NASA's Kepler Mission Finds Smallest Earthlike Planet Outside Solar System
The smallest planet yet spied outside our solar system has been found orbiting a sunlike star about 560 light-years away, astronomers announced today. Known as Kepler-10b, the planet is just 1.4 times Earth's size and 4.6 times its mass.
The planet, found using NASA's Kepler spacecraft, is the first of the more than 500 known exoplanets that's ( Read more... )
The planet, found using NASA's Kepler spacecraft, is the first of the more than 500 known exoplanets that's ( Read more... )
Click to view
However, it's physically impossible for us to be in a position to be *able* to do that to an extra-solar earth-like planet. Space is so large that we don't have the ability to travel quickly enough to muster any sort of invasive force. This isn't because we don't have the technology. It's because at any significant fraction of light speed, we get squished to death by relativistic forces. No space ship can stop that from happening, just like no amount of body armour will stop your internal organs splattering against your ribcage if you hit a wall at two hundred miles an hour or more.
The closest star is Alpha Centauri, about four light-years away, and optimistically it's going to take several hundred years even to get there at the maximum speed the human body can cope with. Alpha Centauri has no earth-like planets for us to colonise. Stars with earth-like planets are, at best, hundreds of light-years away, taking us thousands of years to get to them. It has taken humanity less time to get from the stone age to space travel, than it will take for us to get to an extra-solar earthlike planet. Any colony ship travelling thousands of years isn't going to be able to hold many people, nor will it send back conquering heroes with rich cargo. They'd be returning to a planet that didn't even remember them leaving - they'd be aliens themselves.
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
Reply
Leave a comment