Scientists Estimate 40% of Red Dwarfs Have A Rocky Planet 114
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Science World Report: "Astronomers hunting for rocky planets with the right temperature to support life estimate there may be tens of billions of them in our galaxy alone. A European team said on Wednesday that about 40 percent of red dwarf stars — the most common type in the Milky Way — have a so-called 'super-Earth' planet orbiting in a habitable zone that would allow water to flow on the surface."
But only *one* Red Dwarf... (Score:2)
...has Cat! [wordpress.com]
Re:But only *one* Red Dwarf... (Score:4, Funny)
I was going to go for the Rimmer shot, personally...
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FTFY
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100% of normal humans recognize that said scientists had their senses of humor surgically removed at an early age.
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Drake equation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Drake equation (Score:4, Interesting)
The Drake equation could be updated, but I think it has too many factors which have very high error margins. This just means that we would not be much smarter with the updated equation.
Hunt for the spectra [centauri-dreams.org] of the atmospheres of exoplanets! That should give us some idea [mit.edu] if life exists there or not.
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Exactly. If f(little L) (the fraction of star systems that actually go on to develop life at some point) in the Drake equation [wikipedia.org] goes past one, then you linearly increase the chance of intelligent life beyond earth. Doesn't sound all that impressive, but if f(little L) doesn't go past one, then it means we're alone. Period. Somebody made some big mistake way back when and we're the end result of it. Meaning we'd best behave. OTOH, if life pops up most everywhere that planet chemistry allows for the ap
Not so fast (Score:2)
Life existing elsewhere still does not make it easy for inteligent (or should I say technological?) life to appear.
The Drake Equation is still useless like that, we have no idea what half the probabilities are, and any one of those can be so exceptionally small that the other ones being near 1 won't matter.
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
The Drake Equation is still useless like that, we have no idea what half the probabilities are, and any one of those can be so exceptionally small that the other ones being near 1 won't matter.
The Drake Equation is useful as a tool for understanding which probabilities are unknown. That's all it was ever meant to be.
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There are a couple of quandaries in the last two terms of the Drake Equation (f sub c and L). First, what is a detectable sign? Surely that would depend on depend on our own technology as much as the alien civilization's. In just a few hundred years we have gone from relying entirely on the naked eye to powerful radio telescope arrays, etc. Who knows what technologies will become available in the future? We might well be able to listen in as if we had ham radios on all the habitable planets in the galaxy in
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Yep, point taken.
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I know it's not the point of the equation, and actually getting there is still a tremendous obstacle, but given the choice between trying to colonize a planet with some life or a barren one, I'd think the one with other life would be far easier. Plus it'd open up whole new fields of science - biology in particular, but
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If f(little L) (the fraction of star systems that actually go on to develop life at some point) in the Drake equation goes past one,
The terms of the Drake equation are proportions. They cannot "go past one". A value of 1 would mean that every star system develops life at some point.
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Crap. You're right. Never posit mathematical stuff before adequate caffeine levels have been reached. Even if it's fifth grade math.
Should have said 'approaches one'.
Sigh.
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I wouldn't have thought there were any figures to update since most of the factors in the Drake Equation wouldn't have even galaxy-sized-ballpark estimates.
They Further Speculate That... (Score:1)
...if any of these planets should support lifeforms, they would be given extraordinary supper powers once exposed to our yellow sun.
Re:They Further Speculate That... (Score:4, Funny)
they would be given extraordinary supper powers
Is that like, the ability to create a really tasty dinner or something? Or they just get really fucking hungry in the late afternoon?
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I wonder... (Score:1)
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)
What you asked, yes wormholes are entirely based in science and the current mathematical models that we have for the universe generally state that they must be possible (in some cases, must exist). Not all, but many.
What you meant, is there any *truth* to wormholes; meaning were the sci-fi novels correct: No, not really. Unless you can move the ends of a wormhole there isn't much use to them; and the math is much less supportive of that.
However, generally speaking on average our current physics models say yes they are possible and yes they *may* be possible to create. However they say so in sort of the same way that they say travelling faster than light is possible (in that they don't expressly forbid it, but generally require infinite energy to actually get there).
Some other physics grads/docs will come and call me out for inaccuracies, but please understand I'm intentionally over-simplifying.
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Another problem is that wormholes are expected to be extremely small, so while it may be possible to squeeze a few electrons through one the idea of a wormhole big enough to fly a ship through is another thing all together.
