Monday, November 4, 2013

"There are likely billions of Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy, astronomers say"

There are likely "tens of billions" of Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy, according to a study released Monday by astronomers from the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Hawaii.
"Planets like our Earth are relatively common throughout the Milky Way galaxy," said astronomer Andrew Howard of the University of Hawaii.
In fact, the nearest Earth-like planet may be "only" 12 light years away, which is roughly 72 trillion miles.
Overall, astronomers now estimate that about one in five sun-like stars have planets that are nearly the size of Earth and also have a surface temperature conducive to the development of life.
USA Today, Doyle Rice

56 comments:

bagoh20 said...

Learning how life developed on those planets is gonna be great stuff someday. It's one of the few things about the future that's enticing.

The unanswered question is why have we not seen a single signal from any of them. It's mathematically highly unlikely, but maybe we are the smartest lifeform in the room, or we really are the chosen ones. If so, God must look at us like the unemployed 30 year-old offspring still living at home smoking up every morning and playing video games in our room all day.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The unanswered question is why have we not seen a single signal from any of them.

They are "the silent majority"?

bagoh20 said...

Imagine if we started getting TV signals and their shows were so hilarious that human comedians couldn't find work. Then we start receiving the most awesome music that blows away every genre we have. Then the cosmic porn hits, and humans stop reproducing because watching it is better than sex. That's how they will conquer us - not with superior weapons, but superior entertainment.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Are you sure that report wasn't just a conspiracy? It did involve scientists, after all.

Chip Ahoy said...

Billions and billions of inhabitable planets.

My favorite part about the non-governmental climate scientists report, those would be the scientists not sucking on government tit and so not dependent on government grants for their continued existence, the ones who have not been tainted by politics when not poisoned outright by politics, the reliable scientists who practice actual science and not political science, those guys, my favorite part after dividing their criticisms of IPCC into three categories:

1) backing off from earlier claims
2) making misleading and outright untrue statements
3) deceptive language that fools partisan activist types of the sort that pop up on websites with snarky antagonistic remarks purely to provoke because Lord knows they never do quite manage a single shred of original thought, and then sadly abruptly ignored.

is the part where they go, "Finally, a second team of independent scientific assessors has emerged to counter the United Nations bullshit."

And I was all, "Yeah!"

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Imagine if we started getting TV signals and their shows were so hilarious that human comedians couldn't find work.

Steven Spielberg had a wonderful TV series in the 1980s called Amazing Stories involving an episode that featured this very plot - more or less.

bagoh20 said...

What makes science valuable is the very nature of it, which is the idea that you believe the science - not the scientist.

Every scientist that ever lived has been wrong. The science has a much better record. It's only failing is that it's merely incomplete, and never claims otherwise.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

My favorite part about the non-governmental climate scientists report, those would be the scientists not sucking on government tit and so not dependent on government grants for their continued existence…

Lol. Because the ones being paid by the fossil fuels industries are sooooo much more objective and less biased.

Government research grants are conclusion-blind, but if you'd gone to school or ever done any research you'd probably have known that.

bagoh20 said...

Can you watch that series anywhere, netflix, hulu, etc?

bagoh20 said...

"Government research grants are conclusion-blind"

If you like your conclusion you can keep your conclusion, period.

Synova said...

"Government research grants are conclusion-blind,"

Oh dear gawd, I needed a laugh.

The all corrupting dollar, made magically virtuous by passing through the government grant system. Just like the Blood of Christ.

I shall be singing "Whiter than Snow, yes whiter than snow, now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow," for at least three days. Maybe I can change it out with a rousing chorus of Redeemed by the blood of the lamb, for variety.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Since Synova's never seen the inside of a lab, it makes sense that she also reverts to theology (her own, of course) in reconciling that ignorance of hers with the fact that all science is conclusion-blind.

Only Republicans think that experiments and real-life empirical experiments are presaged by predetermined outcomes. Hence, FOX News on election night 2012.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

What makes science valuable is the very nature of it, which is the idea that you believe the science - not the scientist.

