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Astronomers Estimate Milky Way May Have 100 Billion Alien Worlds
astroengine writes "Last year, using the exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope as a guide, astronomers took a statistical stab at estimating the number of exoplanets that exist in our galaxy. They came up with at least 50 billion alien worlds. Today, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., and the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration have taken their own stab at the 'galactic exo-planetary estimate' and think there are at least 100 billion worlds knocking around the Milky Way."
Then statistically tell me which planet has Amazonian Women, hot green chicks, and Galactic Girls Gone Wild.
No tentacle monsters though, they will take all our womens!
aren't all worlds, not our own, alien?
Why couldn't I be born to a universe with a less restrictive set of physical laws?!
I put my estimate in at 150 billion. What's the prize if I guess the closest?
100 Billion is likely too low. Based on a survey of close suns using Doppler shift indicated at least 50% had planetary systems of some sort. I think the future will boost this percentage to 90% or better, probably virtually all suns have some kind of orbiting object that could be termed a planet. Depending on where you draw the line on size this makes for probably more than 2 Trillion alien worlds in the Milky Way alone (which is estimated to have 200-400 billion suns).
As for examining Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) more closely it seems there is little point to single them out. So what if we know they have planets -- everywhere you could point a radio dish there are planets. I am a big supporter of SETI and this is all good news for SETI, but it doesn't do anything to narrow the search.
Letter To Iran
I put my estimate in at 150 billion. What's the prize if I guess the closest?
Alien invasion!!! Blerg! We come in pieces, shoot to kill! Take me to your ladder!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Alien life in the universe that we could encounter, depending on the climactic conditions, gravity and atmosphere would be very different from humans to say the least. They would not be all humanoid races that speak english and can walk and act just like humans, they might be boneless creatures like an octopus or evolved dolphins that pilot ships full of water, or something that we have not even encountered yet. Dolphins show amazing intelligence so it is easy to imagine, that if they evolved over the course of millions of years on a remote planet and developed mathematics and science, they could invent space flight. Star Trek had humanoid aliens as standard, but the science fiction of Larry Niven envisaged quite different creatures such as the puppeteers.
Not to forget the even stranger aliens in the book Sundiver by David Brin. Discovery channel one time showed a Jupiter sized Earth like planet that had small creatures crawling along its surface that had to eat continually in order to have enough energy to move in the massive gravity. I am not sure if it is possible for such a large planet to form, most large planets that have been discovered are gas giants. But any alien planet we visited could have alien bacteria that we would not have a immunity to and it could be very dangerous if we brought it back to Earth. So any future space exploration would still require caution.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
as having no intelligent life.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
But the real question is how likely is it to happen during our time in this universe. The chances of it occuring are likely very high, but when it might happen or have already happened could be spans of billions of years. Then there's the question of whether we'd even be able to reach it or communicate with it, given the vast distances.
And as Calvin once said: "The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that it hasn't contacted us yet."
50 billion here, 100 billion there. Pretty soon you're talking big numbers.
Now where are the ruby worlds?
Am I the only one wanting to scream 'Fermi Paradox!' at the top of my lungs whenever the probability of extraterrestrial life is discussed?
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
... probably virtually all suns have some kind of orbiting object that could be termed a planet.
Yeah, whatever. That's what they called Pluto at one time.
And they had the nerve to name it after Mickey Mouse's dog!
Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star.
But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And many--perhaps most--of those alien suns have planets circling them. So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven--or hell.
How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million times farther away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of the next generation. But the barriers of distance are crumbling; one day we shall meet our equals, or our masters, among the stars. "
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Alien life in the universe that we could encounter, depending on the climactic conditions, gravity and atmosphere would be very different from humans to say the least. They would not be all humanoid races that speak english and can walk and act just like humans, they might be boneless creatures like an octopus or evolved dolphins that pilot ships full of water, or [...].
Ships full of water - multiply the difficulties to escape the gravity well by about 1000.
Imagine developing metallurgy and special ceramics (I reckon these would be needed for at least propulsion) in/under water...
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
In a couple years kepler will have sufficient data so we can estimate the number of rocky worlds in habitable zones, that's what is most interesting to me. Once we find such worlds, we'd need to fund the type of probe that can analyze atmosphere, life as we know it does a very detectable transformation. Then step up our optical SETI efforts in those world's directions (they won't use radio waves, sorry microwave SETI dudes....)
1 planet Bob.
I recently had the misfortune of meeting some extraterrestrial aliens from outer space right here on earth.
I have not much time now, but I'll jot down what I can.
