Offensive Threat Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 I firmly believe there has to be another life form out there somewhere. No way are we the only ones that occupy this galaxy or universe. I see us as the babies of the universe being recent. I always had a feeling that there was someone else out there. Intelligence wise I believe we are not there yet. Other life forms out there I can see them being a lot smarter then us. We are still not at that advanced stage yet. I am 19 years old and I hope I get to see the day we find others out there. Probably wont happen though When you consider the time span between first flight and landing on the moon and now, we have come so far so fast and the pace of advancement is ever accelerating. If you are 19 now you may live a very very long time. Maybe forever. Medical science is advancing just like everything else. So yes, you may live to see it. You will live to see other things we cant even imagine now anyways. Thats worth sticking around for. IS there life out there? I would think its beyond probable. There may be millions of planets in the right orbits and distances in our galaxy alone. Some will have liquid water. Many may have only simple life forms, Some more advanced plant life and some like earth in its distant past with dinosaurs or mammals etc. But intelligent life? I cant even begin to guess. But then we havent even been able to find out how life on earth began. If it began unaided in earths primordial past it should be possible, it should be EASY, to create life in a test tube. But all ongoing attempts have failed. We can put together the building blocks of life but we cant bring it to life. We can take a seed and make a tree but we cant create the living seed out of non living materials. Until we can find a wholly natural answer to how we came into being the question of "is there life on other planets?" can only be guessed at. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghostsof1915 Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 500 light years. Damn that would be one helluva a commute. (Millennia there and back) If it makes people feel better. It will be about 400 years before they'll realize we're here when our first radio broadcasts from the early 1900's makes it's way to that system. It will be massive news if they find a habitable system within 30 light years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grandmaster Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 I think the huge distance between potentially populated planets is vital for each other's survival. I don't trust them and I don't trust us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baka Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Well, Earth and us are aliens in the eyes of people on other planets but we're not that scary are we? As much as I personally like the fantasy of meeting other civilizations and indulging in the cultures I doubt it would go well. Look at human beings as an individual society. We start wars over how we believe things should be done, we are riddled with racism and prejudice based on looks alone, we look down on other cultures... I would be utterly blown away if humans (as a whole) managed to get along with an alien race. You also have the possibility that an alien species that comes to us would be more advanced and intelligent possibly looking for resources to expand or relocate a population. Their fascination with an alien race could be limited and they may just dismiss humanities usefulness in a way similar to how humans dismiss animals for simply being less intelligent. Others could also look at us wrecking our own planet and be like well we don't want that on our little blue marble. IMO more bad would come out of contact with an intelligent alien race. Unless they happen to be huge Justin Beiber fans in which case we can just give him to them as a gift. A win-win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heretic Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Good grief - I already posted this in this thread: http://forum.canucks.com/topic/357427-nasa-discovers-715-new-planets-close-to-doubling-known-planets/ Why do some here feel they need to post a new thread when the topic already exists???? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caboose Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Us being alone is a statistical impossibility. Regardless, we will never have contact with another race unless we can bend spacetime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tangelos Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Too bad we'll never get there. 500 light years away Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theminister Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 I wonder what minerals it has that we could exploit. Unobtainium? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theminister Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Too bad we'll never get there. 