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Only 8% of the Universe's Habitable Worlds Have Formed So Far (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: According to a new study, 92% of Earth-like planets haven't been born yet. Science reports: "Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers estimated the rates of past star and planet formation in the universe, which is now about 13.8 billion years old. They then combined that information with data from previous surveys that estimated the amounts of hydrogen and helium left over from the big bang that still haven't collapsed to form stars. At the time our solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago, only about 39% of the hydrogen and helium in our galaxy had collapsed into clouds that then evolved into stars, they say. That means that the remaining 61% is available to form future solar systems that may include Earth-like planets in their habitable zones, the researchers report online today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In the universe as a whole, the researchers suggest, only 8% of its original starmaking gases was locked up in stars by Earth's first birthday. The rest will, over the remaining trillions of years of the universe's lifetime, coalesce into stars whose solar systems will contain a myriad of Earth-like planets."
how about 99.999999%--yet? what's the time-line?
This makes me wonder how many planets (as a percentage or otherwise) were around when the background temperature of the universe was in the 40-100 degrees Fahrenheit range where water would be most amenable to life. You could make an argument that period of time would contain the best conditions for life. However, if there aren't many planets (let alone with an appropriate size, temperature, and atmosphere), it makes life kinda hard.
There is only so much gas that will become stars, most of it will forever float in the space between galaxies. The timeline is 100Gyr-1Tyr.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
92% of this story is speculation based on a minuscule sample
compared to the rest of the universe were still primitive cave dwellers
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It says in the summary: trillions of years. Eventually the Universe will cease to exist.
This could help explain the Fermi Paradox: we are simply early-birds. However, this then creates a Copernican Paradox: it's unlikely that we are the earliest or latest: the chance of being on the edges of the bell curve is low (or even a roughly rectangular curve). We are more likely to be approximately in the middle.
This could mean if there were a lot of intelligent species, they'd probably conquer each other. Thus, a middle-age universe would be a hostile place. A curve of universal intelligent population would thus be an initial spike and then a drop-off as aggressive species or machines spread and kill.
This would make our existence at this time less "special": we are merely part of the early population boom (spike) before nasty happens and reduces the population of the universe. Doesn't bode well for the future, though.
If the future were about humans spreading and populating the universe, we'd more likely be one of those mass spreaders (as a randomly selected intelligent being in space and time). We are not. (Hell, we may not even survive ourselves, let alone aliens.)
Better hope Copernicus is wrong and we are in a lucky or special place or time.
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe that's why it's so quiet out there?
I guess we might get first dibs on becoming galactic conquerors...of under-developed planets.
In some distant future, as life evolves on distant worlds, WE would be the advanced civilization! Visiting in our "Flying saucers", and studying primitive cultures who where only at that point learning the sciences that we ourselves understand today. So let's prepare for that future and advance anal probe tech as fast as we can! I can think of a dozen companies that already have the research underway.
Kidding! This is actually Planet Timeshare! NOW INVEST FUCKERS!
And your first clear date will be a between 2 and 3PM local equatorial time on the third Monday of the month, approximately half a billion years from now...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
As a sentient Galactic Species!
Most likely due to dark matter.
First, it isn't clear where the author of the article gets the "trillions of years" lifespan of the universe. Most of hypotheses I've read so far put the heat death at less than a few tens of billions of years, some as early as five billion years. The cited article does not make this claim, although it does make the 92% habitable planets yet to be born claim. So I guess the implication is there would be extremely rapid star and planetary formation in the next few billion years. A kind of last big hurrah before it all goes cold.
The practical application of such a study eludes me though. Given that it takes billions of years for a planet to form and become habitable (to humans), as a species we would likely die out long before ever being able to visit such worlds, or meet an indigenous life form that would evolve on such.
It seems kind of like projecting how many humans have yet to be born until the Earth is no longer habitable (assuming no other factors at play) and stating something like, all of the humans that have ever been born amount to less than .001% of all the humans that will ever be born. It's interesting, but what do we do with that information?
I'm thinking the most interesting part isn't the 92% figure, but rather the rate of formation from which it is derived. Plotting the projection of how many habitable worlds there should be at any given moment, and matching that to our current rate of interstellar exploration for a given number of light years has some practical applications. But given our rate of information gathering and understanding, I'm guessing we make interstellar travel feasible in the next 500-1000 years; which isn't even a tick of the clock in planetary formation time scales.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
You cannot have "a myriad" of anything. Myriad is synonymous with "countless". So just like you wouldn't have a countless of earth-like planets, you wouldn't have a myriad of earth-like planets. You can have myriad earth-like planets, however.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Oh FFS.
How many universes are there? The one we can see part of (due to the speed of light) or many? If one can form why not two, or two zillion. Just because we can't see them they don't exist? Can you even hypothesize a rule that creates UNIQUELY ONE and ONE universe only? No?
Right, so if there are more than one, why would they exist in a bubble? Separate, with distinct space. This whole idea that space didn't exist till the universe was created, then it creates the dimensions.... well if we're not the only universe and we're likely not the first, then space existed before us, and Universes don't create their own dimensional space.
So, if the universe does not exist in a bubble, then there is no such thing as *1* distinct universe, parts of the edge of our universe will head off and interact and become parts of other universes. They'll get sucked into other universes super massive black holes etc..
So saying that 92% of the inhabitable planets in OUR universe have yet to be created, makes a bunch of implausible assumptions about the special ONENESS of our Universe.
Well, not cease to exist, but get so diffuse that the formation of stars, or even molecules, will become vanishingly unlikely.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So 61% of all the pain, struggle, and deprivation in the Universe hasn't even happened yet. Depressing.
> This could help explain the Fermi Paradox: we are simply early-birds.
We're not so early that we wouldn't expect a lot of other civilizations. Something on the order of 1 out of every 13 civilizations should've been born by now, in theory.
So we end up being the Elders, the old and wise species of the this universe, even as we fantasize us not being one. The feeling of responsibility, it's killing us!
Species could never conquer each other. The distances between planets are too vast. By the time you arrived at the planet, the civilization would have ceased to exist. Space is big. Really big. You might think it is a long way to the chemist, but that is just peanuts to space.
Not necessarily. Say you undertook a planetary-scale effort and built a spacecraft capable of moving 1/100th of c, it would take 1200+ years to make the journey to, for example, a very close (12 light years) habitable planet. That's a very long time by our local political standards, but if we ever actually achieve a stable government then it's not all that long. If good AI enables us to build a stable civilization for a few hundred thousand years, there might be some meaningful interstellar travel.
That being said, the best bet for expanding our sandbox is still terraforming a planet (or other environment, like the ocean or arctic or sky) that is already nearby.
Is this necessarily a problem? Has anyone looked at the project plan?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
i'm willing to sound like a fool for a minute (instead of lifetime). enlighten an unknowing fellow. does "space getting diffuse" mean that eventually nothing new will form, everything old will run out of energy and previously formed bodies will get further from each other OR does it mean everything will get diffused on (sub)atomic level (i.e. fall apart and be spread in space)?
secondly, will gigantic black holes sucking up galaxies and spitting out matter not create clouds dense enough to form new bodies? (i'm talking about jets that some black holes have)
Both. Actually it's been happening since day 1 of the Universe. Even now everything is getting further and further away from, well... everything else (on average) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law). Space between galaxies, systems, planets and atoms expands and the Universe is getting cooler (on average, there might be spots when locally it gets hotter but as a whole it gets cooler). So first everything will run out of energy and then it will diffuse into atoms and eventually even atoms will break apart.
Black holes radiate energy too and those will evaporate at some point in time too (it may take trillions of years or more but eventually it will happen). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation)
At least that's one of current theories. We really don't know what will happen in billion or trillion years. Universe is strange and it might turn out that our models of physics (I always cringe when someone speaks of "laws of physics") don' capture vast majority of what's happening in it.
100% of us will be dead by the time they do form. Nice to know, but forgive me if I don't care.
Just another day in Paradise
..in a galaxy far away
Please stop using the term "solar systems" it is wrong most of the time it is used!! Tim S.
This is an astonishingly arrogant "deduction" considering that:
- as recently as 1988 identifications of exoplanets were considered dubious (many were later confirmed by subsequent observation). In fact, even the concept that there were other planets out there was still in some debate in the 1990s
- our detection technologies, while highly advanced from where they were, are still astonishingly rudimentary, largely only by deduction (not direct observation) and likely only finding a *tiny* subset of the bell-curve of planetary bodies out there; in fact, it's unlikely that ANY planets in our solar system would be detectable by observers located at the very closest stars using our current tech.
All we can say for sure is that:
- our system took about 5 billion years to get where it is today, developmentally.
- our system developed from a nebula, perhaps either the remnant of, or subject to the shockwave of, a nova/supernova. Given that such structures had to develop (but age much faster than our star), we can add another 1 billion years to that process to come to a total age of our system of 6 bn yrs for the full process, incl "pre-solar" development
- our universe is about 13.8 billion years old, with stellar formation around 1 billion years ...call it 2 billion, just to be conservative.
