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Tell me about it. I can't get away from the asshole no matter how hard I try
You're fun to hang out with, aren't you?
They do, after all, have better space ships than we do.
Tell me about it. I can't get away from the asshole no matter how hard I try
have you done the math?
what exactly are those odds?
why is it always "arrogant" to think we are alone?
Humans have been blessed with an extremely powerful mind, but with all our supposed knowledge nowadays, "star trek" is in the distant future for humanity still. Which is why a "sub-human" intelligence creature would never get off their perspective rock, or care to.
I believe it will be impossible to ever contact any aliens anyway, due to human lifespans (basically what phyzik said). Going the speed of light might still take a thousand years should an alien world live out there somewhere very far away. Let's hope nanomachines really let us live hundreds of years.
Last edited by z0sa; 04-22-2009 at 11:56 AM.
The whole "we are the greatest most advanced civilization" load of bull is rooted in the typical arrogance we find in so many self-en led Americans.
You shouldn't need to see the statistic to know that the mathematical probability of a more evolved civilization is highly likely. I know I know common sense is always with a grain of salt when it comes to your logic.
ever heard of the Drake equation?
using that equation, even with a fraction of 0.1 for each parameter means there are, at least according to the equation, about 20 other intelligent life forms just in our Galaxy alone.
Is the formula perfect? of course not, it could be way off, but its still the best mathematical equation we have to determine life on other planets. The problem is it cant be an exact math because we really don't know exactly how many planets are out there.
Last edited by phyzik; 04-22-2009 at 12:34 PM.
Beat me to it.
Isn't the main problem with the Drake equation we have yet to find any hospitable planets besides our own?
How can you factor hospitable planets per star, if we have not yet discovered one besides our own?
Another factor in the equation is that the number of civilizations is relative to the amount of stars formed.
Seemingly another problem, potentially much greater, is that if a hospitable planet is located, chances are very much against an intelligent life form arising. Natural selection does not factor in developing intelligence, only the biological ability to survive. A semi intelligent being without the ability to survive is much more likely than one who is. Additionally, in the small chance these lifeforms lived, the aeons of time are too great. They were destroyed tens of millions of years ago by ______. Unless we happen to roll by in the Enterprise, we'll never know they existed nowadays. It's the equivalent of human-like beings living in the dinosaur age - we'd have never dominated, and all that would be left to find now would be the dust of our bones ie nothing.
Last edited by z0sa; 04-22-2009 at 01:22 PM.
That's not a flaw in the equation its a by-product of the limitation of the current technical state. Has no bearing on probability.
That's like say "there aren't undiscovered species in the ocean because we haven't found them".
It's probable because of all the do ented life forms in the ocean. We can reasonably base our assumptions on that.
Now, we cannot reasonably base our assumptions, ie any numbers, on the proportion of earth-like planets in our galaxy compared to non-hospitable. We don't have enough knowledge to accurately make a prediction. You can't base it off our solar system - telescopes have proven no earth like planets exist in any other visible systems.
The formula is correct, its just what numbers do you punch in?
Last edited by z0sa; 04-22-2009 at 01:50 PM.
Funny you should mention that......
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/p.../pr-15-09.html
Well-known exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor today announced the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, “e”, in the famous system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581 d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. These amazing discoveries are the outcome of more than four years of observations using the most successful low-mass-exoplanet hunter in the world, the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6-metre ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.
“The holy grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the ‘habitable zone’ — a region around the host star with the right conditions for water to be liquid on a planet’s surface”, says Michel Mayor from the Geneva Observatory, who led the European team to this stunning breakthrough.
Planet Gliese 581 e orbits its host star – located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra (“the Scales”) — in just 3.15 days. “With only 1.9 Earth-masses, it is the least massive exoplanet ever detected and is, very likely, a rocky planet”, says co-author Xavier Bonfils from Grenoble Observatory.
Being so close to its host star, the planet is not in the habitable zone. But another planet in this system appears to be. From previous observations — also obtained with the HARPS spectrograph at ESO’s La Silla Observatory and announced two years ago — this star was known to harbour a system with a Neptune-sized planet (ESO 30/05) and two super-Earths (ESO 22/07). With the discovery of Gliese 581 e, the planetary system now has four known planets, with masses of about 1.9 (planet e), 16 (planet b), 5 (planet c), and 7 Earth-masses (planet d). The planet furthest out, Gliese 581 d, orbits its host star in 66.8 days. “Gliese 581 d is probably too massive to be made only of rocky material, but we can speculate that it is an icy planet that has migrated closer to the star,” says team member Stephane Udry. The new observations have revealed that this planet is in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist. “‘d’ could even be covered by a large and deep ocean — it is the first serious 'water world' candidate,” continued Udry.
