Galaxies full of Earths & Alien Life?
Hopefully we’ll find out soon enough, but it would only make sense since there are billions of known galaxies that have yet to be explored and who knows how many more to be discovered. It sure would take everybody’s mind off of the financial crisis if they announced that they found Alien Life. Another reason why we hope that President Obama won’t be cutting NASA’s budget too much! Read the full story after the jump!
(CNN) — As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there’s new buzz that “Star Trek’s” vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched.
Pointy-eared aliens traveling at light speed are staying firmly in science fiction, but scientists are offering fresh insights into the possible existence of inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations in space.
There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution and author of the new book “The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets.”
He made the prediction based on the number of “super-Earths” — planets several times the mass of the Earth, but smaller than gas giants like Jupiter — discovered so far circling stars outside the solar system.
Boss said that if any of the billions of Earth-like worlds he believes exist in the Milky Way have liquid water, they are likely to be home to some type of life.
“Now that’s not saying that they’re all going to be crawling with intelligent human beings or even dinosaurs,” he said.
“But I would suspect that the great majority of them at least will have some sort of primitive life, like bacteria or some of the multicellular creatures that populated our Earth for the first 3 billion years of its existence.”
Putting a number on alien worlds
Other scientists are taking another approach: an analysis that suggests there could be hundreds, even thousands, of intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland constructed a computer model to create a synthetic galaxy with billions of stars and planets. They then studied how life evolved under various conditions in this virtual world, using a supercomputer to crunch the results.
In a paper published recently in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the researchers concluded that based on what they saw, at least 361 intelligent civilizations have emerged in the Milky Way since its creation, and as many as 38,000 may have formed.
Duncan Forgan, a doctoral candidate at the university who led the study, said he was surprised by the hardiness of life on these other worlds.
“The computer model takes into account what we refer to as resetting or extinction events. The classic example is the asteroid impact that may have wiped out the dinosaurs,” Forgan said.
“I half-expected these events to disallow the rise of intelligence, and yet civilizations seemed to flourish.”
Forgan readily admits the results are an educated guess at best, since there are still many unanswered questions about how life formed on Earth and only limited information about the 330 “exoplanets” — those circling sun-like stars outside the solar system — discovered so far.
The first was confirmed in 1995 and the latest just this month when Europe’s COROT space telescope spotted the smallest terrestrial exoplanet ever found. With a diameter less than twice the size of Earth, the planet orbits very close to its star and has temperatures up to 1,500° Celsius (more than 2,700° Fahrenheit), according to the European Space Agency. It may be rocky and covered in lava.
Hunt for habitable planets
NASA is hoping to find much more habitable worlds with the help of the upcoming Kepler mission. The spacecraft, set to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida next week, will search for Earth-size planets in our part of the galaxy.
Kepler contains a special telescope that will study 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way for more than three years. It will look for small dips in a star’s brightness, which can mean an orbiting planet is passing in front it — an event called a transit.
“It’s akin to measuring a flea as it creeps across the headlight of an automobile at night,” said Kepler project manager James Fanson during a during a NASA news conference.
The focus of the mission is finding planets in a star’s habitable zone, an orbit that would ensure temperatures in which life could exist. Watch a NASA scientist explain the search for habitable planets »
Boss, who serves on the Kepler Science Council, said scientists should know by 2013 — the end of Kepler’s mission — whether life in the universe could be widespread.
Finding intelligent life is a very different matter. For all the speculation about the possibility of other civilizations in the universe, the question remains: If the rise of life on Earth isn’t unique and aliens are common, why haven’t they shown up or contacted us? The contradiction was famously summed up by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 in what became known as the Fermi paradox: “Where is everybody?”
The answer may be the vastness of time and space, scientists explained.
“Civilizations come and go,” Boss said. “Chances are, if you do happen to find a planet which is going to have intelligent life, it’s not going to be in [the same] phase of us. It may have formed a billion years ago, or maybe it’s not going to form for another billion years.”
Even if intelligent civilizations did exist at the same time, they probably would be be separated by tens of thousands of light years, Forgan said. If aliens have just switched on their transmitter to communicate, it could take us hundreds of centuries to receive their message, he added.
As for interstellar travel, the huge distances virtually rule out any extraterrestrial visitors. iReport.com: Share your view of the universe
To illustrate, Boss said the fastest rockets available to us right now are those being used in NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Even going at that rate of speed, it would take 100,000 years to get from Earth to the closest star outside the solar system, he added.
