There Might Be 100 Million Planets In Our Galaxy With Complex Life

a reply to: JadeStar

Is it possible that the term "M-Class planets" came BEFORE Star Trek...art imitating life?

I'll look into that one for you...

...wait, I found it! The letters (including "M") were used well before Star Trek - for almost a century - to classify stars, not planets.

Yes, art does imitate life. Actually, if art imitates life...what kind of art would we hope to find on other planets??

Can't wait!

Are there classification of planets using letters?

And then the question that we began to gain reason to ask in the 90's..... "Where are they? , or perhaps, " What happened to them?" . I think that intelligent life exists today or existed in the past is a given but unless the stories of 'gods' in the various religious text are all or mostly true one really has to wonder where they are... The relative silence in our local area then basically proves that FTL travel is either impossible or impractical ( too dangerous or too expensive) or that sentience is a very dangerous thing indeed and intelligent life/species have a very limited shelf life!

Either way we know have more questions than we had a century ago and most of them are even more interesting than the one's they replaced....

Thanks for this wonderful researched and well laid out thread Jade; good threads takes effort&intelligence which probably explains why they are such rare finds.

Stellar

originally posted by: MysterX

originally posted by: ausername
All of those potentially habitable worlds out there and not one within our reach.

Good thing too... For the inhabitants of those worlds.

Perhaps not within OUR reach no...but given the figures, probability would be very high that they are well within the reach of the most advanced among the species out there.

The 100 Million figure is still fairly arbitrary, even if it isn't a guess as such. It could be a LOT more than that, or a LOT less too, but even taken down to absurdly low figures, say 500,000 planets with intelligent life...we have to remember that these 500,000 worlds would certainly not have developed all at once.

They would be spread apart not only by distance, but also by time - developmental time.

We can begin to understand the impact this has if we're asking the logical questions about ET species having visited Earth in the past or on an ongoing basis.

Even if we make wild assumptions about developmental differences among these 500,000 intelligent species, such as saying each species is only separated in major technological achievements by an arbitrary 10 years.

e.g. Radio is discovered by species 1, then also independently discovered by species 2 10 years later, then by species 3 another ten years later, and species 4 10 years after that and so on.

That means a developmental time difference between species 1 discovering radio, and species 500,000 discovering it of 5 Million years.

If we on Earth are somewhere in the middle, technologicaly speaking...species 1 would have discovered radio around 2,500,000 years ago from our perspective.

Can you imagine what species 1 might have been discovering and working on, when we were hunter gatherers?

I can.

Imagine what we could do technologicaly, if we have a head start on a species on just 100,000 years never mind 2.5 Million years.

These are all arbitrary figures of course and will no doubt be completely different in reality, but the principle is sound and is certainly going to hold true. There are going to be 100s of 1000's, perhaps millions of species in our Galaxy alone that are up to millions of years ahead of us.

That kind of advancement is unimaginable to us, it would not be godlike, it would be so far beyond that as to be incomprehensible to us (although i'd personally welcome the opportunity to experience such technology if it ever presented to me).

Now...scale these numbers up to the estimated 100 Million planets reported by Jadestar, and increase the developmental time differences from species 1 to species 250,000 (us for example) by 200 X...from our perspective, the hypothetical species 1 could have been discovering radio 500 Million years ago.

The arguments over what some ET species could and couldn't do or where they could or couldn't visit because we ourselves cannot yet achieve the same becomes completely ridiculous when we think of how different and far apart chronologically we are sure to be.

If we are still here and progress technologically in a linear path..where do you imagine we would be and what we could do in 10,000 years, never mind much longer?

Have you ever considered the possibility that we are the most advanced beings in our galaxy?

What if we one day seek out new civilizations and boldly go where no one has gone before only to find very primitive beings?

a reply to: JadeStar

Complex life does not automatically presume intelligence.

WE are proof of that.

a reply to: JadeStar

While I personally agree with you, and I feel there almost certainly is a lot of life in the galaxy, and probably a lot of complex life, a part of me still wonders if we know enough to fill in a value for fl.

I still think that the value we assign to fl can't be anything more than a wild guess until we learn more about how life began here on Earth. We still don't know enough about what sparked life, or what exactly was the tipping point between "non life" and "life...

