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Ross 128b, 2nd closest 'potentially' habitable world


Spaceception

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I know, I know, I've been inactive lately (but I do stalk here from time to time).

Anyway, I woke up to some pretty great news! Ross 128 has a planet!!

First up, a while back, Ross 128 emitted signals (not alien), and here's the link to that http://www.space.com/37579-weird-radio-signal-ross-128-star-satellite.html I also believe there's a forum thread somewhere?

But into the star! Ross 128 is a pretty calm star, with about 15% of the mass, and 20% of the radius of the Sun. It also has a much lower luminosity, meaning the habitable zone is very close in.

The planet in question has an approximate mass of 1.4x the Earth, and a possible radius of 1.2x the Earth, but until we get a direct observation, or transit, we don't know for certain. 

Due to it's orbit of 9.9 days, and light flux of 1.47, it's not very certain how habitable is could be. Recent reports said an Teq of between -60c and 20c, with PHL putting it at 6.85c. It also has an ESI (Earth similarly index) of .86.

At just under 11 light years away, it's the 2nd nearest potentially habitable planet after Proxima, and likely the most promising.

Some links: http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog?utm_content=buffer014e0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1736/

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=38800

Thoughts? :)

Edited by Spaceception
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1 minute ago, Bill Phil said:

I'm still holding out for a desert planet around Tau Ceti. 

Oh yes, I'm hopeful for Tau Ceti too, it has a lot of resemblance to our inner solar system.

But Ross 128 b is probably one of our best bets for life, up there with TRAPPIST-1, I think due to the nature of the star.

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Also, interesting to note, if we (for the sake of argument) had an Orion class starship, we could get to this system in ~108-110 years by flyby, double for a capture/orbit.
If we had starshot, same thing, only no slowdown. But if we used it to go to 0.15c, that would be a ~72.6 year trip, and at 0.2c which is what they want, it would take ~54.5 years to arrive.

Add on to an (Unlikely) leave time by 2030, which is what I remembered last(?), that's Ross 128b by 2084, or 2094 if we leave in 2040.
Annnnd tack on another 11 years for the signal to arrive, so between 2095 to 2105 we could have pictures from this system. Hypothetically, of course. It's just something fun to think about while I'm bored. :)

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2 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Also, interesting to note, if we (for the sake of argument) had an Orion class starship, we could get to this system in ~108-110 years by flyby, double for a capture/orbit.
If we had starshot, same thing, only no slowdown. But if we used it to go to 0.15c, that would be a ~72.6 year trip, and at 0.2c which is what they want, it would take ~54.5 years to arrive.

Add on to an (Unlikely) leave time by 2030, which is what I remembered last(?), that's Ross 128b by 2084, or 2094 if we leave in 2040.
Annnnd tack on another 11 years for the signal to arrive, so between 2095 to 2105 we could have pictures from this system. Hypothetically, of course. It's just something fun to think about while I'm bored. :)

Or we build giant telescopes with advanced occulters to get the pictures... we should build them in space, too...

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Perhaps *technically* habitable... but only in the same sense that a dumpster fire is "habitable".

Sorry to be so dark, but nobody's going to sell their timeshare in Tahiti in order to move to the edge of a large proto- Earth tidally locked in close proximity to a red dwarf.

I know I'm a fun-suck,
-Slashy

 

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I thought that memes were banned

 

6 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

It's fun to think about, even if interstellar travel is a long way away.

Send a message to the aliens of 128b and tell them to upload pictures of their planet to face-book. :D

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23 minutes ago, YNM said:

I still wonder though, what would life adapted to lower peak spectrum/radiation looks like ? Does it look like IR camera ?

I once read that plants around a red dwarf would be black instead of green. As for eyesight, the difference probably wouldn't be as visible as you'd think.

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3 hours ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

I made a Wikipedia page for Ross 128b!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_128_b

Still needs a few tweaks here and there...

Thanks. So it looks like this really is the second closest potentially habitable world after Proxima. Still, at 0.1c a colony ship would take over a century to get there. Then again, Stonehenge and the GWOC both took nearly 2000 years to complete, so I guess it may be possible.

Edited by ChrisSpace
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1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

Bad news about using the James Webb :(

Are there other telescopes that could do this? What about the ELT? Or something similar? Or do we not have any telescopes that could give us more info?

Maybe this might be interesting.

 

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4 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Are there other telescopes that could do this? What about the ELT? Or something similar? Or do we not have any telescopes that could give us more info?

Yes, it is possible to extract the planet's spectrum from the bright star's spectrum even if the orientation is not edge-on.

It has been done with the VLT http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1002/eso1002.pdf

and the technique can still be refined: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1517/

 

GMT, TMT and E-ELT could do this better (if all goes well :-)), given their shear resolution power.

 

Once adaptive and active optics are up and running for the huge ground based telescopes, i see a future for space telescopes mainly in very large baseline interferometry.

 

Edited by Green Baron
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