Aliens... | Page 4 | Vital Football

Aliens...

See the article I posted above.

I've got adverts blocked on my phone so pretty much all newspaper sites don't display me anything so sorry didn't read your link !

Anyway, the one interesting point for me was this signal shifted frequency slightly as it would if coming from an orbiting planet.

So, presume those involved (if they haven't done so already) will be calculating if the signal's frequency shift equates correctly to what it would be if the signal had originated on either the rocky planet known to be at Proxima or from the gas giant there (perhaps from a moon).
And they will need to keep hunting for any other planets that Proxima may have.

And I also assume we will now be keep a constant monitoring going on of Proxima system.

And further, given this is our very closest neighbour, maybe it's time to set a mission heading to it anyway. The Voyagers have now made it past edge of solar system, but any new craft we could build now, ought to be able to travel further and faster and of course be far more advanced that half a century old technology.
 
I've got adverts blocked on my phone so pretty much all newspaper sites don't display me anything so sorry didn't read your link !

Anyway, the one interesting point for me was this signal shifted frequency slightly as it would if coming from an orbiting planet.

So, presume those involved (if they haven't done so already) will be calculating if the signal's frequency shift equates correctly to what it would be if the signal had originated on either the rocky planet known to be at Proxima or from the gas giant there (perhaps from a moon).
And they will need to keep hunting for any other planets that Proxima may have.

And I also assume we will now be keep a constant monitoring going on of Proxima system.

And further, given this is our very closest neighbour, maybe it's time to set a mission heading to it anyway. The Voyagers have now made it past edge of solar system, but any new craft we could build now, ought to be able to travel further and faster and of course be far more advanced that half a century old technology.

Yes, it's certainly interesting. Although Proxima Centauri's rocky planet doesn't look a great candidate for life: probably tidally locked and it's atmosphere most likely stripped by it's star's radiation and coronal mass-ejection events.

I hadn't thought of a moon around the gas-giant, but I'm not sure of its orbit.

We're not really at the stage of interstellar missions yet. They would take a long time to get there at the speeds we can currently manage - rough estimate I just did, 100,000 years.
 
Yes, it's certainly interesting. Although Proxima Centauri's rocky planet doesn't look a great candidate for life: probably tidally locked and it's atmosphere most likely stripped by it's star's radiation and coronal mass-ejection events.

I hadn't thought of a moon around the gas-giant, but I'm not sure of its orbit.

We're not really at the stage of interstellar missions yet. They would take a long time to get there at the speeds we can currently manage - rough estimate I just did, 100,000 years.

Well we definitely need to get going soon then!
 
A quick read up on the Voyagers, it says they've roughly gone 200 AUs so far but still a few hundred years from the Oort cloud.
But in 40,000 years Voyager 1 will be around 1 light year from a star 17 light years from us.
So Proxima should be reachable in 10,000 years at Voyager pace. If technology can improve significantly on that of the 1970s, maybe our neighbour might be reachable in a matter of a few centuries or even less.

And back on the Voyagers, remaining power will run out in next 4 or 5 years so no more data after that. Pity.
 
There are ways to build up speed, of course, multiple sling-shots around the sun and and different propulsion systems (see above). Whether shielding will work at those high velocities is an issue, potentially, I guess.

If we survive as a civilisation I have little doubt it will happen in the future.
 
Well done China.

I'm ever hopeful of one day seeing a manned mission to Mars. And looking quite hopeful of men on the Moon once again. And first Woman on the Moon too. Will she do "one giant leap for womankind". Compulsory surely!!
 
Yep, bit US mission on the way with a huge rover onboard. A couple of others as well, I think.