualy, its on the real live news. and i heavily doubt we found vasudans. life on other planes could very well be bizzare compared to our own. they dont know whether its H2o in the oceans or not yet. as far as we know, the life could be silicon based.
Taka's right.
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Please, that planet isnt the Vasudan homeworld, its Delta Serpentis. :P
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Nobody here has mentioned this so I thought I would post it and see what peoples opinion was! :yes:
It's not the Vasudan homeworld, Vasuda Prime is actually Beta Hydri. This one orbits Gliese 581, and it's name is Gliese 581c. But you already knew that. :blah:
Meh...I don't like when astronomers maintain naming conventions for important stars and/or planets. This planet and its star must be renamed ASAP.
I know that astronomers were looking for "Terra 2"(symbolic name for a planet like ours...ehm...like mine). Naming this planet "Terra 2" would be ok ;)
This thread is interesting. A subject that has nothing to do with FS here in General FreeSpace Discussion rather than in The Pub. Post rate escalating...
Please, that planet isnt the Vasudan homeworld, its Delta Serpentis. :P
Delta Serpentis is a star.... ;)
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It's not the Vasudan homeworld, Vasuda Prime is actually Beta Hydri. This one orbits Gliese 581, and it's name is Gliese 581c. But you already knew that. :blah:
That's fanon.
Anyway 1.6gs is a little too heavy for my tastes. Same with the whole having to always wear sunglasses when outside thanks to the star.
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It is? Oh... (go away Mars)
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they should hold votes for naming it. terra would be nice, since they already named this stormy wet rock earth.
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Mandala Prime? :lol:
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they should hold votes for naming it. terra would be nice, since they already named this stormy wet rock earth.
I quite liked the idea of calling it Thera, an anagram of Earth! :yes:
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how about....
BLORCH!
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It's a shame we can't travel at, like, 200 times the speed of light.
they should hold votes for naming it. terra would be nice, since they already named this stormy wet rock earth.
terra = earth in latin
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but they still hold positions as defferent words.
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No, they are not defferent words.
They're the same things, only in different languages.
It would be like making aller mean to run very fast in English. Or like inventing a new toaster and calling it quemadura.
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Question: Why haven't we found a planet like this before?
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Hey, neat.
*goes back to fighting over oil*
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because before today the human race was stupid. and after today, it will be less stupid.
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I propose renaming the system "Ribos". ;7
Hey, the planet could bear life, and life (on Earth) is based on DNA and RNA, which are derivatives of the sugar ribose (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribose).
It's a bit of a head-scratcher, but it also involves FS, so...
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Question: Why haven't we found a planet like this before?
Its really hard to find small planets. The astronomers doing this job are getting allot better and improving the equipment all of the time. The first extrasolar planets (planes outside of our solar system) were super massive gas giants that make Jupiter look like a Mini Cooper next to a jumbo jet. After that they started to fine tune the methods and now there are hundreds of planets discovered. There are probably many many more planets out there and the better we get at finding them the more we'll find that are probably similar in some way to Earth.
It'll be really fascinating to know if there are other planets out there with similar characteristics to our fair little planet or if most of them will be a fair bit different. That said...if we were to find life on these planets...almost the same as Earth or somewhat different...I think we'll find a whole lot of the same sorts of things. Earth has a very wide variety of life on it that can be found in nearly every tiny hole you can look into...I'd be mighty surprised to know that life was somehow radically different elsewhere.
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Hey, it's Kobol.
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What was the frist system that Terrans found and coloinzed before meeting the vasudans? ALtari was it? What system was one jump away form Sol? Delta surprenes? (SP)
Meh wheres that map.
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What was the frist system that Terrans found and coloinzed before meeting the vasudans? ALtari was it? What system was one jump away form Sol? Delta surprenes? (SP)
Meh wheres that map.
Altair is a Vasudan system and is on the Vasudan side of space. :P
Probably Delta Serpentis, Ross 128, or Beta Aquilae. They met the Vasudans probably in Vega or Deneb.
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This is the first we've ever found a planet this small, due to a new type of telescope if I remember correctly. Also, note that the planet is either a dry, rocky place, or completely covered in water. We can't tell either way. It's 5x as big as Earth, and it is REALLY freaking close to its sun (it goes around in 12 earth days). It's very likely there's nothing there, the only significant thing, in fact, the only "Earthlike" thing about it is that it's the right temperature that water could be present in liquid form.
