EXOPLANETARY LOONIES

O goody! The 'exoplanet' hunters tell us they have spotted a 'cousin' to the earth. Hmmmm. 5.5 times the size of the earth, which means you would weigh 5.5 times as much if it's about the same density. It is also -223 degrees Celsius, a tad chilly for getting up early in the mornings. And it is about 235 million miles away from its star, which is only a reddish one, so the light would not be too bright. And it is about 25,000 light-years from here.

So to get to this hellish 'cousin' you would have to travel at the speed of light for 25,000 years, if that were possible--i.e, about 560 million years at the speed of our rockets. And the same back if you found it was not like the Bahamas, or that squadrons of something frigid and slimy objected to your company, or that you had forgotten your lunch or that you hadn't locked the front door before you left.

Even a phone call home would take 25,000 years to make a connection, then you would have to wait 50,000 years between saying something and hearing the response. That would make even a short conversation ten sentences each go on for a million years. If you got a wrong number it would take you 50,000 years to find out, then another 25,000 to re-connect. If your batteries lasted that long. Even nuclear power would be iffy. Those sorts of numbers are way outside the half life of fissile atoms. Maybe you could use a bicycle generator...

Those exoplanet guys are semi-morononic profligate loonies. They are wasting buckets of money in the name of some tooth-fairy, substitute religion and calling it science. Meanwhile, back here on the only planet that we can live on in the entire universe that we know of and can reach--which makes it the only one, period--it would take just $US500,000 and less than two years to produce a planet-friendly car that would save us from the worst consequences of our fossil-burning addiction and madness.