Known Exoplanets

[quadz]

I might have posted a link to this on another thread a few weeks ago, but anyway...




If the rest of the galaxies are anything like our local neighborhood, there are likely over 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the observable universe.

[Arm0r]

Makes me wonder about the chances of life on the best candidate's of them, most of them being gas giants I assume.  I've always thought it would be better to be contacted or "discovered" first rather than we stumbling upon them first for the simple fact if we found them first they would have to be farther back on the evolutionary track than we are.   It would answer a shit load of questions but then the question "what are the chances of sentient life existing within our reach?" would dominate peoples minds.     

[ex]

Finding another planet wouldn't necessarily mean the creatures we find would be less evolutionarily developed than us.  Maybe they are arrogant and don't want to find other life around them.  An arrogant isolationist lifeform. 

And yeah, there is absolutely life other than here in the Universe.  It's already been shown that there are space bacteria/virii out there that thrive on certain elements (metal in asteroids, gas emissions from planets/moons, etc), so I'm sure there's life out there on a complex level like us.  If not on these exoplanets, then for absolutely sure somewhere in the Universe as a whole.  It would be foolish to think we're truly the only ones.

[|iR|Focalor]

Finding another planet wouldn't necessarily mean the creatures we find would be less evolutionarily developed than us.  Maybe they are arrogant and don't want to find other life around them.  An arrogant isolationist lifeform. 

And yeah, there is absolutely life other than here in the Universe.  It's already been shown that there are space bacteria/virii out there that thrive on certain elements (metal in asteroids, gas emissions from planets/moons, etc), so I'm sure there's life out there on a complex level like us.  If not on these exoplanets, then for absolutely sure somewhere in the Universe as a whole.  It would be foolish to think we're truly the only ones.

Eh, I still think for all it's worth, we might as well consider ourselves "alone". If we happened, then chances are other life forms could happen. But if it exists at this moment in time right now, we'll probably never ever be able to physically reach it no matter what kind of space ship we build. Also, I gotta consider the possibility that maybe we ARE the one and only intelligent life form in the entire universe currently, but maybe trillions of trillions of years ago other life forms existed. Time is absolutely limitless, it had no start and it will have no end. Maybe we're the one and only planet with the perfect chemistry to create and support life at this point in time. Maybe countless other life forms existed around countless other stars in the universe, but they're all dead and gone now. If it's entirely possible that life can exist elsewhere, statistically speaking, it's also possible that we are the one and only perfect planet for it right now.

If there is other life, I think it would extremely advantageous if WE found them before they found us. Considering what we know about ourselves and all the creatures that live here, it's highly probable that other life forms would be predatory creatures as well. Last thing I want is for a bunch of telepathic and telekinetic 13 foot long winged space sharks with 7 eyes and 6 legs landing on earth and eating me... or even worse, fucking my ear holes with their alien space shark dicks and laying eggs in my brain.

[yahoo]

Going a step further, does man knows how to identify what is alien life?

Just previously scientists stated that life would not exist on extreme temperatures yet recently it was disproven by the discovery of extremophile.
We often are biased and assumed that other life would be simillar to what we on Earth and carbon based.

What if other life forms started from an utterly diffrent branch? ex. silicon based
It could be possible that scientists had already found alien life forms but failed to tag them since they are very far cry from the qualifications they are looking for.

Just thinkin.

[|iR|Focalor]

Indeed. Silicon based telepathic and telekinetic 13 foot long winged space sharks with 7 eyes and 6 legs that fuck your ears with their space penises and lay eggs in your brain.

[ex]

I'm not going to try and go too crazy into this, since I can go hard into scientific discussions.  First, to clear up a few things:

1.)  We are not "alone."  There are bacteria and virii in outer space locked up in asteroids, gases, and other things floating around in just our solar system alone.  So as far as being "alone" as the only planet or object with life on it, absolutely not.

2.)  At the current time, we have identified planets with very similar makeups to our own, which could indeed hold lifeforms on them at this very point in time.  I've mentioned before Gleise 581 g, a exoplanet which has been identified as having conditions set up remarkably similar to being Earth-like.  True, the temperature is far colder on average than on Earth, and we're not sure if it's a gas planet or a rocky-based one like Earth is, but even if it's a cold, gassy planet, the realm of possibility of it supporting life is quite great, noting where it is placed, directly in the middle of the Gleise 581 star system's habitable zone.   As yahoo said, extremophiles have been identified here on Earth in temperatures as cold as -120 F in Antarctica ALIVE, far colder than the 10 F to -35 F temperatures expected on Gleise 581 g.

3.)  The idea of time being endless is currently being debated.  Much like the Universe which was once thought to be endless, we now realize that is almost certainly not the case.  Scientists are starting to believe this about time as well.  Time may not be a forward flowing thing as we perceive it, but rather a solid-state entity of the Universal field, and us living through it right now may actually be something that is set-in-stone.  Crazy, I know, but many of our greatest minds are starting to think that if the Universe is built on dimensions, and each of these dimensions have bends and folds in them, and as time itself is merely another dimension, then it may be limited right along with all the other dimensions, having the ability to be manipulated (bended and folded), but also having dimensional limitations.

4.)  Only in the current time do we not harness the scientific understanding to unlock the secrets of space and time which would allow us to reach faraway areas of the Universe in fractions of a second.  We're getting closer to this eventuality, and I can envision a point in our history where we figure out a way with technology to legitimately break the light speed barrier without destroying ourselves in the process.  We've already played with the idea in models here on Earth, a spaceship which would "flash" itself via an pulsating ion engine into speeds greater than previously thought.  True, nowhere near light speed or greater, but still, at least on a model scale, we're getting there.  And since ion engines, in particular pulsed ion engines, work best in space, this is getting closer to what it will take to get us from here to wherever.  The only issue is we need to dramatically increase the power availability of these devices without costing loss of power overall.  Some hurdles for future scientists for sure. 

