Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseHow many liveable planets are out there, and can we reach them?
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Terms apply. In the last thirty years, our vision of what the universe looks like and how likely it is that we can find another home has completely changed.
So before we could see other planets in our Solar system. We saw Earn, Jupiter, Mars, but we didn't know if there were other planets out there.
That's right, and we only had this one example, so that's all we could draw. And of course we wondered how unusual are we could possibly be the only solar system with planets around it? It seems to but as far as we know, we're the only system with life in it as well. So these are deeply intertwined questions like are we unusual in the universe or are we typical? And until a few decades ago, we didn't know at all. We had no information because we couldn't see outside our solar system. But now that's all changed. We are not alone. We may be alone, but there are other planets out there.
Hi, I'm Jorhey, and I'm Daniel, and welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe.
In which we take the universe and we searched through it for tiny little bits of fascinating knowledge that we can download into your brain. The question today is are there other earths? Are there other planets out there where we could potentially they move if we screw this one up? Do we have somewhere else to go? Right? Do we have a backup plan if we're when we screwed up, when it's definitely a when, Yeah, when we ruin this place, when we trash this hotel room that we've been birthed in, do we have another place to go? Is that feasible at all? Yeah?
Or is the Earth like this super rare gem that's just perfect for life and it's nowhere else in the universe?
Can you find a planet like the Earth? Right? And I don't know which message is sort of more valuable, like do you want to tell people, Hey, look, the universe is filled with opportunity to encourage exploration of space and the scientific discovery that comes along with it, or do you want to encourage people to treat Earth as unique, like this is the only place we could ever live, so take care of it. People, don't be so silly, you know, Like it's sort of like a parenting choice. You know, how honest are you with your kids about whether you could actually buy them more food? You know?
Yeah? Like do you want to tell people they live in a hotel or in their house because people probably take care of their house a little bit better, right, But if you know it's a hotel, that's right.
Yeah, then you know you're throwing chairs and having big parties and you know, like your typical rock stars. I mean, I know that's how you travel. Who isn't it you leave a trail of trash hotel rooms behind you? Right? Yeah?
Yeah, No, totally, cartoonists lead a wildlife. Everybody knows that.
You're just drawing from experience anyway. I apologize for my pun there.
Yeah, but we're wondering how much do people know about other planets out there? Like what the probability was that there are other planets that we could potentially go and live on.
Yeah? Are people walking around under the assumption that we have a backup plan. This no big deal and we could just bail on this one head to the next one. Or people operating as if this is the only jewel in the universe and we got to take care of it.
So Daniel went out there as usual and ask people in the street. Do you think there are other earths out there?
Here's what they had to say. A.
Well, it might be, but there might be so far that we cannot reach them.
Oh, certainly, I mean, the universe is big enough that it's bround to happen at least once.
Definitely, I think the universe is too big to just have us as the special higher beings.
People seem to have a lot of confidence that there are other places for us to live. Almost everybody said there are definitely other planets out there.
Yeah, I guess everyone's comfortable with the idea that the universe is humongous and so therefore we can possibly be the only nice blue planet out there.
I know, and I like the idea that the universe is humongous because it is, and I get that it suggests that we shouldn't be unusual, but it certainly doesn't provide a rock solid argument. I mean, that's not an argument that this is a big place and therefore there must be more of us. Until you've seen another Earth, till you've discovered life somewhere else, you don't know if we're the only place that has these features. Right, it could certainly be that we are the only place where life could exist. I mean, if there was only one place for life to exist in the universe, that would be the place people ask that question, right, right, So I feel like people make that argument, but there's a missing piece there.
Right.
You have to know that the other Earth can happen. You have to understand the mechanism for their formation or something to argue that there really are other Earths out there. Yeah.
I wonder if people are just conditioned from watching so many sci fi movies, you know that show other planets, and you know, coincidentally, all those other planets look just like Earth because we're filmed on Earth.
You know, mostly around Los Angeles. Hey, look, this planet looks like Malibu. Yeah, well that's so weird. It's a terrible traffic planet. Oh my god.
