Planets Found in Potentially Habitable SetupBy Ker Than ~ SPACE.com"Three medium-sized planets of roughly the same mass as Neptune have been discovered around a nearby Sun-like star, scientists announced today."
"The planets were discovered around HD 69830, a star slightly less massive than the Sun located 41 light-years away in the constellation Puppis (the Stern), using the ultra-precise HARPS spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter La Silla telescope in Chile."
"The setup is similar to our own solar system in many ways: The outermost planets is located just within the star's habitable zone, where temperatures are moderate enough for liquid water to form, and the system also contains an asteroid belt."
"The newly discovered planets have masses of about 10, 12 and 18 times that of Earth and they zip around the star in rapid orbits of about 9, 32 and 197 days, respectively."
"Based on their distances from the star, two inner worlds nearest the star are rocky planets similar to Mercury, the scientists suspect. The outermost planet is thought to have a solid core of rock and ice and shrouded by a thick gas envelope."
© 1999-2006 Imaginova Corp. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. . . .at 99% the speed of light it would take a passenger 7 years to get there and 7 to get back. . . unfortunately we will have to wait over 82 years to hear what happened. Definately rather be a passenger than a person on earth waiting on the results. At 99.99%c it only takes a little over 6 months for the passeger to get there, still over 41 for those that stay behind.
At 99.9999%c it is only 21 days and at 99.999999%c you could get there and back in 12 hours.calcs at;
99%c=~1/7t
99.99%c =~1/70tt
99,9999%c=~1/700t
Here's the kicker, though. If we can get to speeds FASTER than light, maybe using Alcubierre (
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Alcubdrive.html)(cool site btw) type systems or something, we could cancel-out the relativistic effects of fast travel.
Plus, we could actually reach the Andromeda Galaxy in 60 years time with a one-g spacecraft (
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/O/one-g_spacecraft.html), which is a ship that constantly accelerates at 9.8 m/s/s. Of course, 5 million years will have passed on Earth, but whatever.
It's the thought that counts.
New Scientist Space:
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn9181&feedId=online-news_rss20See a simulation of how the planetary system might look:
http://www.newscientistspace.com/data/images/ns/av/dn9181V1.mov (.mov format, 8MB)
Oldest Observatory in Americas Discovered in PeruThe oldest astronomical observatory in the Western Hemisphere has been discovered on a hillside a few miles north of Lima, Peru, archaeologists recently reported. The site dates back 4,200 years—800 years before such artistic and scientific skill was previously known to have existed in the Americas.
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