...i.e., what was the first thing that was considered "alive", and what was the thing that immediately came before it that was not "alive". What event or series of events occurred that tipped the scales for that non-living group of molecules to develop into something that we would recognize as life.

Like I said, I personally think that life probably is relatively ubiquitous in the galaxy, and I think even complex life may be relatively common, so hopefully nobody will reply with attempts to convince me of such by talking about the shear size of the universe; I don't need convincing. However, what I think is irrelevant, and I could be wrong.

It seems that before we can set a real value for fl that I am comfortable with (other than my simple "belief", which is not at all meaningful when we get right down to it) we need to understand how OUR life began -- and we don't.

originally posted by: nerbot
a reply to: JadeStar

Complex life does not automatically presume intelligence.

WE are proof of that.

Truthfully, I suspect that most (as in nearly all) planets have microbial or African savannah levels of life, but not truly intelligent life (as in intelligent enough to modify their planet).

I suspect that our 'equals' are extremely rare, but most likely more intelligent (by a mile) than us!

Intelligence is not a biological imperative, it's a fluke. Of the billion or so species that have lived on our planet only one has reached that accolade - hinting that it's rare, not common. If we project that figure to alien worlds, most will not develop intelligent life.

Intelligence will be the exception, not the rule.

a reply to: JadeStar

As Stanton Friedman articulates so well here:

www.stantonfriedman.com...

and here:

www.stantonfriedman.com...

The Drake equation is a FARCE from the git-go.

It PRETENDS that there are KNOWN values to plug in for the list of key variables.

When, actually, virtually none of the critical variables are KNOWN AT ALL. ZIP, NADA, ZILCH.

It is ALL 100% PROPAGANDA, FANTASY, BELIEF, RELIGIOUS DOGMA hanging on ephemeral "sky hooks" of the most empty sort.

However, since it flatters the fantasies of the acolytes, priests, high priests and bishops of the RELIGION OF SCIENTISM,

folks keep waxing all prosaic and gah-gah thrilled-like about the 'new discoveries' . . . i.e. new planets . . . with the purported "Goldilocks zone."

While actually, there's not one shred of remotely solid evidence whatsoever that any such zones on any distant orbs have produced anything remotely resembling life.

Yet the same folks who rant with such seething hostility against the Christians, creationists, Intelligent Design and UFO believing groups . . .

suddenly do a mental gymnastics flip-flop and pretend that IN THIS CASE, the "evidence" is convincing . . . when it is FAR WORSE; far more NONEXISTENT; far more silly; far more sheer fantasy than any of the evidence the Christians, creationists, ID and UFO groups can point to.

However, . . . . propaganda . . . control of the media . . . GROUP THINK; IN-GROUP vs OUT-GROUP dynamics all win the day to give the

ILLUSION that THIS TIME, their fantasies are truly the truest true truth.

Nonsense.

Well, we are still finding new "Alien" life on Earth almost every week. New deep sea species, new bacteria, new deep forest dwellers....amazing what could be out there.

What interests me as a lay person, is that these scientists are finding many "Dwarf Stars", the small red ones which seem to have small rocky planets around them.

Now, with my limited intelligence, my understanding is that Stars go thru a "Life" cycle, and specifically, our Sun is mid life. As our Sun ages and it consumes its hydrogen and then helium elements, it grows to a Huge size, and unfortunately consumes its smaller close orbit rocky planets and any life therein...eg Earth, Venus etc.

My understanding is that these stars, once they finish their cycle, reduce in size and become.........Red Dwarfs.

I presume, that in the action of growing to a huge size, and exiling great volumes of Cosmic/Heat rays etc.....that these stars would literally burn or blow the Gasses off the Gaseous Giant planets, thereby exposing their inner rocky core (if they have one, logical would say they do).

So......are all these Red Dwarf stars in our galaxy, ALREADY stars that have almost finished their life cycle, have already consumed their "Life" giving goldilocks, class M planets, and the current rocky planets orbiting them, are the dead left over of once huge gas planets??
Hence, they are a dead star system, with dead rocky planets...which may have moved closer in orbit due to the more dense mass Red Dwarf??

I dont think we should be looking for life in dead star systems, if indeed they can be considered that.

We should be looking at youngish (2-4 billion Earth years old), bright yellow/white stars, with a full complement of rocky and gas planets....just like ours.

