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'Hundreds of Worlds' in Milky Way
Raphael Emportu writes "BBC news is reporting
that rocky planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought in our galaxy, a study has found.
New evidence suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems.
There may also be hundreds of undiscovered worlds in outer parts of our Solar System, astronomers believe.
Future studies of such worlds will radically alter our understanding of how planets are formed, they say."
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No shit that there are other planets like ours out there. The incomprehensibly massive scale of the universe dictates it to be true, statistically-speaking.
Today, children receive next to no education in the field of astronomy. Were they to have a proper understanding of what lies beyond Pluto, they'd probably grow up to realize how silly it is to believe that there is only one planet like Earth.
Now, if we only had some means of reaching it...
The speed of light is a barrier like few the humanity has ever found.
Interesting, considering that just last night I was watching a documentary, on BBC4 no less, about rare earth theory and how miraculous it was that the conditions on earth are as they are.
...
Funny but, I couldn't shake the feeling that the reason conditions here on earth are so 'perfect' for life as we know it was more to do with life as we know it evolving to fit the conditions
Invaders must die
... there may be hundreds of worlds in the solar system. In the Milky Way, expect trillions. The distinction between the Solar System and the Galaxy is a subtle one, similar to that between a grain of sand and Saudi Arabia, so it's easy for the likes of the BBC to confuse the two.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Given hundreds of worlds within our own galaxy, if we apply the Drake Equation, there's a good chance that there's another intelligent species out there, although the chances of it being of a sufficient technological development to make its presence known is slim. Also, the 'accepted values' for the various parts of the Drake equation are subject to (sometimes intense) debate.
This being said, given that most of these "nearby" worlds are tens of thousands of light-years away, with the current state of our technology, we might as well be alone.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
...planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought... I have heard this so many times that I'm losing track on how common we previously thought they were.Wouldn't it be feasible that intelligent life could arise on a planet that is liquid?
... I'm not so sure, probably depends on your definition of intelligence. Complex social structures and communication ? Possible. Tool use ? I'd say that is less probable. In an aquatic environment, fins beat tool-compatible appendages any day.
Complex life, certainly. Intelligent
Wouldn't it be feasible that intelligent life could arise on a planet that is liquid?
Our own earthly cephalopods are pretty darned smart. Given the right conditions, it's not difficult to imagine a similar species attaining greater intelligence. Of course, such an intelligence, having developed in such an alien environment, would be radically different from ours. As Larry Niven says, there are brains out there that think just as well as yours...but differently.
Also, although an aquatic species could conceivably develop intelligence, I can't imagine what form its technology would take. With such elementary things as fire denied to them, it's doubtful that they could progress to any reasonable level.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
As long as the temperature of the liquid is sufficiently stable, there are sufficient chemical building blocks and there is not too much current, single cell organisms and then multi cell organisms could emerge..
Depends on how you define "intelligence". Our liquids are certainly teeming with intelligent life. Life itself apparently began in our oceans. Fish are certainly very smart - they feed themselves, find mates, defend territory, build defensive structures, some species live and travel in social groups, etc. These are all signs of "intelligence". Then if you want to cheat a bit and look at the ocean mammals - seals, porpoises, whales, these are extremely intelligent aquatic beings.
Arthur C. Clarke, however, argued that CIVILIZATION, however, could not evolve in an aquatic environment, for the simple reason that you cannot have fire underwater. His interesting theory claims that fire, and our control of fire - has been a driving force in our technology. First the fire we would use for slash and burn agriculture - which while being devastating for the environment over the long term gave many short term advantages to the primitive farmer. Fire to make steam is what drove the industrial revolution. And that same power is still in use today, though we get our "fire" in the form of Uranium, or by burning fossil fuels. Then there is the "fire" from the sky - electricity. Harnessing this particular "fire" would be pretty tricky underwater.
I guess it's an interesting concept to play with, and surely there are many possibilities that we biased, land dwelling humans could never dream of, but I respect Mr. Clarke and his idea. I think it would be difficult for an aquatic civilization to arise here or anywhere else.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
so we can go to them?
If there are only hundreds of earthlike planets what are the extra Stargate addresses for?
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
First 9, then posibly 10, then back to 9, then 8.. now we have..
