Odds Favor Discovery of Earth-Like Exoplanet in 2013 90
Earth-like exoplanets have gotten a lot of attention in the last few years; it's exciting to think that there's life — or even just life-sustaining conditions — on planets other than Earth, whether near by (on Mars) or much farther away (orbiting Vega). Projects like NASA's Kepler, and the ground-based HARPS, attempt to spot planets outside our solar system of all kinds. These exoplanet discoveries have been ramping up lately, and so has sorting of the discovered planets by size and other characteristics; the odds are looking good, say astronomers quoted by Space.com, that an Earth-like planet will be found this year. Abel Mendez runs the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, and UC Berkeley astromer Geoff Marcy looks for planets as part of the Kepler team; they explain in the article why they think 2013 is an auspicious one for planet hunters.
Forget about it. (Score:0, Funny)
Face up to reality, we are never going to make it there anyway.
Once we have accepted that we are stuck here on earth and the universe is massively boring - we
can begin to put our collective minds together and focus on simulating realities that are more interesting - and perhaps throw in a few quirks that allow us
to travel - faster than the speed of light (without being obliterated) - wormholes - warp speed - hyper space - take your pick!
We just need to tap into the power source that was passed down from the outer (even more boring) simulation and use that (because thats what I would do).
We also need to be able to fool ourselves into thinking its real.
We also need to be able to pass down THE ONE POWER SOURCE so our little incarnations can use it to create their own powerful simulations.
Because, predictably, they will get bored too and might come up with some better ideas that we haven't thought of.
Its all about having fun you know.
Happy new year in 24 hours.
Re:Odds (Score:4, Funny)
the heavens favor the believers.
Year of the Earth-Like Planet in the year 2013: (Score:0, Funny)
And on that planet will be found the dominant life form using Linux as a desktop....
Re:Year of the Earth-Like Planet in the year 2013: (Score:4, Funny)
But the real question is what their IPv6 address range is. We need to know now since packets will take so long.