Slashdot Mirror
The Galaxy May Have Billions of Habitable Planets
The Bad Astronomer writes "A recent astronomical report (abstract in Science) came out stating that as many as 1 in 4 sun-like stars have roughly earth-mass planets. But are they habitable? A simple bit of math based on some decent assumptions shows that there may be billions of potentially habitable worlds in the galaxy. '... astronomers studied 166 stars within 80 light years of Earth, and did a survey of the planets they found orbiting them. What they found is that about 1.5% of the stars have Jupiter-mass planets, 6% have Neptune-mass ones, and about 12% have planets from 3 – 10 times the Earth’s mass. This sample isn’t complete, and they cannot detect planets smaller than 3 times the Earth’s mass. But using some statistics, they can estimate from the trend that as many as 25% of sun-like stars have earth-mass planets orbiting them!' Getting to them, of course, is another problem altogether..."
It's great that we could expand to many different planets. The leap between the Moon, Mars and an extra solar planet is so enormous though that the only thing this tells us is that we may be able to more closely identify where we should listen to for signals.
Yet another reason not to cut NASA's budget
That would seem to make Fermi's paradox even more troubling. My bet is that abiogenesis is vanishingly improbable. It seems pretty reasonable to be fairly optimistic about every other term in Drake's equation.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The High Frontier, Redux - Covers the true scale of the distance between planets, and the energy requirements of going between them. He estimates that sending an Apollo-sized capsule to the nearest star would take as much energy as is produced on Earth in a year.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
But using some statistics,
Uh oh...
Well, there's the Jungle Hypothesis, the Zoo Hypothesis, and I'm sure a few other ones. While lack of proof isn't proof, there's also the possibility that intelligent life in this part of the galaxy only started recently.
Or you know, Reapers.
The Galaxy May Have Billions of Habitable Planets
Or, you know, less than that.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
5x10^-1sagans.
sudo mod me funny
You can put an Earth-sized planet where Pluto is and that's not going to mean anything. Assuming they mean "habitable" from the perspective of humans, the appropriately-sized planet must also be at the sweet spot distance from the Sun for moderate temperatures, have a moon to stabilize rotation for normalized weather patterns, and also produce a strong enough magnetosphere to protect an atmosphere. This is completely ignoring a lot of other factors that come into play as well, but the bottom line is I think it's a little premature to start designating M-class planets.
Apes or angels. If there is other sentient life out there the cosmological timescale makes it a high probability that most of it is either so primitive that it can't have an interplanetary impact of any kind, or so ludicrously advanced that it wouldn't give a rat's ass about a bunch of monkeys who are really impressed with how they can move things around by burning stuff. We're either going to be like a PhD looking at an ant hill or they are. Either way we're probably safe, unless we run into an adolescent god with a magnifying glass, like Trelane "The Squire of Gothos".
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
You take a number which you don't know very well, so you estimate it. Then multiply it by a factor which you really don't know, so you just guess that. Next you multiply the result by another number which you may never know, so you just pull that one out of /dev/random, and multiply them all together.
And wow, you get a result that you like! That's amazing!
With cryo-stasis ships, at least there's a reason to eventually settle somewhere. You want to wake up (or stop taking watches) and eventually start your new life. You can bear the hardships of the journey, because you have a personal goal that you intend to some day fulfill.
The thing about generational ships, is that if they're really self-sufficient and comfortable enough that the early generations don't go mad, then what's the point of landing anywhere? You can say that humans need to expand, but the people onboard won't be able to meet that need, and they're just going to have to cope with such a limited existence. But if they succeed, then that culture will be passed down, so you'll have a whole population that is happy staying in their little box. How can you plan so far into the future and keep the plan intact?
There's a Star Trek episode ("The World is Hollow And I Have Touched the Sky") where the people don't even know they're on such a ship, and the more I think of it, the more realistic and believable that seems. People wouldn't ever be able to stick to such a long-term mission in which they don't personally have any stake, so they might as well not be depended upon to achieve it, or even know it's happening. One single centralized authority with infinite patience (a computer) and a secret and tyrannical agenda, is about the only thing that could keep it going.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.