Are We Alone in the Universe? 759
cynic10508 writes "CNN is running a story about how ours might be a unique solar system. Of the 100+ systems currently known to contain planets, all contain seemingly only gas giants. However, this may be a case of current technology and techniques being unable to detect planets similar to Earth." There are also
BBC and Space.com stories.
We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers,
Erick
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that we are the first is very intriguing. If you assume the big bang theory is accurate then there is a leading time for it to be possible for life to exist. Furthermore there is a leading time for it to be likely that life exists. Has anyone made any attempt to find those leading times?
For example, you can assume that planets made out of elements more complex than hydrogen and helium are necessary to support life. When is it theorized that these elementally-complex planets were possible? How long ago was that compared to when Earth was formed? If it was a long time before earth was formed, then we can go about making some calculations about how many other civilizations might have existed before/with us. If it was around the same time that Earth was formed, then there is the very real possiblity that we are on the "front wave" of life in our universe.
It may in fact be very unlikely that we are first. But someone wins the lottery every week. People must remember that unlikely events are almost guarenteed to happen to someone if the numbers involved are big enough. In this case, even if we aren't first, it's a certainty that some civillizaion was.
TW
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
The universe is massive and ancient. It is also heartless and dangerous.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
If the universe is inimical to life then we should not exist. If it is life-capable, then chances are that there are other life-filled worlds out there (possibly even life-filled stars). If there were 'only' a few millions such worlds, that would still only leave at most a couple such planets in our own galaxy. There would have to be billions of life-bearing planets for us to have a good probability of having (much less finding) a second one in our galaxy.
We are (for obvious reasons) the first life that we've found in this universe. The probability of being the only is low.
As for the fact that most of the planets we've found so far being gas giants close to their stars ... well duh! We're mostly finding them as a result of things like star transits, and wobble effects. Earth has a near-zero effect on the wobble of the sun (too small). Jupiter is too far out -- if you consider the probability of Jupiter being observerved transiting the sun from some random orientation, that's near zero.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
While it's true that we can't do statistics with a sample of one, it's not as if there is no data. The universe (very large) is certainly a datum, and one of the things astronomy has taught us is that it seems everywhere very similar: made of the same stuff and subject to the same laws. And in this one sample we have many subsamples showing how life appears as soon as, and everywhere, it can.
It doesn't matter how probable or improbable life is - even if it occurred less than once in every galaxy that would be far more probable than our being unique. Unique is a big word. That idea that we are unique cannot be counted as rational in the face of even the little we know - in fact, it is precisely because it is not rational that it is often so passionately defended. What it would mean - and this is the superstition hardly anyone wants to abandon - would be that we were not natural. But we are.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup. But you left off the important part:
Life appears as soon as, and everywhere it can - and immediately eats, or infects, or rides parasite upon its neighbors.
I, for one, welcome our alien dinner guests, bringing us the Very Important Book, "To Serve Man."
I want to go with an apple in my mouth
Baked or basted or fried up like down south
I'm nutrients and roughage, vitamins and more
yessir
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Insightful)
How about looking at it this way. I have a mix cd here with 20 songs spread out over the last 60 years (big band to Korn - don't ask). Now based on the huge number of cd's that have been burned since cd-burners have become common place I believe that someone must have created the identical cd (same songs and order of songs). But based on my
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Interesting)
The CD analogy isn't that good. The universe could be infinite, or big enough, in size allowing for anything to happen multiple times.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Except to push your analogy a little farther, not only have the SETI people not found a CD with the same mix, they haven't even found anyone else with a CD burner.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sure we can't find people (Score:3, Insightful)
What, exactly, is the imperative here? What valuable, vital insight into this discussion about finding alien life have you contributed by bringing up Bin Laden?
What next? "We may be close to finding an AIDS vaccine, but please keep in mind that we haven't found Bin Laden yet, so don't get your hopes up!"
Thanks for putting everything into perspective, Captain Insight. Now, please, explain what exactly that perspective is.
Thanks.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that getting alien radio signals would make our differences look rather trivial. Nothing like a common threat (and it would be seen as a threat) to make people stop fighting each other.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Interesting)
As it should be but if anything it would make people fight against each other even more. Religion fuels a lot of our current social problems. What the hell is it going to do when we fight intelligent life that wasn't created in what our cultures felt was "God's vision"?
