Astronomers Discover a Planet Almost Identical to Earth

Here is an excerpt from a book called A Dweller on Two Planets (which I'm sure at least a few of you on here are familiar with), which was written in the late 1800s by an 18 year old, supposedly through automatic writing. I just thought this particular segment was quite relevant to all the talk of finding earth-like planets and extraterrestrial life in general. Take particular attention to the bolded:

No telescope will ever reveal human life on Venus; not that it is not there, but its forms are of the One Substance effected by a range of force rendering them imperceptible to earthly eyes. You will not think the air any less material, or electricity any less real, because your eyes cannot perceive them. Your eyes are very limited in their visual range; if the One Substance vibrates more or less rapidly than an exceedingly small length of time, producing correspondingly minute force wavelengths, your eyes cannot cognize such vibrations. It is the same with your ears and hearing. If your eyes and ears were not thus limited, you would see every sound and hear every sunbeam. Every rainbow would be vocal, while heat, which now you only feel, would furnish amazing wealth of sound and vision. So it is with the Hesperian people, their persons you could not see, their voices you could not hear, yet they would not be similarly limited in regard to your persons and voices. But so long as you fancy that because you have eyes you can see all that there is to be seen, and that your ears hear all that is worth hearing, so long will you depend on these organs, and gain that sort of false ideas of the Universe which must arise from entire ignorance of all except the tiny bit of creation you occupy. So long, too, will you depend on the telescope to reveal truths about other worlds; you will hunt for evidences of human life on the nearer planets, but you will never find any until you cease to expect that matter will reveal soul; it can not do it, for the finite can not reveal infinity. Turn it about; ask of the soul revealment of itself and of matter also, and all worlds will draw near to you, show their teeming vitality of life, and all nature will uncover such treasures as the hungry soul of science has never found before.

Originally posted by SLAYER69
...
This is becoming so routine it's getting scary.
...
Thoughts?

While some people feel it's getting crazy, some of us are thinking "why of course, it only follows reasonable logic."

I think that, unintentionally, the title of the thread is misleading. There is a difference between an earth-like planet and an earth twin. Mercury, Venus and Mars are earth-like in that they are basically rocky planets. Until now astronomers were only able to find the gas giants, like Saturn and Jupiter, because of their strong gravity and it's affect on the orbit of it's parent star. But don't just assume this planet has liquid water and a habitable atmosphere. It could be raining sulfuric acid for all we know. There is a way to tell what the atmosphere is like by using a spectrometer. The light from this planet can tell us what gasses are in the atmosphere and a lot of other good stuff. For instance, I believe that certain gasses in an atmosphere indicate the presence of life. Whether or not it's intelligent we may not know, since intelligent life is evidently very rare- not even appearing on planet Earth! haha

Their is NO WAY this can be the first discovery of a earth like planet. Their is a uncomprehending amount of stars galaxy's and planets in this universe, we have know this for a long while.
Its all about timing, they can now announce stuff like this with out people freaking out.
Public awareness has grown.

Originally posted by unitedeufope
reply to post by BlowinSmoke

 

If life didn't exist elsewhere we wouldn't be here, we didn't come from nothing, someone or something had to seed us. It could well have come from this new discovered planet, it could be our original home and we were just sent here many years ago to colonize earth!

Great insight unitedeufope. This view lends itself to the grok of holonomic thinking. It is the food of visionaries.

Einstein once stated, "matter does not exist -- ALL is energy."

ALL energy carries and conveys information All "science" (gnosis) is nothing but gradually learning to detect and "correctly" interpret that information.

What "correct" means is also open to disagreement and interpretation -- and that is how truly creative scientists operate apart from the unscientific rigid dogmas which have plagued materialist/realist/reductionist science which approaches nature by violently smashing her into tiny pieces and then trying to figure out how those pieces fit together in the first place and how to understand their function. Duh?

That's how very self-limited "science" operates -- but many are now seeing way beyond that old (dead) paradigm.

Many ideas which have been accepted as a consensus (or the "Standard Model") have now been completely overturned. A good example of this is the nature of consciousness -- which at one time was considered to be nothing but a "mysterious artifact" of physical matter.

However -- we 3D beings on planet earth have a very very limited capability of detecting energy. Our instruments -- even the finest instruments are limited to a very very narrow spectrum of frequencies. Whatever we see through our telescopes or microscopes (or is indicated by our field detectors) is very narrow and is limited to the 3D realm -- in which our entire being now resides.

That means -- our conscious awareness is very limited and not aware of anything but a very tiny portion of the vast overall Universal Spectrum. Even our senses have cognition in a very small range of frequencies.

This makes the 3D "discovery" of very earthlike planets even MORE significant. Why? Because our narrow band of energy is manifested way way "out there."

Or -- is it really "way way out there?"

Perhaps it is a parallel world in which an unknown portion of us is already living?

Are we seeing OURSELVES? Are we seeing ourselves perhaps from a new angle -- a new and different perspective?

Does this parallel world contain the same dysfunctions -- violence -- self-destruction -- rigid control paradigm as our present suicidal world which often appears to be willfully flushing itself down the toilet in an escalating downward spiral?

