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NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

nasa.gov

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Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#171

Post by andy_ppp »

pavlov wrote: post #74
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #70

Apparently there's already a Kepler discovered planet with an ESI of 0.98: http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog/dat... EDIT: Unless that list was literally just updated with ESI 0.98 planet this thread is referring to...

1,075 light years away... Assuming we could somehow accelerate a "New New Horizons" probe to near light speed, that's a disappointingly long time to wait for a flyby.

And once it arrived, slowed down (haha!) and performed the survey it would only take another millenia for us to start receiving back information.

We need to work out how to bend spacetime.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#172

Post by redcalx »

psaintla wrote: post #159
redcalx wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There may not be intelligent life on the planet yet" Sounds pretty similar.

Yes, let's not celebrate human achievement and think about the positive possibilities, let's focus on the negative at every turn.

> let's focus on the negative at every turn

You mean like the dearth of humour?

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#173

Post by [deleted] »

jMyles wrote: post #166
nerd_stuff wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neurochemistry and the experience of consciousness are very astonishing, I just think it's a bit egocentric to assume they're the most astonishing things in the universe.

Nobody said they were the "most astonishing things in the universe" - I'm not sure where you get this stuff. It's another straw man. McKenna says that neurochemistry, and its material application called "the psychedelic experience," is the most astonishing thing you can personally suppose, or in some cases, even that you can't suppose. But that doesn't say anything about the (real or imagined) notion of a totality of…

[deleted]

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#174

Post by nerd_stuff »

jMyles wrote: post #167
nerd_stuff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...and it cannot be compared or described by anything else one has experienced in his/her life Many long-term meditators who have previous experience with psychedelics would disagree with you. I'm only making the assumption of agnosticism, that it's fundamentally impossible for you to know that something already within your realm of experience will trump all that exists in the unknown.

> Many long-term meditators who have previous experience with psychedelics would disagree with you. See, the problem here is that you are debating an argument you haven't bothered to fully read. Terence McKenna has literally volumes to say about this argument. So now that we've moved beyond this simpleton back-and-forth, what say you about his position vis a vis meditation? Specifically, what do you say about his arg…

> Terence McKenna has literally volumes to say about this argument. So now that we've moved beyond this simpleton back-and-forth, what say you about his position vis a vis meditation?

If somebody makes a living telling people things like aliens brought us mushrooms and that's why evolution happened they aren't worth my time. They're too far gone. I responded to a comment on a message board encouraging people to not get excited about space exploration and instead focus on the wonders of DMT.

I simply don't care what he says about meditation.

> Specifically, what do you say about his argument that, without being willing to ingest a drug, you haven't humbled yourself to the basic notion that your brain is physical and its operations electrical and chemical?

Narcissistic, egocentric, closed-minded, a little horrifying. I don't understand why he thinks doing drugs is not only the best path but the only path to understanding the realities of being a human. That's how cult-leaders operate, they teach their followers there is no other way and everybody on the outside of their bubble just doesn't get it. Then when people try to help them get out they say "You just don't understand how great our leader is! He even said this would happen!"

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#175

Post by nerd_stuff »

d-equivalence wrote: post #168
nerd_stuff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...and it cannot be compared or described by anything else one has experienced in his/her life Many long-term meditators who have previous experience with psychedelics would disagree with you. I'm only making the assumption of agnosticism, that it's fundamentally impossible for you to know that something already within your realm of experience will trump all that exists in the unknown.

Because I'm tired of arguing with nerds talking theory over matters that ultimately are experiential, I'll say the following two points and I don't mind being downvoted. 1) Whomever says the experiences of meditation are akin to those of psychedelics is plainly full of shit. I've done psychedelics for about 4 years, and western ceremonial magic which involved plenty of meditation daily and consistently for about a de…

From a glance I wouldn't expect this "western ceremonial magic" to bring anything but confusion and maybe the illusion of not-confusion. But if it works for you do your thing.

I've been around enough to reject the notion that an amalgamation of 1001 chemicals is fundamentally different from an amalgamation of 1000. With that goes the illusion of being "deep" while tripping balls. I'm not rejecting the intensity of the psychedelic experience, I'm rejecting the ideas that it's wholly unique in intensity, that it brings unique insight and that it reliably brings insight.

As far as meditation vs psychedelics I defer to people who have done enough of both to have informed opinions on the matter.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#176

Post by ericson578 »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #144
ericson578 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The earth similarity index for venus is 0.44, and for mars is 0.70

I understand, but that's a synthetic benchmark. We actually have no idea why Earth has life and other planets don't and similarity to Earth may not be a big factor (see theories on life in Europa's seas for example or non-carbon based life). I just feel everyone gets excited over nothing solely because its extra-solar. Our own solar system is fairly diverse. If life was common, we'd probably be seeing more of it here…

maybe life is common enough, but doesn't typically overlap in time. Maybe life on mars or venus died out a billion years ago.

We'll have a better picture when we study our solar system in more detail. Maybe 100 years? I agree that speculation this early in the game isn't enough to get excited over.

Re: NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

#177

Post by manifestsilence »

ArekDymalski wrote: post #164
manifestsilence wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, beware! The tendency to value clever quips and memes over actual content WAS the difference between Reddit and HN. And used to be the difference between the nicer parts of Reddit and 4Chan before that... :/

"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a common semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." taken from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ;)

Whoops, my bad. :s
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