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Habitable Planets May Be Common
swight1701 writes "New Scientist tells us, "one in four of the planetary systems identified to date outside the Solar System are capable of harbouring other Earths, say astrophysicists, a much higher proportion than anyone expected." Two seperate groups have come up with results that line up with each other, the latest one using simulations of 85 systems. Warm up the warp engines, time to go planet hopping!"
Alright, I can't wait till we start drilling for on every planet. That will be so cool.
photoplankton
"one in four of the planetary systems identified to date outside the Solar System are capable of harbouring other Earths"
The operable word here is capable.
Half of these planets won't have oxygen, another 49.9% will be too cold.
This study is referring to the distance of the star to the planet being far enough that the sun doesn't fry the planet.
Good, because this one is running out of time.
They say their are habitable for life...why do we always assume every life form will be exactly like us and need our environment to thirve? For some other form of life they may thrive on Venus or Jupiter.
The researchers found that around a quarter of the systems contained regions where life-friendly planets could in principle exist.
If the requirement is that there be a "region" around the star where a planet could have water in liquid state all-year-round, wouldn't almost every star satisfy this? Every heat source has a distance at which it feels "nice" (as anyone who's been at a campfire can attest to). :-)
Maybe I'm missing something here (which has been known to happen
The Raelians have announced their first colonizing ship full of expectant clone mothers is due to arrive in the nearest system in question sometime next month.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
1 in 4 might be good for balls of rock, but it doesn't quite match "Earth".
---
When I grow up, I want to be a kid again.
I took a college course called "Intelligent life in the universe" (god I loved college). Where we learned basically:
1. What we know it takes to support life
2. What living objects are typically made of (carbon based compounds)
3. What percentage of stars have planets around them, what percentage of those planets are the proper distance away from the star the orbit (which changes based on the size of the star)
4. a bunch of biology, and some other related stuff
It boiled down to the idea that the universe is soo huge that IF we're the only intelligent life in the universe, that there must some type of "god" and if we're not, well then the evolutionary theories are probably fundamentally correct (doesn't mean there isn't "god", but not in the literal old testament sense).
see, no real hard conclusiions only questions, cause there is always another level deeper to go.
No matter how many statistical guesses different scientists make, the question of habitable planets, not to mention the question of other intelligences, will not be answered without actually going out and visiting them. This will not happen in your lifetime. You will not know. Sorry!
This isn't too surprising since all a planet has to have to be habitable is a small enough mass to not crush our bodies, ideally a natural radiation shield, and only enough heat per square meter to provide energy while not cooking our structures. Some natural resources that we can eat and drink would be nice too.
Jupiter like planets will have satellites that might have the right sized radius to allow us to live on them. They don't all have to be planetesimals like Mars.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
First they tell us the earth ain't flat, then the Universe doesn't resolve around our planet... then the fake moon landings, now this. Good thing we have fundamentalists around telling us it isn't so. Seriously, unless there is a nature of physical or sound travel that we are unaware of, it really doesn't matter much to us that much if there is a civilization 1000 light years away. In the 2,000 years it would take to get a super amplified light message to them and back, will we still be around to listen?
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When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
Depending how you look at it (glass half full/empty) it turns out that the giants are in the wrong spot three out of four times...
The Drake Equation is a simple little formula that allows one to calculate the number of civilisations in the galaxy. It is a tried and tested scientific means of working out the number of civilisations that pose a threat to the USA and indeed the world.
Here, using the latest information available to science and the most up to date techniques, I have recalculated the values for the Drake Equation showing that the National Defense Establishment must have its funds greatly increased (an unconventional view perhaps, but I am not biased and trapped by the establishment as certain low browed arriviste scoundrels are).
For our readers who don't know simple maths (surely the vast majority of you), you need not worry - this is so simple a child could master it.
Here is the Equation:
N = R* × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L
Let us run through the values one by one.
N = The number of communicative civilisations.
This is the thing we are trying to work out, and it equals the multiple of all those funny symbols on the right hand side of the equals sign (again, for those of you who don't know any mathematics, I mean that when you multiply all the things on the right, you get the thing on the left. The symbols represent numbers, the numbers we are putting values on).
R* = The rate of formation of suitable stars. In other words, the rate of formation of stars with a large enough habitable zone (the bit Earth is in, not too hot and not too cold for life) and a long enough lifetime for life to develop.
This one is measured in star systems per year. Now, our galaxy is about 5 billion years old, and has about 5 billion stars. So the rate of formation is obviously 1 per year. The number of suitable stars is smaller though. It is obvious that all stars have a habitable zone - even the coolest of brown dwarves will have a region close enough to be inhabitable. So the only determinant we need worry about is lifespan. The only stars that don't live very long are giant stars, and they are very rare - only one star in a thousand is short lived. So we can safely say that R* = 0.999. This is established fact, there really isn't any other plausible value.
fp= The percentage of those stars which have planets. Well, here around the sun we have a mighty 9 planets, which suggests that planets are jolly common right off the bat.
There is more evidence - only recently have we had the technology to examine other stars for the existence of planets. And yet already, after just 5 years, we have found 67 planets not of Earthly origin. Given that we can only see the biggest planets as yet, this would suggest that these bodies are phenomenally common, and I feel no hesitation in giving fp a value of 95%.
