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NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

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Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#41

Post by AdamFernandez »

All these comments are fun conjecture, but no one commenting (or on this planet) will be able to reasonably assume anything regarding life or sentience on other planets based on our utter lack of data. There may be life that exists outside of 'habitable' zones. There may be several different types of 'intelligence' that may or may not match our own. No one here can definitively claim that anything is or should be with so many possibilities.

Our only frame of reference is this planet, and while diverse, doesn't represent steadfast laws that all life in the universe follow (convergence, carbon-based, etc.). These questions will only be answered when we send probes, people, or find some other way of observing these planets directly.

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#43

Post by rokhayakebe »

blhack wrote: post #6
cletus wrote: post #2

Kepler has certainly made a lot of discoveries. It should be fairly clear to us now that planetary systems are pretty common and, by extension, sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. But I have to wonder how many assumptions go into this so-called "habitable zone". Doesn't it greatly depend on the atmospheric composition? With a different atmosphere, couldn't Venus be habitable (actually it might be in our…

>sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. Why? Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us, like wings on a bird. There millions of species animals on our planet, and only a handful of them are sentient. We have a bit of a cognitive bias towards thinking that sentient life is something that evolution would work towards, but that isn't really how evolution works.

How can we know if there is life on any planet (close or far) if we can only look for it using our senses? Forget Mars, is it just possible that there is life on earth that we simply cannot know of because we do not have the required senses to perceive it.

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#44

Post by cbr »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #42

How can a planet 600 light years away be habitable for humans? Please forgive my total field ignorance and educate me.

Their usage of 'habitable' has nothing to do with whether you could get there. It's about distance from the star and the brightness of the star.

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#45

Post by cbr »

cryptoz wrote: post #25
nickpinkston wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait - we can't infer this using orbit size and speed plus the volume of body? Is it more about distribution of density throughout the body?

I'm not sure what we know about this particular planet so far, but I think the part that's missing is volume. Currently, nobody knows what the composition of the planet is. We don't know if it's liquid or solid, for example. I think.

The radius is known (2.4x earth), so why wouldn't we have the volume?

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#46

Post by polyfractal »

davedx wrote: post #16
cletus wrote: post #2

Kepler has certainly made a lot of discoveries. It should be fairly clear to us now that planetary systems are pretty common and, by extension, sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. But I have to wonder how many assumptions go into this so-called "habitable zone". Doesn't it greatly depend on the atmospheric composition? With a different atmosphere, couldn't Venus be habitable (actually it might be in our…

The 'habitable zone' is overly simplistic in general. Look at Europa - it's nowhere near the habitable zone, but is one of the most Earth-like plants in our Solar System. That's just inside the one Solar System we have a fairly complete planetary record of! It also assumes that liquid water and an oxygen atmosphere are prerequisites for life. Extremophiles [1] living on our own planet prove that this is not so. [1] h…

While I agree "habitable zone" is a bit of a simplification, it really just serves as a starting point for exploration of the galaxy. If we can find thousands of "theoretically habitable" planets, we can pretty much guarantee there are hundreds of thousands of "uniquely habitable planets" like Europa, which we most likely can't detect using our telescopes.

Low hanging fruit first.

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#47

Post by bluekeybox »

blhack wrote: post #6
cletus wrote: post #2

Kepler has certainly made a lot of discoveries. It should be fairly clear to us now that planetary systems are pretty common and, by extension, sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. But I have to wonder how many assumptions go into this so-called "habitable zone". Doesn't it greatly depend on the atmospheric composition? With a different atmosphere, couldn't Venus be habitable (actually it might be in our…

>sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. Why? Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us, like wings on a bird. There millions of species animals on our planet, and only a handful of them are sentient. We have a bit of a cognitive bias towards thinking that sentient life is something that evolution would work towards, but that isn't really how evolution works.

> Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us ... but that isn't really how evolution works.

Actually that is how evolution works. Evolution results in species acquiring traits that are beneficial to them. Of course you could make a counter-case that perhaps sentience is only beneficial to us in particular, and not so much to other species --

To which I would completely disagree. There is this fascinating, relatively new theory of how humans became sentient. Previously (1960s) it was thought that humans became sentient either somehow out of the blue or due to having to construct tools etc., which then allowed them to organize into groups. The new theory, on the other hand, claims that high intelligence (and by extension sentience) is an inevitable consequence of living within a particular type of group -- largely the type of group that many primates live in (the original studies were done on baboons), though this is not limited to primates.

The idea is that if you are a member of a group where grooming behavior, alliance-making, and status-related interactions are common, you benefit tremendously (in a reproductive sense) from possessing a "theory of mind" capable of making predictions about the actions of others that are at least a few percent more accurate than those of your peers. The way it works is a bit like the stock market -- all you need is to beat the market average. So this "theory of mind" -- being preoccupied with what others think -- is actually claimed to be a runaway effect of the intelligence "arms race" which always occurs among animals living within that type of group. Now, sentience is merely a theory of mind applied to self.

I fully expect that within the next 10 million years at least two other mammal species will become sentient, if we humans don't make them extinct that is... Anyone willing to make a long bet?

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#48

Post by jerfelix »

maratd wrote: post #9
blhack wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. Why? Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us, like wings on a bird. There millions of species animals on our planet, and only a handful of them are sentient. We have a bit of a cognitive bias towards thinking that sentient life is something that evolution would work towards, but that isn't really how evolution works.

> that isn't really how evolution works. Taking this a step further, finding intelligent life out there is simply impossible. The reason our intelligence is unique to only humans on our planet is largely because we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess. We defined it based on our own nature. Finding life out there that would be socially compatible with us is ridiculously unlikely. That life would have h…

> we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess

There's also an article on HN right now about Dolphins proving to be intelligent beings [1]. It says:

    Our research has provided an answer to an age-old question highlighted by Dr Jill
    Tarter of the SETI Institute, ‘Are we alone?’ 
    We can now unequivocally answer, ‘no.’ SETI’s search for non-human intelligence in
    outer spacehas been found right here on earth in the graceful form of dolphins.
I laughed to think that HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dolphin is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language.

Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own.

--

[1] http://wakeup-world.com//2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin...

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#49

Post by daliusd »

bluekeybox wrote: post #47
blhack wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. Why? Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us, like wings on a bird. There millions of species animals on our planet, and only a handful of them are sentient. We have a bit of a cognitive bias towards thinking that sentient life is something that evolution would work towards, but that isn't really how evolution works.

> Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us ... but that isn't really how evolution works. Actually that is how evolution works. Evolution results in species acquiring traits that are beneficial to them. Of course you could make a counter-case that perhaps sentience is only beneficial to us in particular, and not so much to other species -- To which I would completely disagree. Ther…

I heard theory that there will be no other sentient creatures on Earth because humans will destroy them. I read this theory from article about Birutė Galdikas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birut%C4%97_Galdikas) who is studying orangutans. Let's not forget neanderthals as well in this context.

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#50

Post by [deleted] »

daliusd wrote: post #49
bluekeybox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us ... but that isn't really how evolution works. Actually that is how evolution works. Evolution results in species acquiring traits that are beneficial to them. Of course you could make a counter-case that perhaps sentience is only beneficial to us in particular, and not so much to other species -- To which I would completely disagree. Ther…

I heard theory that there will be no other sentient creatures on Earth because humans will destroy them. I read this theory from article about Birutė Galdikas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birut%C4%97_Galdikas ) who is studying orangutans. Let's not forget neanderthals as well in this context.

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