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Earth-Sized Planets Confirmed -- But They're Dead
tizo writes "Robert Britt wrote an interesting article about the discovery of three Earth-sized planets confirmed after ten years of controversy. They orbit a pulsar, a neutron stars spinning very rapidly. Researchers pinned down the masses by watching how the planets affect pulses of energy coming from the star.
All other known planets around other stars are much bigger (like Jupiter) and were found using other techniques (Doppler effect of main star moving in a close circle because of influence of the planet or direct transit over line of sight)."
EVERYBODY knows that class M planets almost always
end up smoking husks because the inhabitants attempt
to discover the mass of the higgs boson particle and
waste themselves.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
extrasolar planets.
"Powers. I have them."
It always amuses me when discoveries like this get made. I've had arguments with people who claim Earth is unique, and those arguments have gone from "extrasolar planets can't exist" to "earth-sized planets can't exist" - and now, they'll likely go to "earth-sized planets in the habitable zone can't exist" (which is bullshit, because the habitable zone only applies to our particular ecosystem)...
Sigh... I imagine these same people will claim that it's all a big illusion when we discover an earth-like planet.
at least at some point in time. For example, our solar system has been around for only a fraction of the life of the Universe. Whole ecosystems and, sometimes, civilizations can come and go in a moment's time (from the Universe's point of view...if it had a point of view...well, you understand).
It is actually very unlikely that we would witness a civilization in a state similar to our own. They would most likely be millions or billions of years behind or ahead of us. Would we even be able to recognize one even a million years ahead of us? It seems life forms like to do things exponentially...
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Based on the share number of galaxies and stars within each galaxy, mathematics would dictate that there are close to infinte numbger of earth like planets.
Will we ever find a planet similar to our Earth with life similar to our on it? Maybe, but the chances are extremly slim based on the the enormous distances we are talking about.
Based on this I would also say the chances are extremly slim that we will ever make contact with other intelligent beeings in the Universe. Maybe we ought to consider the possibility that intergalactic spacetravel is not physically possible hence we will never meet "aliens" from other planets?
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
if there were an infinite amount of Earths revolving around an infinite amount of Stars, then there would be an infinite amount of lifeforms in an infinite amount of galaxies, each with an infinite amount of monkeys who write books.
I write code.
Actually, it depends on what you mean by "contact". If you mean two-way communication, I happen to agree. We'd have to get EXTREMLY lucky to be close enough in time and space to a sufficiently similar species to be able to hold an effective conversation.
However, we have a much better shot at hearing the echoes of long dead civiliations coming to us from other systems. Remember that each signal goes flying out in a sphere around the transmitter at the speed of light. Therefore, much of the statistical problems with time/space coincidence go away. We are currently being bathed in emissions from systems 4.5 light years to nearly 14 billion light-years away. That's a lot of history to be receiving at one time and there's a shot that some of those emissions will be coming from machines created by intelligent beings.
Of course, the idea of sitting in a radio observatory listening to the whispers of a race that's been dead longer than our planet has existed is a lot less exciting than coming out of hyperspace, engines audibly blazing in the vacuum as the crew realizes that "that's no moon." Still, it would be pretty exciting to me.
"Maybe we ought to consider the possibility that intergalactic space-travel is not physically possible hence we will never meet "aliens" from other planets?" Perhaps. But this is also possible: They aren't interested in space. The galaxy has some superpowers, who are for the moment at peace. With Earth in the middle of the DMZ. They are interested in space, but simply not in us. ("Look at those silly humans. Can't even get of their own planet")
Stan and gang get to Earth and Kai notes that the planet is about do shrink to the size of a pea because of attempts by scientists to discover the size of the Higgs boson.
You could've hired me.
My goodness, can you imagine what would happen if we found an Earth-sized planet that was alive? What would it eat?
It would be like the Transformers Movie all over again.
The ______ Agenda
There's little chance of life "as we know it" existing post-supernova, but if these science writers read much science fiction, they'd have the chance of thinking that other kinds of life could be there.
Examples:
Design for Use, not Construction!
They're just pining for the fjords! (http://www.graphicszone.net/monty_python/scripts/ Series_1/53.htm)
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
I was always kind of curious about what the Transformers Movie was about. Now there's no point in watching it. Thank you!
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
But yes, it is extraordinarily neat!
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Close....
:)
790 notes this first, not Kai.
But this particular plot gimmick has shown up in
other scifi prior to Lexx. I can't remember for
sure, but it might have been a piers anthony or
gear novel.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Thanks for modding me a Troll. There ACTUALLY was a study done on this and that is EXACTLY what was done by the monkies TO the computer.