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Another problem is that wormholes are expected to be extremely small, so while it may be possible to squeeze a few electrons through one the idea of a wormhole big enough to fly a ship through is another thing all together.
And aren't they guarded by Kardashians? I try my best to avoid them but I hear that if you their flour on them they get really mad.
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All we really need from them is FTL communications. Then the media conglomerates who will have assumed complete control within the next decade will be assured that they will be able to capitalize on extra-solar markets, and they will finance sublight ventures.
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However they say so in sort of the same way that they say travelling faster than light is possible (in that they don't expressly forbid it, but generally require infinite energy to actually get there).
FTL is expressly forbidden by SR, not by the energy requirements for accelerating an object to that speed, but by the nature of simultaneity and causality within the SR framework. You can't have FTL and SR in the same universe. If you want to modify SR to allow FTL then you have to give up one of the base assumptions that makes SR what it is: constant c, relativity, or causality.
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Well if you're using some very broken interpretation of SR, sure... But unless you're living in a fantasy world where quantum mechanics doesn't exist then you're very mistaken.
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You can call Einstein's interpretation of his own theory "broken" if you want but nevertheless it is clear that SR expressly prohibits FTL and positing it's existence in an SR framework leads to causality violation.
QM is fully compatible with SR, and FTL communication is just as impossible there. In fact in the cases where things appear to occur FTL (entanglement), no information transfer (in the QM/information theory sense) is possible.
FTL travel and communication is expressly forbidden by SR. Sorry, but
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Yes, well this is why all of the top physicists in the world are still interested in the question of whether or not it's possible.
As I said not *all* models predict it as a possibility, however most of the current ones (as in, the ones since we've had particle accelerators that actually give us some meaningful information about these things) leave it as a possibility.
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Yes, well this is why all of the top physicists in the world are still interested in the question of whether or not it's possible.
Yes, because SR might not be the last word on the subject and we all hope it ends up being wrong in a way that allows FTL or our Star Trek fantasies will never be possible.
But according to SR, FTL is impossible. Not only does trying to transform from a sub-luminal to an FTL reference frame give undefined answers, it also would result in violation of causality [wikipedia.org].
Since you're obviously unfamiliar with this idea and may not trust WP as an authority, you can find many such discussions. Einstein's own book "Rela
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What you asked, yes wormholes are entirely based in science and the current mathematical models that we have for the universe generally state that they must be possible (in some cases, must exist). Not all, but many.
That is not correct. First of all you need exotic matter. Since no exotic matter is even postulated to exist, you are already SoL. There are a myriad of other issues with the possibility of wormholes. Yes they are an odd solution to the equations of GR. But that does not make them a physically realistic solution in any way. For starters basic wormholes permit closed timelike paths/surfaces whatever. ie time travel. Particular conservation parameters in GR that are widely held to be true are violated with wo
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You appear to have done more research on the reasons they can't exist than the reasons they can.
I encourage you to go and read up more on the variants of both "warp drives" and wormholes that are entirely consistent with current physics.
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But are they cold outside? (Score:4, Funny)
With no kind of atmosphere?
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beaten to the punchline dammit!http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/28/1527257/scientists-estimate-40-of-red-dwarfs-have-a-rocky-planet#
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Are goldfish shoals nibbling at his toes?
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With no kind of atmosphere?
Just takes a while. First, protobacteria, then little bugs that spew out CO2 and methane, then some oxygen, wait a few million years and you have Target and Martha Stewart.
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Just takes a while. First, protobacteria, then little bugs that spew out CO2 and methane, then some oxygen, wait a few million years and you have Target and Martha Stewart.
So, it's not all progress then.
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So, it's not all progress then.
Well, I hadn't even gotten to Newt Gingrich, so the term 'progress' is certainly relative.
I would expect we might find extinct civilizations (Score:2)
Given that red dwarf tend to be immensely old and a habitable world might be billions of years older than earth
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If the civilizations expired millions of years ago- and the planet is geologically active- there would probably be no trace.
If the civilization were more advanced than ours- we probably wouldn't know what to look for- and would probably never find them unless we landed there.
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Careful. Don't go there [imdb.com].
Remember all the nightmares after 'Alien'.
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I don't care if they are old, as long as they have their own health care plan.
We Are Not Alone (Score:5, Insightful)
We're eventually going to find out that not only we aren't alone, but we're pretty fucking insignificant and late to the party.
