"there could be life out there that's billions of years old."

A Game-Changer in the Search for Alien Life: “All stars have planets”

A Game-Changer in the Search for Alien Life: "All stars have planets" Astronomers working with the Kepler spacecraft have announced new evidence suggesting that there are far more potentially habitable planets in our galaxy than we had believed. And just as surprisingly, these planets emerged much longer ago than expected — a revelation that could have profound implications in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

This is the reason I can't accept the idea that all other civilizations outside of earth are as vicious and dangerous as homo sapiens IS.

Granted we are a threat to ourselves and everything else NOW; this doesn't mean we will be this way ALWAYS. We haven't even been around for half a million years but already we recognize our flaws.

Also, we are becoming sympathetically sensitive to the plight of other living things and how we are polluting earth. That's a start in the right direction, isn't it?

I think it's not so far fetched to surmise that way older civilizations went in the same direction we are starting. Maybe, they are so advanced technologically and evolved that they have realized a better way to be more "secure" in their station than be vicious and dangerous.

Guys, they are out there; and if they really have been around for possibly billions of years, they've found us for sure.

link

A race that was billions of years old would be able to write great t.v for us. And Imagine their philosophies!

reply to post by reject


This is merely the confirmation of what many intelligent have always believed. That we (the sun, the earth) are just as common as hundreds of billions of others. Life must be everywhere, why wouldn't it be?

In just about a few hundred or thousands of years of evolution, we have just barely started to discover the beginning of things. Every new thing we learn opens the door to many others. In millions, billions of years, we will have mastered things that our minds can just not even conceive right now.

reply to post by reject


You may think at first glance that the chances for alien visitation is going up as science progresses, but the further you look into science the more you begin to realize that the universe is not pure chance. There may be life on these planets but the chances of visitation or even being able to observe it is so astronomically challenging it's mind boggling. Understanding the universe as we currently do gives any real answer to the age old question of "are we alone" a very low chance of being answered, ever.

If we learn of other ways to conqure the challenge that is space travel and space observation, then that chance may go up. A great deal of current science must go out the window or re-thought before that will happen though. We already had a pretty good idea that life must exist elsewhere. They're just trying to reinforce what we already knew.

I think we all feel that we could not possibly be alone in this universe, this just confirms this even more.

Considering how old the universe is and just how big it is, all these discoveries of new planets, stars with planets and logic tells us that we aren't alone. Also, there is a very good chance that whoever these other beings are, they are far more advanced than us.

Imagine if Humans WERE the most advanced beings in this universe... i would feel ashamed at the example we are setting! I highly doubt we are alone and the most advanced though. As you said, the Human race is still in its infancy. We have much growing to do as a species.

Thank you for the post!

Originally posted by Evolutionsend
reply to post by reject

 

You may think at first glance that the chances for alien visitation is going up as science progresses, but the further you look into science the more you begin to realize that the universe is not pure chance. There may be life on these planets but the chances of visitation or even being able to observe it is so astronomically challenging it's mind boggling. Understanding the universe as we currently do gives any real answer to the age old question of "are we alone" a very low chance of being answered, ever.

If we learn of other ways to conqure the challenge that is space travel and space observation, then that chance may go up. A great deal of current science must go out the window or re-thought before that will happen though. We already had a pretty good idea that life must exist elsewhere. They're just trying to reinforce what we already knew.

Well, look how we have progressed in finding new planets
in the last few years. Imagine what else we can do in only
say 20 years. It will not be long ubtil we can locate planets
and know that some sort if life is on there.

reply to post by Jay-morris


Direct observation and long distance space travel is a problem of physics. Without some hefty scientific discoveries leading to some equally groundbreaking technological advances, it's not happening. To do it, we must break the laws of physics. Which is why science fiction writters frequently use a plot device called "hyper space" to explain how interstellar space travel is made possible in their story.

Very interesting, though I think many of us already had a feeling this is the way it really was and isn't much of a shock. However, I believe that we shouldn't assume that life will always develope the same way it has on Earth.

