An 'Astounding Time' for Planetary Discoveries

[n2doc]

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 24, 2008; Page A05
It used to be that planets were familiar places such as Mars and Saturn that orbited our sun and were well known to all schoolchildren.

Since astronomers identified the first planet outside our solar system 13 years ago, however, that idea has become downright quaint. Because now, according to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, there are 277 confirmed "extrasolar" planets, and quite a few more on the list of those suspected but not yet confirmed.

This explosion in planetary discoveries is taking place at such warp speed that even those most intimately involved are often amazed -- especially because their ultimate goal is nothing less than finding life elsewhere in the universe.

"This is an absolutely astounding time for this field," said Mark Swain of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who last week reported finding the first "exoplanet" to have organic methane in its atmosphere.

"We're not only finding them rapidly and in great variety, but we're starting to characterize them -- their mass and orbits, the properties of their atmospheres, measurements of day and night, dynamics of their winds," he said after the methane discovery was released last week.

more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301237.html

[txaslftist]

1. If a planet is 63 light years away, can we get there in 63 years?

According to conventional theoretical physics, even if our technological advances are 1000 years ahead of where they are now, could we get there in 63 years?

[Unsane]

2. probably not

If we constructed a spacecraft that could travel the speed of light, it could theoretically get there in 63 years if it constantly travelled at that speed. The problem? matter begins to break down once reaching the speed of light, see Einstein.

[tinrobot]

3. Not that quick....

You have to accelerate to the speed of light. Speeding up too quickly would squash you. To accelerate to 90% of the speed of light at 1G (force of gravity on the earth - 9.8m/sec^2) would take about 520 days. Add in another 520 days to slow down on the other end of the trip, plus the fact that you'll always travel slower than the speed of light, and you'll probably add at least a decade to the trip.