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Space Science

Alien Solar System Much Like Ours 130

Posted by michael from the don't-get-your-hopes-up dept.
MrGort writes "Wired News reports that British astronomers say they found the first sun-like star with a giant gas planet in an orbit similar to Jupiter's, which leaves plenty of room for worlds like Earth and Mars. This system is a quick 90 light years away. The similar solar system to ours means that this gas giant could attract most of the debris, allowing smaller planets closer to the sun to develop like ours did!"
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Alien Solar System Much Like Ours

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  • Wow, what a great telescope! If I could see that well, I could spot a quark on Pluto from here without even squinting.

    Of course the article said 90 light years, which is way too far to walk (or drive) anyway. (We are 8 light minutes from the sun, and it would take your whole life and part of your kids' to drive that far.)

    • Re:90 Million Light Years? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you were going fast enough it wouldn't be so long (for you anyway, nevermind earth people).
    • I miss the days of logical phyysics, where you could theoretically keep accelerating that entire distance and arrive in less than 90 years.

      Anyways, who are we kidding? We are looking for planets like Earth not for life, which will evolve to suit nearly any environment, but to find possible colonization sites.

      For that, a smelloscope would be much more useful.

  • patent (Score:4, Funny)

    by pyrrho ( 167252 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @11:13PM (#6364703) Journal
    This other solar system, it does know that we've patented the planetary creation process... right?

    10 billion years of back license royalties... wehooo!

    • Re:patent (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ChadN ( 21033 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @11:38PM (#6364815)
      You know, this reminds me of the setup of a book by John Varley, called "The Ophiuchi Hotline". It starts off with us learning that humanity started receiving transmissions from space, in the direction of the Ophiuchus constellation. We started receiving it about 400 years prior, and have been decoding peices of it ever since. Of the amount that can be decoded and translated, we've learned about medicine, space travel, computers, etc. All kinds of amazing technology. No one knows who is sending it, or why.

      But a repeating message has appeared, taking up more and more of the transmission. Our hero is summoned to a meeting where he learns that some of this repeating message has ben translated.

      In summary, it reads: "Payment for service is overdue. Please remit immediately, or severe consequences will result."

      The book plays out from this premise.

      Let's hope we never have to deal with intergalactic IP issues.
    • Our solar system is only 9 billion/mrd years old? So they have prior art!

      Damnit!

  • This is not Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @12:02AM (#6364908)
    >> This system is a quick 90 light years away.

    This is the problem with the whole "is there life elsewhere in the universe" debate. I call it the "Star Trek Syndrome". People have gotten so used to movies and TV shows where space ships go zooming all over the galaxy that they have lost any understanding of the enormous distances involved.

    There probably are planets out there with intelligent life -- maybe lots of them -- but they are so far away that it is impossible to have any contact with them. You can debate all you want about whether or not there's life out there, but you can't change the math.

    If we could build a spacecraft capable of a speed of 16 Million Miles per Hour (which we can't -- that speed is far, far beyond any technology we have or have even dreamed of) you could reach Pluto in a few days, but it would take 360 years to reach that system that is only "a quick 90 light years away". Even trying to communicate via radio -- we would send a message and it would be at least 180 years before we got a reply.

    • Re:This is not Star Trek (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think Mister Smarty-Pants here hasn't heard of wormholes.

      'Eddies,' he said, 'in the space time continuum.'

      'Ah. Is he? Is he?!

    • Re:This is not Star Trek (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @12:54AM (#6365102) Journal
      >beyond any technology we have or have even dreamed of

      We've dreamed of some pretty impressive things. For example, the Alcubierre drive (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive). It has some [facetious]minor engineering problems like requiring negative energy density and more total energy than exists in the universe[/facetious], but it's a warp drive that satisfies the equations of general relativity. Faster than light, and physically legal.

      Off topic, did the headline of this story strike anyone else as being like a headline from The Onion?
    • " There probably are planets out there with intelligent life -- maybe lots of them -- but they are so far away that it is impossible to have any contact with them."

      someone is sounding like a pessimist... tisk, tisk. 100 years ago, a couple guys were playing around with this idea of flight, that kinda took off didn't it? Space travael is a big step, give it time.

