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Scientists find most Earth-like planet yet

noaccess said:
EDIT: Or this even bigger one. Link to full image.
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Wow. Now that one's enormous. Almost out as far as Saturn :eek:

obeygiant said:
The odds are ok to find life on another planet, but to find intelligent life is another matter. By the time the human race actually gets to the point of exploring extra-solar worlds things will be much different. To live 581 c might require a change in the way we breathe air or a change in our physiology. They say 581 c has 1.6 times the gravity of the earth. So after a few generations of humans living there people may start to get shorter and have much denser muscles in order to adapt to the environment.
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I do remember reading an article a few years ago which described how humans living on Mars would likely evolve after a few generations. It had them as over 10 feet tall with all sorts of weird mutations going on.

I'll see whether I can find it, but I think it predates the Web so it may be a fool's errand.
 
obeygiant said:
The odds are ok to find life on another planet, but to find intelligent life is another matter. By the time the human race actually gets to the point of exploring extra-solar worlds things will be much different. To live 581 c might require a change in the way we breathe air or a change in our physiology. They say 581 c has 1.6 times the gravity of the earth. So after a few generations of humans living there people may start to get shorter and have much denser muscles in order to adapt to the environment.
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what life on THIS planet is NOT intelligent. do we feel that if they are non-humanoid they are not intelligent. what have we done to the whales and other aquatic life. how many species of land and aquatic life are now extinct or nearly so. we view them as either food or pests or useful for manufacturing processes.
 
Airforce said:
Bacteria, my dog isn't too intelligent, the bug I killed earlier outside wasn't too bright.....:D
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EXACTLY! in YOUR mindset he has no intelligence. did you stop to think what his role is and his mission? (he probably eradicates refuse or pollinates flowers).

but YOU, in your mighty intelligence just squashed him, for nothing more than the pleasure of killing -- seeing his guts spayed all over.
 
orangemacapple said:
EXACTLY! in YOUR mindset he has no intelligence. did you stop to think what his role is and his mission? (he probably eradicates refuse or pollinates flowers).

but YOU, in your mighty intelligence just squashed him, for nothing more than the pleasure of killing -- seeing his guts spayed all over.
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Crazy hippy :p
 
orangemacapple said:
what life on THIS planet is NOT intelligent. do we feel that if they are non-humanoid they are not intelligent. what have we done to the whales and other aquatic life. how many species of land and aquatic life are now extinct or nearly so. we view them as either food or pests or useful for manufacturing processes.
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Well, simply put, there is bacteria and algae. Then animals :). Then animals that can build rocketships and lazer blasters. These type of animals is what i was referring to. This wasn't meant to be a political discussion. Finding some kind of bactieria or chlorophyll on another planet or moon is distinct possibility.
 
Without wanting to turn this into a political discussion, but imagine if all the money spent on wars and armies would be used on research. We'd know all about our planet and would be travelling to other stars in no time.
 
Diatribe said:
Without wanting to turn this into a political discussion, but imagine if all the money spent on wars and armies would be used on research. We'd know all about our planet and would be travelling to other stars in no time.
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But I'd be out of a job...:eek: :p
 
Diatribe said:
Without wanting to turn this into a political discussion, but imagine if all the money spent on wars and armies would be used on research. We'd know all about our planet and would be travelling to other stars in no time.
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I agree. However, in today's world there would have to be financial incentive for everybody to get excited about space travel. When they find an asteroid filled with copper ore or some other ore, the world's first trillionairs will be made by mining and delivering the goods back to earth.
 
Diatribe said:
Without wanting to turn this into a political discussion, but imagine if all the money spent on wars and armies would be used on research. We'd know all about our planet and would be travelling to other stars in no time.
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I wondered about that. The $450bn spent so far on Iraq would probably have gotten us quite a bit closer to nuclear fusion.

