[Closed] NASA's big announcement is...

I guess you're a glass half empty kinda guy...

This means they are likely to be boiling hot one side and freezing cold the other.

No more fighting over the office aircon thermostat! A side to suit everyone!

Send a signal now in that direction and it will take about 40 years

Maybe they set out to invade earth years ago and are nearly here 🙁

This means they are likely to be boiling hot one side and freezing cold the other.

So all the males work on one side and all the females on the other? A world without conflict over the office air con 😆

EDIT: km79 got there first.

if someone could set off right now at the speed of [s]life[/s] light to get there... it will take about 40 years.

Not if you're on the ship because, erm, relativity <waves arms>

Maybe they set out to invade earth years ago and are nearly here

Excellent point. We've been broadcasting about long enough for some near light-speed vessel to be getting close (assuming it spends half the trip accelerating and the other half decelerating. No, I've not done the sums).

One report quotes someone saying they think they'll discover life there within 10 years. Yeah, we can't even discover life on Mars, which is a hell of a lot closer.

As usual, there's more to it than that.

They can detect gasses in the atmosphere, so if they detect oxygen in there then there's probably life. Not because oxygen creates life, but because life creates oxygen. If there were no plants here to replenish the oxygen eventually it would all react with stuff and disappear from the atmosphere.

However, on Mars there isn't atmospheric oxygen, but they are still looking for the possibilities that a) there used to be life a long time ago and b) there's some kind of rock-based bacteria still left.

So any Martian life would be really hard to find; but there might well be obvious life including trees, animals, Taco Bell, 50s hairstyles and all the rest of it on these planets. The presence of oxygen suggests this is likely; its absence does not rule life out.

they're tidally locked, i.e. faces permanently face the star (

So, if they're not spinning, would that mean no gravity then? Would that be right? Does that mean they wouldn't have an atmosphere either? Or am I being a simpleton?

Just think, they've just got used to glam rock and now punk's suddenly appeared and Margaret Thatcher's leading the Tory party.

I'll be dead before they find out about Trump. Which is good - I imagine alien laughter is really cutting.

@tenfoot - no, gravity is due to the mass of an object not whether it spins or not.

They can detect gasses in the atmosphere

How? Genuine question...

I get how they can identify a planet or planets due to the period dimming of a (very faint) star. In this case, as the orbits are so quick it didn't take long. I just about get how they can estimate size of the planet and distance from the star by the "wobble" of the shadow that passed over the star.
What I totally don't get is how they can determine the presence of gas in the atmosphere of the planet...?

@tenfoot - no, gravity is due to the mass of an object not whether it spins or not.

Dim of me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_spectroscopy

Tidally locked just means the nice temperature zone is in the twilight area, on the side between the sun facing side and space facing side.

What I totally don't get is how they can determine the presence of gas in the atmosphere of the planet...?

Shine a light through the atmosphere and see which wavelengths are absorbed.

Everyday example: 'microwaves' are absorbed by hydrogen bonds in water.

Does that mean they wouldn't have an atmosphere either?

Whether or not you have an atmosphere depends on whether or not you have a magnetic field. The stream of charged particles coming from the sun would strip away your atmosphere if you didn't have a magnetic field to divert them. That's what happened to Mars. It used to have a magnetic field, now doesn't.

Our magnetic field is generated by our spinning molten iron core.

Earth-ish size and at a distance that maybe could support lift,

I could have done with that lift earlier when riding into a 40knt headwind.

&

f someone could set off right now at the speed of life

Whose life ? Mine, Yours, someone else's ?

Is confusing

 

Can they support Liff?

D'oh, (blames autocorrect 😀 )... but even then speed of life or light, it's 40 years of my lifetime, and as a 40something already male I'm statistically not going to know anything about it.

jam bo - Member 
I guess you're a glass half empty kinda guy...

And the above is why. I can't get all that fired up over yet more exoplanets that we'll hear little more about for 1000s of years and I'll be long since dead.

