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Earth to...Earth? Are you there?

Posted by Hemos on from the are-you-there-god?-it's-me,-margaret dept.

jasamaman writes "So far all the planets found outside our solar system have been gas giants. So they are not habitable, and couldn't really hold life as we know it. But "planet hunter" David Charbonneau is looking for another planet just like Earth, and claims that astronomers are "very close"."

10 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. How dose he know? by red5 · · Score: 5, Funny

    How the hell could he know that we are "very close" to discovering anything?
    Did miss cleo tell him?

    --
    I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
    1. Re:How dose he know? by seizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      He "knows" he's very close, because he *knows* his research budget might be cut soon ;-)

      (just conjecture, btw)

    2. Re:How dose he know? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      "Well, the world now knows he likes brewing beer and put out to sea in his canoe. Hey, if he has sex in it, it's Miller time!"

      Is that the old 'f*cking close to water' joke I see before me? Why, I think it is. Subtle one.

      Completely ruined by me now though, sorry.

    3. Re:How dose he know? by mshurpik · · Score: 5, Funny

      For all we know we will have nanites in 100 years (or less) contructing a radio telescope antenna of astronomical proportions from bucky tubes with the information collected examined by a worldwide distributed computing system. You have to look at the entire sphere of the advancement of science.

      I'd love to, but my boss keeps telling me, "Put the grill-side of the hamburger FACE-UP on the bun."

      He doesn't care about space telescopes, neither do the customers. But at $6/hr, I will eventually save up for a linux cluster and programming classes, which will help the distributed computing effort quite a bit.

  2. if we have to evacuate.. by marijne · · Score: 4, Funny

    well, we do need some place to evacuate to if the Vogons come to buildt an interstellar bypass and destroy the earth in the process.
    Lets find 42 alternative planets earth

  3. Astronomers very close? by mccalli · · Score: 5, Funny
    David Charbonneau is looking for another planet just like Earth, and claims that astronomers are "very close"."

    That's true. Astronomers are very close. However, where the hell all these planets are is quite another matter...

    Cheers,
    Ian

  4. Re:How dose he know...and isn't it done already? by jamesidm · · Score: 2, Funny

    about a year and two days ago?

  5. receptions by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wonder if we tuned into another planet's radio wave, if we'd be able to watch their soap operas. I watch soaps for 1/2 a day here on Earth, but wouldn't it be great to watch The Alien and the Cybernetic too? Or maybe we'd get to know them by watching their version of Sally Jesse Rapheal?

    --
    "I only speak the truth"
    Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
  6. Re:Given that Scientists.... by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Funny

    recently determined that amino acids are formed in a vacuum
    Now that is impressive! Guess we can throw away that whole conservation of matter thing. Maybe you meant that amino acids can be formed in a methane environment, but seeing that news is over 40 years old, you must be talking about some other "recent" discovery.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  7. coming up next on planet planet... by saviorsloth · · Score: 3, Funny

    shh, this planet here is one of the most habitable in the universe, but also one of the most dangerous, with sharp venomous teeth. now we're just going to sneak up on it.... oh no, it's got life forms! crikey!