One Hundred Billion Planets like Earth....in our galaxy alone.

[Stuart G]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7891132.stm


Hit the above link to see the story.
Now about the the aliens on those planets.
.....yes they are there.
But why would they want to visit us?

[Poll_Blind]

1. We need to track down which ones we can borrow money from, stat! n/t

PB

[Stuart G]

3. What kind of collateral can we offer? nt

[NMDemDist2]

14. ROFL

ahhhh, it's posts like yours that make me miss the DUzies, I'd be all over sending this link

:rofl:

[NutmegYankee]

2. Exactly.

Intelligent life would look at us and go, "damn - they're fucked!"

[ulysses]

4. possibly thousands of intelligent civilizations out there,

and we're the one that invents talk radio. Jeez.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. They'd probably only want to visit planets with intelligent life forms.

Alas, given our short and bloody history, we've probably been disqualified from consideration.

[Stuart G]

6. Maybe as a reminder of how bad we are...they left us...

Rush Limbaugh..:bounce: :bounce:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. The ultimate booby prize.

[MrPerson]

13. We haven't even got a PanGalactic Gargle Blaster.

[Hubert Flottz]

7. Do they need some republicans to eat?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. the aliens are already here

here's one!

[wuushew]

9. Discovery of extraterrestrial life would really piss off organized religion

Might not be in good way though, that guy in Contact was dangerously crazed.

[Avalux]

15. If there was irrefutable proof of intelligent life on other planets -

and/or that they had visited Earth, it would cause a crisis of gigantic proportion among Christians; especially those who take the bible literally. Other religions would have issues too. People would go crazy.

[Ikonoklast]

19. Not the Rastafarians.

Or the Pastafarians, either.

[Avalux]

22. ROFL!

Very Nice! :toast:

[Uben]

10. We need to find one that's peaceful.......

...and send Bush and Cheney there! They wouldn't know what to do!

[zagging]

11. Great, and I got stuck on this one.

I wonder if one of them needs an interstellar H1-B?

[stevedeshazer]

16. Do they have oil?

:evilgrin:

[MineralMan]

17. They won't visit...

Like us, they're all arguing about whether or not there is intelligent life on other planets. Besides, Xhnnr, only son of Rwnw, is enough for them, or should be. What need to go to other planets, since the end is coming soon, and they'll be taken up in the Rapture?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

18. Why Wouldn't They?

It is common wisdom that any civilization intelligent enough to do so would have the desire to learn and explore. Of course they would study us if they could.

[Bigmack]

20. Hell.. Sagan told me that years ago....

"Billions and Billions"...

I miss you, Carl.

[remoulade]

21. To Serve Man

:evilgrin:

[Peace Patriot]

23. Was he talking about Republicans?

"Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7891132.stm

[kestrel91316]

24. Oh, goody! Let's go plunder and ruin them, too!!!

[snappyturtle]

25. Shhhhh! I wonder what the creationists would say about this? nt

[sutz12]

26. Hmmmmm.....I thought Klaatu said they were scarce....

;)

[cobalt1999]

27. Intelligent life is probably rare though and like flashbulbs in a stadium

Short lived so at any one point in time, few exist.

They definitely aren't visiting Earth and probing our anuses.

[JVS]

29. "They definitely aren't visiting Earth and probing our anuses."

They could just be super advanced but also morally degenerate.

"Hey Bralix, what do you want to do this evening?"

"The usual, let's go find some other life forms and stick stuff in their asses"

[cobalt1999]

31. Now that's scary. Advanced AND morally degenerate.

"The usual, let's go find some other life forms and stick stuff in their asses" :rofl:

[Arugula Latte]

28. Okay. My mind is officially blown now.

:hippie:

[lumberjack_jeff]

30. My favorite kind of science. "Wishful-thinking-as-theory."

So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System.

Very few of these would be capable of supporting life, however. Most are gas giants like our Jupiter; and many orbit so close to their parent stars that any microbes would have to survive roasting temperatures.

But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one "Earth-like" planet.

This simple calculation means there would be huge numbers capable of supporting life.

My bedroom contains pillows and dirty laundry and dozens of dust bunnies. Simply taking a calculation from these observations yield the estimate that my room contains.a million dollars. The fact that I've never found a single dollar is irrelevant... I'm just not looking carefully enough.

"Every star has an earthlike planet"? Riiight.

[Evoman]

32. "Every SUN-LIKE star has on ON AVERAGE on Earthlike planet"

Not that I necesssarily disagree with you, just pointing out bad quote.

[Peace Patriot]

33. Well, there was one point missing from these statements, and it is that giant

gaseous planets are the easiest to detect, so the high number of gaseous planets in the 300 that scientists have so far detected is not an accurate gauge of the number of rocky, earth-like planets that may exist in the galaxy. I don't know how this current stat was calculated (approx. 1 per solar system) but I think we can be sure that it wasn't a mere guess (or, as you say, "wishful thinking"). I believe it was at least partly based on the surprising number of planets detected, as soon as scientists had the technology to detect them. I think scientists were rather flabbergasted by it--finding more planets wherever they looked--as they were by the number of moons and rings in our solar system, and, above all, by the properties of some of the moons (such as volcanoes).

I don't know why you're so skeptical. And your analogy isn't a very good one. If you found $300 in your room, say, hidden under a floorboard, wouldn't you be inclined to rip the place apart looking for more--especially if you had reason to believe that bank robbers had stashed a big heist there? These scientists are not talking about dust bunnies being extrapolated into a million dollars. They are talking 300 known planets being extrapolated into many more planets.

[JHB]

35. It isn't about skepticism, it's about lousy science articles

The whole thrust of the article was to highlight one potential result of research that hasn't happened yet. As one person above pointed out, there's very little in that article that wasn't made widely known years ago by Carl Sagan and others. Even if advances over the last decade let us refine the Drake equation more than Sagan would have dreamed possible so soon, there are still so many unknowns that the sort of breathless speculation about the number of earth-like planets in the article is grossly premature.

For at least the last few decades planetary science has advanced in fits and spurts: people hit the limit of what can actually be observed, and start speculating on details beyond that, like reaching for something that's just out of your reach and you're just scraping it with your fingertips. Then BANG, there's some advance: a new technique, a new technology, maybe a probe we've sent has arrived, and there's a flood of new useful data. The things that used to be speculated about drop away because we now are in a position to know, and the frontier of speculation is pushed to the edge of whatever the advance was.

What we've thought about Mars, about Jupiter and its moons, about all the outer planets, and now other solar systems, has followed this pattern. So before we write headlines about how many earth-like planets there are in the galaxy, now that we're hitting the edge of being able to detect them, hows about we wait for some of the data to come in and report about what we're actually finding, not just one potential outcome.

[lumberjack_jeff]

38. But I haven't found any "dollars"

I have no doubt that the galaxy contains many rocky planets, and I suspect that in time, astronomers will be able to detect them. I also don't doubt that many of those are within liquid water range. Some of those are probably orbiting stars which are large enough that the planets are not tide-locked.

To predict that there are as many "earth-like" planets as there are stars is the worst kind of wild-ass guess.

[AnnieBW]

34. Can we send the Repukes there?

Of course, they'd be much more at home on Uranus.

[Blue_Tires]

36. so DC Comics was right all along!

[conscious evolution]

37. They visit cause they like to laugh

If I were an alien I know I would laugh at us.