'Hundreds of Worlds' in Milky Way 334
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."
No shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Today, children receive next to no education in the field of astronomy. Were they to have a proper understanding of what lies beyond Pluto, they'd probably grow up to realize how silly it is to believe that there is only one planet like Earth.
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No shit that there are other planets like ours out there. The incomprehensibly massive scale of the universe dictates it to be true, statistically-speaking.
9 * 10^21 stars.
It's big, but it's not so big.
Imagine we discover:
That the chance of a star to have planets is one in a million. Doesn't seem impossible, does it?
The chance of a star with planets to have one at the correct distance (taking star heat in consideration) to be between 0 and 100 C, one in a billion.
The chance of a planet in the correct position to have water. One in a million.
So, we still have nine planets. Now, cross your fingers that one of those is not radioactive, doesn't show the same side
Re:No shit. (Score:5, Informative)
Of course the Earth could be located in a statistical anomaly within the Milky Way, but if you posit a uniform repartition of planets, there has to be more.
I am just nit-picking however. I fully agree with the rest of your post.
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Re: bad guess (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't simply spout a bunch of hyperbole and expect to be taken seriously. Especially in reply to an article that attempts to actually determine those numbers and percentages based on facts. This kind of talk is really no different from the comedy statement that "90% of people know that you can prove anything with statistics." It's meaningless.
While we will likely have to wait a whole lot longer for meaningful answers to the Drake equation, attempts at putting fact-based numbers on the variables should be applauded, and discounting them with what amounts to emotional hyperbole should be discouraged IMO.
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"The incomprehensibly massive scale of the universe dictates it to be true, statistically-speaking."
(Speaking of hyperbole and statistics jokes).
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2 - I would be interested in your estimations.
Re:No shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Point 1: very long odds, given the number of extrasolar planets we've already discovered.
Point 2: extremely long odds. It's a reasonably wide zone for the Sun, from about halfway between Earth and Venus out to Mars - which would probably be inhabitable if it were larger and could hold a thick atmosphere. Moreover the zone will shift as the star evolves and brightens, so a planet that starts out frozen may spring to life in later years. Come the red giant phase even Titan might bear life.
Point 3: totally redundant. It just repeats point 2, but for some reason does so with a probability greater by a factor of one thousand. Counting the same criterion twice just to get the numbers down by a factor of a million is cheating.
How do you know that tidally locked planets are commonplace? There are none in our system.
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None, except for Venus...
But yes, I agree most of the numbers seem like poor WAGs, and the water point seemed redundant.
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Still, any planets that are tidally locked will be very close to some larger body. If they're close to the sun, then they'll be out of the liquid water zone. If they're close to something else, then I don't see why that should exclude them as a hom
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Once you have planets the odds of one being in a reasonably correct orbit for liquid water would now appear to be quite good as latest evidence indicates that it seems planets form wherever they can. Even being cau
Well, it's nice to have a destination... (Score:5, Insightful)
The speed of light is a barrier like few the humanity has ever found.
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Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, given our understanding for life, and how it evolved, it would seem that complex life forms would probably NOT be rare at all.
The biggest hurdles for human-like intelligence probably includes the following:
1. Self replicating molecules. I'm not sure how precise the conditions for getting life started are, but it probably isn't something we would see very often.
2. Conditions remaining stable for those molecules for a very long time.
3. Symbiotic relationships developing between organisms. (requirement for multi-cellular life)
4. The creativity mutation. (for lack of a better term.)
In between, it seems that the process of natural selection would be the driving factor, but those 4 items listed are probably the most important 'leaps'.
With regard to the creativity mutation: As I recall, there was a proto-human homonid that DID use tools, but never developed on that tool (The stone axe they used at the beginning of their existance was the same stone axe that they used at the end of their existance) And that period of time wasn't short, something on the order of millions of years where they used the exact stone axe. While they were using a tool, there was no real thought behind it. In that respect, it seems that it was much like a spider's web, a very precise tool for survival but instinct rather than a developed idea.