FYI.
The real amazing thing is, it's closer than anything else we've seen. That's about it.
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This is the first we've ever found a planet this small, due to a new type of telescope if I remember correctly. Also, note that the planet is either a dry, rocky place, or completely covered in water. We can't tell either way. It's 5x as big as Earth, and it is REALLY freaking close to its sun (it goes around in 12 earth days). It's very likely there's nothing there, the only significant thing, in fact, the only "Earthlike" thing about it is that it's the right temperature that water could be present in liquid form.
FYI.
I know that the planet is 1.5x Earth and goes around its sun in 13 days.
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It's sun is also a dying star IIRC.
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It's sun is also a dying star IIRC.
Bad thing...
Please post a link...I want to know everything!!!
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Bad thing...
Not exactly, it's predicted it'll take a few hundred thousand or so years to go boom anyway.
(make that a few million? >>)
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Not exactly, it's predicted it'll take a few hundred thousand or so years to go boom anyway.
(make that a few million? >>)
:lol:
Just wanted to know...
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What a misconception-filled thread...
Gliese 581c has a diameter of about 1.5 Earth diameters, or so they say. It also apparently has 5 times the mass of Earth, but due to greater radius, it would "only" have surface gravitational acceleration of about 2 g's. Not pleasant perhaps, but oh what an exellent place for space marine training center... :mad2:
Also, the star Gliese 581 is not a dying star. It is a red dwarf star, which means that it is much smaller than our Sun, but consequently it uses it's hydrogen much slower than larger stars. Our Sun has main sequence life prediction of about 10 billion years - red dwarfs can shine relatively unchanged for hundreds of billions of years. That's one magnitude more time for life to evolve on that rock than Earth has had... and look what has happened only in about 4.5 billion years.
About the habitability. It resides on orbit that apparently hits the Goldilocks' zone - not too hot, not too cold for liquid water... but due to the puny nature of the central star that means it orbits the star much closer than for example Mercury orbits Sun. One orbital cycle lasts about 13 days, and it is very possible that the planet is locked tidally to it's central star, not unlike the Moon is locked to Earth as it rotates at the same time as it orbits Earth. This would obviously mean that the sunward surface would be way hotter than the shadow side (Captain Obvious to the rescue). Near the terminator there could however be a suitable zone for life. It's width would depend on how thick the atmosphere is. The thicker atmosphere, the better it circulates heat around the planet. Considering the planet's relatively large mass and surface acceleration, it is very possible that it indeed has even thicker atmosphere than our Earth.
So that means it is possibe for water to exist in liquid form on that planet. That doesn't mean there actually would be large quantities of water. Also, other characteristics such as magnetic field or lack of one can't really be determined at the moment.
What we can do is to start pinging the star system with some serious radio hardware, and then after 40 years or so we could start waiting for a response. Apparently they have had a lot more time to develop so I'd say if there's anything like our civilization, it either is there already or won't ever be. So start pinging it, and with any luck a respond will get here by my 62nd birthday... :pimp:
...Or, obvious solution is to find subspace/hyperspace travellation means. ;7
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actualy, its on the real live news. and i heavily doubt we found vasudans. life on other planes could very well be bizzare compared to our own. they dont know whether its H2o in the oceans or not yet. as far as we know, the life could be silicon based.
They don't even know if it has oceans, actually.
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The real amazing thing is, it's closer than anything else we've seen. That's about it.
That pretty much says it all. Although something even more amazing is the post above mine. :D
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What we can do is to start pinging the star system with some serious radio hardware, and then after 40 years or so we could start waiting for a response. Apparently they have had a lot more time to develop so I'd say if there's anything like our civilization, it either is there already or won't ever be. So start pinging it, and with any luck a respond will get here by my 62nd birthday... :pimp:
I don't think it's correct. Our technologies enable us to detect radio transmissions, we all know that, but we gained this ability only recently. We will never know if there's(or there was)an evolved civilization until we get close to the planet.