Although they'd probably immediately use it to power weapons :rolleyes:
 
obeygiant said:
Well, simply put, there is bacteria and algae. Then animals :). Then animals that can build rocketships and lazer blasters. These type of animals is what i was referring to. This wasn't meant to be a political discussion. Finding some kind of bactieria or chlorophyll on another planet or moon is distinct possibility.
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but how long does it really take for simple life to evolve into "intelligent" life?

there is of course a lag in what we are now perceiving from that distant star and the considerable length of time it has been in such a habitable mode before we observed it. add that to the time it will take us to increase our technology to get there and the time to actually traverse that distance, i think that would be significant time for life to evolve to intelligent life.

given that the building blocks for life are abundant everywhere and "sex" is an inherent trait among atoms, evolution/mutation is quickly assured.
 
dynamicv said:
I wondered about that. The $450bn spent so far on Iraq would probably have gotten us quite a bit closer to nuclear fusion.

Although they'd probably immediately use it to power weapons :rolleyes:
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If they used the war budget for space, we'd probably have a moon base by now. Which is the next step to putting someone on Mars.
 
orangemacapple said:
but how long does it really take for simple life to evolve into "intelligent" life?

there is of course a lag in what we are now perceiving from that distant star and the considerable length of time it has been in such a habitable mode before we observed it. add that to the time it will take us to increase our technology to get there and the time to actually traverse that distance, i think that would be significant time for life to evolve to intelligent life.

given that the building blocks for life are abundant everywhere and "sex" is an inherent trait among atoms, evolution/mutation is quickly assured.
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Im just guessing here but for single celled organisms to evolve into thinking animals would be in the order of millions of years. But if 581 c has something like cave people, if we left now by the 90,000 years to get there they could have an entire civilization, or they could meet us half way.
 
time-scale for evolution

even substituting "multicellular" for "intelligent" and assuming similar evolutionary pressures and organic compositions for each, it would take 3 BILLION yrs to go from unicelluar (bacterial precursors) -- > compartmentatized unicelluar organisms (eukaryotes) --> mullticelluar eukaryotes
 
obeygiant said:
But if 581 c has something like cave people, if we left now by the 90,000 years to get there they could have an entire civilization, or they could meet us half way.
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Better make darn sure to get the directions right when we meet half-way. I can hear it now: "Hello? Where the heck are you guys? I said turn LEFT at Alpha Centauri! LEFT! Now you're going to have to turn around and waste another 20,000 years backtracking...stupid cave people anyway...."

--Eric
 
Eric5h5 said:
Better make darn sure to get the directions right when we meet half-way. I can hear it now: "Hello? Where the heck are you guys? I said turn LEFT at Alpha Centauri! LEFT! Now you're going to have to turn around and waste another 20,000 years backtracking...stupid cave people anyway...."

--Eric
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lol, i hope the cave people on 581c have Verizon. I can't imagine they'd be 'in-network' tho.
 
Besides, by the time the space voyage is over, the 'cave people' would probably have developed into an advanced technological society.
 
i don't think we have to worry too much about going there. i'm positive it's already be colonized by the daleks or klingons. at least that's what i heard on the interstellar radio news broadcast.

we're not the only ones in search of a new place to live.
 
notjustjay said:
We really need to work on lightspeed travel.
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Isn't it impossible to travel at the speed of light due to the effects it has on time? I mean if you travel at the speed of light you would see the same thing for your entire journey as you would be keeping pace with the light and therefore no new light would hit your retinas. Or am I completely wrong on that?
 
I wonder where they got the gravity as being 1.6x earths. At 1.5 x the radius and five times the mass, I get 2.2g (5/1.5^2)

Cromulent said:
Isn't it impossible to travel at the speed of light due to the effects it has on time? I mean if you travel at the speed of light you would see the same thing for your entire journey as you would be keeping pace with the light and therefore no new light would hit your retinas. Or am I completely wrong on that?
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Yes, you're wrong. The speed of light is a constant for all observers, so even if you're travelling at .99c, the light hitting your retinas will be travelling at the same speed from all directions. The colour of the light coming from external sources will be different - shifted to the red behind you and shifted to the blue in front - but you wouldn't notice any difference in the appearance of the space craft or any of the crew since you are relatively (in the physics sense of the word) stationary.
 
Cromulent said:
Isn't it impossible to travel at the speed of light due to the effects it has on time? I mean if you travel at the speed of light you would see the same thing for your entire journey as you would be keeping pace with the light and therefore no new light would hit your retinas. Or am I completely wrong on that?
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no, because you would be looking where you're going. if you looked behind you it would be the same never-ending thing that you can't get away from.
 
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