Shortlist of Possible ET Addresses

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo News is reporting that Astronomer Margaret Turnbull of the Carnegie Institution has released a 'top 10' list of potential inhabitable star systems. NASA is planning on using this top 10 list as the targets for their Terrestrial Planet Finder a 'system of two orbiting observatories scheduled for launch by 2020.'"

Comments

Keeping it secret

[Monkeys!!!]

"...private philanthropists who pay for the bulk of their work may find out first when and if extraterrestrial life is discovered." I think that in the event of finding E.T life, SETI just might, you know, tell some other people as well.

Re:Keeping it secret

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that in the event of finding E.T life, SETI just might, you know, tell some other people as well.

But only after the financers have placed their bets on the stock market.

And if the transmission contains suitable material filed a few patents. (Or does LGM tech constitute prior art?)

Re:Keeping it secret

[Monkeys!!!]

"But only after the financers have placed their bets on the stock market.

And if the transmission contains suitable material filed a few patents. (Or does LGM tech constitute prior art?)"

I would like to think that the contract the private investors sign to be involved states that all information gained from transmissions are public domain. Then again the project might be desperate enough for money that they would allow the investors to keep control of what they recieve.

Re:Keeping it secret

[UseTheSource]

But only after the financers have placed their bets on the stock market.

Wouldn't that be insider trading?

But, the most important thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's their phone numbers? ;)

Re:But, the most important thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno. But I'm sure that information can be purchased from an ET for a few thousand Reese's Pieces.

Re:But, the most important thing is...

[CarpetShark]

Yeah, you're not the only one who's given up on Earth women ;)

Re:But, the most important thing is...

[Poltras]

More important is the area code, then you just pick up a random number and play et phone pranks!

Re:But, the most important thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

all I wanna know is:
ASL?

Re:But, the most important thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit calling my phone please- yes it is me, Vicki... : )Quit bothering me at my coffeehouse too....

Re:But, the most important thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

867-5309

of particular concern is who is notified first

[wisebabo]

While the chances of hearing from alien worlds is depressing small ("Rare Earth"), still the thought that a few private individuals will know first should give us pause. If there is more information in the detected signal than "hello there", who knows what could be learned? Markets may move in a big way (here's how antigravity works, immortality, existence of god, a big black hole is headed your way, etc.).

Then again if that's the only way we're gonna get these projects funded, perhaps these philanthropists should be rewarded for their risk taking.

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[Monkeys!!!]

I agree with you concerns about industries hording any gained knowledge. It would be interesting to see the contracts all the contributors signed when they went into the project. There is proberly a clause about all information gained being public domain.

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[88NoSoup4U88]

If there is more information in the detected signal than "hello there", who knows what could be learned?

We all know that should be 'Hello world' ;)

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[Toby The Economist]

> While the chances of hearing from alien worlds is depressing small ("Rare Earth"),
> still the thought that a few private individuals will know first should give us
> pause.

It seems to me this is a venture like any other. You put your money where your mouth is, you take a risk, and if it pays off, you get a reward. Smart investors look for low risk, high reward; this particular investment I think is high risk, high reward. Fair's fair and good luck to them!

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[Anonymous Coward]

"We all know that should be 'Hello world' ;)"

Only if the first thing we hear is from some alien kid trying to see if he has his syntax correct in his personal extraterresterial planet finder :)

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[AndroidCat]

Of course, those few individuals might be the first taken over by the Blight, or addicted to Aldebaran Hip-Hop music. (And you need at least three legs to dance to it...)

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[Anonymous Coward]

I also believe there is a book that is the complete opposite of Rare Earth, but I don't remember what it is called. That brings the net value to 0. :)

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[Errandboy of Doom]

a big black hole is headed your way

Best... crank first contact... ever!

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[instarx]

If there is more information in the detected signal than "hello there", who knows what could be learned? Markets may move in a big way (here's how antigravity works, immortality, existence of god, a big black hole is headed your way, etc.).

I think you are underestimating the effect that just the knowledge that there are other intelligences out there would have. The "Hello there" message would be quite enough to roil stock markets, cause riots, etc. Tens of people have been killed in riots over cartoons lately, what do you think would happen if three of the world's major religions had their basic beliefs challenged?

Frankly, if I knew that an announcement was going to be made that intelligent life had been discovered in another solar system, I'd be wishing for a remote mountain hideaway in the Southern hemisphere.

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[glib909]

While the chances of hearing from alien worlds is depressing small ("Rare Earth")

Keep in mind that the Rare Earth Hypothesis is, on the scale of ET related hypotheses, one of, if not the most pessimistic, and makes the quite bold presumption that the factors for allowing intelligent life to develop are identical to that of Earth.

So The Truth** is bound to lie somewhere between that and Carl Sagan's musings.

**(C) 2006 self-righetous partisans, all wrongs reserved

Re:of particular concern is who is notified first

[Anonymous Coward]

If this gives you pause you must be pretty paralyzed by all the shit that ACTUALLY HAS A REMOTE CHANCE OF EVEN HAPPENING

Terrestrial Planet Finder has been cancelled...

[thue]

The Terrestrial Planet Finder has been cancelled:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1092
So this list seems redundant. To bad, as it was NASA's most exciting project IMO.

But there is still ESA's Darwin, an essentially identical project, which is still scheduled for a 2015 launch as far as I am aware.

Re:Terrestrial Planet Finder has been cancelled...

[helioquake]

Have you ever heard of things called "propaganda"?

And "cancellation" and "postpone indefinitely" mean different things. I think that TPF is listed as the latter (but correct me if I am wrong, of course!).

Re:Terrestrial Planet Finder has been cancelled...

[ikandi]

Indeed. Apparently sending live meat to dead rocks is seen as more important than continuing with NASA's fabulously successful exobot ideas. The Webb 'scope will also be killed, probably about the time Hubble de-orbits.

Re:Terrestrial Planet Finder has been cancelled...

[thue]

Have you ever heard of things called "propaganda"?

If you are trying to imply something then I don't get it.

And to me, "cancellation" and "postpone indefinitely" sound very much like the same thing; the two terms seems to me to be equivalent in terms of actual consequences. Hence I think that translating NASA's "postpone indefinitely" into "cancelled" is not misleading. (see also the article I linked)

Re:Terrestrial Planet Finder has been cancelled...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, TPF has been delayed, not cancelled though
the article does seem to have the 15% reduction
in research funding correct. SOFIA has been
cancelled just as it was about to fly, and as
mentioned in another post, the Keck outriggers,
another project where most of the money for the
project has already been invested in the hardware.
Walmart would not do too well if it built stores
and then forgot to open them, and I expect this
is what is in store for NASA as well. A sad day
for science....

hmmm

[smash]

Apparently some systems were "tossed out" because they aren't stable enough (variable stars, strong gravity, etc).

