Billions of Habitable Planets

[Windseeker]

This is pretty cool if this is accurate. And to think this is just in this galaxy.

New 'life in space' hope after billions of 'habitable planets' found in Milky Way - Telegraph

[bcguy]

Windseeker, now if you can do your homework, and see which is the closest habital planet. If it is greater then 120 light years from earth, then that planet, if occupied with advanced life forms have not heard the first communications from earth yet.

[RipplecutBuddha]

Can't wait for them to see the Three Stooges...won't they be excited to meet us then...

[Dravin]

Windseeker, now if you can do your homework, and see which is the closest habital planet. If it is greater then 120 light years from earth, then that planet, if occupied with advanced life forms have not heard the first communications from earth yet.

Gliese 581 g - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is 20.5 light years away, Gliese 370 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is 36, 70 Virginis b - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is 60. The article mentions a closest one at 30 light years.

There are much additional complication than just if they're close enough for our transmissions to have covered such a distance of course. They'd have to notice them (which would require they: (1) exist, (2) be intelligent, (3) be technologically advanced to detect the transmissions), recognize them as having come from intelligent sources, and shot back a replay. Which we in turn would have to notice and recognize as having come from intelligent sources. Considering communication is limited to the speed of light you have to double the distance in years for your communication turn around time and travel using any method we know of would take much longer than the distance in years as well.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Dravin

[Jamie123]

As I understand it red dwarfs are the longest-lived of the main sequence stars. Many have been around much longer than larger, hotter stars like our sun, so any planets orbiting around them are similarly old. Life could have existed on them for much longer than on our earth, and civilizations could be much older and more advanced than ours - perhaps old enough to have developed faster-than-light travel, and they could be on our doorstep with their planetary death rays the moment The Three Stooges reaches them.

A bit worrying really....

[marshac]

They'd have to notice them (which would require they: (1) exist, (2) be intelligent, (3) be technologically advanced to detect the transmissions), recognize them as having come from intelligent sources, and shot back a replay.

There's also the argument that civilizations progress past 'radio' communications fairly quickly (on a cosmological time span), so the window of time that they're actually emitting signals is brief. Before folks are like "what? nothing beats radio!" consider that neutrinos were recently utilized to transmit a message- considering that they could travel through the entire planet without much attenuation, such communication systems would offer many advantages over RF. There's also the possibility of using entangled particles ('spooky').... and possibly other ways we haven't even thought of yet. Hopefully someday we figure out some method to send messages FTL- otherwise colonization of planets (let alone nearby star systems) would have really really horrible internet latency.... no sense even attempting to play Team Fortress2....

[Guest marajotown]

In 1981 I had contact with people very advanced civilization. I published about them March 1982. I'm scientist, M.Sc. from Univ. California Berkeley, USA.

Some of the material was published in length deposited patent of invention, dealing with something as changing environmental conditions in plenty planets orbiting plenty solar systems, not proper for life like humans live in them, trough the Universe, mainly nearby our solar system (plenty of them, year 1981...).

A sketchy of a primitive space craft was provided (attached) to the patent on how to visit them, quite like Startrek spacecraft was to be created/made.

They told they were living in a very far away future and that a "barrier, veil, fence" exists between them and us and that I had penetrated through it. But I was to return alive and remembering about what I had seen and visited and tested.

They were able to "handle" our gravity in other type of gravity as we do with electricity and magnetism fields, and provided theoretical and practical information on that.

Their civilization would not require fossil fuels or solar energy. As I could understood, they could raise and make down softly even the rock of heaven, or that 600 x 600 x 600m stainless steel "plant" supported on ground. Many of them could be orbiting any planet to provide light and energy to a planet... Or to fuel a trip to the stars.

Some I published in USA academic site, but it is not for modern days. In fact we are bound to some type of "medieval concept for TIME" and even for the understanding of "Time x time".

A field class experiment, in Brazil (other in Florida) was provided in 1991 (10 years latter) to make it clear the relationship, as seen from the two sides of the curtain, quite like from a scientific viewpoint.

My conclusion is that they are really stiff tangible people, but they also can be positioned in quite like parallel position in time and space, and thus it is quite disputable what “tangible” bodies are if they are not in our dimension, referential. Some practical cases provided illustration on that, even with my sons: not religious events. Material consequences were the results. We are not to have “fear” or control them.

One practical result was the easy understand of TIME x time relationship. Or that “time” is a relative concept. It changes along the SUPREME BEING’s stages of Creation/Organization: in fact there is just such “ONE true TIME”, of the I AM yet bound to the ALPHA and to the OMEGA. The concept of (true) TIME makes no sense for human reasoning. Thus also time's from Book of Abraham or from Einstein or Black Holes.