We're so steeped in science fiction and there being aliens and other planets. I wonder if it's just kind of a like a given that there would be other planets, or maybe scientists done a good job of like teaching people how vast the universe is and how many stars there are out there.
Yeah, I think NASA's used it, done a great job about announcing their discoveries and what they've learned to the general public. So other science agencies can definitely take a page out of their playbook. But also because it touches on something which people are curious about. I mean, you just need to look up at the sky at night and you can see the grand mystery that is the universe. Other fields of science, you know, chemistry or even particle physics are not quite as successful because their mysteries don't jump in your face every single evening when you look up at the stars. So I think it connects to people's imagination a little bit more and also to their you know, this this idea the humanity is on a trajectory that we're you know, we're having flatlined or plateaued or peaked, that we're just you know, we've explored Earth and we've developed technology, and that's clearly the next step is to go out into the stars and to spread this disease slash blessing that is humanity into other places in the universe. It's like our manifest destiny or something. I think there's a lot of that feeling, and maybe that comes from science fiction, or maybe just comes from the human need to build and develop and explor space, and so I think people want there to be these other earths out there. So I think part of this feeling that the universe might be filled with Earth's is a hope, right, It's a hopeful thought. Nobody wants to say no, I think the universe is at desert and we are the only oasis and we're probably gonna die here today. Like, you know, it's a I was mostly young people I was talking to, so maybe they're just a more hopeful crowd. So maybe we should talk first about what we want in another Earth, Like we're shopping for new homes, you know, you should decide how many bedrooms you want and all that stuff. So let's make our shopping list for like what another Earth should look like? What do you look for in a planet, joege.
You know, Wi Fi is pretty up there, power outlets not freezing temperatures, right, breathable air.
Breathable air, Yeah, that might be too much to ask for. I think number one should be like a rocky surface, right. We don't want to live on a gas giant right where you just like it's a dense clouds all the way down to like a surface of molten rock or something in the core. We need something that has enough rock on it that we can stand, right. So, rocky planets rather than gaseous planets, I think is item number one on my list.
Yeah, because you know, even the plants we have in our solar system, the aid that we know about, there's only one of them that we could actually hang out in.
Right, Yeah, I think we could probably make Mars work. Right. Mars is on the edge of that zone. It's a little too cold, really, but you know, if we were able to terraform it and add an atmosphere and a magnetic field, then it would probably warm up pretty nicely. Things we don't know how to do yet, things if we don't know how to do yet, But I'm hopeful, right, I'm hopeful that humanity can do these kinds of things. Right. This is the accessing the positive side of my personality. So but yeah, most of the planets in our Solar system not well suited for life at all. Yeah, So you need a rocky surface, you need to be the right temperature.
Right.
You can't be too close to the Sun, so you get blasted by fire every day, and you can't be too far away, so you're freezing all the time, right, And where that's is depends on how hot your star is. If your star is much much hotter than our star, then you have to be further away, obviously. And if the star is cooler, then you can be much closer to the Sun, which would be really amazing, Like imagine being on a planet that's closer to their star. So then even though it's not any hotter, the star takes up a larger portion of the sky. You could have like a huge red sun in the sky. If your planet is going around a red dwarf.
Oh, you mean, it could feel the same way as here, but our sky would be like basically a big red circle.
Yeah. Or if you have a much much hotter sun, you could be further from it, so even though it feels like the same amount of heat and radiation, the sun in that world would be just like a dot in the sky. It would look the same size as you know, almost any other star, but it would be just as warm.
It could be like we could see that's just another star, but it could be the one the thing that's warmness.
Yeah, exactly. So the experience of being around another star with the same amount of heat captured by the surface could be a very different experience from the point of view what the sky looks like anyway. So we want a planet with a rocky surface, We want about the right temperature, right, we'd like some atmosphere. Certainly, we need a magnetic field. Why do we need a magnetic field, because we've got to protect ourselves from solar radiation, all sorts of other stuff. Remember, magnetic fields bend particles, and so if you have some dangerous high speed particle coming from space, you need that magnetic field to deflect it. Like Earth has a really nice magnetic field which gives us like a shield against cosmic radiation.