They were very enthusiastic. They explained how wonderful it was to find a planet with the temperature and the water and the magnetic field and the life and the intelligence and the technology and ... advertising(!?) .
They we're an ancient species, homeless since eons. They had been scouring space, looking for intelligent life that could scratch their itch.
Their itch is having control. They get off on manipulation. They crave displays of advertising and propaganda, whatever moves masses to act against their own self-interest, or something.
They have evolved telepathy. It is the result of a million years of marketing, the art of lying, the pinnacle of manipulation.
I would describe them as psychopathic and sadistic. I think they want to enslave people for the joy of seeing a living, feeling life form manipulated.
They had me devising marketing campaigns. I escaped. Other ET:s helped me. I'll tell about it later. I'm too upset now to be very coherent, maybe.
I have to go now. I do not want to be anywhere near these creatures. Watch out for the mindfuckers!
(Or did I dream it?)
There is at least one rocky body (planet or moon) with liquid water and equal or lesser mass than 1.5 Earths in the habitable zone around over 80% of all the stars currently within 10,000 lightyears of Sol.
Now what are you going to do about it?
-D'all rth p'targh
you're really upset at being downmod for a two word post?
something tells me you need to reinforce your ego somehow - it's looking a bit fragile.
Ships full of water - multiply the difficulties to escape the gravity well by about 1000.
Imagine developing metallurgy and special ceramics (I reckon these would be needed for at least propulsion) in/under water...
Who said the ship needs to be full of water. given many of the oceanic creatures on earth only the breathing apparatus needs to meet the creatures environmental requirements. Isn't it entirely possible to create a space suite for an aquatic organism in the same way we have pressure suits for humans?
Your second point is much more interesting. I the best guesses I can come up with are either do it on land using machines (in the same way we use submersibles to work under the sea) or have an entirely different method of smelting and fabrication that we've never considered.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Wasn't this already covered by Arthur C Clarke, Carl Sagan and a myriad of other great astronomers? This is not surprising. What I want is to have them find an Earth Like planet. I want the existence of Alien humanoid life to be confirmed.
That's just the number of possible planets in our galaxy. If you take a rough estimate of galaxies we can see as 500 billion, in other words a galaxy for every star in the Milky Way, and those are just the ones we can see.
Okay, 500 billion galaxies, 100 billion exoplanets per galaxy, which is probably conservative. I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's at least one other earth-like planet out there.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Plus the difficulty of developing technology if you don't have hands
Alien life in the universe that we could encounter, depending on the climactic conditions, gravity and atmosphere would be very different from humans to say the least.
Not proven until we meet one.
They would not be all humanoid races that speak english....
Star Trek did not portray this.
Dolphins show amazing intelligence so it is easy to imagine..
No, it is not easy to imagine. Dolphins lack the dexterity to build a space ship. We may find out that any given species rarely (if ever) reach space unless they meet certain other criteria like opposable thumbs and originate from a planet where it's easy to start a fire. We don't know what all is involved in inspiring a species to leave the planet, just that it likely requires a complex series of events.
It's easy to jump to the conclusion that every planet that sports life will create a random space faring civilization species. However, to put things into a more realistic perspective, consider that this planet has created over a hundred million species of life and only one has intentionally gone into orbit.
Star Trek had humanoid aliens as standard...
No, they did not. The 'humanoid' races were explained by one species that seeded our area of the galaxy with similar genetic material. Elsewhere in the series, the Federation was accused of really only allowing humanoids to join.
We just don't know.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
And with fins instead of fingers
EOM
everyone knows they'll ignore us until we have warp capability.
2 weeks to the Moon?
9 months to Mars? lol.
in other words, one for every star...
I think the issue is how does this water creature develop fire and metal smelting in the first place (you know bronze and iron age level) - once they have technology working around it is easy, the tricky bit would be developing that technology in the first place.
Probably no life on other planets. Extra terrestrial life is a concept that became popular in the 60's and 70's pseudo-science new age period. During this time there were many crazy theories ranging from dolphin cities to crystal healing. The Drake equation came from this era.
The calculus of events that came to form life and then intelligence is unique. Our egos are more evolved then our intelligence. Recent theories are intelligence evolved from the part of the brain that controls speech. It is easy to forget that everything came from somewhere. I have noticed an "adam and eve" view of intelligence in that intelligence "popped" into existence.
Also, the belief in extra terrestrial life is too closely related to common religions ideas. The passionate belief in something that has never had a single shred of evidence is called faith. Theoretical physics, evolution, and paleontology all exist on theory as well but are based on observable evidence; they are examples of "soft science"; ideas that are constantly and purposely making past ideas obsolete. The search for extra terrestrial life does not fall into this category.