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a Christian myself, I'll take a crack at this.
My personal belief is that believing the Bible does not preclude belief in other life forms. In my mind, the book of Genesis clearly shows what God's hand did in our world, our solar system, our planet, etc. However, nowhere in the book of Genesis does it specifically say He didn't create life somewhere else. While it does say He created man in his own image, that does not mean it was impossible for Him to create life elsewhere in a different or similar form.
Though I don't think many other Christians share my viewpoint...
Re:religious aspects of the question (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, that's your faith, I can only really comment best on mine. I'm a shia muslim, and in the corpus of our traditions, there are a number of references to there being many other Adams out there, other worlds with living beings. Like one that goes something like (don;t have the exact reference in front of me, Im at work
There are other traditions like this, and the Quran does mention a plurality of worlds. Since we don't believe in the Christian paradigms, original sin, Christ being the incarnation and son (we believe in him as a human prophet, not a god-man), the atonement through crucifixion, etc., these concerns wouldn't really affect our theology.
That said, I'm not holding my breadth for us to soon, or even ever, make contact through means of technology. The universe is a mighty big place, our galaxy being only one many many more. Add to that, the enormity of the ages since it was created, who knows where or even when to look for other beings as us or otherwise? But as we say, God knows best....
Re:religious aspects of the question (Score:3, Funny)
How would you hold your breadth, anyway? Sometimes I hold my width, especially after eating spicy chicken wings, but I don't think I've ever held my breadth.
Re:religious aspects of the question (Score:3, Interesting)
There was actually a science fiction story about this subject, whose name and author i unfortunatly forget.
It was set in a universe with lots
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/4/part1.html
Even a "Biblical creationist" might find himself unable to believe that we are the only intelligent beings "God created" in a cosmos of countless blazing stars and (who knows how many) planetary bodies? So much cosmic "real estate" going to waste. Doesn't sound very "purposeful" does it?
Yet, if intelligent beings exist on other planets, how are they going to react to the "Biblical creation account?" Are they going to believe that the cosmos was created in "six days" as measured from one planet's perspective, the earth's? Such beings might well wonder why the cosmos wasn't created based on the length of a "day" on their own planet, rather than ours.
Neither are they going to believe that five out of the "six" days of creation, or, five sixths of the "creation period" was focused solely on the earth, during which its seas, dry land and sky, and the plants and animals on it, were created. The "rest" of the cosmos with it's 50 billion galaxies, and it's unknown multitude of planets, including the one these other beings live on, took only "one day" out of "six" to create? They'd be on the floor laughing at such earth-centered viewpoints in the very first chapter of the Bible. Only one planet, the earth, took five sixths of God's creation time to complete? No intelligent being inhabiting another planet is going to believe that!
Or, how about this for a "worst case" scenario after meeting a technologically advanced being from another planet: (Being from another planet speaking with Billy Graham's son) "So, you say, five sixths of God's `creation time' was spent on your pitiful little planet full of natural disasters and turmoil and idiocy, and God only spent one sixth of that time creating the rest of the cosmos, including what was to become our vast pan-galactic civilization whose history stretches back before the first pitiful little Biblical book was scrawled on goat skin parchments?"
Hence my next big question, ARE THERE CREATIONISTS ON OTHER PLANETS? Do they quote from a book somewhat like our earth-centered book of Genesis? And, supposing that the name of their planet is "Zontar," does their book read something like this...
In the beginning God created the heavens and ZONTAR, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters OF ZONTAR and God said let there be light, and there was the first evening and morning. And God separated the waters and caused dry land to appear ON ZONTAR, and there was a second evening and morning. And God made the land bring forth green plants and fruit trees ON ZONTAR, and there was a third evening and morning. And God made TWO GREAT LIGHTS, one to rule the day ON ZONTAR, and one to rule the night ON ZONTAR, and he made the stars also, and set them in the sky to light ZONTAR and for signs and seasons, and there was a fourth evening and morning. And God made animals ON ZONTAR, and there was a fifth evening and morning. And God made beings IN HIS OWN IMAGE, and he visited them in the garden where He and they left slimy trials as they moved and talked to each other via their antennae, and there was a sixth evening and morning. And on the seventh day God "rested" from creating the heavens and ZONTAR.