Ne=The number of 'Earths' per planetary system. In other words, how many of these planets are in the habitable zone? This is very easy to calculate. In terms of temperature, the habitable zone is from -50 Celsius (The South Pole) to +50 Celsius (Sub Saharan Africa). The temperatures in the solar system range from 200 (Mercury, the hottest) to -200 (Pluto, the coldest). This is a range of 400 degrees, of which habitable is 100. So the habitable zone is 25% of the range out from any star, so therefore, by a process of simple logic, Ne = 25%.
fl = Percentage of those planets where life develops. This is where we leave uncertainty behind and start to have more of an idea of the figures. Life develops very easily indeed - for it is a simple process of complex forms replicating themselves. Salt, for example, is a form of life, for each layer of a salt crystal creates the next when in solution. It is thought that it is by this process that life first developed. As clays and salt solutions are extremely common on all planets, it is fair to say that this figure is extremely high. But I shall still be prudent and conservative, and pin the figure at 90%.
fi = Percentage of those planets which develop intelligent life. Given that you have life on a planet, how likely is it that intelligent life will develop? Well, again. I would say that this figure is very high indeed. As life develops by a evolutionary, Darwinian process, and as only the fittest survive, it is clear that any life form more intelligent than another will persevere. There is an inevitable, unstoppable pressure on creatures to become more intelligent. Therefore fi=90%, or thereabouts.
fc = Fraction of above where technology develops.This one is easy. All intelligent civilisations develop technology, otherwise they wouldn't be very intelligent now, would they? fc=100%.
L = Lifetime of these civilisations (years). This one is more difficult. The only thing that can destroy a civilisation is another civilisation. Otherwise, they are immortal. Given that conflict is extremely common, but that total annihilation is not, we can safely estimate that L = 1 Billion or so, if not more.
Multiplying all these numbers together, we see that N = 1,921,826 civilisations active now in our galaxy.
And there is more: Our galaxy is only 120,000 light years across. So the nearest civilisation to us will be in the nearest star to us, or possibly even in our own solar system - such as Jupiter or Venus.
This is the greatest threat Mankind has ever faced.
What happens when one civilisation meets another? Well, if one of the civilisations is more advanced that the other, then the inferior is completely subsumed. This is a law of nature. It is happening now - USian culture is flooding the world, not through force of arms, but through sheer superiority. The effects of even meeting a more advanced alien civilisation, even a supposedly friendly one, would be unthinkable. It is that end that certain far sighted organisations are already working to defend us against.
It is clear to me that the USA must increase hugely its space weapons programme, in order to defend the Human Race from the impending alien cultural imperialism. They will start insidiously, with simple prime numbers bleeped through space from far off stars, and then progress to music and plays, novels and TV programs - these hallmarks of what it is to be human will be supplanted by alien ideas.
I hope that with this revelation the USA does the right thing. When we hear those prime numbers being broadcast, we must switch our radio off and ignore the impure transmissions from far away. China succeeded in this aim when it turned away the Europeans, and retained their culture, where the Japanese did not (something we must be wary of). We should learn from these old, noble civilisations and do the same ourselves.
Curiosity can result in the death of identity - it is this we must fight to avoid.
Saturdays are meant for good spelling.
assuming that these places could indeed hold life, i still don't think that we could go there.
1.life support- it would take a significant amount of energy to get there in terms of fuel etc, even with cyrogenics.
2.too much precision needed. if we take any star system, chances are that it will be a large distance from earth, at least four light years. q minor deviation off course could lead to the space ship having to go millions of miles in a correction course. to make matters worse,all of the stars including ours are moving.
3.time. the actual trip would at minimum take about 8 years, assuming the closest star had life and that a ship could instantly reach the speed of light and could also stop instantly. in reality this trip would likely take several lifetimes, a tough commitment for many people.
4. bad jokes. if the ship lands successfully we will hear about how planets land on you in soviet russia.
I reminded what calvin once said "A sure sign that there is intelligent life is that they have not contacted us"
A theory I once heard:
Universe is about 15 000 000 000 years old. If habitable planets are common then there has to be much older races than we are. Let's say that one of those races is capable of space traveling and it takes 1000 years for that race to spread from planet to another. If they were 1 000 000 years older than us then they would've spread around the universe to 2^1000 planets. Even if it took 10 000 years to populate a planet after reaching one, they would have populated 2^100 planets. Now think about a race that would've been around for a 1 000 000 000 years. They should've populated every habitable planet in the universe.
I can't remember the name of this theory, but please tell me if you do.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
about the crying game! No just kidding, my jest was actually aimed at the arrogance and very unprofessional (not to mention unscientific) mentality of these researchers believing they know all there is to know about planets regardless of how everything is theoretical and we have yet to even set one foot on one of the planets in our on solar system.
I wonder what life will look like on planets that don't have a moon like ours. The moon is very important in keeping the earth's axis ariented in the same position with regard to the sun. Without the moon, earth's axis could tilt so that one of the poles can be positioned towards the sun, thereby illuminating one side of the earth constantly while keeping the other side in the dark. If life can evolve on such a planet I would very much like to see what it looks like.
-- Cheers!
According to the article they were looking for the possibility of Earth-like planets in indendent orbits around stars. They weren't looking at the possibility of planets (moons) in orbit around gas giants. There is speculation reported here that Jupiter's moons Callisto, Ganymede and Europa have subsurface oceans which could support life.
Adding moons of gas giants could raise the percentage of systems with Earth-like planets to higher than the 25 percent reported.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
Bullshit! Why don't they just F***'in' admit it... we have NO idea what's out there and we're never going to know, or even have a bloody friggen clue, until we go out there ourselves (or at least SEND out a probe) -- it's plainly obvious that trying to extrapolate something meaningful from remotely observed phenomena alone is just not useful!
