First Habitable Planet Confirmed.

No, Jaerik has it right. The people traveling at light speed will have aged 20 years, the Earth however, would have gone through several thousand years.

I thought that the only way to slow down time was with the help of gravity. so if you move away from gravity (earth), you speed up time? so on earth it would take less than 20 years for that ship to reach it's destination.

That's just crazy lol
I love space/time relativity, always freaks me out.

It's pretty easy if you think about it this way:

Let's say you have a water gun that shoots water at 1 mph. You now move the water gun forward at 1 mph and pull the trigger. The water is now shooting out, in total, at 2 mph.

So Einstein asked: what about a flashlight? Light shoots out a stationary flashlight at the speed of light (c). What if the flashlight was moving forward at 1 mph? Would the light now be going (c) + 1?

Nope!

Turns out, the speed of light is constant no matter how you're moving, unlike water from the water gun. Yes, it's a mind*&#k, but it's demonstrably true. The light from the stationary and moving flashlight both move at (c). So clearly, something has to "give" to reconcile these two, and that something is time.

Time on the moving flashlight slows down. Time for the light shooting out the front does not. That way, the light is still, Relatively, traveling at (c).

At 1 mph, the effect is imperceptible. But what if the flashlight was already moving at (c)? In order for the light from it to also be at (c), time has to completely stop for the flashlight! It's the only way for both scenarios to make sense together.

^ omg this.

If time is relevant to mass, does time stop in the interstellar-medium?

been trying to find the answer for the better part of an hour

edit: never mind that. gleise581 is in our galaxy.

While I find the search for all extra solar planets fascinating, I think the article name including the word "habitable", even in quotes, is very misleading. Chances are this planet is no where near "habitable". I understand that the word "habitable" is drawing from "habitable zone", but that only takes pretty much 3 variables (star type, distance, and size/mass) of like a bigillion of actually being truly habitable for life as we know it. For example, if everything is perfect, but the planet is not geologically active, there is no radiation belts, which means any chance of life would 0 because of onslaught of solar radiation/wind. The article also mentions that there is a good chance that the planet is tidally locked, which is not a good indicator that any form of life could habit this planet. Venus and Mars are also in our sun's habitable zone, but Venus gets screwed with near tidal lock and insanely powerful greenhouse gas effect, and mars is not geolocially active at this time, which means that it does not have a molten outer core rotating on a solid iron core creating a magnetic field necessary to block harmful radiation. Even earth itself would be way to cold to support life, if it wasn't for our greenhouse effect and lower albedo.

As for exploration to Mars, based on my current understanding, I do not see how this is possible without extreme risks, seeing that a coronal mass ejection could occur at any time, is not predictable, and would fry any life once it is outside of the Van Allen Radiation Belts.

The effect is actually really important for everyday life, as well.

GPS works by having satellites whizzing around earth. Each satellite has an on-board clock. Your smart phone has a matching clock. They are synchronized.

The GPS satellites are constantly broadcasting their time back to your cell phone. When your cell phone reads the signal, the time difference between the two tells your cell phone how far away the satellite is. If you know the distance to three or more satellites, you can triangulate your position on earth to within a few meters. Ta dah! GPS technology.

But... problem.

It turns out, because the satellites are zooming around up there so fast, time for them slows down. The clock on your phone, and the clock on the satellite, start to get out of sync. The effect of relatively is so pronounced, that if the satellite clocks were not constantly adjusted to account for it, GPS location would start to become inaccurate by more than 7 miles per day.

Yeah didn't that throw scientist for a loop when they first discovered the clocks were off and it was actually how they originally made the discovery?

ftfy

Exploration is always extremely risky. They are actually working on ways to predict CME's, with some new solar watching satellite. If they can be predicted, there exists sufficient technological ability to shield a crew from the effects.


You didn't fix anything, you just interjected uninformed opinions into my carefully written OP. ***.

Double the Gravity?
Like that one on futurama?

Where's my STARGATES?!

you gotta dig them up

No, think of it this way:

We're standing on opposite edges of a trampoline. The distance between us is 10 feet. Meaning if I rolled a marble across to you at 10 feet / second, it would take 1 second to reach you.

This is the "blank" state. Think of it like interstellar space.

Now put a bowling ball in the center of the trampoline. The mass of the bowling ball "bends" the trampoline and pulls it down in the center, stretching the surface. This is what mass does to space.

Now I try and roll the marble across to you at 10 feet / second again. Because the surface is now stretched, and there's more distance to cover, it takes longer than a second to get to you. This is pretty easy to visualize.

But let's go back to light. Remember: light's speed must always be constant, no matter what is going on around it. What if instead of a marble, I was shining a beam of light across the surface of the trampoline? It has to be appearing to zoom away from me at (c), but it also has to be crossing that intervening "divot" at (c) even though the distance is longer, so something has to "give" to reconcile the difference.

Again, that something is time. Time slows down near the bowling ball, just like it slows down for the moving flashlight, so that (c) remains constant.

I was thinking about the effects tidal locking in other planets/moons within our solar system too. Most tidally locked planets/moons have no axis tilt, right?

I'm getting ahead of myself assuming that there are oceans on Gliese581, but how would a stationary planet with the same lunar rotation effect weather systems on that planet? I mean, there is no way it could be comparable to a constantly rotating planet like Earth. Would it have continuous weather systems on one side and not the other?

A Tidally locked planet still has some rotation, the day length is the same as the year length, causing one side to always be bathed in sunlight, and the other in cold, perpetual darkness. It's theorized that such a planet would have massive storms generated by the extreme difference at the light and dark poles, and that the Terminator (Band of eternal dusk) would be the only realistically habitable section.

Jaerik you're way too smart lol

I understand the extremes on either side, but couldn't the storms or lack of any natural rainfall make it uninhabitable overall? If you have a band of eternal dusk how is that conducive to the agriculture needed to sustain a population?

@Jaerik
You're like the Ron Burgundy of geeks.

I was under the impression there was no gravity in interstellar space, thus no mass. But I was quite wrong.

It's just "Habitable" it's not "Suitable for human habitation". Our definition of a habitable planet/land has broadened, since the discovery of all those tubeworms and whatnot under the ocean, where they draw their energy not from the sun, but from chemical reactions with the gasses escaping from the Earth's crust.

Anyway, in regards to the particular case, Humans possess the ability to create artificial light, and even water, but frankly, we don't know enough to say with certainty, just that it's theoretically possible.

Thats just a very anti-Obama article. Congress said no to NASA when they confessed their initial estimates of $1 billion in funding for the next Space Exploration vehicle were off and they actually needed $2 billion. That happened when Bush was in office, and regardless of President, saying no was the right call.

Time Dilation effects would shorten the time for those ON the ship. They would effectively be experiencing time in a slower perspective than those observing.

I would take 20years at the speed of light, it says it would take 20years at a speed NEAR the speed of light so say .990 of the speed of light. At that speed they would experience tremendous Time Dilation effects (These numbers aren't accurate and are just for example purposes) we would see them get there in 20years but they would experience 10years getting there. Let's say they sped up to .9990, the time dilation effect would be greater and those 10 years would be 7, move on to .99990 it would be even greater.
This is at least hoe I understood it when we went over Time Dilation effects in my class.

LMAO this is funny.

Reported for racism.

I like you more Jaerik.