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Subscribe to RSSA leader of the Kepler planet-hunting team has created a slow-moving scientific stir by telling an audience at a high-tech conference that our galaxy could harbor 100 million Earths, based on the space mission's raw data. The resulting buzz focuses not only on the findings, but also on the means by which they came to light.
The conclusions drawn by Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov totally make sense, based on the composition of our own solar system. If we look at the eight dominant planets, four of them are Earth-scale, two are Neptune-scale, and the other two are big gas giants. (And then there are hundreds or thousands of smaller worlds like Pluto.)
During his July 16 talk at the TEDGlobal conference at Oxford, Sasselov observed that the preliminary results from Kepler were following that pattern. So far, planetary candidates "like Earth" - those that are no more than twice as wide as our own planet - make up the largest category in Kepler's database, according to a chart Sasselov used to illustrate his talk. The proportion is significantly more than that for Neptune-sized, Saturn-sized or Jupiter-sized candidates. (These observations came just after the eight-minute mark in the video embedded above.)
"The statistical result is that planets like our own Earth are out there," Sasselov, a co-investigator for the $600 million Kepler mission, observed. "Our Milky Way galaxy is rich in this kind of planet."
If you extrapolate that kind of distribution to the entire Milky Way galaxy, there might be 100 million alien Earths out there, Sasselov said.
TED
This slide from Dimitar Sasselov's presentation shows the distribution of Kepler planetary candidates by size. The largest category comprises candidates
"That's great news," he told the TEDGlobal audience. "Why? Because with our own little telescope, just in the next two years, we'll be able to identify at least 60 of them."
Once those candidates are confirmed, follow-up observations would be conducted to study the planets' atmospheres and determine whether they could sustain life. The search for alien Earths, as opposed to alien Jupiters, naturally leads to the search for alien life, Sasselov explained. "Life as a chemical system really needs a smaller planet with water and with rocks and a lot of complex chemistry to originate, to emerge and survive," he said.
So when we're talking about millions of alien Earths, we're talking about one of the biggest stories in astrobiology.
The last word? Hardly
Sasselov emphasized that he was sharing preliminary findings, based merely on the candidates Kepler has turned up so far. The little Kepler telescope is built to gaze fixedly at a patch of sky for months, looking for the faint dips in the intensity of starlight that occur regularly when a planet crosses over the star's disk. Astronomers on the Kepler team say those detections have to be confirmed by other means. Why? It's because they want to rule out any possibility that the dips are being caused by some other mechanism, such as the mutual eclipses of binary stars.
The Kepler team has been holding onto much of its preliminary data for that purpose, with the big reveal scheduled in February. The fact that a lot of the Kepler data is still being held back has rubbed some scientists the wrong way - and the fact that Sasselov discussed an aspect of the findings that apparently had not yet been made public added to the controversy.
NASA
An artist's conception shows NASA's Kepler probe observing a distant solar system. In reality, Kepler does not make direct observations of alien planets but detects transits by looking for a characteristic dip in starlight intensity.
Once Sasselov's comments started making their way across the interwebs, NASA began facing questions over whether significant findings had slipped out of the Kepler team's net.
Some news outlets, such as the Daily Mail, fixed upon the suggestion in Sasselov's chart that 140 Earthlike candidates had been found, as well as his comment that Earthlike planets "with water and with rocks" were of particular interest. The buzz over Sasselov's remarks picked up last week when the TED website posted a video of his presentation.
New news, or new spin?
Responding to the buzz, NASA stressed that the Kepler team has confirmed detection of only five planets, not the 140 mentioned in the news reports. Sasselov, meanwhile, told Space.com that he was "simply repeating what was already announced" last month by the full science team.
"So no new news here - but more to come later in the year!" he told Space.com.
It's true that one of the research papers put out by the team goes into the size distribution question, but that paper goes only so far as to note that most of the candidates appear to be Neptune-sized or smaller. In fact, the earlier charts suggested that alien Neptunes are more numerous than alien Earths. So at the least, Sasselov's comments put a new, Earth-centric spin on the previously announced results.
ScienceInsider's Richard Kerr said Sasselov's presentation "was especially striking because it was largely based on Kepler data that team members had been allowed to keep to themselves for further analysis until next February. So, traditionally, such data would be released formally with all involved scientists onboard."