(end of rant)
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Although the prospect of other stars that are capabale of supporting Earth-like planets is facinating, we need to ask some fundamental questions: 1. Do they also host responsible civilizations; 2. If not, then are these civilizations developing Weapons of Mass Destructrion? If so, then it is imperative that we begin preparations immediatly. If not, then it is still our moral obligation to eventually begin the design and test of Planet-Cracking Weapons to neutralize whatever violent civilizations we may encounter. In the meantime, I believe we should also implement a 7/24/365 inter-steller broadcast of our intentions so that civilizations who could cause potential conflict will "get the message": "Dont F__K with Earth". Specifically, I reccomend that we immediatly begin to repeatedly broadcast the "Planet Cracking" scene in "Star Wars"; although we don't have this technology yet - the Death Star, the aliens won't know that: it will be an adequate bluff.
So, slash dotters, is it not time that Earth laid down the foundation for some Prime Directives?
Engage! - With etiquette!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Okay, besides the fact that this is the new scientist, the weekly world news of scientific discovery, that doesn't make this theory of prolific life in the universe any less valid than the theory of no other life in the universe.
Life on earth is prolific. There are no enviornments on earth which humanity has yet to explore which do not contain some form of life. Heck we've even disocvered complex ecosystems at the bottom of the ocean sustaining themselves no through the sun's energy but from chemical processes.
One day humanity is going to look back on the idea that earth is it and think of it in the same frame of mind that we now think of the age old theory that the earth is flat and you can fall off the edge.
When we do find alien life it may not resemble anything we know, but it will be everywhere.
Read Clark's Fountains of Paradise. There is a chapter on the so called starglider. The topic religion is threated quite in detail.
Just that, it's nice to know that they may be out there, but we haven't the technology to make it to our nearest neighboring star (Alpha Centari, a mere 4.3 light-years away). Long story short, better telescopes and math are nice, but we need a lightspeed capable drive.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
i.e. If there are aliens, why the heck haven't they colonized the earth by now?
Here's a link.
But do fleas wonder if there is life on other dogs?
Read about how your trips will be monitored by Bush's
brown shirts.
Cheers,
W00t
What would deal a bigger blow to these sorry-assed religions than meeting up with planetfulls of other intelligent beings, none of whom have heard of Allah, Yahweh, etc., and we haven't heard of their True Religions, Karlax, Vronontia, Mooolawaei....
Well what do you know, there's hope for the world yet!
"Lo sorprendente es que haya vida en ESTE planeta"
Amazing is there's life in THIS planet.
(Mafalda is a popular Argentinian comic strip by Quino. No idea if there are English editions).
I see 57005 people
Man, now I have to sell my acre on the moon, and save up for some property elsewhere....
....and yes...I DO own an acre of land on the moon.....so there..
I'm surprised the folks(weirdos) over at Lunar Republic.com haven't tried to cash in on this yet...
-Rob www.robtimko.com
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0210006
Note that you can download the full original in PDF, Postscript, or other scientific formats. The PDF is about a half meg in size. and is about 38 pages long.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'm curious if the fine folk at SETI have already gotten data from those 25%, or have they had a plan of where/when to get get data and they're sticking to it regardless of latest findings? I'd love to know that my SET@Home client is processing data from what may be a more likely location.
As long as it doesn't turn into Space Muslims ramming K-XQ9 Interceptors into the Sears Tower, that is.
If we don't believe the TV evangelists, because we know they are just after funding, then why believe the scientists, who are also just after funding? Oh, and also trying to prove their own pet theories. They waffle back and forth on this utterly speculative trash the way the medical world waffles back and forth on how much fish you should eat. I know there are exceptions, but sheesh.... this ain't one of them.
It's a crap British magazine. It's their version of Omni. They print some pretty outlandish shit.
I found the arguments in favor of a truly "Rare Earth" in the book of that title be Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee to be truly compelling. Apparently, the New Scientist article refers to habitable zones (where liquid water can exist) and not being too close to a Jupiter-like planet. But according to Ward and Brownlee, Earth also boasts of:
-a metal-rich sun in a safe region of a slowly moving spiral galaxy without any nearby supernovae
-a four billion year history of surface temperature that supports liquid water, which means the planet orbits on a nearly constant circuit and that the sun has a similarly constant energy output
-the correct mineral content
-appropriately-positioned gas giant planets to absorb most asteroid impacts (including planet killers)
-plate techtonics (this is critical for regenerating the green house gas, CO2, which plays a major role in temperature regulation)
-a near, and unusually large (compared to the planet it revolves around) moon, which critically helps to stabilize Earth's orbit about the sun
Ward and Brownles incidentally don't argue that *any* life is unlikely in the Universe, but that complex, sentient life may be quite uncommon.
What I find interesting is that people seem to assume that earth type life forms are the only possibilities.
What says there are not life forms that does not need f.ex oxygen? Or that they not are solid enough to live on heavy gravity planet like Jupiter? How about not needing water, or food for that matter?
It's a huge assumption that life based on what we have here defines all life forms.
Not that all have neccessarily made this assumption, but it sure is prevailing.
Never mind the assumption that someone with advanced technologies enough to reach us must be friendly!
When the next gen of Hubble-type telescopes are deployed, we may be able to pinpoint habitable planets with life. Just look for the tell-tale traces of oxygen and methane. Next trick: getting there.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Did you not read the recent disscusion about THE rules of relativity?