THEREFORE, assuming that there will be will be other plants like earth AND there will be life on some of them by the numbers is not evidence that life must exist ont there somewhere.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Given the capacity of an infinite occurrance of infinite events, some monkeys could very well write Shakespeare. That in the particular case, the monkeys didn't perform up to expectations does not refute the general statement. The problem is just that we don't have an infinite time to wait.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
"Maybe we ought to consider the possibility that intergalactic spacetravel is not physically possible hence we will never meet "aliens" from other planets?"
Less than one hundred years ago, we didn't think atom bombs were possibly, much less even conceive of them. Less than thirty years ago, there was no idea of what we would be capable in 2003. I wouldn't dismiss the idea of FTL travel just because I can't conceive it yet. Nature seems to always leave some way to do something that we didn't think possible at first. Just wait and be patient (or spend money/effort in research).
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
1. We don't have the ability to detect signals billions of light years away. We don't even have the capablity to detect non-intentionally directed signals more than One LY away.(ie. we can't detect common broadcast signals like radio and tv, only signals deliberately directed at earth).
2. We will never be able to detect signals beyond a few hunderd light years (unless the transmitter is puting gigawatts of radio energy directed at Earth).
Sorry, but the chance of detecting a signal for a civilation dead for eons is zero.
..... I'll get the tricorders!
Thank you, I'm here all week.
We didn't have theoretical reasons on the impossibility of certain things like atomic bombs or computers in every home or whatever else, only technical doubts whether it would have been feasible (or pratical enought) or not.
To say that strictly speaking FTL travel is possible would mean to throw away most things we consider true about life, the universe and everything. I'm not saying that this is impossible, only that it is not easy, not that likely in the next couple of centuries of so and extremely unpleasant for our scientists :)
Of course intergalactic space travel may still be possibile, be it through time-backward FDL travel, teleport, countless eons travel by a self-sufficient ship or whatever else the extreme and still unclear border of our current theory will allow.
You're right. Of course, at the time I was probably staring at Xev and not paying attention to dialog.
You could've hired me.
"Given the capacity of an infinite occurance of infinite events, some monkeys could very well write Shakespear."
Correct, some monkeys could write shakespear. In fact it is true that in the span of the next 24 hours a monkey could write shakespear. The operative work is COULD, not would. It is a fallicy to believe that given an infinite amount of time something will happen.
Consider this, fractals are infinitly deep. That is, you can continue to zoom into fractals infinetely and you will always have more and moree detail to look at. Thus there are an infinite number of pictures present within a fractal. Does this mean that everyfractal HAS to have a picture of the mona lisa? Of course not. Also by the reasoning of "given infinite time anything will happen" ever fractal is exactly the same. That is, the each contain every fractal.
The problem lies in the fact that there are different types of infinities. Infinite time is a COUNTABLE infinity, while the number of things that a monkey could do in an infinite time is a much larget infinity. Thus, in an infinite amount of time, a monkey could not possible do everything that he COULD do. Thus, he is not garunteed to do anything.
Azav raises a great point, although rather crudely. I myself am still amazed that so many people that consider themselves intellegent can belive the "given and infinte time" argument. I guess that the success of this argument is soely based on the fact that people have a hard time comprehending large numbers (else, the lottery would not exist). Sadly this is the case, and as such this example of poor reasoning will continue to prevail.
Also compounding the problem is the almost religious belife people have that there MUST be life out there. These same people that can berate the religious for beliving in some powerfull being that is "just out there" themselves belive that there is life somewhere "just out there". But i suppose that hypocrisy is only human....sigh
well i didn't really mean for this post to be so cinical, sorrry about that. But the fact remains that the "infinite time" argument is not a very good one.
BINGO. That's my point exactly. Great illustration.
Next time, I'll work on my delivery.
Thanks for the follow up, Guess I'm still a troll and an offtopic one at that.
Oh well.
In any case, I'm saving your post. Welcome to my friends list.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
does every1 hope for life elsewhere?
I'm not sure I do, without it sounds just as exciting.
I'm sure we'll find something but it'll redefine what `life` is probably anyway.
A blog I run for the wealth
What is this "close to infinite" business anyway ...
Hmm, so you're saying that in infinite time, one can only do a finite number of things (as you say, if a monkey can do an infinite number of things, but could not do all of those things in infinite time, this must mean the monkey could only do a finite number of the infinite things)?
I don't see how this can be correct - infinite is infinite, there is no "large infinity" or "small infinity", if something has no end, it is infinite, if something is infinite it has no end.
If time has no end, there is no end to the number of things a monkey can do out of the endless set of possible things a monkey can do.