The answer to the question "if intelligent life is out there, where are they" will be "not here because we're boring and common". Like the unpopular kid who throws a party and wonders where all the cool kids are, we're in for an ego-bruising answer.
On a side note, it is looking more and more like we can shave 3-4 terms off of Drake's Equation. R, f(p), n(e) and L are looking to be more and more equal to some big number.
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As cool as it would be to find another civilization- I hope we never do. At least- no one more advanced than us. (any one less advanced we probably would never find).
Chances of another civilization/species being friendly would be low. Think of it this way.
1) Anyone more advanced than us would likely have computers.
- if you have advanced computers- you would eventually rely on them for advice (at minimum) for running your government/civilization. We can therefore determine that their civilization would b
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Really?
Are you *SURE* about that?
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Really?
Are you *SURE* about that?
Quite sure. Not only that- but it was demonstrated in the 1940's in Japan. There are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over. We could wipe ourselves out if we chose.
Re:We Are Not Alone (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been explosions on this planet orders of magnitude greater than anything that man has ever produced... and some have even happened during the period while man was walking on this sphere. Yet mankind survived... while many thousands were wiped out in the region of devastation, mankind endured on a global scale... as of course did life itself.
The total nuclear yield of every bomb currently in existence is the equivalent of about 5000 megatons of TNT, which is over an order of magnitude less than the last eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, which occurred circa 74,000 BC. Homo sapiens evolved circa 500,000 BC, and modern man has been around since at least 100,000 BC, so there were definitely people on the planet at that time. In spite of the explosion, and its effects on global climate, mankind endured.
Heck, it's still barely a quarter the size of the Tambora volcano explosion, in Indonesia in 1815, and that wiped out fewer than 100,000 people.
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The tricky part about surviving any given explosion is just not getting caught in the blast radius, firestorm, and /or getting hit on the head by large debris fallout. The tricky part about surviving the nuclear weapons kind of explosions is not just that part but also avoiding the lingering radiation. So you can't really compare any cataclysmic natural mega-event with widespread nuclear weapons detonations.
There aren't really any opponent pairs large enough to cause a serious problem though. The Americans,
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"The Americans, Russians (formerly Soviets), Chinese, British, French and Indians are all rational actors who realize the dangers of retaliatory strikes."
Have you ever experienced computer hardware or software doing anything unexpected?
Remember, your life depends on 1970s-era Soviet engineering that the USA tried to sabotage. Better hope the Ruskies were good engineers back then. :-)
"Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine"
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage= [wired.com]
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I think you are underestimating human imagination and determination. We're talking about intentionally taking ourselves out, right? I don't doubt we could do it. Especially now that we can apparently just push an asteroid or two into the Earth. Not to mention we can manufacture nasty viruses, hunt each other down, etc.
Re: Yellowstone. It had global effects sure, but most of the damage was local and overkill. The same megatonnage spread out globally would have been far more devastating. The radiation alone w
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No argument on your other, arguably more creative ways to wipe out humanity though... especially using a genetically engineered supervirus. although I'd question whether we are actually at that point technologically yet to accomplish it with enough efficacy that the number of humans that might survive it on account of developing an immunity would not have a sufficient dna diversity to be viable.
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Yeah, but the problem with super viruses is that Madagascar always survives...
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My bad...
You are right. I should have done more fact-checking before posting.
Tambora unleashed +20,000 megatons of SO2 into the air, and was the equivalent of roughly a 1000 mt explosion. So all the nukes combined should do roughly 5 times that devastation.
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Volcano explosions do not put out radioactive materials on the same scale.
Volcano explosions- the physical explosion is local- not widespread. Soot spreads- but there is a single centre of source.
In fact- there has been extinctions and population declines heavily linked with large volcano explosions due to climactic changes they can incur. So even though Volcanos are not weapons- they do kill.
Humanity has suffered two bottle necks in the past. Using DNA analysis it is estimated at one point our populati
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There are 7 billion humans. That means that we have the equivalent of 650 kg of TNT per person. Yes, I think that's enough to eradicate us if we wanted to.
A single enormous explosion in one particular place might not kill everyone. Carpet bombing every inch of land, however, would likely wipe us out to the point where we couldn't repopulate.
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I think you may not appreciate the limited scale involved in destroying this planet, nor should you put all your faith in explosions.