So you absolutely need a magnetic field. That's kind of a necessary condition for a planet to be habitable.
Yeah, space is filled with harmful radiation. You can't go out into space without serious radiation shielding. And our planet house radiation shielding's the atmosphere combined with a magnetic field. Absolutely, so planet without a magnetic field would require us to like constantly wear radiation shielding or build a radiation shield, or you can actually construct a radiation shield using a strong magnet you put out in space. That would be pretty cool, but you definitely need sodar shielding, and that actually rules out a huge category of places to live because the center of the galaxy pumps out an enormous amount of radiation because of all the crazy activity that's happening in there, black holes and dense stars and all sorts of crazy stuff we don't actually really understand because the center of the galaxy is a hard place to study, but it's pumping out so much deadly radiation that even the planets around stars that are anywhere near there could not support life because the magnetic fields are not strong enough. So you have to be far enough away from the center of the galaxy also to be safe from that kind of radiation.
Oh, your whole solar system could be in a bad neighborhood.
Yeah, there's entire swaths of stars that are just because they're close to the galactic center, could never really host life, you know, as we know it. Maybe some sort of super radiation hard life could develop there, and people with thicker skin. That's right, people with thicker skins and bad sense of the year. Well, this is a perfect point to take a break with big wireless providers. What you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price you thoughts you we're paying magically skyrockets. With Mint Mobile, You'll never have to worry about gotcha's ever again. When Mint Mobile says fifteen dollars a month for a three month plan, they really need it. I've used Mintmobile and the call quality is always so crisp and so clear. I can recommend it to you. So say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts. So dit your overpriced wireless with Mint Mobiles deal and get three months a premium wireless service for fifteen bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just fifteen bucks a month, go to mintmobile dot Com slash Universe. That's mintmobile dot Com slash universe. Cut your wireless bill to fifteen bucks a month. At mintmobile dot Com slash Universe, forty five dollars upfront payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars per month. New customers on first three month plan only speeds slower forty gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxi, s, fees, and restrictions apply. Seement Mobile for details.
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So that's what we mean by another Earth, Like is there another planet with the same conditions that we have here? And so that's that's kind of the question. And so but I guess the first question is are there other planets at all in other stars? Right? Like, we sort of take that for granted that other stars have other little walls of rock floating around them. Up until a few years ago, we had no idea we had no confirmation that was just the hypothesis.
That's right, and it's a really cool story. In fact, it has a really cool first chapter to it, which is that only a few decades ago they figured out how to look for these planets around other stars. And one of the primary ways that, one of the first ways they did it is by seeing stars wiggle. And so what happens is you have a planet going around a star and you think of okay, there's a planet. It's going around a star. And that's happening because the star is much bigger than the planet, so the planet orbits a star. Right, that's mostly true, But there's a little caveat there, which is the gravity works in both ways. Right, the star is pulling the planet and the planet is pulling the star. So what actually happens is not just that the planet is moving around the star, but the two of them are moving around their center of mass. They're moving around this point that's between the two of them, so both of them move. So you can tell if a star has planets around it based on whether or not it's wiggling back and forth because it's getting tugged on by that planet.
It's kind of like if you had if you were swinging a rock and a string, even if it was a little rock, you would still feel that the pool of the rock right like you would still sway back and forth as you were swinging it.
Yeah, exactly. So they figured out how to do this and they started looking and they found planets. But the amazing thing is they went back through historical data, like data from telescopes from one hundred years ago, and they found this evidence in ancient data, like somebody in nineteen seventeen had taken careful data about the location of a star and they had seen wiggles, and at the time people had been like, what's this. I don't know, I don't know. It must be something wrong or it's nois in your data. Then they went back later and realized this is beautiful data that showed evidence of an exoplanet, but it just hadn't been recognized at the time. So we had this information one hundred years ago, it was just ignored. It was just like not understood.
Well, let's take a step back. Why is it so hard to see planets in other stars? You know, like in our Solar system you can see Mars in the night sky. You can see Saturn. You can see the rings around Saturn. So you can see other planets that are in our solar system. But that's actually much more difficult to see that in other solar systems.