Every scientist that ever lived has been wrong. The science has a much better record. It's only failing is that it's merely incomplete, and never claims otherwise.


These statements are such nonsensical gobbledy gook as can only be described by the sentence invented by Noam Chomsky to prove that grammatical correctness was a very different from the prospect of any semantic meaning: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

All science ever does is address the question you endeavor to answer. Every unanswered question is therefore still the realm of science. Luckily, there are many - and much science to be done. But most people who've never done any science don't see that point.

Not having every answer question is not a good reason to avoid going with the best available evidence. If that were the case then Bag O' would probably be rubbing his balls with radium, just because no one had done the experiment before to see what would happen.

Luckily for him, (and unluckily for Marie Curie and other pioneers of radiation science), we already have a pretty good idea of what the outcome of that would be.

Conservatives don't seem to understand that most experiments are appropriate scale models, and that waiting for the answer to everything you could ask about a real life phenomenon to emerge so that you can disregard every previous model and experiment is ignorant to the point of making the entire enterprise a theological redundancy.

i.e. it simply doesn't work that way.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Since Synova's never seen the inside of a lab, it makes sense that she also reverts to theology (her own, of course) in reconciling that ignorance of hers with the fact that all science is conclusion-blind.

Only Republicans think that experiments and real-life empirical experience are presaged by predetermined outcomes. Hence, FOX News on election night 2012.

bagoh20 said...

Yep, Amazing Stories is available on Netflix. Think I'll go watch a couple. Thanks Schmendrick!

Synova said...

Really... we've got this fabulous link to a story about exoplanets and Ritmo arrives to throw a turd.

Sorry, I picked it up.

To anyone who wants to talk about EXOPLANETS...

12 light years isn't impossibly far away.

Humans should plan on doing something about this. After all, slip a boson and *zoom*.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

It's almost like you have nothing but words and believe enough of them will somehow add up to something.

So did Tolstoy.

Luckily for him, he and so many others weren't the fan of illiteracy that you are.

The simplified point, since you think over-simplification is actually the same thing as an accurate answer, is that science too becomes more complex. Previous studies, if they're well-performed, (and especially if they break new ground), aren't usually proven wrong, just shown to be less accurate. But still more accurate than the knowledge that preceded them or that is "obvious" to dunderheads like you who don't even know what evidence IS.

I hope those ideas didn't exceed your eighth-grade reading level and folk-wisdom way of understanding the world.

Do you worship fire, BTW?

Synova said...

Seriously... has Ritmo said a single thing about the story? About finding exoplanets? Nope.

Just arrived to throw a turd.

Hasn't yet addressed the subject.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Really... we've got this fabulous link to a story about exoplanets and Ritmo arrives to throw a turd.

Chip threw the curvy (turd) by proving incapable of discussing the actual topic and instead thinking conservative climate non-science provided a probing contrast.

Which, of course, is a topic that always piques my interest. The mind that substitutes theological reasoning and emotions for science is one that should interest all astute observers and reasoners - given the prevalence in our politics of people who think that Noah's Ark and The Great Flood narrative conclusively disprove AGW.

Synova said...

Your turd predates his turd by 18 minutes.



Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Seriously... has Ritmo said a single thing about the story? About finding exoplanets? Nope.

Just arrived to throw a turd.

Hasn't yet addressed the subject.


There are interesting stories like this all up and down the board in science. And as with the climate denialism, the reaction of conservatives to findings as novel as these interested no less an experienced aficionado of the search for extraterrestrial life as Carl Sagan. His $170 million-grossing movie Contact involved some exploration of how conservatives would react to the idea that life here (esp. if intelligent) wasn't "special" due to "God's touch".

But anyway, exoplanets. Yeah, a cool science. With about as much (if less, actually) certainty of what they've found as climatologists have come up with, given that these objects aren't anywhere near enough to us for direct observation of them to be within the grasp any foreseen technology.