;)
Sorry to burst that bubble...
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
It MAY rain tomorrow.
You see, Ms. Nature might have decided that until we are a mature enough species that we wont figure out how to travel orders of magnitude faster then we do now. Without this possibility we can't take our immature squabbling world and use it to destroy other worlds.
this is a completely uneducated guess though.
Not gonna happen.
The third world countries don't have the money for it. And the developed countries just pour their money back into the bottomless pit called "Health Care".
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
a decent engine technology is developed so travel to and from Mars is faster. And once you can test your equipment in the local solar system, you can start sending out scout ships. We're basically stuck here until then, since current engines are so slow that it's horrendously expensive to make trips to Mars.
Cute. But if the Bible contains no errors, than there is no excuse at all for Jesus not returning in the apostle's lifetime.
Therefore, the Bible must contain errors, since the evidence of at least one of them (the failure of Jesus to return during the specified period) is blatantly obvious.
The only other possibility is that there is a distinction between physical death and spiritual death. Other passages in the Bible seem to suggest that this distinction is valid. Thus, the quoted passage might be interpreted to mean that some of those present would not "die" spiritually, though all those present might experience the failure and decay of their physical bodies.
It's also possible that "present" in that context meant not only those physically present, but all those throughout history who were exposed to the scriptures.
I know, I know: this interpretation doesn't work without a considerable amount of "poetic" license. I have no idea if this interpretation is even in keeping with the generally accepted scholarly standards of interpretation. But it does seem obvious that some Biblical passages were meant literally, and others figuratively, and still others appear to have an occult meaning that cannot be understood until the events they describe have already come to pass.
Deciding kind of meaning this particular passage has is, of course, an exercise for each individual reader. As is deciding whether the Bible, in whole or in part, is lying or telling the truth, come to think of it.
Anyway, an amusingly silly parent post.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The study doesn't take into account the moons of gas giants. It either Jupiter or Saturn were "in the goldilocks zone" (not too hot, not too cold!), then several of their moons (Europa, Calisto, etc) would be very Earth-like. Most of the studied systems have gas giants in close-in Earth-like orbits... Maybe most stars in our neighborhood have habitable planets.
Your words carry little weight as an Anonymous Coward. If you believe so strongly in this, why don't you post under your real name?
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
Not to sound like a kook here (I don't believe that UFOs are extraterrestial craft) but the reason that we (a) haven't been visited and (b) haven't yet picked up SETI signals may be that advanced civillisations "gone stealthy" in their communications (think fibre optics and cable), rather than blasting episodes of "I Love X'wirr" into space. (which they did thousands to millions of years ago - meaning that the signals passed us during the Late Jurassic, and can no longer be detected.) To them, signs of intelligent life might be something quite different - the "warp signature" that drew the Vulcans to Earth in the Star Trek chronology, for example. So we've been left alone as an evolutionary backwater - much as animals in a safari park might be unaware of the game warden, and assume they have the park all to themselves.
Read Manifold: Space by Baxter. There's some very good theory in there that basically states that "life will find a way" It's like a cancer, if there's any concievable way for it to flourish it will.
The other big idea is that in order for intelligent life to exist for more than an intergalactic blink of an eye it has to expand to other star systems, eventually it needs to expand at a rate faster then the speed of light or it dies, basically making the foot print of intelligent life look like a circle. The outer fringes are where life it, the center is where intelligent life can't exist for lack of natural resources.
Anyway, it's a good read with some interesting ideas.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
I know this is a tad of-topic but... Some astronauts say, and other psycologists theorize, that the human mind struggles to deal with the physical/psycological separation from earth. Keep in mind, so far all of our missions into space have left the earth in relatively clear view (at least for most of the mission). I think that most human minds are not yet capable of acctually leaving earth (completely) for extended periods of time. I think that our personalities (mental health/well being) need to progress before we can watch our earth shrink in the "rear view mirror". All I'm saying is we are not ready leave in more ways than simply a lack of places to go and modes of transportation.
BTW the person that made that earlier post about "The Scriptural Proof of Extraterrestrial Life" has got to be insane. That post was way too long to be a joke and way to crazy to be sane.
Slowtonejoe75
Most sigs are as lame as this one.
If we were good at (or even capable of) responsible contact/colonization, why the fuck haven't we demonstrated that ability already? It's not like we haven't had thousands of opportunities right here on Earth.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Life on Earth is very diverse, and we have only begun to understand it. Recently life was discovered in some thermal vents deep under the Earth, were it was thought impossible for anything to survive. About a year ago, a new type of insect was discovered in Central Park. Doesn't this just sort of prove that we humans have absolutely no authority over what is "habitable" on a galactic scale, which could prove to be infinitely more diverse? Isn't it at all possible that there are forms of life out there so different than what we know here, that it could fill our minds with awe, and freeze our souls with terror?
Lastly, I'd like to add that this is good news for future humans, if we ever decide to colonize other worlds.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
One in four of the planetary systems identified to date outside the Solar System are capable of harbouring other Earths, say astrophysicists, a much higher proportion than anyone expected.
