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Are We Alone in the Universe?
cynic10508 writes "CNN is running a story about how ours might be a unique solar system. Of the 100+ systems currently known to contain planets, all contain seemingly only gas giants. However, this may be a case of current technology and techniques being unable to detect planets similar to Earth." There are also
BBC and Space.com stories.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
we develop ways to detect extrasolar smaller planets systematically...
Why is this even being posted here?
How frigging arrogant would we have to be to honestly believe that in the ENTIRE universe, we are COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY UNIQUE?
Come on, people... Seriously.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
I bought 120 lottery tickets and didn't find a winner. Must not be possible to win the lottery then, right?
for every one system we know of, there are one billion that we don't. It's a little premature to say we're unique when we have such little data to work with.
"My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists"
It's "news" for dummies.
With current technologies (and the amount of time we've been looking) we can only detect very large planets that are quite close their parent star...
SURPRISE!!!! We've only found systems with large planets close to the parent star.
Big news.
Our situation with regard to the physical parameters of our corner of the universe seems to be average:
Average sun
Average location in the galaxy (OK, maybe a little out in the backwater, but we have traversed more dense regions of the spirals of our galaxy in the last x billion years).
Average matter content (gases, etc...)
What might be the case could very simply be that space is awfully big, and we have only scanned a tiny portion of it in a tiny portion of the ways possible to scan it.
I mean come on, if the observable universe is TINY, and we've only examined a TINY portion of that, isn't it a bit too early to say "That's it, we're all alone" ?
After all, why have such a huge place all for the likes of us? What a waste...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
all contain seemingly only gas giants
Maybe that's because our current science is only good enough to detect incredibly massive (*cough cough gas giants cough*) planets? Gee, thanks CNN, great job writing another logically inadequate article for the igrnorant masses to buy right into.
We know that no other planet in our solar system has intelligent life (at least that we can see), and it appears that we are an anomaly among planetary systems, just as our planet is anomaly in our own solar system (70% water, atmosphere, just the right distance from the sun for life, temperature, etc.
Whatever the odds that life exist elsewhere, we should remember that we have a special planet here, and we should take care of it. We have no other feasible options in the near future.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Seems they are formulating the wrong question.
Even if we are the only earth-like body in the universe (a laughable assumption), there may be life on those gas giants.
On the other hand, considering the vastness of space and the difficulty traversing it, we may be effectively alone in a universe teeming with life.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
but we would be able to detect jupiter..
which according to this article would lead us to believe that this is a gas-giant system.
so we would be quite overlooked by other "aliens" out there looking at the same things.
just a thought..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Hey, it is even hard to find intelligent life on this planet.
Fight Spammers!
...Earth isn't hurtling through space at high speed relative to nearby objects, and certainly don't have a sense that it's orbiting the sun. Thankfully science is informed by more than intuition.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
You missed the point of the article. We can detect jupiter sized planets, the problem is, every one we've seen has been way closer to the star than jupiter is to our sun, we haven't found a single solar system like our own. Aliens looking towards our gas giants would see something different than all the rest of the nearby systems.
There are 200 billion suns in this Galaxy and 125 billion galaxies. The process in which solar systems are formed is caused by forces of physics and the laws of chemistry which are the same through the universe. Just because a terrestial planet has not been seen by human eyes or touched by human feet does not mean it does not exist. In the same way that Europeans in the middle ages could deduce that the earth is round from seeing ships sink in the horizon, we can deduce that planets like Earth or Mars are plentiful throughout the Galaxy. Our geocentricity misleads us to use phrases like "Known Universe" in the same way that Eurpoean history misleads us to call America the "New World" and to say that Columbus "Discovered" America.
Of the extrasolar star systems that we are able to analyze using current methodologies , we have only been able to identify the solar systems that contain gas giants. The only method we have is to take a photograph, wait a while, then photograph the star again, and hope that we can see some variation in the brightness that indicates a large rotating object. That's why the first planet discoveries were of binary arrangements, with gas giants in close orbits around their parent stars, since they had fast orbits, we could (more) easily compare over shorter time. So, given that all the recent discoveries are of inhospitable gas giant system, I can understand why some uneducated reporters might get discouraged.