Now, is it just me, or does the idea that life may well need some abnormal event to kick-start it in conflict with that very idea?

Perhaps include *some* of these systems?

smash.

Re:hmmm

[Monkeys!!!]

Exactly.

Also what about abnormal forms of life? I read a book awhile back (NFI on the title) where humans encounter life composed of dark matter.

I guess the reasoning behind looking for similar basis for life is that we know for sure that life can arise from liquid water worlds.

Re:hmmm

[thedletterman]

I don't see anything wrong with their reasoning. Instable environments don't produce abnormal, life-forming events, they regularly produce events that are hostile to life. I saw a screening of a film last year at USF called The Privledged Planet. Admittedly, it gratuitous in support of "purposeful design", but they did a great job of approaching what makes Earth so suitable for life using a myriad of fields. It may suggest life with a purpose, but it was strongly pro-science, and probably worth a watch, even if you are skeptic of the premise. Not only are some of the theories presented innovative, but the imagery and cinematography rival are reminiscent of an imax presentation.

Re:hmmm

[Farmer Tim]

Instable environments don't produce abnormal, life-forming events, they regularly produce events that are hostile to life.

But the earth is only 4600 years old, so there's nothing preventing an intelligent designer from popping by these unstable systems every so often and re-Genisising.

(Why yes, this is flamebait, thanks for asking!)

Re:hmmm

[welcher]

That's missing the point of the entire exercise. They are trying to concentrate on systems most similar to our own since a) we know life can exist in circumstances like ours and b) if life does exist there, it may well take forms similar to life on earth so we will be able to recognise it. Concentrate on the easy stuff first and then, if that fails, try some more "abnormal" avenues.

Re:hmmm

[4D6963]

"does the idea that life may well need some abnormal event to kick-start it in conflict with that very idea?"

Well, it's very unlikely that you find a planet that, for example, has its temperature constantly changing to carry an advanced form of life. Simply because it's unlikely to find there life that has lived under these bad conditions long enough to have evolved into some advanced form, etc..

It's unlikely, not impossible, but these guys at the NASA are just looking at the systems where life is the most likely to exist, period. No time to waste with the very unlikely to carry life systems.

Re:hmmm

[marcosdumay]

You noticed that humans are composed of dark matter, didn't you. I mean, we aren't so bright...

Re:hmmm

[Lijemo]

Apparently some systems were "tossed out" because they aren't stable enough (variable stars, strong gravity, etc).

Now, is it just me, or does the idea that life may well need some abnormal event to kick-start it in conflict with that very idea?

I'm going to hazard a guess: while system with an unstable star may produce a favorable enviornment for amino-acids to form into something resembling single-celled or other simple life forms, that's not something we're going to be able to detect all the way from our solar system, (not with current technology

We're most likely to actually detect life if it's been evolving for long enough to do something like broadcast "I love Lucy". And while it may not be impossible for such life to evolve in a system with an unstable star, the solar flares are likely to cause occational planet-scorching "reboots" to the evolution process that decrease the probability.

This isn't a list of all systems we think have the possibility of producing life, just of the ones most likely to evolve life that we can actually detect, so that we can check those systems first. It doesn't mean we never check the others, just that we conserve resources by beginning in the places most likely to produce results.

Immigration?

[opencity]

"I've chosen five to advertise the very best places to move to if we had to, or to point the telescope at," she told the BBC.

An open call for science fiction references if there ever was one.

Her criteria include a temperate zone that can support copious amounts of liquid water. If we're moving, I agree. There are chemical reasons we think life would be predisposed toward water but there could be different biochemistries. Any biochemists out there feel free to disagree and/or expound.

This story is also a good test of the slashdot equivalent of Godwin's law. How long until the usual sectarian debates spring up (and I don't mean MS)

Re:Immigration?

[cruachan]

"Any biochemists out there feel free to disagree and/or expound."

I'll take that one. In a liquid water environment it's difficult to see how you'd end up with a biochemistry that wasn't nucleic acid, protein, carbohydrate and fatty acid based. By observation life on earth seems to have explored just about every type of possible molecular structure that carbon/hydrogen/oxygen + other minor elements can produce and if there were some other useful biological molecule then it's difficult to imagine why it's not been 'discovered' and exploited already. That's not to say that the details won't differ - I'd have thought it virtual certain that a mix of different nucleic acids and amino acids would be used in different combinations with a different genetics etc etc, but I'd expect life to be grossly similar on similar planets, just differing radically in the details.

Outside that I'm very unconvinced by non-water or carbon based life. Silicon just doesn't form complex enough molecules so that's out. The next best bet seems to me to me ammonia based.

Re:Immigration?

[gstoddart]

Her criteria include a temperate zone that can support copious amounts of liquid water. If we're moving, I agree. There are chemical reasons we think life would be predisposed toward water but there could be different biochemistries. Any biochemists out there feel free to disagree and/or expound.

IANABC ... but, maybe it's just as simple as we can only conceive life in ways that are familiar to us? While it's possible that life could exist in forms we can't even guess at, we don't have any criteria to look for such things.

What criterion would we use to look for forms of life we can't yet imagine? It would be a shot in the dark and we wouldn't have anything to base our observations on -- it would become pure speculative fiction. "If there was silicon base life forms, maybe they really like cold environments with lots of metal and sulphates" is nothing more than a WAG.

At least by limiting the searches to conditions we do understand, we know at least some of the things to look for. If we go on the assumption that conditions similar to our own are more likely to have spawned other life-forms, then we're at least basing our search on rational criteria.

You could stare at high-gravity, seemingly toxic environments forever, but you'd be no closer to coming up with a guess as to what might possibly be living there. These targets are at least designed to narrow the field to the kinds of things we do know something about.

Cheers

Re:Immigration?

[techno-vampire]

I'll take that one. In a liquid water environment it's difficult to see how you'd end up with a biochemistry that wasn't nucleic acid, protein, carbohydrate and fatty acid based.

I'd be very astonished to learn that all life on all planets uses the same DNA/RNA combination we use. There almost certainly are other combinations of amino acids that can be used for the coding, and different chemicals for the backbone. It may be that DNA/RNA simply got started first and spread fast enough that the alternatives never had a chance. On some other planet, a differnent one might easily have gotten the needed head start. Until and unless we go and look, we'll never know.

Re:Immigration?

[cruachan]

That's what I'm saying. I'd be highly suprised if alien life used precisely the same biochemistry, however I'd be equally suprised if it didn't use nucleic acids, amino/acid/proteins, sugars/polycarbohydrates and lipids. These grouping are too useful and easily available for them not to be used.