I think the issue is how does this water creature develop fire and metal smelting in the first place (you know bronze and iron age level) - once they have technology working around it is easy, the tricky bit would be developing that technology in the first place.
You can create fire underwater, it's a different chemical process to on land.
Besides, you dont need fire for smelting, you simply need heat and there are plenty of active underwater volcano's on earth as well as other heat sources.
Needless to say, an aquatic civilisation would develop things in radically different ways to the way we have.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Ships full of water - multiply the difficulties to escape the gravity well by about 1000.
Who said the ship needs to be full of water.
The GP post did - straight copy/paste citation: ... they might be boneless creatures like an octopus or evolved dolphins that pilot ships full of water, or something that we have not even encountered yet
given many of the oceanic creatures on earth only the breathing apparatus needs to meet the creatures environmental requirements.
I really doubt it (the only part of it). E.g. reverse the situation and imagine yourself travelling for years in a complete suit that wouldn't allow you to clean you skin.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Wouldn't matter that much you if have tentacles.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
what about tentacles?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Man, that episode sucked, but it was some brilliant meta-humor lampooning the anticlimactic ending of the episode.
Basically, a guy dies, leaving clues to a big mystery. Piccard, as well as a Klingon crew and Cardassian crew are all in competition to independently solve this mystery, hoping for gold or secret mega-weapons.
They all solve the mystery at once and meet at the same place where the secret is finally activated: It is a hologram of a proto-humanoid, describing(in English) how their race seeded their genetic material across the galaxy and that they are the common ancestor of all humanoid races.
Afterward, perfect comedic silence before the Cardassian says, "That's it?!" The Klingon captain responds with, "If she were not dead, I would kill her myself!"
Jeeze.
Why not just call it what it is?
An ass-pull number.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
My favourite example at the moment is Solaris (the book by Lem, not the new movie I've never seen or the old one I can't remember). In that example humanity has spent a lot of resources over a century trying to understand WTF is some connection between themselves and the alien/s and at that point even the human experts have trouble communicating to each other about the subject. Meanwhile the aliens seem to be trying to communicate as well but despite Godlike powers and the ability to create human shaped avatars with human thoughts about all they can do is confuse people and their own avatars.
I think the theme was that aliens are not going to be some guy with a weird accent and a funny hat, but instead something we can't understand without vast amounts of time and effort.
The final season of Enterprise dealt primarily with the Xindi, one of the Xindi races (5 different sentient species on one planet) were spacefaring water creatures that weren't humanoid, and flew in ships filled with water, this fact was not particularly shocking or foreign to the captain of Enterprise, nor his highly experienced Vulcan crewmate. But also the Federation are a bunch of bigots who only let humanoids in anyway.
And if you had tentacles your technology would only need to reach the stage where you can trap helpless human females.
you're really upset at being downmod for a two word post?
concise wisdom?
You do realize that only the humans in Star Trek spoke English, right? Everyone used universal translators to reduce communications problems. They just didn't portray it the way some other sci-fi has; for instance, in the movie Dune, in the first scene, when the Guild Navigator meets with the Emperor, his helpers speak first using a mechanical device that translates their language, and you can hear both. Star Trek just eliminates that for budget reasons and to avoid distracting viewers.
Besides, 300+ years in the future it's quite possible we won't be speaking English at all, or it might be very different from what we speak now. With any sci-fi that's in English and set in the future, you might as well assume that all the dialog has been translated into modern English for the benefit of the reader. I believe the Dune series (set 10,000 years in the future) even explicitly says they use a different language, or several in fact, but the characters' dialog is still in modern English so that the author didn't have to invent a new language like Tolkein's Sindarin.
Ships full of water - multiply the difficulties to escape the gravity well by about 1000.
Perhaps these hypothetical aliens captured a comet, send their ships into orbit unmanned, and then thaw the comet's water, adding it to their ships in an environment of minimal gravity.
Or perhaps they're massively technologically advanced, and they have technology to defy gravity, so getting tons of water into orbit is trivial.
even with so many alien worlds.. the chance of intelligent life coexisting in multiple star systems is virtually zero.... and even if that were to beat those odds.. the chance those interstellar societies find each other and communicate with each other is even smaller yet.
100,000,000,001.
Hope I win!
