With 4.5 times earth mass, I think it's probably inhabited by creatures with more than two legs. See, eight legs would be ideal to withstand the gravity of this planet.

We should declare war just to be sure.

I alone am best

Additionaly given the same conditions on the planet(I.E. gravity, atmospheric pressure, carbon based life blah blah blah). I wouldn't think life from another planet would be all that much different in appearance than life on earth.

I don't know, so I am asking....but isn't it a bit naive or easy to think the gravity, atmospheric pressure would be similar? It seems to me that the gravity could be so much different that the life there could be much larger or much smaller than we are. And if we visited we would be instantly crushed?

Also, if the days were 37 hours long and a year 421 days long wouldn't that change things quite a bit? Especially if we were to actually interact with them on their planet?

Again, I am just asking to get more educated....

or what if the days were 16 hours long and the year was 156 days? Would that effect evolutionary processes?

oh jeez, not this planet again.

More absurdity:

What if the planet is only 4,200 miles around so the life forms are much smaller and when we land in peacefully our huge space craft destroys entire "countries" of their inhabitants and they shoot tiny lasers at us as we unknowingly continue to come to a stop on top of their most valued buildings and national treasures. We're like "Oh sorry, didn't see you there?"


Or the planet is even smaller so it the days are like 14 minutes long and as we are communicating with them they take a bunch of naps! And we get dizzy because the sun is like a damn strobe light.


That's the sh*t that I want to see in a movie! Come on Hollywood.

but I digress...

@buckler

Thanks, I've thought about "Dark Star" in awhile

buckler: DOOLITTLE
Well... now what? What do, you have
for us now. Boiler?

BOILER
(checking his readouts)
Not much. Nothing at all in this
sector.

DOOLITTLE
Find me something, I don't care
where it is.

BOILER
Well, I show a 95% probability of
sentient life in the Horsehead
Nebula...

DOOLITTLE
fark that shiat.

BOILER
Well, it is kind of a long shot...

DOOLITTLE
It's a goddamn wild goose chase.
Remember when Commander Powell found
that 99 plus probability of sentient
life in the Magellanic Cloud?

BOILER
Well, there's the possibility of...

DOOLITTLE
Remember what we found? Fourteen
light years for a farking mindless
vegetable that looked like a limp
balloon and went squawk and let a
fart when you touched it. Remember?

BOILER
All right, then...

DOOLITTLE
So don't give me any of that
sentient life crap. Find me
something I can blow up.

traylor: With 4.5 times earth mass, I think it's probably inhabited by creatures with more than two legs. See, eight legs would be ideal to withstand the gravity of this planet.

We should declare war just to be sure.

busy chillin': Or the planet is even smaller so it the days are like 14 minutes long and as we are communicating with them they take a bunch of naps! And we get dizzy because the sun is like a damn strobe light.

Let me fire up my portal gun, and in 22 years, it should open up there, and we can save a LOT of money on gas.

"Currently, they can detect planets which are 3-5 times the mass of the Earth but, in the future, they could detect planets which are smaller than twice the mass of Earth."

okkkkkkkkkkkkayyyy

GAT_00

I have mixed emotions posting this:

What is that from?

i think i see it, down and to the right, kind of between those two little white specs.

busy chillin': GAT_00

I have mixed emotions posting this:

What is that from?

ST: VOY

lick?

I alone am best: Additionaly given the same conditions on the planet(I.E. gravity, atmospheric pressure, carbon based life blah blah blah). I wouldn't think life from another planet would be all that much different in appearance than life on earth

I don't think that it would be that much of a stretch to think that god would make all life in it's image.

SpikeStrip: the fark planet is this from?

[i780.photobucket.com image 640x480]

Those would be Jovian Whales.

Scientists just found Earth? Are these people being paid?

srhp29: Scientists just found Earth? Are these people being paid?

Oh I get it now.

I was just trying to hammer home the point of the headline.

...a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

At first I though that we should send Superman to check it out. Then, I realized that it is a red Dwarf and Superman gets his powers from our yellow sun. I guess we'll never know.

MindStalker: FTA: as 20 years ago scientists were still arguing about the existence of planets beyond our solar system.

Really? I'm having a hard time believing that any credible scientist 20 years ago thought that other suns wouldn't have bodies of rock or gas orbiting them.

The arguments about plate tectonics/continental drift didn't really settle down til the late 60's, early 70's.

Call me when they find a planet inhabited mostly by hot blue alien women.

deffuse: Shouldn't that be the second?

Hey guys? I think I found something!

BigLuca: deffuse: Shouldn't that be the second?

Hey guys? I think I found something!
[www.contentping.com image 327x250]

lulz

Even if it fell in the habitable zone, wouldn't it also need a similar rotation for temperature regulation as well as a moon to control the tides, so the ocean(if there is any)remains in a motion to keep it constantly swirling, so life can happen, versus being a huge stagnant bucket of water?

Not to mention needing the component elements for life?

Omahawg: If there aren't green women there to fark then who cares?

Avoid the green ones. They're not ripe yet.

Astronomers are hailing the plant as the 'Holy Grail' of discoveries,
`
Obscure Monty Python reference?

Quick, let's send up the missionaries to provide assistance and support to our possible new brethren.

CygnusDarius:
/Also, if we find oil there

One of Jupiters moons (maybe it's Saturn) has sea's of liquid hydrocarbons (i.e. Oil or at least something we can use) that far outweigh Earth's total reserves even before we started exploiting them.

Why bother going multiple light YEARS when there's stuff light MINUTES away; we'll just pretend there are brown aliens living there... much like Iraq and WMD's.

abb3w: 4.5 times earth mass?
Bring in the Hoffmanites.