NASA Watch's Keith Cowing said he was confused by Sasselov's seemingly significant non-news: "The Kepler folks seem to want to have things both ways," he wrote. "On one hand they want to tantalize us (and select audiences) with what they have found but yet at the same time they do not want to put their reputations on the line when people start taking their comments as fact. This project clearly needs to put some PR strategy in place."
My efforts to get comments from Sasselov or other members of the Kepler team today were unsuccessful, but NASA spokesman Michael Mewhinney did tell me that the scientists are preparing a fresh response and would provide further clarification on Tuesday. So check back here for updates as they become available.
Update for 8:55 p.m. ET July 27: Sasselov tries to dispel the "confusion" over Earth-sized planetary candidates in a posting to NASA's Kepler mission blog. During his 18-minute TEDGlobal talk, "the expected number of planets, size and Earth-like chemistry got confused, and created a misunderstanding," he said.
In the blog posting, he emphasizes that the Kepler telescope can measure the size of objects as they pass over a star's disk, but can't say much about their climate or chemistry - let alone whether they have water or rocks. In fact, he notes that the Earth-scale planets detected by Kepler so far couldn't be Earthlike in the water-and-trees sense because they circle their parent stars in such hellishly close orbits. They're nowhere near the "habitable zone" within which life as we know it can exist.
"The first data release is an encouraging first step along the road to Kepler's ultimate goals, specifically, to determine the frequency of Earth-size planets in and near the habitable zone," Sasselov writes. "However, these are candidates, not systems that have been verified sufficiently to be considered as planets. The distribution of planet sizes may also change. It will take more years of hard work to get to our goal, but we can do it."
Sasselov is looking forward to reaching those ultimate goals because of another role he plays - as leader of Harvard's Origins of Life Initiative, which tries to make connections between planetary science and biology. In his TEDGlobal talk, he sought to emphasize that "progress in synthetic biology may be accelerated by input from planetary science." That's why he made the connection between Kepler and the search for life.
Another co-investigator for the Kepler mission, William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center, provided yet another follow-up in a telephone interview after Sasselov's blog posting was published. He said Sasselov's TEDGlobal lecture "was a little bit disturbing" because the discussion focused on "Earthlike" planets rather than "Earth-size" planets. "Earthlike is not Earth-size," Borucki said, for the reasons we've already mentioned.
Borucki also said the now-famous graph that Sasselov used was not quite correct, because the leftmost category actually takes in everything less than two and a half times as wide as Earth, not just twice as wide. The fraction couldn't fit on the original slide, but the graph would be corrected to bring it into sync with Figure 2 on page 7 of the scientific paper released by the Kepler team last month, Borucki said.
That figure shows that "super-Earths," between two and three times as wide as our own planet, make up the peak category for Kepler's candidates so far. Neptune-scale candidates (three to four times as big as Earth) make up the second-biggest category, and not-so-super-Earths (less than two times as wide as Earth) add up to the third-biggest category. There's a quick fall-off, however, when you're looking for things less than twice as wide as Earth. "By the time you hit one and a half [times as big as Earth], you've got nothing," Borucki said.
Borucki suspects that the fall-off is merely due to the fact that "we have not yet been able to bring these small transits out of the noise," and that Kepler will eventually find plenty of candidates trending down toward true Earth size.
So if you're looking for Earth's exact twin in the current crop of Kepler data, you'll be disappointed. But if you're looking for life, you needn't limit yourself to Earth size or smaller. In fact, Sasselov is among those who argue that super-Earths are superior for fostering life. And the Kepler database suggests that astrobiologists will eventually have a juicy selection of super-Earths to choose from.
Do Sasselov's amended remarks clear up the confusion that he referred to in today's blog posting? Or does all this talk about super-Earths, "Earthlike" vs. "Earth-size" and missing fractions make your head spin? Feel free to weigh in with a comment below.
