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A Third of Sun-Like Stars May Have Warm Earth Analogs
The Bad Astronomer writes "An astronomer studying data from the first 136 days of the Kepler observatory missions has calculated that as many as 34% of all Sun-like stars (abstract) may have Earth-sized planets orbiting in their habitable zones, where conditions are right for life as we know it. I have some reservations with his numbers, but they do match other studies. There may be 15 billion warm, Earth-sized worlds in our galaxy alone."
A Third of Sun-Like Stars May Have Warm Earth Analogs
Don't worry; our knowledge of superior digital technology will save us.
Thanks -- try the veal! I'm here all week.
H'mm, pretty small crowd for a Thursday. . . .
15 billion, but 0 within reach... So much for that info.
That's the whole "as we know it" part.
It's not that anyone thinks its impossible for life to from under other conditions, but that we do know of one set of conditions that worked. Plus, I always thought habitable meant habitable for humans.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Liquid water is the foundation of a lot of interesting chemistry, and also a good temperature regulator. Life getting by without it would likely have to endure much more significant temperature swings.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Well, we have to send someone to go look for those warm-earth analogs. Eh... why not? Sure.
if you listen to the Mormons, they say that the developers talk to us all the time.
What the developers have to say is all there in the manual. Or at least it's supposed to be. Mormons think there are a bunch of other manuals, and Catholics add a few chapters, but other followers of Christ are under the impression that those manuals are uninspired and misleading.
Given a population of 200-400 billion stars in the Mikly Way, 7.6% are similar to ours for 15-30 billion stars... 1/3 of which would be 5-10 billion stars purportedly hosting planets capable of supporting life as we know it.
Someone asks this damned question EVERY time this topic comes up ... the answer is always the same: We don't know how to look for life that we can't say anything about it's chemical composition.
By looking for liquid water, we limit the search to places where something like us could exist.
How do you propose we look for a life form which has no chemical similarity to us? By your standard, we could look at anything, and say "well, there could be some unfathomable form of life there" ... which doesn't do anything to narrow the field.
Your way isn't science ... it's just pointing and saying "maybe". It has no useful input to actually looking for anything. So, unless you can provide some mechanism still using the scientific method to search for life in the galaxy that DOESN'T look for parameters similar to our own ... it's pretty much a non-starter.
Sure, there could be Jupiter Methane Bats ... and Rigel 7 could be teeming with Silicon Sharks ... but we have no meaningful way to look for them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
As a biochemist, the requirement for liquid water seems somewhat reasonable to me. If you want life, you need a chemistry that supplies a minimum level of complexity - you need information storage, you need thermodynamics that can be balanced quite tightly, and from all our knowledge of chemistry, there is not much room for something like that outside of carbon chemistry in liquid water. I wouldn't categorically rule it out, but it is a pretty good bet.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
You're too short-sighted. It's not about merely killing natives; we want oil, and you need carbon-based lifeforms for oil to form.
How about electing someone who's actually a Christian, and believes the stuff like "love thy neighbor", "do unto others", etc. The people calling themselves Christian now haven't bothered reading anything that Christ taught.
"But, I don't WANT water! Can't you make something with alcohol in it ?!?"
I am scared by people who think people who do believe in god are irrational
And I am honestly scared of being governed by anybody who is familiar with it and still does not get it enough to care.
That's the whole problem with this. The Drake Equation is really nothing more than conjecture, and most of the terms are unknown and probably just plain unknowable (unless you're Q). We might be able to get some values for these terms that are somewhat plausible, but only if we actually start exploring other star systems, so that we could start applying some statistics (e.g., "out of 10 star systems we've explored, all 10 had planets, 8 had planets that could potentially support life, 7 have developed life, and 1 has developed intelligent life"). We'll never figure those things out just sitting here on this planet and never going anywhere.
For "fc", what detectable signs of our existence have we released into space? A few radio transmissions during the dawn of the TV age maybe? That's not much. It's not like we've made some giant structure that aliens could see with a powerful telescope (the way we're now seeing exoplanets) and be able to tell with high certainty that it's artificially-made.
"fp" is probably close to 100%, judging by all the exoplanets that are being discovered around every nearby star these days.
I wonder how many other alien situations are sitting around saying "we must be the only intelligent species in the universe, because no one else has bothered to come visit us", and also saying "space exploration is too expensive and not profitable, so let's not bother. This world will sustain us forever."
The Drake Equation isn't "conjecture" - it's just a way to formulate the question. The numbers you plug into it are largely conjecture at the moment, although we're about to have pretty specific values for many of the elements. This puts some bounds on the final number. The more certain you are regarding each element of the equation, the more tightly bound the final number becomes.