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Vega Older Than Thought: Mature Enough To Nurture Life
sciencehabit writes about new estimates of Vega's age giving hope that any planets it might have are old enough to harbor life. From the article: "Shining just 25 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, Vega is the fifth brightest star in the night sky. In 1983, astronomers discovered dust orbiting the star, suggesting it had a solar system, and Carl Sagan chose to make Vega the source of a SETI signal in his 1985 novel Contact. At the time, Vega was thought to be only about a couple hundred million years old, probably too young for any planets to have spawned life. Since then, however, estimates of Vega's age have increased to between 625 million and 850 million years old. So suitable planets have probably had sufficient time to develop primitive life."
With improvements in telescopes allowing detection of the rough atmospheric composition of exoplanets on the way, this could be pretty exciting.
... then its a great waste of space!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
I suggest a preemptive Vega strike to wipe out any aliens before they get us first!
That means we've got a jump on the Vegans: in a few short centuries, we can thunder into their backwater planet and vaporize them with lightning bolts from our three-legged lander craft. Hurray!! *We* get to be the bad guys in their SyFy horror films!
At less than a billion years old, it seems unlikely any planets there will have much in the way of life. I'm not really expecting that much excitement.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
by at least billions and billions of years.
Very cool development! I'm really interested to see what else comes about in my lifetime. I was born in '74 and just think about the huge advances in space knowledge that have been made since then. Exciting stuff to come!
In the entire history of the universe we have seen one example of life forming. It boggles the mind that from this one sample scientists think they know when, how, and where life can and can't form in the universe.
Now we have to worry about the Vegan Tyranny. Also the interstellar empire of the same name. Bloody vegans, always trying to take away our bacon!!!!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
but the delivery times from Vega were too long
In the 1980s, the Japanese cartoon Goldorak had the bad aliens come from the planet Vega. Based upon that, we really oughtn't go there.
Suzanne Vega has a daughter. (is there any other Vega?)
Too bad none of you want to live long enough to find out if there is life there or not.
Okay, let's say Vegan slime mold is already broadcasting intelligent radio signals. Talk about your overacheivers. And you thought competing with Asian comp-sci majors was tough.
According to http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_fast_are_modern_space_probes modern probes can travel roughly 39000 miles per hour, or 341640000 (39000*24*365) miles per year. 1 light year = 5.87849981 × 10^2 miles, so it would take about 17206 years (5.87849981 × 10^12 / 341640000) for a probe to get there, and another 25 years for it to send a light signal pattern back to us for us to process. Assuming once at the solar system the probe would be able to determine atmospheric compositions of some of the planets in the solar system, and possibly drop some rovers on a planet and send back some additional data. Might as well send a probe out and write down somewhere that we sent it out. Hopefully in 17k years we remember to look for an answer.
http://interserver.net/
So they can take the term away from hipster vegetarians.
SETI got a reply:
"glub glub glub, bwuurrrrp, glub glub."
Table-ized A.I.
Life timeline on earth (in millions of years ago): Earth formation - 4,600; First life (simple cells) - 3,600; Dinosaurs ~ 300; Humans ~ 2.5; If we use that for comparison, and best case scenario of Vega having something very similar to earth, it is highly unlikely that it can host even the most basic of life forms..
"Just" 25 light years away! Hey that's virtually next door. Let's go for the week-end. Sigh.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
people are getting paid real money to sit around in their underwear guessing which stars have planets and life. While eating Cheetos and drinking Dr. Pepper. I think I just found my next career.
Man Vega, getting kicked out of your parent's house is always sucks, I'm sure you can crash on the milk way's couch if need be.
I, for one, would hate to find out that the Vogons were really Vegans. I hate poetry.
Articles like this drive me crazy. We have no idea how life starts in a solar system. We only have the most remote clue regarding how it arose here on earth. We have absolutely no idea if life exists on other planets in this solar system, there may even be intelligent life here, trapped under ice, or perhaps not caring to talk to us... To suggest any of the ridiculously scant data we have on even the nearest of our neighbor stars is any clue we can use to determine if life is possible there is idiotic. These sorts of articles are the sorts of things that future generations will dig up to laugh at how dumb we were way here in the stupid ages.
A Royale with cheese.
If we grant the reasonable assumption that the laws of physics are the same across the galaxy, then we can combine our "ridiculously scant data" on exoplanets with the information and knowledge we already have about life on Earth and the conditions on Mars and other planets visited by space probes. This is the same as in any crime investigation. By itself, a blood stain would be meaningless. You have to compare it to an existing database of DNA samples and corroborate it with other evidence.
This mean that if there is intelligent bacterial based slime mold inhabiting this solar system it has already heard our broadcasts during the Second War and Korea, watched I Love Lucy, Star Trek and US landings on the moon. Given our propensity for insane behavior they might just be getting ready for a preemptive strike at the Earth with an idea that they got from the first movie with Steve McQueen!
So when life is found there, those wheat germ sucking, soy loving vegans will have to give up their appellation and let it go back to the real Vegans -- the the freindly neighborhood aliens from Vega.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So are we hopeful for a chance of a playdate with some frisky Vegans, is that it? I guess we'd better be hopeful for more than just that, then, like hope that they have an FTL drive?
suggesting it had a solar system
It would make so much more sense, in case of Vega, to write "planetary system."
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
well, MY '73 Vega died after about a year.....
In 1983, astronomers discovered dust orbiting [Vega], suggesting it had a solar system
Am I the only one who thought that quote a little off? Isn't "solar system" the one with the Sun (our star) and 8 specific planets (sorry Pluto, I've finally let you go off the list. I miss you though!).
It would have been better to say "suggesting it had a planetary system".
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Dream on. The greatest distance travelled by a human made object is ~120 AU. Vega is almost 1.6 million AU away.
Vegans have been on planet Earth for decades.
Vegas is old enough to have much immature life.
Just pointing out the obvious.
Now, we *knew* there was life in Vegas, though not necessarily the kind you want to associate with.
On the other hand, I though Vegans were from Vega, since they don't seem to be from this planet, and apparently think they're above, or better, than the rest of us mammals....
mark
Alex Collier has been saying this for years. Not news at all to the informed.
And that was just microbial.