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It was old news: In mid-June it had already been reported - e.g. on the websites by Scientific American and Sky & Telescope - that some of the 400 withheld Kepler exoplanet candidates had diameters (but not necessarily masses!) as small as Earth's. And it was explained that those 400 candidates had eiher diameters smaller than 1.5 Earths or circled around bright stars - and since the latter are in the minority, one could easily figure out that there must be hundreds of exoplanet candidates with diameters between 1 and 2 Earths among the 400 'secret' cases. How many of these are actual planets, we'll find out next February, it's promised. On a general note, it's a disturbing trend in astronomy 'journalism' to immediately forget what your colleagues or even you yourself have written and cry "news!!!" when basically the same information resurfaces a short time later. Please, colleagues, take a deep breath, check the facts and then post something ...
Yes, I hope I've been able to check out a few facts and provide a clearer picture. We'll probably hear more tomorrow about how "new" all this is. If you look at Borucki et al., http://lanl.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1006/1006.2799v2.pdf ... specifically on page 9 ... you'll see a graph that indicates the "Neptune class" objects are more numerous than the "super-Earths." So why is Sasselov saying something different? Also, I suspect that a lot of the first super-Earths to be confirmed will be in close orbits around their parent stars, so they'd be a lot more like COROT's "lava planet" than the planets "with rocks and with water" that astrobiologists are interested in.
I can not wait until February now!! oh it's great to be alive in this time of discovery (war on terror, mexican drug wars, stupid political debates, etc. etc. all those things aside) it's a great time to be alive. Now if we can just push funding for a moon base that would really make my day.
I have a question, what exactly is the argument that super earths are more likely to have life? (besides the obvious larger surface area equals more probability.
Of course, if we use Washington DC as a model for the types of live forms that might exist, we could probably assume that intellegence is probably pretty rare.
The only people who do not believe there are other planets like Earth also believe the Dinasaurs didn't exist either. And that the Earth was created 3458 years ago or something like that. And it was all done in 6 days. If the universe is truly expanding that means somewhere out there is a civilization that is light years ahead of us and we are just guppies in a fish bowl to them. And thankfully being way advanced have gotten past the Kill and ask questions later part of thier history.
"young Earth creationism" it's called. If one looks it up on wikipedia one will be astonished to find that apparently "10-45% of American adults" hold this religious viewpoint "depending on various polls". this blip of info amazed me.
Stephen Hawking doesn't seem to think all these alien "civilizations" will be benign. I am inclined to agree with him that the "kill first ask questions later" mentality might persist even in very advanced life forms. point being, you never know.
It's hard to imagine a civilization more dangerous than ours - but if you're going to merge science fiction with science face (which always seems the way things go) then it's quite possible you might have a race out there somewhere similar to the Klingons. Let's hope that our first contact is with a peaceful, intelligent and logical race of beings!
And as far as religion, I just have one question: If all these planets are found and a good percentage of them have intelligent life similar to our own - I wonder if Jesus Christ plays a part of their central religious beliefs. I highly doubt it. Do Christians even have a "contingency plan" for when ET is discovered and have not accepted Christ as their savior?
I just hope that, in what could be the greatest scientific find of the history of the world, religion will not rear it's inflexible face and start a holy war with these extra-terrestrial pagans!
Mob, I'm with Hawking on this one. Currently we only have one model, ourselves, to try to predict what an alien arrival on earth might mean.
You have to look at what happened to aboriginal people here on earth when first contact with "civilization" was made. In many cases the newcomers were welcomed, until they began exploiting the local population, spreading disease and introducing alcohol and other harmful substances. When the inevitable armed conflict occurred the aborigines were brutally defeated by the superior weapons of their "civilized" opponents. Read THE FATAL IMPACT for a real eye-opener.
Even when the contact was benign the results were catastrophic. New diseases such as chicken pox and measles, to which the aborigines had no resistance, proved fatal and whole populations were devastated.
Who knows what kind of alien microbes might arrive with the very logical and peaceful Vulcans? Who knows how they'll react with our biology?
Yes, it's an exciting time, but as with all things we should proceed with caution.
PEACE
"Let's hope that our first contact is with a peaceful, intelligent and logical race of beings!"
that'd be nice, because our planet wouldn't stand a chance dealing with an invasion of extraterrestrial Humans. We'd be wiped out
Oh and you can throw religious mythology back into the trash where it belongs when it comes to extraterrestrials, by all means, with how limited our abilities are currently, any beings even travelling from a nearby star to this planet are already so far ahead as to be "Gods" in their own right, much as airplanes and airmen seen by the stone age peoples of remote Pacific Islands were revered as gods when seen during World War 2.