You're giving for sure that all evolved life forms in the Universe are at the same technological level. Whoever lives on that planet might be primitive(no radio communications), too evolved for us(no radio communications, something we can't detect. This possibility is considered by many scientists) or...dead. Their civilization no longer exists(what could happen here in a few decades).
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I'm not assuming anything, I'm trying to estimate the state of that planet's possible life. Only assumption is that in relatively similar conditions life will emerge in relatively similar time. I think that's pretty solid estimation.
I don't remember how old exactly this star (and planet) is... (wikicheck)... estimation is that it is 4.3 billion years old. Seeing as how our own Sun is slightly older at 4.57 billion years, it means that there's no way of knowing what is going on there. It mainly depends on how fast the planet cooled down after being formed, and how long lasted until by change some replicating molecyle was formed. On Earth, first life left it's marks about 3.7 billion years ago - that's about 870 million years from the light-up of the Sun.
So, on Earth it has taken that much time for life to spin out relatively advanced culture with pre-requisites for observing radio signals and sending them to another star. On Gliese 581 it might take infinite time (if the planet is full of no-lifes so to speak), or shorter or longer time. Depends so much of conditiosn that we cannot analyze at the moment. In fact it is reasonable to assume that the planet took slightly longer to cool down to life-suitable temperatures because it is that much bigger and soforth... :rolleyes:
One thing is sure, however - if there isn't anyone listening when our signals arrive...then it is very unlikely that there would be a civilization able to do it in a hundred years, or a thousand, or even in a million years. That's what I meant - if we don't get any response, it really isn't worth the trouble to keep one hell of an effective radio transmitter shouting it's signals towards the planet for a billion years until someone finally responds. And seeing how Earth will become unsuitable for life as we know it in about 0.5-1 billion years, it might not matter. For 40 years it might be worth it to keep pinging, but if after the 40 years (and some) there's no respond, it's very likely there's not gonna be an answer on our life time, which means that it's more sensible to switch onto periodic ping mode... in cycle of 40 years, send a couple of days of hail message and some information, then wait, keep listening, and in another 40 years, send another message series.
The possibility that there was a radio-capable civilization but is no more is, obviously, very real. But also in that case the previous statement holds - if there's no advanced civilization now, it is highly unlikely they would develop the abilities and means to communicate with us just after we discovered the planet.
However, stranger things have happened, such as the life, universe and everything.
Obviously, if theres no answer, we have to send a star probe to check out the planet. Preferably a self-sustainable colony ship. Heck, I would likely volunteer for such mission if it was in any way technologically feasible. Also, referring to the impending destruction of Solar system in max. 5 billion years, that planet might be the last best hope of survival for Earth's life... :P
Although, it would suck pretty badly for the colony ship's crew members to notice that the planet isn't suitable for humans after a millennia-long journey... :lol:
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i doubt other life would use our same radio tech.
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This topic really belongs to the Pub.
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It's a ****ing red giant for god's sake. So in order for it to have earth like atmosphere it would have to be a lot closer to a red giant as compared with our smaller but yet hotter sun.
After that, this is a significant discovery in detecting planets. They went from detecting only huge ass gas giants to a planet that's only 1.5 times bigger than our own earth. That's a breakthrough. The one thing i was thinking about was that what if we thought about using that planet for colonization say if we had the propulsion means. It wouldn't work, or it might work, that planet has roughly twice our gravity. I can see us humans staying away from that planet for colonization, or inhabiting it and just getting use to twice the gravity which is possible (man the people who would've moved there would be strong as ****). I think it's possible we could use that planet for colonization, humans are highly adaptive, plus not to mention, it's only twice our gravity. That's the best we can ask for given our solar system with really tiny planets and really big planets. Not enough gravity is bad for the body, too much gravity and it's too much strain on your body. Twice the gravity is a great bet, though i of course don't imagine people getting use to twice the gravity right off the bat. Might take a month or two, i mean it only takes astronaughts like a week for their blood cells to turn from spheres back into disc shaped **** when being re-introduced into a gravity environment.
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It's not a red giant.
It's a red dwarf, but seeing as "giant" hardly fits the context of the rest of your message I'd say you were talking about dwarf anyway and the giant thing is just a replacement error or whatever.
Otherwise, I pretty much agree with you S-99.
