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 very very important. And just the beginning. |
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habitable planets |
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A long shot I mostly agree with you, Chris. I think we are unique, in the sense that life as we know it evolved, but I also think that life, even as we don't know it, is not unique to Earth herself. I know Charles Berlitz is viewed as a heretic in the scientific circles, but he raised some interesting ideas that was also considered by other scientists, one of which was that life on earth was seeded from somewhere else. I don't know how far these ideas went, but it is worth thinking about. BC, this being your particular field of interest, why don't you share some ideas with us. What is your view on possible life outside Earth? The morphism of organisms here on this planet is so diverse, what can we expect from outside the solar system? Maybe make the distinction between life and intelligence, because I've read a long time ago that scientists consider certain basic morphisms as a prerequisite for intelligence. That is why insects do not have the intellect of reptiles, which doesn't have the intellect of antelopes, which doesn't have the intellect of primates.... It is an interesting subject, but I haven't read about it in some time. |
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yes its a long shot. |
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That's right; and I want to correct a mistake Teeming with life, when looking at our planet, seems the yardstick. When looking at the galaxy, a total different yardstick must be invented to get the description right. Well, until the opposite is proven, I will believe that life does exist outside our solar system, even if only for the sentiments expressed by Chris. The sheer numbers involved makes the possibility and probability quite reasonable, in my mind. Further, given the vastness of our galaxy, the opposite of my view will not be proven soon, and the probability of life may yet be proven more quickly, especially as our technology advances and more and more resources an manpower is dedicated to this goal. In my previous post I used the word morphism, when it should have been morphology. Sorry, English is not my first language, and often I get it wrong. |
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So our galaxy is a grain of sand on the beach, and we have a hard time trying to imagine what life might be like in a leaf in the forest? |
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RIGHT! After reading several books about this, in which a lot of prominent scientists believe the opposite that I do, I still maintain that until it is proven that no other life exists outside the solar system, it is still a possibility. The probability is a mathematical equation that I cannot compete with, because my mathematical abilities fall far too short, but I think I have a little idea of the size of the universe..... it is not big, it is quite big. Maybe a little more than quite big. I had an epiphany once, about the size of the universe, and I think I understood it as it should be. That knowledge has since disappeared, but intellectually I know that the universe, or even our little galaxy, is huge beyond the ken of mere mortals. It takes a special brain to grasp the knowledge of the size correctly, and there are not many of those. The numbers involved makes me think that life is possible and even probable. The numbers are also huge, beyond the average person's intellect, certainly beyond mine, but that makes my argument! Some mathematicians, physicists and other lucky people can understand those huge numbers. They should be able to understand my argument, even though I do not fully comprehend the numbers myself: 10 to the power of all those zero's become too big for me. Oh, I'm speaking about the possibility of planets similar to Earth in our galaxy alone..... many, many planets, and we've only found three or four serious, realistic candidates since we started looking for them in modern times. All of them are quite close to us, in a manner of speaking, when compared to the size of our galaxy. Then maybe there is something else, and that's why I asked BC about the morphology of alien life: it seems to me that nobody considers that life as we don't know it has evolved. Why does an organism have to have a head, two arms, two legs and body? A brain or nervous system? Why does life have to be dependent on water, oxygen, carbon and other elements that we with huge bravado claim to be the building blocks of life? There are many other elements that are just as well suited to sustain life, maybe even better than what we know. When one considers this possibility, then life may be even more abundant than we realize or predict. So, I read about this topic, and ask my questions, think and philosophize about it, but hey, I'm a policeman, not an astrophysicist, biologist or chemist, and not even fair in mathematics. I could be very wrong, just because I am not a scientist that can understand these things better. I have to rely on others that study this, and then make up my own mind based on the facts that I do understand. |
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your right about that!!! Curiosity |
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Thumper, not all of us BC, thanks for the link- those people thought of everything! |