Right, that's right, And think about what you're seeing when you look at that planet. Right, planets look bright in the sky. Why is that? Well, they're not little stars, they're not giving off light. They're mostly reflecting light the same way the moon is right, why can you see the moon? And the moon is just a dark rock? Why can you see it? You can see the part of it that's illuminated by the sun. You can see the light reflecting off it from the sun. So moonlight is really just reflected sunlight, right. And all the light from Mars, for example, is light that started at the Sun, bounced off of Mars and then came to Earth. So the reason we can see those planets is because they reflect the light of our star. Right, and because they're not so close to the star right. Right, you think about another solar system far away, then the planets are really close to that star compared to their distance from us. So Mars is really far to the star compared to its distance from us. So you can see it away from the Sun. If you look at the nearest Solar system, the planets are really close to the star, and so even if they reflect light, it's just a tiny little bit and it's basically included in the blob that comes from the star. You can't really tell them apart.
Right, So, like if you were to point a telescope at another star in the night sky, you would just get blinded by the light from that star that you were looking at.
Right, that's right, because in your telescope, the planets look really close to that star because the distance between them and the star is tiny compared to the distance between them and us. It's like if you look at another if you look at another city through binoculars, right, you can't really see any details. You can just maybe see that it's there.
Yeah, Like it was described to me as like, imagine that your friend was standing next to the world's brightest lighthouse holding a little lighter, you know, or a little match, a little flame. It would be like you trying to discern that flame that your friend was holding from like three thousand miles away. Basically, all you would see is the light from the lighthouse. You wouldn't be able to see that little flicker next to it.
Yeah, and I think I think actually that's overly optimistic, because planets don't give off their own light like a lighter does. Right. It's like if somebody's holding up a rock next to a lighthouse and you're trying to see that rock at night from three thousand miles away based on how much light it reflects from the lighthouse.
Yeah, it's really it's almost impossible, right. It sounds impossible, which is why up until like thirty years ago, when we didn't have the technology, there was no way we could have seen any other planets besides the one in our Solar system.
Well directly, right, in terms of like using telescopes to see that light and say like here is a picture of that planet. That was impossible until fairly recently. But strategies to see them indirectly have been possible for a while. We just didn't realize it. Oh, I see.
So you're saying that historical data that you heard about is basically we had like the data to know that there were other planets in other stars, we just didn't know to look for it.
That's right, And to me, that's tantalizing because you know whoever that was in nineteen seventeen they got that data, they basically missed out on a Nobel prize, right discovery of extra place. And this data was sitting there in a in a library or whatever for decades. So of course then the question is what other data is sitting in the library right now, which is somebody knew how to analyze could reveal something amazing about the universe that could win you a Nobel prize. Right, it's out there right now, everybody stop listening to this podcast and go to the science library and figure it out.
Or maybe in your computer, Daniel, right, like, there could be something in your data that you're not seeing.
Who knows there certainly could be there, certainly could be anyway. To me, that's a fascinating wrinkle when you look back and you see data from history that people didn't understand at the time what it meant.
Okay, So that's the idea that it's really hard to look at other planets and other stars directly. So the first confirmation that there were other stars out there came indirectly from looking at how stars wobble, right, and also like how the light from stars changes.
Right, Yeah, So the first method was the wobble method, and it uses gravity to see how the planets are wiggling the stars. And the second method is called the transit method. And this is the idea. Still you're looking at the star because it's all you can really see directly, and you watch the stars light and as the planet goes in front of the star, the light from the star should get a little dimmer. It's like a little eclipse. Right now, you're not going to cover the whole star. The star is not going to go totally dark. It just dips by a little bit depending on the size of the planet. But if that happens regularly, right, you watch the same star for weeks and weeks, months and years and you notice a pattern, then you can deduce that there's a planet there, and you can figure out what's its period, how often does it go around the Sun? And you can figure out how big is it, what fraction of the light of the star is it blocking.
You know that it sort of assumes that the orbit of the planet goes around in a circle that is just kind of like perfectly in the same level as we are, you know, like exactly you could have a planet going around another star, but it could be going like you know, in a circle kind of perpendicular to us, so you never see it create an eclipse. But if it just so happens to be kind of on the same level as we, we would you would see it kind of pass in front of the star between us and that star.
