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Our Solar System: Rare Species In Cosmic Zoo
astroengine writes "Pulling from 20 years of research since the first discoveries of planets beyond our solar system, scientists have concluded that Earth and its sibling worlds comprise what appears to be a relatively rare breed in a diverse cosmic zoo that includes a huge variety of planet sizes, orbits and parent stars. The most common systems contain one or more planets one to three times bigger than Earth, all orbiting much closer to their parent stars than Earth circles the sun, says astronomer Andrew Howard, with the University of Hawaii."
That's because the current methods used to detect exoplanets are biased towards large close in planets. As technology progresses we will get more diversity.
We're still really bad at detecting planets that are NOT bigger than Earth and orbiting much closer to their parent stars? Seriously, whether we use light occlusion or observing the star's wobble, this is the only type of planet we know how to detect.
Turns out if you're color blind, red and green are very rare and special colours.
I was under the impression that this was agreed to be due to observation bias. That is, it's a hell of a lot easier to find planets bigger than Earth orbiting at frequent, highly periodic intervals than to find anything else.
I think that the main issue is that people see the TV shows and movies and think that "life" has to look like that.
But those are just theatrics so that human actors can play the parts. Look at the variations of life on Earth. From whales to worms.
Are you telling me that the galaxy isn't full of people who grow lumps of rubber on their heads?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The problem isn't that there are no planets in more distant orbits; it's that the Kepler Space Telescope is designed to detect occultations, when a planet passes between the star and us. I am frankly ASTONISHED that Kepler has discovered SO MANY planets in so close to the parent star, but a civilization in the Tau Ceti or even Alpha Centauri system would never be able to detect the Earth - because none of our planets ever occult the Sun from their viewpoint.
Look up in the night sky, and imagine those distant (and very hypothetical!) civilizations orbiting those many, many stars and trying to find US.. Using a Kepler-type telescope, ONLY civilizations that are pretty darn close to the ecliptic would be able to detect OUR solar system.
For Kepler to have discovered so many planets, there must be planetary systems around virtually every star out there. There may be a trillion stars in the Milky Way. If only one in a million planets host anything even remotely resembling "life", there must be a million planets with some form of life.
Which was why Roddenberry did it that way, I saw an interview with him once where he was asked why all his aliens were forehead aliens instead of anything exotic and he pointed out 1.-The exotic aliens on Dr Who looked like crap, and 2.-90% of an actor's craft is done with his face and when you can no longer see the actor's face he can no longer convey emotion. Joss Whedon said the same thing when asked why he got rid of the cool "American Werewolf" in the first season for a classic wolfman, he said all the animated wolf could do was snarl, it couldn't be scared or show pain or any emotions whereas Seth Green could make you feel for the monster by putting bits of the man into the performance.
As for TFA, to quote Ian Malcolm "Life finds a way". Just look at how there is life on this planet in some of the most hellish places, like thermal vents on the bottom of the ocean. I remember reading an article talking to the guys that went down so deep in the Marianas trench and one of the things they were talking about was how you had flat fish even down that deep. To say that our planet is so far unique for supporting our monkey asses is fine and dandy but anybody who thinks that means there couldn't be life on those because we wouldn't survive is just being arrogant. This is why i support exploring the oceans of Europa with a probe, from what we saw the oceans under the ice are warm and flowing, if there is any place in our own solar system that would have life my money would be on Europa.
The problem isn't that there may or may not be life out there, the problem is even in our own galaxy the space is just so damned vast that just saying hello could take 10 million years. Until we can find a way around that pesky little relativity thing we are just pulling ideas out of our asses because with our best telescopes its the equivalent of stepping out a single inch, our reach is just too small when compared to just what is in our own galaxy, much less the thousands of other galaxies, that for all we know earth like planets are a dime a dozen, there just aren't any in the few feeble inches we can reach out with our current tech.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.