Roddenberry hit it dead-on!

lukep

lukep

He Hath Arisen
Sep 18, 2010
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Very cool space news today.

Ever since the first discovery of an exoplanet, we've only been able to detect the giant gasballs like jupiter and larger. Many astronomers predicted that rocky planets like Earth were very rare in our galaxy.

Well the Kepler team's first results are fully in today, and they basically said "Um, you got that backwards..."

Small planets like Earth are much more prevalent than Jupiter-sized worlds and that multiple-planet systems are common.
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...in one small neighborhood of the Milky Way registered more than 1,200 candidates, including 54 residing in life-friendly orbits around their parent stars.
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Shit just got serious.

You guys remember the Drake equation? I bet if we plug this new data into it we'll have something like 10 million Alien Civilizations in the milky way!

Time to revisit NASA's budget... ;)

Anyway, I wish Gene Roddenberry had lived to see this. -Awesome validation for his life's work.
 


I keep hearing cool space related news like this, but I'm in no way smart enough to figure out when we will actually be able to go out and talk to these folk.

So get rid of my curiosity -
In my lifetime or not? Because if not then I don't care :D
 
NicheSpotter said:
I keep hearing cool space related news like this, but I'm in no way smart enough to figure out when we will actually be able to go out and talk to these folk.

So get rid of my curiosity -
In my lifetime or not? Because if not then I don't care :D
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Not... At least not the Americans. Politics will forever get in our way of giving Space a big enough budget.

Now the Chinese... They may make allies with some little green dudes before we die... And then we'd likely die as a food source for said green dudes.
 
The only aliens our government is interested in reaching out are the illegal ones, they continually gut NASA for BS entitlement spending.

Its a shame to see so much in NASA derailed by constant political issues.
 
The only thing I don't like is the phrase "life-friendly". Who says all life has to be on a rock with water and C-H-O based organisms? Maybe there's some sort of arsenic based lifeform out there.

Oh wait, there is.
Discovery of "Arsenic-bug" Expands Definition of Life - NASA Science

In my opinion, anywhere there's chemical reactions going on, there's a chance of a molecule figuring out how to replicate itself, with occasional replication errors, thus potentially leading to life and evolution.

A distant possibility... but still one nonetheless. Doesn't need to be on a rock planet.
 
Berto said:
The only thing I don't like is the phrase "life-friendly". Who says all life has to be on a rock with water and C-H-O based organisms? Maybe there's some sort of arsenic based lifeform out there.

...In my opinion, anywhere there's chemical reactions going on, there's a chance of a molecule figuring out how to replicate itself, with occasional replication errors, thus potentially leading to life and evolution.
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I think by 'life friendly' they specifically mean warm enough for liquid water (and chemical reactions) to exist but cold enough for it not to evaporate into space. This "Goldilocks Zone" is specific to each star, but for us it's between the Asteroid Belt and this side of Mercury.

As for it being on a rock, I'm sure they'd also consider a water world but Gassy worlds like jupiter in the habitable zone are simply out of consideration because there's nothing to stand on. -The "surface" of the planet is way down deep in billions of tons of pressure, effectively killing everything, even microbial.
 
I don't understand why space junkies ignore the staggering realities of extraterrestrial travel, or those of maintaining communications on any meaningful level over interstellar distances. The sociopolitical ramifications of the idea of a culture actually capable of getting their heads and wallets around the science are also a big stumbling block that no one in the scifi wonderland ever wants to consider.

Not in your lifetime, NS. Not in your grandkids' grandkids' grandkids' lifetimes. There are almost certainly a handful of interstellar-capabale civilisations out there. And if they're relatively new at it, maybe they're still doing it. But there is simply zero economic, scientific or cultural reason for them to acknowledge our existence, let alone have some kind of dialogue. We're at a relative technological level roughly on par with the odd chimpanzee who has figured out how to use a stick to dig grubs out of bark -- novel and perhaps romantic to ponder our possibilities as a species, but not much more than that.


Frank
 
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Berto said:
The only thing I don't like is the phrase "life-friendly". Who says all life has to be on a rock with water and C-H-O based organisms? Maybe there's some sort of arsenic based lifeform out there.
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I think biologists think that Ammonium based life is the next most likely form of life to occur on other planets besides water based life.
 
fm1234 said:
Not in your lifetime, NS. Not in your grandkids' grandkids' grandkids' lifetimes. There are almost certainly a handful of interstellar-capabale civilisations out there. And if they're relatively new at it, maybe they're still doing it. But there is simply zero economic, scientific or cultural reason for them to acknowledge our existence, let alone have some kind of dialogue. We're at a relative technological level roughly on par with the odd chimpanzee who has figured out how to use a stick to dig grubs out of bark -- novel and perhaps romantic to ponder our possibilities as a species, but not much more than that.