"Stephen Hawking doesn't seem to think all these alien "civilizations" will be benign. I am inclined to agree with him that the "kill first ask questions later" mentality might persist even in very advanced life forms. point being, you never know."
Well it persists to this very day in humans, of course the flipside is humans really aren't that advanced by any means.
Leee - Why would this discovery have to be counter to Christianity? If God could create one planet of life, why wouldn't he create others? There could be millions of such planets and that would not have anything to do with the validity of religious beliefs here on Earth.
The bigger question is why you derive pleasure in attacking an individuals religious beliefs. Does that give you some sense of superiority that you are missing in your everyday life?
Science and religion do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Jaeger Dean: He is not attacking anyone or anything, just stating his beliefs -as did:
Albert Einstein: "I refused to join any religion that asked me to leave my brain at the door."
"Childish, fairytales."
And so he did not.
Lee said "Do Christians even have a "contingency plan" for when ET is discovered and have not accepted Christ as their savior?"
Christians do have a contingency plan, they will call the ET's Demons.......
But then the question is, has this played out before. Aliens visit, accidentally wipe out 99% of the population, realize that they can't to anything but make matters worse, and then leave. Our oral histories remember them as gods, daemons, angels, pixies, leprechauns or whatever. 10,000 years later, they come back and do it again.
Among the earliest life forms on this planet there is evidence of predators and prey. All the advancements in the structures and organizations of creatures great and small, including bigger brains, has not eliminated predation. There is no reason to suspect that this pattern will not hold true for creatures either more physically or technologically advanced than us. We live in a jungle.
Breeze, Leee, and all others who don't think Christianity and science can coexist:
Guys, please understand we simply believe that the God of the Bible, the Triune God we serve, is the one who created ALL things, meaning all in our universe, INCLUDING any and all planets and life in and on them. The Bible tells us the history of God's people and his plan for salvation for us. It does NOT cover EVERY subject in the universe in detail, such as Go'd's other creations on other planets, as that's not necessary for our salvation, but He expects us to deal with these subjects as He allows them to us, praying that He will allow us the wisdom to deal with them as His gift to us. We certainly haven't done this in a consistently worthwhile manner on this one planet, and I'm sure that's why He's put other planets so far out of reach. But Christianity and the belief that there could be other life besides humans don't have to be at odds, especially when we believe we serve an Almighty, Omniscient God who cares about His entire creation.
if you were orbiting one of these earth-like planets around an sun-like star many light years away and you point this baby at the Earth for "a few months" at a time would you expect to see the Earth pass between you and the star?
also, stars like our Sun are relatively rare in our galaxy with Red Dwarfs being much more common. I'd be especially interested to here what is the rate of "earth-like" planets orbiting a red-dwarf.
I think the answer to the first question is yes. Kepler was designed to spot Earth-scale planets in Earthlike orbits around sunlike stars, and if one of those planets had a "Quepler" probe doing the same thing in our direction, they should eventually be able to detect Earth. They'd probably be brainier as well so that they didn't squabble over the findings as much as we do here. ;-)
Here are a couple of stories that address the red dwarf question:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30136580
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19291045/
thank you for the links!! :)
i'd really be surprised if a "brainier" civilization squabbled less. to be honest these "squabbles" are a vital component to dissemination of the information (in my opinion). sure, we could all do without the "blame it on (a politician)" but passion for science is really only good for the science lovers. for the rest of the world there actually needs to be some sensationalizing (again it's just my opinion). how are we (the science lovers) going to get average "Joe Six pack" excited about an alien planet he'll never see and probably doesn't care about? well, one way to get Joe excited is to find this planet and hope that they too play back-breaking games of football and argue endlessly about the purpose of people like Sarah Palin.
I actually hope we aren't the only civilization in the Universe that bickers endlessly about pointless things. It would just be comforting to know that even the aliens hate (a given politician, or sport, or use of funding for whatever). to find out what an alien species does hate and love and feel and think about is one question that is always in my mind when thinking about aliens in general.
Statistically they must exist. so then, would I be wrong in saying statistically there must be aliens who love football as much as I do?