“So when you think about that, maybe we shouldn’t be worried about having interstellar air raids any time soon,” Boss said.
wow..
Billionaire Boys Club Blog » Galaxies full of Earths & Alien Life?…
It sure would take everybody’s mind off of the financial crisis if they announced that they found Alien Life. Another reason why we hope that President Obama won’t be cutting NASA’s budget too much! Read the full story after the jump! ……
really interesting!!
nice
i like the way they’re “prepping” us for the big announcement lolol
my $.02…of course there are intelligent life froms out there and im pretty sure they got some knowledge to drop on us…movies like 5th element are just prepwork for our subconcious
check out the 1st matrix…that SUPER COOL phone that Neo was rocking is now a dinosaur Nokia
i believe the mayans met them some intelligent life forms and decided they like them more than earthlings..lol
Fascinating Pharrell!!
The sheer number of glaxies, stars and possible planets surrounding them would suggest that SOME form of life exists.
But remember, if intelligent life evolved on a far away galaxy, or better still, on the other side of our milky way; we are 100 million years away from them. So if we detect some form of communication from them and send something back, it will be 200 million years before they “hear our reply”. During which time anything could have happened to them, most likely extintion.
Ok, just read the rest of the article. The bottom pretty much shared my views on distance/time scale differences.
“…I guess I’d say if it is just us … seems like an awful waste of space.“ -Carl Sagan
hey PheRRELL
I LIKE YOUR OUTFITS BUT U CHARGE TOO MUCH FOR THAT SHIT CAN U BRING DOWN THE PRICE U MOTHERFUCKER>>> I NEED TO RECIEVED SOME LESS EXPENSE SHIT IM A STUDENT IN HIGH SCHOOL AND I DONT Have a job fool what up on that mutherfucker>>>>> please replie ASAP TRICK
HEY PHERRELL THIS IS DAKOTA : AUSTIN BROTHER AND I DONT SHARE THE SAME FEELING THAT AUSTIN HAS ABOUT YOUR CLOTHES I NEED TOO RECIEVED SOME TIPS ON THE RECORD BUSINESS IM AN ASPIRING RAPPER AND MY BROTHER WANT TO BE A PRODUCER HERE IN THE CITY IS THERE A CHANCE FOR US TO MEET I SAW U ONCE IN LOS ANGELES AT THE VENICE BEACH FILMING AND CHAD
as if there isn’t other ‘intelligent’ life (that’s if you can classify humans en masse as intelligent!) out there!? and although it is a pity we can’t really know because of the restrictions of spacetime, to me – what NASA does IS really interesting – but i have to say i think the money could and should be better spent. with the situation the world is in – i think we should look after our own home – rather than exploring the neighbourhood.
perhaps we don’t need all these new spacecraft – and projects like the kepler mission – perhaps instead we could spend those billions on healing the earth and saving the life on it – i mean what’s the point of knowing these things if we destroy the earth and everything on it!
i also think it’s quite ironic they would name the project – ‘the kepler mission’ as johannes kepler was from the 16th – 17th century and made observations that are proven and still valid today and at a time there was no difference between astronomy and astrology!
“…. Kepler made some very accurate observations of all planetary behavior and characteristics. The planets appeared to constitute a very disorderly team. Kepler plotted the position of each planet at the beginning and end of a twenty-one day period, and the calculated areas swept out by each of the pie-shaped triangles proved to be exactly the same.” R Buckminster Fuller
so, not only does this show that the solar system has an extraordinarily intelligent design and gives us a big hint that there MUST be other life out there, but it shows us we do not really need all this new technology that could actually prove to be our demise.. i also understand that these missions are very far-reaching and of course not just observing the solar system and, yeah, it IS really interesting – but i hope obama DOES cut NASA’s budget and instead spends the money on helping the US and the rest of the world that are in need of urgent help! (sorry !)
it also shows that perhaps we should look to the PAST rather concentrating on the FUTURE for ideas of how to observe reality – and then we might actually HAVE a future! i mean – we’re destroying shit so much on earth that we’re actually thinking of moving to another inhabitable planet! maybe that’s what they’re doing! looking for somewhere to go if (and hopefully not when!) we destroy the earth and it becomes uninhabitable! now that would be AWFUL! living on a planet where only rich and upper class assholes live – knowing they destroyed the earth!