Frank
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I would agree with this totally, if and only if, there was some evolutionary advantage to all races turning out benevolent. Sadly, logic would dictate that many races would turn out more warlike than this, especially if there is a limited resource that we have and they want.

I'm not saying let's get prepared for an ID4-type invasion, but to assume that all alien Civs would ignore us for our quaintness seems naive of the fact that we may be:

1. Tasty.
2. Able to provide great slave labor.
3. Sitting on some resource they find hard to source elsewhere.
4. Entertaining.
5. Extremely different, and therefore interesting, from them.
6. Not too badly polluted.
7. Sitting on the last cheap Real Estate.
8. Something else I haven't thought of.

Also, consider the fact that we may be the 1st ET race that some fledgling alien race may come across... They may not have communicated with anyone else out there yet and we are as interesting as they are to us. (Again, because we're different.)

So under the circumstances, I say the odds are pretty low that they'd leave us alone. A bigger piece of that pie says they'll invade.
 
I saw this today and thought it was awesome news, but then I got sad that our space program is totally dead. We will never see anything space related in our lifetime.
 
lukep said:
Not... At least not the Americans. Politics will forever get in our way of giving Space a big enough budget.

Now the Chinese... They may make allies with some little green dudes before we die... And then we'd likely die as a food source for said green dudes.
Click to expand...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIufLRpJYnI]YouTube - "It's a Cookbook!" Ahah... I get it![/ame]
 
BeerNuts said:
I saw this today and thought it was awesome news, but then I got sad that our space program is totally dead. We will never see anything space related in our lifetime.
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Well perhaps we're being too hard on Obama's plan. (In before Hellblazer!)

What's he's effectively done is spurred the private sector to go to space instead of spending as a nation. I figure once we've got some space hotels and a little moon mining, we could step foot on mars as a species by 2035 or so. -For mining reasons though, corporations don't "explore" as well.
 
lukep said:
Well perhaps we're being too hard on Obama's plan. (In before Hellblazer!)

What's he's effectively done is spurred the private sector to go to space instead of spending as a nation. I figure once we've got some space hotels and a little moon mining, we could step foot on mars as a species by 2035 or so. -For mining reasons though, corporations don't "explore" as well.
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You know I have thought about this also. But really corporations are only interested in profit. The only profit that we currently know of in space is tourism. There just isn't the money in tourism to bother with to much, there are way to many ways to make money here on earth that there is no need to even think of space.

We have the same problem with the ocean, NOAA says we have only explored less than 5% of the ocean. No one cares, no one ever will. Especially now a days, long gone are the dreams of moon bases and underwater cities.
 
BeerNuts said:
There just isn't the money in tourism to bother with to much, there are way to many ways to make money here on earth that there is no need to even think of space.
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Yeah, we need a way to make Mining the moon (presumably for helium 3) profitable, and while we're there, sell real estate.

It would be the shiznit to go for a vacation on the moon... Perhaps a week in low gravity at a time... Even if they can't make grand palaces there yet; surely some resort & casino is going to put up one before too long for all of the space tourists to come and stay/play at.
 
BeerNuts said:
You know I have thought about this also. But really corporations are only interested in profit. The only profit that we currently know of in space is tourism. There just isn't the money in tourism to bother with to much, there are way to many ways to make money here on earth that there is no need to even think of space.
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NASA launches satellites and also does research in space for private companies. One story I remember had to do with a perfume company.

The astronauts and shuttle could have logos all over them like in racing. How much would MTV pay to have Jersey Shore goes to Space? There's lot of possibilities. Also, much money gets donated to various things without interest in profits - sports, museums, theaters, scholarships, etc. But no, there won't be a moon base anytime soon.
 
BeerNuts said:
I saw this today and thought it was awesome news, but then I got sad that our space program is totally dead. We will never see anything space related in our lifetime.
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MANNED space program and exploratory space program dead, yes. We'll be back up there soon enough with privatization, but until then, we will be on Russian rockets.

But to say our space program is dead is pure ignorance and I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to broadly generalize it like that. The next major war is going to have major implications in space. Whoever can preserve their satellites and destroy everyone else's will have an extremely big upper hand. And they know this and are preparing for it more than you could imagine.
 
Berto said:
The next major war is going to have major implications in space. Whoever can preserve their satellites and destroy everyone else's will have an extremely big upper hand. And they know this and are preparing for it more than you could imagine.
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Ah, I was wondering if this thread would get over to military space tech.

It was long clear that China blew up the first orbiting satellite with a missle, but we got one too, just to flip the finger back at China. I found it hilarious that we made up the excuse that the satellite we were downing had a "Hydrazine leak," and that was why we had to shoot it down... So Hydrazine wouldn't fall on us and poison us from orbit!

-Hydrazine is basically ammonia. You may not want to drink a few gallons of ammonia, but feel free to drop them at me from outer space all day long. And twice on Saturdays. ;)

Why couldn't the US Military just say to China: "You're not the only ones, Bucko!"
 
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