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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!"
"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.
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!
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?
Up to this point in the history of our world, certain things are required for all life as WE know it. If we're searching for life on other planets, wouldn't that be a good place to start?Wait...you were told that if we're the only intelligent life form in the universe (which isn't exactly easy to verify), there _must_ be some sort of "god"? Seems like a non sequitur at best to me.
:) ? Seriously though, you'd think a science professor would know a thing or two about Occam's razor...
Was this course offered by the department of theology by any chance
But we have found life thriving in places like volcanic ash spewing from the sea floor...we never expected to find it there... What you are searching for always ends up being in the unexpected places.
Right. But for now, the only evidence of life we have is here on earth.
Nobody is saying "There can't be other kinds of life"... but to speculate on the odds of it is meaningless as we haven't found any yet.
They should've populated every habitable planet in the universe.
One thing that I've never understood in scifi is that the aliens are always quite a bit like us. They are explorers, and they are interested in conquest, philosophy, etc. One thing we have to remember is that life on other planets is likely to be vastly, vastly different from life on Earth. On earth, we share a great deal of genes with our most distant cousins. Alien life will be completely different.
There will of course, be some parallel evolution on other planets. For example, fish on other worlds will always be streamlined and usually have the same kinds of fins as earth fish. Most large animal on other planets will have four legs. If technical civilizations evolved from these four legged creatures, they would probably be bipedal. Anyway, intelligent alien life probably won't share the same drive to explore or even advance, that we do. Many intelligent aliens will be perfectly content to live a primitive lifestyle, most likely. Many may even eliminate themselves with powerful weapons.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
By the time the complete history of the human race human race can be written there won't be anyone interested enough in us to write it.
The history of the human race already has been started, written by the only creatures in the multiverse likely to find us interesting, rather than fascinating (or appalling?)
Information is not Knowledge