If they are peaceful.....they must be all females. (ie. nurturers)
(Sorry, no football and no "running of the bulls"; too purposeless and violent!)
if they are all females they would've died out after the first generation. Sexual reproduction does not happen without sex, sex does not happen without the opposite sex, and sex(gender) does not exist if there is only one manifestation. And females, at least female humans, are hardly peaceful, many a queen of human nations has dealt with an iron fist.
How do you respond to... where to start.....speechless.
Who chose your name, by the way?
Cheeeze, what a male chauvanist attitude. What makes us think that aliens would even have a male\female reproductive process. They be hermaphrodite and mate in groups like worms. Or may be asexual and "bud" their own children. They might even be the artificially intelligent mechanical descendants of a biological race that died out a millennium ago.
If they are peaceful.....they must be all females. (ie. nurturers)
I am appalled by the level of absolute idiotic sexist bullcrap in that statement.
lol
Ha Ha Ha. Let's see you find just one of them!
you currently reside on one.
WOW, you are really on your game today! ZING!
PEACE
Lets see you prove the Earth isnt flat... Oh wait we already did that. Its only a matter of time. Besides why does it have to be an Earthlike planet for intelligent life? Who says life has to be carbon based?
The Universe has a lot of surprises in store for us so one thing you never want to do is Say never or its impossible. If history is any teacher it has proven those words to be wrong and that is just on this planet.
I think the point of looking for life on earth like planets is that we have some vague idea of what to look for. If we found life in another form, would we really be able to recognize it as life without getting closer than we are physically able to?
But I do agree with you, life shouldn't have to be just carbon based, I'm pretty sure silicon functions in a similar manner. (High school chemistry though... not so sure about that...)
Sorry Gerrit. but your high school chemistry let you down in this case.
Life wouldnt HAVE to be carbon based, no one can prove there aren't Horta's out there somewhere (Trekkies get it).
BUT silicon and carbon really are very, very different. In fact, Carbon is so unique in its properties that there is an entire branch of science dedicated to it - Organic Chemistry. Silicon is pretty good at making rocks while Carbon is good at making just about everything else you can think of. Carbon is so good at combining with itself and other elements that it is the basis of more compounds then all the other elements combined. It is also one of the most abundant elements in the universe, so theres a whole lot of it available for mixing together in some primordial soup on some other planet to get the process started just like it did here.
no one can say that life HAS to be carbon based. But its abundance, willingness to interact with other elements in millions of permutations and the kind of bonds it forms with those elements make it a pretty safe bet that alien life, in whatever form that may be, would also be carbon based.
"Once Sasselov's comments started making their way across the interwebs,"
Aww Alan, please don't be that guy! It's bad enough that the typical reporters on MSNBC pull that crap - you're too smart for that.
The 'net, the web... good accepted, valid terms.
"Interweb", no thanks!
Point taken, glad you called me on it. ;-)
I have felt for many years that it is statistically absurd to think that Earth-like planets and advanced civilizations do not exist elsewhere in the universe. There are simply too many possible places - an astronomical number, in fact (pun intended). I get more and more feelings that we are living in a science fiction age!
Our planet earth is not the only planet. Our moon is not the only moon. Our sun is not the only sun.
In fact, They are all part of trillions throughout the universe. My point? Why would anyone believe there is only one universe. I submit that there are countless universes and ours is but one.
indeed! I have "elegant universe" on dvd and in it is described "M Theory". there is a wonderful (visual) analogy using a sliced loaf of bread. if you haven't seen that program it's really worth it, and i think it's probably also on the interwebs. (lol- that use of "interwebs" was just for chouse, because i know he loves it when folks say interwebs)
what would the odds be of finding some form of life on one (or more) of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn? what kind of life would one expect to find in that kind of high radiation environment?
The idea is that there may be simple forms of marine life beneath the ice of Europa or Callisto (moons of Jupiter) or Enceladus (moon of Saturn), sheltered from radiation by the ice.
Here are a couple of golden oldies:
Oceans may exist on two moons of Jupiter:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077987/
Liquid water on Saturn moon could support life
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11736311/
The question and the answer here both have a very "Human-centric" flavor to them. We tend to trap ourselves into believing "If I couldn't survive there, What possibly could?"