Of course, we earthlings, being raised on the Bible, would know that God
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I don't think it's that unpopular... I've heard my rather fundamentalist (with a lower case f) pastor talk against many things, from evolution to homosexuality... but never against finding life elsewhere in the universe. I think that most of the christians that I know would consider aliens to simply be another amazing creation.
It disturbs me to hear people talk about how finding life elsewhere in the universe would be the "end of religion." Religion survives scientific discovery, because ultimately it's not based on what is possible to know, but what is possible to feel - something science cannot touch.
In short, there's a lot more of us out there than you think! Also, there's plenty of christians that are rather apathetic about doctrinal details like this, never underestimate the power of apathy.
Cheers,
Justin
P.S. I hope we do find some life out there in my lifetime!
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Interesting)
You might want to take a look at this [angelfire.com] then.
An interesting quote from the site: "Thus, for sixty years Utah has led the nation in per capita production of scientists. To many people, likely, the fact that a distinctive "religious" state was also notable for scientist productivity, was remarkable, a challenge for some explanation."
I don't know if it explains how Christians can be scientists, but it does show that not only Christians can be s
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course not. Basic logic tells us that if you assume a contradiction, you can derive anything. Since the bible is full of contradictions, if you assume that it is true, you can prove any statement you want (as well as its inverse.)
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Or not. Aztecs were very similar to Pizarro or Cortez, but this did not prevent their demise.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:4, Insightful)
> the adaptability and universality of its
> message.
read: its willingness to CHANGE its message when inconvenient facts present themselves (i.e., evolution, heliocentric solar system, women not made from ribs, etc.)
Mod me troll, I don't care. I think that it's high time that we all called a spade a spade and recognized religion for what it is.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally - I'm a scientist, and a Christian.
Being a scientist means that I know that all statements have a concept of certainty associated with them. For examples I believe that the world is round, and I'm extremely certain of that. I tend to thik that there are no spacial dimensions outside of the obvious 3, but I'm not at all certain about that (to the degree that extra dimensions are very small).
In the same way, I can look at the Bible and make interpretations with varying certainties. Does the Bible teach that there is a God - I think I can give that a high level of certainty. Does it teach that there is no chance that aliens could exist - well, I'd have to say that I'm not sure, but I can think of good arguments one way or the other. So, I think that in cases where the Bible is vague, we should certainly look to the knowledge we can gain with our eyes and ears to help clarify things.
Remember, the Bible was written with a purpose. Its purpose was not to describe the orbits of the planets, the size of the earth, the nature of matter and energy, the nature of time, whether there are aliens, or how in detail the world came to be. The primary purpose of the Bible was to teach about the existance of a God, the relationship of man to God, the nature of man as being inherently flawed, and how God set out to fix that. It also has a lot to say on what the right thing and the wrong thing to do are in a variety of situations, and principles behind these distinctions.
If I want to understand human psychology, I'll pick up a psychology text. I won't expect it to be 100% accurate - just a snapshot of what experts in the field currently think. The same applies to physics/chemistry/whatever.
When somebody goes off about how one line in the Bible about the radius and diameter of a large bowl suggests that pi is equal to 3, I stop and ask myself whether the point of the passage was the exact (to the nearest micron) measurements of the bowl, or if it was just a footnote in an overview of a massive construction project. Usually, when the authors of the Bible wanted to get a point across, they generally repeated themselves and used a variety of examples - just like most normal people would do. If something in the Bible is fairly obscure, chances are that it is fairly unimportant in the big scheme of theology...
Christians - just like scientists - would be wise to be honest about the limits of their knowledge. People confuse being honest about uncertainty with being wishy-washy, and as a result we have churches full of preachers who like to bang on the pulpit and pick any contentious issue in theology and say that if you don't agree 100% with them on it you're destined for eternal flames... If you want to know what the Bible teaches - read the Bible. Take anything else that anybody says with a grain of salt...
