New Planets!

[Orionskies]

More Earths out there only 40 light years away :)

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-telescope-reveals-largest-batch-of-earth-size-habitable-zone-planets-around

[ozjoe]

Amazing news...

[Pinwheel]

I doubt Mankind will ever stand on another world outside our system. 40 light years is just unreachable. A radio signal one way is 40 years, a currant space craft trip about a million years one way.

[el_draco]

Seriously amazing system :thumbsup:

[Shiraz]

amazing - thanks for posting Julian.

interesting that their gear is high end amateur http://www.trappist.ulg.ac.be/cms/c_3313479/en/trappist-eq-trappist-north

[Max Vondel]

An interesting system
As usual the alien life brigade is out

Relevant points
Planets will be tidally locked with very short periods
Large flares are common in small mass stars

Probable life: Close to Zero

[JA]

Apparently Pluto was somewhat dejected by the news, hoping it too might make the cut. :D

In news on another front, apparently there is a group working on a new/different definition of "planet" which if accepted would help Pluto rejoin the planets.

Best
JA

[el_draco]

... and yet, we've been shown ad infinitum:

- What we find out there is always more spectacular than our widest dreams
- The impossible becomes common place as our knowledge grows.
- There are candidate sites for life in our solar system where we never expected to find them.
- Where life can exist, it will exist, even in a melted nuclear reactor core.

...based on these titbits, I'd be amazed if there were not life in this system if its as diverse and complex as so far hinted. :question:

[Wavytone]

If they've been picking up our TV signals they've been watching such gems as Grease and the Brady Bunch.

Hopefully they'll conclude there is no intelligent life here ...

[bigjoe]

Hi Wavy.
I think about 30 yrs ago they got some signals from our ol mate ADOLF'S first harangues!
IN 40YRS TIME it will be DONNY'S broadcasts! They won't be visiting any time soon I feel. Haw!!!
bigjoe!

[bigjoe]

All too true I agree!!
Its good speculation though , just to give whole ASTRO
THING momentum!
bigjoe

[AussieTrooper]

This speculation of advanced life has about the same likelihood of being correct as the 1800s predictions that Venus has lush tropical forests and dinosaurs did.

[julianh72]

But multiply a near-zero probability on any given planet or moon, by the hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, each of which typically has tens to hundreds of billions of stars (most of which seem to have planetary systems), and account for the dozens of moons that each planetary system contains (and a not-insignificant fraction of those moons now seem likely to have the conditions to support life) and you get a near certainty ...

[FlashDrive]

I was listening to the Radio about this ... a NASA ( in Canberra - CSIRO ) spokesman said it was 39million light years away.

He goes on to say, using the fastest Rocket / Space Graft we have ( Current Day Technology )..... which travels at 17klm's per second, it would still take 750,000 years to reach it.

Good Luck with that .....:shrug:

Not in our time anyway ....

Col....

[billdan]

At that speed it would take 76,764 years to reach Alpha Centauri.

Light speed = 300,000Km/sec divide by rocket speed of 17Km/sec = 17,647 x 4.35 light years dist to Alpha Cent = 76,764 years.

We need Cochrane to hurry up and build his warp drive.

[DarkArts]

"New Planets"? That's false advertising! They're actually slightly used planets in very good condition. :P

Seriously, though, it's an exciting discovery. No-one on this forum today will live to see them explored, but it's a nice thought that, someday, humankind could send a mission there even if it's only robotic.

But yeah, warp drive is sorely needed: who wants to help get a Kickstarter up and running ... ;)

[el_draco]

Modified math curriculum.... :rolleyes:

[geolindon]

It's a mute point but with gravity assists we can get way faster than 17k/s. here's an excerpt from the Broadsound Bulletin :D

'The fastest man made craft I can search is ESA's Rosetta. As comet 67P G-C swoops in towards the sun it will travel at as much as 37.5 km/sec = 0.0125% of speed of light, and Rosetta is orbiting the sun with the comet. At that speed the run from Carmila to Sarina or to St Lawrence would take 2 seconds and to Proxima Centuri (the next nearest star to us after the sun) would take 32,000 years.' (i hope the maths is good??)

also as pointed out to me once before in a similar thread - slowing down at the other end is an issue.

i find the approaching proof of life existing some/any where off Earth very exciting - it will be as significant as Galileo's proof 400 years ago that the universe doesn't orbit Earth.
The space and Earth telescopes now being built will be able to study these and other closer planets' (discovered because we no longer rely on transiting orientations) atmospheres, and NASA is starting the process to probe Europa for life around 2030.

L

[blindman]

Fairy tales for litul children

[Orionskies]

Your welcome guys not a problem for posting. Thanks Shiraz for posting as well.

I think it's a moot point whether we can travel to these systems or there may be advanced life there. But who knows if our civilizations survive we may be able to achieve and answer those questions. For me just knowing that these new worlds ( or perhaps slightly used worlds :P) exist and there could be similar to ours makes it mind boggling enough. This was one common dwarf star that was studied for 500 hrs, imagine how many of these worlds might possibly be out there.........

