We may not be alone. That’s the message from NASA, which says a new planet by the dorm room-sounding name of Kepler 22b has been discovered. Kepler 22b is reportedly a lot like Earth in that it orbits around a single star and may have water on its surface, indicating it may be the first planet discovered that might have life on it .
But did you know there are other similarities between the two? Here are some other features of Kepler 22b that are eerily similar to Earth:
1. Four Kepler 22b women have come forward to say they had affairs with Herman Cain.
2. Scientists say there's a small but vocal Occupy 22B Wall Street movement that's sprung up.
3. They sent a transmission asking E! to stop showing 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians.'
4. Donald Trump has already claimed the entire eastern half of the planet to build high-rise condos.
5. Brett Favre has announced that, if contacted, he would be more than willing to play for an expansion team based on Kepler-22b.
6. It's way out in space, but holiday shopping is very popular. The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Hole Friday.
7. No one is quite sure why, but Lindsay Lohan is also on probation there.
8. One of its highest-rated TV shows is 'CSI: Kepler 22b.'
9. No one there believes Al Gore invented the Internet, either.
10. People there are just as stunned as we were. Not that there are two similar planets. That Britney Spears is engaged.
11. When plugging in your home address, your GPS will send you off a cliff on Kepler 22b as well.
12. People there are also clamoring for a summer tour featuring legendary R&B band Kepler 22b, Wind, & Fire.
13. Much like us on Earth, they don’t have proof of intelligent life in the universe. Thanks a lot, George W. Bush.
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176 comments:
Kepler-22b or not to be? Or, in other words, should we attempt to rationally analyze the first habitable planet confirmed to possibly have water, or should we just start launching whatever the hell we can at it?
Um. Six hundred light years is a bit of a... well... schlep. I'm fairly certain that anything we launch today will not pass a half of a percent of that distance before we get around to figuring out a FTL solution. (That gives us over three hundred or so years to work on a FTL option, roughly.)
Um... FTL?
Faster Than Light
So, what you're saying is we could declare war on our possibly future selves right now? I'm in!
Not in the slightest, but, hey, why not. As a species we seem to be pretty good at the whole declaring war on ourselves. Just anyone who takes the slow boat (or any slow boat we can design now) is going to be pretty annoyed to show up there, and find out it has been renamed to "New Detroit" and have to watch out for falling concrete.
We should wait until 2039, and then send out some volunteers. I figure by that day, the lands will be few, and maybe 20 brave souls inside can sail across the milky seas and return, say exactly 100 or 200 years later.
Another blog so soon? Merry christmas to you too, doc.
If I met anyone from several centuries from now, I'd probably think he was really weird and kind of a dick anyway. Also, they can't retaliate unless they invent time travel. Score.
Never thought of it that way; but, you know, if my ancestors did that to me, I'd be an even bigger big... ohhhh, yeah. Suddenly a lot of things make sense now.
Hey McGinty - Dude, there are only 200 comments allowed per blog. Don't bogart all the space. Thanks.
'That gives us over three hundred or so years to work on a FTL option, roughly.' - comment hog mcginty
This assumes FTL is possible, though the recent discoveries at CERN suggest that it might be. The more logical solution is a fusion drive with a ramscoop, which could easily be 50 years from production.
Launch what at it???
An ICBM?
A cow?
Kirstie Alley?
Is it weird that I love to try and imagine what it would be like to be on that planet?
Can you even imagine stepping down on to another Earth? It's mindblowing.
Of course, at 2.4 times the size of the Earth, I'd better get my spine shaped up so I don't get crippled by gravity.
Better to play it safe. Aim reruns of 'Survivor' at them. That will keep them from EVER wanting to fucking visit.
We'd better get to work getting humans off this planet if we want the human race to survive.
Two words: B Ark.
LAUNCH ALL THE THINGS!
Of course, at 2.4 times the size of the Earth, I'd better get my spine shaped up so I don't get crippled by gravity. ~ akatherder
I was thinking of that as well. If we colonized that place, our colonists would come back looking like freaking weightlifters and snap our puny necks.
We should send bankers and politicians. All of them.
Clearly that planet is harboring a species of malevolent aliens who are hell-bent on destroying us and consuming Earth for its natural resources. I suggest we nuke it from orbit just to be safe.