500 light years away Why not? One day it might even be possible to build lighter than air machines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theminister Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 As much as I personally like the fantasy of meeting other civilizations and indulging in the cultures I doubt it would go well. Look at human beings as an individual society. We start wars over how we believe things should be done, we are riddled with racism and prejudice based on looks alone, we look down on other cultures... I would be utterly blown away if humans (as a whole) managed to get along with an alien race. You also have the possibility that an alien species that comes to us would be more advanced and intelligent possibly looking for resources to expand or relocate a population. Their fascination with an alien race could be limited and they may just dismiss humanities usefulness in a way similar to how humans dismiss animals for simply being less intelligent. Others could also look at us wrecking our own planet and be like well we don't want that on our little blue marble. IMO more bad would come out of contact with an intelligent alien race. Unless they happen to be huge Justin Beiber fans in which case we can just give him to them as a gift. A win-win. Two scenarios that I can see... 1) We meet another life form from space. It defines the concept of 'alien.' Everything about it is unknown and strange to us including it's appearance, functionality and motivations. We will not be able to bridge the mutual understanding bridge. Think 'Starship Troopers.' 2) They aren't that alien at all. Unending consequences for what that means to us as a species. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
î мцšт вяздк чфµ Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 that's nice. i bet the real estate is cheaper there than vancouver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-AJ- Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 So is it just as habitable as earth? I wonder which planet would be more beneficial to live on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theminister Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 So is it just as habitable as earth? I wonder which planet would be more beneficial to live on. There is no guarantee what the atmosphere or elemental make-up of the planet is. Solely that it could have liquid water and is in the correct temperature range. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gurn Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Well, Earth and us are aliens in the eyes of people on other planets but we're not that scary are we? Actually we are very scary, I doubt species capable of getting here would want anything to do with us. for all we know we may have already been put into solitary confinement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-AJ- Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 There is no guarantee what the atmosphere or elemental make-up of the planet is. Solely that it could have liquid water and is in the correct temperature range. So "habitable" isn't really the right word then, I suppose. It's got a least a few of the variables though, I guess and it might have more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jai604 Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 500 light years. Damn that would be one helluva a commute. (Millennia there and back) If it makes people feel better. It will be about 400 years before they'll realize we're here when our first radio broadcasts from the early 1900's makes it's way to that system. It will be massive news if they find a habitable system within 30 light years. That's assuming you'd be traveling at the speed of light, which as far as we understand at this moment in time, is impossible for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRussianRocket. Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 http://policymic.com/articles/87889/how-close-are-we-really-to-finding-life-in-outer-space?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=socialNASA's recent discovery of Kepler-186f, the first habitable Earth-sized planet is big news in humankind's long search for extraterrestrial life. A universe full of exoplanets: Thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope, which was launched in 2009 to hunt planets across the universe, we've managed to find around 1800 exoplanets so far, many of which have been discovered in just the last year or so. Kepler has had so much success because it's the first piece of space technology that is remarkably adept at detecting tiny changes in light coming from distant stars. The small, periodic dimming of a stars light is the classic smoking gun which scientists use to find exoplanets. The long-held Holy Grail for planet hunters has been to find a world which is the Earth's "twin" and therefore thought to be capable of supporting life. Kepler has advanced this cause amazingly so far, managing to find many planets that are a similar size to our Earth. In fact, thanks to Kepler, we now know that the Earth-sized planets are actually quite common in our galaxy. The bad news? Most of the Earth-sized planets found so far are either too hot or too cold to support life. For instance Kepler-20e, the first Earth-sized planet discovered, has an extremely small 6-day orbit, making planet's surface temperature is an inhospitable 1,400 degrees. On the other hand, the Kepler telescope has also discovered many planets within the "habitable zone" of star systems. This is the region where planets may be at the correct temperature to support liquid water. However, many of these planets such as Kepler-22b, the first habitable-zone exoplanet discovered, are several times the size of Earth. Unfortunately, these "Super-Earth" sized planets are unlikely to be rocky like our home, and are probably composed of liquid or gaseous outer shells. Our first exoplanetary relative: Kepler-186f is the first exoplanet discovered that is both the right size and distance from its own sun, making it the best candidate for supporting life so far. That's exciting news. The size of Kepler-186f, which is within 10% of Earth's, is particularly