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Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

news.bbc.co.uk

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Re: Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

#11

Post by likpok »

andr wrote: post #3

This has been "known" since the 60s. The Drake equation estimates the number of habitable planets in the universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Rather poorly though. It takes several numbers for which we have no idea of a reasonable guess, multiplies them to get a number. The best we can say about this number (pretty much) is that it is in the interval (0,1]. Which is what you get by the definition of a probability. We then multiply this by several other (somewhat) arbitrary constants to get a number.

Re: Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

#13

Post by gibsonf1 »

ReverendBayes wrote: post #6

How many of those are getting warmer, gibsonf1? :), couldn't resist.

Most likely only those planets exposed to our sun would have had any warming similar to us (or cooling as is happening now), but I would need some help mounting an expedition to find out for sure. :)

Re: Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

#14

Post by kaptainlange »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10
matt1 wrote: post #5

Not to derail the conversation, but, question: What impact would the undeniable discovery of alien life have on organized religion? Would theists abandon their beliefs en masse or would they find a way of explaining the new discoveries with their existing doctrine?

Creationism -- the belief that some deity created all we see -- wouldn't have a problem with life on other planets. We see them. What kind of creation would only involve certain planets or creatures? ID -- the belief that our perceptions can either be of completely natural artifacts or artifacts created as a result of an external intelligent agent -- also not implicated. Interestingly enough, there may be a counter-m…

My early childhood religion always taught me that man was special, so I think there would be an impact if we were to find intelligent life elsewhere. In fact, I feel like that idea that man is so special is used as an argument against evolution. They use the 'disgust' of hearing that humans could be related to modern day apes, and thus is not so special.

As you said, religion would have to adapt, but that is an impact. I'm more curious what path they would take. As you said, they could deny them full privileges of being sentient...that is they are less than human. Or they could accept them as being on the same level, but that would require a small alteration to their beliefs.

Re: Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

#15

Post by DanielBMarkham »

kaptainlange wrote: post #14
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creationism -- the belief that some deity created all we see -- wouldn't have a problem with life on other planets. We see them. What kind of creation would only involve certain planets or creatures? ID -- the belief that our perceptions can either be of completely natural artifacts or artifacts created as a result of an external intelligent agent -- also not implicated. Interestingly enough, there may be a counter-m…

My early childhood religion always taught me that man was special, so I think there would be an impact if we were to find intelligent life elsewhere. In fact, I feel like that idea that man is so special is used as an argument against evolution. They use the 'disgust' of hearing that humans could be related to modern day apes, and thus is not so special. As you said, religion would have to adapt, but that is an impac…

Worst-case for religion, I guess, would be the discovery of obviously super-intelligent beings who claim that belief in God is an evolutionary defect.

Seems to me that Judaism is a major world religion that applies for Jewish people, although there are many kinds of people in the world.

Christianity is a religion of mankind, hence the need to dehumanize native peoples. The logical progression would be that Christianity would simply follow the lead of Judaism, i.e., Christianity is just for men.

Of course, that's a big-picture, long-range guess. One of the reasons Christianity is so resilient is that there are so many versions. What would happen would be a thousand different possible ways forward. Most wouldn't last 200 years. A few would succeed.

The "man is special" disgust with coming from monkeys thing is just a limited reaction to Darwinism. It's already dying off. Within another 300-500 years it'll be completely gone. There were similar reactions against Copernicus.

Re: Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

#16

Post by vlisivka »

Earth is complex product. Tides, created by the Moon, are important to mix water and to clean coasts. Metal core of the Earth is producing magnetic shield. All that is created due to collision of Earth with large object, which is comparable to Earth, and capturing it.

It is unlikely, that our Galaxy will contain too many systems created by two objects with comparable mass, because such systems are unstable. We can calculate this number by comparing number of star systems with two comparable stars in the system to number of regular stars.

Re: Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

#17

Post by trekker7 »

Do they believe that only Earth-like planets can support life? Or is it that Earth-like planets are one type of planet that supports life, with many other possibilities? I would think the first assertion to be short-sighted.

Re: Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

#19

Post by andr »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #12
andr wrote: post #3

This has been "known" since the 60s. The Drake equation estimates the number of habitable planets in the universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

The Drake equation is just a guess based on other guesses.

True, but a more educated guess than "billions".

Re: Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

#20

Post by jhawk28 »

swombat wrote: post #2

Slightly misleading headline from BBC there... it should really be "Galaxy may have 'billions of Earths'". There's no proof of it, it's just an estimate/guess. It may well be true, but there's no proof yet. Billions of earth-like planets. Makes you want to live forever to get to explore all that stuff, doesn't it?

I like his estimate that each sun like star has on "AVERAGE" one Earth like planet. Nothing like stating the obvious. (Everyone knows that we have one planet like earth for our sun like star :))
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