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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."
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.
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.
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!!!
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.
Yes, but this means we have the opportunity to grow into one of those awesome and sophisticated "elder races" that we see all the time in science fiction. That is, assuming we can avoid killing ourselves off completely by clubbing each other over the head.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
You may want to reread up on the Heat Death of the Universe. Our Sun won't even be cold in 5 billion years, never mind the rest of universe. Existing red dwarf stars may last a 100 billion years. Most models put the Stelliferous Era (era of stars) as extending 10s of trillions to 100s of trillions of years into the future. True Heat Death is 10E100 or 10E1000 years out depending on the model, but there won't be any stars or planets (protons will have decayed). Although the Big Rip may occur in as little as 20 Billion years
Umm, maybe you're thinking of the death of the Earth as our sun expands into a red giant? That is projected to happen in a few billion years, with a few billion more spent in its "death throes". That would put it at about the right time frame. That's a purely local problem though. Meanwhile red dwarf stars are projected to have FAR longer lifespans, by at least an order of magnitude or two. And so long as there's stars you can't have heat death of the universe.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
We can bring them ad "free" TV and small pox. Boy won't they be pleased.
Could go both ways. Some of us evolve in to the Arisians and others into the Eddoreans.
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)
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 maybe there will only ever be 13.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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
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
and publicly.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Fewer civilizations means that it takes longer to confirm the existence of other civilizations. Fewer needles in the haystack. Furthermore it's quite likely that many of them are not yet advanced enough to detect other civilizations. We took 3.5 billion years to get radio signals.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
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.
Our light cone is our Universe. If we cannot interact with it, it may as well not exist.
You may want to reread up on the Heat Death of the Universe. ...
For those that don't know, you can read about that here Heat Death of the Universe and here Future of an Expanding Universe
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
Which bet? If you mean some combination of the bets that we are in the first/early evolutions of life on one of the first/early potentially life bearing plants? Nope, still wouldn't.
However, I would bet, were it possible to verify, that the first people living on the first potentially life bearing planet to bear life that they would not take that bet either.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
That's because they know their statistics.
Table-ized A.I.