Search For Earth-Like Worlds Focuses On Sun's Siblings

astroengine writes "The search for 'Earth-like' worlds just became even more Earth-like. Researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, have begun the search for the Sun's siblings in the hope that they may play host to exoplanets. Since these stars 'grew up' in close proximity to our Sun inside a stellar nursery some 4.5 billion years ago, they may have shared more than just star-building materials. Through the biology-spreading hypothesis 'panspermia,' they may have also shared the basic building blocks for life. Two sibling candidates have now been found and the researchers hope to survey the two stars — which contain similar metals and are of a similar age to our Sun — for bona fide Earth-like worlds. Could these worlds have life? If they do, extraterrestrial life may have more in common with us than we ever imagined."

Comments

The TV-Theory of Why We Can't Find Life...

[dryriver]

Our TV broadcast signals reached them years ago... They saw Reality TV programs like "Keeping Up With The Kardashians", "Big Brother Austria" and "MTV Teenage Cribs". Horrified, they quickly hid their planets from view with giant cloaking devices, hoping that the Earthlings never find them... ever...

Re:The TV-Theory of Why We Can't Find Life...

[Anonymous Coward]

If a superluminal (or similar) alien society were to first encounter our civilization by our TV transmissions, I anticipate they would be initially intrigued and approach. As they got closer (and thus more recent broadcasts), they would study the sitcoms to understand human behavior and revel at some of the educational content. A few light-years closer and the sitcoms are going downhill, Elmo appears on Sesame Street, and the aliens start growing concerned. A little closer and reality TV sets in, the aliens write off the planet as 'lost potential' and resume their search for the Higgs Boson.

Re:The TV-Theory of Why We Can't Find Life...

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. The old shows like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek (TOS) will intrigue them and make them very interested in humans. When they get close enough to watch Jerry Springer, they're going to either decide our civilization has gone down the tubes, or that we need to be invaded.

At this point, I think occupation by intelligent aliens is probably preferable to ruling ourselves.

Re:The TV-Theory of Why We Can't Find Life...

[Ep0nym0us]

They actually went back home to get MORE warships when they found out what happened to Firefly.

billions of worlds with life

[schlachter]

There are probably billions of worlds with life...and probably millions of worlds with intelligent life...yet the best we can probably ever do is find indirect evidence of their existence. Makes me kind of sad. Still we should continue trying.

Re:Under the street light

[icebike]

And its easier to see under the street light.

QED.

Re:Under the street light

[steelfood]

Your analogy still fails.

It's certainly easier to see under streetlights. But you're not looking for your set of keys that you lost under these streetlights. To look for keys you lost is making the presumption that the keys exist, and that you lost them under the streetlight. In your analogy, you're looking for something specific, a thing you can attach a proper noun to.

What they're doing is more like looking for dicarded chewing gum. You think it exists. You're not looking for any specific piece of chewing gum (though you may be limiting your search by only looking for the red ones). You're looking under the streetlights because it's easier to find what you're looking for there.