Earth Like planet found

[Shwoo]

I agree with Numbuh 0xFF. Space fascinates me. This is quite exciting. And it's pretty close in astronomical terms.

Wouldn't that include the possibility that a non-humanlike race could inhabit a non-Earthlike planet? There you go. They don't even consider that possibility.

Who said they didn't? I did, and I'm not even a trained scientist. But we know that life is possible on an earthlike planet, and we don't know that it's possible on a planet that's nothing like Earth.

[thesuki]

veljko said:

@james

Who are you and what have you done with James?

Seriously, though, do you even read what you type? Did you think, perhaps, that there are people with sensibilities that extend past daily politics and light entertainment?

I'm just psyched someone agreed with me. ^^

Seriously, I think proof of giant squids is way more amazing than a possibility of life "out there".

Hey, do we have a thread for the giant squids? I like those things. They're cool. Calamari for everyone!

[hoagiegal1970]

Well, I for one think giant squids and space exploration are both fascinating.

I'm probably in the minority, but when I feel like relaxing, I go outside and stargaze. Now, I've been fascinated by the cosmos as far back as I can remember. My mom said that when I was in 1st grade, I'd being home drawings of the solar system every day.

That childhood interest was reawakened in college, or specifically, a celestial event that happened in 1991: Venus, Mars, and Jupiter close together in the twilight sky.

From that day on, I went outside to look for planets, something I still do to this day. Granted, I don't live in the best area for stargazing, but I'm going to make a trip to Wyoming or Arizona to check out the Milky Way from the desert one of these days.

In fact, the other night, I saw an absolutely amazing celestial picture: Orion, Venus, and a thin crescent sliver of a moon in the western sky. Too bad I don't have a sooper mega professional-quality camera, or I would have gotten a nice picture of that.

Nature itself fascinates me as well, but this post is already long, so I'm not going to go into it.

As for this quote:

"Did you think, perhaps, that there are people with sensibilities that extend past daily politics and light entertainment?"..."If there are, they're in an extreme minority."

I hate politics. And while I do indulge in light entertainment, it's purely for my enjoyment only. I never discuss celebrities, American Idol, or most pop-culture nonsense.

And one more thing: I'm not tailoring my sensibilities to agree or disagree with anyone on the forum. I don't lie to "fit in". I'm also old enough to know that I'm never going to fit in with any so-called "popular crowd". I never went along with any "herd mentality", and I'm not about to start, slowly nearing age 40.

[Numbuh 0xFF]

@re: A Veritable Cornucopia Of Cephalopodic Delights

As a faithful reader of Pharyngula I am always game for talk about giant squid. Or any squid. The whole class is marvelous.

Take cuttlefish. We are talking about color changing, tentacled, three-hearted green blooded things with donut-shaped brains. You'd think that they crawled (slithered?) from some lurid SF pulp, right? Turns out, you could probably keep one as a pet. And you might want to. Some studies show that some cuttlefish are almost as intelligent as, say, dogs. Possibly more. The art of mollusk psychometry is far from precise. ;D


@re: the state of people in the world

I don't know. For all the foolishness and evil that stalk the Earth, I still think that humanity has a potential for great things and much wisdom and kindness. If you look back at merely a few hundred years and compare the state of liberty then and now you'll see that we have come a long while.

@re: Earth-like planet

Why are we all so happy about the planet being similar to Earth? Several reasons:

1) Pure carbon-based chauvinism. We like our type of life best. ;D

2) More importantly, while there are hypotheses about other modalities life might take it's all fairly dubious. You need information-carrying compounds to act in a certain way for life[1] to occur and those would be tricky if, say, the temperature hovered around -100 C. Why? Well there's simply not enough energy in the system for a whole lot of 'varying' to occur. Conversely get the temperature to far up and there's too much energy -- the compound isn't stable enough to be a stable enough information medium. Life is probably dependent on a whole bushel of "Goldilocks zones" and, while we don't know about how, say, Jovian planets fit in to that we do know that Earth occupies all of them. So looking for Earth-like planets is a surefire way to find planets that we know can support life.

3) And finally, and crucially, we know how to detect Earth life (water, carbon and so on). We haven't the foggiest how to detect a, say, neutron star dwelling civilization. Or Jovian gasbag aliens. Or star-dwelling beings that exist only as breathtakingly complex alterations in EM patterns as coupled to plasma. You get the idea. So we test for what we can find.

