A Trillion Worlds
blogs.scientificamerican.com
A Trillion Worlds
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: A Trillion Worlds
#2Could this mean the great filter is likely behind us?
Re: A Trillion Worlds
#3Could this mean the great filter is likely behind us?
It's likely there is no great filter; there exist reasonable claims that the Fermi Paradox has been "dissolved" [1] [2].
Re: A Trillion Worlds
#4I would have liked to hear about how they are now accounting for the inherent bias of our detection process to find large, close-to-star planets, because those are the ones that produce the best signals. I remember that that used to be a big issue in drawing any statistical conclusions about expolanet data. Has there just finally been enough data collected that we can model our own bias?
Re: A Trillion Worlds
#5I wonder if there is any models exploring the possibility that our system is uncommon due to 2 systems merging? IOW, Sol ejected a companion star and assimilated the planets from the other.
Re: A Trillion Worlds
#6Could this mean the great filter is likely behind us?
It's likely there is no great filter; there exist reasonable claims that the Fermi Paradox has been "dissolved" [1] [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17302924 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17560462
If I understand this study correctly, their conclusion is that it is likely that intelligent species are very rare in the universe. This still implies a "Great Filter", but it would have to be behind us.
Re: A Trillion Worlds
#7I would have liked to hear about how they are now accounting for the inherent bias of our detection process to find large, close-to-star planets, because those are the ones that produce the best signals. I remember that that used to be a big issue in drawing any statistical conclusions about expolanet data. Has there just finally been enough data collected that we can model our own bias?
Yeah exactly this. We’re not finding any solar systems like our own because we _can’t_. It’s possible that the majority of stars that we don’t see planets around look exactly like ours and we wouldn’t know.
Re: A Trillion Worlds
#8Off-topic, but I really appreciate that they offer "Cookie Settings", giving me the option to disable ad-tracking cookies. Yes, the button is almost invisible gray-on-gray, but it's there. Is this the GDPR showing its usefuless already?
Re: A Trillion Worlds
#9Could this mean the great filter is likely behind us?
It's likely there is no great filter; there exist reasonable claims that the Fermi Paradox has been "dissolved" [1] [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17302924 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17560462
"We substituted some guessed numbers for our own" isn't so much a "reasonable claim" as a thought experiment.
Even accepting their numbers, it's hardly "dissolved".
> When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively).
Re: A Trillion Worlds
#10I would have liked to hear about how they are now accounting for the inherent bias of our detection process to find large, close-to-star planets, because those are the ones that produce the best signals. I remember that that used to be a big issue in drawing any statistical conclusions about expolanet data. Has there just finally been enough data collected that we can model our own bias?
I have read in other articles that, yes, this very obvious issue has been taken into account and yes, there is still a surplus of solar systems not like ours even so. Hard to link one, though, since there's a lot of noise from articles that don't mention this.