Two times the gravity would be tolerable for anyone in normal physical condition... might be a bit hard for the faint-hearted and very tall people to get the circulation to adapt to new things. Blood pressure would need to be higher to counter the increased pull towards the feet. You would get swollen feet much easier than on Earth. And the longer the journey from heart to head, the harder it would be for the heart.
Physically, muscles and stuff would adjust pretty soon to constant double-load. Osteoporosis would be a lot bigger risk though, so getting enough calcium would be more important than in space even.
Possibly the most difficult part of colonization would be to have the colonists who lived in space for several generations to adjust to g-loads... one way (if we had abundant propulsion) is obviously to make the ship accelerate at 2g to half-way, then decelerate at 2g the rest of the way. That way the colonists would be pretty much used to gravitational pull when they arrive. Assuming it's a self-sustaining generational colony ship.
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Luckily i'm 5,7. So i wouldn't need to worry too much. Hail all the midsized humans :lol:
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I don't see colonization becoming practical until faster than light travel becomes available. Back in the old colonization days, we were talking about voyages that took many years, the time frame was still conceivable as far as support infrastructure goes. Space colonization without faster than light travel would take generations, there wouldn't be support infrastructure to help the colonists in a case their resources prove insufficient. Communications would be another big issue, instead of years it would probably take decades, centuries or even generations to reach the other party.
For space colonization, I'd say that faster than light communications and travel is pretty much a requirement for it to be conceivable. When that happens, I have high hopes human ingenuity has made such distances relatively insignificant.
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hopefully, the discovery of this possibly habitable planet will encourage practical research into FTL technology, even if its kinda sorta impossible (according to the basic rules).
that's if we can calm down and stop trying to kill each other for a bit.
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I don't see colonization becoming practical until faster than light travel becomes available.
Lightspeed is considered a phisically unreachable speed. So no space colonization.
Unless we discover subspace :D
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that's if we can calm down and stop trying to kill each other for a bit.
Hey, neat.
*goes back to fighting over oil*
;)
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I don't see colonization becoming practical until faster than light travel becomes available.
Lightspeed is considered a phisically unreachable speed. So no space colonization.
I'm no physics expert, but in the past many theories concerning physics have been proved wrong. So the theory about speed of light being the highest reachable speed may be proved wrong as well. Besides, even if speed of light is highest speed an object could possibly travel, I'm sure there are ways around that. Such as somehow bending time and space to cross vast distances with "relatively slow" speed.
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You know there's the star trek way and the star wars way, and some other ways.
In star trek they achieve ftl speeds by getting the ship into subspace by first developing that famed warp bubble, without the warp bubble, no going into subspace to do ftl travel. Star trek is going into subspace, ftl, leave subspace...at destination.
Star wars works similarly but all it's principals are relatively unheard of unless you go to wookiepedia (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) to find out exactly how star wars hyper drive works all the way. Anyway star wars is similar, the ships just sort jump into hyperspace for ftl, and come out of it at their destination.
After that there is yet again something similar, worm holes.
I don't know how many of you guys have seen event horizon. But the event horizon had a gravity drive that focused a narrow beam of gravitons (gravitons are still unproven to exist still...there goes star trek tractor beams out the window as well) with a focussed emp field that tears a hole in space and connects it to another point in space...pretty much creating a worm hole and travelling 0 distance to get to it's destination. Of course the event horizon ended up tearing a hole in space and our known universe opening up and entrance to hells universe (this is how event horizon is...good movie).
Anyway my point being is that in most scifi movies and series people travel at light speed or faster than light speed by not actually doing so. When you use a worm hole you travel 0 distance and it's considered an ftl travelplan, more accurately a lets-go-no-where-to-get-to-there plan. After that star trek and star wars, god knows what speed the enterprise is actually cruising at inside of subspace, but outside of subspace the speed can be calculated as time how long it took to get there. But since subspace isn't normal space, that's what i meant by god knows what speed the enterprise is travelling inside of subspace. Same for star wars ships, who knows how fast they are going inside of hyperspace itself, but hyperspace lets people cross the galaxy measured in real time in real space in minutes.