A race of beings could be 1 billion years older than us, yet no more advanced than our current primates. Just as well that a civilization could be only thousands of years old and far more advanced than ourselves.

Some believe that if a civilization has the means to travel vast distance in space or travel faster then the speed of light, then it would mean that they are so advanced that they would by now solve the problems of war, greed and other ailments that still pleague the human race. Again, that's an assumption based on our own perceptions we see here on Earth.

I personally believe evolution excellerates whenever life is threatened. I also believe levels of contiousness rises when paradigms shift. For instance, eventhough it seems like we are not ready as a species to ascend to a higher lever of contiousness due to all the war and pollution we still inflict... the human race could shift it's conciouness (awareness) in the matter of seconds if say we knew we are not alone in the universe.

Of course there is. Pure logic. There are stars billions of years older than the sun and then apply Drake's formula.

Every single moon and planet is a project.

reply to post by Unity_99

reply to post by Evolutionsend

Fermi's Paradox isn't based on the idea of hyperspace drives or warpdrives, it's based on the idea that using robots or reproduction on a large scale and colonizing space on multiple fronts can lead to a species inhabiting an entire galaxy within millions of years. Not 100's. Laws of physics aren't broken. We don't need to break rules to colonize other stars, we just need the technology to survive the journey to them. We have hundreds and thousands of years to develop these technologies. Just observing the past 10 years and all of the accomplishment shouldn't leave any doubt that in the next 1000 we'll do incredible things. Theoretically, if we build a nuclear spaceship we could reach the nearest start in less than 100 years. This is something we could do now if we pushed real hard. But we have a lot of time to do this. And along the way our technology will improve even further. Furthermore, with solar sails or ion drives we could still get to the stars using much less fuel, but it will require more time. However, if we're robots or we're "sleeping" then 15,000 years is not long.

In fact, look here:
news.discovery.com ...

.......
But the right solar sail can take you much, much farther. In order to achieve interstellar travel, Matloff stresses that less mass and more of a solar push are key. That means deploying an ultralight solar sail really close to the sun.

"You'd have to position the craft as close to the sun as you can, probably within the orbit of Mercury," Matloff says. "And in a case like that, it would reach maybe 200 astronomical units (200 times the distance between Earth and the sun) in something like 10 or 15 years."

Of course, that also means the craft would require 7,000 years to reach the nearest star -- but that's if the sails depended on current technology. Matloff believes a 50-nanometer beryllium sail, built in space, could potentially make an interstellar voyage in as little as 2,000 years. Go lighter than that, via perforated sails or lighter metamaterials, and potential speeds increase.

"There are materials coming online like carbon nanotubes and graphenes, and these may allow you to cut the mass of the sail even more," Matloff says. "So, I think we'll be able to do to a lot better than 2,000 years to the nearest star. Will we get below 1,000 years? Maybe. Will we get down to a couple hundred? Well then I have my doubts, but that’s my own personal feeling."
........

There is no IMPOSSIBLE in that quote.

I'm not being impractical. This is realistic. 100 years ago, who would have thought we'd land on the moon in 1969? Who would have thought that in the 1990's we'd develop supercomputers that could do more computations in a day than ALL the world's scientists combined could do in a year? Nuclear bombs were just theory in 1912. IN fact, HG Wells wrote a novel in 1914 that had nuclear bombs.

Bottom line, there's nothing stopping us from going to the nearest star in the next 10000 years. Only thing stopping us is US. We have the theory we just have to apply it. Applying it in a timely and cost effective manner that society will accept will take time, but it's NOT breaking the laws of physics.

Originally posted by Evolutionsend
reply to post by Jay-morris

 

Direct observation and long distance space travel is a problem of physics. Without some hefty scientific discoveries leading to some equally groundbreaking technological advances, it's not happening. To do it, we must break the laws of physics. Which is why science fiction writters frequently use a plot device called "hyper space" to explain how interstellar space travel is made possible in their story.

Sorry, what meabt was chanced are high that will will be
able to find life on other planets soon. zYour roght about
space trsvel though. If we do find a planet with life, then
thats great in itself and maybe that will give us a kick up
the backside to advance in space. Ad a planet, not as a country.

