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Earth-Like Planets In Our Neighborhood
goran72 sends in a story out of the Chicago AAAS meeting contending that Earth-like planets with life-sustaining conditions may be spinning around stars in our galactic neighborhood — we just haven't found them yet. "'So I think there is a very good chance that we will find some Earth-like planets within 10, 20 or 30 light years of the Sun,' astrophysicist [Alan Boss]... told his AAAS colleagues meeting here since Thursday. ... The images from those new planets, he added, should identify 'light from their atmosphere and tell us if they have perhaps methane and oxygen. That will be pretty strong proof they are not only habitable but actually are inhabited. I am not talking about a planet with intelligence on it. I simply say if you have a habitable world. ... Sitting there, with the right temperature with water for a billion years, something is going to come out of it. At least we will have microbes,' said Boss."
For the last 4 billion years the Earth has shed some 2 billion metric tons of genetic material per day. Solar winds have pressed some of this material more, and some less. Some of this material has been captured by extrasolar objects and carried away. Some of it has been captured by comets over which the sun no longer holds sway. Some of it has been so light and so thin that the solar winds have carried it far from home.
These solar systems polluted by life? How could they not be?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Lately I've been really pessimistic about the whole thing, I mean, really, who cares? Even if there were intelligent life on planets that close, we would only be able to exchange communication once every 10 years, not enough to actually learn their language, and we would never be able to travel to visit them, right?
So realistically, there is not much point except for dreamers and space geeks. Might as well spend the effort here on earth. On the other hand, what if we could travel out there? Wouldn't it be COOL? I might actually meet a girl. Just kidding.
I want to believe that we will be able to travel long distances one day, hyper speed and all that, but it's pretty hard to see how it could happen.
Qxe4
and there may be a treasure chest buried in my back yard... I just haven't found it.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
No question that we can't seem to stop the infection of living conscious - its seems like a good idea to get a little more room. "There goes the neighborhood"....perhaps but honestly, in this twisted world of now, I find myself increasingly relieved by as much space exploration as possible. Perhaps a vicarious thrill or indulging the imagination or wishful thinking....or perhaps an innate instinct to survive elsewhere, in a place without human institutions anachronistic and twisted with human error and befuddlement. 'La Tabla Rasa' - a clean slate - for the messy ascent of men - Like the hope of a new world, that became the discovery of new continents, before it turns into self centered and self destructive human nature infusing itself into society. Whatever....beam me up Scotty....my unemployment runs out in a few weeks and frankly my stimulus package needs a little more stimulatin' or at least I desire a much broader approach to the possibilities of living life in pursuit happiness outside the realm of the obvious, bleaker possibilities....
Our technology as of now is not good enough to detect earth-sized planets at any distance. The discoveries we have made have been due to said planets having specific rare properties of their orbits. So of course, we still have no way to tell how common solar systems like ours are, although we do know it's not almost all of them, quite a few are different, most of the ones we've been able to discover. But we don't know anything about the rest.
'I simply say if you have a habitable world ... sitting there, with the right temperature with water for a billion years, something is going to come out of it. At least we will have microbes,' said Boss.
This is exactly the thing that nobody knows ... how likely is it that life will occur in these conditions? It might be so unlikely that we are the only planet with life despite billions of ideal planets. Until we find at least one other planet with life on it (and sample its genetics to confirm or rule out panspermia) we won't have an answer to this question.
I don't want an Earth-Like planet in my neighborhood because they bring down the property values.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
...is rapidly building Beagles 3 thru 255 in his garden shed, to launch and splat into these new planets. Fly you puppies, fly!
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
'I simply say if you have a habitable world. ... Sitting there, with the right temperature with water for a billion years, something is going to come out of it. At least we will have microbes,' said Boss.
Water is definitely a necessary component to our form of life, however a stagnant pool of water won't produce even microbes in any prompt fashion on a cosmic scale. The moon is as big a contributor to life on Earth as its water, because of how the tide has stirred the water like no other planet we've discovered yet.
This video gives you an idea of how complex molecules like DNA could form over billions of years when such a large water mass is stirred so frequently and consistently. The principle is called cymatics. Google that term, and you'll find some really insightful information, as well as a lot of lofty hipster theories.
One thing's for certain, the ancient Egyptians were all over it. They surely pondered sand dune formations for eons.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
As far as i was aware, it was nothing new to suggest that actually there are quite a lot of planets out there. We know this already from the number we've managed to find, not alot but they hint to many many more especially when you consider the selection effects, and also the arguement about there are so many stars that if even a fraction of them have planets, its a hell of alot of planets. It also seems pretty major jump to suggest that methane and/or oxygen = life, we know F all about how life begins, how it is first formed etc, so we are not really in a position to claim which planets will contain life. The only reason to assume they would have life on those conditions is because it would be even remotely similar to here, it seems similar to looking out your window, seeing a bird and deducing that that bird is present over the whole globe
We better beware!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054511/plotsummary
The chances are that intelligence life is trying to communicate with us thru faster than radio waves communication, like quantum datacom. Maybe when we learn how to read em? =)
I think I just saw youranus, oops, I mean Uranus. Ah, forget it, it was the old lady picking up a hair roller. Too much slashdot's has my eyes going fuzzy.