I wonder if my Dobsonian will help me find some!:P

Cheers Julian

[Wavytone]

Meh... when Donald Trump finds out he'll build a wall... a YOOOGE wall - coz' ... you know, they're aliens.

[Max Vondel]

I want to believe too
but:

Life sterilising Extreme UV flares
High X-Ray activity

Both causing atmospheric erosion as well as the extreme radiation to any life forms present


Source : arXiv mobile: UV Surface Habitability of the TRAPPIST-1 System
J.T O'Malley-James & L.Kaltenegger 22/2/2017

[julianh72]

I agree that these issues would make it harder for "life as we know it" to get a foothold, but never underestimate the capabilities for life to evolve and flourish in the most extreme environments.

E.g. consider Deinococcus radiodurans - this bacterium can actually repair the damage caused to its DNA by radiation, and carries redundant copies of its genome so that it will always have a good copy to repair any damaged segment. It is not known how or why it evolved the capability, but it can take more than 1,000 times the radiation dose that would kill a human, with negligible effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans

It has been suggested that perhaps this capability came with the very first life forms to develop on Earth (or arrive from space, carried on a martian meteorite?), as the Earth was not exactly a Garden of Eden when life first appeared here. Perhaps radiation-resistance is the very first challenge that life has to tackle before it springs up anywhere - which would make it very common in the universe, and maybe we are the exception in being so susceptible to radiation?

[AussieTrooper]

That may be true. But think about this.
The earth has existed for roughly 5bn years. We only had the ability to communicate into space for a few decades before we got the ability to destroy ourselves.
A species with the ability to communicate (let alone travel) may only exist for a few centuries on any planet. If the average distance between habitable planets is say 10LY, you have to multiply that distance by the ratio of (planet existence/intelligent life span).
Even if there are millions of intelligent life forms, you may well have the situation where no two close ones persist for long enough to communicate with each other.

[julianh72]

I agree entirely.

I am an optimist when it comes to the likelihood of intelligent life somewhere "out there". I suspect that life is widespread throughout the universe (I think it quite likely that life evolves on a significant fraction of places where the right conditions exist). I also suspect that intelligent life may be "rare" (in the sense that intelligence may only arise on a very small fraction of the places where life exists), but there are so many potential places that I suspect there are (or have been) millions of places where intelligent life has evolved in the Universe - probably thousands of which are in our own Milky Way.

I am also optimistic (but by no means certain) that within my lifetime, we will have some very strong indications of life elsewhere in our solar system, or in some of our nearest neighbouring planetary systems. We are close to being able to send specific robotic missions to some of the best candidates in our solar system, and our telescopes are getting close to the point where we'll be able to detect the tell-tale signs of biological processes in the atmospheres of exoplanets. (If / when we do detect chlorophyll or something similar, I am sure there will be a long and heated debate about whether it's really chlorophyll or something else, and whether there are non-biological ways in which chlorophyll can be generated, but I think there will be a steady growth in the body of evidence.)

I'm somewhat pessimistic about whether we will get a clear indication of intelligent life within my lifetime - but I'm still hopeful. (My computer runs SETI@Home, and I can't resist the urge to click on every Facebook post that announces "Scientists confirm contact with Aliens!") My pessimism comes not from whether I believe there is intelligent life out there, simply from the low odds of it being in the right time and place for us to get their signal.

And I'm very pessimistic about the likelihood of having a 2-way conversation (or a face-to-tentacle meeting), because of the immense times and distances that such a conversation would require.

But I still live in hope that they (or we) will prove Einstein wrong, and invent a faster-than-light drive, and / or learn how to exploit a wormhole - but I really don't expect to live long enough to witness it!

[el_draco]

Its not a matter of "wanting to believe". Earth was a nightmare when life first evolved here and I suspect that this would be the case everywhere else life evolves. Extremophiles are tough buggers by any standards and they took everything that early solar system threw at them.

[AussieTrooper]

Cue :optimisticben:

There are those who were alive for both the Wright brothers flight, and the moon landing.
Before the Wright brothers, few outside of the domain of science fiction literature could have imagined sending a robotic space probe to the planets, let alone actually going to the moon.
However we do explore planets of nearby stars, it will not be with the things we know of today, and it may well happen within the lifetime of some of us.

[Max Vondel]

I've enjoyed this discussion
Logical without all the emotions it usually raises
Thanks Julian Ben and Rom
:)

[xelasnave]

I can't imagine communication with anyone but it would not surprise me if there were other species highly evolved. I often wonder.
I wonder if any have wings. Their worlds culture history.
Folk with four legs and four arms.
I wonder about their politics ethics beliefs food sports whatever.
There could be billions or a few but if we are it one has said big waste of space if life is important...
Alex

[xelasnave]

If we could become immortal, cure ageing, we could go anywhere, imagine that you could spend 500,000 years traveling.
Imagine DNA has a code that produces immoral humans from every habitable planet and we all set off at once.
And from everywhere humans are driven to swarm and ....feel free to suggest something crazy.
It is wonderful to see these discoveries.
If you were immortal would you have to reinvent yourself every century..would you have to have your memory cleared every century.
Alex

[Slawomir]

I have just read that three of the planets in this system have been 'scanned' for atmospheres and their chemical make up by analysing cyclical absorption spectra in 2016, and the researchers found nothing.