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Riaan I think that's the sensible way to do things. Most scientists would agree that we can't assume that life exists elsewhere until we find it, even if it's thought to be highly probable. <<Why does an organism have to have a head, two arms, two legs and body? A brain or nervous system? Why does life have to be dependent on water, oxygen, carbon and other elements that we with huge bravado claim to be the building blocks of life?>> The first question is a good one, I guess given the amount of organisms that populate our own planet that don't fall into the model of head+arms+legs the answer is they don't! It's what amuses me most about stories of little green men, they always have two eyes, a head, a mouth and stand upright. I suppose it's difficult to imagine other intelligent beings that are not in our own image, though the chances of them being so are probably quite small. With regard to the latter question, I would say it is a question of relative abundance of elements. Oxygen and Carbon are made in great quantities by stars, and water is almost certainly the most abundant chemical in the universe apart from hydrogen and helium. Carbon, oxygen and water also have quite special chemical properties (Carbon will form long chains for example, and water has special properties that arise from the fact that it has a small dipole). I'm not saying other biochemistry is impossible, but probably much less likely. <<Some mathematicians, physicists and other lucky people can understand those huge numbers. They should be able to understand my argument, even though I do not fully comprehend the numbers myself: 10 to the power of all those zero's become too big for me.>> Riaan, it is my understanding that no one, physicist, mathematician or otherwise, really understands these huge numbers. I can use them, I can put them in an equation and multiply them together but I don't have any real physical concept of a billion, or a trillion, and I don't think anyone really does. How could we? These are numbers we never physically come across in our daily lives, you may as well try to ask someone to imagine a new colour. So don't get disheartened, what limits you here is not your intellect, it is your experience, and it's one we all share. |
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Thanks itchy |
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Billions and billions of planets ********************************************************************* How many planets are in our galaxy? Billions and billions of them at least. That’s the conclusion of a new study by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology, which provides yet more evidence that planetary systems are the cosmic norm. The team made their estimate while analyzing planets orbiting a star called Kepler-32 — planets that are representative, they say, of the vast majority of planets in our galaxy and thus serve as a perfect case study for understanding how most of these worlds form. “There are at least 100 billion planets in the galaxy, just our galaxy,” says John Johnson, assistant professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech and coauthor of the study, which was recently accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. “That’s mind-boggling.” “It’s a staggering number, if you think about it,” adds Jonathan Swift, a postdoctoral student at Caltech and lead author of the paper. “Basically, there’s one of these planets per star.” M-dwarf study Like the Caltech group, other teams of astronomers have estimated that there is roughly one planet per star, but this is the first time researchers have made such an estimate by studying M-dwarf systems, the most numerous population of planets known. The planetary system in question, which was detected by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, contains five planets. Two of the planets orbiting Kepler-32 had previously been discovered by other astronomers. The Caltech team confirmed the remaining three, then analyzed the five-planet system and compared it to other systems found by Kepler. M-dwarf systems like Kepler-32′s are quite different from our own solar system. For one, M dwarfs are cooler and much smaller than the sun. Kepler-32, for example, has half the mass of the sun and half its radius. The radii of its five planets range from 0.8 to 2.7 times that of Earth, and those planets orbit extremely close to their star. The whole Kepler-32 system fits within just over a tenth of an astronomical unit (the average distance between Earth and the sun) — a distance that is about a third of the radius of Mercury’s orbit around the sun. The fact that M-dwarf systems vastly outnumber other kinds of systems carries a profound implication, according to Johnson, which is that our solar system is extremely rare. “It’s just a weirdo,” he says. REFERENCES: Jonathan J. Swift et al., Characterizing the Cool KOIs IV: Kepler-32 as a prototype for the formation of compact planetary systems throughout the Galaxy, Astrophysical Journal, 2012, in press Jonathan J. Swift et al., Characterizing the Cool KOIs IV: Kepler-32 as a prototype for the formation of compact planetary systems throughout the Galaxy, arxiv.org/abs/1301.0023 www.kurzweilai.net |
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good article |
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ignorance is bliss As Tesla said, I maybe wrong today but I will be proved right tomorrow. |
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