331–340 of 347 posts
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The implication is that is the star system had potentially been artificially modified or even designed. Any entity capable of performing such a feat that must logically possess advanced technology. That's all.
If they had any real intelligence, they would keep quiet about it!
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Throw a d6 six times and you probably won't see each value exactly once.
Yes, I mentioned that in my comment, unless you believe that after seeing five rolls including a duplicate, adding a sixth might bring the total to six rolls with no duplicates.
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Every value being equally likely does not mean we expect every value to appear only once. Throw a d6 seven times and we expect a configuration to come up twice, even though the distribution is uniform.
Throw a d6 seven times and the pigeonhole principle requires that a configuration will come up twice. The example is weakening your argument; it's still true that if you throw a d6 five times, you expect a configuration to come up twice. A better example wouldn't involve a probability that can achieve 1; maybe ask about the probability of rolling a 3, or of rolling another 3 given you've already observed one 3. None…
Even that isn't as strong as you could make it; rolling a die 5 times is basically the birthday paradox but instead of asking 30 people their birthdays to find a duplicate, you're asking 300.
In the case of life supporting planets though, it feels like we're trying to talk about the likelihood of rolling a given value when we haven't even determined whether the die has unique values on each face or not. If you're assuming that only one of the sides has a 3 on it, the interesting part is already over.
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Not to mention if we did pick up an alien signal it would have been sent a very very very long time ago
Yeah, if we ever actually received an alien signal, it wouldn't change much, other than some people going wild about knowing that extraterrestrial life exists. We'd never be able to make meaningful contact. At best, we could send a high-powered signal aimed at where the aliens are, but by the time they received it, we'd likely already be extinct. Heck, they're probably extinct by the time we even receive their signal…
Many earthbound lifeforms have lifetimes in the tens of decades, and might be expected to survive as a species for thousands of years. And there are many "interesting" star-systems within 100 LY, so in those cases perhaps extinction isn't an issue. But I think humans would have difficulty when an exchange like "Earth to Aliens: come in please", "Aliens to Earth: receiving, go ahead" takes 2 lifetimes.
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Neither humans nor aliens created it, obviously.
I mean, that's literally what they are investigating. It's an article about the search for intelligent life, if you think that's nonsense, that's fine but it doesn't make it "clickbait".
I mean I guess it could be worse "We found a mathematically perfect alien star system, and then..."
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I know the film sequel is shunned (and I presume rightfully so) but does the same apply about the book?
I’m probably not the best person to ask. I loved all four books and both movies. I actually saw 2010 before 2001 and dare say I kind of prefer 2010. 2001 is beautiful art but the pacing is slow. 2010 is a solid 80s sci-fi flick.
What is the "mathematically perfect" aspect of this system? I don't see it in the article.
As detailed in the companion article [1], for every 54 orbits of planet 1, planets 2..6 orbit 36, 24, 16, 12, and 8 times respectively, giving successive ratios of 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 3/4 and 3/4. After those 54 planet 1 orbits, all planets are in the same relative position. [1] https://www.space.com/six-sub-neptunes-found-100-light-years...
We used to think shells and flowers must have been made by gods because they have patterns.
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What does that mean? Everyday objects don't work like that. Saying ice cubes are cold is roughly equivalent to saying that they radiate less heat than the objects around them. If they radiated at "high intensity" then they wouldn't be cold anymore. "A cold object that radiates heat at high intensity" is a contradiction.
Only for black body radiation do we have a perfect correspondance between spectrum and intensity. But there can be other ways of radiating. Non-black bodies. Antennas. Lasers.
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Well, perfectly spaced is the only way 3 planets can share the same orbit. And if we go for a gas giant and two small planets, there are probably many of those out there. We almost got one such trio.
Perfectly spaced is not a stable orbit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point You want L4 and L5 for that.