Earth-Like Planets In Our Neighborhood

goran72 sends in a story out of the Chicago AAAS meeting contending that Earth-like planets with life-sustaining conditions may be spinning around stars in our galactic neighborhood — we just haven't found them yet. "'So I think there is a very good chance that we will find some Earth-like planets within 10, 20 or 30 light years of the Sun,' astrophysicist [Alan Boss]... told his AAAS colleagues meeting here since Thursday. ... The images from those new planets, he added, should identify 'light from their atmosphere and tell us if they have perhaps methane and oxygen. That will be pretty strong proof they are not only habitable but actually are inhabited. I am not talking about a planet with intelligence on it. I simply say if you have a habitable world. ... Sitting there, with the right temperature with water for a billion years, something is going to come out of it. At least we will have microbes,' said Boss."

Polluted by life?

[symbolset]

For the last 4 billion years the Earth has shed some 2 billion metric tons of genetic material per day. Solar winds have pressed some of this material more, and some less. Some of this material has been captured by extrasolar objects and carried away. Some of it has been captured by comets over which the sun no longer holds sway. Some of it has been so light and so thin that the solar winds have carried it far from home.

These solar systems polluted by life? How could they not be?

Re:impossible dream?

[Seth Kriticos]

While technically it is no problem to send them large quantities of information, local law prohibits most of it and you will be sued by different interest groups if you try. So if we find someone out there, then we will probably start to spam them with viagra adds..

Re:impossible dream?

[gzipped_tar]

We could give them, say, the entirety of Wikipedia

REPORT ON THE INGREDIENTS OF THE EARTH'S CIVILIZATION AS SEEN FROM THE "WIKIPEDIA" SENT BY HUMANS * 20% ---- Elitist mod-trolls * 30% ---- Politics (a.k.a. sheeple herding) * 35% ---- Religion-like (i.e. spirituals, rituals, TV, Paris Hilton, Web 2.0, Slashdot, pr0n, etc) * 15% ---- Obsolete knowledge known as "science" and/or "technology" CONCLUSION Humans make good material for Soylent Green.

Re:impossible dream?

[ionix5891]

[citation needed]

Re:impossible dream?

[ion++]

CONCLUSION: Mostly harmless

Well, there goes the neighborhood.

[DigitalReverend]

I don't want an Earth-Like planet in my neighborhood because they bring down the property values.

Re:Polluted by life?

[dontmakemethink]

Man, imagine how rammed the courts are going to be when entire worlds get sued for pirating our copyrighted genomes...

Re:Polluted by life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, Google will tell you that the following comes out to 44%,

A more precise answer would be... 42.