Heck! Venus sized! Distance: 950 Lightyears. Kepler telescope.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-20-system.html
Earth Sized Planets!
- Thread starter Wanderlust
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Heck! Venus sized! Distance: 950 Lightyears. Kepler telescope.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-20-system.html
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That system is tight.
It's a pity our system doesn't have extreme planets that close to the Sun, those must be great fun for exploring.
I guess they must be tidally locked. Habitable somewhere around the terminator? Pretty implausible, unfortunately, but just think about it... It makes a good hiding spot for a colony at least.
It's a pity our system doesn't have extreme planets that close to the Sun, those must be great fun for exploring.
I guess they must be tidally locked. Habitable somewhere around the terminator? Pretty implausible, unfortunately, but just think about it... It makes a good hiding spot for a colony at least.
^^ Weird, but common around here I'll bet.
That really is a nice graphic. We've found so many wondrous things in such a tiny area that we have only begun to explore-- in just our own galaxy. It boggles the mind what is out there to find.
That really is a nice graphic. We've found so many wondrous things in such a tiny area that we have only begun to explore-- in just our own galaxy. It boggles the mind what is out there to find.
The bad news is that we will probably never have any clue what it is in the other galaxies. The good news is that for life and planetary development the difference between galaxies shouldn't be that big, so a random sample in ours should be almost as good as a random sample of other galaxies. At this point you can expect the same wonder and excitement from digging right here, where we are.
Unless we find that there are no other civilizations in our galaxy, and the rest of them are the only place where we could expect to find them. That would be terribly depressing and amazing at the same time.
Oh, one more thing: Hopefully our descendants would spread across the galaxy and fill it with humanoids. That's something we won't be able to observe here, at least not now and from our species.
You have to consider the possibility that, on the scale of cosmic time, it's possible that only one civilization at a time is ever active and space faring in any particular half-million year span. If we discover an intelligent civilization, it is more likely to be an archeological expedition than a cultural one.
That's only if you assume that we are likely to be extinct in much less than a billion years.
This is certainly possible.
It's also just as likely that the universe is full of millions of intelligent species all existing at the same time.
It's also just as likely that we are the only intelligent species that has ever and will ever evolve in the entire universe.
We really need some samples of intelligent life other than our own before we can even begin to make a claim one way or another.
It's not “as likely”. We know something about the odds: we have estimates of the number of stars, guesses about the number of planets, and some basic knowledge about the origin and evolution of complex life (meaning: we have reasons to suppose that it's not extremely difficult for life to start and not difficult to evolve into complex lifeforms).
Also, if (when you don't know anything) you claim that everything is “as likely” you'd get contradicting results depending on the starting point.
Also, if (when you don't know anything) you claim that everything is “as likely” you'd get contradicting results depending on the starting point.
I'd say it is likely there is intelligent life elsewhere, but, no, we can't estimate it. That would imply being able to predict evolution in alien ecosystems that only theoretically exist. We can predict the number of probable planets with life, but I don't think we can go much farther than that.
That's kind of the point I was making. We can certainly estimate the number of planets that might be capable of supporting life, but until we actually find life out there and get a better understanding of how life begins, we can't predict how much life there is. We don't even know how life started here. We certainly can't make a reasonably guess at how life started elsewhere or how much of it there might be.
Yeah, I personally think intelligent life likely exists somewhere, but too far away to ever make contact with.
There is certainly significant progress in this area, but we are no where near making an accurate prediction of even this yet.