Or -- is it the world of the persistent visionaries among us who are creating a new earth which outwardly expresses as a fully interactive and interconnected Galactic Civilization -- where peace on earth and goodwill toward men is the normal practice?

Just some food for thought.

Just curious but how many "close to earth like" planets does this make anyways?

they are finding a new planet almost weekly its only a matter of time before someone makes first contact.

Originally posted by FutureThinker
This is just amazing, I wonder how long it will be before they say that LIFE exists on one
of these planets, this year maybe, if not, then I think soon.



Thanks Slayer

oh, nice avatar

Peace

edit on 1/9/2013 by FutureThinker because: (no reason given)

And how would they confirm life on a planet so far away? Is such technology even conceivable?

reply to post by TwiztidRoman


kepler team say they have 4 candidates

reply to post by SLAYER69


How's it going Slayer just wondering why this discovery would be 'scary'? I find it amazing and enlightening, no where in my mind does scary come up.

Originally posted by FormerSkeptic

Originally posted by SLAYER69
...
This is becoming so routine it's getting scary.
...
Thoughts?

While some people feel it's getting crazy, some of us are thinking "why of course, it only follows reasonable logic."

My thought is -- we are on the cusp of a "discovery" so tremendous and unique that it will trigger what biologists refer to as a "punctuated equilibrium" -- a sudden forward leap in our evolution -- both our DNA and our consciousness. And -- yes, Former Skeptic, it only follows reasonable logic because mankind in general has reached a very significant "crossroad" that requires a totally New Paradigm.

It does seem that lately these planet discoveries just keep piling in. Perhaps just a mere sign of the times. Very exciting in my opinion.

I have heard from some that maybe these have been discovered awhile ago; TPTB are just revealing slowly as to not overwhelm the people.

Again it is very exciting to see! I hope to see attempts in making contact with these other planets!

I don't think I require any more dots to be joined. Years ago the leaps between belief vs fact were large, now it has become common sense. Life as we know it and as we do not know exists elsewhere in this universe.

Whether human like animals are walking these rocks doesn't phase me right now, although that would be an awesome find.

Simple organisms will have flourished just as they did here billions of years ago.

Thanks Slayer.

Originally posted by MystikMushroom
reply to post by Char-Lee

 

I know, right?

You can use the Hubble and see galaxies that are 10 billion light years away, but you can't snap an actual visual image of an exoplanet?

I've never understood that.

Remember the pilot, I think it was a Navy pilot that claimed our military have been flying space for many years and had traveled far enough to see lights of a civilization on a planet but were unable to travel the distance there?

He said he flew these missions and thought people should know the truth. I can't find the paper he wrote but it would explain a lot I think if this were the truth.

Originally posted by merkins

Originally posted by Manhater
If true, I'm buying the first spaceship ticket..

Way too many crazy people in this world.

Tell me where you want the donations for that ticket to go. It'd be no problem for me to divert my monthly contribution to 'keep piers morgan out of the UK' to you instead.

---

Nice discovery but massively short of the 'almost identical' tag it seems to have acquired.

You can send it to my P.O. Box. I already got one possible serial killer that knows where I live, think I want another one.

This fascinates the hell out of me, I wonder how long it will be before they say " we have found one that holds life and we are going to attempt communication"

On another note, why do they keep naming these planets with numbers, why don't they give it cool name we can remember, unfortunately I can't think of any cool names at the minute

Originally posted by havok
My thoughts? I am taking this into a new direction.

After many more "discoveries" and articles from these scientists...
A perceived threat will come from the skies in the form of "extra-terrestrials".
Just like the plan I read about years ago...

It will be the largest threat to ever hit modern civilization.
Global chaos will ensue.
But will it be real?

What will happen, you ask?
Everything from nationwide riots, to modern warfare.
The television will be it's greatest ally.
Striking fear into households daily.
Fear drives this nation to consume.
It will also drive it to accept whats coming.

More control.


(You wanted my thoughts. That's exactly what came to mind)

This evil that comes will be surprised to find strong beings on this planet

Originally posted by Trolloks
The next decade in space is going to be thrilling! More missions to mars (maybe manned), Voyager 2 going into deeper space, better technology for detecting more plannets, the Hubble. The next generation are going to have a different point of view from space than we did.

This could be the case, if we don't destroy ourselves as a species first.

And here's another thought-- if, and I know this is a stretch, but just imagine for a moment if humanity were able to put their petty squabbles, and war-mongering, and power-grabbing, and greed behind us.... and stopped attempting to attack and enslave each other, and we instead worked cooperatively as one species... how much more quickly and effectively could we discover new life in the universe... new earth-like planets... and maybe even begin travel there?

reply to post by SLAYER69


Great little read SLAYER.

Do we know where and how far (light years?) this planet is from Earth?

Just curious I didn't see it in the link.

-SAP-

Originally posted by Vandettas
If the amount of galaxies, planets, and stars out there are correct, even remotely correct, then its mathematically impossible for it to not be other life, intelligent or not.

This isn't a surprise to me. What is surprising are the scientists who think life can't originate on other planets without oxygen and water. We can't DEFINE LIFE.

Exactly! Just because life on Earth is carbon based does not mean life on other planets is.