Edited March 29, 2012 by marajotown
MISTAKE

[Windseeker]

I like your hat

[Dravin]

There's also the argument that civilizations progress past 'radio' communications fairly quickly (on a cosmological time span), so the window of time that they're actually emitting signals is brief. Before folks are like "what? nothing beats radio!" consider that neutrinos were recently utilized to transmit a message- considering that they could travel through the entire planet without much attenuation, such communication systems would offer many advantages over RF. There's also the possibility of using entangled particles ('spooky').... and possibly other ways we haven't even thought of yet. Hopefully someday we figure out some method to send messages FTL- otherwise colonization of planets (let alone nearby star systems) would have really really horrible internet latency.... no sense even attempting to play Team Fortress2....

I suppose one could adjust technologically advance enough to detect to listening to the right medium. Failure to listen could be, as you suggest, having moved past using that medium, or being incapable of listening to that medium.

I never considered the EM Radiation might be the equivalent of the Pony Express.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Dravin

[Blackmarch]

tellin ya a mix between using wormholes and tachyons is the way of the future

[Vort]

Hopefully someday we figure out some method to send messages FTL- otherwise colonization of planets (let alone nearby star systems) would have really really horrible internet latency.... no sense even attempting to play Team Fortress2....

I'd suggest that any idea of "FTL" communications is a pipe dream. According to physics as we understand it today, "faster than light" has no meaning. If you believe in sequential occurrence and in the idea of causality (e.g. a photon was emitted because a particle decayed, I was born because my parents' gametes combined), then "FTL" is untenable, since its existence necessarily implies a violation of causality.

[Traveler]

It should not surprise anyone - especially LDS that there are billions of solar systems (suns with planets) in our galaxy. It should not be a surprise to anyone to speculate that life exists on some fraction of those planets. What is a surprise is that no signs of life have been found.

Let me review some hard facts. Our solar system exists on the outer rim of our galaxy. The older and therefore further evolved solar systems overwhelming outnumber possible relatively new solar system such as ours. If there is any life in our galaxy it has over 90% probability that the life is more evolved than ours. There are also a few other galaxies within detectable distance similar to ours that statistically are within the distance (speed of light) that following the same evolution of earth would be advanced enough to become detectable. Although the use of electromagnetic communications may be a rather narrow foot print - detectable uses of energy would not. Let me explain.

Our sun is an amazingly efficient energy engine. If we compare the energy ratio generated by the sun to our average automobile - it is most embarrassing. A car getting the same energy conversions being driven at average speed could be driven constantly for around 100,000 years on a gallon of gas. As advanced as our civilization is - we are already using nuclear fission - and that gives off distinctive electromagnetic pulses that would be detectable with just our current technology. Nuclear fusion (what is going on in the sun) likewise is detectable. It is important to note that controlled and/or sustained use of nuclear energy would stick out in the emptiness of space (even considering all the stars) like a beacon.

The perplexing truth is - there is nothing. Space is unexplainably quiet about life. So much so that many scientists argue that life is a great exception - contrary to what we observe here on earth. The simple fact is - no one has any reasonable reason or even speculative suggestion as to why we have been unable to find any remote hints that we are not alone. As far as we know and have evidence - this earth is a one of a kind. There is no more evidence of life anywhere beyond earth than there is scientific evidence that G-d exist. I have used this simple fact with many atheists with the question of why they are so much more willing to believe that somewhere in the universe there may be other life but not a G-d - such thinking makes no sense.

The Traveler

[NeuroTypical]

Oh, I dunno. Any discussion on the subject involves seeing these potential other forms of life through our own lives.

For example, here's a partial list of unsubstantiated, unsupportable assumptions I see when we discuss such things:

* Other forms of life have senses.

* They are curious.

* They go about trying to discover things.

* They create sources of energy.

* They create anything at all.

* They are appropriately thought about using a term like "they".

As far as I can tell, the billion-year-old giant fungus living just below Omicron four's planetary crust isn't able to detect our 3 stooges radio waves, and it also isn't particularly interested in caring one way or the other.

[mordorbund]

Traveler's post reminds me of President Kimball's article "Voices from Space" in Faith Precedes the Miracle. He points out the irony that many of the things hopeful scientists look for in space can be found right here in the gospel. We have a clearly defined "something more"; we have received messages from an advanced intelligence. What's more, he even quotes a scientist that speculates we may even hear a voice of warning before an entire civilization annihilated itself (cue Book of Mormon references).