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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."
My blog
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
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.
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.
I'm all for shipping grammar nazis off to the most distant rock available.
;)
By the way, it's "later", not "latter"
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.
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 ...
> (Sorry to pick on you but your statments are a bit too Malthusian for the facts.)
:)
> We are going to develop a reliable renewable energy source (probably fusion and solar) before we trully "run out."
And yours are too optimistic. We've been in technological stagnation since 2000 and it's only going to get worse from now on. Research is not a high priority during a depression, and we are definitely heading for one now. I rather doubt we'll have fusion. For one, nobody is seriously working on it. The few projects in existence are just token government efforts "to be doing something". I do not expect them to succeed.
> Plus the mined resources aren't gone...they are in buildings.
Yes, they are. They are also in dirt. The reason we have ore mines is not that iron doesn't exist anywhere else, but that it's concentrated there and is in an easily extractable form. Abandoned skyscrapers will indeed have iron, but at a very low density. Most of it is embedded in concrete as rebar, making it very hard to extract by hand, and impossible to extract on industrial scale. The iron that's out in the open will rust after a few decades of exposure. How long will your house stand if you never fix roof leaks? Once it's rusted, the energy required to extract it becomes enormous. Industrial ores today are sulfides, which are easily melted. Melting rust is very very difficult by comparison.
> they are just harder more expensive to tap.
But that's the whole point. To us they are too expensive to tap now. To a civilization at 12th century level of technology it is impossible to reach at any cost. In fact, even that level requires abundant metal to reach. With all the surface metal gone, civilization might not be able to leave stone age. How will you build a modern mine with a flint axe and a wooden shovel? Or an oil well under the sea? The further you fall, the harder it becomes to climb back. If our civilization falls into stone age, it would quite likely just stay there.
> Actully whe have more proven reserves now than we did 50 years ago,
I would take the official "proven reserves" figures with a very large grain of salt. Some of them are just guesses. Others are outright lies. No, I don't have links, sorry
......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