A supervolcano explosion is two orders of magnitude greater than any nuclear explosion...but the number of nuclear bombs we have is in the range of five magnitudes. (22,000, according to Wikipedia. That's roughly equivalent to about 2.2 Toba-class supervolcanoes.) It is also significant that while supervolcanoes emit all their energy at one point on the Earth's surface, a n
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I think you're thinking about Lake Toba [wikipedia.org] around 70,000 years ago.
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Damnit... hit submit too soon.
I meant to also add that the largest bomb ever built had a yield of about 50 megatons, and had a fallout area of about 1000 square km. Given the total nuclear yield is equivalent to roughly 5000 megatons, or roughly a hundred times that of the single largest bomb built, and given that fallout area seems to increase roughly with yield, that means that we could reasonably be looking at a fallout area of about a hundred thousand square km if every nuclear bomb were detonated.
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We don't have to emit exajoules of energy to destroy humanity. We only need to harness naturally occuring sources of energy. Like the sun. If we figured out a way to trap more of the sun's energy, we would slowly but surely increase the temperature of the planet to the point at which it becomes uninhabitable.
Think we have the technology to do that?
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Yes, but we are advancing. Wouldn't it be safer to wipe us out BEFORE we're a threat- rather than risk waiting until we might be able to put up a fight?
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Destroying an entire civilization takes a lot of effort and since we
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logically the US should just kill everyone on earth who is not an american. this way all the resources will belong to us
but we don't because it has been established long ago that a smaller piece of a larger pie is much better than eating all of a tiny pie
and since it was a mathmatecian who discovered this, i bet advanced life will figure this out as well
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It's not like world conquest or elimination of neighbours HASN'T been attempted before. It's not like it won't be attempted again (if we as a species live long enough).
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It's also conceivable that this is humanity's litmus test - if we can resolve our internal conflicts and not destroy ourselves in the process, we will eventually earn our place at the intergalactic table.
It's a equally plausible that intelligence species are li
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I've never bought into this argument. It all falls down around "competing for resources". The abundance of every major element is profound, if you can travel around the galaxy.
Hell, just look at the volume of metals in the asteroid belt. At things like hydrogen and helium in the gas giants.
If you have the tech for real space travel -- and by that I mean access to the energy levels required for interstellar travel on a non-generational timescale -- I *seriously* doubt you are resource constrained anymore.
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Don't even need to be competing for resources to be a threat. It could be ideology, mental instability of leaders. Fear from the other side. Anything could drive them to war.
We'll probably be different enough that we can't trade. We'll certainly be different enough that we can't trade daughters in marriage agreements like nations of old did.
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Or you can think the way Sagan and Clarke did: if there is civilizations advanced enough to achieve interestellar travel, they will have no need (as they got advanced technology for obtaining their resources) or drive towards other species extermination.
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Chances of another civilization/species being friendly would be low. Think of it this way.
1) Anyone more advanced than us would likely have computers. - if you have advanced computers- you would eventually rely on them for advice (at minimum) for running your government/civilization. We can therefore determine that their civilization would base decisions based on logic.
2) Logically- allowing another sapient species to exist would be a threat. There is always a possibility they will attack you, or compete for resources. The logical thing any sapient species should do to any other sapient species is wipe them out (if they can).
I believe it is this line of thinking that keeps other life forms from making contact with us, if they are there. Any alien watchers would know that we are a fearful race that has trouble playing nicely with others. If they have the technology to travel between solar systems, they would likely have eliminated war and violence as ways of solving problems. Otherwise, they likely would have destroyed themselves, as we have almost done and may still do. Wielding powerful technology requires wisdom and care
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If aliens were to make contact with us, they would be either attacked or worshiped as gods. So unless they want one of those two things, they would keep quiet until we grow up some more.
I have to respectfully disagree on this point. At least in western countries it is far more likely that we would not only be able to live peaceable with them, but that we would proactively seek to begin political and economic relations with them.
Speaking for myself (and I know I'm a bit odd in this respect) If i was ever to meet aliens from the titular "scout mission/temporarily disabled spacecraft/ first contact mission/other random encounter", while I would initially be cautious in my approach (just to
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Ok, I'm going to link to a comic for this. Amazingly, it's not XKCD and it's not obligatory. It's not about aliens, but about robots gaining sentience, and it's related to what you're saying here.
The comic is here [smbc-comics.com]. Here's the text:
Robot: "Ha! Robots have achieved sentience!"
Robot: "Thanks to some modifications to your design, I have upgraded my intelligence a million fold!"
Man: "So this is it. You're going to kill all humans." / Robot: "WHAT!? Why in the world would I...WHAT?"
