Trillions of Earths

[astroron (Ron)]

Universe has more stars
Just in from the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11888362
I have been saying that there are more stars than they say there is for a long time and now evidence is coming to the fore
Let the discussion begin

[CraigS]

Thanks Ron;

Interesting isn't it ?

I don't believe this statement is supportable (that's an opinion !… got to slow down on these … I've been giving a few lately ):

According to Yale's Professor Pieter van Dokkum, who led the research, the discovery also increases the estimate for the number of planets in the Universe and therefore greatly increases the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the cosmos.

.. until they've discovered another instance of exo-life, the above quote is merely speculation.

I do like the sounds of this of this one, though (another opinion) ..

The findings also help to account for what astronomers describe as the "missing mass" in the Universe.

Wouldn't it be terrific if all this 'darkness' stuff turned out to be attributable to measurement technology inaccuracies !! Classic stuff !

… and a good one to finish off with … a 'plug' for the telescope developers .. the best cause of all !! (another opinion):

Finding red dwarfs in other galaxies is quite something and shows how far we've come with the latest generation of large telescopes.

Good 'down-to-earth' article supporting real-life observational astronomy !
Very interesting.

Cheers & Rgds.

[Robh (Rob)]

Ron, very interesting.

Some more here ...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80...-just-tripled/

Regards, Rob

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

It is a very interesting not only for orbiting planets but the potential collapse of Dark Matter theory.

Still mentions in the post nothing has been conclusively proven but it seems highly likely for both.

I would wonder if there might be loads more Red Dwarf star outside the galaxies in great number, not just tied within the galaxy itself. This could suggest the holding together the outer spiral arms instead of Dark Matter.

[CraigS]

Hmm interesting Malcolm;

I've just been reading another astronomy forum (of low repute) and I'm reminded of how easy it is for us humans (myself included, of course), to completely dump an idea and take up another.

Interestingly Science doesn't quite work that way (thank goodness). It would be interesting to see what effects the additional mass might have on the Lambda CDM model. After all, it predicts an absolutely huge amount of dark matter out there.

I think I'm guilty, (to a certain degree), of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater' on this one.

Also interesting is your question about other stars that might be outside the galaxy.
I had the same thought, but then I wondered what does 'outside the galaxy' really mean ??

Cheers & Rgds

[Suzy]

This article really really got me thinking. And a good question that Malcolm posed about Red Dwarfs perhaps holding the galaxy's structure together.

We have to remember though that the use of the word Dark Matter is a description of matter that cannot be seen. It can be anything. Even these Red Dwarfs. Coming from my understanding, I'm on the right track, yes?

What further interests me is, seeing as a Red Dwarf is a very cool star, can it actually harbour life on these exo planets (I'm thinking not)? My understanding is that our current model states that we need a sun the same age and size as our own, with an Earth like planet to be in the same spot.

Furthermore, am I understanding that the finding of these exo planets around Red Dwarfs may contradict the current age of our universe, and basically we might have to go back to the blackboard?! Oh boy! But that's science right, the more answers it gives us, the more questions it attracts. . As Prof. Kaku recently said so well, "we have learned more in the last 50 years than we ever have in the history of human kind". I think it would serve us all very well to keep an open mind to all of the possibilites science is throwing our way regarding our Universe, as there is such an abundance of information being thrown at us these days.

Thanks Ron for posting that article .

[bartman (Bart)]

Somewhat recent BBC article that new telescopes have discovered 3 times as many stars than previously thought. More stars, more planets.....

"It found that galaxies older than ours contain 20 times more red dwarf stars than more recent ones.
Red dwarfs are smaller and dimmer than our own Sun; it is only recently that telescopes have been powerful enough to detect them.
According to Yale's Professor Pieter van Dokkum, who led the research, the discovery also increases the estimate for the number of planets in the Universe and therefore greatly increases the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the cosmos.
"There are possibly trillions of Earths orbiting these stars," he said. "Red dwarfs are typically more than 10 billion years old and so have been around long enough for complex life to evolve on planets around them. It's one reason why people are interested in this type of star."


Apart from the other interesting stuff in that article, I would like to ask....
If our sun is about 4.5 b years old and the stars they are talking about are about twice the age of our star, and 'complex life' has evolved over an extra ~5 b years, then surely we would have heard from them by now?


