Habemas Papem!

[Kidlicious]

Candidates mean everything if you have enough of them. If we found planets were a rare thing, or formed only in certain configurations, that would indicate the odds of life were pretty poor. Now we've found planets are the norm, not the exception, they form in a much wider variety of ways, and as we've refined our detection capabilities, we find that near earth mass planets are also common, and we find them in their star's habitable zone too.

No. It doesn't matter if you get 3 numbers 100 times or never in powerball. Your chances of winning are the same.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Are you actually this obtuse, or channeling BK? Where the **** do you get "3 numbers" in Powerball? My powerball analaogy was that if you buy one ticket, the odds are extremely small. If you buy a few trillion tickets, the odds are much greater. My reference to "3" is the number of near earth mass habitable zone planets we've discovered, so far with only part time effort in the last 2-3 years of having any ability to detect such small planets at near interstellar distances. Three solid candidates with very limited local area detection capbilities is proof of concept that habitable zone earth like planets do occur with regularity. Multiple that by trillions of candidate stars in the known universe.

Skool is not out. This lesson has been brough to you by the number 0, in honor of your IQ, and the letters F and U.

[Elok]

As opposed to the blatant lesson it teaches poor people everywhere? Oh gee rich people have it really hard, all those jewels are heavy!

That's a serious understatement of the issue. I don't know what Catholics wear, but an Orthodox priest puts on the following every Sunday:

-ordinary black clothes
-a black cassock over that (what Neo wore in the first Matrix sequel)
-a white robe with embroidered trim over that
-a brocade stole around the neck, with a brocade belt over the stole and brocade cuffs around the wrists
-a brocade mantle that hangs down to the feet in the back and covers the front down to about mid-chest. And a pectoral cross.

Forget the bling factor for a moment. Do you have any idea how exquisitely uncomfortable that can be when you're elderly and wear it for four or five hours, standing the whole time? Back when I was an altar boy, summer services would have me sweating under there, and I just wore a brocade robe and sash over normal dress clothes. An overweight priest/bishop will be a slick of sweat after a short period of time. No open windows. Lots of lit candles, people packed together around an altar, smoke coming up from the censer. And if you have to pee after the long service, guess what? It all has to come off first. Oh, and it's heavy, and restricts movement something fierce, too. Jewels would only make it worse; imagine sitting down and having rocks poke into you.

If the Pope's getup is at all comparable, I imagine every single holder of the office has positively hated the regalia.

[Kidlicious]

Are you actually this obtuse, or channeling BK? Where the **** do you get "3 numbers" in Powerball? My powerball analaogy was that if you buy one ticket, the odds are extremely small. If you buy a few trillion tickets, the odds are much greater. My reference to "3" is the number of near earth mass habitable zone planets we've discovered, so far with only part time effort in the last 2-3 years of having any ability to detect such small planets at near interstellar distances. Three solid candidates with very limited local area detection capbilities is proof of concept that habitable zone earth like planets do occur with regularity. Multiple that by trillions of candidate stars in the known universe.

Skool is not out. This lesson has been brough to you by the number 0, in honor of your IQ, and the letters F and U.

It seems we are done here due to your limited intelligence.

[Alexander's Horse]

Wow. I did not realize that Jesus refered to posts here in the OT. I guess with his Dad/Him being omnipotant and all, its possible...
Take that, civfanatics!

How do you know God himself isn't a registered poster, probably wiglaf...which means we're all screwed

[MrFun]

I'm amazed by Kid's ability to have examined all the planets in the universe himself, and concluded that Earth is the only planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

[Kidlicious]

I'm amazed by Kid's ability to have examined all the planets in the universe himself, and concluded that Earth is the only planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

Whether there are other oxygen-rich planets or not, doesn't mean a thing. Just stop.

[Alexander's Horse]

we need to get this thread back on track, this one is for you Il Papa

[MrFun]

Whether there are other oxygen-rich planets or not, doesn't mean a thing. Just stop.

For the argument you made, yes it does. You've been arguing with MTG that there probably is no life elsewhere in universe and one of your points is that complex intelligent life cannot evolve without an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

But if there are indeed other planets out there with an oxygen-rich atmosphere, your whole argument falls flat.

[Kidlicious]

For the argument you made, yes it does. You've been arguing with MTG that there probably is no life elsewhere in universe and one of your points is that complex intelligent life cannot evolve without an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

But if there are indeed other planets out there with an oxygen-rich atmosphere, your whole argument falls flat.

This post proves how rare intelligent life is.

[Alexander's Horse]

Another one for you Pope Frank

[Kidlicious]

Stop taunting us with your Pope worship.

[MrFun]

This post proves how rare intelligent life is.

I'm going by what you've been arguing.

[Alexander's Horse]

Stop taunting us with your Pope worship.

Tee hee, we got it all, theology, liturgy, sacred music, ancient prayers. Salve Regina goes back to Roman times and The Angelus is not much younger. Both loved, recited and meditated upon by countless millions every day, for a millenia already, think about that. You should get with the strength kid, lol.

[MichaeltheGreat]

One of the interesting things about so many planets being discovered is the "tilt" of their orbits I seem to remember. The configuration of the orbits of our solar system does seem to be somewhat rare from what I have read.

Not quite correct. Conservation principles dictate that unless disrupted by another massive body, or part of a distinct local gravity well (e.g. within a globular cluster), the orbital plane of planets in a solar system will have more or less the same orbital plane as the galaxy in which they're located. It can be a few degrees off due to the effects of interstellar winds and random prior events - supernovae, proper motion of antecedent stars, and the like, but it won't be significantly off without either a disruptive event or local gravity well. So our solar system is dirt common in that respect.

What you're recalling that's rare is the orbital planes of the planets we observe. There are two basic techniques we can use to detect exoplanets. The first was changes in periodicity and luminosity. This is what Geoff Marcy et al used to discover the first exoplanets. When you have a smallish star and a close orbit super-jovian planet or planets, the center of mass of the system as a whole is significantly offset from the center of mass of the luminous star. Basically, the bodies in the system don't revolve around the star (as in our solar system, where center of SS mass is very close to the center of sun mass), they all revolve around a common point - the SS center of mass. So the star shifts luminosity and/or position* ever so slightly in a predictable way, and from accurate measurement of those changes, you can infer a solution for the location and mass of the exoplanet without ever directly observing it. That technique only works with super-jovian planets in very close orbits, but it was what we had within the technological limits in 1994-95 when the first successful observations were made.

The second technique is the one you're thinking of, which measures changes in luminosity as a result of planetary transits as viewed along our line of sight. That's what so rare - depending on stellar size, planet size, and planet distance from the sun, even a few minutes of arc deviation from our line of sight can prevent transits from ever being observable with nearby stars. With near earth mass planets, that's the only means we have to observe them with foreseeable technology. We're getting the ability to apply those techniques at greater distances, but the further a given star is for us, the tighter the tolerance for deviation of orbital plane - the the point where seconds or fractions of a second of arc would prevent successful observation entirely.

So there could be hundreds in our nearby stellar neighborhood, but most of them will be impossible to observe due to those slight differences in orbital plan alignment. The only way we could cure that issue would be a series of space based observational platforms deployed perpendicular to the plane of earth's orbit. We don't have the ability to maintain a vehicle in position at the necessary distances, and you'd break the physical sciences research bank several times over with the costs of the instruments.

* change in position is most easily observed indirectly by gravitational lensing effects on more distant objects in the same line of sight as the target star.