SO earthlike planets might be common eh

this is good news that earthlike planets are common its fairly impossible that theirs no other habitable planets out their i still cant get it around my head that theirs people still on earth who still think were alone in the universe perhaps multiverse i hate it wen people say theirs no life in the universe because the bible doesnt mention it then i reply yeh and im batman/bruce wayne

Originally posted by Wirral Bagpuss
Cover ups and political who haaa's aside i think the news that Earth like planets are common is good news. We urgently need to find a planet as we are doing an excellne tjob of wrecking the one we live on now. Humanity needs to expand and leave the nest so to speak. SO the sooner offical conformation of an Earth like planet is discovered the better.

Agent smith:I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.

That article is about scientists running simulations. It's pure speculation. At the end of the day, Hot Jupiter systems are nothing like our own, and are therefore less likely to harbour small rocky planets like Earth. If anything, the study of extra-solar planets suggests systems like our own are not the norm. Of course, we need better data before a conclusion can be reached.

Originally posted by rizla
That article is about scientists running simulations. It's pure speculation. At the end of the day, Hot Jupiter systems are nothing like our own, and are therefore less likely to harbour small rocky planets like Earth. If anything, the study of extra-solar planets suggests systems like our own are not the norm. Of course, we need better data before a conclusion can be reached.

Yes, it's speculation, but it's speculation based on educated guesswork and a lot of observations. It's a close as we're going to get without actually visiting the places themselves. You are correct in summising that systems with Hot Jupiters are nothing like our own and in all probability preclude the formation of terrestrial planets as a whole. However, they don't have enough examples of the systems to be able to say definitively anything about our own solar system, or even those types of systems in general. What the study of extra solar planets has shown is that only 5% of all Sun like stars has planets of the Hot Jupiter type. Most Sun like stars don't have a Hot Jupiter....... they know this from radial motion studies. To find a system like ours takes quite some time, considering that Jupiter orbits the Sun in a roughly 12 year orbit. To accurately measure the radial velocity changes in a star with a Jupiter like planet in orbit usually takes 1-3 complete orbits......so it could take anywhere from 12-36 years of observations to discover a planetary configuration much like ours. That's using present technology. They haven't been observing most systems for that long. Hot Jupiters are only noticeable because of their short orbital periods and large radial velocity variations, that's all.

Consider this....... 4% of all the stars in the Galaxy are G class stars like the Sun. That's 16 billion stars. Take out those that are giants and the minority of those in multiple systems which are not dynamically stable for planets (most multiple systems are in very wide separations between the stars) and you have about 12 billion left. 70% of those G class stars are older than the Sun, and the majority of those were born between 10-8.5 billion years ago. That's 8.4 billion stars of G class older than the Sun. Given what they know about the formation of planets, pretty much all of them should have at least 1 Earth like planet. Let's say 80% of them developed, through evolution, an advanced, technologically capable species, and then 95% of them survived the "idiot stage" (that we're in at present). That leaves around 6.4 billion civilisations, in this Galaxy alone, that would make us look like silly little children. They would have anywhere from (if evolution on their world was similar in length as on ours) 5.6 to 4 billion years ahead of us for the majority of them and from our stage to 4 billion years ahead of us for the rest.

And this is just with G class stars, alone.

We haven't even considered the F class stars of suitable size (those between F5 and F9).....another 6 billion stars. Or the K class stars.....another 50 billion. Or even those of M class that could harbour Earth like planets, which they now believe is likely and could number upto 100 billion stars (out of a total of ~ 320 billion M class stars).

So, chances are, we're surrounded by alien beings who are for the most part very much our seniors. It would more than likely only be those civilisation closest to us in technology (say between 100-1000000 years) that would probably have an interest in visiting us on a regular basis. Those old civilisations would for all intents and purposes be God-like in their technological and social/evolutionary state......they'd know about us, but probably don't need to visit us to know how we're getting along.

Originally posted by GhostITM
So, chances are, we're surrounded by alien beings who are for the most part very much our seniors.

Nice data. But with so many alien beings all around us, one would expect a few conspicuos beacons to be lying around and easy to pick up. If they are out there, they don't appear to be talking.

Originally posted by rizla

Originally posted by GhostITM
So, chances are, we're surrounded by alien beings who are for the most part very much our seniors.

Nice data. But with so many alien beings all around us, one would expect a few conspicuos beacons to be lying around and easy to pick up. If they are out there, they don't appear to be talking.

That would only apply to races whose development closely followed our own...... remember we've had radio for only about 100 years, so even with this technology we're still in our infancy. However it would be more than likely that the aliens would employ technology that we have no idea about and cannot detect, so any beacon that maybe out there would just as well be completely silent, to us, as it would be undetectable. Even a race only a few hundred years ahead of us would have technology we can't even imagine. That's one of the big problems that SETI has, although it's still worthwhile to look. You never know what you may find.