"Our old view, that the Solar System had nine planets will be supplanted by a view that there are hundreds if not thousands of planets in our Solar System,"
The first release of Solaris was Solaris 2. This replaced SunOS 4.x. There were a number of Solaris 2.x point releases, with the last being Solaris 2.6. Solaris 7 was released in November, 1998, followed by Solaris 8 in 2000, Solaris 9 in 2002, and Solaris 10 in 2005.
Although Sun's marketing dept. sometimes comes up with fucked version numbering conventions, the progression is actually quite linear.
Not every day or time, it all comes down to in which environment it has to survive. And we have examples of tool-compatible appendages in aquatic life here on earth: the octopus that can open plastic bottles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfRqYjv9QgA. And then there are other aqautic life that seems to do very well without fins such as crustaceans.
a planet would not be 100% uniform liquid at room temperature. You don't get planet sized blobs of water. Our planet is a lot of liquid around a fairly small probably solid iron core. The most common liquid component of planet earth by a long way is magma. The solid rock crust and liquid water in the seas is so insignificant by comparison it is surprising we even bother to talk about it. Anyhow what you were probably thinking about is a planet with a surface completely covered by liquid water or something like it. I think something could arise on such a planet, at the surface (or possibly below it if we are allowed to assume a hot core with volcanic vents.) You could get algae mats forming and sinking when they die off. Huge floating mats could then provide an ecosystem for other things to evolve around. At some point there could be fishlike animals under the mats and amphibious creatures walking on top of the mats. I can't see any real limit to the size and stability of the floating mats. Any creature looking to develop technology would have to use organic materials, which makes electronics a bit tricky. In terms of leaving the planet, fuel and a launch pad wouldn't be too tricky, building the rocket might be though.
except Europa. I'll not be attempting any landings there.
Squid, cuttlefish, and other similarly baleful creatures are all members of the cephalopod family, characterized by HUGE EYES, BEAKS, INTELLIGENCE, and AMBITION.
I'm all for shipping grammar nazis off to the most distant rock available.
;)
By the way, it's "later", not "latter"
Indeed - the article also says:
Some astronomers believe there may be hundreds of small rocky bodies in the outer edges of our own Solar System, and perhaps even a handful of frozen Earth-sized worlds.
So it's reasonable that any Earth-sized bodies would be considered as new planets, but "handful" doesn't seem to account for "hundreds if not thousands".
Then again, I'm amused that this guy still seems to insist that there are 9 planets in our solar system, so either he slept through the recent decision, or he disagrees with it, and in both cases it's consistent that if Pluto is a planet, all those hundreds of other small rocky bodies should be too...
The speed of light is not a deal-breaker. It means that, from *our* perspective, we'll send people to distant planets and never hear from them again. But from their perspective, it may be a few years. If interstellar travel actually happens, then the speed of light issue is just a managable logistical issue. It means that space-farers must be able to think for themselves. They already must be self-sufficient in other respects.
If there is a deal-breaker, then it is contruction and propulsion of such a craft. The vaster the craft, then the more unlikely it's construction. We might be able to fire ourselves off in a single direction, but how do we slow down, and what if we need to change course. If we need to come home, then we've doubled the energy required!
Then there are complex issues with people - our fragile minds and bodies. How do we react to the stress of space-travel, can we do it?
The speed of light seems like a comparatively simple issue.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
There are plenty of volcanoes under the water here on Earth. Could those serve as a source of fire?
Perhaps primitive marine creatures would realize that some sort of algae-like food source grows better in the warmer waters around these "glowing liquid not-water" sources and start building walls around them to hold in that temperature. Sort of like farming - but with algae instead of regular "crops". This would give them a stable food source and they could get to thinking about other things.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
The question is whether we want to have any planets. From Earth, for example, you could construct 10000000 rotating hollow cylinders, 1000x1000km each, with reasonable gravity, perfect weather, safety from radiation, and sustainability for billions of years. The total usable area will be 1e11 square km, 196 times larger than the Earth. It is also portable and redundant, ensuring that the entire civilization is not wiped out by an asteroid. It can remain usable after the Sun burns out; you can install a fusion generator and mine Jupiter for fuel for a very very long time. So tell me again why we need a planet?
While tool use is certainly probable in an aquatic species that evolved intelligence, I would doubt that any such species would progress past the stone age in terms of technology. However, they may evolve a very advanced society, afterall, the Ancient Egyptians and Mayan cultures also were just progressing out of the stone-age yet they had highly advanced societies.