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Given sufficient time, all things possible are inevitable.
Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination... (Score:5, Interesting)
Put another way, "given enough time, monkeys will fly out of my ass." Now, evolutionarily speaking, flying monkeys are possible. It is also possible, given enough mechanical force, that my ass could be stretched large enough to fit the wingspan of an average flying monkey. But I really doubt that even if you waited around for an eternity, you'd ever see a monkey fly out of my ass.
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Conway's Game of Life (which I remember programming on a ZX-80 computer, good grief) is an extremely limited set of rules compared to the Universe's - it specifically doesn't allow for randomness - all configurations of the game can be reached if the initial conditions are randomly set.
For your viewing pleasure
Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination... (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe the specific hominid you are referring to is Homo Ergaster (Working Man).
While they were using a tool, there was no real thought behind it. In that respect, it seems that it was much like a spider's web, a very precise tool for survival but instinct rather than a developed idea.
I don't know if I agree with that assessment. It seems to me as if H. Ergaster simply progressed as far as his brain would allow, and no farther. A simple hand axe was just the apex of his ability. Looking at H. Ergaster makes me rather worried about the future of our species...after all, we haven't been around nearly as long. What if we run up against an innate limit in our brains, and our technology can proceed no further?
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Re:Well, it's nice to have a destination... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that it helps illustrate what is actually a non-distinct separation between H. Ergaster (thanks for identifying that) and modern humans.
If it were the case that H. Ergaster simply reached the limits of their mental capacity, we should have seen other examples of tool use. We should be able to find species which developed tools a step or two beyond H. Ergaster. Instead what we see is that there is a type of technological explosion beyond that point.
I would argue that our intellect has reached a sort of 'critical mass' with regard to its capacity to manufacture tools of increasing complexity and advancement. While we may reach plateaus, our intellect allows us to circumvent artificial limits and develop new technologies. Even now, we are inventing tools that help us create tools that are beyond our physical limitations (CAD, genetic simulations, etc).
In contrast, H. Ergaster invented and used the stone axe, and almost a half million years later was still using the same stone axe. In a similar amount of time, modern humans have progressed from the stone axe, to sending robotic explorers to other planets.
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Energy is the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is a deal-breaker, then it is contruction and propulsion of such a craft. The vaster the craft, then the more unlikely it's construction. We might be able to fire ourselves off in a single direction, but how do we slow down, and what if we need to change course. If we need to come home, then we've doubled the energy required!
Then there are complex issues with people - our fragile minds and bodies. How do we react to the stress of space-travel, can we do it?
The speed of light seems like a comparatively simple issue.
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Holly: Look, we're travelling faster than the speed of light. That means, by the time we see something, we've already passed through it. Even with an IQ of 6000, it's still brown trousers time.
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Imagine if you would a cure to aging or a method to remain in stasis for hundreds or thousands of years. Once we get that out of the way, traveling to another solar system isn't that far fetched. It is suspect there is enough material in the vacuum of space between systems that could help refuel a fast traveling vessel to keep propulsion up and since there is no weather or space bacteria (that we know of) erosion and decay won't be much of
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Not so Rare Earth (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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Heh. This new information kinda blows a hole in that theory, huh?
Re:Not so Rare Earth (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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But an Intelligent Designer? Piffle! He just hung the drapes and painted the place. And the bast
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An entire documentary based on a retarded truism. How depressing.
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"Exactly, as well as the simple fact that if conditions weren't suitable for life here, there would be none of us here to remark on how suitable conditions are for life."
Let me fix that for you: "Exactly, as well as the simple fact that if conditions weren't suitable for life here, there would be none of us here in our current form to remark on how suitable conditions are for life.