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
Speaking of gas giants, it's relatively easy to imagine an ecosystem of blimp-like creatures floating around on one in a way similar to how plankton do in Earth's ocean.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
An aquatic version of That Darn Cat. http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/That_Darn_Cat/70026374?trkid=2361637
You do realize that only the humans in Star Trek spoke English, right?
Well... humans and really nerdy Klingons.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Is it a process a dolphin would be able to do, without using anything directly or indirectly made on land?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Except they didn't work 100%. Gakkamok, when his car wouldn't start. Turdnik, cursing his wifi card. Or something.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I feel like there must be something to your comment, and I wish I'd seen that movie recently enough to remember anything about it.
[Note: This post is utterly sincere. I have seen that movie, but probably not within the last 20 years, so I have no idea what the context is.]
I don't quite get this. Isn't it true that what they are detecting is evidence that the planets/etc *used to* exist? ... and quite a long time ago too.
What's to say that they still exist now? ...and how long would it take us to get there? I guess there's no chance we can get there at all.
Max.
What is the point of even trying to quantify it?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
100 billion in just 5000 years! That is two worlds every three seconds. God must be working very hard to create them.
Well, 640 billion should be enough for anybody...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I read lips and can tell you that, indeed, everyone spoke English in Star Trek.
The DS9 episode Little Green Men, shows Quark and Roms' universal translators fail, so we see them picking through each others' ears trying to "reset" them talking in Ferengi while USAF personnel look on in amusement.
DS9 was really good at bringing back that old-skool camp, especially in this scene.
And I'm stuck on THIS one. *sigh*
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The cat was an alien. Without possible thumbs, instead of developing manual tools that require hands, they developed other technologies that avoided the need for hands. Primarily, telekinesis devices, and thus defying gravity. The movie wasn't terribly deep, but there it was.
1. We're not going. 2. They're not coming. 3. This is it - so please do a better job of taking care of the place.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Oooooooh.
Yes, now I remember. Thanks. I wish I hadn't required the explanation.
We have some data points on exoplanets... that's great and you can probably start estimating the numbers in the galaxy from that.
Right now someone is trying to come up with a way to estimate life or even intelligent life or even star spanning civilizations. Don't do that until we have actual data... please... Drake's equation has done enough damage.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I have eyes, and I can tell you that what the show claimed to be starships flying in space and firing phasers were in fact actually models, with late 80s-quality special effects added on top in crappy NTSC resolution.
We are not putting a serious effort to get man out there!
Yeah, some probes etc. but lunar landing was over 40 years ago ffs!
Space exploration budgets are quite miniscule compared to war effort. Thanks for us being so aggressive with each other, we are not getting ahead as a race and going exploring the vast riches available in the galaxy.
Where would we be now if NASA budget would have remained at the 60s level?
What if all countries in the world would put in even some kind of effort in to it? I'd bet the cost to get to orbit would be really small compared to what it is now.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
There is no life out there on any of them, the billions here in this galaxy or on any of the others in the billions of other galaxies. Now go back to work and pay your taxes.
were in fact actually models, with late 80s-quality special effects added on top in crappy NTSC resolution.
They purposely made it look like that, because they knew 20th century humans would panic if they realized it was real.
What you call late-80's crappy effects are in fact high-tech hologram projections purposely made to look fake.
I read lips and can tell you that, indeed, everyone spoke English in Star Trek.
Wrong. If you actually watched the show, you'd know why.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
How many Libraries of Congress is that?
Well, you could become Supreme Overlord of the Amazonian Women, hot green chicks, and Galactic Girls Gone Wild Planet
Try Robert Forward's Camelot 30K: A species with a nuclear-powered metabolism at near absolute zero on a Kuiper belt object.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
There's also an argument that nature seems to "copy". Once it has done something, it seems to do it again more quickly. Now Star Trek was written to not be so alien looking that the audience couldn't relate to it. And I do get bored with endless forehead-ridge variations. Trek was like that for reasons of TV writing. But humanoids, or things that are sorta upright with four limbs, might be quite common anyway, simply because nature seems to repeat stuff. We might imagine some small change early on in evolution that would have made a very different outcome millions of years later, but life seems also pretty stable, in that, it sorta keeps to a pattern for a long time, then suddenly something changes and the new pattern spreads rapidly, but then it stays the same for a long time, and so on. I don't know if people know why and how patterns in nature spread rapidly. Like, suddenly there is a new species. (I'm not being creationist *spit* *spit* and there is this photocopier-like behaviour which suggests some additional blind and automatic mechanisms which we don't know about, or that we're somehow overestimating how many paths are actually available in the system). It is the "stays the same" and "copies" part that might suggest that alien worlds are similar to Earth. Why? Because Earth isn't special and because nature made it happen here, so we know it can happen, and therefore it is probably happening in a similar way elsewhere. (Of course I wouldn't bet on what aliens look like, but seeing as they're out there across the vast expanse of space, expecting them to be completely different, following a different path, is one view, but expecting them to be very similar, because nature and the universe "likes" to copy stuff, is another.)
