There are a ridiculous amount of Sun-like stars out there!

I mean, most of you probably already know this, and if not, download Google Earth, switch to sky, and really look around. Really zoom in. Look especially for "misty" areas (seems like higher resolution), and squares and rectangles (where the images were connecting to one another). Those are the best places to zoom. I don't even need to give coordinates... Just look around.
It seems to me that orange stars (like our sun) are a dime a dozen... There are so many of them.
I hope this isn't a stupid topic, but I just couldn't help myself.
There are everywhere. These stars are in perfect shape and age to accomodate life. And there are beyond millions of them in our galaxy alone.
And don't get me started on galaxies...
Find Andromeda. Find the center, and go down (best way I can put it). You should see a box that is on an angle with those "I's" that people use to add tags and info. Zoom in on that box and look at the galaxies... And the orange stars of course...
There is absolutely no way we can be alone.
Peace.

Edit for grammar, basically...

[edit on 3/14/2009 by impaired]

Microsoft Worldwide Telescope is much better as it contains multiple camera types, infrared, ultraviolet, etc, etc.

Try it out.

[edit]
But you are right, we are not alone, but until they bother to show up... we are I like looking at the Hubble Deep Field images as they show just how vast the universe is. And we are only able to see so little and science knows only so much. It's a shame we live in this time, would be exciting to be in a startrek reality.

[edit on 14/3/2009 by spitefulgod]

reply to post by impaired

The Sun is actually a yellow star (type G). There are thought to be over 500 of them (us?) within 100 light years.
www.solstation.com...

But it probably takes more than just the star for there to be life. Like a planet. That planet should be rocky and not a gas giant. It should also be close enough to, yet not too far from the star to have a reasonable temperature. It also needs a few other things.

But with all that, I agree. It's highly unlikely that we are alone. Still you have to keep an open mind. It is possible that we are.

The fact that we consider sun like stars as the most possible place to look for an inhabitable planet, or in this case life, is egocentric.

In theory, nothing prevents a red dwarf for instance to have all it takes for life to be present or possible. And not only red dwarves. We know so little anyway...

Only 20 years ago, we knew of planets only in our star system. Now we have over 300 planets in the catalogs. And we can only detect them indirectly.

I'm wildly launching numbers, I bet that in 25, 30 years, we will know of several thousands of planets, to include several dozens that would be perfect for human type life. And no one can give me a single valid argument why this would be false. I may just only be off in the proportion or the time it takes.

Our galaxy contains an estimated 200 to 400 billions of stars. How many planets is that?

reply to post by Phage


So forgive me for this stupid question, but I always get confused
about it. Back at school they thought you that stars you are lookin' at are allready vanished but because of lightspeed you still see them...
This idea still gives me a "brain-frying"moment of stupidity so please can someone clear this one up for me

When you look up in the sky at night you see "stars"
Our sun is a star, and our solar in our solar system..
Does that mean that the stars up in the sky are suns too with own planets?
Or just the really orange-like stars are suns? and the rest of them are enlightened planets/komets by those orange suns like Venus and Mars light up by our sun..... my

mind is confused with confusion...

Other things to consider, most stars in our Galaxy are located closer to the core, the huge central bulge of the galaxy, and though a great many of those are average, main-sequence stars very similar to our own, it's likely the stars there are too densely packed for life to successfully exist because of all the ambient solar radiation they cause.

Much like there's a "Goldilocks Zone" in our solar system where life is more likely to occur (not too hot, not too cold), there's a similar sort of thing in galaxies (not too much radiation close in, enough heavy elements 'cause it's not too far out).

Even so, odds are tremendously high that within that galactic Goldilocks Zone that there's something living besides us, and I think it's likely some of it is probably quite intelligent and maybe even technology building, like us.

[edit on 8/22/2010 by LifeInDeath]

reply to post by LifeInDeath


So what is it I see up in the sky?
Are they really ALL sun-like stars? and all with orbitting planets and moons? Or only the orange-like stars are actually the suns and the rest is enlightened/illuminated by them? like venus and mars by our sun?
we see the pleiadians, they have their own stars/suns right? So the brightest of the pleiadians is their Sun, the rest are planets?.. Or..
We see ALL suns of the pleiadians and their planets arent visible/illuminated?..
And so we see thousands of solar systems at night in the sky?

Originally posted by PositiveVibration
reply to post by LifeInDeath

 

So what is it I see up in the sky?
Are they really ALL sun-like stars? and all with orbitting planets and moons? Or only the orange-like stars are actually the suns and the rest is enlightened/illuminated by them? like venus and mars by our sun?
we see the pleiadians, they have their own stars/suns right? So the brightest of the pleiadians is their Sun, the rest are planets?.. Or..
We see ALL suns of the pleiadians and their planets arent visible/illuminated?..
And so we see thousands of solar systems at night in the sky?

Think about this: Even though Pluto is part of our solar system, it so far away from us that you can't see it without a powerful telescope. It's distance from us it at worst 49 AUs, or 0.00077 lightyears.

The closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 lightyears away. In other words, it's 5420 times farther away than pluto. Do you think we can see any planets it has?

Never mind the Pleides, which is 440 lightyears distant, or 567866 times farther away than Pluto.

If it is outside of our solar system and you can see it with your bare eyes, it's a star. Now what kind of a star and whether or not it has planets is a different thing, though.

[edit on 22-8-2010 by MacAnkka]

[edit on 22-8-2010 by MacAnkka]

reply to post by MacAnkka


Ow my god...
I always had a feeling things we learnt at school was just BS
But this really really is something beyond imagination..
It's just hypocrit to think we're alone


Thanx for the info MacAnkka!



Insufficient brainspace... maximun capacity overload....

reply to post by PositiveVibration & MacAnkka


Actually... The closest star is found about half way Proxima Centauri.
Although it is a brown dwarf. It's still considered a star that can have planets of its own.

Originally posted by SpookyVince
The fact that we consider sun like stars as the most possible place to look for an inhabitable planet, or in this case life, is egocentric.

No, it's just that we know life IS possible around a star like this. It's the only kind we're certain advanced life can inhabit. That's not to say you can't find life around other kinds of stars, it's just that this kind is the one we're certain of. When looking for life elsewhere it only makes sense to pursue that which is familiar first; we know what to look for to search for life similar to earth life in similar conditions. We can worry about exploring exotic theories of the interstellar equivalent of extremeophiles after we've exhausted the search for life similar to terrestrial life. The focused nature of our current search efforts is not a condemnation of other possibilities.