Why would they be limited to the stone age? If you assume that they are fully aquatic and not amphibian-like then they would lack one of the major requirements for progression beyond the stone age. Fire. Granted I may be taking a short sighted view of this, but without easy access to fire, it would be VERY difficult for such a society to develop anything beyond basic stone age tools.
I suppose it would be possible for them to utilize a volcano as a source of energy to smelt metals. But I would imagine that smelting in an aquatic environment would have some severe drawbacks. (even if we ignore the problem associated with oxidation of metals)
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Apparently not, even at the BBC. What they were saying is that there could be hundreds of worlds in the solar system, not in the galaxy. (They meant in the Kuiper belt, far outside of Pluto and Neptune.)
We have already found 273 extra-solar planets in the galaxy. No one doubts now that there are millions, if not billions, in the galaxy, and a puling "hundreds" of Earth type planets in the galaxy would strike most people following this research as a very low estimate.
From the article : "Some astronomers believe there may be hundreds of small rocky bodies in the outer edges of our own Solar System, and perhaps even a handful of frozen Earth-sized worlds."
I would also regard this as almost not news at all, given the rapid rate of discovery of TNOs (Trans Neptunian Objects), three of which so far are the size of Pluto or larger.
I disagree. I understand the argument you are trying to make, but your "1 in a million" suggestions are really more akin to wild stabs at the biggest number you can think of, than they are reasonable guesses. 1:1000000 is really an unusually small ratio, and not as common as you intimate. It certainly has no actual relation to the situations that present themselves in the formula.
You can't simply spout a bunch of hyperbole and expect to be taken seriously. Especially in reply to an article that attempts to actually determine those numbers and percentages based on facts. This kind of talk is really no different from the comedy statement that "90% of people know that you can prove anything with statistics." It's meaningless.
While we will likely have to wait a whole lot longer for meaningful answers to the Drake equation, attempts at putting fact-based numbers on the variables should be applauded, and discounting them with what amounts to emotional hyperbole should be discouraged IMO.
Except, we are in the midst of people arguing about exactly how intelligent cephalopods and sea based mammals are.
The truth of the matter is that we have no real way to gauge the intelligence of other alien life forms. Almost all tests are based on a set of assumptions. It is only fairly recently that we have even defined classes of intelligences within humans (Linguistic, Spatial, Musical, Body-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Logical/Mathematical). It is entirely possible that intelligent life could evolve in aquatic environments that score extremely high in multiple categories there and we would have no real way of knowing. We know that there are a number of species that have highly evolved linguistic characteristics. But, what are they saying? Is it "See Spot Run"? Is it something profound? Is it elaborate fart jokes? It is entirely possible that the social structures are subtle enough that we have no means of determining how complex they are. When whale song can be heard from thousands of miles away, how do you determine the society that hears it and responds and the relationship between the one singing and the ones listening?
Someone once said that either we are alone, or we are not. Either answer is mind boggling.
My view is that we don't even know if we alone here on Earth, much less the universe.
Arthur C. Clarke, however, argued that CIVILIZATION, however, could not evolve in an aquatic environment, for the simple reason that you cannot have fire underwater. His interesting theory claims that fire, and our control of fire - has been a driving force in our technology. First the fire we would use for slash and burn agriculture - which while being devastating for the environment over the long term gave many short term advantages to the primitive farmer. Fire to make steam is what drove the industrial revolution. And that same power is still in use today, though we get our "fire" in the form of Uranium, or by burning fossil fuels. Then there is the "fire" from the sky - electricity. Harnessing this particular "fire" would be pretty tricky underwater.
I always thought that was a pretty uncreative comment from such a create fellow. If you eliminate the need to breathe (artificially) underwater, it's pretty easy to come up with a basic concept of civilization.
Algae farms wouldn't be hard to manage with the most basic of technology. Power could be generated from currents turning water wheels. Heat based power sources could also work, such as sea floor hot spots or something using the differential between the warm sea surface and the cool sea bottom. Hard metals might be all but unworkable, but fabric and bone could be made easily with plant and animal life. That would then allow a relatively firm fabric based cage/pen for herding animals. Transportation obviously wouldn't be in the form of a locomotive, but perhaps a system of rapid current tunnels could be worked out. Or maybe the harnessing of larger sea animals.