Whether the ice would or wouldn't shelter potential life forms is irrelevant. There are bacteria right here on earth that exist exclusively by quietly munching away on the plutonium fuel rods in every nuclear power plant on the planet.
The Apollo 12 astronauts brought back a camera lens from one of the Ranger probes that had sat on the moon in the vacuum of space, been through 14 month long cycles of -250 to +250 degrees C and had been exposed to the full on solar radiation for all that time. When they got it back to earth it was discovered that a technician had sneezed on it before it was launched and the viruses that were transferred to it had just gone merrily along for the 14 months as if nothing had happened to them.
We are susceptible to radiation and temperature extremes and to other conditions in our environment because we evolved HERE. That cant be assumed to be the same for life forms that potentially evolved elsewhere. The life forms that we consider extremophiles because they survive things that we couldn't are probably laughing stocks when you get out into the universe as a whole.
And the point really shouldn't be "What kind of life could possibly exist in that environment?". The point should be DOES life exist anywhere but here? I really dont care if its the simplest bacteria ever discovered or we drill through the ice on titan and fall into the middle of the equivalent of an alien shopping mall. The point is that ANY discovery of ANY form of life, simple or complex, finally answers the question of whether or not this tiny little rock we're on is the only place in the universe where any form of life COULD evolve.
my question - What kind of life could possibly exist in that environment? - was simply poorly worded. I was actually trying to ask the question What kind of life would one expect to find in that kind of environment? I was hoping to get some ideas of weird alien life forms. Instead, because I'm a lousy writer, everyone assumes I think the radiation is too great or that something like "because humans couldn't survive there nothing could.." well, I personally believe 100% that we WILL find life of SOME sort on the moons of Jupiter and/ or Saturn. I was just hoping to get a few alien descriptions out of everyone. Next time I will choose my words more carefully. My apologies to the group.
And I guess I should back off my stance a little considering my interpretation of
what you wrote was apparently incorrect. However, I think the vast majority of
people do in fact believe that for life to develop on a planet, the planet has to
have very similar condition to those that we evolved under right here on the Earth.
I personally dont believe anything could be further from the truth.
As for the intent of your original question, to elicit speculation about what alien
life might look like...
I always come up with a blank on that one. If I were an alien and you tried to convince
me that Slime Mold, Snakes, Squid, Fish, Elephants and Humans all came from the same planet
and shared the same overwhelmingly vast genetic make up, I'd call you crazy. Life right
here at home is so ridiculously varied im not sure the human imagination can come up with
anything more bizarre than you can run into in your own backyard or at the local zoo.
I agree that it's not in our best interests to limit ourselves to any one frame of thought on the idea of extraterrestrial life, I think we have to do it in the short term to get us started. The vast amounts of raw data that are out there to sort through will overwhelm us if we don't start somewhere, and since we know for a fact that life can evolve on a planet with similar conditions to our own, that is were we will start looking - for places where statistically (according to what we currently know) there is the highest chance of life existing. After that, though, hell yes we should be considering other things (I'm all for Silicon based life forms after reading the "So You Want to Be A Wizard" Series). Just thought I'd add my 2 cents.
Hope everyone's day is going well,
Kuster Jr
About fifty years ago, Harlow Shapley, Director of the Harvard Observatory, wrote a slim book entitled "Of Stars and Men," in which he discussed the statistics of life in other solar systems. Using some fairly crude assumptions, he arrived at the conclusions that planets like Earth exist in the millions. He speculated on whether they would be based on some other element than carbon (eg, silicon, as had been suggested) and concluded that only carbon offers the vast number of chemical compounds necesssary for a complex living system. I don't know whether you can find this volume in the library, but you all would find it interesting reading. He also speculated on whether such civilizations would be ahead of us or behind us, concluding that at least some would be where we will be in a thousand years. Food for thought.
what do we do when we find one? i know it would cause more than quite a stir, and many philosophical systems throughout the world (ours) would probably collapse, but seriously, what do we do next?
I really don't think it will cause as much of a stir as you suggest. We've already found a couple of exoplanets that are Earth-scale ... but they are in such close orbits around their parent stars that they're probably boiling-hot and not very friendly to life as we know it. It's just a matter of time before we find Earthlike planets in Earthlike orbits around sunlike stars. It's kinda like how scientists figured out it'd be just a matter of time before new worlds were found on the solar system's rim that were bigger than Pluto. If these true alien Earths were found, scientists would definitely try to analyze their atmospheres, looking for any signatures that would suggest life exists on them. I'm guessing that the SETI folks would focus on those planets as well.
sorry, i meant one with proof of some life form.
