Do we want to sent probe to Newly discovered planet 'Kepler-22b' now?

[sr241]

what you think, do we want to sent probe to Newly discovered planet 'Kepler-22b' now?. the data may be useful after may be a millinium later since it is 600 light years far away. still it is better now than later, right? or may be we want to wait for quantum entanglement in quantum information theory to mature so that instant communication is possible.

 

[JonDE]

The fastest probe we could send would be way to slow. Most likely it would be better to wait a thousand years for technology to further advance (or stop advancing whatever the case may be) and then send a probe as the new probe would almost undoubtedly pass the old probe.
I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but I did the math once and it would take something like 9000 years for a probe to get to proxima centauri, just a mere 4 light years away. As Kepler-SSb is 125X that distance you are looking at around 1.35M years to reach this planet, and I seriously doubt we could make a probe that could operate for that long.

p.s. that 9000 number might be wrong but I'm almost positive the number was somewhere between 6000-11000 years. Either way its all but impossible right now. Plus then you would still have to send a signal back that would take 600 years and still be strong enough for us to understand.

 

[Chronos]

Kepler 22b is 600 light years distant. Science fiction aside - it aint going to happen. The more recent estimates based on the Drake equation suggest thousands of intelligent civilizations may exist in the milky way. Apparently they have not figured it out either.

 

[DaveC426913]

600 light years is approx. 3.5x10^15 miles.
Our fastest probe, moving at ~35,000 mph, would take a mere 100 million years to get there.

 

[DaleSwanson]

As already pointed out, it's way too far to bother attempting. However, I'd also like to point out that we are at the very infancy of our extrasolar planet search. I think it's very likely we will find much better candidates in the next decade. I suspect in 50 years no one will even remember Kepler 22b.

See here:
http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog/results

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Quantum entanglement would not allow instantaneous communication. This has been thrashed out many times on this forum, feel free to search for said threads.

 

[Kosmos61]

We will be able to do much more refined analysis of telescopically collected data in the much more (relevantly) near future that will enable us to identify better candidates that are much closer - if one is there to be found. A probe would not only be ridiculously slow but would have to be completely autonomous - and probably damned lucky - to actually make it there and by the time any data could be returned it would likely be moot for a number of reasons. Not least among these is the potential for our species to be evolved/extinct in the roughly 10 million years it would take to retrieve and transmit. Cost prohibitive? Very. And useless. But continue this and related projects by all means!

 

[Nik_2213]

Given pulsed fusion and He3-mining infrastructure--aka Daedalus mission-- the nearby stars are mere decades away for a fly-by probe. Kepler22 is much too far for any Einstein-ian tech short of a Bussard ramscoop, which probably couldn't 'break even' due to our location in 'Local Bubble'...

Incidentally, that may be an answer to 'Where Are They'-- The nearby interstellar medium is too thin for such, isolating us: We'd have to figure our own way 'across the doldrums'...

 

[DaveC426913]

Incidentally, that may be an answer to 'Where Are They'-- The nearby interstellar medium is too thin for such, isolating us: We'd have to figure our own way 'across the doldrums'...

Interesting idea. Is there any evidence to support it? Or is it a hypothesis?

Regardless, it only goes to explain why we haven't been visited; it doesn't go to explain why we haven't seen or heard them - which is a far more realistic expectation.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Interesting idea. Is there any evidence to support it? Or is it a hypothesis?

Regardless, it only goes to explain why we haven't been visited; it doesn't go to explain why we haven't seen or heard them - which is a far more realistic expectation.

Interesting idea indeed, apparently our local (30ly wide) interstellar cloud is five times less dense than the galactic interstellar medium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Interstellar_Cloud

Not sure if bumping up the density five times would make a ramjet any more feasible.

 

[arabianights]

i think it's feasible to establish a sort of 'Deep Space Network' along the route to Kepler-22b by launching succeed probes, maybe every 50~100 years, the later lauched faster probes would catch up with earlier slower probes, but the slower probes would relay the information eventually collected by faster probe and beam it back to earth.

 

[Pengwuino]

We need to put Jodie Foster on the job.

 

[e^(i Pi)+1=0]

God I love that movie.

 

[qraal]

600 ly is too far to bother with a probe now, but according to analysis of the Kepler and MEarth data about 38% of low mass stars should have super-Earths of their own. Proxima, Barnard's and Lalande 21185 are the three closest red-dwarfs and odds are that at least one has a super-Earth. A bit easier to reach.

 

[bm0p700f]

We can't even afford to get people back to the moon which would be cheaper than sending a probe out to another star and get data back. By the time it got there our decendents would have forgotten that we even sent it, and that would happen even if we could sent it traveling at c. Intersellar travel is not going to happen.

 

[DaveC426913]

...get people back to the moon which would be cheaper than sending a probe out to another star

You have a gift for understatement.

 

[Chronos]

New physics are needed to send even a probe to the nearest star in less than a human lifetime. What politician would ever vote to approve such an expenditure without guaranteed success and measurable benefits to society?

 

[Radrook]

According to this article reaching Alpha Centauri with a nuclear-pulse propulsion system can take as little as one-hundred years. That's an approx 200-year round trip at the approx velocity of 13,411 km/s, or 30,000,000 mph.

Nuclear pulse propulsion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion

 

[qraal]

New physics are needed to send even a probe to the nearest star in less than a human lifetime. What politician would ever vote to approve such an expenditure without guaranteed success and measurable benefits to society?

Chronos that's total rubbish, aside from the politics. Known physics can send probes to the stars at high speeds without nucleonics on-board. James Benford, who literally wrote the book on high-power microwave systems, released this recent preprint...

Starship Sails Propelled by Cost-Optimised Directed Energy

...which discusses the relevant issues. The costs are very high, but there's no physics issue stopping interstellar travel to the nearer stars.