How do they find an new plante

[High]

If Astronomers discovered a potentially habitable planet for us to live on, and travelling at 2000mph it will take 75 years to get there, how did they discover this planet in the first place?

[MarkRae]

They evaluate its gravitational effect on the sun around which it orbits. BTW, existing space crafts travel much faster than 2,000mph...

[ChuckFickens]

I should imagine it would come as a little bit of a shock to the scientific community in general if a potentially habitable planet was suddenly discovered somewhere between Saturn and Uranus.

[High]

Sorry I may have being wrong regarding the speed,but it would take 75 years to travel to that planet.
"They evaluate its gravitational effect on the sun around which it orbits"

How do they get to the sun that orbits around it? The sun around it must be close to that planet for them to observe it.

[ChuckFickens]

As a general rule... Suns don't orbit around planets!

[High]

Thet are going beyond Saturn and Uranus.

[High]

They^

[MarkRae]

http://en.wikipedia.o...ng_extrasolar_planets

[ChuckFickens]

I think you need to get some perspective of how small an amount of time 75 years is with current technology and how vast interstellar distances are.

The fastest object so far ever made by man is the Helios probe which reached 150000Mph. In 75 years at that speed you'd get 0.04% of the way to our nearest star (other than our sun)... to reach it at that speed would take nearly another 7500 years!

Or to put it another way... for us to travel to our nearest neighbouring star in 75 years you'd need to travel at well over 40million Mph, or nearly 300 times faster than the fastest ever man made object.

[Zacs-Master]

We're all dooooomed!

[ChuckFickens]

Nah, we'll be fine, Zacs.... We've just got to wait for someone to spot that, so far overlooked, potentially habitable planet halfway towards the edge of our own solar system

[Zacs-Master]

Half way! That's still 75,000 light years. Someone find a wormhole. Quick!

[Huderon]

if you want to try finding a planet yourself, you could sign up on the planet hunters site and have a go. It's one of the Zooniverse projects which started with Galaxy Zoo. The planet hunters site is https://www.zoonivers...project/planethunters and the Zooniverse site is https://www.zooniverse.org/

[beso]

Actually Mars is our best bet for future life.

The Sun is getting hotter. That is what the type of star that includes our Sun do. In about a billion years there won't be any water on Earth because the sun will be too hot. If we could get the whole plant out to the same distance as Mars we would be OK but that has a few obvious technical problems.

The current research on Mars will one day be recognised as the embryonic phase of the ultimate path to the survival of life in the Solar System.

[beso]

Zooniverse is soooo cool. I volunteered on their first project. Even the ordinary images were pretty and occasionally some were awesome. I was possibly the first person to see some images! It was addictive which is why I don't go there any more.

I always remember Hanny from Holland. Hanny realised something was very odd in one image and now has Hanny's Voortwerp (Hollandier for "thing") to tell her grand children about.

[ChuckFickens]

Hollandier??

So that would be Dutch then.

[JonnyBoy12]

I often find new 'plantes' in my garden although some people call them weeds! I do not often find new planets in the Solar System though.