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Billions of Planets In Milky Way?
jeffsenter writes, "The Washington Post has the story: 'NASA scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered what they believe are 16 new planets deep in the Milky Way, leading them to conclude there are probably billions of planets spread throughout the galaxy.' What sets these potential planets apart is they are in the central bulge of the Milky Way where most stars are located. More planets in the galaxy means more chances for life." The 16 are planet candidates at this point, until verified by spectroscopic measurement of their parent stars' wobbles, which probably can't be done until the James Webb Space Telescope files in 2013.
Harbouring what form of life exactly.
Common sense suggests that there are billions of planets in the galaxy, and that millions of them could harbour life, and that thousands of them have significant evolved life and a few have intelligent (tool using or above) life. That's just playing with numbers and likelihoods and the belief that we're not a one off.
But this just shows that there are lots of large gas giants. Maybe there's life on their moons...
In Soviet Russia, space telescope looks at YOU!
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
I think the best way to contact aliens and let them know we are here is to build a giant billboard about 10x bigger than the sun that says "Hey aliens, people live here" and park it right outside out solar system. That way when they're looking at us with their giant telescopes, they'd see it and know. I'm sure we could get pepsi to sponsor that billboard, they sponsor anything. As for us seeing other intelligent life, just watch for planets to spontaniously blow themselves up. I'm sure we'll almost do that a few times in the future looking at the past so logically some aliens have to do it.
Is it just me or is it not going to upgrade to Vista in here?
I work for the Shuttle program. The current plan is to send up a Hubble repair mission. Can't say when, but it's definitely planned.
Fuck my accountant. I'm getting an astronomer.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Oh wait, that's the 1-AU-wide super-sized Snickers bar.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is a great example of a ground-based telescope that could easily rival any space telescope:
OWL Telescope
SETI's odds are very poor on this score.
Yeah I used the life angle to get it posted, but there is a little bit of substance to this increased chance of life thinking. Even though the central bulge is not the best place to find life, finding plenty of planets in the central bulge, where large scale planet formation was somewhat in question, suggests that planets are formed around stars everywhere, not just in our galactic neighborhood. If planets are formed everywhere as opposed to just in select parts of the galaxy there are more planets generally and planets present in parts of the galaxy that are more hospitable to the formation of life.
It is not just the area of the galaxy around earth that has planets. Planets are probably helpful for the formation of life. More planets more chances for life.
The article said these findings were based on 7 days of observations, using the transit method. In this method, the planet passes in front of the star, causing a very small, but sudden and periodic drop in the brightness of the star. Presumably, they don't claim to have a candidate unless they see multiple dimming events. If so, the longest possible orbit they could have observed is 7 days, meaning the planets are extremely close to their stars. Even their moons would be inhospitable.
However, as another poster pointed out, these systems may also harbor smaller planets in more favorable orbits. In fact, some researchers believe that smaller rocky worlds can only form with the assistance of disturbances created by the gas giants.
In contrast, other researchers are skeptical that planets can form at all in the inner regions of the galaxy because of the high star density. Even if they did, they might not be able to harbor life because of all the radiation from said stars.
As another poster pointed out, however, we don't necessarily know the limits of conditions that life may form. This is getting a rather fanciful, but perhaps high-temperature silicon-based rock monsters are real, like Season 4, episode 7 where Kirk fought the lava man with the Abe Lincoln avatar (just kidding, I made that up...or did I?).
Spinning liquids to form mirrors works on Earth because Earth's gravity acts perpendicular to the plane of spin. We would need some way of replicating those two forces in space. All the methods I know about would cost more than simply launching a solid mirror.
A method of putting cheap mirrors into space that I proposed to my physics mentor a few decades ago is to use inflatable mirrors. He brushed off the idea at the time. Now, though, NASA has research on the general concept:
NASA Tech: Parabolic Membrane-Thickness Variation for Inflatable Mirror
A Google search for inflatable mirrors turns up many more results.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)