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Insightful)
You sort of have two questions in one there:
1. Is the Bible the word of God? (Ie absolutely true.)
2. Is the Bible intended to be interpreted literally?
The second half of your question (whether it was intended to teach lessons not to be interpreted literally) is th
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Informative)
Oh please. There might be some wackos out there that may take that issue but there are pleanty of other wackos out there too. I don't think that most "Christians" would have any problem with the idea that God created life elsewhere and didn't bother to give us details.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
My silly hope is that they are gonna go: "There are aliens ? Really ? And they don't believe in $Deity ? REALLY ? Well, I guess we were wrong all along. Sorry guys".
But I know full well that the responses will range from: "Then we must show them the way of $Deity", to "They do, they just don't know it", to "Who cares, let's keep fighting here."
When you see that the same line in some dumb old book can be interpreted as "kill them all" or "god is love, though shalt not kill", by the same religion at different times, I'm very pessimistic.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Funny)
hmm, I just had a great idea for a DOOM 3 mod...
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Interesting)
I always find this notion rather amusing. You're far more likely to find a new deadly disease that can infect *humans* in places like the Congo than anywhere off our planet.
People can dream up all sorts of wild ways in which it could evade our best defenses, be immune to quarantine, be unfightable by any sorts of drugs, be able to infect
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:4, Insightful)
We're not trying to communicate right now. If ET is out there listening to Earth like we're listening to space he won't hear us.
Factions of SETI have talked about building the VLA (Very Large Array) which would be a 1km square array of C-Band sized dishes spaced almost side to side. With this they could pick up transmissions from distant worlds about the strength of a TV broadcast.
As is, unless we've got a radio telescope pointed at us with enough juice going through it to vaporize an airliner we're not going to hear them calling.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:5, Interesting)
We have been looking for "life" outside of our planet for quite a while with nothing even approaching a hit
Five billion years of evolution for this planet alone, any you consider your lifetime a significant timescale? We have barely begun to even scratch the surface of exploration at this stage. You may ultimately be correct and we are alone but to base that assumprion on what we have done so far is truly premature.
I agree though though that if we did encounter intelligent alien life in the next few years the problems would be manifold.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Given the enormous amount of matter in the universe, I have an intuitive sense that we are not the only intelligent lifeforms. But given the enormous distances involved, I do find it unlikely that we'll ever contact them.
Most people have an intuitive sense that the... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Most people have an intuitive sense that the... (Score:3)
Here's my first "Mod Parent Up" post! Whee!
Most people can't even begin to grasp how vast and old the universe is. Why should we trust these same peoples' "intuitions" that we are alone in it? That was an absurd comment, even if it was a First Post.
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Insightful)
"We have evidence of a civilization that was on a planet circling a star 200,000 light years away." only says we were not alone at some point - namely 200,000 or so years ago. They may be extinct now - and we are alone once more. Getting them and us in the same time frame is going to be a problem, for sure.
S
Why you may not find alien civilizations (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Interesting)
A G type yellow dwarf star. A narrow band of radiation and thermal emissions. Planetary body with a core that generates enough of a magnetic field to create an ionization field around the planet capable of stopping most (but not all) of the hard radiation. A prevalence of carbon in the chemistry, and a temperature gradient in the narrow band between the solid and gaseous state of hydrogen ash when held at a pressure in also a very narrow range. NOW. Find that combination, see if life arises, then
Re:We/they may be better off alone for now (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because WE have those things doesn't actually imply that that is the only answer to the question.
Hard to find (Score:5, Insightful)
alone, until (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:alone, until (Score:2, Interesting)
Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence (Score:5, Informative)
Though you are correct, this is not what the article is saying. It's suggesting that the theoretical model for how planets are formed may not be accurate. If what they're saying turns out to be true enough, then Earth-type planets could be extremely rare. They do not say that we're alone. They do not say they have evidence that we are alone or close to it. Instead they've come up with an alternative that may provide a reasonable assumption that it'll be a LOOONG time before we find another earthish planet.
Scientists just don't work that way.
Re:Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence (Score:4, Insightful)
It's suggesting that the theoretical model for how planets are formed may not be accurate.
