Tatooine discovered?.....

[jep316]

First they find "Vulcan" and then "Krypton" and now "Tatooine"..

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/07/astronomers-spo.php


Now will Lucas sue "God" for stealing his idea?

 

[O'Dib]

that's not how you use ideal

 

[RoJoHen]

Pretty neat, but too far away. I'm still way more interested in the water on Mars!

 

[jep316]

that's not how you use ideal

Whoops,fixed it.thanks.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Get your facts straight, Tatooine is in a galaxy far far away!

But given the number of galaxies out there, I would bet there are a few habited Tatooines. We aren't going there though.

 

[RandyS]

First they find "Vulcan" and then "Krypton" and now "Tatooine"..

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/07/astronomers-spo.php


Now will Lucas sue "God" for stealing his idea?

If he does, I hope Brian Herbert sues George for stealing his dad's Arakis.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I have to laugh at the breathless popular press announcement of "potentially habitable planets" every time astronomers find an object that's not ten times the size of Jupiter orbiting some distant star.

Being the size of Neptune would make for a rather unpleasant amount of gravity, but the type of sky you'd get to enjoy might just make up for it.

Yes, and no. Yes the gravity would be unpleasant - try "unbearable" - and no, the view wouldn't "make up for it."

If any of the planets discovered and described so far is likely "habitable" then you may as well add half the solid bodies orbiting our own Sun to the "likely habitable" list - which is not at all a bad idea, considering that most of them are reachable within a human lifetime. We could certainly devote resources and a period of time longer than all of human history up to this point in making Mars livable and creating a robust human civilization there.

 

[Gojira]

I have to laugh at the breathless popular press announcement of "potentially habitable planets" every time astronomers find an object that's not ten times the size of Jupiter orbiting some distant star.

Being the size of Neptune would make for a rather unpleasant amount of gravity, but the type of sky you'd get to enjoy might just make up for it.

Yes, and no.

If any of the planets discovered and described so far is likely "habitable" then you may as well add half the solid bodies orbiting our own Sun to the "likely habitable" list - which is not at all a bad idea, considering that most of them are reachable within a human lifetime. We could certainly devote resources and a period of time longer than all of human history up to this point in making Mars livable and creating a robust human civilization there.

These planets that are described as possibly being habitable is because they lie within a zone where scientists believe that life is capable of existing. Not all solid bodies within our solar system are in this habitable zone.

 

[Kegg]

I've been to Tataouine. Didn't need an astronomer's directions, either.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I have to laugh at the breathless popular press announcement of "potentially habitable planets" every time astronomers find an object that's not ten times the size of Jupiter orbiting some distant star.

Being the size of Neptune would make for a rather unpleasant amount of gravity, but the type of sky you'd get to enjoy might just make up for it.

Yes, and no.

If any of the planets discovered and described so far is likely "habitable" then you may as well add half the solid bodies orbiting our own Sun to the "likely habitable" list - which is not at all a bad idea, considering that most of them are reachable within a human lifetime. We could certainly devote resources and a period of time longer than all of human history up to this point in making Mars livable and creating a robust human civilization there.

These planets that are described as possibly being habitable is because they lie within a zone where scientists believe that life is capable of existing. Not all solid bodies within our solar system are in this habitable zone.

So what?

First of all, scientists are currently pretty broadminded about the width breadth of circumstances under which life can exist. That's not the connotation of "habitable." The popular press writes about these extrasolar worlds as if something that's known about them suggests that they're human-habitable or habitable by creatures similar to us - calling them after Tatooine, Vulcan etc.

We have at least three worlds - Mars, Earth and Venus - that are all much more similar in mass and composition than what we currently know of these extrasolar worlds indicates. Guess how many of these three are currently "habitable?"

This "habitable planet" stuff is just grandstanding, either on the part of the press or the scientists, in an apparent attempt to goose public attention.

 

[jep316]

I remember a story a few years back when one of our probes took pics of the Earth and someone asked a Scientist if just going by those pics could he tell if there was life on it and he said honestly no.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Exactly.

I wonder, though, if the question had been asked "can you guess at the habitability of the place from the way it looks?" as opposed to the more specific "can you tell if it's inhabited?" if the answer would have been the same.

 

[RoJoHen]

Exactly.

I wonder, though, if the question had been asked "can you guess at the habitability of the place from the way it looks?" as opposed to the more specific "can you tell if it's inhabited?" if the answer would have been the same.

I'd think the giant oceans would be a dead giveaway.

 

[Vendikarr]

Exactly.

I wonder, though, if the question had been asked "can you guess at the habitability of the place from the way it looks?" as opposed to the more specific "can you tell if it's inhabited?" if the answer would have been the same.

I'd think the giant oceans would be a dead giveaway.

Depending on the distance, you may not see oceans.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

No, but you can detect the water by spectrum analysis.

Being the size of Neptune would make for a rather unpleasant amount of gravity,

I don't know what “size” means, but Neptune has 1.14 g surface gravity. Being crushed by violent pressure and winds is far more unpleasant. Unless it's a Neptune-sized rocky planet, then it must be pretty massive.

 

[Talosian]

A Neptune sized world, which would presumably not be rocky, doesn't sound promising for complex life, but one of it's moons could be.

The problem of course is that our current means for detecting planets are skewed towards finding giant planets and especially giant planets in tight orbits.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Exactly.

I wonder, though, if the question had been asked "can you guess at the habitability of the place from the way it looks?" as opposed to the more specific "can you tell if it's inhabited?" if the answer would have been the same.

I'd think the giant oceans would be a dead giveaway.

Well, of course the crux of the absurdity of the question is that our scientists might guess that Earth is habitable because from space it looks remarkably like the planet that we live on - oceans, clouds, prevailing winds and everything.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

A Neptune sized world, which would presumably not be rocky, doesn't sound promising for complex life, but one of it's moons could be.

All other things being equal, the more rocky bodies in the habitable zone, the bigger the chance for a habitable planet, and the bigger the chance of an inhabited planet. The gas giants is therefore more likely to have life on a moon than a regular rocky planet.

On all seriousness though, Neptune and two suns in the sky sounds cooler than just two suns in the sky. Tatooine would be jealous.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

A Neptune sized world, which would presumably not be rocky, doesn't sound promising for complex life, but one of it's moons could be.

The popular press will call that one "Pandora."