~8.8 Billion Earth Like Planets In This Galaxy Alone

[Motown_Johnny]

Lots of articles out there on this today, here is part of one.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/8-8-billion-habitable-earth-size-planets-exist-milky-way-8C11529186


^snip^


Astronomers using NASA data have calculated for the first time that in our galaxy alone, there are at least 8.8 billion stars with Earth-size planets in the habitable temperature zone.

The study was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.



As for what it says about the odds that there is life somewhere out there, it means "just in our Milky Way galaxy alone, that's 8.8 billion throws of the biological dice," said study co-author Geoff Marcy, a longtime planet hunter from the University of California at Berkeley.




For the first time, scientists calculated — not estimated — what percent of stars that are just like our sun have planets similar to Earth: 22 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 8 percentage points.

[Turbineguy]

1. And we get

the teabaggers.

[longship]

2. I recommend that we adopt the Golgafrincham solution.

Golgafrincham

Plenty of planets to send them to.

[Turbineguy]

3. Maybe we already are the

Golgafrincham solution.

Maybe we are God's practical joke.

[longship]

7. Well, I haven't seen too many telephone sanitizers recently.

Where did they all go? Of course, we still have plenty of television producers, middle managers, and hair dressers. But at least the telephone sanitizers are gone. Too bad they didn't take the tea partiers with them.

[NuclearDem]

16. Already know what that colony will look like...

Not a lot of people will get this, but those who do will shit bricks.

[RKP5637]

26. We got the short end of the stick! n/t

[Warren Stupidity]

5. And oddly SETI has found nothing.

One of the factors in Drake's equation is f(p) the probability that a star has a planet, that has now gone from 1/100 (based on zero knowledge) to nearly 100/100 based on current data. Now the probability that a star has at least one planet in a habitable zone is getting larger and larger.

Where is everybody?

[longship]

10. Yup, the Fermi paradox.

Fermi paradox.

As it is usually told, I find it amusing that when Enrico Fermi asked "where is everybody?" his luncheon compatriots knew what he was asking.

It is a great question but I don't think we know enough to provide a reasonable answer. The standard answer is that the distance between intelligent life forms in the galaxy (even if it is common) is so large that they are all relatively isolated in their respective planetary systems. Interstellar travel may be that difficult.

Of course, Fermi pointed out that it would only take a few millions of years to accomplish galactic colonization, small when compared to the billions of years the galaxy has existed.

I like mathematician Ian Stewart's answer. Maybe the galaxy is full of intelligent life, but they are all independently thinking of the Fermi paradox and are not venturing out themselves. They are all just sitting around wondering, "Where is everybody?"

That's my favorite answer. It has a Douglas Adams element to it.

[Orrex]

11. Honestly...

If you got a look at the petty bullshit we've been up to here on planet Earth, would you initiate contact?

[seveneyes]

22. Yes, maybe.

Any life form able to master interstellar travel would likely have mastered harnessing energy. Who wouldn't want to help other life evolve? Unless, of course, they have also mastered living for millions of years and have lots of time to watch it unfold naturally.

[Motown_Johnny]

12. The Drake equation assumes radio waves of some sort for communication.

Just because we broadcast radio waves does not mean other civilizations will also. Even if they do, maybe the atmosphere is more reflective and they just use short wave transmissions that don't make it into outer space (with enough strength to be detected light years away).

Another part of the equation is how long a civilization will exist that is using detectable forms of communication. That could be very short. We are past the 100 year mark but if both sides had developed atomic weapons during WW2, then our time sending radio signals might have been very short indeed.

It is entirely possible that some detectable signals passed this planet 500 years ago, but nobody had a receiver. If that civilization ceased to exist, or evolved beyond the need for radio waves for communication, then we simply missed out.


Besides, this is just about life. Not about intelligent life. There are plenty of reasons why life might not evolve to use technology.

SETI was worth a shot, but it was always a long shot. It doesn't surprise me that they have not found anything. It also would not surprise me if they did find something. Ya never know. It might pan out yet.

[edhopper]

19. And even intelligent life

doesn't need to be technological. Think of whales that are very intelligent, their songs could be long stories on par with Shakespeare or Proust, But they would have no need to develop tools. Some people mistake intelligence as a goal of evolution, when it is just another adaptive trait that doesn't automatically occur.

[EOTE]

17. I blame the Prime Directive. nt

[snooper2]

21. SETI hasn't found anything becuase they are looking at the wrong data

Out of the almost infinite number of frequencies everyone scans the skies through all of them trying to find a "pattern" in the noise. More than likely any alien race would be at least as smart of us and realize you can send large amounts of information a lot faster if you "break it up" and send little bits over different channels at the same time instead of just one.

Kind of like, you think they would be on dial-up or FIOS


So unless we find out something like the equivalent of an alien TCP or UDP packet structure we probably won't ever hear from them.


Science works

[Marr]

23. I don't think that's surprising at all.

We're talking about an ocean of time here as well as space-- and who knows how long "intelligent" life tends to survive on any given planet. I mean, how long have we been using radio? A tiny blip in our existence.

But more than that, who's to say that another intelligent race would ever even think to use radio waves for communication? We're just recently deciphering all sorts of "languages" used by animal species, from dolphins to prairie dogs to ants and bees, some of which have nothing to do with sound. And they've been chattering away at each other for the entirety of our existence as a species, right here on this same planet, and we never recognized it as communication until recently. So if we ever do encounter extraterrestrial intelligent life, it's likely to be so different from our own that we don't even recognize it as such.

Then there's the whole question of life vs. "intelligent" life. Humans are a pretty odd flourish in the evolutionary chain. The environment never produced another creature like ourselves in all the billions of years worth of life before us, so I would expect the vast majority of planets with life on them would be filled with species that don't use technology.

[Warren Stupidity]

24. We are talking about a lot of planets, a huge number.

That it appears that not one of them produced a tech civ that radiated signals we could catch over the last 40 years or so seems in need of an explanation.

100,000s perhaps millions of habitual planets relatively near us. Life should have developed on some large number of them. Intelligent life on some smaller number of those. Tech civs on a subset of those. Tech civs within the right timeframe for their signals to reach us over the last 40 years on some subset of those. Not one?

[liberal N proud]

6. I wonder if any of them have a population bent on self destruction

Like Earth.

[LWolf]

8. I wonder

how many of them have what we think of as "intelligent" life? And, have any of those intelligent life forms evolved into a peaceful, happy, healthy species?

Can I emigrate to a planet that values peace, social and economic justice, and the environment?

[Johnny Ready]

9. Good news, bad news. Stephen Hawking believes if we did see

life from another planet it would be mainly due to the fact they had exhausted all the resources on their planet, and would be here to eliminate us and take our resources. It's ok though Will Smith, Lil Wayne and I will handle it

There's an alien here from space people leaving hurried
Put that laser on an alien face, I ain't got no worries!
- No Worries by Lil Wayne, remixed a little.

[Motown_Johnny]

13. It would take such an investment to come here for our resources

that it seems unlikely it would be worth it.

Mining asteroids and using renewable resources would be far more cost effective.


The distances involved are so great that anything other than an equivalent of unmanned probes seems like to much to hope for. That does not mean that they might not use some sort of biological component, but I think it would be something akin to trained monkeys to run around and collect whatever samples they are trained to collect.

I have always thought the assumption that the "little green men" or grays, or whatever, where actually the builders of the crafts that have been reported (assuming one or more report is true). They could easily be nothing more than trained animals and they don't contact us because they are not able to.


At least that is how I rationalize it. Everyone finds some way to make sense of it and that is my method.

[Johnny Ready]

14. Our own government seems to have no problem with the cost

of searching for the next precious metal or a cure for cancer. I agree we would be subject to limits such as lifespan (100 years) but it is possible the "aliens" we would see could have been elite and reserved a spot on the only way out of their expired or toxic planet, a mothership. Self contained with several generations on board traveling for hundreds of light years searching for a habitable zone before the resources on board are exhausted. Granted this is movie material, but as we start to colonize Mars it seems less far fetched.

I think you have a very logical point, the use of "scouts" would make sense. Animal or not it would seem scouting the target would make sense, long before the mothership would arrive. It makes sense too that they would not be able to communicate with us mainly so we could not capture them and retrieve information about them and their planet or mothership.

It is hard to rationalize the unknown but it is interesting especially when you consider the number of planets that may have the conditions for life. This is a very interesting thread, thanks for posting it.

[Motown_Johnny]

15. Sounds more like "Battlestar Galctacia"

Except they had robots/cylons kick them off their own planet.

Colonizing Mars may be a pipe dream. There is no magnetic field. No, or almost no, protection from radiation from space. Why colonize Mars if you need to live underground? Just burrow inside a mountain here and save the money.


A multi-generational ship would be similar to colonizing Mars. If you are able to build something that a viable population can live in for generations, why launch it into space? Just build it on the planet.

[Johnny Ready]

18. Spock - Are you out of your Vulcan mind?

Actually you are the second person who has suggested we should build the system but there is no need to send it into space. One of my friends suggested lofting the craft into our own atmosphere near Earth, might be a viable solution if we ever had the need for one. Considering the popularity of doomsday shelters, maybe a space station just outside our atmosphere that could support life would be very popular to those who believe the end is nigh.

I could be wrong but I believe private organizations have already committed to colonizing Mars. I read somewhere that in fifty years the colony will be totally self sustainable. I think something like 25,000 people have already applied to live on the red planet. It appears they will have to wear space suits and live in cone shaped houses from the pictures I was able to find. It should be interesting to see how that works out.

Live long and prosper

[Shankapotomus]

30. Why launch it?

Because you want something maneuverable to avoid catastrophic destruction from comets and meteors. Extinction is more likely if all your eggs are in one basket on a single, non maneuverable planet. If you have a large floating multi-generation biosphere ship - provided you can build a long enough supply chain - you can take your mult-generation ship between stars when the one you're orbiting shows signs of dying out. Thus your species' life span is no longer tied to the life span of a single star, increasing the longevity of your species' existence even further.

[snooper2]

20. Most people don't comprehend that there are 100s of billions of Stars in a galaxy

and that are 100's of billions of galaxies in the visible universe..


Or, that an atom in your left hand probably came from a different supernova than an atom in your right hand...


Or, that your iron skillet is so powerful that it can cause the death of a Star...



But, we all know buddy jesus!

[RKP5637]

28. Much of earth is so backward it's hard to comprehend. n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

25. Neat!

I think its cool.

[NoOneMan]

27. Which means earth isn't special

Just like that twentieth child the Duggars want to fuck for. Not special. Earth, get over yourself already

[RKP5637]

29. Earth, a spinning ball of dirt bent on self-destruction. n/t

[snooper2]

31. Earth actually is pretty special...

We have a perfect atmosphere that didn't get stripped away, our temperature doesn't fluctuate 900 degrees like Mercury, it didn't end up becoming a gas giant...

Our Star is pretty special as well, just the right size. If our Star was VY Canis Majoris it would extend out past Jupiter with a diameter of two billion kilometers. It doesn't have to be special to you though, that's why humans made trusses