Right, but their basis for suggesting that is a pattern in the data that is totaly explained by known selection bias in the data. Occam's razor, if nothing else, should have made them stop and think. If you knowingly mount a security camera in an ammusement park angled so that it can only see people over six feet tall, do you then conclude that an alternative theory of amusement parks is needed, because by the standard model you would have expected to see more children than you did? Or do you say "sample bias" and try to develop a better camera setup?
We can't detect earth-like planets at earth-like distances from their starts (yet) but we can detect large planets that orbit close to their stars. So of course the extra-solar planetary systems we find will be the ones with a gas giant close in. That just proves that our detection methods are detecting the sort of things that can be detected with those detection methods. It says nothing about what we aren't detecting (yet) one way or another.
-- MarkusQ
Re:Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence (Score:5, Informative)
The basis for the assertion that there's a problem with the model is based on the current population of known extra solar planets. It's almost completely made up of big planets close their stars.
Well, duh.
We have only detected short period orbits because we need to see multiple passes of a planet in front of its start to confirm it's presence. This technique finds the shortest periods first. We have to keep watching to catch the longer periods.
The bigger the planet, the bigger the wobble, the easier the confirmation of the presence of a planet.
Big planets on short orbits are the first off the assembly line.
We have to wait longer to detect longer orbits (if an orbit takes 10 earth years, and we need three passes of the planet to call it a dedection...)
Smaller planets don't make their stars wobble enough to be detected in the current manner.
The original post is absolutly correct, there's no news here.
I just KNOW somebody's getting a new grant to take a look at this possibility, though.
-ave
Bablefish proves there is no god. (Score:3, Funny)
In audio [swipnet.se]
Gun-Jumping (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gun-Jumping (Score:3, Insightful)
which according to this article would lead us to believe that this is a gas-giant system.
so we would be quite overlooked by other "aliens" out there looking at the same things.
just a thought..
Re:Gun-Jumping (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gun-Jumping (Score:4, Interesting)
If you do a grep for the wrong pattern, you're not going to find the pattern you are looking for.
Additionally, we can only scan a small chunk of the galaxy, much less the universe as a whole.
Probability is still WAY on the side of other earthlike or at least life sustaining planets existing. Hell, we are finding life in so MANY places that we thought were uninhabitable that it probably can form in any environment with liquid water and a sustainable energy source.
That only covers a small chunk of what we are secretly hoping/dreading finding. Next we would want to find not just a planet, not just life, but intelligent life. Given how intelligence probably evolved in people, we will need to find a massive amount of life before finding intelligence.
Then to find civilization of some form that intelligence has to survive into the maturing process (a point we haven't passed yet ourselves) or we have to get lucky enough to find it before it dies off (and before we die off).
Chances of anyone from Earth ever seeing an alien culture? Pretty slim, but a large part of that is the question of our ultimate survival. Chances of civilization existing at some point somewhere in the universe? IMO 50/50. Chance of -some- form of life existing elsewhere? IMO 100%. Chances of me being alive when it happens? IMO 1% and then only if it originated within our solar system.
Ok Seriously... (Score:4, Insightful)
Come on, people... Seriously.
Re:Ok Seriously... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ok Seriously... (Score:5, Interesting)
But on the other side of that coin, the entire Universe is Very Large - and the vast majority of it is completely unmapped / unexplored (from our perspective) to any reasonable degree.
I'd argue that our two "Very"s cancel each other out nicely.
The odds of us being fairly Unique? They're probably pretty high. But the odds of us being COMPLETELY Unique?
And plus your argument of timing is very good. But I'd argue that the finding artifacts from a long-doomed alien civilization would be almost as tasty as finding the civilization itself.
Certainly if they were already gone, at least we wouldn't have to worry about forming (and maintaining!) good relations with them.
Re:Ok Seriously... (Score:2)
"Oh, she looks out the window and wonders again; Is there life out there..."
Re:Ok Seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not arrogance, it's just a belief. You can call it a "statistically improbable belief" but not arrogance.
On the other hand I would like to understand how is it even possible to calculate the chances of life appearing in another spot of the galaxy, and the chances that such life becomes intelligent. Personally, I don't think they are as high as you seem to believe.
Well, duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
It occurs to me that a useful way to think about these "hot Jupiters" may be as failed double stars, not planets equivalent to our own gas giants. And we already know that double stars are more common than singletons like the Sun. (Er, I think -- someone please tell me if I'm wrong.)