Anyway, trying to travel lightspeed or faster but being weighed down by the laws of physics. It's like the guy says in event horizon, you can't change the laws of physics, but you can go around them. And that's quite possibly the only way in my mind that i see people going the speed of light by going around the laws of physics, such as creating a worm hole drive or something.
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gotta wonder how that stuff plays into relativity though. if youre bending space to make yourself go faster, but still travelling at a normal speed relative to space, you probably still look like youre going hella fast from someone on earth. we all know about that business when you travel at super high speed, time goes slower for you than for people not going super fast, but if youre bending spacetime to increase your speed, does it have the same effect?
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Do research in wookiepedia. That actually plays a part in the star wars hyper drive technology. They had a certain type of shielding that goes into place to make sure you stay in sync with the normal time in the galaxy. There was a star wars story where ones guys hyper drive ****ed up, but he didn't know what ****ed up because it was working normally. He got to his destination but 100 years in the future when the empire took over, because his time displacement shields ****ed up and he didn't notice :lol: Or whatever they're called.
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Ignoring for a moment my skepticism that a 2-g environment is as minor a detail as a lot of you are making it out to be, there are other practical problems with this planet being habitable. Gliese 581 is also known as the variable star HO Librae, a UV Ceti flare star. I will leave to your imagination what solar flares are going to be like for a planet with a 12-day orbit around its primary. Unless that planet has a monstrously thick atmosphere (which in itself could be a serious problem a la Venus) the surface will be seriously irradiated when g-581 flares.
My other concern is that this star is metals-poor. According to one source I found, its metal content is only about half that of Sol. In astronomy, everything heavier than hydrogen and helium is considered a "metal." As above, so below; the implication is that this planet probably has only a trace scattering of heavier elements. Earth life needs a lot of heavy elements in at least trace concentrations. I'm no biologist, but I know that iodine is important in human biology, and there may be still heavier elements that are also needed. Natively grown food would be deficient in all of those without heavy mineral supplements. Those minerals themselves would be difficult to come by in this star system, though perhaps not impossible. I'm reminded of Destiny's Road by Larry Niven, where on a world poor in potassium, the entire society ended up being held in thrall to those who controlled access to it.
Here's a link to a lot of quick and easy stellar data. It is someone's pet project, not a published paper, so take it like you would wikipedia: with a grain of salt.
http://www.stellar-database.com/Scripts/search_star.exe?Name=HO+Librae (http://www.stellar-database.com/Scripts/search_star.exe?Name=HO+Librae)
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you dont need to go ftl to reach distant places, wormholes are probly the best bet, when we find out how to make em anyway ;)
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if we do discover suspace do u think :v: will claim the right for it, seeing as they have the right over it in FS?
and btw u dont MAKE worm holes( well at least as far as i know) they are a natrule thingy
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Dang!!! they found my house!
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If anyone finds subspace, they should call it freespace :D
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i found subspace once...there were mooses in it.
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Yeah you found us subspace aliens...alaskans. We have many different breeds and forms. If only i had nickel for everytime a driver hit a moose in alaska/subspace. Reality is wierd here.
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Its being a flare variable could be a problem for home-grown complex life.
As for human habitation? Definately possible though. Living semi-subterranean and having a good observation system is what would be needed.
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That's true, but if we have to go underground to protect ourselves from the radiation, what advantage does this planet have over, say, the moon? Not only that, but it's got the gravity well from hell if you ever want to launch anything back off the surface.
I'm holding out my hopes for Alpha Centauri. The fact that it is relatively close is a plus, but the really big deal is the primary star of that system could be Sol's identical twin. They are both G2 V's, with AC-a having a slightly higher size and luminosity. Unfortunately, there's a good chance that the interaction between Alpha Centauri A & B cleaned the system out of most planetary building material. Still, I keep my finger's crossed. Orbits within AC-a's habitable zone would be relatively stable.
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Perhaps we should, y'know, get past the Moon before we start planning out the drape-scheme for our Gliese 581c underground bunkers.
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you dont need to go ftl to reach distant places, wormholes are probly the best bet, when we find out how to make em anyway ;)
Oh we do know how to make them...in theory....
how wuz it again?
Two flat metal panels the size of Earth charged with rougly the same ammount of energy a supernova produces... or something liek that..
Now go get hte panels, I'l make Sol go boooom :D