Thus - in infinite time, a monkey can do all of the infinite things it can do, IF IT WISHES TO DO SO.
Just because a monkey CAN do all the things it could possibly do, doesn't mean is WILL do all those things, it might spend infinity sitting on it's ass. So just because in infinite time a monkey CAN write shakespeare, doesn't mean it WILL.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
i am afraid that you are incorrect. I don't mean to be mean, but you are. Let me try to adress your post some....
I think this will have to be long, so please try to stick with it =)
"I don't see how this can be correct - infinite is infinite, there is no "large infinity" or "small infinity", if something has no end, it is infinite, if something is infinite it has no end."
There most centainly are larger and smaller infinities, although you must take some math to konw this. To demonstrate this, lets look at a few examples...
1) Consider all of the numbers that are possible between 0 and 1. Infinite right? Now, consider all of the possible integers. Also infinite. OK, now consider all of the possible numbers. That includes all of teh possible intigers (which are infinite), as well as all of the numbers in between the integers (also infinite). That means that all of the posssible numbers represent and infinity of infinities. Or that we have infinity raised to the infinity. This is larger than just plain old infinity.
2)Ok, so in case the last example was too much like the old infinity +1 argument for you, lets look at a more rigorous treatment. Lets supose that you have a funtion f(x)=(x^2)/(x). Right? Now lets see what happens to this function as x goes to infinity. Well, we can treat this just like a normal function, so we see that (x^2)/x is hte same thing as x. So we now have f(x)=x as x goes to infinity. Well, it should be obvious that as x goes to infinity, x becomes infinity. OK, so what is the point? The point is that one infninity [(x^2) as x goes to infinity], devided by another infinity(x as x goes to infinity) was equal to infinity. This could only happen in X^2 was infinitly larger than x. That is one infinity was larger than another.
Well, hopefully that helps some with the question of larger infinities. If not, read up in the beggining of any calculus book, it kinda covers the same idea, in depth.
Now for the next point.
"If time has no end, there is no end to the number of things a monkey can do out of the endless set of possible things a monkey can do.
Thus - in infinite time, a monkey can do all of the infinite things it can do, IF IT WISHES TO DO SO.
Just because a monkey CAN do all the things it could possibly do, doesn't mean is WILL do all those things, it might spend infinity sitting on it's ass. So just because in infinite time a monkey CAN write shakespeare, doesn't mean it WILL."
WEll, lets return again to the point of the number of integers and teh number of numbers between integers, shall we?
Ok, now lets consider two monkey's, monkey A and monkey B. Monkey A will spend an enternity counting to infinity by 1's. Monkey B will spend the same eternity counting to infinity by all possible numbers. Now it will take monkey B and infinitly long amount of time to cover just the possible numbers from 0 to 1! Right? So if both monkeys start counting at teh same time and at the same rate, then there are cenrtain thing that CAN NEVER happen. Namely, monkey B will never count as high as monkey A. Never, it cannot happen. DO you see, that? THere is just one simple example.
HEre is another. Lets cosider another. WE have a monkey. This monkey will live forever. This monkey will behave randomly, preforming random acts for eternity. Now, lets see if it is possible for the monkey to do anything. First, there is an infinite amount of things that the monkey can do, right? So durring an infinite amount of time, the monkey can do them all. Perhaps. But we will asssume that. But then lets consider order of actions. That is the monkey can either fly to mars first and them drink a glass of water, or the monkey can drink a glass of water and then fly to mars. There is an infinte set of these ordered actions. Next there is a set of actions that conatain sets of 3 ordered actions, and so on, untile there is a set of infinite ordered actions. SO we see that there many many infiniteie
AFAIK neutron stars form from a supernova and they are the second most dense objects after the black holes. How can any planets survive the supernova blast of the original star?
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
the computer is online
i am not at it
what a waste of ressources
your logic is seriously flawed, sorry. and your choice of examples is... hmmm... interesting.
the computer is online
i am not at it
what a waste of ressources
Could take a little while to get there...
Distance from Sun: 2630 Light Years
i am afraid that you are incorrect. I don't mean to be mean, but you are. Let me try to adress your post some....
You're trolling, aren't you? You're just hoping against hope that some idiot (like me) with more time than sense will read your article and launch a blistering reply refuting all the astoundingly wrong things you said. And this will make you feel -- what? Loved? Real? Like somebody who matters?
Well, I'm not going to do that. But you're wrong. You're astoundingly long-winded about it, and you have a knack for saying unreasonable things in reasonable language (are you an evangelical christian or something?), but at the end of the day, your post was less accurate than a Gulf war media briefing.