We can even reasonably be a bit more precise about it. With proteins of the 20 amino acids in prime use a good dozen of them could be expected to turn up in an alien biochemistry just because they're the simplest that do the job. With the carbohydrates many are also a dead certainty - glucose, fructose etc. and polymers like chitin are certain to be just as useful to alien biochemistry as they are to ours. On the lipid front, wll lipids are lipids and our biochemistry uses just about everyone going anyway so there's certain to be major overlap.

Nucleic acids are more interesting though. I'd lay a bet on RNA just because the ribonucelic acids tend to form easily in prebiotic conditions. DNA is more suspect, particularly as life here can get along without it just fine. Nevertheless it's the next simplest step up from RNA so may be favoured against other varients. Of course which nucelic acids are actually used is open to chance, although it's noticable that the ones we have are among the simplest.

Beyond these broad categories though indeed it gets more speculative. Even so, some assumptions seem probable. For example if there is RNA/DNA then a triplet genetic code is likely, because as has been observed, a doublet code doesn't give you enough combinations to work with (but there is evidence that our early genetic code was doublet and we evolved the triplet later) whereas a quad code would be inefficient needing 33% extra DNA to code and more error prone.

Other things that might also be expected to turn up. For example porphorins (the building block of haem, chlorophyll and many other useful molecules).

Unfortunatly I guess we'll never know, unless we strike lucky on Mars or Europa.

Re:Immigration?

[barawn]

carbon/hydrogen/oxygen

and nitrogen. Nitrogen's not exactly a minor element with organic compounds.

Other elements (like sulphur for amino acids, or magnesium for chlorophyll) are very, very rare, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could build a full biochemistry with just CHON - just much more inefficient than our current one. The one thing I'm not sure that life could build with just CHON is a photoreceptor - the metal-free pigments all seem to be accessory pigments only. This, actually, is an interesting point - if it's true, without a photoreceptor, life can't evolve until stars have generated enough metals so they're common. A decent molecule to store energy might be lacking, too (no ATP), but the lack of a photoreceptor seems like it could be more fundamental.

The big coincidence, of course, is that if you exclude helium (chemically inert), those four elements are also the most common in the Universe.

I've always wondered whether or not biochemists have tried building artificial biochemistries with other molecules. It's entirely possible purely CHON precursors to chlorophyll, ATP, etc. existed, but were discarded later as they were less efficient.

Re:Immigration?

[cruachan]

There's a theory that just like solar systems, galaxies have a 'habital zone' around the core - too far in and the stars formed before there was enough heavy metals to support life. If so it would be a nice explanation as to why we havn't seen any signs of intelligent life out there yet.

Incidently I life would manage to get by with scarer metals. There's a group of molluscs with vanadium-based blood, which is a couple of orders of magnitude rarer in the crust than iron.

Re:Immigration?

[barawn]

Blood I can understand - there's a fair amount of different blood chemistries out there.

But photoreceptors and energy storage molecules I'm not so sure about. Everything uses ATP and every plant uses chlorophyll. I'm not sure life could really manage in a phosphorus/magnesium poor area.

Re:Immigration?

[Anonymous Coward]

This story is also a good test of the slashdot equivalent of Godwin's law.

Please, for the love of God, stop this crap with Godwin's law...

It's not a law, at all.

And the envoking of this tired, limp trash is enough to make me puke because of how many retards I've found that have used it in their "defense" anytime they can't defend themselves yet have been classified as a "nazi".

Locating Greener Pastures

[sanman2]

This search for 'habstars' (habitable star systems) is really fascinating, and perhaps even practical in an offhanded way. What better way to inspire future astronomers and astrophysicists than to find some beautiful blue-green jewel like ours out there, even if we can't detect signs of intelligent life.

This would be a lot more motivating and captivating than scanning the heavens for shapes of creatures from mythology, which is no better than looking for pictures of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in a cheese sandwich.

Once we find something out there worth travelling to, then it would automatically spur thoughts of developing means to get there. Even if such dreams aren't possible due to the limits of known physics, it's still a noble and instinctive goal, like our grazing ancestors had in seeking greener pastures. Who knows where such thoughts might ultimatley lead?

Re:Locating Greener Pastures

[toganet]

You raise an excellent point, and reminds me of the sense of wonder that inspired westerners in the 15th and 16th centuries to set sail for lands that existed only in legend. (Of course, they probably had rough maps purchased from the Chinese, who had been to these places 75 years earlier).

Re:Locating Greener Pastures

[ralphclark]

> the Chinese, who had been to these places 75 years earlier ...and pulled back, because the mandarin bureacracy had decided to stop funding these expeditions on the basis that they had little practical value, while there were problems at home of more pressing concern to be dealt with.

A lesson for our times, indeed.

Re:Locating Greener Pastures

[ralphclark]

> This would be a lot more motivating and captivating than scanning the heavens for shapes of creatures from mythology

That's not what astronomers do. That's not even what amateur astronomers do.

The constellation-based naming system is just a convenient way of finding your way around the sky because it leverages the human mind's facility for pattern recognition and it's a billion times easier than trying to remember thousands of ascension and declination co-ordinates which change every minute.

The constellations themselves only hold significance for astrologers, of which the less said the better.

Recent Articles on the Origin of Life

[Quirk]

The Royal Society is holding a symposium on the origins of life...

Life on Earth 'unlikely to have emerged in volcanic springs'

13 Feb 2006

"The latest findings of experiments to re-create the conditions under which life could emerge from chemical reactions suggest that volcanic springs and marine hydrothermal events are unlikely to have provided the right environment, a leading researcher from the United States will tell an international meeting tomorrow (14 February 2006) at the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science."

In the alternative Plos ran an interestin article titled Jump-Starting a Cellular World: Investigating the Origin of Life, from Soup to Networks which touches on the front running theories on the origin of life.

ZOMG SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

We got motherfucking snakes on a plane!!!

Adresses ? those fools !

[SirFlakey]

If memory serves me right ET was after a PHONE Number not his home address.

Re:Adresses ? those fools !

[jacksonj04]

118 500

It's BT's directory services, they used ET as part of their millennium advertising campaign.

Why not?

[Shanesan]

The US Government, supposedly the most wealthy in the world, keeps breaking all of their promises. Peace, a stable economy, and now they take their stargazed eyes and focus them significantly closer to home.

At the rate we're going, by the time we actually need to get off this planet because we've hollowed it out and destroyed the O-Zone....

Congressman1: Alright, we're about to die. Any ideas?
Congressman2: We can up and move to another planet.
Congressman1: Great idea! Get us a list of inhabitable planets!
Secretary: Um...that analysis was cancelled not too long ago - back in '06.
Congressman1&2: ...Poo.