If you want a cool documentary on what things might be like on such planets, assuming life did evolve/is evolving on them and actually manages the level of sentient communication of which humans are capable, I've actually got an awesome link. But that might require a mind first capable of appreciating the difference between speculation, probability and observed findings. As well as that of wishful thinking.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Your turd predates his turd by 18 minutes.

Yes, but it was less than 10% the size of his. And much less runny.

When it comes to turds, shouldn't things like that matter?

;-)

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I mean, he does like to make copious pictures of his prepared dishes, after all. ;-)

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I actually appreciate knowing that Amazing Stories is on Netflix. That gives me another reason to go with them. I think I'd seen seasons available on Amazon, but just wish that I could access individual episodes. I mean, they're almost all uniformly good, but still. Having the individual episodes to access just increases the appreciation for this awesome show, the same way individual episodes of The Twilight Zone are widely appreciated, retold and resonate with so many people.

Synova said...

http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-kepler-results-usher-in-a-new-era-of-astronomy/index.html#.UnhcJfmsh8H

This goes to a NASA discussion of the Kepler telescope results.

It would be interesting if we could evaluate the composition bands of planets around other stars to see how they compare to planetary evolution of our own solar system. So many of the first extra solar planets that were discovered were in the wrong place compared to what we'd expect from our own solar system. But now they're identifying small rocky planets in the habitable zones of other stars.

If we can map composition we could probably also map the likelihood of a planet having enough of a liquid core to develop a strong magnetic field or plate tectonics, the absence of either which would make life far less likely.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Found it. I think. Great video.

Unknown said...

Ever take a trip to the local I-max or planetarium to see anything Hubble related? or anything at all.

I found this but it is
not the one I watched. The galaxies are mind boggling. I cannot even fathom just one.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Leftists never admit their mistakes, they just blame anyone, everyone else.

And rightists can't quantify the magnitude of a mistake, or of anything else. Jaywalking and murder are both lawbreaking to them, so… moral equivalency! A short, snide quip and paragraphs of accusatorial conspiracy-mongering: Equal, so saith the innumerate!*

Where's your apology for the 2012 election predictions, BTW?

*N.B. Being able to measure things is more or less the foundation of empirical observation and science. Imagine Icepick standing over Isaac Newtons shoulder and arguing that the length of the base and the height of a right triangle are irrelevant, because, after all they are both lines!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

A firecracker and Hiroshima?

Equal, saith Icepick! They are both EXPLOSIONS!

Same thing.

Can I perpetuate this as a meme? It kind of gets at the core of one of the more persistent problems of the sort of thinking he and others are having trouble with.

Synova said...

Heh... I got the whole poo-pouri commercial. :)

I'll put a bookmark on the show. I've got to either study for a test or go to bed. It looks like a fun show, but I've my doubts about the long term viability of a planet without enough volitiles to maintain more than "a small sea" or life to speak of in less than a couple billion years. Because what we call that planet is... Mars.

bagoh20 said...

"Amazing Stories"

It's the "Love American Style" of science fiction. I'm loving the 80s' fashions and some now grown actors in their youth.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Amazing Stories was such an awesome addition to the typical 1980s tv programming landscape. Even then as a kid I could tell that Spielberg was trying to emulate the style of tv narrative that predominated in the 1950s and earlier, before we landed on the moon and became bored with so much of the more extravagantly adventurous sci-fi.

Amazing Stories was immediately followed through most of its run by Young Indiana Jones. I loved that show, too. I remember an episode where Young Indiana Jones meets another paleontologist's daughter, and they start getting into arguments and showing off their experience. They eventually compete over their acquisition of classical languages, and pretty soon Indy's potential paramour/love interest starts shouting or cursing at him in Arabic. She was as blonde as he, so it was much more fun and subversive than watching Peter O'Toole blowing up allied trains for the sake of romancing the anti-imperialist natives. Indy and his friend were archaeologists, after all, and couldn't give a crap about politics. They had their own, selfish agenda - aside from each other.

