Yeah, he’s right. That’s a pretty foolish thing for a scientist to say. I don’t even see any details about the composition of the atmosphere which would give a little more evidence for the possibility of life.
Who cares now that we have Minecraft ?
. . . a distinction I’ve been try to make in the UFO Nuclear Stockpile thread, to no avail. Good luck.
H.
No wait, it’s all cool. I have it covered. I just assigned Magistrate Torg as the colony leader there, we will have it growing the population of life there in no time.
It still boggles my mind how quickly we are spotting, categorizing, and investigating planets orbiting other stars.
When I was a kid, such a thing would have seemed almost unthinkable.
What about Klingon microbes?
pre-gons.
Dude! Klingons almost certainly evolved from microbes. So all we have to do is wait a bit.
Astronazi?
I’ll say there’s a 100% chance that life from this newly discovered planet isn’t visiting nuclear facilities on ours in cigar shaped glowing objects. Quick, someone prove me wrong!
His 100% chance of life comment is pretty disappointing. We can’t afford to have scientists ignored any more than they already are (climatologists). The fact is if the sun is very old it may have shrunk down to it’s current size, so at it’s apex it would have been sterilizing the exoplanet to the nth degree. Life would have had to take seed long after, and an older planet with no tidal forces and no active geology would be less prone to life than what we have. I didn’t see any talk about the error deviation so it could be Venus with a crushing atmosphere with 0% chance of life.
Amen. It wasn’t that many years ago that most scientists were saying that life on the other planets was so unlikely it might as well be non-existant, now we’re discovering planets that have the right make up.
Not much longer we’ll find planets that are thought to have water and oxygen and so on… I can’t wait.
It’s worth pointing out that we aren’t observing these planets directly. Their existence is being inferred either from the ‘shadow’ they cast as they pass in front of their sun or the gravitational wobbles they cause in it. Unlike stars, planets aren’t emitting much of anything for receivers in our solar system to pick up and analyse. It probably won’t be possible to learn much about their make up and environment without getting close enough to actually take a look at them.
Maybe so, with our current tech. But without our current tech and expertise, we weren’t even inferring. As tech improves and expertise improves, we’ll only get better at it.
That’s why I say within my lifetime maybe we’ll be able to say that planet as every piece of makeup for life. And then pick up a radio signal! (j/k)
We’re going to need a bigger telescope.
This is what makes me sad. Can someone please invent a way to exploit a wormhole or put a hyperspace button on an existing spacecraft??
Maybe paint some racing stripes on? They work on cars.
It’s a pity how any mention about extraterrestrial life gets conflated with stupid UFO sightings, though. Not that I agree with that 100% chance guy but there’s a whole world of difference between claiming there are microbes on a planet 20 light years away and claiming that aliens anally probed some trucker in New Mexico.
It’s basic narcissism, most people believe that the universe exists in order to bring humans into being, ergo evolution marches towards intelligent life, ergo life on other planets means intelligent life on other planets. None of which is correct.
H.
According to wikipedia the archaic homo sapiens (various species of homo-like species like Homo Heidelbergensis that isnt quite modern homo sapiens if I understand the term correctly) appeared 400.000 to 250.000 years ago. Lets say 350.000 years and guesstimate 30 years per generation and that gets us around 11.600 generations.
Of course generations have become longer in recent time but we would perhaps not even be the same species when we get there!
No, you are wrong. Your numbers assume the constant orbital velocity that the shuttle reaches. Aka, ten minutes or so of acceleration. For this to be realistic, you need to assume:
-We have a constant ability to put out as much thrust as the main booster rocket from the current shuttle, but for all the time we need. (About 3Gs) Because obviously, we’re not going 20 light years with the current technology.
-Accelerating nonstop for the first half of the journey, then decelerating the second half.
Assuming some kind of nuclear propulsion, this is how we’d do it. If we can hit 28000km/h in ten minutes, then we’re going to get there a hell of a lot sooner than 707058 years.
edit: if my math isn’t horrible, a trip would take just over 5 years.
distance = (accel * time^2) / 2
time = sqrt((2 * distance) / accel)
therefore
half trip:
(distance is halfed, because we accel for hafl and decel for other half, math is the same.
time = sqrt( 175,200,000,000,000,000 / (3 * 9.81) )
time = 7715639s = 2.4466 years.
edit: errrrrr that does assume we can accelerate past the speed of light though, DOESN’T IT.
Back later.
For much of that time homo-whatevers had a life expectance of about 30 years. It’s only recently that humans haven’t had children before their 20. The average generation time for the existence of homosapiens is probably closer to 15-20 years.