Are we alone? NASA expects answer soon

Are we alone? NASA expects answer soon

www.sfgate.com

"The fundamental question is: Are we alone? For the first time, there's an optimism that sometime in our lifetimes we're going to get to the bottom of that," said Simon "Pete" Worden, an astronomer who heads NASA's Ames Research Center. "If I were a betting man, which I am, I would bet we're not alone - there is a lot of life."

Read more: www.sfgate.com...;type%3Dscience#ixzz0danXIFwr

(visit the link for the full news article)

well nothing new here for me anyways, but im sure others may be informed by this. happy reading,

This may be just one small step closer to the truth we have been given a timeline to expect answers here.

Would like to hear other peoples take on this so please give a response

www.sfgate.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

The article is about finding "Earth-like planets", not about finding life. By "Earth-like" they mean about the right size and about the right distance from its star. We have no way of determining any of the other factors which require it to be truly like Earth.

reply to post by theflashor


As soon as Kepler was launched the countdown to known life outside of earth started in my eyes.

How much inside information you think Simon "the gambler" Worden has ?
I know I would not bet against him

I personal cannot wait to hear the Vatican trying to explain Earth.2.0.

Obviously Phage, hints the need of a new $5billion telescope .

[edit on 24-1-2010 by nophun]

reply to post by Phage


yes but earth like planets within the habital zone gives high probability of life

reply to post by theflashor


What, is the world waiting on a definitive answer from them? LOL. I think not!!!! NASA is Vrill, via project paperclip. They operate on different levels probably even over NASA's head now, of course, in underground faciilities throughout the world, in conjunction with negative ets, such as zetans and run a eugenics program.

They doctor all the pictures we get from space, moon, mars, soho, you name it. Just saw the thread on the mysterious globes orbitting sun, that seem to behave in an intelligent fashion and I'm glad the photos are up and nabbed because NASA now has little black editting boxes over the orbs. Hmmm.....they really got my ears. Does Mr. Et exist????
And the NASA jury is still out? What a joke!

reply to post by Unity_99


The people in that thread also believe NASA is "blocking out" the whole sun in some images.
sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...

They got there answer what they are looking at and completely ignored it or deny it. I know, I know NASA lies .. psychos.

reply to post by nophun


Really, what answer? I saw anomalous orbs that really werent explained at all. Its not white flashes I was seeing, but round, metallic looking orbs. Its not compression. If it was there is not a chance that we would be seeing black boxes.

Originally posted by Phage
The article is about finding "Earth-like planets", not about finding life. By "Earth-like" they mean about the right size and about the right distance from its star. We have no way of determining any of the other factors which require it to be truly like Earth.

I thought the same thing, infact that's why I'm not very interested in finding planets around other stars or much of anything outside our own solar system. If there is something interesting in this system then we could potentialy check it out and study it but finding a dot that's in some hypothetical magic zone doesn't mean much.

Or at least that's what I thought. Today, however, I read somewhere that we could detect the signature of life. We still have no way of even imagining a way to see if that life is just microbial or full on aliens with star ships and the like, but just being able to detect life at all would be huge.

When I read this I immediately thought of you Phage. Can you confirm this? Could we detect the signature of life? Reading your previous post I assume you will say no, but after hearing we could earlier today I was hoping you could clear up the issue.

Are we alone?

No

If you need NASA to answer this question for you, then you should do a little research on just how immense our universe is.

reply to post by fieryjaguarpaw

It's news to me.

I can't imagine how this could be done, much less what assumptions would have to be made about what the signatures of extraterrestrial life would consist of.

I have to agree with Phage as usual...BUT
Einstein (and others on occasions) have been proven to be wrong...does the planet have to have the probabilities that ours does?..ie a moon that sustains our tides etc...a Star that is equilibrial distance that it also is very stable...Apparently we are LUCKY that our Star is predictable and stable....and our sattelite The Moon...I have read extensively that our probabilty of existence and survival...is quite precise...now the probabilty of that also happening in solar system collectively...I would predict is small...but not indefinite...and certainly 'possible'

Ps how would we represent this in algebraical terms...a nightmare from probabilty factor...
1. Find the probability of an empirical event.
2. Find a theoretical probability.
3. Know when two events are mutually exclusive.
4. Use basic properties of probability to find various probabilities.
5. Know when two events are independent of each other.
6. Know how to find the probability of the intersection of two independent events.