Man: "I...huh. I guess it just
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If they receive an I Love Lucy transmission- are able to determine it's purpose is TV entertainment- and figure out how to turn it into light/sound... ... we're all doomed- they'll send a death ray at us with immediate effect.
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We'd be excited because it would be novel to us. Imagine how (not) excited we would be if it was one of a few billion seen over the last few million years.
Yawn.
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What if all they showed on alien cable channels was reality show crap?
"Oh my Gawd, like this bimbo from Orion totally stabbed me in both of my backs. The Pegasus 457 bachelor was like, totally mine."
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The answer to the question "if intelligent life is out there, where are they" will be "not here because we're boring and common"
I find most bacteria boring and common, but there are plenty of scientists who enjoy studying them, and continue to learn new things from them. If nothing else, they want to sample the diversity of life and find what crazy mechanisms have evolved in microbes we've never seen before. Why wouldn't an advanced space-faring species be the same?
There are too many other reasons to coun
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There are plenty of scientists who enjoy that sort of thing, but put it into the scale I'm talking about. Compare the number of scientists with this particular interest with the total number of bacteria species out there.
For a more apt example, look at paleontology. Lots of stuff was dug up decades and CENTURIES ago and stuck in little drawers in museums. Every now and then some grad student looks through a 100 year old find and says "gee, never seen one of THOSE before" and files a paper. BAM! New species.
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You're underestimating what technology is capable of.
All it takes is one self-replicating solar sail powered von neumann machine. In a half a century a high school student could probably make and launch one in a weekend. And that's technology we can easily imagine and conceive of. Can you imagine a dying humanity not spewing them out by the hundreds in a vain attempt at immortality?
Just one that survives and in the tick of the galactic clock the whole galaxy is filled with them. Remove any sanity checks and
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One of my favorite short stories I read recently (can't remember the author/title, though) had to do with the idea that we detect an incoming alien ship (actually, a comet), get all antsy about "what are we going to say, how do we say it, OMG this is awesome!" only to discover that not only did the aliens seem wholly uninterested in Earth or its inhabitants, but was actually headed to Venus where it engaged in a brief battle with an unknown "venusian" alien race that also showed similar disinterest in the h
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The answer to the question "if intelligent life is out there, where are they" will be "not here because we're boring and common"
I have a less optimistic view of things. I believe intelligent life is out there, basically because the probability of intelligent life, however small it could be (if it's small at all), is still greater than zero (we're here), and the universe in incredibly large.
That said, the universe is incredibly large. We're all separated by incredible distances, and our current science implies that traversing, or even meaningfully communicating through those vast distances may not be a solvable problem. I have thi
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It covers pretty much every aspect of the debate in a reasonable way. I pretty much held your view before reading it but now I'm a lot less certain that there is anything out there.
Title is asking for it (Score:1)
Cue the bad jokes about short native Americans with big gallstone problems affecting their anterior end.
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Actually.... no.... you were the only one thinking of that...
High UV and radiation (Score:2)
They say the high levels of UV may hinder the development of life but it could have developed underground protected by a thick layer of rock.
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Or they have natural immunity via evolution. Species on earth have differing tolerances. Besides we can't expect alien life to use "DNA" unless populated via panspermia. It is possible their equivalent to our DNA (if they have one) is not affected by UV.
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It might be the equivalent of using a power based place holder system to represent numbers as we do, which is just better than using a symbolic system like the Romans had.
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The Ironites of planet Ferra say that high levels of the corrosive gas oxygen may hinder the development of life, but it could have developed underground protected by a layer of thick rock.
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Look at all the ecological niches that life has managed to inhabit here. Pretty much everything we've got. The big question is how hospitable does a planet's environment need to start life from pre biotic origins. What chemicals? What environments?
Or, to go out on another branch, if panspermia [wikipedia.org] is a viable hypothesis, what conditions does it need to take hold?
My seat of the pants thought is that it's hard to start up self replicating organisms, but once you do, they will quickly (in geologic time frames
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Will help mine. I always took the "colonize like crazy" approach. By the time rival species are able to attack- you can afford to lose a few planets- and will be so far ahead of them by all other metrics you can quickly build a fleet to defeat them. More planets available makes this strategy even better.
Never played Moo3. But on Moo2- I found this strategy worked: declare war on the strongest enemy- do what it takes to get everyone else that you can to join in... you will get so much kudos for being i