600 light years is a long, long, LONG way away. There are similar planets that are closer if we're looking to go to another star. Which is silly anyway as far as colonization is concerned. With the time and energy needed to reach another star, you'd be better off making Mars friendlier to life.
"Better to play it safe. Aim reruns of 'Survivor' at them. That will keep them from EVER wanting to fucking visit." -- Aunt J-Ha
Or Twilight.
Ours is a planet of sparkly vampires and hunky werewolves. Be very afraid.
What if they just discovered a smaller Kepler-22b like planet 600 light years away from them, and are thinking about traveling here to save their species?
Better to play it safe. Aim reruns of Survivor at them. That will keep them from EVER wanting to fucking visit.
Or Twilight.
--------------
We're trying to stop them from visiting, not pissing them off enough to nuke us from orbit.
Send it smallpox or ebola.
[Another blog doc? So soon after Occupy Sachs and Dear Leader's passing? For shame (funny shit though) Merry Christmas everybody ... and happy new year if doc doesn't post one before then.]
Preferably on a blanket.
I mean nobody would suspect a blanket, and what's the first thing anyone does when they get a new blanket? Rub it on their face and cheeks to feel how soft it is.
Those alien bastards wouldn't know what hit 'em.
They confirmed that it's at the right distance from its star that it COULD have liquid water (i.e. it's in the "Goldilocks zone"). However, it's not yet known if it actually DOES have any liquid water.
It would be highly anomalous if it didn't have water. We've found water of the frozen variety everywhere we've looked so far that wasn't boiling hot. There's even many frozen chunks of water flying through space, you know them as comets.
At what point do we just say water is abundant and stop this nonsense?
I say nuke it now. At the rate we are going, the radiation will be long gone by the time we get there.
Um. Six hundred light years is a bit of a... well... schlep. I'm fairly certain that anything we launch today will not pass a half of a percent of that distance before we get around to figuring out a FTL solution. (That gives us over three hundred or so years to work on a FTL option, roughly.) -- Mcginty77
I'm going to guess that within that same time frame we will have the ability to image the planet from here with the same kind of detail possible by our best current spy satellites, thus making the trip unnecessary.
Some currently undiscovered branch of space warping time travel really is about our only hope of ever visiting another habitable planet, but I think we will have the whole interstellar voyeur thing nailed in another century or so.
[Of course, at 2.4 times the size of the Earth, I'd better get my spine shaped up so I don't get crippled by gravity. - akatherder]
Depends how rich in heavy metals it is. It might be like Robert Silverberg's Majipoor - a vast planet with Earth-normal gravity but metal-deficient, meaning a low-tech sort of lifestyle.
Before anybody gets too excited about these "other earths" we're discovering, please remember that we have a nearly exact match to the Earth as our nearest planetary neighbor. Mass is almost exact, rocky surface, substantial atmosphere... it's called Venus.
By nearly all definitions it sits in the habitable zone, but with slow rotation and massive atmospheric density, the greenhouse trapping from a CO2 dominated atmosphere cooked all the water, allowing photo dissociation in the upper atmosphere, and turned it into an acid oven.
Acid? Well, let's go there then.
'That gives us over three hundred or so years to work on a FTL option, roughly.' - comment hog mcginty
'This assumes FTL is possible, though the recent discoveries at CERN suggest that it might be. The more logical solution is a fusion drive with a ramscoop, which could easily be 50 years from production.' - lionel trane
Ramscoops don't work, even in the right interstellar environment -- there's no way you can gather fuel and burn it in fusion reactions to give yourself a net acceleration -- the scoop slows you more than the burn can speed you -- it's a fundamental flaw.
Oh you science and sifi nerds with your geek talk make me soooo hot...
We launch the nukes now and in the millions of years it will take to get there, they have time to develop into a space race, we will declare war and BAM nuked! or if not we just sent them back to the stone age.
Or they're much more advanced than us and it does nothing but piss them off...
"Um. Six hundred light years is a bit of a... well... schlep. I'm fairly certain that anything we launch today will not pass a half of a percent of that distance before we get around to figuring out a FTL solution. (That gives us over three hundred or so years to work on a FTL option, roughly.)" - comment hog Mcginty
Odd...that just sparked a half-memory; something about an FTL-capable Earth vessel encountering a sublight ship, maybe a generation ship, that's the tiniest fraction of the distance to their destination after several hundred years, when the FTL craft would be getting there within a matter of weeks.