That's right, it has to pass between us and that star. You're totally right. But remember that these stars are really big compared to their planets, so there's a lot of wiggle room there. I mean, I see plane of that rotation is totally orthogonal. So it's like if we're seeing the entire motion of the planet around the star and it never goes in front of it, then yeah, we can't use the transit method at all. But as long as it passes in front of it at some level, then we can use it.
Right.
But I mean, we were sort of talking very casually about these techniques, but they're really kind of incredible achievements and technology, right, and math and just kind of an imagination to come over with.
I think they're pretty easy, honestly, one of those guys. No, I mean, it's just like I ten minutes of coding, Right.
You're sort of like measuring the effect that the Earth has on our Sun. Like our sun is you know, thousands of not millions of times bigger than the Earth. So like you know, we know that the Earth is affected by the mass of the Sun. But you know, to think about the tiny little effect that our planet has on the Sun. It must be like miniskill, right, it must be like super little tiny wiggles.
No, you're right. It's a triumph of instrumentation and of data analysis and of theory. You know, all those things have to come together. You have to have a telescope that's capable of seeing this, you have to be able to pull that information out of the noisy data you get, and then you have to have enough understanding to say, here's what it should look like if this is happening, and then see that in your data.
Right.
So it's a complex dance of various strains of intellectual effort that came together to make this possible. It's a huge accomplishment and it's really opened up our eyes to the way the universe works. And this wobble method is pretty good, but it's hard to see the transit method has been much more successful in terms of just like sheer numbers of planets, and now we have thousands of planets that we found outside the Solar System.
But that one's also hard to see. I mean, you're looking at a star is just like a point in the sky, and you're looking for like a little tiny dip as a little tiny ball of rock passes in front of that little star.
Right, Yeah, absolutely, And it's more complicated because what if stars have multiple planets, right, and like how do you know which planet is which? And their orbits can be very different, and so you could be looking at a very difficult to understand pattern of a star and like is that just variation in the star or is this a dust cloud passing in front of it. There's a lot of different things to disentangle. It's a complicated thing to do. It's not just like, hey, I noticed this star is twinkling, therefore there's a planet around it.
Right.
It's a hard thing to do. It's some really impressive science and some data science for sure.
Wow, because that's kind of what it is. It's like you're finding a plant it inside of the twinkle.
Of a star. Yeah, exactly, that's pretty cool. You're interpreting the twinkles of stars as saying, come visit us. We have a place for.
You to live. So that's kind of the main method, right, Like that's the most predominant method. But also there's now new technology that lets you see these other planets, Like you can somehow blot out the light from that other star and you can actually see the little dots kind of floating around them.
Yeah, you can actually direct image some planets. Now, it's limited to planets that are pretty close, because they have to be close enough for them to have an apparent enough distance from the star that you can tell them apart maybe it's super duper far away, then it's they're basically on top of each other. So the closer they are, the more likely you are to direct dive into them. Also, it's much easier to image a planet once you know it's there, so you can use like the transit method to say, oh, this star definitely has a planet orbiting it, and we can even tell where the period is, so we can tell where it is. Then you can zoom in and you can say, hubble, look at that and look at it carefully for a while, and then we'll pick it out It's sort of like where's Waldo. Once somebody tells you where it is, like boom, it's easy to spot and you can study them in great detail. Finding them initially can be pretty tricky, right right?
I think that should be the name end of the first planet we go to, Planet Waldow.
No, the haves have some sort of sterile name.
You know.
It should be Waldo thirty nine.
X or something like that, Alsa Waldo thirty nine.
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Okay, so now we can all that there are other planets in other stars. So what do we know about all these other planets out there?
Right? Well, the amazing thing is that we know that there's a lot of them, like not just one or two, but an enormous number of planets out there. And we know now we didn't know thirty years ago that there are more planets in the galaxy than stars. Wait what Yeah, there are more planets than stars in our galaxy.
So like, on average, every star you see out there in the night sky has more than one planet around them on average.