Fun times.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Shooter on the loose in Paramus, NJ, Garden State Plaza mall.

Witnesses have discarded the governor as a possible suspect.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I tweeted that and deleted it right away.

I such a woos.

Icepick said...

And rightists can't quantify the magnitude of a mistake, or of anything else.

You claim that you only started shitting on the thread because someone else did it first. That was wrong. And by now you have shit over the thread far more than Chip Ahoy did, who in fact made all of one post. So the idea that someone else has shit over the thread more than you have is also wrong. You have made many posts, most of which have the sole purpose of shitting on the thread and of saying. "Look at me! Look at me! I'm fabulous, and you're all Neanderthals!"

For the life of me, I can't think of you ever doing anything other than that on any thread I've ever seen you participate in. It's always about shitting on everyone that isn't a leftist like you, usually expressing a maximum of contempt for everything that you don't believe in, and usually with a great deal of dishonesty.

bagoh20 said...

I believe it's "wuss", and yes you are. Everyone who tweets is.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

thanks for the correction bags.



Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Oh Dear. Looks like someone needs a sense of humor. Or a hobby. How many words (no matter how few posts they're crammed into) do you need to make the point that a single one-liner is somehow as destructive as Chip's winding, politically obsessive diatribe? As many as Chip needed?

Bag's not a "leftist" and he's thanked me (before adding in the cute insult) for getting him started on Spielberg's Amazing Stories, a series as rich as it is overlooked. I uploaded a nice comment at 10:45 about just a few of the interesting, pleasant diversions that allows. Or go watch the 90-minute exobiology video I linked. It's so much better than obsessing about how horrible I must be. In fact, that's what I've been doing for the last hour (along with keeping up with emails). And I hate myself so much less for it. Hopefully, you will, too.

Cheers -

bagoh20 said...

Let's not be too hard on Ritmo. He voted for Obama, and that shit is getting pretty embarrassing right now. Imagine how you would feel if you did something like that. You got to expect he's a little angry over it. Every day he wakes up and it's worse than the day before. That will wear on a person. He needs our support right now. We all make mistakes.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

That's right, Bag. It's what converted me to Teat Party-ism: All the benefits of inflicting a bad economy with none of the blame. It works until a Republican president is voted into office, at which point everything's his successor's fault.

You guys really are like the Palestinians to Obama. You believe he should simply have the decency to not exist or to convert to innumerate conservatism (where laying off 2 million people is good for the economy because deficits).

Watch Icepick now call me a bad person for responding to your comment as if not taking it as Gospel were a sin.

Revenant said...

Government research grants are conclusion-blind

Similarly, lobbyist donations are legislation-blind.

It is just an eerie coincidence that people usually wind up agreeing with the point of view of whomever is giving them money. :)

Revenant said...

The unanswered question is why have we not seen a single signal from any of them

It seems likely to me that interstellar travel is effectively impossible. The only real incentive for it is curiosity, and the times involved put a real damper on that.

If life is effectively trapped in its system of origin, and if species inevitably move away from omnidirectional radio broadcasts to more energy-efficient means of communication (as we are doing), there may not be anything to hear.

The Dude said...

While he may not be able to stay on the topic of exoplanets, Rit Mo could prove that humans on earth have caused every single one of them to experience AGW. We are just that powerful and he is just that flaming stupid and gullible.

bagoh20 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bagoh20 said...

AGW = Alienogenic Global Warming

bagoh20 said...

"if species inevitably move away from omnidirectional radio broadcasts to more energy-efficient means of communication (as we are doing), there may not be anything to hear."

But the numbers suggest there are billions of these planets, so a large number could be expected to develop the same technology as us, and a significant number could even be expected to mirror the time frame. The numbers are so overpowering that anything is possible, and those signals would get here. A civilization nearly identical to us is even pretty likely. Doppelgangers with better hair. Something is strange about us not seeing any sign of other civilizations in the energy signatures that travel at the speed of light. If they are out there, they must certainly have heard of us, and MTV from the 80s is blowing their mind.

