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

nasa.gov

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

#251

Post by maaku »

vectorjohn wrote: post #208
maaku wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have sensitive telescopes. If there was life out there, we would have noticed. You would have astronomy conferences filled with people trying to figure out what all these weird spectra objects are, or trying to decipher all these structured radio observations.

What? No, absolutely no we would not just see them with sensitive telescopes. Perhaps, if you're thinking of some sort of interstellar space travel, maybe we'd see the engines? But no, even that seems unlikely. Any space habitat of any plausible size will be completely undetectable, or at least indistinguishable from a planet. And I would think they'd be much smaller than that. And structured radio? Lots of possible…

I think you are completely misunderstanding the point. He have to vent heat somehow in the most efficient ways of doing so are not natural in their spectra. An encrypted radio transmission is still perfectly detectable -- you may not know what it says but you know that it is there. Artificial signals are blindingly obvious.

And this is without getting into Dyson spheres and other efficient but detectable technology.

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

#252

Post by maaku »

rybosome wrote: post #238
maaku wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have sensitive telescopes. If there was life out there, we would have noticed. You would have astronomy conferences filled with people trying to figure out what all these weird spectra objects are, or trying to decipher all these structured radio observations.

> We have sensitive telescopes. If there was life out there, we would have noticed. I'm sorry, but that's way off. Our current telescopes can't even see the majority of the exoplanets in our galaxy; we are made aware of their existence by observing the behavior of their host star (wobbling/dimming). Unless something is extremely close, unfathomably enormous, or emitting/reflecting large amounts of electromagnetic rad…

They can see stars. There wouldn't be stars in a type 2 civilization. There would be amorphous blackbody spectra which we do not see.

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

#253

Post by jsmeaton »

uptown wrote: post #19
sktrdie wrote: post #18

Meh, given the hype for this press-release, I was hoping for something more extraordinary frankly. Not that finding other exoplanets isn't amazing, just that we're all waiting to find out whether we are alone or not in the universe. Finding out that other advanced civilizations exist out there would bring such an amazing new meaning to life. If I could ask for one wish, it would be to find out if we're alone or not.…

Read: "Where are all the aliens?" http://qz.com/452452/where-are-all-the-aliens/ "We’re rare, we’re first, or we’re fucked."

That was an incredible read. Thanks for sharing!

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

#254

Post by [deleted] »

lovemenot wrote: post #243
Gravityloss wrote: post #111

The significance is this: it's very likely that there are a lot more such planets a lot nearer to us. This is because Kepler can only detect planets which lie in the same plane as earth and the star so the planet occults the star. Assuming random distribution, there's probably thousand fold amount of off plane planets. There are 259 stars within about 30 light years. Communication could be conceivable with such dista…

>> Assuming random distribution (of plane of planets), Has there been any research on this? I have no actual insight, but I'd guess the plane of the galaxy would affect plane of stellar rotation and perhaps also planetary disk alignment.

[deleted]

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

#255

Post by pdonis »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #227
pdonis wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that's unlikely, even if there were advanced life there for 2 billion years. Why do you think so? "Continuity" doesn't have to be having the same government or the same political structure, or even the same physical form (the article itself talks about uploads and nanomachines). It just means continuity of technological development. It doesn't have to mean steady progress either; our civilization hasn't h…

On those timescales mass extinction events (asteroid, supervolcano etc.) become rather probable, which I guess could be what GP was trying to say.

A mass extinction event would mean there wouldn't be a civilization on the planet at all. That's certainly possible, but for this particular subthread I am taking as a premise that there is a civilization there.

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

#256

Post by joshmn »

esolyt wrote: post #228
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be the funniest thing I've ever read on HN.

For a second I thought I was on reddit.

I was beginning to think we collectively lost our sense of humor.

There is hope. Now quick, someone post a cat pic and a relevant gif.

Edit: Not complaining about the downvotes, but guys, this is the internet, not work. Loosen up. Smile for once. It's good for you, and confuses people.

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

#257

Post by pdonis »

unchocked wrote: post #226
pdonis wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that's unlikely, even if there were advanced life there for 2 billion years. Why do you think so? "Continuity" doesn't have to be having the same government or the same political structure, or even the same physical form (the article itself talks about uploads and nanomachines). It just means continuity of technological development. It doesn't have to mean steady progress either; our civilization hasn't h…

Yes, I mean continuity of technological development. I suspect that the prior millennium’s dark ages are but a pale inkling of how far a civilization can collapse, especially given geological time scales. I also suspect that technological development can plateau for sociological reasons.

Even during the dark ages here on Earth, there was technological advancement. Also, the dark ages weren't worldwide. I would be skeptical of a plateau in technological development for any significant length of time for the same reason: even if one part of the planet was in one, the rest of it wouldn't be.

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

#258

Post by AreaGuy »

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.

It's like an anthill in the middle of the Amazon saying "If there were life on Earth that is more intelligent than us, why can't we see their enormous anthills? Why haven't they tried to contact us yet?"

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

#259

Post by mohaine »

Nogwater wrote: post #250
lovemenot wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Assuming random distribution (of plane of planets), Has there been any research on this? I have no actual insight, but I'd guess the plane of the galaxy would affect plane of stellar rotation and perhaps also planetary disk alignment.

I've asked that before too and been told that they are randomly distributed. Here's a link! http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/236-are-the-planes-of-solar...

Thank you. I've been wondering about that for years but never got around to looking it up.
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