Wouldn't 5b years be enough time to figure out inter galactic travel? ( through what ever means....)
Sure, there are billions of galaxies and trillions upon trillions of stars out there, but if they have that 5b years on us they would have invented some sort of 'earth like- supporting life- planet radar'?
We are finding hundreds of exoplanets at the moment, and we are just a speck compared to the research "they" have been doing.....for five billion years.....


.....just wondering.....

Bartman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11888362

[CraigS]

Ok .. so looking at this more closely, the present CDM model mass estimates are:

i) Heavy Elements ~0.03%
ii) Neutrinos: ~0.3%
iii) Stars: ~0.6%
iv) Free Hydrogen and Helium: ~4%
v) Dark Matter: ~25 %
vi) Dark Energy: ~70 %

So, even if the star matter estimate was out by three times (as the article makes out), it makes almost zilch impact on the proportion of dark matter/dark energy.

Cheers

PS: Ok reading more, they're only saying that the observation might effect the amount of dark matter in the elliptical galaxies only. That's Ok .. makes sense.

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

Oh they've been here, had a look, and shook their heads - "Maybe another 2000 years, if they survive that long."
As Groucho Marx said, "I don't want to be a member of a club that would accept me."

Let's face it, if they arrived a mere 200 years ago, they'd have been challenged by a guy with a pointed piece of metal and a lacy ruff. Even HG Wells hadn't worked up the steam to produce War of the Worlds.
300 years ago and they'd been hung for being witches' familiars!

They would have had to have landed around 1980 to get an inkling of our potential and seen us with only one or two wars going on.
They would have noticed - 3 Billion people on the bread line, 1 Billion people starving, 1 Billion gorging themselves on the fat of the land and the surplus energy whilst beating off the others.

[bojan]

Originally Posted by jenchris

Oh they've been here, had a look, and shook their heads - "Maybe another 2000 years, if they survive that long."
As Groucho Marx said, "I don't want to be a member of a club that would accept me."

Let's face it, if they arrived a mere 200 years ago, they'd have been challenged by a guy with a pointed piece of metal and a lacy ruff. Even HG Wells hadn't worked up the steam to produce War of the Worlds.
300 years ago and they'd been hung for being witches' familiars!

They would have had to have landed around 1980 to get an inkling of our potential and seen us with only one or two wars going on.
They would have noticed - 3 Billion people on the bread line, 1 Billion people starving, 1 Billion gorging themselves on the fat of the land and the surplus energy whilst beating off the others.

Yes..
Fermi paradox was always bugging me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocatastrophism

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

merged threads

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

merged threads

Thanks Paul

[Robh (Rob)]

OK, so now we are discovering there are lots more of these red dwarfs.
But just how many brown dwarfs are out there? Maybe we can pack some more mass into these galaxies.

Regards, Rob

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by Robh

OK, so now we are discovering there are lots more of these red dwarfs.
But just how many brown dwarfs are out there? Maybe we can pack some more mass into these galaxies.

Regards, Rob

I haven't had a look at how much dark matter they currently reckon is in one of these ellipticals, but I have a feeling its a big amount.

For example, dwarfs are mostly elliptical. These galaxies are presently believed to be DM dominated, in a big way .. I think about >10:1 DM:matter ratio.

These guys are reporting that ellipticals contain up to 20 times the previously thought number of red dwarfs .. similar orders of magnitude, at least !

I noted from Rob's earlier post that the paper causing all of this, is presently resulting in a lot of controversy amongst the establishment. I guess there'll be a lot of fallout from this study.

Cheers

[bartman (Bart)]

Bojan,
Thank you for the link to the Fermi Paradox.
Very interesting and informative!
Certainly has made me think more about whether there is or isn't life out there!
Bartman

[CraigS]

Yes Bojan;

Thanks for the 'heads-up' on the Fermi paradox.

The Wiki article seems to cover all of the human perspectives on exo-life that I, (for one), can imagine, or have encountered in my travels.

I guess we all fit into one, or more, of the headings when we're wrangling on this topic.

There are other dimensions to the scale/probability problem as well.

For instance: the DNA information paradigm. What is the probability that the order in DNA, eventuates over time, given that entropy increases over time? Also, what is the probability that the methodical functions of the 'cellular machinery', (necessary for replication etc), could develop in the way that it has ?