Finding life == Online Dating

[layer3switch]

So why are we looking for life on planets we won't be able to get data back after a generation later? This really fits the meaning of "shooting for stars". After waiting 50 - 100 years, find out there is nothing there? So what if we do find life on planets, then what? What exactly does that prove or provide when we can't even all agree on evolution on Earth? Not to mention how to detect "life" on other planets.

What exactly is the point? Life is out there, I like to believe, but until I can see, feel, witness, study, examine in my own two hands, this is like online dating with some chick living on the other side of the planet and building long distant relationship through email messages on weekly basis.

Not that I know anything about online dating with a chick living in Russia... ok, I said too much...

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[tinkerton]

Yet another reason for switching from IP4 to IP6 addresses.

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[TallMatthew]

So why are we looking for life on planets we won't be able to get data back after a generation later?

I hate to break it to you, but the world will go on after you die. There will be people just as bright and interested in things like this as you are (or aren't).

Astroscience is about advancing the species, not the nation, not the corporation, not the individual, but humanity itself. In space are the answers to all of our questions (origins of life, divinity or lack thereof, the nature of sentience, possible existence of other dimensions, the relative success of our species and planet compared to other species and planets). We are as ignorant about such things as we were about electricity not too long ago. Because there are those who would prefer we stay that way, for sake of the belief we are somehow the center and culmination of all universal existence (how absurd!), it's necessary for those who know better to push these projects forward even though the results won't be present until long after we're dead.

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[Firethorn]

From what I've read, some of the stars are under 5 light years away. That's within near today technology to send a probe and get information back within somebody's lifetime. Say, 30 years to for it to get there, 5 years back.

Of course, we need to improve some more on artificial intelligence. We don't need something that can converse, but we do need something that can make decisions about proper behavior for unexpected events.

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[kimvette]

But if the FTL drive becomes reality, couldn't a probe get out there and back in just a few months? I'd say quit spending money on the moon, mars, ISS, and other useless missions and put all of NASA's development resources into possible FTL technologies.

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[gstoddart]

From what I've read, some of the stars are under 5 light years away. That's within near today technology to send a probe and get information back within somebody's lifetime. Say, 30 years to for it to get there, 5 years back.

I think 30 years to get there is a little optimistic.

It took 26 years for Voyager to leave our Solar System. Even with ion-drive spacecraft (still in their infancy, and very experimental) I doubt we'd get anywhere near 1/6th the speed of light your 30 years would suggest.

Short of some major technology breakthroughs, we're a long way from being able to build anything which could travel unattended and travel a distance of five light-years. At those distances I doubt we could even communicate with it, let alone control it.

It'll probably be at least another generation or two until we make those kind of breakthroughs, if at all.

Then again, maybe buddy who was applying for the patent for a warp engine might not turn out to be a quack. =)

Cheers

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[Firethorn]

Problem is, we don't have any possible FTL technologies. Sure, we have some wormhole theories, and some involving huge rotating black holes, but we have no clue as to go about doing it. It's like trying to propose an atom bomb when we don't have any clue as to atomic structure or even atomic decay.

As we don't even have such technologies in the theoretical stages, I'll say that it's at least a hundred years off. As long as it stays that way, we might as well send an STL probe.

What's the worst that could happen? We send it off then develop FTL 5 years later and pass the probe by with a manned ship. So the effort was 'wasted'. Still, the probe could explode on the launch pad and be just as an expensive loss. Or meet with a mission ending meteor.

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[Firethorn]

Well, to be fair, we're still improving the technologies for viewing them from home, bigger and better telescopes and such.

I figure that we have at least two more generations of remote detection methods before we'll have to send a probe to get more detail. Meanwhile, we might as well use them to get more detail, the more we know the better the probe can be. It's not like we're in a huge hurry right now.

Voyager's been on a ballistic course for most of it's journey, if I remember correctly. Yes, we do have quite a job ahead to get our electronics reliable enough for such a journey, but then again, we still got a while. Ion drive is right.

As for returning telemetry, well, that's why you'd build a double purpose radio telescope...

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[maxpublic]

Short of some major technology breakthroughs

Not really. If you could get past the rabid enviroloons who shit bricks every time someone says the word 'nuclear', a relatively simply Orion-style probe could reasonably be expected to achieve a velocity of 10% or more of the speed of light in short order. And it could carry enough fuel to slow down for orbital insertion once it reached the target system, using that same power to boost one hell of a signal back to Earth about what it sees.

That means that a system 5 light years away could be reached by such a probe in 50 years - or less, depending on the size of the engine and the amount of fuel you're willing to use. That's well within a single human lifetime, meaning the same scientists who saw the probe off could be around when it starts transmitting its data back home.

The problems here aren't technological, but political. You'd have to face down the leftie extremists who scream every time something remotely radiological is boosted into orbit, and deal with them again when they complain that we're polluting the 'environment' (what environment? There is no life in space) with the toxic backwash of the probe, despite the fact that aside from a few stray hydrogen atoms there's nothing about to poison.

Max

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[instarx]

So why are we looking for life on planets we won't be able to get data back after a generation later? This really fits the meaning of "shooting for stars". After waiting 50 - 100 years, find out there is nothing there?

Why not? It's not like the human race would be sitting around doing nothing during that time. We just leave a note for the next generation reminding them to check the inbox every once in a while.

If we did get a response it would probably be more than just "Got your message, please reply." Communications would not be in the form of asking a question and then waiting 100 years for a reply - that would be really stupid. I suspect we would start receiving and sending a constant streams of unsolicited data. True, if you ask a specific question you might not get the answer for 100 years, but then again it may have been sent to you six months after the data exchange started.

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[jfengel]

If we did get a response it would probably be more than just "Got your message, please reply."

No, it would probably be some sort if intergalactic smiley: %*&. An we'd figure that the pointy bits were probably teeth, and get all pissed at them, so we'd send them a snarky message back, and then it's just flame-flame-flame for a few millennia.

(Of course on the planet Arkthon IV you have to turn your head to the right rather than the left to read the smileys.)

Re:Finding life == Online Dating

[instarx]

No, it would probably be some sort if intergalactic smiley: %*&. An we'd figure that the pointy bits were probably teeth, and get all pissed at them, so we'd send them a snarky message back, and then it's just flame-flame-flame for a few millennia.

(Of course on the planet Arkthon IV you have to turn your head to the right rather than the left to read the smileys.)

Except for the lefthanded smileys, a lot like slashdot. (-:

Propaganda ?

[aepervius]

Cancellation means that you attract attention and maybe protest from Joe Q Public. Posponed indefinitly means you won't get as much heat on you, and still have the same results. De Facto, those are two of the same effect for a project (stopped and get no funding), just one is with a more "softer" on PR...

Best part of the whole thing is...