Is it me or does anyone see the connection? Those of us who've played the fabled "Master of Orion" series(Civ in space) are well aware that on average 1 in every 4 planets are hospitable to indigenous life. (You can teraform planets to colonize them, but 1 in 4 are naturally sustaining)
So apparently the game designers knew about this research well before it was published(1994). Or the scientific community is "broadening" its scope to include data from computer games. I'm more inclined to believe the latter, as game designers usually don't have time to engage in bio-astronomy on the side.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I can't say in my 15 years of studying scripture that i've ever seen any proof that Jesus was suposed to come back durring the disciples lifetime. While there are hints as to when it will happen (revelations) and that Isreal would again be a nation and the Temple would be rebuilt (they have all the prerequisets of bizare animals, snails and other stuff now to rebuild it), then he is suposed to return.
come comment on the madness at http://slashdot.org/~phreak03/journal/
But you still have to account for that particular passage in some sort of rational way, don't you?
I mean, if Jesus said some of his audience would not die before he returned, then either he was lying, or there must be some plausible alternative interpretation (that is at least internally consistent with what is stated elsewhere in the text).
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
There is no environment like Venus on the sea floor. Not even close.
The surface of Venus is incapable of supporting life anything like what we have on Earth. There are two slightly possible locations for life on Venus: In the upper reaches of the atmosphere, and beneath the surface.
Hi,
I am an astrophysicist, and I like physics and astronomy a lot. I also think the extra terrastial research, whether it is for life or the planets that can support life or to travel to those systems, is very interesting and exciting. However, I am looking at the situation at earth and cannot see how we can justify to focus our efforts to reach other planets while we are screwing Earth itself.
Why are people planning to reach these planets etc? Is it easier to avoid the problems on earth, are these people living in crystal towers or do they just not care, or what? What am I missing here?
The USA is at the frontier of science but also arguably the most hated nation in the world. Is this situation inevitable? Isn't there a way to balance things?
ato
A red heifer without blemish is still needed to purify the holy of holies area. There is a one year-old one right now, but the minimum age for the sacrifice is four years. The last red heifer, during its third year, sprouted from white hairs on the tip of its tail making him imperfect. Google for the "four legged bomb" for more information.
You can tell someone on Slashdot has watched "Contact" when they mention Occam's Razor as if it's the most fundamental law of Physics.
It's not. It's a rule of thumb, at best.
It means that it's capable of hosting advanced lifeforms.
Muslims are BAD! Islam is BAD! All BAD things have been because of Muslims and Islam! Christians are GOOD! Christianity is GOOD! All GOOD things have been because of Christians and Christianity! The Crusades were a Muslim LIE! Rish fat Israelis and Westerners are the root of all GOOD! Muslims must be starved and beaten into submission -- most oilfield work is filthy, and no rich fat Israeli ir Westerner should have to do it.
This study is not saying that 1 in 4 stars may have habitable planets around them.
:)
It is saying that 1 in 4 of the stars around which we have already detected planets may have habitable planets around them.
We have only detected planets at all around roughly one percent of the stars we have searched, though. (That's because we can only detect enormous Jovian planets close in to the star.) For all we know, the other ninety-some percent of surveyed systems might have habitable planets.
So, don't go plugging 0.25 into the Drake equation for the fraction of stars around which there are habitable planets.
- A friendly neighborhood astrophysicist
from the maybe-counter-earth-exists dept.
Are you referring to that fictional world where branding irons and whips are generally considered an indispensable part of the dating process? Nasty Hemos.
The Muslims have themselves to blame for the Crusades.
Granted, the Christian response was a bit heavy handed.. But the Crusades started because a certain Muslim ruler decided to have a church destroyed.
Up until then, everyone mostly got along peacefully in the holy land.
Here's a lesson that future religions can learn from the mistakes of the past: Don't fsck with other people's temples if you're going to whine when they come down from Europe to put you to the sword for your sacrilege.
I mean, if Jesus said some of his audience would not die before he returned, then either he was lying, or there must be some plausible alternative interpretation.
A mistranslation. I was there and what he said was that some of the meek in the audience would not get laid before he returned. Which leaves me with a problem. Someday I'll finally lose my virginity and then the world will end.
First, 'may support life' != 'supports life!'.
Second, the *verse is fscking huge.
Third, if we're the only sentient species so far, it doesn't automatically mean there's some crochety man with an unkempt beard sitting on a throne of clouds somewhere.
(Whatever gods may exist help existance if we are the first, however.)
But...
Just because I CANT prove flying pink elephants (or aliens) don't exist does not mean that they DO infact exist.
The point being that humans search for extra-terrestrial intelligence is based on our own understanding of life which at this point is ONLY life from earth (or from a meteorite from Mars if you believe that).
Since we have no real evidence of what life is like elsewhere (if it exists at all) you really cannot make any authoritative statements of what IS really out there.
Of course the what you do look for has to be grounded in some basis or theory that might have some chance being proven. This keeps us all from wasting time and energy from spending alot of money and time trying to prove the rediculus. This is not saying that we should have closed minds! Every possibility (even the crazy ones) should be at least considered.
When we look at the statistics for earth like worlds and from those statistics then start postulating reasons why or why not we can or cannot find life people need to remember that we still have VERY little scientific concrete conclusive evidence to go on. Sure there is lots of INCONCLUSIVE evidence, from alleged alien abudctions to metorite fossils (possibly) and other things more or less credible, who knows maybe some of these or none of these might turn out to be fact.
People just need to step back and have perspective . Just because we THINK statistically there WILL be earth like worlds does not mean there WILL be earth like worlds or earth like worlds where we think they should be.
ramble off
There's a large difference between "capable of having planet with a stable orbit in the habitable zone" and "having an earthlike planet with a stable orbit in the habitable zone."
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of looking for extraterrestrial life and earthlike planets. (Who would have guessed?) That there are stable orbits in the habitable zone of many stars is not a surprise. It really says very little about the number of earthlike planets out there.