I don't know enough to determine the rest, but I think the rudimentary civilization is there; tool use, farming/herding instead of hunting/gathering, and the basics of transportation.
doesn't tell you a whole lot. What we do know is that most of the extrasolar systems we've found also tend to have Jupiter-like and larger planets and that in the majority of cases, these planets are either fairly close to their stars or in highly eccentric orbits. Either of these conditions would tend to make any "habitable" planets less habitable. A Jupiter-like or larger planet close in or in a highly eccentric orbit would tend to destablize the orbits of any small rocky planets in the habitable zone.
There are so many things that have to come together to make our planet habitable, that I suspect these conditions are a lot less frequently found than a lot of people would hope. That's not to say I don't think is common in the universe. I do. I just think the vast majority (by several orders of magnitude) of it is going to be single-cell (or if not in the form of cells, of equivalent complexity). You need liquid water (which gives you a pretty narrow temperature range at any given pressure), you need something in the atmosphere to protect against stellar radiation (or, if it's a water planet, I suppose something in the water to protect), you need a planet that's active, but not overly active (and lots of factors go into that). Anyway, I suspect true earth-like planets are pretty rare.
The explanation for the "write" vs. "write to" distinction, at least, is pretty simple. The nouns taking the verb "write" are dative case. That's not obvious in English, but it's there, and it underlies the apparent form.
German is useful here because 1) it's the root language for English and 2) its sentence structures can be perfectly analogous. Take the German sentence Schreib deiner Mutter einen Brief which is translated word-for-word as Write your mother a letter. In German, the deiner is a clear marker that Mutter is dative. The exact same thing is happening in English, but since we don't decline our articles or possessive adjectives and rely instead on word order, it's not obvious to the typical native speaker.
So you can laugh all you want to...
I always found this verse interesting, using worlds as opposed to planets. So why wouldn't there be more than one?
Just food for thought
Think of all the stargates ...
Remember that the Galaxy is a three-dimensional volume, while Saudi Arabia is flattish. According to Idle et. al (Significat Vitae Carmen Galactica, 1983), our Galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars and is a hundred thousand lightyears side to side; it bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand lightyears thick, but out by us it's just three thousand lightyears wide. Taking the lower thickness, that gives a Galactic volume of pi * (50000^2) * 3000 = 2.34x10^14 cubic lightyears = 2.00x10^61 cubic metres. Taking the Solar System to the orbit of Pluto, that's 2.86x10^5 cubic AU = 8.97x10^38 cubic metres. Ratio of the two, that's about 2.2*10^22. Allowing that Saudi Arabia is on average covered by one metre's thickness of sand, we get a grain of sand about half a millimetre on a side.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Well, I think the problem was that one reasonable definition of "planet", "a mass large enough that its gravity pulls it into a ball" leaves us with 50-something planets in our solar system.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
#1 Never said it was impossible...only very difficult to maintain.
#2 A cycle DOES care how large it is. The larger, more complex the cycle the more places there are for slack in the system, the more complex it is the more control points you have and the larger the volume the more time you have to fix it before it starts reinforcing itself.
#3 In a larger system the materials and energy reuierments wouldn't be nearly as stringent and the system could have compensated before it crashed.
#4 Please site a reference for you comment on chaos theory. Everything I read suggests a very strong predictaive value (everything from projecting battery life to environmental effects)
#5 Exactly, I mean exactly like earth. Humans have had a reckless abandon for the care of the planet for well over 10,000 years. For example, before humans got there, the Saraha was about the size of New Hampshire...but with our greed and goats we over the last few thousand years finally got beyond the lands ability to recouperate and thus the current dessert formed quickly. If it wasn't for the self supporting and very large system of the earth, we would have made the planet unihabitable eons ago.
If it weren't for the size of the planet there would be no possible way we could see the change and fix it before the planet turned into an oven. As an example of how fast things can change read up on the precambrian explosion. The current geological evidence suggests that the earth's surface competly froze which locked away the biosphere to undersea volcanoes etc then drove the global temperature below -50 C. After a few 10's of thousands of years enough CO2 from volcanoes and dust and others caused a massive greenhouse effect which melted the ice and increased the global temperature by over 100 deg C in as little as 50 (thats fifty) years. After the biosphere was releaseed it was able to accomidate to the changes and tamp down the extremes.
#6 I was referencing the size quoted in the original comment. But as I already proved, smaller will be less stable, harder to maintain and more prone to accidents.