Now more on discoveries in our own solar system, or otherwise a way to live for 1000s of years to see all this stuff in the future, then yeah I'm buzzing over that 😀

so if they detect oxygen in there then there's probably life. Not because oxygen creates life, but because life creates oxygen

Says who? I reckon intelligent alien life breathes Hydrogen or something like Alienogen - an element unknown to puny man!

The planets may also be tidally locked to their star

so they don't actually know one way or the other.

Yeah, damn autouncorrectikles.

Still, the "find" is an interesting conundrum. Do we spend £b's going out there to find a warm ring around each that "may" hold life, or do we wait for LGM to have a poke around our blue rock ?

Whose to say they already haven't been here and left Nigel Farrage as an example to us all ?

It does tell us that any alien civilization, equal or more advanced than us, within 50 lightyears probably has a good idea we are here.

It does tell us that any alien civilization, equal or more advanced than us, within 50 lightyears probably has a good idea we are here.

Obviously, I mean someone sent us here in the first place didn't they? They probably had it well documented back home. Although they must have found better planets, otherwise they would have came back for an update. Unless we were sent here as criminals like what we done with Austrialia.

yoive got a double post because the "option" menu didn't load.

BinDun, droped here because we were problably not getting along on the previous planet.

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

[quote=bikebouy ]BinDun, droped here because we were problably not getting along on the previous planet.

We're the descendants of the B Ark

Talking of which...

https://www.change.org/p/nasa-name-one-of-the-newly-announced-exo-planets-golgafrincham

If a planet is tidally locked does the lack of spinning mean they won't have a magnatic field, hence no atmos and no van allan belt? i.e chances of life even slimmer?

One sometimes wonders if NASA sensationalises these things to get a bit more research funding (not that that's a bad thing).

if NASA sensationalises these things to get a bit more research funding (not that that's a bad thing).

I think it's more that the mainstream meeja likes to put a spin on things (s****), the usual 'well, if there's life on other planets, why hasn't it contacted us?' bollocks is either deliberately or through wilfull ignorance skipping over the fact that life doesn't have to have reached a level of sophistication that would enable it to get into space, or if it had, just decided that the effort isn't worth the candle. There are human societies on Earth which are at a more-or-less stone-age level of sophistication, and probably have been for millennia.
Also sentient creature may well not have the means to gain a highly technical level of technology - crows are intelligent enough to be self-aware, to use tools and count, and have what appears to be a fairly sophisticated level of communication, but they're hardly likey to be able to develop much further.
And I'm not ignoring the fact that birds are closely related to sauropods, but it's still unlikely they could develop the toolmaking skills to build complicated machines, and the same is very likely true of the majority of alien species/races, but that doesn't make for colourful newspaper headlines...

Now for reality.

"With today's technology, there's no way that anyone alive right now could make it to TRAPPIST-1 in a lifetime. While discussing the new discovery at a news conference today (Feb. 22), NASA officials suggested that it would likely take at least 800,000 years to reach the TRAPPIST-1 system."

Though Stephen Hawking has a crazy concept idea that might make it in 200 years.

http://www.space.com/35796-trappist-1-alien-planets-travel-time.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=socialfbspc&cmpid=social_spc_514630

They can detect gasses in the atmosphere, so if they detect oxygen in there then there's probably life. Not because oxygen creates life, but because life creates oxygen. If there were no plants here to replenish the oxygen eventually it would all react with stuff and disappear from the atmosphere.

Not wanting to start an argument, but isn't that a bit arrogant? 😕

Why do you say that?

Says who? I reckon intelligent alien life breathes Hydrogen or something like Alienogen - an element unknown to puny man!

But they still obey the same laws, alienogen can not be something with which we are completely unfamiliar

I note the year (orbital period) of most of these planets is less than 13 days.

That's going to make for some interesting weather if any of them do spin & have a tilt...