[deolaudamus]

This "listing," "research," and "entire project" is all just for show...we've actually been travelling the galaxy to other habitable (and inhabited) planets from a secure facility inside Cheyenne Mountain--kinda surprised nobody mentioned that already! In fact, we've made friends with several other worlds and they joined our fight and helped us defeat a race of nasty snaky guys! Oh, and if anyone wielding a creepy glowing staff promises you candy for reading his book on Origin, run FAST. Sheesh...old news what?

What about Zeta Reticuli

[Shinaku]

Are they looking at Zeta Reticuli? http://www.gravitywarpdrive.com/Zeta_Reticuli_Inci dent.htm

Re:What about Zeta Reticuli

[holophile]

Curious about the same thing, I did some research...
Zeta1 Reticuli is number 57 on the list. Obviously, not in the "top 10". But Alpha Mensae is also on the list at number 31 and Tau Ceti actually made number 3.
Interestingly enough, All 3 of them are G class (Yellow) stars just like our own sun.
I wouldn't want to encourage science to chase after tabloid stories and urban legends, but it certainly does seem interesting.

Re:What about Zeta Reticuli

[RubberDogBone]

Serpo.org proports to tell another part of the Zeta Reticuli story.

I can't say I believe this story but it's interesting enough. It would be stunning if it's true.

Assuming it's true, one take-away from this story was that the beings living there came from somewhere else. It's not their "home world" where their form of life developed and evolved.

Most of our scientists -and nearly all the "probable habitable planets" charts seem to always stick to looking at stars that might support life RIGHT NOW. If this story is true, then life might develop one place and move to one or more additional planets as it saw fit or as conditions warranted.

It's another aspect to considered when choosing where we think we might find life. Life might have its own ideas about where it wants to be. UFO stories or not, that's a simple truth that makes searching potentially a lot harder.

The human drive for greatness

[zpok]

Yeeeey, let's find some things to kill!

Re:The human drive for greatness

[banaanimies]

I want to meet interesting and stimulating aliens... and kill them. I want to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed interplanetery kill.

Re:The human drive for greatness

[Stonehand]

The bombing begins in five centuries.

Inhabitable?

[Haveck]

The quote should read: "Carnegie Institution has released a 'top 10' list of potential habitable star systems"

...because it can't be inhabitable, if ET lives there.

Re:Inhabitable?

[UglyTool]

The quote should read: "Carnegie Institution has released a 'top 10' list of potential habitable star systems" ...because it can't be inhabitable, if ET lives there.

You must not have followed too much of human history...

Registered Realtor

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Sell land and real estate on planets thousands of lightyears away (Mars is overcrowded and so passé)
2. Sell tickets from the new spaceport in UAE
3. ???
4. Profit

Life in our solar system

[lazy genes]

We need to take a closer look at mars first.We need to look under the surface.There has to be life there.There is no reason why life cannot be there.

Has she lost the plot?

[dalesc]

Margaret Turnbull is quoted as saying

"These are places I'd want to live if God were to put our planet around another star,"

which I can't helping thinking is going to colour her research from the start.

As have the Keck Outriggers, which would have...

[Shag]

As have the Keck Outriggers, which would have upgraded the interferometry capabilities of that facility (already the top in the world for optical/infrared astronomy). Their proponents were expecting to be able to image planets around other stars. (As opposed to just detecting them via the slight gravitational wobble they cause in the stars, or getting really, REALLY lucky and having one in an orbit edge-on to us transit the star. :) Keck already hunts planets, and the outriggers would have been a step up in that field, on the way to TPF.

The outriggers drew more controversy (from Kimo Q Public) than TPF, though, so they appear to be getting generally viewed as "canceled" rather than merely "in(de)finitely delayed."

TPF has been delayed, not cancelled

[gargleblast]

As Michael Griffin explains in Griffin Builds Hopes For Terrestrial Planet Finder And Hubble Rescue Missions.

The short reason is that the Crew Exploration Vehicle takes priority.

just 10?

[wwmedia]

just 10? our intelligent designer has been busy!

Phone numbers? Please.

[Sentsix]

NASA isn't looking for ET's phone numbers, they're confirming Gate addresses. It's only a matter of time before McGyver and team of Air Force officers are heading out into the galaxy to do battle with the Gua'uld!

Re:ummm

[RedStar]

Ummm indeed... You may want to check before trying to correct..

Re:Phone numbers? Please.

[Esion Modnar]

they're confirming Gate addresses

Grasp of reality... slipping. Sentsix, you really ought to keep taking your medication. ;)

Now there's a marketing ploy

[Dachannien]

She said NASA once had a policy of what to do, whom to call, and how to announce the news if someone detected a signal of intelligent life from space. "Today it is in fact a group of very generous philanthropists who will get the call before we get a press conference," Tarter said. They include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold.

Crap. You can bet the aliens will end up with Windows on 90% of their desktops before they even hear of Linux.

Bill Gates Phone Home

[gubachwa]

From the article:

She said NASA once had a policy of what to do, whom to call, and how to announce the news if someone detected a signal of intelligent life from space.

"Today it is in fact a group of very generous philanthropists who will get the call before we get a press conference," Tarter said. They include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold.

Does anyone else find it disturbing that funding for basic science is suffering from such severe cuts? It seems that unless the government can use science for political purposes (e.g., the space race of the 60's, "lets beat the commies"), they really don't care.

It's a depressing state of affairs when basic research has to turn to private investment to be funded. Check out the above quote. "It is in fact a group of very generous philanthropists who will get the call before we get a press conference." While this condition on the research funding provided by the private investors may seem minor, what happens in other situations when basic research perhaps comes to conclusions that the investors don't agree with? Private investors can have agendas that aren't in the best interest of the public at large. Sure, governments can have agendas too. But with government it's the people who voted that government in -- and who can vote it out again. We can't do that with "private investors".

Kirk said it best:

[Farmer Tim]

"I. Will. Not. Kill. Today."

Life in stranger places

[Onuma]

Just look at some of the life that grows in a college student's dirty laundry pile. Scary.

You never know what situations you might create life in.

Re:Life in stranger places

[Biomechanical]

Just look at some of the life that grows in a college student's dirty laundry pile. Scary.

You never know what situations you might create life in.

Funny you should say that. My Mum once bought this round rack thing with three bottles in it, meant for fancy cooking and what not.

In one of the bottles was, if I remember it correctly, balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.

Because of the densities of the liquids, they tended to settle, light on top, dark below.

Long story short, Mum never uses the bottle with the vinegar and oil, and about twelve months later I pull it out of the pantry one day while wondering if there's anything left in it and find a cool thing.

Right inbetween the two layers was a layer of mold, built up a bit towards the centre of the plane and flatter near the edge touching the glass. It looked vaguely like a microscopic model of a city.

