51–60 of 107 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You misinterpreted. The point of the article isn't to explore the epistemology of why or how we perceive ourselves to be "special". The point was that a few years ago we had a solid, broadly-agreed-upon scientific theory of planetary formation. And it was wrong. That's interesting for scientific reasons, not philosophical ones.
In most articles investigating how our solar system or planet is different from the others, they take a pop-sci tone (which I may be reading too much into, for sure) about scientists studying why our special planet got this way. That is absolutely true to some degree—we want to find out what conditions support life, and why the Earth did end up how it did, and resulted in conditions stable enough and correct enough t…
It's true that this could still turn out to be mostly observational bias, but I feel like everyone is missing the monkey wandering across the corridor. The anthropic principle, that is. Isn't it possible that, while gas planets clustered closely around the star is the normal shape of solar systems, such a configuration is not amenable to complex life?
It would also be a good candidate for the Great Filter - the hidden factor that has stopped the development of all the other intelligent civilisations that would otherwise be out there. That would mean this is good news - we'd rather the Great Filter lies in our past (because that means we've already survived it) than in our future.
Call it the "two neptune filter", to borrow from the article. :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In most articles investigating how our solar system or planet is different from the others, they take a pop-sci tone (which I may be reading too much into, for sure) about scientists studying why our special planet got this way. That is absolutely true to some degree—we want to find out what conditions support life, and why the Earth did end up how it did, and resulted in conditions stable enough and correct enough t…
This article definitely isn't communicating what you interpreted. Why are your comments about "most articles" relevant?
(Aside: I'd guess it's because there are people like me, who often read comments before or without reading the article, that a well-written but not on-point comment like this can get upvoted. I wonder how you'd fix that?)
Couldn't the techniques we are using be biasing the results? Maybe solar systems like ours are simply harder to detect.
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I was very surprised that the article made no mention of such a bias. It was my first thought, too. I'm not terribly up-to-date on how Kepler has been detecting planets, but isn't it due to the 'wobble' of the stars? Surely they'll find planets that orbit faster (and wobble their stars faster) first. It'll take many many years of very consistent observations (or one very lucky day) to see a wobble (or occlusion) from…
Kepler uses occlusion, not wobbling.
Being a long time fan of 4x games, well of space games in general, this article makes me smile. I remember reading game forums where one subject that always arose was galaxy and system formations. So many of our concepts are strictly based on the very little observable data we have. Its great to live in a time when many assumptions are proven to be just that. Now the question that remains is, which configurations are…
A bit off-topic, but can you recommend any recent space 4x games to check out? The last one I played was Galactic Civilizations II and I enjoyed it immensely.
It's a little weird in that all players take turns simultaneously (you still have movement restrictions, etc, but it adds a real-time component because you want to wait to react to your opponent's movements, but also there's a time limit). The impression I got was that it was a way to speed up gameplay (less sitting around while others make their moves).
But it's a cool little game, lots of race customisation (with a few truly unique race benefits), interesting four-category tech tree (and equivalently, four ways to win), custom ship classes built out of components (like Gal Civ).
The combat is a little weird, they have some card-game-like thingy that can significantly influence battle outcomes.
EDIT: Not a turn-based game but there's also this: http://triton.ironhelmet.com/
Neptune's Pride is an always-on real time game played over several weeks in matches of up to 12 players. The mechanics are refreshingly simple, and there's a focus on diplomacy and betrayal in order to come out top.
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Yes, but they quoted both Steve Vogt and Mike Brown, who have devoted most of their careers to planet-finding. And both of them said that our solar system seems unusual. Since they are well aware of the biased sample issue, I would bet there is more to it than this. For instance, maybe they are able to model the effect of the bias, at least for some range of planetary masses, and the bias is not enough to explain the…
tocomment is right. Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JTneTI82nE from 5:00 to 7:00. Yes, scientists may have been quoted in this article, but I have seen how most journalists mangle, ignore, or sensationalize things that were said.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kepler uses occlusion, not wobbling.
Yes, and it's designed to detect Earth-sized planets as well as larger gas giants.
Eventually, Kepler and Kepler-like probes will be able to locate all earth-like planets with orbits that cross the path between the star and us. However, this technique will find the larger planets with shorter orbits first.