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A comment on Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star. Parent comment

Re:Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest su... by Retra on Thursday August 10, 2017 @11:12PM (#14986325)
If we discovered actual humans on a near-exact clone of earth, we'd still be about 50,000 years from something relevant here on Earth. Outer space is staggeringly expansive. Staggeringly. Like "your space probe is sad joke" expansive.

We could develop our own alien life right on Earth within that timeframe.

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Re:Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest su... by ExactoKnight on Saturday August 12, 2017 @04:20AM (#14997006)
You're thinking about this wrong. As long as we can send probes and/or communicate within compressed timeframes than physical transportation of humans doesn't matter.

E.g. Breakthrough Starshot can get us to many exoplanets within 20-30 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot

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Re:Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest su... by Retra on Saturday August 12, 2017 @04:54PM (#14999910)
"Many" exoplanets? How many planets does Alpha Centauri have?

It is ~4 ly away. If you're willing to go ~10 ly, you get 6 more stars to look at. And it gets far worse from there.

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Re:Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest su... by ExactoKnight on Thursday August 17, 2017 @05:25PM (#15041167)
It's now estimated there are more Earth-sized planets than gas giants on most stars, and that every star has at least 1 planet, likely more.

So that's 7 or more planets. That's many.

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