'Hundreds of Worlds' in Milky Way

Raphael Emportu writes "BBC news is reporting that rocky planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought in our galaxy, a study has found. New evidence suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems. There may also be hundreds of undiscovered worlds in outer parts of our Solar System, astronomers believe. Future studies of such worlds will radically alter our understanding of how planets are formed, they say."

Re:sweet

[morgan_greywolf]

Now to find a way of this rock onto one of those.

Just keep typing stuff like of instead of off and leaving out conjunctions like and in between rock and onto and sooner or latter someone around here is sure to get pissed off enough to help you off of this rock. Getting onto one of the others is an entirely different story.

Re:Not so Rare Earth

[morgan_greywolf]

Funny but, I couldn't shake the feeling that the reason conditions here on earth are so 'perfect' for life as we know it was more to do with life as we know it evolving to fit the conditions ...

No, no! Can't you see? Earth is incredibly rare! Too rare to be a coincidence. Nope, must've been an Intelligent Designer that created life. Probably about 6,000 years or so ago. Yep.

Heh. This new information kinda blows a hole in that theory, huh?

TFA is confused...

[meringuoid]

... there may be hundreds of worlds in the solar system. In the Milky Way, expect trillions. The distinction between the Solar System and the Galaxy is a subtle one, similar to that between a grain of sand and Saudi Arabia, so it's easy for the likes of the BBC to confuse the two.

How common were they before?

[Joohn]

...planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought...

I have heard this so many times that I'm losing track on how common we previously thought they were.

Re:Drake Equation

[biased_estimator]

http://xkcd.com/384/ [xkcd.com] Sorry, couldn't help myself.

How meny of them have stargates on them?

[Joe The Dragon]

so we can go to them?

Re:can we make our minds up?

[Anonymous Coward]

First 9, then posibly 10, then back to 9, then 8.. now we have..
"Our old view, that the Solar System had nine planets will be supplanted by a view that there are hundreds if not thousands of planets in our Solar System,"

The first release of Solaris was Solaris 2. This replaced SunOS 4.x. There were a number of Solaris 2.x point releases, with the last being Solaris 2.6. Solaris 7 was released in November, 1998, followed by Solaris 8 in 2000, Solaris 9 in 2002, and Solaris 10 in 2005.

Although Sun's marketing dept. sometimes comes up with fucked version numbering conventions, the progression is actually quite linear.

And all of them are ours

[barzok]

except Europa. I'll not be attempting any landings there.

They played us for suckers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Our own earthly cephalopods are pretty darned smart. Given the right conditions, it's not difficult to imagine a similar species attaining greater intelligence. Of course, such an intelligence, having developed in such an alien environment, would be radically different from ours. As Larry Niven says, there are brains out there that think just as well as yours...but differently.

Squid, cuttlefish, and other similarly baleful creatures are all members of the cephalopod family, characterized by HUGE EYES, BEAKS, INTELLIGENCE, and AMBITION. [qwantz.com]

Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination...

[somersault]

It could be a bigger barrier getting everyone to stop playing Solar System of Warcraft long enough to get onboard the faster than light vessel... unless perhaps they have an exclusive SSoW expansion pack onboard the ship.. hmm..

Re:Not so Rare Earth

[Dunbal]

This new information kinda blows a hole in that theory, huh?

Yes, but His Spaghettiness is most forgiving. May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage forever. Hang on, that sounds a bit like icky things Japanese do with tentacles... oh second thoughts...

Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination...

[Thanshin]

And to be intelligent on top of that.

That barrier is so high that most humanity never got to surpass it.

Re:sweet

[RicardoGCE]

I'm all for shipping grammar nazis off to the most distant rock available.

By the way, it's "later", not "latter" ;)

Re:No shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Universe > Galaxy

Yeah, no shit. Although the article limits itself to just our galaxy, why should we? To ignore the greater universe, and the trillions upon trillions of galaxies that exist in it, is just plain stupid.

Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination...

[rucs_hack]

And have caek

Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination...

[TheAngryIntern]

the caek is a lie

Re:Not so Rare Earth

[Viceroy Potatohead]

What a quaint and backward notion! There was no Intelligent Designer who created life [scoff], it was an Intelligent Astronomer who placed our planet in the perfect spot for life to form on its own. Of course, there are some indications that it was actually an Intelligent Particle Physicist who started it all off, so there are obviously many more discoveries to be made in the field of Intelligent Science.

But an Intelligent Designer? Piffle! He just hung the drapes and painted the place. And the bastard didn't even let us select our own wallpaper.

Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination...

[DirkGently]

I wish I could meta-mod so I could bitch-slap the guy that gave you a +1 insight.

the wonder

[cpricejones]

Think of all the stargates ...