If conditions were different, it doesn't mean that life (even intelligent life) wouldn't exist. Now let's all welcome our h
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The OP nailed it - the conditions here are perfect for us because here is where we developed, evolving along the way to fit our conditions perfectly. There's nothing remarkable about it.
Aquatic life? (Score:2)
Anyhow, cool to hear that being the third rock from the sun is nothing special.
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Complex life, certainly. Intelligent
Re:Aquatic life? (Score:5, Informative)
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Octopuses are on my "Do not eat because they're too darned bright." list and have been there for awhile. I think uplift experiments involving them would be very interesting. :-)
sponge bob (Score:2)
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Aquatic post-stone age is improbable (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would they be limited to the stone age? If you assume that they are fully aquatic and not amphibian-like then they would lack one of the
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Layne
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It isn't sufficient to just have a heat source to smelt, if you just heat up the ore you would end up with melted ore. There is actually a chemical reaction taking place, mainly it is the use of ca
Re:Aquatic life? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, we are in the midst of people arguing about exactly how intelligent cephalopods and sea based mammals are.
The truth of the matter is that we have no real way to gauge the intelligence of other alien life forms. Almost all tests are based on a set of assumptions. It is only fairly recently that we have even defined classes of intelligences within humans (Linguistic, Spatial, Musical, Body-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Logical/Mathematical). It is entirely possible that intelligent life could evolve in aquatic environments that score extremely high in multiple categories there and we would have no real way of knowing. We know that there are a number of species that have highly evolved linguistic characteristics. But, what are they saying? Is it "See Spot Run"? Is it something profound? Is it elaborate fart jokes? It is entirely possible that the social structures are subtle enough that we have no means of determining how complex they are. When whale song can be heard from thousands of miles away, how do you determine the society that hears it and responds and the relationship between the one singing and the ones listening?
Someone once said that either we are alone, or we are not. Either answer is mind boggling.
My view is that we don't even know if we alone here on Earth, much less the universe.
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Sure, there are many others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Origin_of_life), but I think that is the most commonly accepted one.
Re:Aquatic life? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Also, although an aquatic species could conceivably develop intelligence, I can't imagine what form its technology would take. With such elementary things as fire denied to them, it's doubtful that they could progress to any reasonable level.
They played us for suckers! (Score:2, Funny)
Squid, cuttlefish, and other similarly baleful creatures are all members of the cephalopod family, characterized by HUGE EYES, BEAKS [qwantz.com]
Re:Aquatic life? (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on how you define "intelligence". Our liquids are certainly teeming with intelligent life. Life itself apparently began in our oceans. Fish are certainly very smart - they feed themselves, find mates, defend territory, build defensive structures, some species live and travel in social groups, etc. These are all signs of "intelligence". Then if you want to cheat a bit and look at the ocean mammals - seals, porpoises, whales, these are extremely intelligent aquatic beings.
Arthur C. Clarke, however, argued that CIVILIZATION, however, could not evolve in an aquatic environment, for the simple reason that you cannot have fire underwater. His interesting theory claims that fire, and our control of fire - has been a driving force in our technology. First the fire we would use for slash and burn agriculture - which while being devastating for the environment over the long term gave many short term advantages to the primitive farmer. Fire to make steam is what drove the industrial revolution. And that same power is still in use today, though we get our "fire" in the form of Uranium, or by burning fossil fuels. Then there is the "fire" from the sky - electricity. Harnessing this particular "fire" would be pretty tricky underwater.
I guess it's an interesting concept to play with, and surely there are many possibilities that we biased, land dwelling humans could never dream of, but I respect Mr. Clarke and his idea. I think it would be difficult for an aquatic civilization to arise here or anywhere else.
Re:Aquatic life? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are plenty of volcanoes under the water here on Earth. Could those serve as a source of fire?
Perhaps primitive marine creatures would realize that some sort of algae-like food source grows better in the warmer waters around these "glowing liquid not-water" sources and start building walls around them to hold in that temperature. Sort of like farming - but with algae instead of regular "crops". This would give them a stable food source and they could get to thinking about other things.