[el_draco]

Thats already a given Alex ;):lol:

[el_draco]

You are welcome. Its a topic that has interested me for a long time. I have a significant interest in ecology and it amazes me that there are literally millions of possible niches on this rock for life to exploit. Three whole planets in the "habital zone" just makes my mind spin a bit. The possibilities seem endless.

On a side note, I started telling my son a story about a shape shifting alien when he was about 7 years old. He is 15 now and its still going though I write it more as a novel these days. The system just discovered fits terribly well with the plot... How bizarre :)

[xelasnave]

You have dis covered the secret.
When we imagine something a world opens up out there to accommodate it.
Alex

[bigjoe]

Sounds good Julian , but just getting to the stage of self -replicating molecules is a tough ask of any Planetary -Star system in any galaxy given also that many planets have double suns to contend with!
Water, light, atmosphere , heat, distance from a stable star etc, etc.
GOD ! - yes the magic word, its a monumental ask!!

I HOPE THERE IS INTELLIGENT ENOUGH LIFE ELSEWHERE
bigjoe

[Shiraz]

If you haven't looked at it before, the Drake equation is interesting http://www.space.com/25219-drake-equation.html

Assuming that the equation indicates that there are between 10,000 and 100,000 detectable civilisations in our galaxy at any one time, the probability of any single star supporting one is about 1 in 10,000,000.

The odds that there is at least one other such civilisation supported by the 2000 odd stars that are within 2 way comms distance (lets say 50 light years at the extreme) is about 1 in 5000. It isn't surprising that SETI has found nothing.

Of course, this type of analysis is nothing more than advanced guessing, but still, don't hold your breath.

The biggest determinant of the odds is the time factor - our tenure here on earth is a miniscule fraction of the lifetime of the sun and it looks like we will destroy our habitat before much longer. Assuming that this is the standard Darwinian process, the chances of finding another civilisation in between the start of industrialisation and the exhaustion of it's habitat is exceedingly small. The chances of finding evidence of some form of life elsewhere could well be high, but technological competence may be such a fleeting phase that it is very rare indeed.

[AussieTrooper]

I actually hope there is not intelligent life elsewhere, or if there is, that we never find it.
Throughout human history, whenever we find a new place, we conquer and exploit it. Every culture that a regional power has found, they have destroyed. This isn't limited to the conquistadores, it is from every power, on every inhabited continent, throughout history.
I'm yet to see and example of where a power showed up and immediately made life better for the original inhabitants.
If we explore and inhabit lifeless worlds, then that's fine. But to find and ruin life on another planet would be unforgivable.

[billdan]

Couldn't resist

Reg: - All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?
Xerxes: - The aqueduct.
Reg: - Oh yeah, yeah they gave us that. Yeah. That's true.
Masked Activist: - And the sanitation!
Stan: - Oh yes... sanitation, Reg, you remember what the city used to be like.
Reg: - All right, I'll grant you that the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done...
Matthias: -And the roads...
Reg: -(sharply) Well yes obviously the roads... the roads go without saying. But apart from the aqueduct, the sanitation and the roads...
Another Masked Activist: - Irrigation...
Other Masked Voices: - Medicine... Education... Health...
Reg: - Yes... all right, fair enough...
Activist Near Front: - And the wine...
Omnes: - Oh yes! True!
Francis: - Yeah. That's something we'd really miss if the Romans left, Reg.
Masked Activist at Back: - Public baths!
Stan: - And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now.
Francis: - Yes, they certainly know how to keep order... (general nodding)... let's face it, they're the only ones who could in a place like this.

(more general murmurs of agreement)
Reg: - All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
Xerxes: - Brought peace!
Reg: - (very angry, he's not having a good meeting at all) What!? Oh... (scornfully) Peace, yes... shut up!

[AussieTrooper]

Splitters!!

[geolindon]

I agree Julian, it is moot but has opened a can that won't be mute :P

Reading the thread and reflecting led me to ponder evolution from microbes to more complex to 'intelligent' organisms to the future evolution of humanoids and how that will play into survival long enough to enable communication with exoplanets. Or how more evolved exo-civilisations may have done it.

right now, what environmental pressures are selecting what traits for our evolution? seems easy to understand as hunter/gatherers - eat/be eaten - survive to reproduce, but what is in play in modern society? e.g. does welfare skew our progress?

will AI survive/persist inspite of humans? "What remains to be seen is what contribution the human brain will make, especially as technology development outpaces human brain development by a million to one." Michael Milford.

obviously the skies aren't clear :D
L

[blindman]

There are not any aliens (other than that I sent to NZ)