      • Re:This is not Star Trek (Score:4, Informative)

        by turgid ( 580780 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @08:06AM (#6366360) Journal
        I agree with you that we shouldn't be too pessimistic, however the Wright Brothers' flight was more of an engineering challenge than a scientific one. They required no novel physics to accomplish their feat, only the application of known physical laws. It will be possible for us to explore our own solar system using known physics by using nuclear propulsion (fission and some day fusion) and even solar sails. However, travel to other stars in less than a human life-time in our frame of reference will require super-luminal speeds. There is no physics known yet that will allow us to achieve this. So, interstellar travel will be a lot harder for us to achieve than the Wright Brothers' first powered flight.

        • Re:This is not Star Trek (Score:4, Insightful)

          by sk0pe ( 614508 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @08:52AM (#6366530) Homepage
          Yes, the Wright brothers managed to apply proven physical laws through engineering. However, in the 1600's, those laws of physics (specifically Bernoulli's principle) were not theorised, let alone proven. Peope did, however, dream of flying like the birds.

          The same applies to space flight now. We can dream it, but we can't figure out how to do it. Some day, a bunch of different people will come up with a bunch of theories on "super-luminal" travel, then set out to prove their theories. One of them will be proven.

          Soon after that, someone will apply that "proven" law of physics (as the Wright brothers did), and a short time later interstallar travel will be like catching a plane is now - nothing out of the ordinary.

          Unfortunately, it's not likely to be in our lifetime. (Oh, that it were!!)

          • Re:This is not Star Trek (Score:2, Informative)

            by Gyl ( 318790 )
            True, there may eventually be laws that allow for faster than light travel (wormhole anyone?) But the Wright borthers had birds as examples that flight was possible. We don't have any physical evidence of super-luminal travel being possible.
          • Unfortunately, it's not likely to be in our lifetime. (Oh, that it were!!)

            Oh, that is were, indeed. We can console ourselves somewhat with things like SETI and the fact that with advanced nuclear technology we should be able to explore the Solar System. There must be so much there waiting to be discovered. I only wish those with the money and the brains would get on and do it!

          • Some day, a bunch of different people will come up with a bunch of theories on "super-luminal" travel, then set out to prove their theories. One of them will be proven.

            Assuming Einstein was right with his theories of relativity, super-luminous travel or even travel at the speed of light is a major no-go: travelling at the speed of light means instant displacement for the traveller; for the traveller it takes 0 (zero) seconds to move any distance at the speed of light.

            So Einsteins relativity doesn't keep

            • i have seen at least one theory that didnt involve the speed you travel or distance. It relied on pulling space toward you kinda like folding a blanket using gravity. The problem was the amount of energy needed to create this affect. The idea that there are other ways to travel other than just accelerating from one point to another is not that unbelievable to me.
              • Unfortunately 'folding space' dosen't help. the problem isn't with the acceleration per-se. But rather with getting from point a to point b in less time than light in a vacum could make the same trip through normal space/time. How you get there isn't as important as when. Naturally there is a lot more to it than that, and any language other than math pretty much gaurantees a bad explantion, but the gist of it pretty much holds.
                fair warning IANAP just a fairly well read interested spectator.

                Mycroft

                • what i was basically trying to point out was that there are many theories that await to be discovered. If you would have asked someone 200 years ago how to get to the moon I am sure you would have just got a confused look. Admittedly, the "folding space" theory wasn't the best example but just becasue we cannot conceive of a way to travel to far off galaxies now does not mean it cannot happen.

            • b) the human body can only endure acceleration of about 1g for prelonged periods.

              uh, I hate to break this to you, but you're experiencing an acceleration of 1g right now, and you have been most of your life...

              -calyxa

              • uh, I hate to break this to you, but you're experiencing an acceleration of 1g right now, and you have been most of your life...

                Exactly, the human body was "built" for 1g; you can't put humans in a spaceship and accelerate with 2g for 25 years or you'll arrive with a dead crew. Even if we had the technology to reach relativistic speeds; we can't accelerate human bodies a lot, so manned interstellar travel would still take generations (for the crews).

          • The same applies to space flight now. We can dream it, but we can't figure out how to do it. Some day, a bunch of different people will come up with a bunch of theories on "super-luminal" travel, then set out to prove their theories. One of them will be proven.

            Why are you certain that one of them will be proven?

            The universe is what it is, regardless of what we _want_ it to be. This may or may not include mechanisms for FTL travel, but we have seen no evidence of such phenomena occurring to date, and our

          • Re:This is not Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)

            by sbaker ( 47485 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @07:29PM (#6369785) Homepage
            What's different about our society looking to develop super-luminal travel compared to people in the 1600's thinking about heavier-than-air flight is that whilst there were no known scientific laws that would enable a heavier-than-air craft to stay aloft, there were no laws to prohibit it either. They had birds, insects and bats flying around all over the place - all demonstrably heavier than air. They knew this was an achievable goal.

            With faster-than-light travel, we have a very different situation. He have actual scientific laws courtesy of that Einstein guy that show that you cannot accellerate an object up to the speed of light without consuming infinite energy . Those laws also indicate extreme difficulties with even the concept of something travelling FASTER than light (if you ever got going faster than light, it would take infinite energy to avoid travelling infinitely fast - and getting to a nearby star at infinite speed is MUCH harder than doing it at subluminal speeds.

            Then, we also have no examples of super-luminal objects to point at and say "Ha! Those laws must be wrong".

            That's an entirely different (and much more depressing) situation than the situation in the 1600's. They could look to a simple child's kite and imagine a hang-glider with a motor replacing the force provided by the kite-string. They could see birds doing that exact thing - taunting us with the ease of it all.

            We have no similar thing to look towards - and one of the greatest minds of the last century showed us clear mathematical proof that this isn't going to be an easy matter.
            • have actual scientific laws courtesy of that Einstein guy
              last I checked it's still the General Theory of Relativity.
          • No, it won't work that way.

            In the 1600's, it was possible to make things go through the air. You can throw a rock through the air. Birds can fly outright. It, therefore, was somehow possible to do.

            Supersonic flight was believed impossible, but mostly as an engineering challange (resisting massive pressures, etc.) not scientific law.

            Superluminal speed is impossible from scientific law. We have never, EVER seen anything or made anything go faster than light. We may be able to get things moving AT the
        • They required no novel physics to accomplish their feat, only the application of known physical laws.

          However, travel to other stars in less than a human life-time in our frame of reference will require super-luminal speeds. There is no physics known yet that will allow us to achieve this.

          True, but it should be pointed out that for decades after that, most scientists thought it was physically impossible to break the speed of sound in an aircraft. There was no physics that allowed > Mach 1 speeds to
          • There was no physics that allowed > Mach 1 speeds to be achieved
            Not true. Newtonian physics allows Mach 1 to be broken. Einsteinian physics does not allow c to be broken (or to be achieved with rest mass).
            • I'm aware of the limits of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. Back in the day, however, it was believed (or so I hear - someone else wants documentation, which I'm currently looking for) that you could not accelerate an object past the speed of sound in the medium that the object is in. That doesn't mean >Mach 1 speeds were believed to be impossible, because they were aware of speeds of meteorites as they entered our atmoshere. The belief was supposedly that you couldn't accelerate a body past the sp
          • True, but it should be pointed out that for decades after that, most scientists thought it was physically impossible to break the speed of sound in an aircraft. There was no physics that allowed > Mach 1 speeds to be achieved. With time, that theory was also proven wrong.
            Can you document this? I'm aware of engineering studies showing what the difficulties would be in exceeding Mach1, and the valid concern that vibrations from the shock wave could damage improperly designed craft, but have never read a
          • True, but it should be pointed out that for decades after that, most scientists thought it was physically impossible to break the speed of sound in an aircraft. There was no physics that allowed > Mach 1 speeds to be achieved. With time, that theory was also proven wrong.

            I doubt that. In fact I doubt it so much that I challenge you for a citation.

          • Ahhh, no.

            The issue with "breaking the sound barrier" was largely an engineering problem, not a theoretical one.

            Bullets, for example, had been supersonic for quite some time.

            The trick was learning to design an _airfoil_ that could provide sufficiant lift at speed ranges that would allow subsonic takeoff/landing but yet still allow controlled supersonic flight.

            It's all about the behaviour of air at high speeds - its material properties, if you will. But there was very little physics going on.

            This is vast

    • Re:This is not Star Trek (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @02:06AM (#6365350)
      There probably are planets out there with intelligent life -- maybe lots of them -- but they are so far away that it is impossible to have any contact with them. You can debate all you want about whether or not there's life out there, but you can't change the math.

      "The math" also says two things:
      • We can most definitely contact systems within a few hundred light-years by radio. We'll need an array of phase-locked transceivers in space to do it, but it's not difficult or even horribly expensive to do. Contact by optical carrier depends on us building very large interferometric telescopes, which is a tougher engineering challenge but can also be done.

        Communication occurs at the speed of light, so round-trip time to 90 light-years is 180 years, and one-way time is 90 years.

      • This is useful because anyone who can hear our signals and generate signals for us to hear in return is almost certainly far more advanced than we are.

        Modern humans have existed for about 30,000 years. Human civilization has existed for on the order of 6000 years, depending on who you ask and what you call "civilization". If the lifespan of an alien technological race is longer than this - and it will be, especially once it decentralizes (makes colonies not on the same easily-bombed planet) - then, of the stretch of their civilization's existence where they can hear and respond to us, the segment where they are more advanced than us is much longer than the segment where they are less advanced than us. This makes it likely that _if_ we find someone to contact, they're in the "more advanced than us" stage.

        This makes communication, even with a multiple-lifetime time lag, worth it.


      This discussion overlooks the impact of any future technology that would confer either extreme longevity, or the ability to store and reconstruct a human mind-state/personality. In the first case, slower-than-light travel between the stars becomes feasible because we have the patience for it, and it doesn't take that large a chunk out of our lives. In the second case, we can be sent at the speed of light as data, with no subjective time elapsing en route, to be reconstructed at the other end.

      In conclusion, communication is both possible and worthwhile even without FTL travel or exotic technologies.
      • Re. slower than light travel - if you get fast enough (i.e. a sizable fraction of c), then, even if it takes dacedes to get where you're going, time dilation will mean that far less time passes for the crew of a spacecraft - so, if you're going fast enough, a trip of 90 light-years, say, could be accomplished within the natural lifetime of the crew without FTL travel.

        • Re:This is not Star Trek (Score:4, Informative)

          by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @12:12PM (#6367591)
          Re. slower than light travel - if you get fast enough (i.e. a sizable fraction of c), then, even if it takes dacedes to get where you're going, time dilation will mean that far less time passes for the crew of a spacecraft - so, if you're going fast enough, a trip of 90 light-years, say, could be accomplished within the natural lifetime of the crew without FTL travel.

          There turn out to be practical problems with this. Any craft that carries its own fuel with it - including the more practical breeds of antimatter drive - will be limited to a crusing speed of about 0.1-0.2C by the specific impulse of their fuel. The only thing that could approach speeds at which time dilation would be significant is a beamed core antimatter drive (that uses the charged particle shower from an antiproton annihilation as the reaction mass), but that requires unrealistic amounts of antimatter (positrons are easy to make, but antiproton synthesis is very inefficient, and will remain so unless new physics is discovered).

          In principle, some kind of sailcraft driven by a stationary laser or maser array could reach relativistic speeds, but the array would be very expensive to build and very large (we need to focus on a planet-sized sail at a range of many light-years). It would also work wonderfully as a weapon capable of melting cities to slag at a range of hundreds of AU (or even light-years, depending on configuration), so I suspect non-proliferation agreements would prevent it from being built in the first place.

          In short, the only hope for relativistic travel at less than colossal cost is new physics.
          • "Any craft... will be limited to a crusing speed of about 0.1-0.2C by the specific impulse of their fuel"

            It's been far too long since I read a non-fiction book with spaceships in it, but can't you (in theory) propel a spaceship by shining a very powerful light out of the back, using the photons themselves as the reaction mass? Then could you get nearer to c?

            • Re:This is not Star Trek (Score:4, Informative)

              by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @12:37PM (#6367743)
              It's been far too long since I read a non-fiction book with spaceships in it, but can't you (in theory) propel a spaceship by shining a very powerful light out of the back, using the photons themselves as the reaction mass? Then could you get nearer to c?

              You can, but the problem is generating the light in the first place, and the fact that light has a lousy ratio of momentum to energy (it has to be very, very bright to generate significant thrust).

              Most light sources that are bright enough to move a ship at any reasonable acceleration (e.g. fusion bombs wrapped in other matter or just shining on a shield block that can tolerate gamma rays) waste matter - the energy to mass ratio of a fusion bomb is much worse than that of the photons you're driving the ship with. This means you'd be better off just using a magnetic bottle to deflect the plasma resulting from the fusion explosion, and you'd still end up with specific impulse too low for relativistic flight.

              A light source that doesn't ablate or otherwise lose mass has to be relatively dim (either a hot block of solid matter or a confined plasma ball), which means getting anywhere will take an extremely long time.

              The forms of light propulsion that I've seen considered involve generating the light somewhere else (e.g. a laser array) and just reflecting it off the craft's sail. You still have a drive that's horribly inefficient energy-wise, but the energy source doesn't have to travel with the craft.

              For reference, power to thrust is 3e8 W/N for a photon drive (energy to momentum ratio is C for photons).
          • ... assuming that said craft does actually carry its own fuel (which you limited yourself to, but...)

            That's, of course, not the only kind of craft: ramscoop ideas have been around for a while, and while they're not exactly "production quality" ideas, there's nothing fundamentally killing them. We'd just have to figure out how to do fusion much better than we do now - which is not exactly new physics - it's new engineering. We'd also want to get the hell past the heliopause, to interstellar space. Ramscoops

            • ramscoop ideas have been around for a while, and while they're not exactly "production quality" ideas, there's nothing fundamentally killing them.

              Dialogues concerning the viability of ramscoops tend to follow a "death by a thousand cuts" pattern, mostly because whenever someone finds a reasonable obstruction to their practicality, someone else will propose a wildly unrealistic and ad hoc remedy, saying it could be plausible one day with future technology. Perhaps a better description of the situation w

            • That's, of course, not the only kind of craft: ramscoop ideas have been around for a while, and while they're not exactly "production quality" ideas, there's nothing fundamentally killing them. We'd just have to figure out how to do fusion much better than we do now - which is not exactly new physics - it's new engineering.

              Ramscoops are fundamentally killed by drag.

              Consider a ramscoop to be a special case of a magnetic bottle. In a conventional magnetic bottle, matter leaks through "loss cones" at the pi
              • That's a ramjet, not a ramscoop, which is what I'm proposing. Though it's not really a ramscoop, more just a particle collector. The benefit of space is that, well, there's virtually no drag, and so you can coast when you run out of fuel until you get enough. This means that you have a speed limit for short distances, but there are no short distances in space.

                If it's fundamentally impossible to get it to fuse in flight, then it's always possible to contain the material, store it, process it, and fuse it la
          • So far as the question of fuel capacity vs terminal velocity, two words: "Tau Zero", by Poul Anderson.
            • So far as the question of fuel capacity vs terminal velocity, two words: "Tau Zero", by Poul Anderson.

              This craft used a Bussard ramscoop. There have been multiple messages in this thread explaining why they turn out not to work. For practical field configurations, drag greatly overwhelms fusion-produced thrust.

      • holy crap (Score:2, Funny)

        by AssFace ( 118098 )
        After reading that, I can definitely walk away with one thing firm in my mind:

        You must get laid incredibly often with that schpiel
      • I find it disturbing that futurists tend to presume that the benefits of communication outweigh the risks. Okay, an Independence Day scenario is not likely. But how unlikely? 1 in 10 chance? 1 in 100? 1 in 1000? 1 in 10000? What is an acceptable risk? (we do, after all, have at least one potentially valuable commodity down here: a world with flora and fauna that will be alien and novel to them) And what would we get from them? Technology? I'm not against technology but it isn't the be-all and end-all. I thi
        • I find it disturbing that futurists tend to presume that the benefits of communication outweigh the risks. Okay, an Independence Day scenario is not likely. But how unlikely? 1 in 10 chance? 1 in 100? 1 in 1000? 1 in 10000? What is an acceptable risk?

          We are already broadcasting more than enough radio noise to be easily seen by any hypothetical aliens who are hunting down and destroying other races, so attempting contact does not substantially increase the risk of this scenario.