I'm not the biggest fan of splashy press releases for unsurprising results. (I think the "more than anyone expected" comment is well overstated.) But it's AAS meeting time, so we'll be seeing a few of those this week. The usual ones are:
These are the ones you will hear about because we astronomers tend to think that this is all the press would be interested in hearing about. Maybe we're right, maybe we're not. At any rate, AAS meetings are a good time to think about whether the way we sell science to the public is the best way. Any suggestions?
Hidden among these press conferences will be one surprising result that is wrong, one surprising result that is correct and interesting, and the correction of a surprising result released at the previous meeting. And there will be a lot of interesting research presented by people who don't schedule press conferences. It will, for the most part, be ignored by the press.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of looking for extraterrestrial life and earthlike planets. (Who would have guessed?) That there are stable orbits in the habitable zone of many stars is not a surprise. It really says very little about the number of earthlike planets out there.
I'm not the biggest fan of splashy press releases for unsurprising results. (I think the "more than anyone expected" comment is well overstated.) But it's AAS meeting time, so we'll be seeing a few of those this week. The usual ones are:
- the best evidence ever for existence of black holes.
- it looks like life could be common in the universe, but we still have no evidence of this.
- more planets have been found.
- the first time "blank" has been observed, where "blank" is something that has been announced as being observed for the "first time" at the previous 10 AAS meetings.
- a controversial mars "result" that will be argued about for years.
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look at the pretty pictures a half billion dollar space mission can give you.
These are the ones you will hear about because we astronomers tend to think that this is all the press would be interested in hearing about. Maybe we're right, maybe we're not. At any rate, AAS meetings are a good time to think about whether the way we sell science to the public is the best way. Any suggestions?Hidden among these press conferences will be one surprising result that is wrong, one surprising result that is correct and interesting, and the correction of a surprising result released at the previous meeting. And there will be a lot of interesting research presented by people who don't schedule press conferences. It will, for the most part, be ignored by the press.
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No - the Prime Directive never made any sense. There is no reason to believe that intelligent races were not "meant" to make contact with other races and provide knowlege and assistance.
And cultural differences are shallow and have been given far too much significance by the looney left (as opposed to the old-time "liberals", which I consider myself). Civilizations making contact with one another and "contaminating" one another is nothing new. The most successful civilizations have all assimilated the best from other cultures. It's only the insular mop-heads that want to stick their heads in the sand and retain old ways for the sake of retaining them.
And it's very arrogent to have a Prime Directive, anyway. You're essentially saying that anohter sentient race is too stupid to deal with your existance. That, IMO, is the ultimate insult.
a) there is intelligent life out there. Maybe not in this post, but out there, yes.
b) they know we're here, but they don't care. It's as if you discovered a bee hive in your backyard. Are you going to go over and bug them or just let them go about their business? Not unless they start heading towards your house..
c) intelligent life obviously live on planets, proably much like Earth.
I wonder if 300 years from now, the concept of having to constantly prove that life in outer space exists is as stupid as once believing the Earth was flat.
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Caught a great book once called "The Ambidextrous Universe" that had a chapter on alien life and the forms it would take. (Book itself was about symmetry and asymmetry in nature - very cool.) It made the argument that if we encounter non-plantlike alien life it will likely be recognizable and that the basic 'animal' forms on earth are likely universal. Argument went thusly:
If a creature is motile, then symmetry dictates basics. There is rarely any functional difference between left and right but there is a difference between forward and backward. So animals would likely have a front and a back, but would be symmetrical along a dorsal axis. (There are exceptions to this in nature, creatures with a spiral morphology like the conch, or creatures like the fiddler crab, but these are rare exceptions.) Since front is generally more emphasized than back, sensory organs are more likely to be collected near the front. Further, if the animal feeds (which seems likely) then it seems logical that sensory organs would be concentrated around the feeding orifice. Further, since minimal distance between sensory organs and the 'brain' (assuming aliens have brains) is more efficient for reacting faster to the environment, it seems likely that the mouth and forward facing sensory organs would be concentrated on a head-analog. (A face, basically.)
The argument wasn't claiming to be definitive, but rather that the recognizable forms of symmetry, faces set on the front of heads, heads at the front of bodies (and set high up to elevate the sensory organs to extend range) have a logic to them that would likely be repeated.
actually your statement is false. He said some of you will still be arround not all of you. Acording to the book of genesis no one will be allowed to kill kain till god saw fit to remove him from this world....soooo it is possible for Kain one of the first people ever born to still be alive, why is it hard to believe that one of the people that was there is still alive
Look at every historical example of first contact between two cultures, especially two cultures of unequal technological advancement. The historical legacy of unmitigated disaster would be an excellent reason for aliens to avoid us and for us to avoid aliens. It might even be a good reason for them to avoid each other.
Would we really want to repeat what happened when the Spanish colonized / conquered the Americas and almost completely wiped out the native Mexica. I would hope that for most super-civilizations, one or two instances of unintentional genocide would be enough to encourage them to stay home.
Look at us, if we made contact with another species we'd turn them into a thrid-world planet. Buy our products or DIE!!! Adopt our economic models or DIE!!!
Maybe different species are not really meant to get along, or maybe there is no evolutionary advantage early on of developing "get along with other species" traits. Either way, I do honestly fear that whatever unlucky civilization we encounter first - we're going to wipe out, whether we mean to or not.
Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
I propose a shuttle launch, whose mission is to destroy unstable planets in star systems which are to be colonised. We should equip them with 20 self-aware Exponential Thermosteller Devices or "Bombs", and prepare a path for colonisation.
Hey, at least it would in no way be boring, right?
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
...planets inhabit you!
We are intelligent?
And more importantly, there is no evidence any candidates are still alive. That's the problem with religious "thinking" - possibilities are considered probabilities...
A primary effect of binaries on each other is tidal stresses, responsible for tides on earth, and heating of Io, which circles Jupiter. The earth has been shown to be squeezed slightly by the moon's gravity. This has been shown through laser rangefinding measurements of orbiting satelites.
IMOH tidal forces on Earth by our binary partner is also responsible for our realatevely strong magnetic field. The magnetic field deflects the solar wind which might otherwise strip away atmosphere, though this hasn't happened with Venus.
So, although the axis tilt stuff isn't right (conservation of angular momentum), I do agree that we should fobably factor in larger moons, of the binary partner size...
Dr. McCoy said "...there is only one of each one of us in the universe"
\m/
You only need to play around with an orbital mechanics simulator like the one here a little bit to convince yourself that the long-term stability of an orbital system with more than 2 elements is a rather chaotic matter.
So I'm curious how long they deemed an orbit had to stay within what boundaries to deem it "stable." For example, for our own system, it appears that most of the planets are likely to remain close to their present orbits until the Sun goes red giant, but Pluto's orbit is difficult to predict past about 3 billion years or so, according to some simulations.
How fast are we capable of traveling in space right now? I mean maximum, using s slingshot effect, or whatever method to get there. Is it not possible to build a large piece of hardware, like the hubbel, with more sensors and an extremely good tracking/navigation system, and fire it off toward the closest "life possible" plant? Then in 1/2 the time it would take to actually get there, we could have decent images of the planetary system in question? I really have no idea, so I am asking.
4149642029
Well Duh!!
Well first of all, you could have a terrestrial planet with liquid water on the surface, but no oxygen in the atmosphere. That's what the earth's atmosphere was like before life evolved here. We don't know how probable it is for unicellular life to evolve on such a planet, but AFAIK, an O2-rich atmosphere is thermodynamically impossible unless you have life.
I also have a beef with the assumption that it has to be a terrestrial planet. Why can't it be a moon orbiting a gas giant? We now know that it's quite common for gas giants to orbit relatively close to their stars, much closer than the ones in our solar system do. So a moon of a gas giant could easily have liquid water on its surface.
Beef #3: who cares about liquid water on the surface? Life apparently evolved far below the surface on earth. Where I live (Southern California), there is very little liquid water on the surface, but we consider it "habitable." If "habitable" implies humans could go there and live, then ice on the surface, or liquid water below the surface, would seem fine to me.
And finally, who the hell cares? Most science fiction fans seem to have little conception of how fantastically difficult it would be for humans to travel to another solar system and colonize it. Kinetic energy scales like v squared, so the amount of energy required to travel 100 light-years in less than 10,000 years simply ridiculous. Before we reach that level of technology, I suspect that humans will already have remade their own bodies into something dramatically different, like brains-as-wallpaper, or giant computers, or intelligent colonies of bacteria. (Or, more likely, we'll have killed ourselves off first.) So the meaning of "habitable" is pretty much up in the air.
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We aren't looking for life, IMHO, so much as for places we could live.
Yes; a lot more. Please see here and here for more information.
The key point is that Terrestrial Planet Finder and similar projects aren't looking just for signs of life, but rather for other places that we (i.e. humans) can live.
Just for future reference, "planetary systems" and "planets" are different things.
Perhaps ants would die, but not all of them, and probably not all of them from the living room colony. If however, I saw the ants were capable of discourse, then I would give them an ultimatum first, and if they were rational and believed my claims about my vaccum cleaner, then they would leave and none would die.
What I'm saying is that I don't agree with the characterization of intentional transmissions as foolish at all, especially in the context of all the commercial television out there already.
Think about it, would you like to be judged on the basis of incidental radio and television broadcasts alone, or wouldn't you rather have Sagan, Drake, Dyson, et al. putting in a word in for your species' inherent worth every so often?
As with everything, you can relate this to the simpsons. We mess up the earth, so we move the whole damn thing to another planet.
This runs counter to the thesis of "Rare Earth," by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee. The subtitle was "Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe." As someone who grew up watching Star Trek (Classic) and other scifi, this saddened me, because the book really made is sound like Earth-like planets would be few and far between. So I hope the New Scientist story is right.
I'll probably get modded as flamebait for this one, but the question is QUITE valid:
...go figure...
Isn't it arrogant BIGOTRY to be spending tens of billions of dollars on the space program and on probes that will never reach anything outside our solar system but almost zero money is allocated funding research into communicating with dolphins and whales.
We eat the only other intelligent life we do know exists. Or put them in crappy movies.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Your restraint is admirable ... yes, there exists NO OTHER habitated planet in the entire cosmos besides earth. None nada nix nyet nothing. Everything is cold, hot and dead. Unliving. Never was never will be. Utter desolation, absolute hostility to all values associated with life, from one end of the cosmos to the other ... should such ends exist ... We the living are a historical freak. Singular. Deal with it.
Yeah, and you spew nonsense like an exploding kidney stone. FIRST fact of life ... life is corrosive, and earths oxygen mostly a byproduct ( not to say defense mechanism ) of its organisms.