Now for the main subject:

For sure, there is the possibility that we are the only ones.  Not a smart mentality though, especially because of the space shark issue!    Vigilance is best.  I do honestly believe there is life out there though.  It would be too ignorant for me personally to think we're the only ones.  In fact, I'd be betraying my knowledge on the Universe.  Even if in the Universe in totality, where there is an estimated 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (300 sextillion) stars alone, if we take just an average of 10 planets to every 1 star, that would mean there are 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (3 septillion [I hope I did my math right]) planets in the Universe as due to size estimations at the current point.  And that's considering our estimations are accurate, and the Universe isn't even BIGGER than that!

If you can tell me in that number of planets, that not one has life on it, I think you're probably lying to yourself.

And as yahoo said, if it's silicon or some other-based lifeform, we may have already found it and overlooked it due to our own scientific paradigms.

Anyway, my .02 cents on the issue.  Always been fascinated by it.

[|iR|Focalor]

3.)  The idea of time being endless is currently being debated.  Much like the Universe which was once thought to be endless, we now realize that is almost certainly not the case.  Scientists are starting to believe this about time as well.  Time may not be a forward flowing thing as we perceive it, but rather a solid-state entity of the Universal field, and us living through it right now may actually be something that is set-in-stone.  Crazy, I know, but many of our greatest minds are starting to think that if the Universe is built on dimensions, and each of these dimensions have bends and folds in them, and as time itself is merely another dimension, then it may be limited right along with all the other dimensions, having the ability to be manipulated (bended and folded), but also having dimensional limitations.

[quadz]

1.)  We are not "alone."  There are bacteria and virii in outer space locked up in asteroids, gases, and other things floating around in just our solar system alone. 

Reference?

We've discovered meteors on Earth that we're certain originated on Mars -- which we believe to have been ejected from Mars by an asteroid impact; and we've found traces of the so-called building blocks of life like amino acids on meteorites. However, that is quite different from bacteria and virii. We suspect some forms of DNA based bacterial life could survive an interplanetary journey, if kicked from one planet to another via impact ejecta. But the actual discovery of bacteria and virii in outer space? That would be interesting if you've got any links.

[Arm0r]

I'd be interested in a source to those claims as well.  Never heard of such a thing myself.

[yahoo]

I think he was referring to this

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/06/nasa_alien_fossils_found_meteorite/

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/03/nasa-researcher.php

however the evidences were not conclusive

[quadz]

I think he was referring to this

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/06/nasa_alien_fossils_found_meteorite/

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/03/nasa-researcher.php

however the evidences were not conclusive

Ah, thanks.

I'd forgotten about that, but I recall reading the following criticisms of the alien bacteria claim at the time:

http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2011/03/is-this-claim-of-bacteria-in-meteorite.html

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/06/did-scientists-discover-bacter/

[yahoo]

if i remember it right, the claim of alien bacterial fossils is not near to conclusive of the existence of other lifeforms beyond this panet. Otherwise this would have made headlines all over.

I still believe what would be the ultimate proof would be the detection of signals from other intelligent beings (not necessarily trying to communicate with us). However, this may prove to be ellusive since not to mention the huge distances between stars, frequency involved and limitations of speed,  its a question of technology.

There could be a posilibility that other intelligent lifeforms (specially those that are more advance than ours) are using some other forms of signal broadcasting/communication aside from radio waves. Maybe coz of the technology that they had started upon perhaps followed a different pathway from what we have. IDK.

[DKarn]

there are countless thousands of other civilizations just in our galaxy

didn't you guys watch the 'Men in Black' movies? yeesh

[ex]

3.)  The idea of time being endless is currently being debated.  Much like the Universe which was once thought to be endless, we now realize that is almost certainly not the case.  Scientists are starting to believe this about time as well.  Time may not be a forward flowing thing as we perceive it, but rather a solid-state entity of the Universal field, and us living through it right now may actually be something that is set-in-stone.  Crazy, I know, but many of our greatest minds are starting to think that if the Universe is built on dimensions, and each of these dimensions have bends and folds in them, and as time itself is merely another dimension, then it may be limited right along with all the other dimensions, having the ability to be manipulated (bended and folded), but also having dimensional limitations.

Well, seeing as how time is considered a dimension, a.k.a. the "4th dimension" by most scientists, it holds similar and has key properties of the 3 main dimensions, the main properties being bends and folds which manipulate dimensions.

Just as length, height, and width are certainly limited in how we understand the Universe at this point, time itself is more than likely bound to these same rules.  It could be true that time is on a different wavelength altogether, which humanity has yet to discover, but if it holds true to the equation of the other 3 dimensions, then time as a 4th dimension can be bended and folded identically.

Some proof of this is the issue of the Speed of Light.  As you go faster and faster, time for you remains the same, yet time around you speeds up, and time for everything else that views you slows down.  Proof is the astronomical clocks that we've put in satellites that rotate around the Earth, both started at the same time, and one satellite put at a faster speed to calculate the if the clock would tick slower compared to the other.  The result?  It did indeed age slower than its less-faster counterpart.

Also, more proof of this would be the black hole issue, where time slows down to a standstill once material passes the event horizon and goes into the black hole.  It appears to us that way anyway.  To the material being sucked in, time flows at the same rate, perception-based anyway.  It's interesting stuff for sure.

And as a last comment, time itself may not be the 4th and last dimension.  If String Theory holds true, we could be looking at an 11-dimensional Universe or more, but that has yet to be proven.  But as far as time being a dimension, that's pretty much already been proven with the existence of the aforementioned facts about how time behaves under gravity.