Galaxy Has "Billions of Earths"

Galaxy has "Billions of Earths"

news.bbc.co.uk

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard...

[snip]

..."Not only are they probably habitable but they probably are also going to be inhabited," Dr Boss told BBC News. "But I think that most likely the nearby 'Earths' are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago." That means bacterial lifeforms.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Despite all the ecomomic and political news that is so troubling these days, the cosmos moves on, little preoccupied with our woes.

It's good to keep a sense of perspective when all around us people are losing their heads...

May all lifeforms in the cosmos enjoy a peacful existence and as little suffering as possible.


[edit on 15-2-2009 by silent thunder]

Edit: sorry, double post.

[edit on 15-2-2009 by silent thunder]

That's not a double post. Usually your comments appear in the following post.

Please review the Instructions for the Breaking News Forums.

reply to post by silent thunder

"But I think that most likely the nearby 'Earths' are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago." That means bacterial lifeforms.

I really don't get it. One the one hand these guys always saying “yeah there may be life - but only bacterial or microscopic or something.

Are they too scared to say, “well there could be beings there more advanced than us - or there may be creatures similar to dinosaurs”??

It always seems they are trying to down play any life that may exist in the universe - and that really gives me the Jimmy Smitts!!

reply to post by WatchNLearn


Well simple life has existed on Earth for billions of years whereas more complex life has only been around for a few hundred million. Going by that evidence it is far more likely that most extraterrestrial life is going to be bacterial.

But isn’t this just another interpretation of the Drake equation, or a part thereof? As far as I’m aware no new information has come to light that would allow for a serious probability to be calculated. We only have one sample to go by and no real idea of how typical our planet is in terms of the development of life.

However the, so far, lack of life on Mars would at least make the probability 50/50.

reply to post by WatchNLearn


Because of the sheer number of worlds out there what they are saying is that the majority of them would have only evolved to a very primitive type of life.

Even if only a small percent evolved like earth then that still leaves millions and millions of worlds with sentient beings most likely with the universal 5 branch bodies and brains. (head, arms, legs)

[edit on 16-2-2009 by Wormwood Squirm]

I am encouraged to hear about other possible life on distant earth-like planets. And I really hope some of them are more intelligent than humans. Not by a lot, just enough to live without greed, pride, lust, envy, glutton, sloth, and wrath!

Originally posted by WatchNLearn
reply to post by silent thunder

 

"But I think that most likely the nearby 'Earths' are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago." That means bacterial lifeforms.

I really don't get it. One the one hand these guys always saying “yeah there may be life - but only bacterial or microscopic or something.

Are they too scared to say, “well there could be beings there more advanced than us - or there may be creatures similar to dinosaurs”??

It always seems they are trying to down play any life that may exist in the universe - and that really gives me the Jimmy Smitts!!

my thoughts exactly when i heard this guy on the radio....they are scared of saying anything else....

but..do they think we are stupid?

This just sounds like a guess to me. It doesn't sound any better than saying "yeah, I think there are probably a gazillion Earth-like planets in the universe."

However, I too do think that the number of planets out there inhabited with life (both intelligent and non-intelligent) may be a very large number. The best way to confirm this is to find out what's causing those methane gases on Mars and to explore the outer moons in our solar system such as Callisto, Europa, Titan, etc. There is a very good possibility that these natural satellites have microbial life. And if does turn out to be true that life exists on more than one planet (or moon) in this solar system, then suddenly the likelihood of life outside of our solar system just increased ten fold.

reply to post by Mike_A


But we don't really know how old the universe really is. It could be hundreds of billions of years old instead of the 13-14 billion they think it is. In which case civilizations more advanced than us could have evolved and died out long ago as well as exist now. We just don't know for sure.

I think there probably is many earth like planets with life in all stages of advancement. Like on Star Trek, sometimes they are more advanced than us, sometimes less, sometimes equal.

"But I think that most likely the nearby 'Earths' are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago." That means bacterial lifeforms.

reply to post by silent thunder


No reason to believe what he said! Earth is 4.5 billion years old. The alledged Big Bang was 13.5 billion years ago. There are billions of stars in the Milky Way (our) galaxy, probably most stars have planetary systems, the Universe has billions of galaxies like ours and there is evidence that there are universes outside of ours (that is more than one). And if there is more than one, why couldn't there be billions more way out there.

13.5 divided by 4.5 years says that the earlier solar systems in our galaxy had 3 times more time than Earth to develope intelligent life. Why would they have just bacteria? That is completely illogical! The obvious assumption is that they would have intelligent life 3 times more advanced and intelligent the we are except that of course advancement occurs exponentially sort of like the computer chip. So those guys out there must be really, really smart! Even smarter than Einstein who thought that light speed was the limit to space travel!

Go figure!

There are some significant implications not considered in the BBC article!

This topic has already been posted:

Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'.

Please continue discussion in the above-linked thread, and please read the section about repeat topics in this link.
Closed.