encouraging. Although scientists don't have direct evidence of the planet's composition, observations and models of other exoplanets suggest that planets similar in dimensions to the Earth are most likely to have a rocky composition. This can be seen with similar planets within our own system such a Venus or Mars. We've actually found exoplanets in habitable zones that are as small as 1.5 times the size of Earth before, but the models predict that the chances of a rocky planet increase significantly the closer you get to the Earth's size, making Kepler-186f the most exciting exoplanet discovery to date. What's next? Right size, right distance. Great news, but these characteristics alone don't guarantee that a planet is habitable. There's other crucial information that we need before we can be confident in launching future space-probes on long journeys to strange star systems in search of life. One of the most important things that we need to know is what the atmospheres of exoplanets such as Kepler-186f are composed of. The atmosphere plays a crucial role in habitability in many ways such as protecting the surface from solar radiation, and by regulating the planet's temperature. Its significance can be seen in a planet like Venus, which is a similar size to Earth and orbits within the habitable zone, but has a greenhouse-filled atmosphere that renders it far too hot to support life. So how can we find out more about the atmosphere of exoplanets? Well, in 2018 we're sending an exciting new telescope into space that can do just that. It's called the James Webb Space Telescope, and its mirrors are an impressive 7 times larger than those of the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope will help decode planetary atmosphere by observing changes in light when a planet passes in front of a star. When this happens, the light changes because certain wavelengths are absorbed by the chemicals in an exoplanet's atmosphere. The gaps that appear in the spectra of the star's light are therefore a cosmic fingerprint that can reveal just what the atmosphere is made of. Because this absorption effect isn't particularly strong, it will take a powerful telescope capable of seeing in infrared like the James Webb to observe them. So does this mean that we can confirm that Kepler-186f is actually habitable soon? Sadly that seems unlikely, even with the James Webb. The Kepler-186 system is 500 light-years from Earth. This means that the light from its star is too dim to gather the detailed light signatures needed to decipher further details about the exoplanet. But we're sending up another piece of high tech space equipment that could help. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will be launched in 2017 to conduct an all-sky survey to find exoplanets in our solar neighborhood. The stars that TESS will scan are 30 to 100 times brighter than those surveyed by the Kepler satellite, so we'll be able to quickly learn more about an exoplanet's composition soon after it's first discovered. With its wide-field cameras, TESS will cover an area of the sky 400 times larger than Kepler. Because Kepler has shown that Earth-sized planets are relatively common, it's expected that Kepler-186f is just the tip of the iceberg, and we'll soon find hundreds more similarly sized planets orbiting the habitable zones of stars. Future space missions will allow us to find out a lot more about these planets than just their locations, and may even help us to directly detect the bio-signatures of life, such as the presence of water, oxygen, or even photosynthesis, on other planets. And just like that, our place in the universe may suddenly appear to be little less lonely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghostsof1915 Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 That's assuming you'd be traveling at the speed of light, which as far as we understand at this moment in time, is impossible for us. No, but according to Carl Sagan we could get to 1/10th the speed of light right now, if we used fission powered starships. We develop fusion, 6/10th's is theoretically possible (or maybe better). So say 700 to 5000 years each way. Why are we not building starships? Because we are too busy fighting each other for our little piece of turf. As they say in "The Warriors", "That's crap brothers..." As the saying goes "The surest sign of intelligent life is they haven't contacted us.". Then again how many machines do we build that lasts even 100 years? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gumballthechewy Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Well, Earth and us are aliens in the eyes of people on other planets but we're not that scary are we? Humans are pretty damn scary. If I was an alien I wouldn't want to meet a human. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theminister Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 That's assuming you'd be traveling at the speed of light, which as far as we understand at this moment in time, is impossible for us. We shouldn't worry about what is possible for us at the present. That factor could change very quickly. In 100 years we've gone from Kittyhawk to having rovers on Mars and a network of satellites surrounding our planet that allow us to do virtually anything. 50 years from now it will be a completely different ballgame with probabilities of largely increased lifespans. IMO, the idea of 'travelling' 500 light years is a mistake. 'Traversing' 500 light years is our objective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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