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Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

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Re: Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

#21

Post by phreeza »

codeboost wrote: post #6

But let's say what we really hope for is true. What if we somehow discover that a large number of these planets are teaming with life ? What then ? How would that help us ? Spiritually, economically ? Wouldn't that make us feel even less significant ? I'm just wondering, why are we hoping there is life out there and what would we do if we find it ?

Assuming this life is not techological civilizations that were hiding in plain sight, such a discovery would be bad news for us because it put us before the great filter.

cf http://www.technologyreview.com/article/409936/where-are-the...

Re: Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

#22

Post by marcosdumay »

codeboost wrote: post #6

But let's say what we really hope for is true. What if we somehow discover that a large number of these planets are teaming with life ? What then ? How would that help us ? Spiritually, economically ? Wouldn't that make us feel even less significant ? I'm just wondering, why are we hoping there is life out there and what would we do if we find it ?

Probably, nothing changes untill we start communicating with them, what may take a while. If we start feeling less significant, well, list that in the benefits... But I doubt it'll happen.

Rationaly, we should start looking hard for the explanation to Fermi's Paradox. Since it's not in our past, it must be in our future, what's very bad. But we are not rational, so we probably won't.

Re: Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

#23

Post by VLM »

Tepix wrote: post #10
codeboost wrote: post #6

But let's say what we really hope for is true. What if we somehow discover that a large number of these planets are teaming with life ? What then ? How would that help us ? Spiritually, economically ? Wouldn't that make us feel even less significant ? I'm just wondering, why are we hoping there is life out there and what would we do if we find it ?

Hopefully, we'd get a little attitude adjustment, question religion more and work together as a human race in the newfound awareness of our place in the universe. Perhaps also work towards actually surviving as a race for a while instead of selfishly exploiting every resource before others do.

It'll revolve around the Native American Experience, hopefully minus the conquest and genocide, more likely as a pattern than an anti-pattern.

In the long run, some high school sports teams controversially named after the aliens, some B-list movies, some academic interest, and that's about it?

Re: Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

#24

Post by devx »

melling wrote: post #11

Unfortunately every single one of them is unreachable within several lifetimes. We're going to be pretty much trapped in our solar system until we try to solve some of the more difficult problems.

We can visit up to a few tens of solar systems in a few hundred years, if we could develop a space-ship powered by a black hole, antimatter, or some advanced or innovative hybrid fusion engine (there were talks about one from the 60's around here).

Colonizing a few solar systems out of the 100 or so we can visit with such a ship that reaches a large fraction of the speed of light, should be "enough" for the next 1,000 years or so.

By year 3,000, we'll probably figure out something faster than that, to really begin exploring the whole galaxy.

Re: Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

#25

Post by dionidium »

VLM wrote: post #17
codeboost wrote: post #6

But let's say what we really hope for is true. What if we somehow discover that a large number of these planets are teaming with life ? What then ? How would that help us ? Spiritually, economically ? Wouldn't that make us feel even less significant ? I'm just wondering, why are we hoping there is life out there and what would we do if we find it ?

"Spiritually, economically?" Community norms would be an interesting dynamic. Some groups of humans like to conform more than others. What does equal rights for beings with different numbers of tentacles mean to us? Humans think its hilarious good time to fight and kill each other over multinational corporations "owning" teams of grown men playing childrens ball games, so if you think humans aren't going to kill each…

Humans think its hilarious good time to fight and kill each other over multinational corporations "owning" teams of grown men playing childrens ball games...

This is obviously tangential to your point, but it doesn't make you sound smarter or more evolved when you talk this way about sports. This sort of stuff is just tiring. As a software developer in one of the cities that sent a team to the World Series this year, I assure you I've heard every "sportsball" joke a dozen times and each time delivered as though the person saying it thinks they're the first person to realize some cultural blind-spot.

It doesn't advance your point, in other words.

Re: Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

#26

Post by Pxtl »

Diederich wrote: post #13

In my mind, Fermi's Paradox looms very large. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Yup.

I'm pretty sure we're screwed and interstellar colonization is impossible. At best, we'll get a probe that takes a thousand years to tell us what it found, and we'll only explore a handful of neighbouring systems this way before something eventually scrapes humanity down the memory hole.

Re: Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

#27

Post by thangalin »

dm2 wrote: post #16
melling wrote: post #11

Unfortunately every single one of them is unreachable within several lifetimes. We're going to be pretty much trapped in our solar system until we try to solve some of the more difficult problems.

We're (other people, not me) at least working on it. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/warp.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Year_Starship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light If they're successful and you warp to a planet that's 100 light years away then warp back, I don't know how much time would have passed on Earth though.

Depends on their velocity. Assuming a warp of 95% the speed of light, then ~640 years (~320 years one direction). See:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/31105/how-to-calc...

http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/HEP/QuarkNet/time.html

t / 2 = 100 / (1 - (0.95 * c)^2 / c^2)^(1/2)

Where t is the time for a one-way trip and c is the speed of light.

Re: Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

#29

Post by unepipe »

Diederich wrote: post #13

In my mind, Fermi's Paradox looms very large. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Honestly, I've come to disagree with the "paradox". The ability to send physical evidence of other intelligent life is based on a certain speed limit of the universe. So that doesn't serve as much of a lack of evidence. Habitable planets are too far apart for much interstellar travel to occur readily given that the speed limit is c.

Beyond that, the power of a radio signal is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, and we have things like magnetic eddies at the edge of our heliosphere, so it might just be incredibly improbable for any civilization to have generated the types of signal creation that we would pick up.

In the hypothetical/fantastical, other advanced civilizations might have long distance, superluminal communication technology, but that's not something our civilization could actively intercept.

tldr; I don't buy Fermi's paradox.

Re: Tens of billions of potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy

#30

Post by lxmorj »

ceejayoz wrote: post #4

I've seen this reported as 2 ( http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/04/planets-galax... ) and 8.8 ( http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/study-88-billion-... ) billion this week. Anyone know why the wildly different numbers being reported for the same research? I'm also curious about Earth-sized moons around gas giants in the habitable zone.

Don't Earth-sized moons of gas-giants have a few others problems? Less consistent weather patterns due to a more complicated relationship with the sun, stripping of the atmosphere due to gas giants gravity, and crazy huge tidal forces from the same.
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