Peace even if life was proved to exist on other planets people would deny it and say it was all a conspiracy theory, that it was staged. Until actual undeniable proof, (like commercial space flights to another planet) is available people will still deny the truth. People are not keen to acknowledge what is right in front of their face.
It is a good thing the world can still go on without any positive input from those people.
What we do next is measure for the chemical signatures of organic life, then build the biggest visible light telescope imaginable out in space and see if we can't snap an image that shows some detail. That's my holy grail - images of the surface of a habitable world like Earth!
If we find evidence of civilization 'out there' by definition they are x light years mere advanced than we observe. If there is an interstellar civilization, it is not going to arrive here for anything other than exploration (a one-time visit) or conquest ( overflow population releif) Trade would be pointless without FTL. If they are there, then it only means "We are not alone" but life of all kinds is all around us here. Enjoy the alien-ness of your pets and wildlife. They won't give you the keys to the universe, but neither will those "out there."
"Your pets and wildlife won't give you the keys to the universe."
That is up for debate.
"We learn more from our children and pets than any guru."
Quote by brilliant and famous author who has accomplished something nobody else ever has going into 2 centuries now.
Even if there are Millions of earths there are Billions of years and the chances for any of a technological civilization existing in parallel with our blink of time is less than infinitesimal.
Exactly. One hundred million large space rocks. Brilliant! So what?
And primitive life forms ... pond scum? Oh that would be exciting now wouldn't it!?! Let's all get excited about the possibility of pond scum.
Most folks seem to assume that if life of some form did exist in space, that it would be more advanced than ours. It could be very primitive compared to Earth. Another assumption is that for a planet to have life of some form, that it must be the same design as Earth ...... hardly true.
I believe that one cannot look at the millions of stars in the sky and be so backward as not to think that there are other forms of "life" somewhere. Crap, if some morons believe in ghosts, you would think many more would believe in the possibility of an alien existence no matter the scale of evolution.
Just my op though. Have a great week.
How many years does this planet have left? Maybe there is a correlation.
The earth has 4 billion +/- years left around that time the sun will go red giant and the earth will start to melt.
A certain highly respected Nobel Laureate recently gave US (HUMANS ) UNDER 100 years.
Another one, Dr. Henry Kendell before he died a while back while diving.:
"If we do not halt population growth with justice and compassion, nature will do it for us - and it will be brutal and without pity."
We are watching the scenarios above stepped up on a minute to minute basis around the world now.
Religion or science. Looks like religion lost.
lemon1
How many years does this planet have left? Maybe there is a correlation.
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until november 2012! lol
I agree with you JGator.
While it will be cool to find earth like planets orbiting other stars at a distance that makes them candidates for life, I also believe the best bet to first confirm life exist outside earth is to look at the moons of Jupiter that possibly hold liquid water oceans. If I could design a space mission it would be to send a probe to Europa where we estimate the surface is newest. You likely wouldn't even need to dig to determine if life exists in the assumed ocean below. All you would need to do is analyze the surface for life, living or not. One would assume any life in the ocean there would in it's lowest form be microscopic. So it would easily be caught up in the process forming the new surface and transported dead or alive to the surface of the moon just waiting for us to analyze it and finally say, "We are not alone."
We learned in 2001 that:
"All these Worlds are yours Except Europa. Attempt No Landings There."
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It's called eternal life, and we're all living in it and have been for billions and billions of years. Of course they're out there. We and they don't travel by modern ships with blinking lights and warp drives, we travel by far more practical means on comets and asteroids, eventually colliding with other planets and delivering our goods so that life begins again. And once our planet dries up and blows away, it will eventually blow towards a new life, and whatever raw materials that were once "us" makes it through will seed the next host, and combine to begin a whole new cycle. We're big, timeless ageless pollen.
ok if they find any whos not to say it does not have oxygen, it could have a argon atmosphere, i hope most scientist are not so narrow minded that they think only organic beings can evolve on worlds with only oxygen>???