Re:Aquatic life? (Score:4, Interesting)
I always thought that was a pretty uncreative comment from such a create fellow. If you eliminate the need to breathe (artificially) underwater, it's pretty easy to come up with a basic concept of civilization.
Algae farms wouldn't be hard to manage with the most basic of technology. Power could be generated from currents turning water wheels. Heat based power sources could also work, such as sea floor hot spots or something using the differential between the warm sea surface and the cool sea bottom. Hard metals might be all but unworkable, but fabric and bone could be made easily with plant and animal life. That would then allow a relatively firm fabric based cage/pen for herding animals. Transportation obviously wouldn't be in the form of a locomotive, but perhaps a system of rapid current tunnels could be worked out. Or maybe the harnessing of larger sea animals.
I don't know enough to determine the rest, but I think the rudimentary civilization is there; tool use, farming/herding instead of hunting/gathering, and the basics of transportation.
not very wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Re:not very wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:not very wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think we're going to be seeing many Europan astronauts anytime soon.
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The Earth's mantle is a crystalline solid, with only tiny isolated pockets of magma. There is no vast magma ocean. The lower mantle is subjected to pressures that can keep it solid well above 2000 degree C. Much of the mantle deforms over millions of years, but it is not liquid.
The biggest liquid comp
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Its been posited that life (including intelligent life) could be possible on the surface of a brown dwarf, using exotic chemistries, "helped along" by the much higher gravity. We just don't know, and we may never know.
TFA is confused... (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't want to talk about why I remember such things.
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Remember that the Galaxy is a three-dimensional volume, while Saudi Arabia is flattish. According to Idle et. al (Significat Vitae Carmen Galactica, 1983), our Galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars and is a hundred thousand lightyears side to side; it bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand lightyears thick, but out by us
Drake Equation (Score:4, Interesting)
This being said, given that most of these "nearby" worlds are tens of thousands of light-years away, with the current state of our technology, we might as well be alone.
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Using "Accepted values" for the Drake Equation are like using accepted values for the age of the earth taken f
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How common were they before? (Score:2, Funny)
How meny of them have stargates on them? (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder then... (Score:2)
And all of them are ours (Score:4, Funny)
But do we want them? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Yeah, if you don't mind disassembling the whole planet. The NIMBY people would be all over you and, frankly, I would join them on this one.
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Why should you mind? I'm not necessarily talking about disassembling Earth. We could start with Venus and Mars.
> The NIMBY people would be all over you and, frankly, I would join them on this one.
Why? The planetoids will not be anywhere near your back yard. In fact, if you stay on Earth, you don't even need to be aware of their existence. They'll be so far, you will not even be able to see them without a huge telescope. And it isn't like you hav
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BTW, I think that Venus will be more terraformable than Mars.
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Naturally, your ownership rights will transfer to one of the planetoids we build from it. I said we could start with Mars and Venus, but I'd consider it desirable to eventually disassemble Earth as well.
In case you are wondering, living in the planetoid will not be any different than your present situation. You'll still have blue skies, rain and clouds, rivers and the sea. You'll be able to
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#2 A cycle DOES care how large it is. The larger, more complex the cycle the more places there are for slack in the system, the more complex it is the more control points you have and the larger the volume the more time you have to fix it before it starts reinforcing itself.
#3 In a larger system the materials and energy reuierments wouldn't be nearly as stringent and the system could have compensated before it crashed.
#4 Please site a refere
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In the same place as we ought to bury the ridiculous custom of burying people - in the recycler. That said, if you want a graveyard in your backyard on the planetoid, nothing would prevent you from doing it. It will have soil, you know. In my calculations I assumed a 100m shell, which is far deeper than you'd ever dig on Earth.
Re:But do we want them? (Score:4, Insightful)
> We are going to develop a reliable renewable energy source (probably fusion and solar) before we trully "run out."