Actually, you just reminded me of that creature that can create explosions powerful enough to generate plasmas. Under water.
It might not be too far fetched at all.
The right conditions and right mutations, bam, a race that develops in the water, a place that is almost impossibly hard to externally develop as a species.
That is essentially the main reason species don't develop far underwater. It is anti external development for the most part.
The water limits the things a species can do with tools, with materials.
No vision also hinders hugely. Even if they have echo-location. What happens when they get to the surface? Space?
It could very well be that all of the species that eventually went to land were the ones that did become externally intelligent to their surroundings.
We know humans are capable of echolocation for a start. We should test completely unrelated species to see if they are.
Not impossible. But extremely hard to imagine happening. Same with life evolving using things different than something like DNA, it is highly stable. And with the recent thoughts on that TNA, it makes life even easier to come about due to the lower energies needed.
Besides, 300+ years in the future it's quite possible we won't be speaking English at all, or it might be very different from what we speak now.
No wa, dood. Well be speekn just t sam as we alwys did... jst shortr cuz were all usin wee wee kbds.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
Besides, you dont need fire for smelting, you simply need heat and there are plenty of active underwater volcano's on earth as well as other heat sources.
I say good luck to stone age water dwelling alien dolphinoids when it comes to getting to the bronze and iron age, since the heat transfer properties of water are going to be a real bitch to work around when it comes to smelting in those volcanic vents. It's not like working near a hot fire in air, which in some cases is already problem enough.
Maybe with a long enough stick with something on the end they might be able to smelt, but some of those forging processes in metal tool-making aren't going to be that obvious nor easy to work out.
I know it's an estimate but as we know, estimates have this way of being very conservative. So it means there's probably life elsewhere in just the Milky Way.
Granted, it might be single celled life, but it's life!
Yeah obviously the milky way has something like 100000000000 planets. I mean how hard is that to guess? It's just 1 followed by a load of zeroes.
Will we run out of IP addresses again when all those worlds are connected to the same network?
No i'm happy with SlashDot
"I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
-Calvin & Hobbes
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
It's called "Mapping".
And if that's too slow for you, discover them at a faster rate.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
haha, someone is angry for being modded down because of their 2 word troll.
GTFU
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"100 Billion Alien Worlds" - Yay! Sounds much more optimistic than "100 Billion Lifeless Rocks"...
And if you had tentacles your technology would only need to reach the stage where you can trap helpless human females.
In which case you would need technology to travel to Earth. Problem solved, alien tentacle creatures must be able to produce advanced technology.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
STFU
Probably no life on other planets. Extra terrestrial life is a concept that became popular in the 60's and 70's pseudo-science new age period. During this time there were many crazy theories ranging from dolphin cities to crystal healing. The Drake equation came from this era. The calculus of events that came to form life and then intelligence is unique. Our egos are more evolved then our intelligence. Recent theories are intelligence evolved from the part of the brain that controls speech. It is easy to forget that everything came from somewhere. I have noticed an "adam and eve" view of intelligence in that intelligence "popped" into existence. Also, the belief in extra terrestrial life is too closely related to common religions ideas. The passionate belief in something that has never had a single shred of evidence is called faith. Theoretical physics, evolution, and paleontology all exist on theory as well but are based on observable evidence; they are examples of "soft science"; ideas that are constantly and purposely making past ideas obsolete. The search for extra terrestrial life does not fall into this category.
On the other hand, they might be physically 100 times smaller on a planet with less gravity, be far more durable to the effects of radiation, and have a more efficient means of sustenance. It's possible they don't have to haul as much into space to stay alive. All that would add up to their trip to space being actually far *easier* than ours.
http://xkcd.com/638/
Not as odoriferous as Uranus.
cogito ergo dubito
[...] but the characters' dialog is still in modern English so that the author didn't have to invent a new language like Tolkein's Sindarin.
That, and requiring potential readers to learn an entirely new language just to understand all character dialog would guarantee limited success...
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
[...] We don't know what all is involved in inspiring a species to leave the planet, [...]
Yes we do: Amazonian Women, hot green chicks, Galactic Girls Gone Wild and snu snu.
Have you not been paying attention?