i also feel the same about nuclear research and use – the money spent on the hadron collider could have fed billions and created millions of schools for those that don’t have any etc, etc… the money spent on war is another thing!!! scientific and nuclear research have so much to do with all this!
now i know this is in stark contrast to the ideas you guys have – don’t get me wrong! i LOVE LOVE LOVE NERD (particularly pharrell [who i ABSOLUTELY ADORE]) and i love BBC and ice cream and all the space themes – but i’d rather leave it as science fiction – and not science ‘fact’… i think science should be different than how it is today.
sorry for writing SUCH a LOOOOOONG post!!!!!!
on a lighter note, can’t wait to see you in the flesh – performing – rather than just in my dreams!!! xxxxxxxxxxxxoooooooooo
from the boston gerl…. (: <3
I dont think we should find any alien life. If we we did we should keep it a secret. We always destroy anything good.
Crazy. We’re discussing this in my astrophysics class. Basically, an extraterrestrial life form would have to posses the intelligence to build a vessel that can travel faster than the speed of light. In theory, this can be achieved, though it will only work when—or–if the life form can control/harness the energy of a black hole. And even still a huge problem remains. They call that problem the event horizon, which will shred a muahfukah up as soon as they go near it. But who knows… Perhaps wormholes will do the trick.
whoa…that’s pretty cool.i’d love to find other human like life.it’s real boring when they’re like WE FOUND LIFE IN SPACE….BACTERIA!!!
oh great..germs!
yo, somewhere in the universe on another planet, theres clones of us walking around, did u catch the episode on Histroy Channel, yep thats where phrase “in another life” came from…give me some brain:)
hey creole, yeah…. astrophysics – that’s hardcore ish, but i used to see a dude who wanted to be an astonaut who studied atrophysics in rhode island and it was just pages and pages of maths – but he couldn’t seem to visualise (should i use a ‘z’ here? haha!) tings… it was wierd… so ya wanna be an astronaut huh? i wish you good luck! hopefully barack’s cut the budget (no offence!)
yeah, wormholes… they pretend not to know ish about dark matter – and dark ‘time’, but you know, they just keep it a secret… but, then again, they complicate ish and i don’t tink they understand what they should.. there’s a unification theory – it’s simple – do they know it or not??? all this specialisation is bullshit ….
but yeah wormholes… dark matter (and time!) is mad – but i don’t really think it could or should be put into practice!
like molecular deconstruction and reconstruction… but it’s all a bit warped.. time (and space) manipulation is a bit beyond us at the moment (perhaps not aliens – haha! maybe they’re pretending to be humans – or they are so similar we can’t tell!!!) i know, you probably think i’m an idiot!
mesoclever,
imagine if every ‘event’ or moment in our sapcetime reality were just each moment of our existance (read niels bohm – not the same idea – but explains that nothing ever really dies [N*E*R*D!]) so eac moment of our past and our future exists (and INsists) forever – over and aver again.. we just travel through it…
too short a space to explain really.. but some food for thought…
deja vu (:
put us on the guestlist on wed? PLEASE!!!!????
phrase is on my spaceshipage, i sent him a msg – but hasn’t got back yet – i need tix – so…, go on!!! help me!! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!?
he’s so talented, rad and lovely and he has a talented, beautiful and lovely girl – meet em and hang out out – they so rad! his flatmate is the same too…
i’ll throw something (a square star) out on sat – i’m in black…. get back…
looking forward (and back!! ahahahaha
you know tha go.
look for it.
xoxoxo <3
today (: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxoooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
off tha page (: xxxxooooo
excuse my mis-spelling… “hey, i’m miss spelling
”
xoxox
‘miss pelling”?
“miss pell-mellling”?
haha (:
i don’t like capitals – i prefer whole countries
<3 <3 <3 <3
hello mr moderator (:
would you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE erase all the my posts on this page???
thankyou!
xxO
every single one – entitled ‘gerl rok’…
including this one and the last one?
thankyou!!!!!!
I’m so LATE commenting this post, but this was awesome. I read the WHOLE thing.
It amazes me all of that space; It would take 100,000 years to get to the nearest star outside of our solar system?! That’s crazy.
And I must say, if there is another civilization out there of some sort; who’s to say that they need water to survive; or that their planet is even Earth-like