And yours are too optimistic. We've been in technological stagnation since 2000 and it's only going to get worse from now on. Research is not a high priority during a depression, and we are definitely heading for one now. I rather doubt we'll have fusion. For one, nobody is seriously working on it. The few projects in existence are just token government efforts "to be doing something". I do not expect them to succeed.
> Plus the mined resources aren't gone...they are in buildings.
Yes, they are. They are also in dirt. The reason we have ore mines is not that iron doesn't exist anywhere else, but that it's concentrated there and is in an easily extractable form. Abandoned skyscrapers will indeed have iron, but at a very low density. Most of it is embedded in concrete as rebar, making it very hard to extract by hand, and impossible to extract on industrial scale. The iron that's out in the open will rust after a few decades of exposure. How long will your house stand if you never fix roof leaks? Once it's rusted, the energy required to extract it becomes enormous. Industrial ores today are sulfides, which are easily melted. Melting rust is very very difficult by comparison.
> they are just harder more expensive to tap.
But that's the whole point. To us they are too expensive to tap now. To a civilization at 12th century level of technology it is impossible to reach at any cost. In fact, even that level requires abundant metal to reach. With all the surface metal gone, civilization might not be able to leave stone age. How will you build a modern mine with a flint axe and a wooden shovel? Or an oil well under the sea? The further you fall, the harder it becomes to climb back. If our civilization falls into stone age, it would quite likely just stay there.
> Actully whe have more proven reserves now than we did 50 years ago,
I would take the official "proven reserves" figures with a very large grain of salt. Some of them are just guesses. Others are outright lies. No, I don't have links, sorry
Doesn't Anyone Read TFA ? (Score:3, Informative)
We have already found 273 extra-solar planets [obspm.fr] in the galaxy. No one doubts now that there are millions, if not billions, in the galaxy, and a puling "hundreds" of Earth type planets in the galaxy would strike most people following this research as a very low estimate.
From the article : "Some astronomers believe there may be hundreds of small rocky bodies in the outer edges of our own Solar System, and perhaps even a handful of frozen Earth-sized worlds."
I would also regard this as almost not news at all, given the rapid rate of discovery of TNOs [harvard.edu] (Trans Neptunian Objects), three of which so far are the size of Pluto or larger.
Just because it's rocky (Score:4, Informative)
There are so many things that have to come together to make our planet habitable, that I suspect these conditions are a lot less frequently found than a lot of people would hope. That's not to say I don't think is common in the universe. I do. I just think the vast majority (by several orders of magnitude) of it is going to be single-cell (or if not in the form of cells, of equivalent complexity). You need liquid water (which gives you a pretty narrow temperature range at any given pressure), you need something in the atmosphere to protect against stellar radiation (or, if it's a water planet, I suppose something in the water to protect), you need a planet that's active, but not overly active (and lots of factors go into that). Anyway, I suspect true earth-like planets are pretty rare.
Re:Just because it's rocky (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not an attribute of solar systems in general; it's an attribute of solar systems *we can detect* by viewing perturbations in a star's relative position. There's a reason the first planets have had extremely short orbits and extremely large mass. By virtue of the methodology, the larger the planet and the closer the orbit (which makes for a larger/faster wobble, respectively), the easier we can detect them. A planet with the mass of our Sun would still take centuries to detect with current technology if it had the orbital period of Pluto.
Granted, you qualified your statement, but then you went on to describe the likelihood of an Earth-like planet based on our limited findings. That's a bit like saying "The faintest stars we can see with the naked eye are magnitude 4, therefore it's unlikely that many stars are dimmer than that."
To aid science with religion... (Score:3, Interesting)
I always found this verse interesting, using worlds as opposed to planets. So why wouldn't there be more than one?