          Furthermore, due to the vas
      • This is useful because anyone who can hear our signals and generate signals for us to hear in return is almost certainly far more advanced than we are.

        There is no proof of that. The whole hoping aliens are smarter than us is a bad assumption. If it took so long for life to evolve here, it would probably take just as long if not longer in other conditions.
        • This is useful because anyone who can hear our signals and generate signals for us to hear in return is almost certainly far more advanced than we are.

          There is no proof of that. The whole hoping aliens are smarter than us is a bad assumption. If it took so long for life to evolve here, it would probably take just as long if not longer in other conditions.

          If anyone responds to us, then life has already evolved, so that issue is not relevant. The relevant question is, "given that someone is there who _ca
        • Have a close look at the sentence you quoted, and you'll see that the amount of time it takes for life to evolve is not relevant. Hint: only aliens with radios are under consideration.
          • Hint: only aliens with radios are under consideration.

            Having radios doesn't mean they are more advanced than us. We've had radios for a long long time.. What we are doing in regards to space exploration now could have been easily accomplished 20-30 years ago had space exploration been as big of a concern as say military weapons development.

            Look at it another way.. Had we received transmissions from aliens 50 years ago, we probably could have replied, and I'm sure you'd agree that we are somewhat more ad

            • Having radios doesn't mean they are more advanced than us. We've had radios for a long long time..

              Are you seriously suggesting that a couple of centuries is a long time? Good grief man. I'm speechless.

              Anyway, my point still stands that none of this has anything to do with how long it takes for life to evolve.

              Had we received transmissions from aliens 50 years ago, we probably could have replied, and I'm sure you'd agree that we are somewhat more advanced now than 50 years ago.

              So you are con

              • A race with radio must be no more than a couple of centuries behind us, but could be thousands or millions of years ahead of us. Think about it.

                Statements like that just show an ignorance of statistics. The odds of there being aliens more advanced than us is the same as there being aliens that are less advanced than us. Not to mention that you are using human intelligence as the metric for all intelligence. It is also just as likely that a civilization would have radio technology far better than our o

                • Not to mention that you are using human intelligence as the metric for all intelligence.

                  Ok, I think I see where you are coming from. I am equating how advanced a civilization is with time elapsed since the invention of radio. Granted, there are many other ways to measure "advancement".

                  Do you agree that an alien race with radio is likely to have possessed it for longer than we have?

                  I only wish you had expressed yourself more clearly in the first place instead of resorting to calling me ignorant.

                  • Do you agree that an alien race with radio is likely to have possessed it for longer than we have?

                    No, I wouldn't even agree to that..there is nothing that would lead me to believe that an alien race within communication range of earth has had radio technology longer than we have. As I said, statistically, the odds of there being aliens more advanced than us are the same as there being aliens less advanced than us in regards to radio communication and otherwise.

                    It's one thing to assume there is intellig

                    • As I said, statistically, the odds of there being aliens more advanced than us are the same as there being aliens less advanced than us in regards to radio communication and otherwise.

                      What are these "statistics" you keep referring to? There are no statistics on alien races because we haven't yet even encountered a single one. What statistics are you talking about?

                      there is nothing that would lead me to believe that an alien race within communication range of earth has had radio technology longer

                    • What are these "statistics" you keep referring to?

                      Statistics is a branch of mathematics, if you go to college you generally get a decent introduction to statistics. As I pointed out before, your statements show an obvious ignorance of statistics.

                    • What are these "statistics" you keep referring to?

                      Statistics is a branch of mathematics, if you go to college you generally get a decent introduction to statistics. As I pointed out before, your statements show an obvious ignorance of statistics.

                      No, numbnuts, I mean what are the numbers that you're using? How did you decide that "statistically, the odds of there being aliens more advanced than us are the same as there being aliens less advanced than us"?

                      You're making it very hard for me to bel

                    • Read carefully: I'm saying that any given alien race with radio technology probably has had it longer than we have.

                      No sir, it is you who is trolling me.
                    • just let it go.. you failed to understand my point, and you've failed to make one of your own. it's over.. get on with your life.
    • We've already been sending out artificial radio waves from Earth for around 100 years. If there was intelligent life there that had sensitive enough radio detectors they may already have detected us.
      • >We've already been sending out artificial radio waves from Earth for around 100 years.