Oh, more geek talk, faster, faster, faster..... than light. So hot.
No. Let's say we get there and it's habitable. Undoubtedly it will have other life living on it. We can't just land a probe and risk contaminating the whole planet. One microbe could turn the it into a festering pile of rotten detritus in rather short order.
I don't know about you ladies, but this does nothing for me. Think I'll go play with the spaceship shaped missile in my bedroom nightstand.
Sounds like a plan.
No. Let's say we get there and it's habitable. Undoubtedly it will have other life living on it. We can't just land a probe and risk contaminating the whole planet. One microbe could turn the it into a festering pile of rotten detritus in rather short order.
------------------
I'd imagine it's more likely that our virii and bacteria wouldn't know what the hell to do with it, and just ignore it and die.
(((Before anybody gets too excited about these "other earths" we're discovering, please remember that we have a nearly exact match to the Earth as our nearest planetary neighbor. Mass is almost exact, rocky surface, substantial atmosphere... it's called Venus.
By nearly all definitions it sits in the habitability zone, but with slow rotation and massive atmospheric density the greenhouse trapping from a CO2 dominated atmosphere cooked all the water allowing photo dissociation in the upper atmosphere and turned it into an acid oven.)))
Those same conditions are why habitable planets are now believed to exist further out from a sun. In fact Frank Drake has recalculated his equation to include that, and it means many more habitable planets are out there.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/life.html
Every planet has different atmospheric qualities. For it to be exactly like Venus would be unlikely, but still remotely possible.
guys we're scaring off the females, at least the ones who aren't turned on by our nerdliness.
We will need to find a much closer planet if you want to see anyone on Earth go to another 'earth'. Unless that is, some other beings give us a ride elsewhere on their spaceships after they take over the Earth just to get rid of us.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Kepler's methodology only works on systems where the planetary disk is edge-on from our perspective. So it seems that for every system it finds, there must be thousands more!
We'll never hit 200 comments without the ladies' help. Think what you're doing people!
Star Wars, Star Trek, hot hot hot.
No?
They've gone... now you've done it.
Except the article says that the star at the center of Kepler 22b's solar system is cooler than ours. So I will continue to be excited.
I still believe in you science! Never stop dreaming!
'Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Kepler's methodology only works on systems where the planetary disk is edge-on from our perspective. So it seems that for every system it finds, there must be thousands more!' ~ jimbei
Yup.
There's billions of these damned rocks!
Interesting.
Obviously it'll be some time before we can be sure that it does support life, but the outlook is better for this new world then anything I've seen before.
From another article I read if its greenhouse effect is similar to Earth's, then it should have an average temperature of 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 C), perfectly acceptable for a life-bearing planet.
It's still quite a bit larger than Earth, but all that really means is that any multi-cellular life will probably be built very low to the ground. Not really a point against life in general at all.
What if we throw an object full of bacteria and viruses at it and see what happens in a few hundred years.
Would we be gods then?
Only if you show up later to cause division and centuries of war among them.
Only if you teach different civilizations different versions of how to worship you so they war amongst each other over it for the rest of their existence.
"Launch what at it??? An ICBM? A cow? Kirstie Alley?" - semisarcastic
I don't think we have that kind of heavy-lift capability. Maybe in 10-15 years.
Would we be gods then? bonuspersona
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clark.
Launch what at it??? An ICBM? A cow? Kirstie Alley?
You said 'cow' twice.
Would we be gods then?
Even if we wouldn't be, I vote we claim it, and litter our bacteria/virus ships with all sorts of random bits of writing and dinosaur fossils to test their faiths.
It seems that every time a theory is shot down another loophole in our understanding of physics opens up where FTL is possible. Even if the ship itself isn't actually moving.
Frankly I think FTL is perfectly possible, people said exactly the same thing about the sound barrier (or high pressure steam) as they do Faster Than Light but I also think the same thing then is true now: we have neither the technology or energy generation capabilities or the will as a species to actually make use of any subtleties of physics we manage to figure out a way of abusing for our own ends.
