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“Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

skyatnightmagazine.com

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Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#301

Post by teamonkey »

netsharc wrote: post #282
teamonkey wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of science papers are like “we found a hint of this thing, we need to do more research” and it’s reported as “ALIENS??!?” I understand why this is the case but I think it can lead to a loss in trust in science when the reporting jumps to conclusions that aren’t supported by the research itself. In this case the abstract is far more grounded. In particular, > The observations also provided a tentative hint of di…

Ugh, "alien life" is a reasonable title, IMO. I think the sensationalism is happening in your head, that you're imagining the Borg or little green men.

I don’t think it’s an unreasonable title, but it’s also not accurate. The paper states quite clearly that they’ve found reasonable evidence of a known biomarker. They don’t know enough to say whether it’s from a biological or some abiotic process (but speculate a little about what that might mean and what evidence they would need to take that further).

That’s quite a different tone from the article, and I think the comments here and elsewhere online reflect that.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#302

Post by saaaaaam »

sgt wrote: post #4
ZiiS wrote: post #3

Astronomers have yet again found possible signs of alien life.

You're not thinking like a journalist. This is a breakthrough! Alien life has been found! SETI is making contact as we speak.

To be fair, there’s a big difference between journalists and headline writers!

Headline writing is the art of taking something that a journalist has thought about in detail and carefully crafted and making it into something that someone with low to zero interest in the topic might want to read.

Having done both, I got annoyed when headlines misrepresented what I’d written, and journalists got annoyed when I took their perfectly crafted but pedestrian articles and gave them punchy headlines in a desperate attempt to get people to read them...

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#303

Post by nonethewiser »

davedx wrote: post #92

Some speculation On DMS: - DMS is a very specific configuration that’s rarely the endpoint of non-living chemical cycles. - The simplicity of DMS doesn’t make it less indicative of life—it actually makes it a very selective molecule, which only shows up in large quantities when life is involved (at least in Earth-like chemistry). - Until we find a compelling abiotic pathway, high DMS remains a strong biosignature, es…

Or, megafauna. Some Leviathan in the deep.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#304

Post by vivzkestrel »

glimshe wrote: post #227
vivzkestrel wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no matter how advanced the civilization is, proxima centauri will always be 42 trillion kms away. Our civilization in current stage is not even close to 0.1% the speed of light but lets say your advanced civilization goes at 99% the speed of light, still doesnt change the fact they need 4.25 years approx to reach earth. Still doesnt change the fact that unless they have a 1 billion km wide telscope, they cannot relia…

Where did you get the 1bn km number? I'm asking it seriously, I'd like to better understand how to calculate these things.

some calculation about resolution of the telescope to be able to see cities and people of another planet from a 100 light years away at the minimum. I forgot the exact calculation but it ll need a humongous sized telescope mirror

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#305

Post by Earw0rm »

cmsj wrote: post #163
nbadg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder if the answer to the Fermi paradox isn't just as extremely banal as "turns out that interstellar exploration just isn't economically viable". I think it's entirely plausible that advanced economies are circular, and that within a circular economy, it's just extremely difficult to justify the massive expenditure of resources that it would take to become interstellar. I mean, think about how many stars h…

The thinking generally would be that while it might take political pressure to initially begin leaving the home planet, once politics has unlocked that capability, commerce will take over. If we were to begin mining the solar system, it unlocks vast pools of resources that would really change things. That said, interstellar travel is still a pipe dream because of the time involved. Without finding a cheat code for ph…

Vast pools of /what/ though?

It seems, at present, that energy is more of a constraint on civilization than matter.

With unlimited cheap energy, there's enough material to do most anything we might reasonably want.

It's likely to cost $thousands/kg to bring materials back from beyond Earth orbit. There are only a handful of elements valuable enough, and that's if they existed in pure form.

Hypothetically, if an asteroid made of pure gold existed, and if a Cargo Dragon atop a Falcon Heavy had enough delta-V to make it there and back with a couple of tonnes, it might break even, but all of this is doubtful.

Most valuable minerals are worth hundreds to low thousands of dollars per kg, so you need a launcher that can bring back a ton of rock for $1M - and not from LEO, you probably need to escape Earth's gravity and get back again.

The physics and engineering are proven, but the economics? Unlikely.

Put another way, you can mine a heck of a lot of Earth rocks with a rocket's worth of kerosene.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#306

Post by sgt »

saaaaaam wrote: post #302
sgt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not thinking like a journalist. This is a breakthrough! Alien life has been found! SETI is making contact as we speak.

To be fair, there’s a big difference between journalists and headline writers! Headline writing is the art of taking something that a journalist has thought about in detail and carefully crafted and making it into something that someone with low to zero interest in the topic might want to read. Having done both, I got annoyed when headlines misrepresented what I’d written, and journalists got annoyed when I took thei…

Fair enough! Also, to the credit of headline writers, I have sometimes clicked on a clickbait article and learned something. If it hadn't been clickbait, I might have missed it.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#307

Post by floxy »

farmdve wrote: post #150
meindnoch wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll put a giant sunshade in the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point.

Sadly it is still only a stop-gap measure. The sun is for all intents and purposes, dying a slow death.

We'll have colonized the galaxy in 10 million years. In 200 million years, I'd expect that some future historical society could undertake a project to clean out the heavy elements in the Sun to keep it going.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#308

Post by andreygrehov »

martopix wrote: post #284
andreygrehov wrote: post #157

Let’s assume there is alien life on many planets beyond our solar system. Now what? What’s the practical benefit?

What's the practical benefit of Beethoven?

Beethoven’s music directly impacts human lives. It evokes emotion and inspires creativity. Its value lies in its immediate effect. In contrast, knowing that life exists millions of light-years away offers no such tangible impact. It’s a data point. An interesting one, sure, but it doesn’t feed the hungry, cure disease, change policy, or even affect your commute. So yea, Beethoven is a lived experience, whereas aliens in Andromeda are an abstract concept.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#309

Post by floxy »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #183
ta8645 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If life is very common in the universe, then that is probably bad news for us. It means that civilizations should exist that are millions of years more technologically advanced than us; and should be leaving telltale signatures across the sky that we'd likely have detected by now. And the absence of those signs would be relatively strong evidence that life, while common, isn't long-lived. Suggesting that our demise t…

no matter how advanced the civilization is, proxima centauri will always be 42 trillion kms away. Our civilization in current stage is not even close to 0.1% the speed of light but lets say your advanced civilization goes at 99% the speed of light, still doesnt change the fact they need 4.25 years approx to reach earth. Still doesnt change the fact that unless they have a 1 billion km wide telscope, they cannot relia…

Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens Mission (with 1 km resolution)

https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421

...and someone made an awesome video about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#310

Post by m4rtink »

IsTom wrote: post #54
dtech wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sun has about 5B years more to go before it turns into a red giant, not 0.5B years...

While it has more time to become a red giant, it'll become more luminous over time and life on Earth will be impossible much earlier. I've seen estimates of 0.5B to 1.5B years.

Nothing a bit of stellar lifting would not fix[1]. Or worst case, move to a bunch of habitats orbiting stellified Jupiter[2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting [2] https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4a48d58c84350

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