Or have I the wrong end of the stick and am completely wrong.?

originally posted by: gort51
Well, we are still finding new "Alien" life on Earth almost every week. New deep sea species, new bacteria, new deep forest dwellers....amazing what could be out there.

Well, Earth has the advantage of being a place on which life began. Everything on Earth is most likely descended from that first life. So it may not necessarily be true to say "look how diverse life is here, so it must be everywhere in the universe". Technically, all life here may have come from one single source, one genesis.

Sure -- once life got a foothold, that life found a myriad of paces to live and took a myriad of forms here on earth. But all of that life that proliferated had the advantage of that first life starting in the first place.

Granted, I personally think that there probably is life elsewhere. However, life on Earth may have only started just once, and the genesis of life may still be quite rare. Don't let the proliferation of life on Earth since that genesis fool you into thinking that life MUST be common and easy thing that will just "happen".

Maybe it is, but maybe it isn't.

As a middle-aged guy, I look at the projections of 2030-2040 for confirming the existence that other "intelligent" life does, or did exist away from Earth... it's depressing. When I was 15 years old and listening to Dr. Sagan predict that in 30 to 40 years we'll have confirmation of SOME KIND of life, it was exciting. Now, I want THEM to contact US, and ASAP please.

But, what if it turns out that intelligent life doesn't just "form". What if it's "created" by God and he only made one set, which happens to be humans? How many hundred years would it take for us to come to this realization, I wonder?

It would be like the missing flight MH370 search...no debris, but tons of hope at first, which fades into puzzlement and frustration, which ultimately concludes with scientists literally throwing in the towel.
-cwm

originally posted by: gort51
Well, we are still finding new "Alien" life on Earth almost every week. New deep sea species, new bacteria, new deep forest dwellers....amazing what could be out there.

What interests me as a lay person, is that these scientists are finding many "Dwarf Stars", the small red ones which seem to have small rocky planets around them.

Now, with my limited intelligence, my understanding is that Stars go thru a "Life" cycle, and specifically, our Sun is mid life. As our Sun ages and it consumes its hydrogen and then helium elements, it grows to a Huge size, and unfortunately consumes its smaller close orbit rocky planets and any life therein...eg Earth, Venus etc.

My understanding is that these stars, once they finish their cycle, reduce in size and become.........Red Dwarfs.

I presume, that in the action of growing to a huge size, and exiling great volumes of Cosmic/Heat rays etc.....that these stars would literally burn or blow the Gasses off the Gaseous Giant planets, thereby exposing their inner rocky core (if they have one, logical would say they do).

So......are all these Red Dwarf stars in our galaxy, ALREADY stars that have almost finished their life cycle, have already consumed their "Life" giving goldilocks, class M planets, and the current rocky planets orbiting them, are the dead left over of once huge gas planets??
Hence, they are a dead star system, with dead rocky planets...which may have moved closer in orbit due to the more dense mass Red Dwarf??

I dont think we should be looking for life in dead star systems, if indeed they can be considered that.

We should be looking at youngish (2-4 billion Earth years old), bright yellow/white stars, with a full complement of rocky and gas planets....just like ours.

Or have I the wrong end of the stick and am completely wrong.?

You have it wrong. Red (M) and Orange (K) dwarfs are main sequence stars just as our Sun a yellow (G) dwarf is. They are not in their death stages. I think you are confusing Red Giants and White Dwarfs (Stars that are dying or have died) with Red Dwarfs.

H-R Diagrams - The diagonal band labelled "Main Sequence" is the normal life of a star - The "Giant" area at the upper right corner are dying stars.




Life Cycle of Stars of various sizes



The interesting thing about these lower mass stars is that they live LONG. They do or will have lifetimes billions of years beyond what are Sun will have. Hence, more time for some life to become advanced.



Red and Orange Dwarfs are also the most plentiful stars in the Galaxy making up over 80% of the stars in our Milky Way and most are older than our Sun and solar system.

Just remember that Mars and Venus are both within the habitual zone too. Earth could easily be snowball earth still, and so when I really think about complex life it is based on other factors too that are not included in the drake equation. Complex life also means very delicate life and it comes and goes rather easily, and that might be the key here in what planet can sustain complex life over a long period to allow evolution to work.

We do know something as small as not having our moon or replacing Jupiter with a small planet would prevent complex life on earth from evolving past very simple stages.