Yeah, absolutely, on average more than one. And so whereas before all we could see were the stars, right, we could see eight planets and billions of stars, now we can see billions of stars and we know that there are billions and billions of planets around them as well. So that just blows your mind.
The universe is littered with planets, that's right.
It's lousy with planets. Yeah, you know what I mean. They're not uh yeah, planets are not rare. They're like, they are not all rare. They're everywhere. You know, everybody's got a planet. Like if the Sun used to feel like special, Hey man, look at all these cool planets I got. It turns out it's pretty ordinary thing to have. You know, everybody's got planets. It's still it's last year's cool thing. That's an important thing to know because if you're you know, if you're a fan of finding alien life, one of the big questions is how many planets are out there? You know, another question is are they suitable for life? But just even knowing that the number of planets out there is in the billions rather than in the dozens is a huge factor in that calculation.
Wow, suddenly the probability that there are aliens is much higher because there are, right.
For me, I don't know, I mean, I would say it's much less non zero. It's much more, much more non zero. I see, less unlikely, it's less unlikely. Yes, there's one way that could have killed it. That is no longer killing the probability. Right, there's lots of other things that could mean that life is not all everywhere in the universe. Right, Even if the universe is filled with Earth like planets with water and sun and everything, that doesn't mean they're filled with life. Also, that's another question. But this one aspect could have been a bottleneck and is. In fact.
I heard that almost every star out there on average has about one to three Earth size planet around them, meaning like there's a planet's sort of about the same size as ours. There's three of them, possibly around every star you see in the night sky.
Yeah, you know, the weird thing is that the most common planet around stars are between the size of Earth and Neptune, right, so bigger than Earth and smaller than Neptune. The odd thing is there are none of those in our solar system. Our solar system is weird in that way. So, I mean, in some ways it's not We're not unusual, like we got planets. Everybody's got planets, but our set of planets is a little strange, right, so far, what we're learning is that most other solar systems don't look like ours. And I think you're right. There are Earth sized planets distributed through lots of solar systems, but not every star has an Earth like planet. In Winu factor in that they have to be near enough to the Sun to be warm and not too far away to be cold. So in terms of Sun like stars, you know stars that are similar to our Sun. I think one in five of those have Earth sized planets that have reasonable amount of solar radiation, so the temperature should be you know, within human range. Oh, I see.
So there's billions and billions of planets out there, but not all of them are in the ideal zone for life.
That's right. You're typing in Earth's into your your to zillow or you're out the real estate home finder, and you know you're going to narrow down your search. You're looking for ones that are approximately Earth sized and rocky, but as we said earlier, also have to be in the Goldilock zone, so they're close enough to the Sun to get enough warmth and not so close that they get fried. So that's one in five sun like stars.
I mean it's not a huge field. You're going from like billions and billions and billions of planets to still billions and billions and billions of planets that are sort.
Of like Earth. Yeah, I think technically you go from kajillions.
To bazillions, which is, you know, less unlikely.
That's right. So the short version of the story is that Earth like planets are everywhere, right, I mean you look at the night sky and one in five sun like stars has an earth like planet around it. Wow, that's incredible, right. Yeah. Thirty years ago we thought we might be one of the only ones, and now we know that there are possible houses everywhere for us. Crazy, so we got a lot of open houses to go to.
So, I mean we're in la and so we can see maybe five stars in the night sky on a good night. But if you're out there in another part of the country, you might see, like, you know, five thousand stars when you walk out at night, and that means there are one thousand earth like planets that you can see out there, right.
That's right, liketh.
Presents, You're in the presence of thousands of earth like planets.
Yeah, and how many of them are looking back at you and wondering, hmmm, that looks like a nice place to move, right, Let's colonize and eat them. That's the flip side of it, right, If there are other earth like planets on there with life, what if they're screwing up their atmosphere and they're looking to move in over here? We need a wall, a space.
Wall, space wall. That should be the next order of business.
After space fans. The aliens should pay for it. I wonder if they'll leave this in. Yeah, So all those planets are out there, and so for those of you feeling like, oh my gosh, we have we're you know, it's an embarrassment of riches. We have so many places we can move. Let's just like burn this place to the ground and move somewhere else. These distances we're talking about are still pretty vast, right, some of the nearest stars we found with planets around them are still like twelve light years away, which is really really far away.
Wait, the nearest earthlike planet is twelve light years away.
Yeah, twelve light years away. You might think, oh, that's no big deal, let's just get in a rocket, right, how long would that take us? Well, there's a lot of constraints there. If you assume sort of current technology, then you know, you can't get going really very fast at all, and imitations on how much you can accelerate, like the human body cannot handle acceleration beyond a few g's. So the short version is that it takes tens of thousands of years to get there.
Tens of thousands of years, so like human history is not even tens of thousands of years old.
Again depending on how much credit you give the Greeks and the Egyptians and stuff, but yeah, it's maybe longer than written history.
Yeahah.
And so if we're going to get there, you need to either cryogenically freeze everybody or have some sort of colony ship where there are generations and generations born on the ship and live and die on the ship and never set foot on a planet. That's sort of crazy to imagine.
And survive this incredible, crazy journey, right and not get hit by an asteroid or run out.
Of food or yeah, exactly.
So basically, while there are a ton of hotels out there we could move to, we're just never going to get there probably.
I mean. One thing we're focusing on in our current strategy for planet searching is to find more close by planets, and that's for two reasons. One is, of course, we want to find another place where could potentially colonize, but also that makes it easier to study, because the second thing that people have been doing recently is not just finding the planets but studying them, like trying to understand which ones might have air, which ones might have water on them. We can do crazy things now, like analyzing what's in the atmosphere of a planet around another star.
Wait, so before we couldn't even see them, and now we can tell what it would be like to be there. You can see the air in those little planets.
Yeah, it's incredible. You know what used to be totally impossible and fantastical is now just like normal technology. And in twenty years we'll be able to do something even more impressive. The way we do that is we look at the light that passes through the atmosphere the planet as it blocks that star. So the light passes through the atmosphere and some of it gets absorbed and some of it doesn't get absorbed, and how it gets absorbed depends on what's in that atmosphere. So if there's a lot of water in that atmosphere, then certain frequencies of light will get absorbed more or less. And the same thing with hydrogen and methane and all this stuff. So that we can tell what's in the atmosphere that planet based on the spectrum of light that's getting absorbed or not absorbed as it passes through that atmosphere. And this is very difficult, right, Yeah, it's hard enough even just to tell that there's a planet there, But then you analyze it's sort of in another dimension, in the spectral dimension, to understand what's around that planet. And that's how we, for example, we've discovered water around planets around other stars. It's amazing. So the new telescope that was launched just a month ago, it's called Tests, and it's got incredible capability for looking at this transit method for finding other planets around stars, and it's going to discover tens of thousands of planets. And the really cool thing is that it's focused on nearby planets, and so it's going to find lots and lots in our neighborhood that we could study and understand their weather and you know, and maybe even here's my fantasy, see signs in the atmosphere something that looks like biology. Oh wow, yeah, that would be amazing. I mean, say, you see like methane in the atmosphere that planet, and methane is something that's produced by life, and maybe the methane cycles with the seasons, or you see other weird stuff in the atmosphere. Right, are we going to talk about, Daniel, Every podcast in the end is about alien.
Farts methane, Yeah, because that's kind of what a biology produces right out the other end, that's right, And we could see that in these little blips.
Yeah, exactly. All right. So we hope that we've inspired you to understand that there are lots and lots of Earth like planets out there, and there are lots of places that we could potentially visit, but remember that those places are still pretty far away and so before you start packing your bags and setting fire to the earth, remember that we have a long way to go before we could ever reach those planets, and so this one that we're living on is still a really valuable, precious jewel. That's right. It's not a hotel, it's your house, that's right. So once you're done with this podcast and you're download next one, go outside and do something nice for the earth.
Yeah, like tell your friends about this podcast.
That's right, exactly, all right, Thanks everyone, have a good one. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at feedback at Danieldorge dot com. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is us dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as dairy dot COM's last sustainability to learn more.
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