You seem to be missing the point. An advanced alien race might consider the entire galaxy their living room. There would be no ultimatum to "leave the galaxy". We couldn't do it anyway even if we wanted. They'd simply squash us.
I think most humans would be even quicker to squash talking bugs than they are to stomp on the traditional stupid variety!
As for "intentional transmissions", I most certainly did not include all of the commercial radio and television signals already out there in that category. I was specifically referring to numerous high-power signals which have been deliberately beamed into space in order to attract extraterrestrial attention. That's a profoundly foolish thing to do. You have no idea what might be listening, or what its intentions might be. It's bad enough our planet leaks a low level of radio noise due to all of the commercial traffic.
Yet more H-1B's. They will work for 4 Zerkles an hour.
There was a great deal of contention prior to 1950, when the Church officially announced that it would tolerate its members believing in the Theory of Evolution. This ocurred when Pope Pius XII produced the papal encyclical entitled "Humani Generis". His statement said, essentially, that it was alright for Catholics to believe whatever scientific theory they wanted... then went on to stress that the Theory of Evolution was still unproven.
The above poster may be referring to the much more recent (1996) statement by Pope John Paul II entitled "Truth cannot contradict Truth". In this document, the pope not only accepted the ToE as being in line with Catholic beliefs, but he stated that it was "more than a hypothesis". This was the first time that a Pope officially supported the ToE, rather than merely tolerating it.
So it's more or less correct that the Church only officially got behind Evolution recently, though I don't know if it's accurate to say that they disputed the existence (and extinction) of the Dinosaurs.
The same applies to fossils. If fossils found far far back didn't belong to deceased animals, then that means (to religious people) that God put them there (the bones). But then that contradicts the watchmaker theory. Why would God create essentially fraudulent records?
It seems that the existence of fossils could be construed as incompatible with the Watchmaker theory anyway. Why would God, in the process of creating an intricately designed world, feel it necessary to create creatures (actually, entire ecosystems) that would ultimately be unable to survive?
You could respond that God is ineffable, but that same logic pretty much works for the folks who think God created fake fossils and buried them in the ground. The point is, once you allow for the existence of God, rational arguments are pretty much always vulnerable to the divine wild-card.
You could probably end up in outer space just by closing your eyes and clicking your heels together.
I wonder whether they took into account that with smaller stars, the habitable zone is so close to the star that any planet in it would be tidally locked, leading to the atmosphere etc. freezing out on the side that never sees its sun.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'm certain there must be plenty of habitable planets out there - regardless of being common or not, the sheer size of the galaxy/universe/etc is just so huge. I think the whole perspective people seem to have that they must be rare is just a need to feel special - that we are the centre of the universe, etc (similar to the old thinking that the sun rotated around the moon). My opinion is that we *aren't* special, and that our solar system is probably just like billions of other systems out there. If our system formed this way, and its not special, then surely plenty of other systems formed the same way, and had similar results... Just my 2c... smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
IANAP, but due to the Inverse Square Law, I think a high power directional radio transmission would travel a lot farther than those random TV and radio signals and thus reach a much greater number of potential alien home planets, not all of which may be benevolent. I think that was his point.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
No, we don't know that faster than light travel is impossible. What we are pretty sure of, is that travel at light speed is impossible. Check the lorenz transforms. v = c is undefined, that's all.
Have you considered that we may not meet the vulcans first, and first contact might possibly bring all out war ?
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
I vote that the war with iraq is delayed one day and the money put aside to designing a 500 AU mission probe and quite possibly going a long way to building the sucker. You need another few days of the war budget to launch the sucker.
A 500 AU misison probe is designed to use the Sun as gravitational lens and at 500 AU visible light should be focused. Do a google search to turn up real detail on this.
Then have a good long look at some the candidate systems.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
you know, I used to have a condo there, by\ut the neighbors sucked.
Hirk this Kirk that. Some guy getting drunk and misquotiing Melville.
I'd be yelling back "Its not a Klingon saying, halfwit."
I was glad I got out when the market peaked.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
they can be subdued with the kiss of a starship Captian. ;)
Imagine Kirks surprised when he found out those where the men
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Theolistic Evolution?
As A believer in God, I find it fasinating that he gave us inteligence to be able to find out how the universe was created, and how it works.
OTOH, I have to tolorate people who quote the bible literally. it says Six Days, so it must have been Six Days.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"one in four of the planetary systems identified to date outside the Solar System "
Even planets can't get girls of their own ethnicity now. What's the world (??) coming to?
How does this even begin to address Fermi's Paradox?
Fermis' Paradox states, basically, that our sun is a rather new kid on the block. In fact, given the age of the universe, there has been more than enough time for some other civilization to colonize the entire galaxy.
So Fermi's question was: Where are they all? The question appears to still stand.
So when are we going to be getting our Ark fleet ready? I think it's about time we got all our Hairdressers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, management consultents and public relations executives ready to "colonize" another one of these planets...
What's more, the Babel fish is a dead give-away isn't it? It proves that God exists, therefore he doesn't. QED.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Naturally, but the nonexistence of God wasn't actually what we were trying to prove. Unless you meant "QED" to represent "Quantum Electrodynamics", in which case I'm totally lost :
Anyway, paradoxes in logic do not map to paradoxes in reality. That's one of the ways in which logic is useful: it helps us identify instances where our reasoning doesn't reflect the truth. Since, if God does "exist" (which the argument assumes), then he does not "not exist". Therefore, there is no paradox in reality, only in the argument. Either our assumptions about God, or our assumptions about the Bablefish, or both, are incorrect.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.