NASA Discovers Inhabitable Planets

**Sri Hanuman** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 4:28pm

That's like 60,000,000,000,000 in banana feet.

We're coming for you.

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 4:34pm

Originally Posted by Sorekara

Light year, 10 trillion kilometers (6 trillion miles) So, the closest one is only a mere 120,000,000,000,000 miles from earth.

True but if you consider for a second that a LY is from a human's perspective just 365 days so if there is a civilization capable of at least radio or optical communication 20 light years away, we could possibly catch their transmissions by pointing SETI antennae their way or even send advanced optic in that generation and actually see them on the surface. 20 years may seem lot a lot of time to have between text messages but still, being able to communicate with an exoplanetary civilization 20 light years away at ALL would sure be something.

The big problem with SETI has always been there is a lot of sky and only so much can be watched at once and 99.9999....% of it is of course, empty.

Now, they're starting to find strong, high confidence targets....so now they'll get their (lost) funding back hopefully.

The fact that SETI is getting research money again because of this discovery is awesome enough...SETI was the process of dying out before these big announcements...their needle in a haystack mission just got a lot more focused and interesting to say the least.

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 4:39pm

Originally Posted by Jacob Marley's Ghost

Hey Wabbit -realistically, how long do you think it will take for the folks at NASA to determine whether the planets in question have an atmosphere similar to our own and whether they habitable or not ?
Exactly how far away are these planets ?

Very, very, very, very, very, very far.

Atmospheres appear pretty common, a number of Solar System planetoids have them. Jupiter, the biggest planet in our system, is basically a big ball of gas/atmosphere. Wherever there is gravity, gasses, and some mass you'll get one...is it oxygen? Argon? depends on what materials were around when the star system formed billions of years prior.

As far as discovering an atmosphere, keep in mind it takes X-rays 20 years to reach Keppler 22, so if we were to even start "probing" it using EM or looking at it with powerful telescopes, we'd be waiting 20 years or getting 20 year old pictures. My guess is SETI (esp with USAF funding now) will start trying both.

The realist in me says that the only real value in discovering life that far away would be to observe it from Earth, even if the observations are 20 years delayed. That would still lead to great scientific breakthroughs....I can see entire research industries watching 20 year old activities on Kepler-22, if it actually contains anything interesting.

How's this for a cool one: what about if (when) they find an exoplanet just like Earth but still in the process of forming, e.g. very volcanic. The possibility of finding planetary life in it's very earliest stages (microbial) would answer soooo many questions about Earth's life.

At the end of the day the reason the Goldilocks zone is money is that in that zone, you not only get liquid water but the composite vapor molecules which are....

O2, H2...see where that is going? Liquid water and an oxygen/hydrogen atmosphere could, theoretically, be found often together in the Goldilock's Zone of many stars.

**Ignorami** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 4:41pm

Launch torpedoes!

**Res Judicata** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 4:55pm

Call me Eeyore, but I've always believed that the odds of finding intelligent, technological life at all--let alone near enough to communicate--are probably about nil. Over the course of 4.5 billion years, our planet produced such life exactly once, and we've only had the technology to do so for a century at most. Until about a billion years ago there were no multicellular organisms at all. Modern humans showed up only about 200k years ago. And we can't even know how common life is in the universe because we have no real sample. (My guess: really uncommon and we may be unique. Entropy is a bitch).

**Res Judicata** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 4:59pm

Originally Posted by Ice Hole

Very, very, very, very, very, very far.

Atmospheres appear pretty common, a number of Solar System planetoids have them. Jupiter, the biggest planet in our system, is basically a big ball of gas/atmosphere. Wherever there is gravity, gasses, and some mass you'll get one...is it oxygen? Argon? depends on what materials were around when the star system formed billions of years prior.

As far as discovering an atmosphere, keep in mind it takes X-rays 20 years to reach Keppler 22, so if we were to even start "probing" it using EM or looking at it with powerful telescopes, we'd be waiting 20 years or getting 20 year old pictures. My guess is SETI (esp with USAF funding now) will start trying both.

The realist in me says that the only real value in discovering life that far away would be to observe it from Earth, even if the observations are 20 LY delayed. That would still lead to great scientific breakthroughs....I can see entire research industries watching 20 year old activities on Kepler-22, if it actually contains anything interesting.

How's this for a cool one: what about if (when) they find an exoplanet just like Earth but still in the process of forming, e.g. very volcanic. The possibility of finding planetary life in it's very earliest stages (microbial) would answer soooo many questions about Earth's life.

At the end of the day the reason the Goldilocks zone is money is that in that zone, you not only get liquid water but the composite vapors molecules which are....

O2, H2...see where that is going? Liquid water and an oxygen/hydrogen atmosphere should, theoretically, be found often together in the Universe.

It's been a long time since I studied it, but on our planet the switchover from a reducing environment to an oxidizing one with significant free oxygen was the result of the development of photosynthesis. Which, incidentally, probably killed off a very large fraction of the life on Earth during the "Oxygen catastrophe". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_catastrophe

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 5:04pm

You brought up a good point I think I mentioned in another thread, but temporal locality is a big issue with finding life on other planets.

What about dead civilizations? Extinct intelligent races that died because their world overheated or an asteroid wiped out their atmosphere?

The list of requirements for life is, indeed, common....you just need certain gases, gravity, common, stable elements like iron and carbon and oxygen and hydrogen.

But, if you mixed all those together and created life on Kepler-22b, it may have come and gone a billion years ago which means the chances of even getting a radio signal from there is kaput.

To really communicate with another race or observe them, we'd need that critical variable of time to factor in and Res is right...given the size of that variable and the age of the Universe, we may be SOL.

Even if we stared right at a planet that once had a civ (or might someday) we'd never have a clue.

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 5:10pm

Originally Posted by Res Judicata

It's been a long time since I studied it, but on our planet the switchover from a reducing environment to an oxidizing one with significant free oxygen was the result of the development of photosynthesis. Which, incidentally, probably killed off a very large fraction of the life on Earth during the "Oxygen catastrophe". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_catastrophe

Another good point about GOE.

Wait, what's that? Evolution killed off the majority of Earth's non-oxygen life billions of years ago?

Take that, Creationists.

I often forget GOE is proof that God has been using evolution to kill off life on Earth for eons.

**Ignorami** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 5:11pm

There was no mention of this place in either of god's first two books.
I'm in first on this being a publicity stunt for a pre-Christmas release of 'The Bible -volume III'

**FinalLegion** · Posted On: 12/07/2011 5:14pm

Originally Posted by Res Judicata

Call me Eeyore, but I've always believed that the odds of finding intelligent, technological life at all--let alone near enough to communicate--are probably about nil. Over the course of 4.5 billion years, our planet produced such life exactly once, and we've only had the technology to do so for a century at most. Until about a billion years ago there were no multicellular organisms at all. Modern humans showed up only about 200k years ago. And we can't even know how common life is in the universe because we have no real sample. (My guess: really uncommon and we may be unique. Entropy is a bitch).

The problem is that we only have our planet to look at in terms of any close examination. What are the odds of intelligent life cropping up on other planets? Who knows? Are we talking strictly carbon based life? Do conditions have to be the same for all life? Remember, we're only capable of theorizing based on life as we understand life existing. Life and intelligence may be possible under a host of other conditions and forms that we don't understand, so we can't really assign what the possibilities are of intelligent life existing on other worlds.

Now, I think eventually, as we gain more and more data about the other planets we've observed, we will be able to determine what the likelihood of life as we know it existing on those planets...and Ice Hole points out, life may have already come and gone from those worlds.