NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 9:41 PM UTC

eastbayjake wrote: post #141

tomjakubowski wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's jarring to think that if intelligent life were on Kepler 452-b and observing Earth, we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China. Is there something uncivilized about the Arab conquest of Byzantine lands? Had the Kepler…

Not a dig at anyone, especially not the Arabs who basically preserved philosophy and mathematics while Europe entered the Dark Ages. My point was simply that Kepler 452b-ians observing Earth would be seeing lots of war and destruction even though we're currently peacefully collaborating among mankind to discover and explore planets.

Post by Cyph0n » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 9:43 PM UTC

omonra wrote: post #179

Cyph0n wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more proper to refer to them as Muslims, not Arabs. The whole point of Islam was to unite everyone under the same ideology. That's why it's called the Islamic civilization. Source: I'm both an Arab and a Muslim.

Was anybody but Arabs involved in the conquest of the early 7th century? Ie I'm sure other people took on Islam afterwards but he was talking about a specific point in history. We don't call the Spanish conquest of the Americas a Christian one even though they were Christians who ultimately converted everybody to Christianity.

Post by evilduck » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 9:48 PM UTC

logicfiction wrote: post #146

ratsimihah wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we are them. We used to live there, and conditions reached a point when we had to leave, and we came to present Earth. Haha.

Plausible, but what would be explanations for sending ourselves back to the stone age instead of carry advanced knowledge along?

Post by unfunco » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 9:50 PM UTC

maaku wrote: post #77

phantarch wrote: post #5

At 2 billion years older than Earth, I can't begin to imagine what kinds of things could possibly be living on this planet. Given, of course, that it's got the right ingredients for life to arise. What if it's suffered huge extinctions recently? What if there's a domineering species out to conquer the planet just like humans? What if there's a society there more sophisticated than us? It's a very exciting discovery.

If there was an intelligent life form, like humans, it would have expanded into the cosmos and colonized the entire galaxy within only a million years of developing technology. Since we don't see traces of them everywhere, we must presume they don't exist.

Post by aaronbrethorst » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC