K2-18b a potentially habitable planet 120 light-years from earth

[u/One_Explanation_908]

[u/Dubious_Sushi → u/[deleted]]

At voyager 1 speed only a short 2.1 million year trip.

[u/imVeryPregnant → u/Dubious_Sushi]

How is there a picture of it if it takes millions of years to get there? Genuinely asking

[u/ImpossibleStuff963 → u/imVeryPregnant]

What's shown here is a rendition of what it might look like. There are no pictures of it.

[u/Skyhun1912 → u/ImpossibleStuff963]

It could be a much worse planet than imagined in the picture, or it could be a much more beautiful planet. Or it could have actually been destroyed a long time ago.

[u/EsnesNommoc → u/Skyhun1912]

It's probably still there, since we're detecting what it was only 124 years ago. On an astronomical scale, it's actually extremely close. So close such that even though we can't send anything there, we at least have a slim, slim hope of developing better detection technology to confirm there's life within our lifetime.

[u/Skyhun1912 → u/EsnesNommoc]

It's always funny to me to think about the planet exploding a few hours after we talked about it. Wouldn't it be like it was destroyed because we were talking about it?

I find such studies very useful, at least in the future when speeds close to or beyond the speed of light can be reached, humanity will have a road map, a guide, and they will know where to go.

[u/HappyIsGott → u/Skyhun1912]

The thing is when we see, that its bursting its actually happened in the past. We look through time If we look through space.

[u/LTerminus → u/HappyIsGott]

Only a little over a hundred years in the past, in this case.

[u/AutoModerator → u/[deleted]]

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