That is interesting...I think a few lines that Jodie Foster had in "Contact" said it beautifully -
"There are 400 billion stars out there, just in our galaxy alone. If just one out of a million of those had planets, and just one in a million of those had life, and just one out of a million of those had intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there."
And that's just in this galaxy alone - and we are on the outskirts of it. Not to mention there are billions upon billions of other galaxies, many much bigger than our ours.
Astronomers find other plantes outside our solar system by the wobble movement of other stars - that way they know there is a planet orbiting it. It's amazing we are able to calculate that, but these our basically our neighboring stars...We are not even scratching the surface. However, astronomers have found planets orbiting a number of stars considered "close by". Whether they are gas giants or rocky earthlike planets doesn't matter - the fact that most stars we check up on tend to have some sort of system is promising.
Jesse
· 3 years ago
I personally am highly doubtful that there is any kind of life out there. It would take meeting an alternative life form in person for me to believe, and even then I would wonder.
1/1,000,000 is actually far too generous to put for the odds of a planet being able to support carbon-based life forms
A. J.
· 3 years ago
Jesse - How do you explain our planet then? There is soooo much room for possibility, if it happened here means it could easily happen elsewhere. Even Mars is a failed earthlike planet...
Heres something interesing from a physics website I read:
The Elements of Life
It is reasonable to assume that life, wherever it might begin, would form itself out of the most abundant elements available to it. This does not mean that life based on such rare elements as holmium or hafnium could not exist, only that it would be very unlikely. In nature there are 85 stable elements (from hydrogen to uranium) and just four of them - hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen - comprise more than 95% by weight of all living matter on Earth. Except for the gases helium and neon (which because of their inert nature do not form chemical compounds), these four elements are also the four most abundant elements in the universe. Curiously, they are not the four most abundant elements on Earth (these are oxygen, iron, silicon and magnesium). In other words, the composition of living matter resembles the composition of the stars more than the planet we live on! Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that several people have proposed theories to suggest that life arrived on Earth rather than originated here (among them Lord Kelvin, Nobel prizewinner Francis Crick, and astrophysicist Fred Hoyle).
Fascinating.
Jesse
· 3 years ago
How do I explain our planet? God.
That's an interesting idea, but there's a good reason why only a few people believe it, and that is because it's pretty much absurd
Jesse
· 3 years ago
UPDATE: NASA has gone open source. good for them
A. J.
· 3 years ago
To believe that the earth was created in six days, and the whole planet was populated by incest thru Adam and Eve, AND at the same time dismiss the idea that other life exits in this huge universe IS pretty absurd...
But there is obviously some sort of higher, unexplained intelligence keeping the balance. I think the universe is too beautiful and perfect to think otherwise... God is much bigger than what any human being can write down in a book and call it "the word of God"... We shouldn't be afraid to open our minds and give "God" a little more credit.
Travis Seitler
· 3 years ago
Check out the press release under that headline on Drugdge:
Cassini's discovered a geyser spewing water on one of Saturn's moons. That's all... for now. ;)
A. J.
· 3 years ago
Wow - very cool.
Aaron
· 3 years ago
Well that was anticlimatic. I was expeting to have someone come out with a chained alien recovered in the foothills of Oregon or something.
Travis Seitler
· 3 years ago
I know, me too.
Apparently, the SETI guidelines require an event like that to have a larger-scale announcement. (Think "Kofi Annan Special Report" overriding all television and radio broadcasts worldwide.) ;)
Jesse
· 3 years ago
that was a bit of a letdown
Travis Seitler
· 3 years ago
You'd think they would underpromise and overdeliver. Are they asking for budget cuts?
A. J.
· 3 years ago
Well using Drudge as a source isn't saying much...
If any of the major news websites were carrying the story with a headline of "major announcement expected from NASA" I would be more let down...
But a geyser spewing liquid water on a moon orbiting the icy reaches of Saturn is pretty cool.
Travis Seitler
· 3 years ago
Okay, well here it is, straight from the horse's mouth
Aaron
· 3 years ago
I gotta train you people to stop linking entire URLs ;) It breaks IE
Jesse
· 3 years ago
Aaron: have you considered the link truncator plugin?
Travis Seitler
· 3 years ago
Maybe if the commenting system hadn't been so picky about my anchor tags, I'd use them. =p
In the future, I'll at least "tiny" the long URLs. ;)
All Comments
"There are 400 billion stars out there, just in our galaxy alone. If just one out of a million of those had planets, and just one in a million of those had life, and just one out of a million of those had intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there."
And that's just in this galaxy alone - and we are on the outskirts of it. Not to mention there are billions upon billions of other galaxies, many much bigger than our ours.
Astronomers find other plantes outside our solar system by the wobble movement of other stars - that way they know there is a planet orbiting it. It's amazing we are able to calculate that, but these our basically our neighboring stars...We are not even scratching the surface. However, astronomers have found planets orbiting a number of stars considered "close by". Whether they are gas giants or rocky earthlike planets doesn't matter - the fact that most stars we check up on tend to have some sort of system is promising.
1/1,000,000 is actually far too generous to put for the odds of a planet being able to support carbon-based life forms
Heres something interesing from a physics website I read:
The Elements of Life
It is reasonable to assume that life, wherever it might begin, would form itself out of the most abundant elements available to it. This does not mean that life based on such rare elements as holmium or hafnium could not exist, only that it would be very unlikely. In nature there are 85 stable elements (from hydrogen to uranium) and just four of them - hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen - comprise more than 95% by weight of all living matter on Earth. Except for the gases helium and neon (which because of their inert nature do not form chemical compounds), these four elements are also the four most abundant elements in the universe. Curiously, they are not the four most abundant elements on Earth (these are oxygen, iron, silicon and magnesium). In other words, the composition of living matter resembles the composition of the stars more than the planet we live on! Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that several people have proposed theories to suggest that life arrived on Earth rather than originated here (among them Lord Kelvin, Nobel prizewinner Francis Crick, and astrophysicist Fred Hoyle).
Fascinating.
That's an interesting idea, but there's a good reason why only a few people believe it, and that is because it's pretty much absurd
But there is obviously some sort of higher, unexplained intelligence keeping the balance. I think the universe is too beautiful and perfect to think otherwise... God is much bigger than what any human being can write down in a book and call it "the word of God"... We shouldn't be afraid to open our minds and give "God" a little more credit.
http://drudgereport.com/flash8na.htm
Cassini's discovered a geyser spewing water on one of Saturn's moons. That's all... for now. ;)
Apparently, the SETI guidelines require an event like that to have a larger-scale announcement. (Think "Kofi Annan Special Report" overriding all television and radio broadcasts worldwide.) ;)
If any of the major news websites were carrying the story with a headline of "major announcement expected from NASA" I would be more let down...
But a geyser spewing liquid water on a moon orbiting the icy reaches of Saturn is pretty cool.
In the future, I'll at least "tiny" the long URLs. ;)