If it has earth like density and oceans, then 2.4 Earth gravities really doesn't matter in an ocean. I bet a dolphin might be able to take 20 gravities.
So, what you are saying is we should launching dolphins into space?
Happy Hanukkah (I can't be the only Jew on here) and Merry Christmas
I think any Earth-density planet that doesn't have oceans would be too dry to be comfortable for humans. If the planet does have oceans then we might as well launch dolphins (rather than humans), because being water creatures they can handle a much larger gravity range both in flight and on planet.
Dolphins brains are nearly equal to human ones, they have a more advanced language, and also don't have commercialism, or politics.
They deserve to get off this rock more than we do.
A little over 12 years at 1G constant acceleration. If you're on the rocket ship.
The rest of us have to wait 600 years, though.
Then another 600 years for any report to come back to Earth. So a good-sized chunk of recorded history just waiting for "nope, dead gas ball."
Yeah, but if you can make a return trip, 24 years to you gets you to Earth Year 3211. If we're not a lifeless cinder by then, it there should be some cool tech, and you'd be the most valuable reference to an ancient Earth civilization that exists.
I'd go.
Sometimes I think God put the planets so far apart for a good reason.
Yay! A deep comment from a female.
Loved doc's blog, have no clue what most of you guys are saying, said my piece and now I'm gone :)
Whether or not abigail knows it, her 'piece' is The Cosmic Quarantine Hypothesis.
Hey, Mcginty, you're being a comment hog again!
You'll need me to make the 200 comment mark; all the ladies have gone.
They've gone to Kepler 22b to live with the dolphins.
Speaking again of dolphins:
"Dolphins brains are nearly equal to human ones, they have a more advanced language, and also don't have commercialism, or politics." - stevier
Dude, more advanced language? Really?
Yes, they've been found to have individual names for each other and regional dialects like we do, but use a wider variety of noises than any human language.
I got it! Dolphins are aliens from Kepler 22b, the mostly water planet, who landed in our oceans millenia ago and can't wait for us to leave Earth & go to Kepler 22b!
I for one can't wait for our alien dolphin overlords.
Study: Dolphins Not So Intelligent On Land
Although dolphins have long been celebrated for their high intelligence and for appearing to have a complex language, a team of researchers at the University of Florida reported Monday that these traits are markedly less evident on dry land.
According to study researchers, a group of 25 bottlenose dolphins removed from their holding tanks failed 11 exercises designed to test their basic cognitive abilities and reasoning skills.
"The dolphins were incapable of recognizing and repeating simple gestures," said study co-author Dr. Ima Geek. "Their non-verbal communications were limited to a rapid constriction and expansion of the blowhole, various incomprehensible fin motions, and heavy tremors while they lay prone on the lab table."
After capturing the dolphins from the ocean, Geek and his colleagues tagged them and placed them under the intense, high-wattage lights of a moisture-proof lab. The researchers then administered an extensive battery of tests designed to measure everything from the dolphins' self-awareness to their aptitude for writing and reading comprehension.
"Dolphins have a popular reputation for being excellent communicators," Geek said. "But our study group offered only three types of response to every question we posed: a nonsensical, labored wheezing, an earsplitting barrage of unintelligible high-pitched shrieks, and in extreme cases, a shrill, distressed scream."
Even the dolphins' proven ability to navigate through a form of sonar called echolocation was ineffective on land.
"The military has claimed great success in training these mammals, utilizing their echolocation skills to detect mines that have been placed underwater," said Geek, who conducted a similar experiment in a concrete parking lot. "We were unable to replicate this finding ourselves."
Geek added: "In most cases, the dolphins succeeded in finding land mines only when we placed them directly on top of the mines."
In another test, several pounds of mackerel were placed on the ground, separated from the test dolphins by only 20 feet of concrete. The dolphins were unable to reach the food and feed themselves.
Despite their failures in the initial series of tests, the animals were given further opportunities to demonstrate their intelligence on land. The dolphins were unable to display novel behaviors, use a map to pinpoint their location on campus (spatial reasoning), or complete a simple obstacle course and wall climb.
"Their learning curve was actually negative," Geek said. "The more time we gave them to complete basic land-based tests, the more pitiful their efforts became, with many of them opting to bask in the sun rather than perform a simple task."
"In some cases," Geek added, "the dolphins appeared to be looking directly into our eyes, as if pleading with us to help them perform better in these tests."