Great op! f+s

And I'm always thinking: what about all non-physical life on non-physical spheres, which we can't observe with our capability of seeing just 6% (or was it even 4%?) of the EM spectrum...

a reply to: JadeStar

I believe I read that binary stars are more common than singular stars, and a binary system would most likely not be very good for a stable evolutionary condition.

Also how would having a sun that gives off ultraviolet or infrared as the main light souse affect complex life...hmmmm

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

we need to understand how OUR life began -- and we don't.

With so many variables and possibilities for what caused 'us' and the myriad other life forms on this single planet of ours, we probably won't find the answer to that profound question here on Earth.

To discover how life is started, i have a feeling we will find the answers 'out there'.

We need to understand how THEIR life began to understand how ours did.

a reply to: Xtrozero

But don't forget, 'The habitat zone' or the so-called 'Goldilocks zone' is only suitable for life that resides on our world, and life with similar requirements...and even then, as we know the life here has a very broad range of habitats and requirements from freezing to boiling, from acidic to alkaline..in fact, Earth has some life that would do quite nicely on many other worlds that we consider hostile to Humans and most other species originating from Earth.

In other words, The Goldilocks zone is for life that has similar environmental requirements to ourselves..and is not applicable to life that would have different requirements.

With the amount of life that must be out there, it's a certainty there are going to be a portion who have similar environmental needs to ourselves and a portion that has completely different needs, who would then of course have their own version of a 'Goldilocks zone' different to ours.

originally posted by: MysterX
a reply to: Xtrozero

But don't forget, 'The habitat zone' or the so-called 'Goldilocks zone' is only suitable for life that resides on our world, and life with similar requirements...and even then, as we know the life here has a very broad range of habitats and requirements from freezing to boiling, from acidic to alkaline..in fact, Earth has some life that would do quite nicely on many other worlds that we consider hostile to Humans and most other species originating from Earth.

In other words, The Goldilocks zone is for life that has similar environmental requirements to ourselves..and is not applicable to life that would have different requirements.

With the amount of life that must be out there, it's a certainty there are going to be a portion who have similar environmental needs to ourselves and a portion that has completely different needs, who would then of course have their own version of a 'Goldilocks zone' different to ours.

When we talk advance life we can look to earth as an example. Is there life on a planet with methane seas? Maybe, but I would not think advance life much less some kind of civilization would be sailing the seas there. So far we have seen that advance life falls within a extremely narrow band even though life in general has been seen out farther from that band in both directions. We can look at the extreme life on our planet and see it doesn't get very far even though the rest of the planet is unrestricted.

These completely different life types right now are basically fictional, so the "what ifs" are great, but I'm really expecting that complex life follows somewhat of the same requirements we see on earth.

The whole habitual zone really comes down to whether water can be in a liquid form or not. Any life that doesn't need water would be extremely alien in nature, not saying it is not out there though.

a reply to: JadeStar

Good thread.

I think I just blame my stubbornness, while I believe it is well in the realm of possibility that there could be alien life on distant planets, but I refuse to believe people could put a number on it.

From the timeline I assume they could only put a number on it in about 26 years?

What will funding be like for 26 years to reach that point? Astronomical tax money for an astronomical find and even if we can circumvent the laws of physics to travel there, the "elite" will go there to fark it up anyway.

It is a cool story though.

"What a multitude of worlds! A new study suggests that the Milky Way could host 100 million planets with complex life, leaving no lack of choice for astronomers to look for organisms beyond Earth - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com..."

Why do they have no lack of choice but to look for organisms beyond earth? Can't they do something else on earth?

originally posted by: Rainbowresidue
a reply to: MysterX

Star for you!
How right you are!
We could achieve so much more even today if we weren't limited by rules etc. by TPTB. They have a reason for holding us back,I just haven't figured out yet completely what it is ... control perhaps? They already know of aliens visiting earth, and are gaining knowledge/ technology from them...

Anyways,one way or another we will be traveling/inspecting other stars and their planets in the future.
( Whatever will happen in history to cause TPBT to fall.)

That''s the next step,and it's inevitable.It's our destiny.
We've been building up to this for many decades.

To infinity and beyond!!!

If the "elite" can control the aliens the aliens are pretty useless, if the aliens are working with the "elite" then the longer we avoid them the better we will be off.