One writeup on Yahoo made a good point... we have only had the technology to observe at this level of detail for about a decade, while the only directly observable gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) have orbits of 12 and 26 earth years, respectively. So, in the next few years, expect a lot more "gas giant" discoveries, assuming that the orbits of gas giants in "life-friendly" systems are relatively equivalent to ours.
Then, we'll have to wait until we have telescopes with better resolution and/or more megapixels, so we can resolve better detail of smaller earth-sized objects...
This article is bogus. About 95% of the planets have been detected so far by causing subtle doppler-motion shifts in their parent stars. The lower threshhold of measuring this doppler shift from earth observatories can only measure the really massive and/or fast (close-in) planets. Several planned space-based observatories will improve on this. They will either have more sensitive doppler or use alternative methods such eclipsing transits (Kepler probe) , or direct observation of planets.
"Are We Alone in the Universe?"
With an estimated world population of 6 Billion.
And a projected population of 9 Billion in 2050.
We would be the generation worried about being "alone".
I got my information here:
http://www.prb.org/datafind/datafinder.htm
Cheers,
--The Dude
It's about significance.
The odds of drawing a Royal Straight Flush in poker is one in 2,598,960.
But one in 2,598,960 also happens to be the odds of drawing any configuration of five cards. It is just that the Royal Straight Flush has more significance in the game, from the rules we created.
If we consider our existence to be significant, then we may believe ourselves and the world around us "designed" especially for us to exist.
Sentient creatures evolved on another world, breathing a cyanide atmosphere of 40 bars pressure, would probably at some point early in their evolution consider the rules "made up" especially for them, not themselves an evolutionary product of their environment.
The universe draws from a big stack of cards, and, at least once, life has come up. This, however, doesn't mean that the lucky combination is associated with a high score. It's just important to us, who happens to be that hand of cards.
The analogy the book is apt: if the volume of the entire universe is represented by the earth, the observable universe is the size of a single grain of sand.
That means we will NEVER, EVER, EVER see light from the extreme end of the universe: right this moment, a photon leaving the end of the universe would take more than 70,000,000,000 years to arrive on Earth. That light could be a giant laser beam from a big ol' alien rave, but it's useless to speculate, so just forget that right now.
Our "grain of sand" may be desolate, but for all we know the next grain over may be full of Earth-type planets just by random chance, but remember, our grain of sand includes ALL the light that will EVER reach earth. They're not in it, they can't signal us, period.
Even worse, keep in mind that the while we're moving around in space, space is expanding. If we could freeze in space two points A and B, the distance from A to B will increase with time, and the rate of increase is increasing. If this rate of expansion ever passes the speed of light (which it will soon), A can NEVER talk to B because the points are too far apart to communicate, forever.
Statistical sample = infinitesimal
Extrapolation = huge
CNN = slow science news day, apparently.
AFAIK (IANAAA) our current detection methods are pretty much one of two methods:
1) observing wobble in a sun caused by orbitting planets
2) slight occlusion of the sun if the planet passes in front of it.
Both of these methods are ONLY any good for detecting MASSIVE (!!) bodies close to their primary. Further, both very rapidly become useless if these very particular beasts are not present. Plus, we've examined such a vanishingly small proportion of even the local stellar neighborhood, on any rounded scale we've seen almost precisely 0%. Nice sample size.
Ergo, this would really only be somewhat significant if we found that every star we've analyzed has such a system, this would make it depressingly likely that this is a COMMON configuration. But the fact that a statistically small sample of the measured stars have these giants in close orbits conversely suggests that, as predicted, we are *probably* only looking at a tiny segment of a 'solar system bell curve'.
Conversely, as already pointed out here, the fact that we have a humdrum Sun, humdrum element signature, humdrum stellar neighborhood (a little on the sparse side right now), suggest that our system is more likely to be a humdrum, average system.
-Styopa
Why on earth does this "have to be said"?
What, exactly, is the imperative here? What valuable, vital insight into this discussion about finding alien life have you contributed by bringing up Bin Laden?
What next? "We may be close to finding an AIDS vaccine, but please keep in mind that we haven't found Bin Laden yet, so don't get your hopes up!"
Thanks for putting everything into perspective, Captain Insight. Now, please, explain what exactly that perspective is.
Thanks.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Of course not. They've already examined our solar system, and found that the only planet here, Jupiter, would be inhospitable to any sort of life, so they didn't bother.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.