The gentle pull of an exoplanet as it orbits the host star introduces a tiny wobble in the star’s motion — only about 7 km/hour, corresponding to brisk walking speed — that can just be detected on Earth with today’s most sophisticated technology. Low-mass red dwarf stars such as Gliese 581 are potentially fruitful hunting grounds for low-mass exoplanets in the habitable zone. Such cool stars are relatively faint and their habitable zones lie close in, where the gravitational tug of any orbiting planet found there would be stronger, making the telltale wobble more pronounced. Even so, detecting these tiny signals is still a challenge, and the discovery of Gliese 581 e and the refinement of Gliese 581 d’s orbit were only possible due to HARPS’s unique precision and stability.
“It is amazing to see how far we have come since we discovered the first exoplanet around a normal star in 1995 — the one around 51 Pegasi,” says Mayor. “The mass of Gliese 581 e is 80 times less than that of 51 Pegasi b. This is tremendous progress in just 14 years.”
The astronomers are confident that they can still do better. “With similar observing conditions an Earth-like planet located in the middle of the habitable zone of a red dwarf star could be detectable,” says Bonfils. “The hunt continues.”
Notes
This discovery was announced today at the JENAM conference during the European Week of Astronomy & Space Science, which is taking place at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. The results have also been submitted for publication in the research journal Astronomy & Astrophysics (“The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets: XVIII. An Earth-mass planet in the GJ 581 planetary system”, by Mayor et al., 2009).
The team is composed of M. Mayor, S. Udry, C. Lovis, F. Pepe and D. Queloz (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland), X. Bonfils, T. Forveille , X. Delfosse, H. Beust and C. Perrier (LAOG, France), N. C. Santos (Centro de Astrofisica,Universidade de Porto), F. Bouchy (IAP, Paris, France) and J.-L. Bertaux (Service d’Aéronomie du CNRS, Verrières-le-Buisson, France).
ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe. It is supported by 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in the Atacama Desert region of Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor.
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You see, its not that the planets are not out there, its that its just really hard to see them from the distances we are looking at.
^ see above. no way to quantify the proportion of hospitable to non hospitable planets as of yet. We're not sure if even that planet is truly hospitable.
Huh what?!? The general consensus is that there are potentially millions of undiscovered species in our oceans. Less than 10% of the worlds oceans have been explored. Its widely accepted scientifically and typically accepted by the average ignorant Joe because its not outer worldly.
Insert space travel or far away places and it just doesn't seem to compute with the typical laymen.
Last edited by BacktoBasics; 04-22-2009 at 02:08 PM.
They've found candidates for life like ours having only explored the equivalent of one grain of sand to all the earths soil. That relation of size is so tiny that the numerical percentage would probably extend hundreds of miles.
"they haven't even scratched the surface" would be the largest understatement ever in the scientific community.
I met an Alien once.
He was pretty cool
the ocean teems with life because its on the only known planet supporting life. It's completely apples to oranges to compare space to the unexplored depths of the ocean. There's proof of life in the oceans, there's none in space.
I'm pretty sure there is something out there somewhere and it would be pretty incredible if we found it before I leave.
If it doesnt happen before or on December 12, 2012, its never going to happen.
Damn you, Mayans!
I'll go ahead and disagree and ask for your statistic.
Common sense with you says you don't really have one.
Humanity has always placed itself at the center of importance.
We're the center of the universe...nope.
Ok, our solar system is the center of the universe...uh-uh
OK, OK our existence is the only one of its kind in the universe...jury is still out.
I mean really, when it comes to humanity's best guess at the order of importance on a universal scale, our track record is deplorable.
I'll just go ahead and assume we are completely wrong on all matters of where our existence falls on the Univeral Uniqueness Scale. Color me skeptical of any idea or outlook that puts humans as the sole....anything in the universe.
I have precedent to think I may be right, do you?
lol aliens
I have seen teh alien once. It was a long long time ago.
95% that given a billion years, the chance of life starting on a suitable planet is at least one in three.The current research estimates that there are at least 361 intelligent civilizations in our Galaxy and possibly as many as 38,000.
The work is reported in the International Journal of Astrobiology.
And there it is what? That you believe one fairy tale over the other?
There is this ratio or equation or something this guy at work always used to talk about, that tells the scientifically inclined mind that there is almost no chance in that there is NOT other life out there.
It's based on the chances of an earth existing, using the total sheer numbers of existing galaxies and systems we know to be out there.
Stephen Hawking himself said this is highly probable, but would be a complete disaster upon first contact...
Face it. We're not alone.
Let's just hope by the time we make first contact, we have better weapons.
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