I reckon they will look like 75% of the planets in No Man's Sky
[img] [/img]

alienogen can not be something with which we are completely unfamiliar

What exobiology would like is a nothing more than pure speculation

What we find will be both "familiar" and "unfamiliar" depending on what you want to look at

I agree its not likely[ or remotely probable] to be based on a new hitherto unknown element.

What exobiology would like is a nothing more than pure speculation

Sure, but not completely open or unbounded.

What we find will be both "familiar" and "unfamiliar" depending on what you want to look at

Alienogen was a suggestion about what they might breathe, which is what led to the following.

I agree its not likely[ or remotely probable] to be based on a new hitherto unknown element.

It might be a new element, but not one that we could not conceive of, nor be able to deduce some properties of.

What exobiology would like is a nothing more than pure speculation

Speculation is neither guesswork or fantasy. It's well informed speculation, as was covered recently on a similar thread (about exobiology.. I love STW...)

Chemistry is going to be the same everywhere in the universe.

yes chemistry will be the same everywhere but we are talking about life and biology and the reality is until we have some data is it is little more than speculation bereft of any evidence.

speculation
?sp?kj??le??n/Submit
noun
1.
the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence.

yes chemistry will be the same everywhere but we are talking about life and biology and the reality is until we have some data is it is little more than speculation bereft of any evidence.

As I said, it's informed speculation, based on lots of knowledge.

Biology is constrained by chemistry, and we understand a fair bit about that. So what we know won't work for life on earth also won't work on other planets.

The reason scientists speculate is to direct their research. So although they don't have any firm evidence of life on them YET, the stuff we already know about them suggests it's a good place to look. Otherwise we are simply searching in the dark. To dismiss this discovery because it's also associated with speculation is.. well.. I'm not sure what your point is tbh.

And the idea of chemistry, biology, physics etc. being 'different' sciences is artificial and recent and now I wonder if it is a Western construct

until we have some data is it is little more than speculation bereft of any evidence.

We can infer a fair bit, I think. There will be a limit to the kind of things that living forms can be made of. Not necessarily carbon, but similar. For example, not aluminium, that would then give something about the 'strength' of the living tissue, which would give a limit to the size of the being, dependent on the gravity of the planet on which they live, which in itself is estimable.

So, not entirely groundless speculation, but a bit like a big Fermi task

deadkenny - Member

One report quotes someone saying they think they'll discover life there within 10 years. Yeah, we can't even discover life on Mars, which is a hell of a lot closer.

Do you think the difficulty of finding things is all about how far away they are? Would it, frinstance, be easier to find my car keys on my desk, 1 foot away, or in my coat pocket, 10 feet away?

The OP's link is not responding.

THEY'RE HERE............

it's informed speculation, based on lots of knowledge

As i said no one has any knowledge of exo biology as we have not found any yet therefore its, as i said, speculation - it has no evidence. LITERALLY.

Biology is constrained by chemistry

True but exo biology is still biology and not chemistry.

To dismiss this discovery because it's also associated with speculation is.

There is a difference between finding a number of habitable planet and searching for signs of life on it and making statements about what the life will be like on it. We dont know as exobiology is as yet an unknown science.
I have no issue with SETI in general and assume [ scale/drake equation] means there is probably life but there - its an educated guess and speculative even though I can explain why.

I think with what the life is like, as CM notes, we may be able to put limits on it - as we can with say what type of planets are habitable but beyond that we cannot actually say anythign meaningful about it as we require data.

We can infer a fair bit, I think.

Indeed we can speculate

speculation
?sp?kj??le??n/Submit
noun
1.
the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence.

We just dont know. its not really knowable till we encounter it.

As i said no one has any knowledge of exo biology as we have not found any yet therefore its, as i said, speculation - it has no evidence. LITERALLY.

So what's your point?

No-one's claiming to know, so I don't know who you're arguing with.