It's a shame Mum tossed it.

Useful links about the project

[mattr]

TFA sucked but wading through the net produced these notes and links.

Here or here, a very nice article on the project, "Margaret Turnbull and Jill Tarter have a new list, called HabCat: A Catalog of Nearby Habitable Stellar Systems." (2003) Interview included.

Interesting that starting with the Hipparcos catalog of 120,000 stars and skipping all with major problems for life ("cataclysmic, eruptive, pulsating, rotating, or X-ray stars", low metal content systems, rotating too fast or too much UV or bad size or composition), left 1 star in 6 still potential life bearers.

Wiki on HabCat and Turnbull. The Turnbull page has a link to a PDF, which is a very interesting scientific paper about how the list of habitable stars was made.

Wiki article on the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which uses Turnbull's list of 5000 candidates within a 100 light year radius. List of Top 100 candidates. Note 18 Scorpii at 46 light years is number 62 in the list, and 37 Geminorum is not listed.

The highest ranked 2 candidates in that list are just 4 ly away from Earth, at Rigil Kentaurus, and then Tau Ceti at 12 ly. There is one at 3 ly and some others at 19, 20, 24 ly too.

Allen Telescope Array

Turnbull's top 10 list includes 51 Pegasus, where in 1995 Swiss astronomers spotted the first planet outside our solar system, a Jupiter-like giant.

Others include 18 Sco in the Scorpio constellation, which is very similar to our own sun; epsilon Indi A, a star one-tenth as bright as the sun; and alpha Centauri B, part of the closest solar system to our own.

Re:Useful links about the project

[angel'o'sphere]

The 3 ly distance star is an error. Iota Persei is about 34 ly away.

See: http://www.astronexus.com/scripts/eos/eos_star.php ?IDType=HD&ID=19373

angel'o'sphere

Re:Useful links about the project

[mattr]

Thanks! time to tell the wiki..

Re:Useful links about the project

[barawn]

The highest ranked 2 candidates in that list are just 4 ly away from Earth, at Rigil Kentaurus

Rigil Kent is more commonly known by its Bayer designation, Alpha Centauri.

Re:Useful links about the project

[meringuoid]

Rigil Kent is more commonly known by its Bayer designation, Alpha Centauri.

Well, we don't want to send a spaceship there. Not yet, anyway. We want to wait for the 25% boost to thrust you get with Fusion Power, and for the 50% discount on construction of it that you get once you've built the Space Elevator.

We'll want to make certain of security, and conduct thorough psychological assessments on the people we send, too. You don't want to risk there being a major quarrel among the crew enroute - if that happens, what with cabin fever and all, chances are somebody will bump off the captain, and the whole lot of them will divide into factions and land separately. A complete mess, basically.

TPF defered not cancelled

[amightywind]

The Terrestrial Planet Finder has been cancelled:

The article you linked says it has been defered. The cancelling part was the author's embellishment. This is happening because NASA administrator Griffin is responsibly trying to balance the retirement of the space shuttle, the completion of ISS, and the development of the CEV. Something has to give, it is space science. They've had a heck of a run. Look on the bright side. Extrasolar science is advancing rapidly without a TPF. The extra few years until it is flown will allow technology to advance even more.

Re:TPF defered not cancelled

[canadian_right]

"delayed indefinitely" is NASA speak for cancelled.

For more information on the cancelled science mission see The planetary Society which has been fighting Congress for science mission funding for years. You don't have to be a member to help out.

Re:ummm

[rbarreira]

Perhaps you would like to learn a new word!

Microsoft cornering the ET OS market?

[benbranch]

I found this paragraph highly concerning "Today it is in fact a group of very generous philanthropists who will get the call before we get a press conference," Tarter said. They include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold. Is this for real? NASA (who pulled funding on SETI years ago) is now asking them for free advice and the Microsoft bosses are going to be the first ones to get the heads up on ET civilizations? Damn, that could be dangerous for more reasons than I can think of.

Fast way to narrow it down

[xant]

Send them a message containing the link: Click here to be removed from our mailing list..

Terrestrial planets maybe. Intelligent life not!

[bradbury]

It is unfortunate that Turnbull, the Carnegie Institution and NASA chose to affiliate themselves with the Search for Extraterrestrial *Intelligence*. TPF might be capable of locating "water worlds" but there is no experimental information with regard to what fraction of those might have no water or be entirely covered in water (water worlds). It seems obvious that planets like Venus and Mars do not support life or may have only supported it for a brief period (in large part because they are near the edges of the habitable zone). It is also difficult to envision how intelligent life, particularly intelligent life with robust technology (radio transmitters, integrated circuits, rockets, etc.) would evolve on planets entirely covered in water. So one needs to make careful distinctions between systems with dead planets, systems with only water covered planets (pure water worlds), systems with water worlds with primitive life (e.g. those before the Earth's current stage of development), systems with water worlds with intelligent life (our current stage) and those beyond our stage.

Lets do the math. Universe, ~13 billion years old. Earth, ~5 billion years old. Time to develop first sun-like stars perhaps 1 billion years. So there is a reasonable chance that there are (or were) Earth like planets up to 7 billion years older than Earth (at least around stars slightly smaller than the sun which age more slowly). There are some systems with younger Earths (*much* younger for those systems currently in the process of planetary formation). Lineweaver's group has worked on this and has concluded that ~70% of the Earth's in the galaxy are older than ours -- many of them by billions of years.

Based on this it is unlikely that either TPF or SETI (based on its current approaches) will discover "intelligent" life. The statistics dictate that you only have perhaps a 5000 (years) / 12,000,000,000 (years) chance (less than 1 in a million) of finding a planet which hosts "intelligent" life as we know it.

For those systems with terrestrial sized planets and those with water TPF is a reasonable effort -- it might manage to detect water and if lucky atmospheric composition that could hint at life. However pointing the SKA (or any other radiotelescopes) at the stars in the list provided are highly unlikely to be successful because they assume intelligent civilizations which are currently at (and remain at) our stage of development. (This changes the statistics to about 1 in a billion.)

The reasons for this are as follows... Whether you believe in steady state growth (Dyson's assumption in 1960), or exponential growth as "The Singularity" concept proposes the bottom line is that it seems very unlikely that a civilization would actively choose to remain at our state of development (i.e. zero growth for millions or billions of years). If you choose the steady state model the time to develop to a Dyson Shell is measured in a few hundred to a few thousand years. If you choose the singularity model then the time to develop a Matrioshka Brain (also here) is measured in decades. Once either of those states is reached the star goes "dark". So the star list is useless (to either the TPF mission or SETI) for identifying locations of intelligent civilizations with capabilities even slightly beyond our own.

