NASA Stumbles Upon A New "Super Earth" That's Just 31 Light Years Away

(SOURCE)

A potentially habitable ‘super-Earth’ has been discovered just 31 light-years away from our solar system, astronomers announced Wednesday.

The planet, named GJ 357 d, is about six times larger than Earth and orbits a dwarf sun GJ 357, much smaller than our own, every 55.7 days. The international team of astronomers that discovered the planet said in a news release that it could “provide Earth-like conditions.”

“With a thick atmosphere, the planet GJ 357 d could maintain liquid water on its surface like Earth, and we could pick out signs of life with telescopes that will soon be online,” Lisa Kaltenegger, the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell and associate professor in astronomy, said in a statement. “If GJ 357 d were to show signs of life, it would be at the top of everyone’s travel list – and we could answer a 1,000-year-old question on whether we are alone in the cosmos.”

I am in a HUGE space and aliens kick right now.  Not sure if I’m completely late to the party or it’s a new fad, but I find myself watching some new space or alien documentary on Netflix just about every night, so finding out there’s a planet that’s *maybe* able to support life is awesome news to me.  I don’t want an alien invasion, I need one

Not really, I’d shit my pants 

anyways, seeing that this planet is only 31 light years away makes it possible in theory to travel to.  No, we don’t have the technology yet.  And 31 million light years is a looooooong distance.

186,000 miles per second x 31,000,000 to be exact.

“but WSD you fat idiot, how is that possible??”

I won’t attempt to explain it to you, I’ll just let Steven Hawking do so.  Remember him?  The world renown astro physicist who knows everything there is to know about time travel?  Watch this clip:

If you can’t watch at work or whatever, here’s the TL/DR:

Imagine you’re in the back of a train moving 50MPH.  You stand up and start walking towards the front of the train.  You’re technically moving faster than the train itself.  Probably like… 51MPH or so.  Maybe less.  That doesn’t matter.

But if we ever get to the point 100, 1000 or 10,000 years from now where we have the technology to build a ship that moves at the speed of light, which is physically proven to be the fastest velocity anything can possibly travel, we could load the train with people and have them walk towards the front of it.  Physics wouldn’t allow those people to travel faster than the speed of light, so in order to compensate for this, time would slow down to protect the laws of physics.  So if this hypothetical train traveled for 100 years, time inside the train would only have elapsed one week, or in other words in one week of time inside they train, they’d walk off the train 100 years into the future.

So basically what I’m saying is this: get me a light speed train and let’s get on getting on to this super earth planet 31 million light years away.  I need to see what all the hubbub is all about with it.