[www.thugdome.com image 400x623]

Hi!

deffuse: Shouldn't that be the second?



The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

/We only pretend we're intelligent

Telegraph, eh? I'll wait for the BA article, thanks.

Only 22 light years away. Hell, why speculate? We should start spamming it with transmissions non-stop and see if we get anything back in 44 years. It's a long shot, but a trivial investment against the potential to find extraterrestrials close enough to for actual dialogue to be possible. A team made of people who had long-lived ancestors should be designed for high odds that several members might live long enough to experience two exchanges.

traylor: With 4.5 times earth mass, I think it's probably inhabited by creatures with more than two legs. See, eight legs would be ideal to withstand the gravity of this planet..

If the planet is the same composition as Earth, then the surface gravity will only be 1.65G. 2 or 4 legs is still sufficient. I believe higher gravity will mean smaller creatures rather than beefier ones. Many of the planets being discovered have significantly lower densities than Earth. If this planet were closer in density to the water rich planets and moons in our solar system, the surface gravity could be as low as 0.8G, and would potentially have a very thick atmosphere, leading to increased buoyancy and might be able to fly by flapping our arms.

Mixolydian Master: Even if it fell in the habitable zone, wouldn't it also need a similar rotation for temperature regulation as well as a moon to control the tides, so the ocean(if there is any)remains in a motion to keep it constantly swirling, so life can happen, versus being a huge stagnant bucket of water?

Not to mention needing the component elements for life?

As an lame and ignorant person, I'm not sure needing tides or rotation or being tidally locked is all that relevant. If an atmosphere exists, the constant heating of one side and cooling of the other would create a circulation system in the air. It may be possible for life to develop that way, using bladder systems, rather than our more familiar water-based development of life.

Likewise...

Mad_Radhu: It's easy to day there could be alternative biochemistry involved, but when you start looking into the details of how those biochemistries would function you start running into problems where the chemical bonds formed by silicon are too strong for it to make a good alternative to carbon, and ammonia makes a crappy substitute for water due to weak hydrogen bonds and a low surface tension. Plus you have the fact that hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon are among the most common elements in the universe, so it isn't an accident that they are used for biological processes.

We'll see what happens when we look more closely at moons like Titan in the outer solar system where methane-based life might work, but it's possible that the basic chemistry just doesn't work out on forms of life that are too far removed from our own. I'd love to see some really exotic life, but reading about some of the problems with alternative biochemistry gives me some cause to think it just isn't as easy getting life started with those building blocks.

I would argue that this sort of logic is still basing itself too much on what we know about life. Now, that's a fine place to start, and certainly it is logical to assume that life would develop around abundant elements (especially since we have evidence of it already happening once). But, the argument is looking at what alternative elements might support an otherwise similar or even identical biochemistry to what we know. Silicon's chemical bonds may preclude it functioning as a substitute to carbon, but that does not preclude a silicon-based chemistry completely different from what we know of our carbon-based chemistry. This hypothetical chemistry may not even need a liquid to function, as our life needs water, so what does it matter that ammonia's hydrogen bonds are too weak?

We are on the cusp of creating this sort of thing ourselves. Electricity can function as much simpler carrier of energy, acting as creature's lifeblood. If we could create artificial life - a machine that can function without instruction, can replicate or even produce offspring (regardless of the extent of work required, e.g. having to mine and refine materials, and manufacture components, rather than simply nutrients in->grow) we could easily produce a lifeform that is completely unique from what we are, having only the most shallow of similarities. This stretches the definition of "organic", but then, in the scientific sense, organic only extends to carbon-based chemistry anyway.

I'm not saying we should expect* to find something akin to robots naturally evolving in place of carbon-based life. But the mere possibility of living machines indicates we should not confine** ourselves to looking at alternative elements that could function as a substitute for our carbon-based chemistry.

*Going deeper, one could argue that artificial constructs would actually be more likely to be found, since they theoretically function on a much longer time span, and aren't necessarily as limited, as organic life.

**As I mentioned earlier, yes, it is much easier to use our selves as a model for life elsewhere, because we know that this, at least, works. And if we find something that functions like us, it is much easier to define it as "life." Just saying that, provided the wealth of resources exists to pursue multiple avenues, we should not limit ourselves only to life as we know it.

uttertosh: StoPPeRmobile: [www.tatoos-tattos.com image 350x191]

Smart! Funny!

I sometimes appear smart, don't let me fool you.

Niveras: **As I mentioned earlier, yes, it is much easier to use our selves as a model for life elsewhere, because we know that this, at least, works. And if we find something that functions like us, it is much easier to define it as "life." Just saying that, provided the wealth of resources exists to pursue multiple avenues, we should not limit ourselves only to life as we know it.

So...


Kidding aside it seems we are stuck.


Flow theory applied to artificial intelligence is an interesting approach.

/flow

SnarfVader: I'd settle for capable of supporting complex life.

That would be preferable, that way we won't have to murder all the natives of this New World when we move there. I mean, if we did something like that Kevin Costner or James Cameron might make another shiatty movie about it, and where would we be then?

mr lawson: busy chillin': many of you are way way smarter than me, but if a bunch of these meteorites are flying around there is a chance that there is life somewhere in the universe, or the chance that life could start somewhere if one these land on the right planet.

Am I right in thinking this?

/love thinking about this stuff

better yet....the asteroid that hit the earth that kill off the T-rex put a lot of earth material (which had life in it) into space. That stuff could be landing on habitable planets right now seeding life.

There is absolutely zero chance it has reached any habitable planet, nor will it for many millions of years.