Many scientists believe these findings may help to explain why dolphins, for all their vaunted intelligence, have never developed technology or agriculture, or harnessed the power of fire—skills still exclusively in the domain of Homo sapiens.
Said Geek: "Their failure is a great disappointment to all of us who once felt an intelligence-based kinship with these majestic animals."
LMFAO!! AWESOME!!
Hahahahahahaha
Brilliant!
Kudos
Doc's the man!
LOLOL
Hey, wait a minute...
Is doc somehow satirically calling us geeks like that Dr. Ima Geek?
I resemble that remark ;-)
Doc's miniblog satire makes a good point Dolphins may be horny bastards, but are they really that intelligent?
Barring a very convincing citation or ten, I think the "more advanced language" is bullshit. While it's possible that they have an advanced language that we haven't decoded yet, I need stronger evidence than a finding of a wider variety of noises - and a very strong/compelling argument that a large variety of noises produced could indicate an advanced language (or even any language, with at least the properties of human language).
You know I am married to this man and see him everyday. So... when the mini blog about the dolphins had me crying with laughter I thought that was kind of cool.
Doc is funny. love, Buffy
Buffy is funnier. Love, Dr. B.
I think Buffy's the only female left here, thanks to our geeky Kepler 22b comments.
Buffy, is doc just as funny in real life?
Speaking of women on here, for the life of me, I thought it said "Keibler-22b", and immediately thought of a planet populated by beings like her:
http://cdn2.maxim.com/maxim/files/2006/05/10/best-stacy-keibler/stacy_keibler_l5.jpg
Whoa! I say we send a picture and genetic sample of Ms. Keibler along with some amino acid solutions and assorted microflora and microfauna all cryo-preserved on a probe to Kepler-22b with a VASIMR drive that can run balls-out for at least 30 years (15 years accelerating, 15 decelerating), which should get the thing going at a decent clip, and then if we're lucky, by the time we actually get around to going there we might find an entire planet populated with her.
And at 2.4G, they'd be amazonian goddesses who wrestle each other for the right to wear the Cutoff Blouse And Thong Panty Of Leadership, which is the only clothing on the planet aside from thigh-high spike-heeled boots which they wear to defend themselves against the sticky, honey-dripping bondage vines, giant, wild, self-lubricating, body-heat-seeking dildo worms and fluffy, leaping tickle-glommers that give off a euphoric pheromone which induces an endless string of orgasms.
Come to think of it, we should also make sure our probe has an automated micro-bot factory which can self-repair and self-replicate while making swarms of tiny, gnat-like high-definition 3D audiovisual recorders that fly about, following the natives at all times and sending their data back to a central recorder which sends burst transmissions back to Earth.
At 2.4G they'd be like Nixen's Jinxians. Short, wide, and with a grip that could crush brick. The hottest chick on the planet would be 4' 8" tall 3' 6" wide, and could tear your leg off and beat you to death with it.
So far, I'm not hearing anything that's a deal-breaker.
Guys, just because this planet is 2.4 times the size of the Earth doesn't mean it has 2.4 times the gravity. I don't wanna look up the equations I'd need to calculate this but its surface gravity would be more like 1.4 or thereabouts. It depends on the planet's density and its radius.
Case in point: Jupiter's surface gravity is 2.5G, and it's 318 times the size of Earth.
Fair point.
What is it's mass? Then you'll know.
The surface gravity is not likely to be 2.4 times Earth if the planet is 2.4 time the mass of Earth.
It depends on the diameter, which is related to the interior composition. It could actually have lower gravity if the planet is iron poor and rich in other lower density materials.
So your dreams of the squatty honey with the Kung fu grip are a bit premature I fear.
As always, thank you for your insight Oh Wise One, but personally I didn't understand a single word you said.
I guess if Texas made you retarded, that might explain it. KIDDING
I didn't really do the maths, but assumed that if the planet is in the Goldilocks Zone and had the same basic density as Earth at 2.4 times the mass then it would have a more direct correlation between gravity and mass.