(Except about there being infinities of different sizes of course)
Well, while I'm here, I should also say that a lot of you have missed the point about the monkey illustration, which is this: it's not about monkeys. Or, indeed Shakespeare. Or even typewriters.
Not at all. The number of things a monkey can do (at least, with respect to Shakespeare replication) is not only countable but finite. The product of a finite set and a countably infinite set is still countable. In particular, assuming totally random key banging at a fixed rate, it straightforward to calculate the probably of Othello being emitted by the Monkey Bard in any particular span of time. No - that probability will never reach 1, but then it isn't zero for very long (relatively speaking) either.
Also, note that the product of two (indeed, N!) countably infinite sets is still countable: see Cantor or the nice little discussion here
"You're trolling, aren't you?"
Well i certainly am not trolling, and i am really sorry if the post came across that way.
"Well, I'm not going to do that. But you're wrong."
Am I? I don't mind being told that i am wrong, but i would appreciate an explination. Really. I don't mind considering other peolpe's arguments (how else would we learn?), but in order to learn, you must give me something to understand, not just a "you are wrong." I am supprised that you take issue with my conclusions. You are willing to accept that there are inifinities of differing sizes, but you are unwilling to accept the natural conclusion stemming from those results?
"You're astoundingly long-winded about it, and you have a knack for saying unreasonable things in reasonable language (are you an evangelical christian or something?), but at the end of the day, your post was less accurate than a Gulf war media briefing."
What does beinng an evangelical christian have to do with this discussion? I fail to see the relevance. Anyways, i would love to hear what you consider to be unreasonable in my post.
"Well, while I'm here, I should also say that a lot of you have missed the point about the monkey illustration, which is this: it's not about monkeys. Or, indeed Shakespeare. Or even typewriters."
Well, yes and no. The post has gotten off topic from article somewhat, but teh monkeys on a typwritter is just an illustration. An analogy if you will. It most certainly applies. It adresses the argument that "given an infinite amount of time, X must happen." WHich is a fallicy. Truly. There is not once reason why this must be true. Now of course, if you are talking about the same order of magnitudes of infinities, then teh probability of X happening approaches one. However, most of the stuff considered in the origin of life is not in the same infinity as that of countable time. SO this simplified situation does not even apply.
But i digress, the main point is that nothing is GARUNTEED to happen. To assume that ANYTHING has to happen, or MUST happen ever is a bad assumption. And whne you start trying to base your argument on infinities and such, it is even worse.
But like i said earlier, i would love to hear your thoughts on this. Just stating that someone is wrong does nothing to help anyone. Yeah, so i look forward to your reply =)
All this talking about "GARUNTEED" makes me wonder if "UNGARANTEED" isn't what you really want to say.
=]
Actually you wouldn't have to break the laws of physics to travel faster than light. You just need to find ways around them. Generating a 'hole' in spacetime might allow you to move quickly from one area to the next. My personal favorite though is 'bending' space by creating huge gravity well do that the two points you want to travel between are no longer far away. In both instances you travel a distance faster than light could, but you never moved faster than the speed of light.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Thank you. Yeah, you had a great point. I think that you got trolled because people couldn't see past you delivery :P. Oh well. ALso i think that some people are threatened by your challenge to the argument that they have just kinda blindly accepted forever. But people are kinda that way. But it has turned into an interesting discussion nonetheless =)
Regardless, it is always refreshing to see someone that actually thinks about what is being told to them, and can figure out when it is rubbish.
BTW, i added you to my friends list too. Laters(
Let's see, if memory serves me right... the last time a supernova happened near us.... Hmmm, OH YEAH, it caused our solar system to coalesce from the cloud of gas left over from the one before that.
Sorry, Tired. Becoming Sarcastic. Can't stop self. Help...
they take a huge screen and pass it in front of their star, doing so in a pattern that we can identify as "intelligent" (are we smart enough to recognize it?)
Yeah, I know it's not likely. Yeah, I know how big the screen would have to be. So what. If ya ain't got nothing better to do, why not build something.
Think of it as a Chinese construction project where they manage to redirect a river basin by giving a few million people shovels and telling them to start digging.
It may not be efficient. It may not be pretty. It just happens to work.
"Based on the share number of galaxies and stars within each galaxy, mathematics would dictate that there are close to infinte numbger of earth like planets."
Ummm... no it wouldn't. If you multiply two very large numbers together, no matter how big they are, infinity is still much, much bigger.
Yeah, so i look forward to your reply =)
Well, lucky you, because I love to hear myself talk. What threw me was that you wrote with conviction, and there was enough stuff there that was correct that I couldn't believe you didn't really know the whole thing. So here goes, and this is just off the top of my head on a very hot Amsterdam afternoon, so there's probably mistakes.