- If stars were forming at 2 bn yrs, and our system is about 6bn yrs, that means there could have been planetary formation and systems like ours developing for 5 BILLION years before today.
- Since our system is an entirely average sun, in an entirely average stellar neighborhood, it's probable that our experience is entirely typical.
To deduce then that only 8% of potential planets have formed is nonsense.
-Styopa
Other than this, we can't claim to belong to a civilized species until we have shed the evolutionary baggage of tribalism and religion.
I just hope I'm not here the day that happens.
I don't think that's a concern.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Per your first q: we don't know. Like most things we have a few theories. Google/wiki "the Big Crunch" which is basically the opposite of the Big Bang where ultimately everything will re-coalesce, produce anothe Big Bang and we start the show over again. Futurama covered this concept (in a joking manner) in one of their later episodes where Dr. Farmsworth builds a time machine that can only go forward.
There are also heat/cold death theories. Cold is where everything drifts apart, all energy is eventually spent, no stars shine, black holes dominate the landscape which eventually peter out. Heat death then is kinda the opposite where it reaches a state of pure entropy, everything is so evenly distributed that there will be no more information exchange or processes.
When scientists started thinking about the potential impact dark matter could/would have we get theories like the Big Rip where everything, no matter how large or small will eventually be ripped apart into ubbound fundamental particles.
The timelines I recall for any of these are on the order of 10^15^56 years, with "as is" - that being the formation of stars & planets from large "dust" clouds - for the next 10^15 years, give or take.
HTH
I really need to do a PWD RST
So what your saying is that Uranus came from gas, and not the other way round?
First planet!
No, that was a few billion years ago. Talk about being late!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Cool, so climate change will take care of itself then.
Most species may be reasonably cooperative, but it takes only one or a few jerk species to ruin it for everyone else. The first "wave" may be normal species, but eventually the aggressive ones would either push their way through, or "enjoy" causing mass chaos out of habit or religion. Hitlers happen.
And I don't think our current state of space technology is a good baseline for comparison. I imagine automation will make self-sustained and self-repairing colonies much easier in the future.
And, we already have nuclear propulsion technology, we just need more practice harnessing it. After a few thousand years of practice we should get pretty good at it.
Table-ized A.I.
This MAY be proven true... eventually, or it may not. As of this date, however:
1. There is no scientific evidence of the existence of even ONE habitable planet other than Earth in the universe. There are statistical presumptions based on lots of arbitrarily-assigned percentages of presumed possibilities, and there are bits of spectrographic data of light from distant solar systems which we ASSUME tell us about worlds around other stars (with no actual observations to confirm those assumptions).
2. There is no firm definition of what constitutes a "habitable planet". We all agree Earth "fits the bill", since we obviously live here. It's entirely possible that mars could be made habitable, but that is unproven. It's entirely possible man can live on otherwise uninhabitable worlds, but that is currently unproven. It's also quite possible that a world with the right gravity, a good atmosphere, water, etc might nonetheless be toxic and uninhabitable due to factors we do not even know about yet (something that cannot be detected by an optical instrument in Earth Orbit observing a few photons from many light years away). We will only know if a place is actually habitable by going there and actually studying the place - a trip that would take something like 20,000 years to even the nearest solar systems.
This "science" is as solid as the pronouncements of flat-earthers. It's every bit as valid as the study of alien life (for which there's actually LESS evidence than for Noah's Ark, or Erich Von Daniken's "ancient aliens/gods" - which would get laughed-off of Slashdot as unscientific). Science requires HARD EVIDENCE, not wild speculation and arbitrarily-selected numeric percents of probabilities.
There's simply no reason to bother with all this speculative garbage while we are technically and financially unable to even send people to the planets within our own solar system. Once we have a large colony on mars and small facilities on places like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and on Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, THEN we should waste resources worrying about planets orbiting stars it will take 20000 years to get to.... or rather our VERY distant descendants can decide if THEY care to worry about it. Chances are, they'll not care what we thought and all the "studies" we publish now will be laughed at as being as unrelated to their sciences as we see old charts with sea monsters at the Earth's edges related to moon landings.
Would you take that bet? Try to assume you have no emotional connection to the longer-term survival of the human race, would you take the bet that you* are simply one of the 8% early birds (versus something limits future population of ponderers)? At what odds?
* Or some other being in the same condition/knowledge
Table-ized A.I.