        Most of those radio waves are drowned in noise, alone by the fact that there are too many transmitters that share the same frequencies. All those powerful broadcasts for radio and TV are radiated into outer space, but from a long distance one would see a superposition of all those signals for different TV and radio stations, i.e. noise.

        The exception is the short-wave radio band. Because one can receive a powerful

        • I see what you mean. However, wouldn't the amount of noise in these bands be much higher than you would expect to occur naturally? If you took a spectrum of radiation coming from the vicinity of earth (assuming it wasn't right in front of the sun) wouldn't they be disproportionately strong?
          • >However, wouldn't the amount of noise in these bands be much higher than you would expect to occur naturally?

            Let's try to estimate that. Consider the frequency range around 1 MHz, the MW AM broadcast band which has been in use for quite some time. The range is something like 0.7--1.5 MHz, or 200--400 m wavelength. I'm not so sure about the total power installed in the world; say 500 kW for every 200x200 km area of populated land. That is maybe 200 MW of total installed power (that feels like a high es

        • <I>"...but from a long distance one would see a superposition of all those signals for different TV and radio stations, i.e. noise."</I><BR><BR>
          Ummm, has someone told those SETI guys this? Maybe that's why we haven't found anything yet...
          • > Ummm, has someone told those SETI guys this? Maybe that's why we haven't found anything yet...

            I think they're hoping to detect a transmission that is meant to be detected, in the range 1.4--1.7 GHz [216.239.37.100]. In that range, the thermal background of the sun is about 1e10 watt, so only a very directional narrow-band transmission has a chance to be noticed.

            I remember that people have tried to send a message to a few nearby stars a few years ago with a powerful directional transmitter. The message was a series

    • It's true, 90 light years is quite a distance for us to travel or communicate. But, compared to the rest of the galaxy, or universe, 90 light years is quite close. If life is to be discovered within, say, 200 years it will likely be at that sort of range.
      • >>>This system is a quick 90 light years away.

        >>This is the problem with the whole "is there
        >>life elsewhere in the universe" debate. I call
        >>it the "Star Trek Syndrome". People have gotten
        >>so used to movies and TV shows where space
        >>ships go zooming all over the galaxy that they
        >>have lost any understanding of the enormous
        >>distances involved.

        >It's true, 90 light years is quite a distance
        >for us to travel or communicate. But, compared
        >to the re
    • a quick 90 light years away

      I'm going to guess that the submitter actually knew that 90 light years isn't quick by any sort of standards we have for travel here on earth, but rather said that as a mix of tongue-in-cheek-humor, and some somewhat well-deserved optimism. It really could have been much, much farther, as far away as 90 light years really is.
    • SURE we can reach them!! All we need to do is construct an infinite improbability drive and plug in the improbability of M$ on day writing a secure, reliable operating system and we can go anywhere we want...
    • Settle down. He was being ironic.

      Besides, considering the size of the galaxy, 90 light years is very, very close. I think it's clear that's all he was saying. He wasn't implying that we could drop by for a visit.

  • Cosmic Wonders! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04, 2003 @12:16AM (#6364956)
    Whatever they find there, it just ain't gonna compare to the cosmic goatse.cx [nasa.gov].

    Don't worry, kids, it's a NASA site!

  • we might be able to find intelligent life. (Score:3, Funny)

    by McAddress ( 673660 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @12:48AM (#6365083)
    All we have to do now is make a craft that can go 90 light years within a reasonable amount of time. minor detail.

    And one other detail, we have been mostly unsuccessful at finding intelligent life on earth, what makes us think we can find it somewhere else?

    • Re:we might be able to find intelligent life. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xilman ( 191715 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @04:13AM (#6365790) Homepage Journal
      All we have to do now is make a craft that can go 90 light years within a reasonable amount of time. minor detail.

      We already have the technology that could get us there in around a couple of thousand years --- and only 1000 if you were happy with a fly-by mission. The 1970s Daedalus study by the BIS showed us how it could be done using only technology known at that time or reasonably expected to be available by the turn of the millenium. To this extent, it is indeed a minor detail.