It's just like SETI: we look for radio because we know how to detect it and it's what we'd use. The aliens could all be jabbering their multiple mouths off using some sort of super-ultra-hyperwave-FTL comm system but we don't listen to that because, to the best of our knowledge, it doesn't exist.

@re: attacking a distant planet

We could GET to Mayans. And they were standing on some land the Spanish took a fancy to. We can possibly get near any other intelligent species in the universe. And even if we did, I doubt we'd go genocidal. We've come a LONG way since then.

[1] I use Dawkins' definition: "Life results from the nonrandom survival of randomly varying replicators."

[numbuh82]

Professors Mochio kacku((I know I spelled it wrong but blah)) said

"Imagine you are walking down a road and you come across an ant hill,Do you give it nuclear technology,do you give it precious metals.No you simply step on it"

[Numbuh 0xFF]

Actually, I never step on ant hills. I like ants.

Also, I can't TALK to ants, now can I?

Further, I find the idea of giving nuclear technology to ants strangely appealing.

[numbuh82]

veljko said:

I like ants.

I do to but I always end up bring the Apocalypse's down on them with Dedodrants and fire and pouring chemicals on them

Then visit the place in my garden a day alter and see the outcome.

veljko said:

I find the idea of giving nuclear technology to ants strangely appealing.

Ant- Why are we suddenly Green

Also I believe he was speaking in general terms

[Cap'n Veg]

@if an alien landed right now-

Alien: *lands on earth* Hey everybody, wanna be friends?
Scientists: ZOMG DISSECTION!!!!

[numbuh82]

If they landed in the USA...maybe China as well....In fact just land somewhere in Europe

Preferably my back garden.

[hoagiegal1970]

If I was to see an alien, I wouldn't shoot at it or turn it in to the local authorities. I'd be awed by it and simply stare at it (since I probably couldn't communicate with it.) I'd have the same fascinated awe I'd have if I ever saw a ghost, or better yet, a spookie hamster ghostie. ;D

[Numbuh 0xFF]

If I saw an alien right now? I'd raise my hand in a Vulcan salute and say "Live long and prosper.". There are some things you simply must do.

;D

Seriously, I'll own up to a distinct urge to, uh, poke and prod. Dissection is a bit to harsh a word. But I trust that my manners are good enough that I'll be able to resist. Besides maybe simply asking will work. As in:

Alien: Ah-hah! Now we will dissect this hu-man and see what makes it tick!
Human: Uh...there's a copy of Gray's Anatomy on the shelf behind you. Please put the scalpel down.
Alien: Spoilsport.

[numbuheightbitstar]

veljko said:

Further, I find the idea of giving nuclear technology to ants strangely appealing.

You would just be all giddy if this happened, wouldn't you?

[numbuh82]

Ah simpler times,A time when radiation was stoped by just a thing over the head and Rocket launcher were bigger than than people....Really tall people

I'm wondering why they called it an Unknown terror and just labeled it as Them,Why not Giant Ants or Giant radioactive ants.But no,lets call it...THEM!

[numbuheightbitstar]

numbuh82 said:

I'm wondering why they called it an Unknown terror and just labeled it as Them,Why not Giant Ants or Giant radioactive ants.But no,lets call it...THEM!

@ Unknown Terror

Well, how many people do you know that have fought giant ants?

Also the movie does kinda have a mystery build-up--it's not until about 1/3rd into the movie that the ants are revealed (Though why they bothered is a good question, since the trailer, the poster, and the box outright show that the movie is about giant ants).

@ Calling it "THEM!"

Obviously, because having the little girl scream "Them! THEEEEEEEM!" is more chilling than having her scream "Ants! Aaaaaaants!"

Also, calling it "The Ants From 20 Miles Deep" would sound too much like "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" and we can't have similar titles now, can we?

[Numbuh Googol]

I don't know how big a deal this will turn out to be, but I really hope more research will be done towards it. Space is so exciting, you just don't know what could be out there!

If there is life on this planet, then how similar or different it would be to life on Earth would be somewhat affected by the planet's atmosphere. The air on Earth is mostly made up of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. So if this is the same on the other planet then that could well have a large effect on what's living there. For example, it could have plants that photosynthesise and creatures with lungs.