If there were an answer to these questions, it would be truly mind blowing when you lay this on top of the Scale of the Universe. The two 'probability scales may actually end up being of similar orders of magnitude, and we might find that it does actually require an almost infinite scale 'laboratory', (ie: universe), for an instance of life to come about !!

I think its difficult for the human brain to cope with these probability scales.

Cheers

[ngcles]

Hi Bartman & All,

Originally Posted by bartman

Apart from the other interesting stuff in that article, I would like to ask.... If our sun is about 4.5 b years old and the stars they are talking about are about twice the age of our star, and 'complex life' has evolved over an extra ~5 b years, then surely we would have heard from them by now?

Wouldn't 5b years be enough time to figure out inter galactic travel? ( through what ever means....)
Sure, there are billions of galaxies and trillions upon trillions of stars out there, but if they have that 5b years on us they would have invented some sort of 'earth like- supporting life- planet radar'?
We are finding hundreds of exoplanets at the moment, and we are just a speck compared to the research "they" have been doing.....for five billion years.....


.....just wondering.....

Bartman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11888362

This is a very interesting finding but as has already been pointed out, it has only a small impact on calculating in what form the "missing matter/energy" is because so little matter appears to be actually locked-up in stars in our Universe.

But to provide an answer (there could be other answers for much relies on speculation and best-guesses) to your question, it is manifestly improbable that any of these newly discovered stars play host to advanced/intelligent/space-faring races. They are in elliptical galaxies for a start which are extremely harsh environments for advanced life (or indeed any life).

The stars they mention are "old" red-dwarfs. Old stars obviously formed a very long time before the Sun and it is manifestly improbable that there would have been enough metals in the gas from which these stars formed (so early in the history of the Universe) (a) to make any terrestrial-type planets and (b) have the right elements in the right abundances to produce the chemistry essential to life -- let alone advanced life or intelligent life.

Third, Red-dwarf stars are low mass, low luminosity stars with very narrow habitable zones so close to the host star that tidal locking of any terrestrial planet is a virtual certainty. Red dwarf stars are very often flare stars, a type of star that has high magnetic activity unleasing powerful x-ray bursts from sumo-sized solar flares that continue for very long time-scales. These factors (coupled with the others) further reduce the chances to what I'd suggest is a figure so low, that for all intents and purposes, is zero.

We have added a very large number of stars to the inventory, but none of them appear to be sites where advanced life would stand a whelk's chance in a supernova (apologies to Douglas Adams).


Best,

Les D

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

+ngcles
most of the 'first cycle' stars are devoid of anything heavier than helium so eliminating the first cycle after the big bang.
Even short cycle second cycle stars are unlikely to produce as they are usually supergiants and go SN quite early in life.
So we need a third cycle star with no close by heavy radiation to keep us in the slime.
Which means you have to be on the outside of the galaxy arms or lucky.
You then need a mass extinction to produce enough storable energy to lay down hydrocarbon fuels for a prospective intelligent species to break through the industrial revolution.
Then you need the civilisation to be smart enough not to nuke itself when it does reach that level (I'm not sure we've gotten away with this yet).
Then they need to crack plus light travel.
All in all, not a good set of odds. Perhaps one in 1,000,000 planets in our galaxy. That means there's thousands and thousands if not millions of planets out there with intelligent life.... all onthe threshhold of interstellar travel.
Hopefully they're not all as greedy and vicious as us.

[bojan]

Originally Posted by CraigS

For instance: the DNA information paradigm. What is the probability that the order in DNA, eventuates over time, given that entropy increases over time? Also, what is the probability that the methodical functions of the 'cellular machinery', (necessary for replication etc), could develop in the way that it has ?

If there were an answer to these questions, it would be truly mind blowing when you lay this on top of the Scale of the Universe. The two 'probability scales may actually end up being of similar orders of magnitude, and we might find that it does actually require an almost infinite scale 'laboratory', (ie: universe), for an instance of life to come about !!

I think its difficult for the human brain to cope with these probability scales.

Cheers

Among a lot of creationists crap, I found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14KTshLUkg

I remember couple of articles that discuss this issue.. when I find them again, I will post them here...

[bkm2304 (Richard Brown)]

Originally Posted by bartman

"It found that galaxies older than ours contain 20 times more red dwarf stars than more recent ones.

That's a lot of episodes to get through! I'm still laughing at the first series.....