Robert Bradbury

Notes:
For the above calculations I chose 5000 years as the longevity of humans with a reasonable level of technology development. One could limit it to smaller time frames (~100 years for radio or 40-50 years for lasers or rockets). TPF has a much greater chance of being successful than radio or optical SETI because it is working with a much larger time window. Water world longevities range from 100 million to many billion years if they restrict themselves to sun-like (

Perhaps

[subtropolis]

they've given up on you.

Re:Perhaps

[CarpetShark]

Yes, perhaps :)

My roommate looked into it already

[ecorona]

My roommate actually spent a couple of hours looking up these solar systems to search for aliens with Celestia before I smacked him upside the head. Please if there are kids reading this, don't drop out of school. *For those of you who don't know, Celestia is software that maps and lets you travel around in space.*

I have weird priorities.

[Zorque]

Am I the only one who thought the article would be about addresses where they could have buried all those Atari games?

Re:What about Zeta Reticuli - The actual 10 stars

[mikael]

The closest they get is HD 10307. The entire list is:

Tau Ceti, 11.9 light years
Alpha Centauri B, 4.35 light years
Epsilon Eridani, 10.5 light-years
Epsilon Indi A, 11.8 light-years
http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/stars/keid.html">Omic ron 2 Eridani, 16 light years
Beta Canum Venaticorum - 27.31 light years
HD 10307, 41.2 light years
HD 211415>/a>, 44.4 light years
18 Scorpii, 45.7 light years
51 Pegasus, 40 light years

There is also a top 50 list

Lobbying against NASA

[amightywind]

Astronomy and planetary science have been well funded for 15 years. There great new missions in the pipeline. Progress continues to be made in extrasolar studies. NASA space science is as healthy as it has ever been. The Planetary Society is nothing more than a greedy lobbying organisation that takes with both hands. They will never be satisfied. They are no different from AARP or AFLCIO. I hardly consider their views on the direction of the US space program to be mainstream. I would not dream of helping them out.

And? What are the ten systems?

[angel'o'sphere]

Probably I'm blind or just getting old.

Can anyone post a link which INCLUDES the ten systems/stars and is not jsut babble?

angel'o'sphere

Re:And? What are the ten systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit spelling words backwards, are you dyslexic? I think so....LOL : ) Eh, I am not, once again it is me your long lost pal.

Are you guys on Brokedown Mountain or what? Pfft

Red vs. Blue Quote

[kadathseeker]

Grif: "And talk about a waste of resources, you know? I mean, we should be out there, finding new and intelligent forms of life. Y'know, fight them"

Razor blade star NUMA NUMA yay

[tepples]

by the time we actually need to get off this planet because we've hollowed it out and destroyed the O-Zone

Numa Numa haters take note: If you destroy the O-Zone, you too will be destroyed.

So much of SETI is pure pseudo-science

[Artifice_Eternity]

Whether you believe in steady state growth (Dyson's assumption in 1960), or exponential growth as "The Singularity" concept proposes the bottom line is that it seems very unlikely that a civilization would actively choose to remain at our state of development (i.e. zero growth for millions or billions of years). If you choose the steady state model the time to develop to a Dyson Shell is measured in a few hundred to a few thousand years. If you choose the singularity model then the time to develop a Matrioshka Brain (also here) is measured in decades. Once either of those states is reached the star goes "dark". So the star list is useless (to either the TPF mission or SETI) for identifying locations of intelligent civilizations with capabilities even slightly beyond our own.

I can't help but notice the high proportion of sheer speculation, verging on superstition, that you rely on in your post. So much talk about SETI is based on completely untested assumptions that "experts" have expounded, and that others have decided to take as gospel, lacking any hard data.

Examples:

- "The Singularity": This is a whopping big superstition, sometimes referred to as "the Rapture for atheists". The idea that we're all going to transcend our current bodies / technology / civilization / mortality within the next several generations is no more than a hopeful myth. There is no real proof that any such thing is inevitable or even likely -- it just fulfills a longing for immortality and transformation that many people feel, and that used to be fulfilled by religion, or Marxism (the idea of "History" as a transcendent force that would eventually produce a heaven on earth).

- The Dyson shell: Dyson's idea is intriguing, but seriously, why would any race decide to build such a bizarre artifact? You can make arguments for it, but the notion that this is somehow a probable development of any intelligent civilization is, again, speculative to the point of superstition. Even if there are millions of intelligent, technologically advanced races out there, we have no way of knowing that ANY of them would ever build a giant sphere of matter around their star. It's just a pipe dream.

- The 5,000-year window: This is also a myth, even more questionable because it is based on other myths, including the two above. The real truth is, we have no idea how our own civilization will progress in the coming centuries and millennia, and certainly no clue at all what path a completely alien one might follow.

I mention all this simply to make the point that a large part of accepted wisdom in the SETI field is sheer science fiction, and should never be mistaken for science fact. The reality is that we have almost no data to go on, and while it is tempting to speculate, our speculations should not be elevated to the status of established truth.

Re:So much of SETI is pure pseudo-science

[Artifice_Eternity]

P.S. I was not aware of the "Matrioshka Brain" concept until now, but file that in the pseudo-scientific myth category as well.

Re:So much of SETI is pure pseudo-science

[Schwarzchild]

"The Singularity": This is a whopping big superstition, sometimes referred to as "the Rapture for atheists."

I heard someone call it "The Rapture of the Nerds" which I think is more apropo.

Re:So much of SETI is pure pseudo-science

[maxpublic]

I agree with pretty much everything you've said except for your disdain over the possibility of achieving practical immortality. Only the rankest of fools could possibly think that we'd somehow manage to keep progressing technologically in all fields, yet somehow forever be subject to some mystical "Law of Death" which confounds all efforts to extend life and defeat the process of aging. That smacks of nothing more than religious superstition.

There's nothing special about aging and death. It too will yield to science.

Max

Re:Terrestrial planets maybe. Intelligent life not

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed regarding Intelligent life-- however, glancing at your site and your description of the Matrioshka Brain- it appears to me to be something that humanity should fight against happening with every fiber of our being, or at least hope that nanotechnology doesn't pan out. Construction of one of these from the raw materials of our solar system (read: all life on Earth) seems to be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What good is it to be an uploaded mind in a Virtual Reality when it means giving up everything worth living for? How many would willingly choose to live within the Matrix, and if they aren't given the choice, wouldn't it be murder of the highest order?