The idea of a host of extra-solar planets filled with low-order animals or plants is one that is a running theme throughout Issac Asimovs works. Very rarely does he make mention of truly alien species (The Gods themselves showing that he could if he wanted to)
Most of his works involve habitable worlds that were either naturally suited to life or required minimal terraforming from settlers, (See Terminus) and to be honest, this news article just seems to glurge back what Asimov had been writing as far back as the 1940's, only without the excellent storytelling.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
There are plenty of film clips that show the blasts of these things. However, there is never any scale to them. Either the blast is so far away that you can't possibly compare it to scenery or it is footage from high flying planes.
So, out of curiosity, how big are these mushroom clouds anyway?
Obviously, these guys are part of the generation that grew up believing that if you want something badly enough, someone will provide it.
It's disappointing to see otherwise intelligent scientists make so much of so little.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
There is no a priori reason to suppose that earth is a common planet unless you buy into the aliens are everywhere myth.
Just because we have Sony Walkman here on earth, and the conditions needed to make such things exist everywhere else in the universe, it does not follow that Sony Walkman must exist somewhere else. It doesn't even follow that the existence of Sony Walkman are likely somewhere else.
Let's wait and see, and stop letting our imagination carry us away into fantasy land.
"we have no reason to suspect that there is life beyond this planet"
I do, it's called chemistry. Enlightenment in ten minutes, great sound track to boot!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
My guess might have been a wee bit high. What's four or five orders of magnitude among friends, eh?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"They could be in our equivalent of 1750 and we'd never hear a peep."
In fact, they could be our equivalent of 2009 and we'd never hear a peep.
Except for one or two exceptions, no radio signals from Earth are strong enough to be detectable at interstellar distances using the receiving technologies that we use for SETI.
The "exception" is ballistic-missile warning radar, which might be detectable, if it were at the wavelength being searched, and they happened to be looking in the right direction when the Earth happened to be rotated so that the radar pointed the right way. But there's no signal in radar, and even the carrier would be gone when they looked again to follow up, so to a SETI search, it would be tagged "noise"-- most likely a side-lobe of a transient terrestial source, possibly a satellite. (Unless they knew the Earth's rotational period, so they could look again when the signal was aligned their direction.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I think we should protect the earth - our house before find a new planet
There may be life elsewhere, and there may not be.
Just because it is here, and the universe is a big place, it does not follow that life must exist elsewhere.
Any more than there must be a blue stone with my initials carved into it in some other garden on the planet simply because there is one in my garden, and conditions for it to occur in other gardens are favourable.
There is no logic to the arguments being presented for or against. The truth is we don't know, difficult as that is to accept.
Gotta stop farting around with pointless space station projects that are due to be retired just after they're finished and build a real space SHIP. Oh, but thanks to friggin' Carter and now Obama, we can't make better use of nukes. Smooth move, ex lax.
Which tastes like rattle snake, doan cha kno...
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We've already proven the ability to observe from afar, both from a terrestrial setting and via space-bound satellites or probes. We have also proven the ability to launch deep-space probes for extended operation. We need to put the pieces together to establish an ongoing and expanding network of observational probes and relay satellites.
We should start with a series of relay and observation satellites orbiting our sun at equal distance from each other and roughly mid-point between the sun and the outermost planetary orbit. They will have the ability to relay messages between themselves and/or to earth.
Next, deploy a network of permanent observation and communication satellites orbiting each planet, capable of relaying communication periodically to earth via the solar orbit satellites.
Once our solar system "network" is complete, we could branch out via a series of deep space probes, launched in the direction of our most interesting neighbors every n years, where n is determined by the maximum distance where communication is possible between each n and n+1 generation probe or the solar orbit relays.
Essentially, we are extending our network in all directions via a series of (relatively) low-cost unmanned probes/telescopes. We will eventually have the capability to observe and relay details of distant solar systems back to earth in an ongoing manner. Each generation of deep space probes would become more capable and/or more efficient as technology advances. This would continue predictably for generations, supplementing any potential manned inter-stellar mission as a communication backbone.
If the time on board could be augmented by some kind of "hibernation" equivalent, so much the better.
There have been some advances there, too, using of all things: hydrogen sulfide gas.
The real question is, how the hell are we all going to get there?