Revenant said...

The numbers are so overpowering that anything is possible, and those signals would get here

For certain values of "get here". The radio telescopes we're using for SETI can theoretically pick up radio signals of the kind we're currently using at a range of a couple hundred light-years. That puts two or three thousand *potentially* Earth-like planets within range. The actual number capable of supporting life is presumably lower than that. Say 2000 have life; if we're average, that puts 1000 of them ahead of us. That's 1000 chances of us listening for radio at the same time their civilization uses it.

Given the timelines involved -- billions of years -- a thousand shots at a window of a few hundred or thousand years still doesn't give good odds.

Trooper York said...

Hey I have been away from the computer for a couple of days.

It is true that India is sending up a spaceship to open a 7-11 on Mars?

Aridog said...

Trooper York said...

It is true that India is sending up a spaceship to open a 7-11 on Mars?

Absolutely not! No sir. India is sending up a crew from Tiruchirappali and Visakhapatnam to set up call centers for Healthcare.gov ... it is mandatory that they all have Canadian accents.

Oh, wait...this is a science thread only for those special critics who think they are the only people who've ever set foot in a laboratory and know teh science protocols that are sekrit.

Why today, in a "social science" meme, I just learned, from the weekend Wall Street Journal that wearing double denim anything, such as the jeans and jackets many horsemen, including me, have worn for decades or so is called a "Canadian Tuxedo."

I am ready, I tell you, and have been since age 7, for any formal soirée. Who'd a thunk it?

bagoh20 said...

" The radio telescopes we're using for SETI can theoretically pick up radio signals of the kind we're currently using at a range of a couple hundred light-years. That puts two or three thousand *potentially* Earth-like planets within range."

Are you sure about that? First, is that all the earth-like planets in that range? Second, why would a planet outside that range not be able to have delivered a signal here. It could have been produced anytime and had millions of years to get here. Who knows what strength they could have produced, and were talking about thousands of civilizations out there. All we need is a patterned signal from anything they might be using energy for, yet we see nothing. Maybe I'm missing something, but if there are literally millions of civilizations in the universe using energy for long periods of time that travels at the speed of light, then the signals should be ubiquitous. Certainly not non-existent.

ken in tx said...

Maybe they are all still hunter-gatherers. Somebody has to be first and maybe it's us.

Revenant said...

Are you sure about that? First, is that all the earth-like planets in that range?

There are around 10k to 15k stars within that range; I'm using the "one in five has an earthlike world" stat from the article.


Second, why would a planet outside that range not be able to have delivered a signal here.

I was referring to overhearing radio chatter from an alien civilization, not picking up deliberate messages.

It could have been produced anytime and had millions of years to get here.

Unless it arrives at the exact moment we happen to be listening, we'll miss it. To have any real chance of contacting another civilization you have to broadcast continuously to that system until you receive an answer, which in the vast majority of cases you never would. That's impractical to do even to the closest stars, let alone to every star within millions of light-years!

Revenant said...

All we need is a patterned signal from anything they might be using energy for, yet we see nothing

That's what I was getting at, above. Our early use of electronics was very "noisy" in the radiation it gave off. The thing is, you don't WANT electronics giving off that kind of noise, because if fucks with intentional use of the spectrum. So the move now is towards technology that is "quiet" from a SETI point-of-view.

A few hundred years from now I doubt we'll be making enough accidental radio noise for aliens in the next star over to pick up with radio telescopes of the kind we use for SETI.

bagoh20 said...

It doesn't have to be accidental to be continuous. The signals from earth even if they are 100% pure signal and no noise are now continuous coming from millions of sources with thousands transmitting at any given time. We are a continuous beacon, and I have to believe other civilizations would be too, unless they are communist.

Revenant said...

We're only a continuous beacon because of the inefficient technology we're currently using. Unless communication technology plateaus at the level we currently occupy I see no reason to believe that other civilizations will be "beacons" for more than a few centuries of their histories.