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Looking for Life in Light
Gearoid_Murphy writes "Earth-like planets around distant stars may be too far away to be reached by spacecraft but scientists could still investigate whether they harbour life.
Telescope technologies are being developed that will probe the very faint light from these objects for tell-tale signs of biology.
These are the same "life markers" known to be present in light reflected off the Earth - so-called "earthshine"."
PS: funny part is, if they see our earthshine from the same distance, we humans wouldn't even exist. Talk about being stealthy :)
Of Code And Men
We want to:
A. attempt to detect life on a planet that is too far away for us to determine if we are correct any time in our lives
B. using a method that has an unknown accuracy
C. despite the fact that we don't even have an idea of the *order of magnitude* of the chances of life out there
What's the point?
Or we might see a death star heading our way in their "shine" and then blow up the day after :)
Seriously though, it seems to me that we always have this idiotic need to find ORGANIC life. Perhaps it might not be light emitting or light modifying. Perhaps they're not even "corporeal" or light necessitating. Perhaps they'd find Pluto's cold more hospitable than the wet juicy nature of our own ball of mud. Everyone always thinks in their own paradigm. Why not think outside the box that someone always demands we think within?
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
This is not just a case of assuming everything has to be like us. The reason we look for organic life is the same reason we're made out of carbon and the same reason carbon (organic) chemistry is an entire subject separate from inorganic (non-carbon) chemistry -- carbon is an amazingly versatile element, totally unlike anything else. Sure, it's possible there might be life made of something else, in the same sense that "anything is possible". But some things are a lot less likely than others.
To have life, you have to have a capability for very complex reactions. It's fun to speculate on "non-coporeal" life in a science fiction novel, but something has to be supporting the mechanisms of life.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
yeah - right bitch - more like eh fuck it here goes my last paycheck
"Parents who Unschool [wikipedia.org] should be charged with child abuse."
// contrary to popular belief, I had plenty of food, it was just not MacFood, it was healthy food :)
Strange, since it seems to me that its mostly an American thing... our children are lazier than hell. And public school teachers are coerced into standardizing a shitty education, instead of making it engaging, interesting, and possibly controversial (as in the case of history, politics, language, physics? I once had a physics professor who began class by explaining that explosions are really fast burns, and, in fact, that flour, as in the food ingredient actually does burn very fast and demonstrated blowing up flour. How's THAT for a controversial high school physics class?)
I came here with an eastern european education and found school easy, boring, and mostly a time sink for children, keeping me, personally from doing what I liked most... reading and researching for my own. (Keep in mind, most of eastern europe at the time had 6 day work weeks, and 6 day school weeks, but school was only about 4 hours a day and 2 or 3 days had also an after school gym class (mandatory, but VERY different than the lame duck gym we have here, most kids there were both limber, agile and rather thin.)
You have no idea how mind numbing our schools here in the USA can be, especially to someone accustomed to learning a lot on the outside on the extensive free time the "communist" education system offered (4 hours of mandated science, language, geography, history (oddly, I find that they taught relatively accurate world history, other than aggrandizing their own power plays as "wonderful displays of humanity, etc" At least the commies weren't racist where I lived (the russians are another issue, I hear they didn't get along with the jews too well)). Anyways, everything they teach here is cut and dry, and they have VERY few classes that facilitate discussion, controversy, and therefore, growth. The promulgation of heroification in history and political science is also extremely disturbing.
Imagine, if you will, going into 5th grade math, having the lady give you the american used sign for long division, and setting up some random 6 digit number divided by 3. Now imagine the child in question, being thought "about 4th grade in math skill" because he takes the cube root (by hand) of said 6 digit number. I guess the word "radical" doesn't enter into mathematical speech until about 10th to 12th in our fine country of SOL testing buffoonery.
So I promote, less the unschooling, and more the MORE FREE TIME FOR KIDS AND MORE FREE TIME FOR PARENTS. We had school from 06:30 to 10:30 in the morning. No more, no less. Gym was 2 hours x 2 days. We only had Sunday off, but school was FUN because it actually taught challenging things, and homework wasn't just busy work, it was relative, and usually short, mostly a cementing factor (as opposed to homework in the US which is at best bland, and worst busywork). My parents came home from work around 0400, they left around 0700 (I always left first) and we actually had time together, there was less shit on TV, except one hour of anime at 18:30 (6:30 PM) and that was my TV watching. And imported movies, once or twice a week. Other than that, I spent my time becoming acquainted with the works of the masters, from Master DaVinci to Jules Verne to Aristotle and Shakespeare. Strangely I also had time to go outside, play soccer both for fun and in a club, AND play chess (freestyle and tournament). I can guarantee less kids have time for this before they're 11 in our country, because we're pushed to "spend more time in school". Efficiency is something that is advertised but STRONGLY discouraged in America. Freedom is another one of those things, strongly advertised and COMPLETELY antithetical to the way of life Americans endure.
We just want to guzzle more gas, more food, more TV, more everything while having others think for us, since thinking is far more painful for the majority of Americans than even the other most painful thing... losing weight.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
SETI has that pesky 'I' there, meaning intelligence. It's looking for signs of radio communications, based on assumption that only intelligent beings might communicate with radio. Though if a non-intelligent life communicating with radio was found, I don't think anybody would be majorly disappointed ;-).
u rrent/lectures/first_billion_years/first_billion_y ears.html
TFA is talking about finding planets that have *any* life that can significantly change the atmosphere of a planet. Earth could have been discovered like this probably at least since we've had O2 (regular oxygen gas) and O3 (ozone) in our atmosphere, starting from about 2 billion years (*) ago. Contrast this time with the time we've used radio communications, less than 100 years.
(*) reference:
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/c
Very true.
Things that don't work on the small scale, will never work on a large scale. Can't make your family happy? Don't try to be a leader of your country (i.e. politician). Don't care about keeping your world in shape? Then stop dreaming about exploring other worlds.