One thing that frustrates me about the articles I've seen on this subject is that they don't explain why formation of big, close-in gas giants precludes formation of Earth-like planets farther out. Accretion disks are really, really big; surely parts of them can clump into gas giants while others slowly form smaller, rocky planets?
Re:Well, duh. (Score:5, Informative)
One thing that frustrates me about the articles I've seen on this subject is that they don't explain why formation of big, close-in gas giants precludes formation of Earth-like planets farther out. Accretion disks are really, really big; surely parts of them can clump into gas giants while others slowly form smaller, rocky planets?
Here's the explanation: gas giants have to form farther out, past the "frost-line" where ices can first freeze out of the gas disk. In order to be a hot Jupiter, the have to migrate inward toward the star. That migration is slow, but if the planet encounters a terrestrial planet then the terrestrial planet is in trouble because the giant planet will either scatter it out of its way (either out of system, into the Sun, or at least into a fairly eccentric orbit, none of which is good for habitability) or accrete it. And if there is a terrestrial planet, the giant planet will encounter it on the way in since, by the standard model for planet formation, the terrestrial planets will be in the giant planet's path.
Re:Well, duh. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well, duh. (Score:3, Informative)
The difference in planets is due to temperature in the disk. Since it's colder farther out, ices can freeze and be used to build the cores. Once the core is large enough, you get gas capture and jovian planets.
Only 120 solar systems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only 120 solar systems? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheers,
Erick
Re:Only 120 solar systems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only 120 solar systems? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's say a mysterious being came and offered you a chance to win a million dollars by giving him $1 per ticket and you had absolutely NO idea of who they were or what this "lottery" system was. You had no idea of the odds, you had no idea of the other winners.
120 tickets later, you would have no intelligent reason to believe that you could actually win. You wouldn't know.
Key wording is "100+ systems currently known..." (Score:4, Insightful)
And if we are alone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And if we are alone? (Score:5, Funny)
Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes)
Probablility... (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, been done before....
So far.. (Score:2)
The universe is a pretty big place, and I bet somewhere out there is something pretty close to our solar system.
Who knows... (Score:2, Insightful)
"My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists"
This is not "news for nerds" (Score:5, Insightful)
With current technologies (and the amount of time we've been looking) we can only detect very large planets that are quite close their parent star...
SURPRISE!!!! We've only found systems with large planets close to the parent star.
Big news.
Are We Alone in the Universe? (Score:5, Funny)
Next story, please.
Nothing days we are alone (Score:5, Insightful)
Average sun
Average location in the galaxy (OK, maybe a little out in the backwater, but we have traversed more dense regions of the spirals of our galaxy in the last x billion years).
Average matter content (gases, etc...)
What might be the case could very simply be that space is awfully big, and we have only scanned a tiny portion of it in a tiny portion of the ways possible to scan it.
I mean come on, if the observable universe is TINY, and we've only examined a TINY portion of that, isn't it a bit too early to say "That's it, we're all alone" ?
After all, why have such a huge place all for the likes of us? What a waste...
Rediculous (Score:2)
Well I work for some Gas Giants, yet... (Score:2)
Re:Well I work for some Gas Giants, yet... (Score:2)
Great statistics. (Score:2)
just a few tenfolds more have been scanned for planets.
From that one draws the conclusion we are alone !!??
The "current technology and techniques" link is in that context also
very interresting, as we at the moment don't know how to detect earth sized planets.
I think a bit more science and research is needed before one draws the conclusion that our solar system is genuin
No s**t Sherlock (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe that's because our current science is only good enough to detect incredibly massive (*cough cough gas giants cough*) planets? Gee, thanks CNN, great job writing another logically inadequate article for the igrnorant masses to buy right into.
Are we alone? Does it matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever the odds that life exist elsewhere, we should remember that we have a special planet here, and we should take care of it. We have no other feasible options in the near future.
Gas giants (Score:2)
Getting scientific information from CNN is like getting political news from The Enquirer.
Would You Visit Earth? (Score:4, Interesting)
Take a look at any of the alien visitation movies we make. Aliens come to Earth. Aliens attack humans. Humans unite (that's the truly unbelieveable part of these movies). Humans destroy all Aliens.