1) Consider all of the numbers that are possible between 0 and 1. Infinite right? Now, consider all of the possible integers. Also infinite. OK, now consider all of the possible numbers. That includes all of teh possible intigers (which are infinite), as well as all of the numbers in between the integers (also infinite). That means that all of the posssible numbers represent and infinity of infinities. Or that we have infinity raised to the infinity. This is larger than just plain old infinity.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here, but let me rephrase the example a bit. Consider the number of even positive integers -- infinitely many, right? Now the total number of positive integers, which is also infinite, and which contains all the even integers. However, the two infinities are identical, which we can prove by providing a one to one mapping of each positive integer to an even integer; e.g
f(x) = 2x
However, it is true that there the infinity of real numbers between 0 and 1 is larger, which was first proved by Cantor I think, using his famous diagonal. Yet this is the same infinity as, for example, the number of points on a Cartesian plane.
2)Ok, so in case the last example was too much like the old infinity +1 argument for you, lets look at a more rigorous treatment. Lets supose that you have a funtion f(x)=(x^2)/(x). Right? Now lets see what happens to this function as x goes to infinity. Well, we can treat this just like a normal function, so we see that (x^2)/x is hte same thing as x. So we now have f(x)=x as x goes to infinity. Well, it should be obvious that as x goes to infinity, x becomes infinity. OK, so what is the point? The point is that one infninity [(x^2) as x goes to infinity], devided by another infinity(x as x goes to infinity) was equal to infinity. This could only happen in X^2 was infinitly larger than x. That is one infinity was larger than another.
This is not true, and in fact the idea of dividing one infinity by another doesn't really make sense as you've described it here. In fact, the limit as x goes to infinity of f(x) = x is exactly the same as the limit as x goes to infinity of f(x) = x^2.
To get a large infinity, you must use it as an exponent. Call the number of integers aleph-null. Then aleph-one = 2^(aleph-null), which is the number of elements in the set of all subsets of integers, is larger, because you cannot find a one to one mapping between the two entities. However, it's not known (as far as I know), whether the number of real numbers is the same as aleph-one.
Well, yes and no. The post has gotten off topic from article somewhat, but teh monkeys on a typwritter is just an illustration. An analogy if you will. It most certainly applies. It adresses the argument that "given an infinite amount of time, X must happen."
Not really. What it says is that given an infinite series of random numbers chosen from a finite set, every possible finite sequence must be a subset. Why? Because the probability of it not being a subset goes to zero as the length of the sequence goes to infinity.
Take coin tossing. For any finite number of coin tosses, there is a non-zero probability that all of them are heads, so you could argue that the sequence is not guaranteed. But as the number of tosses goes to infinity, the probability of an infinite number of heads goes to zero.
This applies to the monkeys because there is a finite chance that a random sequence of letters and punctuation will correspond to the complete works of Shakespeare. It's very low, but it's there. For any sequence of length N, you can calculate the probability p that it contains the Shakespeare sequence, and as N -> infinity, p -> 1.
How can you ever get "close" to infinite?
It's all a big illusion! These are the Earth-sized cores to gas giants! Earth-sized planets can't exist!
That is what I was thinking. Those planets are quite close to the star. They may have been Neptune-like planets that had their gas shell blown away when the star Nova'd, leaving the smaller metalic core in place.
Table-ized A.I.
not close to infinity, but it would be infinate. Newest research in quantum physics (discovery magazine, I think april of 2003)indicate that all possible realities can and do exist in an infinatily large universe, including the idea that there is and alternate "you"s somewhere in the galaxy. The problem is that with such a large universe, we could never see any of our "clones". It took our voyager probes about two decades to get out of the solar system and into deep space. It will take hundreds of lifetimes for then to reach the nearest galaxy. Humans may no longer exist by time the probes reach anything of interest. Human reality is said to be confined to our local galaxy because anything beyond that is so large and involves so much "time" that our conception of space/time/reality begins to break down.
In in infinate universe exists an infinate # of galaxies, there and infinate # of realities, therefore Anything/Everything can and does happen.
Now have fun and apply this to the existance of God. Maybe God does or doesn't exist, maybe God is you "clone" somewhere, maybe Neo is God...
Please refute this
> What would it eat?
That's easy. Mars bars.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What bugs me is this common assumption that interstellar and intergalactic spaceflight necessarily implies faster-than-light spaceflight. It may be a long, boring trip, but the technology already exists to get somewhere eventually, and within a century we may be able to go very close to the speed of light (with Bussard Ramjets or something similar).
All it takes is nukes and nerves.