#7 Countries are actually VERY easy to leave. I can leave this country today if I want. The issue is taking the land with you. Once all the planets have been made into the cylinders, don't you think someone will object to one group trying to split one up? Remeber the Civil war was fought with a huge unexplored and availible bit of land nextdoor but they decided to fight over their current homes instead.
#8 Do you really beleive socialism is the route of all evil? Take a look at the Gilded age in the US... Take a look at the feudal system... All of one system NEVER works. We need a balanced system of capitalism to create the energy and vitality, socialism to protect the weak and the occasional dictatorship to keep things dynamic. If biology and evolution has taught us anything it is that thoes who fail to adapt will perish.
The most charitable interpretation of of your comment that I can stomach is that you mean "root language" in a non-standard way. Anything else would be wholly ignorant of basic historical and linguistic facts.
Where I come from (i.e., in linguistics), English is regularly referred to as a Germanic language. In English literature courses, professors in the know will tell you that, while most of our long words come from Latin through French, the short words and the structure are derived from German. There are divergences - e.g., in German one can say Einen Brief schreibt er seiner Mutter but not the word-for-word English version A letter writes he his mother - but they're accounted for and often accompanied by complementary changes elsewhere in the language. The very history of the development of the English language and people points to the influence of German (despite what this guy apparently thinks).
To me, all of this says "root language." Mere temporal separation isn't enough to remove that relation, as you seem to suggest. Beyond that, I have no clue what you seem to mean by the same phrase, so I won't hazard a guess.
So you can laugh all you want to...
......Our galaxy *should* be littered by millions of civilizations........
/.er has the time to do a rough estimate what the probability is that only these factors be met. There surely are other factors not mentioned above.
Carbon is the only central element we know of that can make the extremely complex molecular constructs we find in living things. A "rock" like ours has to have a minimum set of specifications in order to have life capable of anything we could call "civilization".
1.0 One major requirement that this rock must have no other star closer than about 3.8 light years besides its "sun". Another sun sized star closer than about 3.8 light years would mess up that rock's orbit and make the long term climate there inhospitable to life. Only about half of all the stars in the whole universe qualify on this distance specification.
2.0 The gravity at the surface of the planet must be right. Too strong gravity causes the atmosphere to contain too much methane and ammonia, both very poisonous to life. It also makes it hard to move, especially flight. Too little gravity will produce a planet like Mars with little air and water.
3.0 The mass of that star has to be just right. Too large a star would causes its energy output vary more than living things could stand. The energy output of huge stars is not stable, long term. Any life would be exterminated by cooking or freezing before it could get very far along. A too tiny star would force that rock to be too close to its star to get enough heat for life. This would mess up the rotation time, tending to make a day and a year about the same length, such as the planet Mercury. Also there would be excessive tidal forces that would be hard on higher civilized life.
5.0 The rotation time of such a rock could not be too different from that of our earth. If that rock rotates more slowly, then everything would freeze solid every night and cook during the day. A faster spin would make for terrific storms in the atmosphere all the time, preventing the formation of higher civilized society. The rotational speed of Saturn and Jupiter are very high and the winds in its atmosphere are phenomenal. (hundreds of miles per hour)
6.0 Ratio of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere is critical. Too much oxygen would make life functions run too fast and allow any fires to burn whole continents over in devastating fire storms. Too little oxygen would not allow much meaningful activity, because life processes would proceed too slowly. Any other gases, if present in more than trace amounts could also prevent the development of life.
7.0 The crust (outer solid layer) of such a rock has to be the right thickness. If it were too thick, most of the oxygen in the atmosphere would be tied up in it, leaving too little free for living things. Too thin a crust would result in too many severe earthquakes and volcanoes would make it quite difficult to develop any advanced civilization. The crust of our own rock is thinner than the skin on an onion at the relative scale.
8.0 The chemical binding energies of carbon dictate the wavelengths of light needed by living things (photosynthesis in plants on our own rock) that convert the light from the star into a suitable form to knit hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and other elements together as building blocks and fuel for all life forms. The spectrum of that rock's star must therefore be pretty close to that of our sun. Blue or red giants or dwarfs need not apply for the job.
Conclusion: To get a suitable rock upon which a civilization can develop and flourish requires a number of fortuitous "coincidences". On a random basis, this makes the chance of another rock like ours very small. Maybe some enterprising
All theory is gray