JUSTIN JOHNSON: It’s a TRAP! – SCNow

All my bags are packed. Im ready to go.

Oh, let me tell you where were going:

Yeah,that2MASS J23062928-0502285, the only-39.5-light-years-away dwarf star that NASA technically revealed in 2016 but re-revealed last week.

Its a dwarf star, but not just any stupid regular-type dwarf star.

Its classified as an ultracool dwarf star. Like,so dope.

And not dope like Dopey, Dwarf Star 1-of-7. Like, dope likeultracool.

I bet youll find 2MASS J23062928-0502285 kicked back against the bleachers after school.

Leather jacket. Motorcycle.

Wait, thats not ultracool. Thats retrocool.

Ultracool like a modern tech kid with good hair and rolled skinny jeans and high-tops.

Yeah, like someone who used to shop at American Apparel before they became woke and spoke out against the companys practices.

Now theyre concerned about political issues, butnot like, political, you know?

That kind of ultracool dwarf star.

2MASS J23062928-0502285 even goes by an ultra-cool name: TRAPPIST-1, in all-caps like its an acronym, but it isnt an acronymcause thats its name, man, but technically it is the telescope they used to find it is the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope ... I dont know where the I comes from.

There is an I in Planetesimals, so maybe there.

But anyway, thats where Im going.

Well ...nearTRAPPIST-1. You cant live there.

Its a star, dummy. Youd get all burnt up.

But it does have seven planets orbiting it. Four of those seven were just found a couple weeks ago, and five of those seven are roughly the same size as Earth, and three of those seven might be able to support life.

See, weve effectively destroyed our planet, because humans are jerks.

And Earth is actively trying to shake us off. We are absolute parasites, killing our host.

So more and more, globes are warming and earths are quaking and canes are hurriing and nadoes are toring and Im looking to get out while the gettins good.

Where better than TRAPPALACHIA-1 itself?

There arent any planets other than Earth in our solar system that we know can support life.

Maybe Mars, but Mars kinda sucks. I sawThe Martian. Thats a lot of red dust to deal with.

So maybe the right planet for me and us is TRAPPIST-1f or maybe TRAPPIST-1g or maybe TRAPPIST-1h. One of those three Earth-like spots. We can start fresh (First up? Changing those lazy names).

Well gather up the best people (who I havent gathered yet) to load up the space shuttle (which I havent acquired yet) with gear and supplies (which havent acquired yet) and well ship out.

Based on our current tech, itll only take us 1,469,400 years to get to TRAPSVEGAS-1.

Drops in the bucket of time, am I right?

Thats actually a butt-ton of time, so maybe we need a loophole.

Look, Ive seenInterstellar. AND Ive seenGravity.

So you can just shut up. I know what Im talking about.

But even with all of this figured outtechnically, theres still the issue of the hardest part of all of this:

How do we manage the humans heading for the new utopia?

Ive seen enough science fiction movies to know that human nature is the worst part of nature, because either someone gets spacecrazy and stabs someone else or someone gets infected by some extraterrestrial somethingorother and then bites a face off or someone decides they can fix the ship and gets snatched out into nothingness or someone lets an alien monster onto the ship by accident which then proceeds to just eat everyone, and thats just a short list.

These are all things that could or could not happen on our trip to NEWTRAPCITY-1.

Not to mention all the problems thatll come up once we get there, like deciding what form of government we should use, or what the best way to grow food is, or how we plan to hunt, or how to avoid being killed by the people or creatures already living there, and you know what this seems like a ton of work after a million-and-a-half years of traveling.

Mars doesnt look so bad now.

Justin Johnson is content editor at the Morning News.

He hopes Reeses Peanut Butter Cups exist elsewhere in the universe.

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JUSTIN JOHNSON: It's a TRAP! - SCNow