      There are two major details, IMO. The first is cultural: we no longer seem to want to embark on projects that are expected to have payback times measured in centuries, as the builders of the Egyptian pyramids and the European mediaeval cathedrals did. The other is economic: even if we wanted to do something like this, the cost would be enormous. OTOH, perhaps the cost might be no greater in societal terms than the price to the Egyptian economy almost 5000 years ago of building the great pyramids.

      Paul

      • I really wish that I could mod you up for such an insightful comment, but the Slashdot gods have not awarded any lately, so I'll reply:

        Perhaps you are right that humans have become too short-sighted to embark on any projects to further our species (look at the vast majority of government policies anywhere), but I don't think that we need build such a huge space ship just yet.

        I think it will happen, but only after we have developed the technology to conquer our own galaxy. Then when we arive at the ne
      • But, on the third hand (Larry Niven) we also might want to contemplate the Republican side and use the metals-extraction technology and null-gravity refinment technology to make oodles of bucks, thereby stair-stepping the building of this radio/emitter to contact this other similar system.
      • I remember the Daedalus study, I subscribed to the Journal of the BIS at the time.

        One "problem" with the proposal was that if we sent such a probe, it might report back in 1000 years, but if we waited another century, we could send a probe that would get there in half the time, so we'd get the information in only 600 years.

        Of course, in two centuries we'd be able to send a probe that could get there more quickly still, and maybe have the data less than 500 years from now. Of course there is a limit to thi
        • I do remember a ST:TNG episode where they found a probe sent by earth at around our current time. I think it would be foolish if we dont try at least. Because although we may be able to build a probe thats significantly faster every 100 years or so, there is also no garantee we will ever be able to surpass the fastest (at some point in time).

          So I think it would at least be important to try to send probes, even though we hope that we could soon build faster ones.

  • "planetary system" (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hate to be pedantic, but using the proper terms aids clarity and, of course, helps one to sound credible, so let me offer this helpful advice:

    There is only one "Solar System," and that's the system of bodies orbiting our star, Sol.

    The generic term for any other collection of planetary bodies orbiting some random other star is "planetary system." The planets therein are referred to as "extrasolar."

    Read the original press release [aao.gov.au] and paper [arxiv.org]. You will see this usage reflected there.
    • Speaking as an actual planetary scientist, we often use "solar system" for planetary systems outside out ours. And we refer to their stars as "suns" rather often, too. As long as you capitalize the proper noun version and not the general term, it's pretty obvious what you mean.

      (For that matter, we talk about Jupiter's "moons" a lot. Given that there is only one "the Moon", that shouldn't be, either. But it is, so just get used to it.)
  • The aliens on this planet will receive the first television signals from Leave It To Beaver. They will immediately drive their FTL space battleships to earth and blow it up.

  • More info from New Scientist and others (Score:3, Informative)

    by securitas ( 411694 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @10:12PM (#6370425) Homepage Journal


    A bit more info from a previously submitted post:

    New Jupiter-like Planet Discovered in Sol-like system

    A new Jupiter-like planet [newscientist.com] has been discovered in a circular orbit around a Sun-like star 90 light-years away in the constellation Pupis. What is remarkable about the discovery is that this system is the most like our own solar system discovered to-date. This development lends credence to the theory [ananova.com] that systems with small, rocky Earth-like planets are out there [ananova.com]. ''This is the closest we have yet got to a real Solar System-like planet [reuters.com] and advances our search for systems that are even more like our own,'' said UK team leader Hugh Jones of Liverpool John Moores University. Jones went on to say that, ''Jupiter's position is probably crucial to the distribution of other planets in the Solar System.'' Current thinking on planet-formation indicates a large, Jupiter-like planet in a circular orbit would allow the relatively undisturbed formation of an inner system of smaller Earth-like planets. The newly discovered planet is about twice the mass of Jupiter with an orbit equivalent to the asteroid belt [cnn.com] in our own solar system.

  • I read a book a few years ago, called SIVA or SHIVA (don't quite remember). Anyway, this book was about how our own ancient civilizations (egyptian I believe) had created giant space ships out of ice. People inside the giant ice cube could use the ice as water, and the sheer mass of the thing would act as a collector for hydrogen atoms - isn't the universe made up of mostly hydrogen (or was that helium? ;)

    The velocity was increased gradually by using the hydrogen as fuel. Of course, the book said that

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