"i hope most scientist are not so narrow minded that they think only organic beings can evolve on worlds with only oxygen>???"
narrowminded? Rofl are you *that* stupid? First of all, scientists are well aware of numerous lifeforms that can grow in the absence of oxygen and in fact for some, oxygen is a toxin. However these are bacteria, the simplest forms of life. So yes, bacteria can grow in a world without oxygen, without sunlight, in extremes of temperature, pressure, salinity and acidity. They might even be able to live in extremes of gravity; life is very resilient. Will you ever see anything beyond bacteria in a world without oxygen? No, you know what our best measure of this is? The fact that on this very planet, for a span of nearly 2 billion years of living on a world devoid of oxygen and experiencing all those extremes, not a single lifeform more advanced than bacteria existed. Please open your narrowmind to how science works, and realize it's not subject to interpretation or imagination like your sci-fi movies. the FI in sci-fi should be your dead give away anyways.
Dude - why are you so harsh?
and your own "because that's the way it happened here, it must HAVE to work that way everywhere" philosophy is pretty narrow minded in and of itself. Oxygen became a pre-requisite for OUR life because we evolved in the waste gasses given off by the bacteria you mentioned as the inhabitants of this planet who preceded us.
To think a single case represents scientific proof of the only possibility and to shout it with such a demeaning tone doesn't make it science. it just makes it rude tunnel vision.
This is all the more reason we need to fully fund NASA! We should say YES to funding for commercial spaceflight missions for NASA, say yes to Constellation, yes to permanent moon bases, yes to continued funding of the International Space Station, yes to heavy-lift-rocket development, yes to advanced propulsion research, yes to a Mars/asteroid expedition.
And please don't tell me the government can't afford it. What a load of crap. Just look how much money they've wasted (and are still wasting) over all these years. Is anyone SERIOUSLY going to tell me that they can't find enough money that could be redirected in such a way as to fund these critical developments in space sciences and technology to open the new frontier to humanity?
As soon as a habitable planet is found, settlement should begin immediately. Fully funding NASA, getting more telescopes in orbit, and hiring more Astronomers to help us find it seems like a good way of getting it done faster.
Thankfully we've got some organizations (however small) like the Planetary Society out there rallying support for our space program.
yes lets build moon bases, that way we can go see the ruins on the dark side of it, and explore who really built them!
Legion-1982: There is no "dark side of the moon." Take off the foil cap please. ;)
It's so sad....
This is old information, but the ignorant masses immediately misunderstand it because they are scientifically illiterate.
I think it just takes a while for things to sink in sometimes... The reason why Sasselov's comments resonated so much is because of the way he framed the findings. Talking about "100 million Earths" gets folks' attention, but it has to be followed up by solid observations. Let's hope there are some promising specifics available in February...
I have to protest! Ignorance does not equal "scientific illiteracy." I had not heard of this news from the Keppler team until Mr. Boyle posted this article but, I will view it in an objective manner until more information is available. Lumping everyone into one box defeats the scientific method.
Having said that I'll now contradict myself with a quotation:
"A person is smart but people are stupid."
Tommy Lee Jones in MIB
Yes, we earthlings are stupid, which is why we have already left our trash from THIS planet in outer space ,sad to say.
Who WOULDN'T be happy to see us coming?
The more we discover - the more we realize the magnitude of God's creations. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) has long taught in revealed scripture that God has created millions of inhabited earths -- all his children.
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/moses/7 see verse 30
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/abr/3
http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/study-and-faith-selections-religious-educator/chapter-4-our-creators-cosmos
He is what I refer to as an intelligent idiot. Let's get real, he and no one else has ever seen or hear one other planet in the cosmos like earth. He has an idea based on nothing more than his own imagination, then makes a big announcement about it based on absolutely no facts.
There may be like planets out there, but as of this date we have absolutely no proof that there are... NONE!
So... what's your point?
Kepler is only designed to detect planets that are transiting in front of their stars, which is a very narrow sample - only a fraction of a degree above and below the star's ecliptic plane. That leaves out the other 179.9 degrees above and below the ecliptic, meaning there could be many thousands of times more exoplanets out there than we can detect by this means. "And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose" - Moses 1:33, The Pearl of Great Price (look it up)