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Earth to...Earth? Are you there?
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"."
I see the pointy that any further information about space (even out of our solar system) is useful, but what would we do if we found an earth-like planet?
It is expensive and time consuming to send a probe to Mars, would we really want to investigate this far off planet before we properly explore our own solar system? And put the money in when the results may only come back years after we are all dead? Nope.
I'm glad you posted the section you did here, as I didn't remember his exact words (and I can sometimes be a stickler for comparing what he said to what people think he said.) It says, "We are close to being able to find Earth-like planets." He doesn't say we're close to finding one, just that we're close to being able to find one. That's quite a big difference, especially when you consider that space is mostly empty. It could be 20 years after we are able to find one that we actually do.
Just to kind of explain that to some of our slower readers... and this is in no way accurate, but just an example to help understand... if putting a coke bottle on the end of a telescope enables us to detect Earth-like planets, then we still have to search the skies with that telescope. That could take a long time, with the vastness of space.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
First, we need to find an extra-solar system in which Earth-sized planets exist. It's now believed that these are fairly few and far between. The reason is that a vast majority of the gas giant systems we've discovered so far have their gas giants in either really close orbits to their stars, or are highly eliptical with passes close to their stars. In these situations, Earth-like planets would likely be tossed into their stars, or more likely, tossed into open space, by the gravitational effect of the giants.
Oh, bullshit.
The methods we have used until now to find extra-solar planets are extremely biased to find (a) large planets, (b) very close to the star and (c) in highly elliptical orbits. To make conclusions about the distribution of Earth-like planets from biased samples is foolhardy.
It's as if you decided to count species by sitting in one place in the woods looking through a pair of binoculars. Sure, you would see all of the large mammals and birds that happened by, but you'd miss the vast majority of species by seeing hardly any of the incects (maybe a few fireflies if you were savvy enough to recognize them as animals) and none of the water dwelling animals. You conclusions about the distribution of species would be worthless because you saw only the easiest animals to spot.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
It is not so much that we resemble the aliens as it is that the aliens resemble us.
Remember that the sci-fi movies about which you write were written by humans, and no doubt the authors were trying to make a point about human behavior. Since, by your admission, the activity of serially raping planets for their resources is now associated with nasty aliens in your mind, it looks like the authors have succeeded in making their point.