Only 90 light years away. With the Terrestrial Planet finder misson starting in 2009, we may find a whole new world here!
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Solar System Similar to ours found
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Solar System Similar to ours found
"I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration." - Hillary Clinton, 2003Tags: None
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AFAIK, they only found a gas giant similar to our Jupiter. They are a very long way from discovering a solar system like ours with terrestrial planets. A gas planet does not automatically mean that the system also has terrestrial planets.'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.'"
G'Kar - from Babylon 5 episode "Z'ha'dum"
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Skywalker, it is theoretically possible to communicate with superlumial tachyons, but thats way way off, iirc we dont know how to manipulate them yet.
If there is an earth-like planet, its possible there is life, but whether it is beyond the single-celled is a different matter.
In general, it could well be possible to find intelligence alien life, but unlike Star Trek, dont expect them to have humanoid form.
Lets not get too over optimistic, I once calculated that there should be around 200 civilisations in the universe at our level (350-500 until they hit their equivalent of 1962)."I work in IT so I'd be buggered without a computer" - Words of wisdom from Provost Harrison
"You can be wrong AND jewish" - Wiglaf :love:
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The part that inspired hope of a terrestrial like planet was the configuration of the gas giant's orbit. It appears to be the first one found that has the circular orbit that would be needed for it to be possible that there would be interior planets. No guarantee's obviously, but it is the first hopeful opportunity. The Terrestrial planet finder mission is designed to detect these smaller, Earth ike, planets from Earth Orbit. They don't actually plan on sending a probe there. Also, with ion drive technology that has been proposed a generational colony ship could make the trip in about 300-400 years. If the international co-operation on space accelerates, we could probably build such a ship within the next hundred years IMHO."I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration." - Hillary Clinton, 2003
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Same way everyone does.
R*A1*A2 = number of alien civs
Where
R = Rough number of stars in galaxy
A1 = Arbitrary proportion chosen to approximate number of stars capable of harbouring life.
A2 = Arbitrary proportion chosen to approximate number of life forms that develop advanced civsConcrete, Abstract, or Squoingy?
"I don't believe in giving scripting languages because the only additional power they give users is the power to create bugs." - Mike Breitkreutz, Firaxis
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exactly, so it's a rough number mixed with two numbers pulled from your backside, result, bollocks"The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.
"The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton
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Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Same way everyone does.
R*A1*A2 = number of alien civs
Where
R = Rough number of stars in galaxy
A1 = Arbitrary proportion chosen to approximate number of stars capable of harbouring life.
A2 = Arbitrary proportion chosen to approximate number of life forms that develop advanced civs
N = R x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L
R is the rate at which stars have been born in the Milky Way per year, fp is the fraction of these stars that have solar systems of planets, ne is the average number of "Earthlike" planets (potentially suitable for life) in the typical solar system, fl is the fraction of those planets on which life actually forms, fi is the fraction of life-bearing planets where biological evolution produces an intelligent species, fc is the fraction of intelligent species that become capable of interstellar radio communication, and L is the average lifetime of a communicating civilization in years.
A much more impressive load of bollocks, I'm sure you'll agree
BTW where the hell did you pluck 1962 from Elijah?
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Originally posted by Maniac
That's what I thought too!
With this news, of a solar system similar to ours being so close (astronomically speaking), I think the odds of finding an Earthlike world go up. Weather or not there is life is a totally different question."I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration." - Hillary Clinton, 2003
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