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[JoshuaFH]

Juno takes some sexy french girl photos of Jupiter, oh myy.

I know that all of Jupiter's environment is an uninhabitable storm-dimension, but those pictures of the hellishly black north pole look especially menacing.

[Starver]

The time is overdue for the Great Black Spot to appear and transform Jupiter into Lucifer. I blame the lack of Tyco moon-bases, these last 19 years.

[Reelya]

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/ross-128b-is-there-life-out-there-planet-find-says-it-could-be-as-close-as-next-door/news-story/edcfe95a611d7191b2f52030f4e785b7

Seems like they found an Earth-sized planet only 11 light years away, and it's in the habitable zone. However it has some interesting differences. 1 solar orbit is around 10 days, and it's tidal-locked to the star, which is a fairly cool red dwarf type, so that one face always faces the star, so there's a hot and cold side, and no day/night cycle to speak of.

However they're estimating that it's surface temperatures are between -60 and 20 degrees Celsius. Even if there's no life there this would seem to be a viable place for humans to colonize. And it's close enough we could get some real information on what it's like within a reasonable time-frame.

[Starver]

Tidally locked might even mean "goldilocks longitudes" on the planet, where tenuous life can develop in the most conveniently neutral part of the near-side/far-side gradient (and convenient shadows to be in or out of, from the local geography). Once it gets hold, evolution of hotter/colder/brighter/darker tolerances then can happen, if at all possible.

Though if the theory that Earth's lunar tides helped our development (isolating littoral pools, periodically, to open up many separate prebiotic experiments in abiogenesis at the start, and stranding proto-amphibians at a later time, then perhaps a near-constant set of conditions aren't good enough to tweak actual solid developments out of the random mush. Especially if it means there's less effective experimental area, comparing and contrasting contemperaneously temperate areas across vast swathes of a rotating sphere with our above planet having much narrower slice betwixt Hell and Hoth, easily cut through by simple geological barriers to further restrict migration when libration or solar variation does cause localised discomfort (see also Earthly cloud forests, 'lifting off').

But interesting to think about how it might develop one or other (or several?) branches of life.

[RedKing]

Problem with tidally-locked planets is that, theoretically, if they have an atmosphere at all, it's going to be a rather violent one. Heat transfer between light side and dark side is going to generate some impressive wind.

Good news -- a Belgian study in 2015 calculated that this may not be that big of a problem after all.

Bad news -- The same study calculated that heat transfer generally doesn't occur in planets with a rotational period of less than 12 days. Planet you mentioned is 10 days. So, no heat transfer.

[Reelya]

That's not necessarily bad as Starver hinted at. If there's no crazy wind and there's hot and cold then there must logically be a steady temperate band.

~~~

Also a quibble, the article says that a certain unwanted pattern only occurs in planet with less than 12 days rotational period. However, it doesn't actually state that all planets with less than 12 days rotational period have that feature.

I mean, maybe, but we only have the wording of one pop-science article summarizing some research to go on. If we take that too literally then we're probably ascribing more rigor to the article than it warrants.

[RedKing]

That's not necessarily bad as Starver hinted at. If there's no crazy wind and there's hot and cold then there must logically be a steady temperate band.

~~~

Also a quibble, the article says that a certain unwanted pattern only occurs in planet with less than 12 days rotational period. However, it doesn't actually state that all planets with less than 12 days rotational period have that feature.

I mean, maybe, but we only have the wording of one pop-science article summarizing some research to go on. If we take that too literally then we're probably ascribing more rigor to the article than it warrants.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[smjjames]

How old is its parent sun? The article says that it isn't young, but doesn't specify the age, which could be important to knowing what complexity we might expect.

Then again, the conditions are so radically different that we don't know whether taking three billion years to develop complex multicellular life is the norm or if it can happen faster.

Also, having a windy atmosphere isn't going to stop life from developing, more challenging, yes, but not prevent. life would also adapt to the conditions, I could see the windy atmosphere fostering many more instances of flight, possibly even some unusual and innovative methods that wouldn't work on Earth.

[Madman198237]

400mph+ winds basically preclude biological flight. The stresses would require metal bones.

Also, think about how LANDING would work.

Or how about flying against the winds PERPETUALLY because otherwise you will be blown into Hoth? Or sucked into the hellscape on the other side.

[smjjames]

I think we'll end up surprised as to what life can adapt to...

Incidentally, constant 400 mph winds would preclude all but the most adventurous and risk taking colonists from trying to colonize said planet. Unless they somehow got underground as fast as possible.

[Madman198237]

Even then, you're going to have ~400mph of speed on landing with such winds, assuming a lengthy-ish descent.



That's going to cause some difficulty in actually reaching the "underground" stage.

[smjjames]

As I said, the most adventurous and risk taking colonists, probably including some that have ideas on how to make it work but are viewed as crazy by most everybody else.

[Starver]

That's going to cause some difficulty in actually reaching the "underground" stage.

Or help...

Penetrating impactor with intrinsic internal dampening/buffering ('Martian Cylinder' on (a)steroids!) hitting surfaces of a particular (possibly wide) range of hardness could be the answer to getting out of dynamically hostile atmospheric.


(But not with current tech or information, of course. Just maybe something possibly considered once the 11ly manned mission has settled into the extrasolar orbit necessary to consider the final down-well drop people down. Including taking time to harvest materials from the local asteroids. I don't think we'd be prepackaging everything, for all contingencies, into the vessel sent from here. Probably work on getting a certain minimum of materials processing, assembly and repair mechanisms as part of the "go with" tech, plenty of 3d-printing tech across all ranges of polymers, metals, ceramics, etc, and let the possible landing plans (unmanned probes foremost) develop in brainstorming sessions across the 22 years of reciprocal communication to include Earth, and maybe take advantage of their having developed actual Inertial Dampeners or something in the meantime.)

[LordBaal]

If we send a sufficiently advanced and autonomous probe today that could accelerate to relativistic speed of .9 C at a constant 1G it could reach the planet in around 13 years(I'm not couting deceleration), with a com lag of 11 years.
If everything goes rigth we could have info back in around 24+ years. Well within a lifetime. Now this is the SciFi scenario with a nonexistent propulsion system as of yet. And it depends on a lot of things that have millions of ways to go wrong to go exactly right.

I mean we still crash probes on Mars because differences over measurements units. (Everyone should use metric system).

But even if the time of the mission is 50 or 100 years with more realistic propulsion systems I would say is still worthy of doing. As long is done right.

[Starver]

I mean we still crash probes on Mars because differences over measurements units. (Everyone should use metric system).

The most successful nation at getting probes to Mars is India, by the way...

Makes you think!