ET Life

[the_odin]

Problem, is that even if there is intelligent life out there, (which i believe there may be) by the time we recieve a message, the civilization may be gone extinct, or just so evolved beyond our own level (technologicly or biologicly) that we couldn't communicate with them anyway. If there was a species out there that sent messages out into space, they would have had to do it around the same time of development that we are in. that could have been billions of years ago. Even if they are still sending messages out... to unknown recipiants (or each other) if they are even a bit more advanced than us, do you really think that they would still be using the radio spectrum to send those messages/signals? if a species did become intelligent, and it's civilization lasted long enough to get to our level, or beyond; if they were even a thousand years more advanced than us(much less a billion or two) I think they would have a means of communicating that is so far beyond us now, that it would be worse than cro-magnum trying to figure out messages sent via satalite, with no computer. we don't have the capability to recieve such messages, language used, programming language used, or even an understanding of the means of which the message is being transmitted. If there is life out there. I don't believe that we can understand there messages, or even HOW they are sending it.

Re:ET Life

[gameboyhippo]

C'mon. Haven't you ever watch Star Trek? They send out messages to unknown aliens, hack unknown computer systems, and read unknown languages all the time! It should be easy to do.

Instability: not for life, but for intelligence

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

I think you're on the trail of something important. In stable environments you get turtles and lizards. They can easily outcompete a life form that spends 500 calories a day just idling its brain and which needs a decade to teach its young to be at all self-sufficient.

The ruinous cost of a human brain can only be paid back in an environment that's variable enough to put a premium on adaptability. Otherwise "fitness" seems to map to "reproduce early and often".

But...

[SirBruce]

... what are the Stargate addresses for those ten? :)

Bruce

Correction -- Two "Top 5" Lists, and more...

[SirBruce]

The submitter got it slightly wrong. First off, Margaret Turnbull's team came up with a list of 17,129 potentially habitable star systems in 2003, and the work she has done since has been to refine that list.

What she announced yesterday were TWO "Top 5" lists. The first list includes the top 5 recommendations for a SETI search:

beta CVn
HD 10307
HD 211415
18 Sco
51 Pegasus

The second list includes the top 5 recommendations for the TPF to examine for Earth-like planets:

epsilon Indi A
epsilon Eridani
omicron2 Eridani
alpha Centauri B
tau Ceti

Why the difference? Well, the second list is of much closer stars, and much more likely to have planets that TPF can find and image. The first list has stars that are a bit farther away, but are, generally speaking, more like our Sun.

And here's a useful link:

http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2006/0218habitab le.shtml

Bruce

Don't be scared

[Schwarzchild]

They no longer work for Microsoft.

Re:Terrestrial planets maybe. Intelligent life not

[Anonymous Coward]

It was not really possible for an earth like planet to be created for much of the first several billion years of the universe. Our star is a 3rd generation star and is made up of the explosive remains of the first two generations.

When the first stars were formed, there was nothing available in the universe other than hydrogen. Those stars would thus not have anything other than gas giants made of hydrogen orbiting them. When they went super nova, the explosions formed heavier elements including Oxygen.

From those remains, the second generation stars and their solar systems were formed. Once again, made up of nothing much heavier than Oxygen. When those went super nova, elements including Iron were formed.

Our sun, solar system, Earth and everything we know today were formed from that waste.

The Earth would not have been possible until the second generation of stars had died.

On the other Hand...

[Cletus the yokel]

If Heim Drive works out, several of the top contenders are under 200 days away...

Maybe not a big coincidence

[GPS Pilot]

The big coincidence, of course, is that if you exclude helium (chemically inert), those four elements are also the most common in the Universe.

A big coincidence, or a sign of Intelligent Design?

Re:Maybe not a big coincidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither a coincidence or Intelligent Design.

It's simple logic and statistics. If the evolution of life is random combinations of elements until something 'living' results then clearly the most abundant elements have the highest chance of eventaully hitting the 'jackpot'.

On the other hand, if it was the rare elements that were most common in living creatures then it would be more likely the outcome of some Intelligent Design (eg, kind of like how computer processors came to be).

Re:Maybe not a big coincidence

[barawn]

then clearly the most abundant elements have the highest chance of eventaully hitting the 'jackpot'.

Actually, no - CHON are the most abundant elements in the universe, not on Earth. Many of the other planets in the solar system are poor in one of CHON - Mars is very nitrogen-poor, for instance, and the Moon is very carbon-poor. Earth is tremendously silicon-rich, but we don't use it instead of carbon because silicon wouldn't work.

The reason that they're used for life has more to do with their chemistry than it does their abundance. The reason that they're abundant has more to do with their nuclear properties than their chemical properties.

It is a coincidence. Well, somewhat of one - their chemical properties and nuclear properties aren't independent. That's the answer to the puzzle, not "life uses the most common materials".

my top 5

[PermanentMarker]

1) XiaOrixpuh
2) urrrkrrttktiitrrsktskkkrrtktaH
3) Sal
4) 00.001.356979700-.1200028125.5.5 T/AK (they don't use names only numbers)
5) Kricket (from the well known kricket wars (try google))



;)

OFF TOPIC, but... DVDs and Linux...

[Zantetsuken]

I'm suprised nobody else has mentioned it, so let me be the first - will their planets be able to play DVDs (or maybe BDROMs?) and can the planets run Linux???

After all, aren't those the really important things in the universe?

Nuclear Contamination of Space

[Teancum]

If you send one of these nuclear rockets into space, it might kill some of the cyano-algae that is going to start the life cycle on some planet in a couple billion years, thus making it impossible for that future civilization to exist. :)

Seriously, I have to agree that the uber left-wing idiots against nuclear energy are clueless as to its potential. Of course I've already seen environmentalists complaining about the effects of open pit mining on the Moon damaging the environment... and studies to complain about the changing tides devistating wildlife on the Earth due to over production of lunar ores. I am not kidding about this one either. Lunar environmental protection laws... the next frontier of the Ecology movement.

BTW, I agree with that nuclear rockets are clearly the way to go for inter-planetary and interstellar travel... at least using current scientific knowledge and only needing to develop engineering skills to get the equipment running. All military vessels in space will be almost exclusively nuclear, as will likely all passenger vessels as well except for re-entry capsules going to the Earth. There is no way that a nuclear rocket could even compete against a single solar flare in terms of radioactive material and ionizing radiation that is produced from such an event.

In addition, nuclear fuels (fission, forget about fusion unless that can be made feasable) are the only way to densly pack large amounts of energy into a small space to make an actual ship be able to function in space. Chemical rockets are only going to be used to get people up to Low-Earth Orbit only... and that because lanuching via nuclear power is likely to give you some serious problems underneath the rockets here on the Earth. Yes, this is rocket science, but not advanced rocket science and nothing that the current generation of spacecraft designers can't handle or even really new production techniques. Or nuclear submarine designers for that matter. Unfortunately, the political environment is such that a nuclear spacecraft is unlikely to be built for more than 50 years.

Don't Panic.

[Sody]

I was just curious; are any of the systems in the vicinity of Betleguese?