What species in their right minds is going to come to a planet who's inhabitants immediately imprison and disect anything remotely extra terrestrial?
Re:Would You Visit Earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
We can always (Score:3, Funny)
That way we will always know there is life outside the planet, but we will have no desire to find it.
wuh? (Score:2, Funny)
ET probably won't even care about us (Score:5, Funny)
Scenario 1: We find life outside our planet, but that life turns out to be nothing more interesting than slightly-better-tasting cattle.
Scenario 2: We find ourselves on the receiving end of Scenario 1.
Let's face it, if the odds of finding intelligent life outside our solar system are astronomical, then consider the odds of that life being even remotely analagous to us, development-wise. We're either gonna be finding some glorified alien algae or uber-beings who don't even blink when their uber-Cuisinarts routinely vaporize solar systems...
Re:ET probably won't even care about us (Score:5, Informative)
(as closely as memory serves.)
Re:ET probably won't even care about us (Score:3, Interesting)
You recall correctly, wish I had some mod points for ya.
-dave-
Life? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if we are the only earth-like body in the universe (a laughable assumption), there may be life on those gas giants.
On the other hand, considering the vastness of space and the difficulty traversing it, we may be effectively alone in a universe teeming with life.
The real uncommon thing about Earth (Score:2, Interesting)
However in astronomy class I did learn one quite interesting thing about the Earth. Apparently the Sol system was forming just as a near by super nova happend. This caused a lot of short term radioactive material to be injected into our solar system. This stuff has mostly long since decayed, but it provided some extra heat to melt the earth's crust and cause the "iron catastrophy". Basically th
Decent article on detecting extrasolar planets... (Score:2, Informative)
It involves five methods currently (all of which are outlined in the article):
That is not what we should be concerned about (Score:2, Funny)
Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Gee, we've sampled 100 star systems out of 900 trillion, and none so far are like our own. Nevermind that the technology we have can't even detect earth-like planets except by the dumbest luck, I think we have a CNN science story! Don't forget to add something vaguely religious the last paragraph of the article."
Patterns (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends... (Score:3, Insightful)
One writeup on Yahoo made a good point... we have only had the technology to observe at this level of detail for about a decade, while the only directly observable gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) have orbits of 12 and 26 earth years, respectively. So, in the next few years, expect a lot more "gas giant" discoveries, assuming that the orbits of gas giants in "life-friendly" systems are relatively equivalent to ours.
Then, we'll have to wait until we have telescopes with better resolution and/or more megapixels, so we can resolve better detail of smaller earth-sized objects...
OK but what does it really mean? (Score:4, Interesting)
OK. Perhaps this is true but ultimately I wonder; so what? Even if another M class planet doesn't exist what's the big deal? Even in that model of the universe that doesn't exclude the idea that there may be other life forms. It also doesn't end the possibility of human expansion. While it is possible it's also trivial on many levels.
And with the rate we're going it gives plenty of time for other planets to form...
method only sensitive to large, fast planets (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupidest article evar!...ok, well, TODAY. (Score:3, Insightful)
Extrapolation = huge
CNN = slow science news day, apparently.
AFAIK (IANAAA) our current detection methods are pretty much one of two methods:
1) observing wobble in a sun caused by orbitting planets
2) slight occlusion of the sun if the planet passes in front of it.
Both of these methods are ONLY any good for detecting MASSIVE (!!) bodies close to their primary. Further, both very rapidly become useless if these very particular beasts are not present. Plus, we've examined such a vanishingly small proportion of even the local stellar neighborhood, on any rounded scale we've seen almost precisely 0%. Nice sample size.
Ergo, this would really only be somewhat significant if we found that every star we've analyzed has such a system, this would make it depressingly likely that this is a COMMON configuration. But the fact that a statistically small sample of the measured stars have these giants in close orbits conversely suggests that, as predicted, we are *probably* only looking at a tiny segment of a 'solar system bell curve'.
Conversely, as already pointed out here, the fact that we have a humdrum Sun, humdrum element signature, humdrum stellar neighborhood (a little on the sparse side right now), suggest that our system is more likely to be a humdrum, average system.