Good luck!.my friends..and then when we have the answer...we can truly believe in extra terrestrial life....

The existance of Homo Sapiens on Earth is down to shear accident. Had the dinosaurs not been wiped out by a great comet impact (or whatever it was), we would not exist. Had that extinction not happened, the Earth would be dominated by something else, certainly not human. They would to us, be alien.
This is why the anthropomophisation of aliens that supposedly visit Earth is simply laughable.

WG3

[edit on 25-1-2010 by waveguide3]

We do not have to wait nothing from NASA reports. NASA lies. NASA is a military institution. NASA alters the data. NASA is not reliable. NASA, if something BIG does not happen in the next few months, will be simply beleted by the Chinese and Indian discoveries on the Moon.

Maybe Something is changed into NASA Office whit the new Director, but the military faction is still strong and rule.

[edit on 25-1-2010 by Imagir]

Originally posted by waveguide3
The existance of Homo Sapiens on Earth is down to shear accident. Had the dinosaurs not been wiped out by a great comet impact (or whatever it was), we would not exist. Had that extinction not happened, the Earth would be dominated by something else, certainly not human. They would to us, be alien.
This is why the anthropomophisation of aliens that supposedly visit Earth is simply laughable.

WG3

[edit on 25-1-2010 by waveguide3]

still down to probability math.................

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by fieryjaguarpaw

 

It's news to me.

I can't imagine how this could be done, much less what assumptions would have to be made about what the signatures of extraterrestrial life would consist of.

I would guess carbon or organic compounds. I know that that doesn't mean that it would definately be from life but I figured that is what was being referenced in the blurb I read.

I know we have detected organic compounds shooting out of a moon that circles one of the gas giants (I can't remember which one at the moment) and that makes scientists think it has a high likelyhood of it having life beneath it's frozen surface.

What about something like that? Could we tell if a distant planet had carbon or compounds that are typically produced by life? I didn't think we could tell much of anything about these planets other than that they exists and their distance from the star they orbit and how long the orbit takes to compleat.

I wouldn't be suprised if what I read was wrong. Stories dealing with space exploration in the MSM almost allways get some of the facts wrong.

For the first time? Nasa and other countries has known this for a LONG time. This is no news

It its entire history, NASA has really avoided the part of looking for life in all but a single instance; the Viking Missions. And even then, it was a half-hearted effort.

If it turns out that Mars does, or at one time hosted any form of life, then the genie is out of the bottle because if it can happen in two places, it can happen in 200 billion places.

That single declaration will change everything but... to be sure, finding evidence of say, just past life on Mars, will be applied as a low key, limited discovery event. There will be an asterisk applied so that the final word will be that we might still be alone in the universe.. even though that notion is then already shot to hell.

This will keep skeptics and some religious PTB at bay.

It is amazing how the one thing that might change the world in such a profound way, is also the target of those who fear such a change and the liberation of our species from the grip of ignorance.

Kepler is very capable of finding exoplanets in there stars habitable zone.
NASA is using the the Goldilocks Principle to simplify the search for extraterrestrial life.

The Goldilocks Principle states that something must fall within certain margins, as opposed to reaching extremes. It is used, for example, in the Rare Earth hypothesis to state that a planet must neither be too far away from, nor too close to, the sun to support life

en.wikipedia.org...

This has been a goal of the Kepler mission since day one. Kepler is cool, but is not able to tell if there is like on these planets. It will tell them that a planet planets are in the habitable zone of there mother stars, giving what we assume is the best chance of life.

The challenge now is to find terrestrial planets (i.e., those one half to twice the size of the Earth), especially those in the habitable zone of their stars where liquid water and possibly life might exist.

Even if they found the perfect candidate , Kepler has no way to know if life is aboard. This would take a new telescope that can take reading of Oxygen, CO2, and some good ol' H2O. No this again will not prove to the big time skeptics out there of ET life

It would take something big for NASA/ESA/Etc. to come out and say we found a earth like planet that has life.

As the OPs article says one approach would be finding "faint signs of industrial emissions", with this we assume intelligent life.

I know I have not really said anything in this post.. but I like the subject