But yeah, we ate a long way off that

Am I at all optimistic or naive to say that this thread shoud have been named "there is life out there that's billions of years old." ?

Originally posted by SpookyVince
Am I at all optimistic or naive to say that this thread shoud have been named "there is life out there that's billions of years old." ?

Seth Shostak, a very skeptical and scientific man by virtue of his history as a ufology debunker and a rabid supporter of SETI, was quoted as saying that there's a possibility for it.

So... more like: "There's possibly life out there that's billions of years old."

Like any good skeptic he has to acknowledge we don't KNOW yet.

We're scratching the very surface of everything. The universe is so much larger than our limited dataset can appreciate and it's surely larger than a human will ever grasp in the best moments. The data says there're 300+ sextillion stars in the observable universe. The data speaks in rhymes of billions and trillions and quintillions and on and on. In a language we ourselves are so unaccustomed. When the numbers get that large we're like dumb apes scratching an itch going potty.

Add up all the moons and asteroids and planets and comets and so on and there're many trillions or more of potential sites where life might be found either fossilized or in an inactive state. And if life is somehow inside the clouds of gasses in interstellar space then it's virtually everywhere.

But just think. If we're alone and there's no life elsewhere, that's the best evidence of a god. Either that or we're the most amazing glitch that ever happened in this universe. The odds that life sprung up here and didn't spread anywhere else and instantly dies when it goes off planet is so small that for this to be the case we're blessed. We're in luck we have no competitors! The universe is ours.

But something tells me, honestly, that we don't own all this. We're not alone. I guess it's faith, but it's partly based on the numbers, I suppose. And even if all the universe was ours, I'd feel kind of lonely. I also turn to my experiences on earth. I'm inclined to think that the rest of the universe is going to look like the rest of earth - lots and lots of life. As above, so below. It would seem like such a catastrophe of continuity and physics if the moment we leave earth all life dies. Just too weird.

reply to post by jonnywhite


The problem isn't propulsion. The solar sail idea is pretty old by scientific standards.

The issue is interstellar debris, radiation, and solar winds. The more we learn about space, the more we realize that it's so inhospitable that interstellar travel may be impossible. We still do not know a lot about interstellar environments, but everything we learn keeps pointing towards impossibility.

Originally posted by Evolutionsend
but everything we learn keeps pointing towards impossibility.

Not really. On the contrary we tend to learn new things every now and then that could allow, possibly, all sorts that we simply don't expect today.

Impossible is impossible. It is just not possible yet.

reply to post by SpookyVince


Everytime we get around one problem, or find an avenue that may solve a problem, we explore a bit further and find more problems. Interstellar space travel may happen one day. We're so ignortant on the subject that we're not even able to fully state the problem, let alone find a complete theoretical solution. Nevermind finding a practical working solution.

reply to post by Evolutionsend


Agreed. But this definitely doesn't mean that it's tending towards impossible as you said.

I'd say the contrary actually: while something is not "proven" impossible (today's truth is found to be false tomorrow) then it is possible. Or possibly possible, if you want to see it this way.

This is merely the confirmation of what many intelligent have always believed. That we (the sun, the earth) are just as common as hundreds of billions of others. Life must be everywhere, why wouldn't it be?

reply to post by SpookyVince


EXACTLY! Our galaxy contains around 200 billion stars (at least). If our star can form planets then what's stopping all the others. Granted most of the exoplanets we've seen are gas giants, but that's just because they're so big. Smaller earth like planets will be harder to detect over such great distances but that doesn't mean they're not there. It's like trying to spot a firefly next to a lighthouse with current techniques. But.. We're getting better, just look at Kepler.

Now step it up a notch... Ours is hardly the only galaxy! There are trillions!! Frankly we can't even put a number on it some of them contain trillions of stars some of them a few hundred million.

Now ask yourself. With the universe being as big as it is, why can't the same conditions exist elsewhere.

Answer: They can and they do don't be so arrogant as to assume otherwise, the universe will be teeming with life. Who knows maybe someday we'll meet them.