Just food for thought
the wonder (Score:3, Funny)
Re:sweet (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:sweet (Score:5, Funny)
By the way, it's "later", not "latter"
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Re:sweet (Score:5, Informative)
German is useful here because 1) it's the root language for English and 2) its sentence structures can be perfectly analogous. Take the German sentence Schreib deiner Mutter einen Brief which is translated word-for-word as Write your mother a letter. In German, the deiner is a clear marker that Mutter is dative. The exact same thing is happening in English, but since we don't decline our articles or possessive adjectives and rely instead on word order, it's not obvious to the typical native speaker.
[OT] Re:sweet (Score:3, Insightful)
Where I come from (i.e., in linguistics), English is regularly referred to as a Germanic language. In English literature courses, professors in the know will tell you that, while most of our long words come from Latin through French, the short words and the structure are derived from German. There are
Re:sweet (Score:4, Interesting)
Carbon is the only central element we know of that can make the extremely complex molecular constructs we find in living things. A "rock" like ours has to have a minimum set of specifications in order to have life capable of anything we could call "civilization".
1.0 One major requirement that this rock must have no other star closer than about 3.8 light years besides its "sun". Another sun sized star closer than about 3.8 light years would mess up that rock's orbit and make the long term climate there inhospitable to life. Only about half of all the stars in the whole universe qualify on this distance specification.
2.0 The gravity at the surface of the planet must be right. Too strong gravity causes the atmosphere to contain too much methane and ammonia, both very poisonous to life. It also makes it hard to move, especially flight. Too little gravity will produce a planet like Mars with little air and water.
3.0 The mass of that star has to be just right. Too large a star would causes its energy output vary more than living things could stand. The energy output of huge stars is not stable, long term. Any life would be exterminated by cooking or freezing before it could get very far along. A too tiny star would force that rock to be too close to its star to get enough heat for life. This would mess up the rotation time, tending to make a day and a year about the same length, such as the planet Mercury. Also there would be excessive tidal forces that would be hard on higher civilized life.
5.0 The rotation time of such a rock could not be too different from that of our earth. If that rock rotates more slowly, then everything would freeze solid every night and cook during the day. A faster spin would make for terrific storms in the atmosphere all the time, preventing the formation of higher civilized society. The rotational speed of Saturn and Jupiter are very high and the winds in its atmosphere are phenomenal. (hundreds of miles per hour)
6.0 Ratio of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere is critical. Too much oxygen would make life functions run too fast and allow any fires to burn whole continents over in devastating fire storms. Too little oxygen would not allow much meaningful activity, because life processes would proceed too slowly. Any other gases, if present in more than trace amounts could also prevent the development of life.
7.0 The crust (outer solid layer) of such a rock has to be the right thickness. If it were too thick, most of the oxygen in the atmosphere would be tied up in it, leaving too little free for living things. Too thin a crust would result in too many severe earthquakes and volcanoes would make it quite difficult to develop any advanced civilization. The crust of our own rock is thinner than the skin on an onion at the relative scale.
8.0 The chemical binding energies of carbon dictate the wavelengths of light needed by living things (photosynthesis in plants on our own rock) that convert the light from the star into a suitable form to knit hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and other elements together as building blocks and fuel for all life forms. The spectrum of that rock's star must therefore be pretty close to that of our sun. Blue or red giants or dwarfs need not apply for the job.
Conclusion: To get a suitable rock upon which a civilization can develop and flourish requires a number of fortuitous "coincidences". On a random basis, this makes the chance of another rock like ours very small. Maybe some enterprising
Re:can we make our minds up? (Score:5, Funny)
"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.
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Some astronomers believe there may be hundreds of small rocky bodies in the outer edges of our own Solar System, and perhaps even a handful of frozen Earth-sized worlds.
So it's reasonable that any Earth-sized bodies would be considered as new planets, but "handful" doesn't seem to account for "hundreds if not thousands".
Then again, I'm amused that this guy still seems to insist that there are 9 planets in our solar system, so either he slept through the recent decision, or he
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