No biggie. Bigger planet with similar gravity to Earth just means more space for the statuesque Keiblerian Amazons to roam; To stretch their long, powerful legs and stay absolutely fit; To demonstrate their position as the dominators-- sorry, dominatrixes-- of their wide, bountiful world, from the warm, rainy Bathing Lands on the coast of the carbonated Bubbling Ocean to the briskly nipply Pillowfight Plateaus to the Slippery Oil Swamps where they harvest one of their staple goods, the Wriggling Cucumber, to the steamy, sweaty grasslands above the Great Cleft where they hunt the wily Giggling Land-Clam to gather the lush fibers of its silky beard.
Jesus WTF !?!?!?
The trip should take a little over 12 years at 1G constant acceleration. If you're on the rocket ship.
The rest of us have to wait 600 years, though.
Actually, you'd want to go incrementally faster than 1G, because the target would be presumably a planet with 2.4G and you'd want your people to be acclimated by the time they got there. Also, from Earth it would be a lot longer than 600 years (or even 1200) to get any kind of reply from such a hypothetical mission due to the time it would take to accelerate, cover the distance (we're talking 600 light years. Even if the ship is traveling at .999C, you still have to travel across that distance) and decelerate, perform the mission and then send a signal back, let alone return.
If you were really all that wise, you'd realize that shit like that is why the ladies have left the room.
Oh Most Wise One: Those are all practical mission concerns for a ridiculously impractical mission. It has absolutely no bearing on the relative travel time of the astronauts heading out there. Get them at a sustained 1G acceleration, and they are there in a bit over 12 years. But since acclimation is a good idea, lets send 'em out there at 2.4Gs. They get there in just under six years, and that includes deceleration.
You and I are still 600 years dead, though. Our astronauts are on site, checking it out. If they decide it sucks, they can turn around and be back in 12 years, because they'd want to adapt to 1G again.
It's this: 18 year mission time for something like that, knowing you'd come back 1200 years into your own future? I'd do it in a minute.
We should wait until 2039, and then send out some volunteers. I figure by that day, the lands will be few, and maybe 20 brave souls inside can sail across the milky seas and return, say exactly 100 or 200 years later.
I see what you did there. Well done.
What did he do?
Queen - '39
In the year of '39 assembled here the Volunteers
In the days when lands were few
Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
Sweetest sight ever seen
And the night followed day
And the storytellers day
That the score brave souls inside
For many a lonely day sailed across the milky seas
Ne'er looked back, never feared, never cried
Don't you hear my call though you're many years away?
Don't you hear me calling you?
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew
In the year of '39 came a ship in from the blue
The Volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news of a world so newly born
Oh, their hearts so heavily weigh
For the earth is old and gray, little darling we'll away
But my love this cannot be
For so many years have gone, though I'm older but a year
Your mother's eyes, from your eyes cry to me
Don't you hear my call though you're many years away?
Don't you hear me calling you?
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew
Don't you hear my call though you're many years away?
Don't you hear me calling you?
All your letters in the sand cannot heal me like your hand
For my life still ahead, pity me
Oh.....
Wow. Excuse me while I check YouTube for that one by Queen (never heard of it before, but the lyrics are great. Thanks, lyrical!)
At 1g of acceleration, you would reach light speed in less than a year.
Drat! Forgot that bit. Well, then it would have to be a spinship to simulate gravity for the long haul.
600 light years away? That is fucking far. If we can manage half the speed of light we can get there in a twelve hundred years. That is assuming of course that over the 1200 years our space craft doesn't hit some random space debris while flying at a ridiculous speed. And that of course doesn't take into account the expansion of the universe, which will likely tack on many more light years.
Crap. I want my Na'vi slave girl.
That's an interesting point. I wonder how much distance that would work out to over 1,200 years: 1G for the first half, -1G for the second half. I know Hubble's equation is in there. Some sort of exponential expansion function over time which decreases as you get closer. This sounds like differential equations. I've been out of differential equations for too long.
How weird would that be if we got there, there was intelligent life, but they hadn't reached the level we had?
Almost all of our sci-fi literature and films about alien life involve them being more advanced than us and discovering our planet.
What if we got there first and we were the advanced life form? Maybe they're at some Neanderthal level of intelligence.
We would seem like gods to them, I imagine.
Wouldn't it be fun to build some stone pyramids for them and then leave, only occasionally returning to anally probe an isolated individual out in the middle of nowhere.
Scientist pours cold water on the hype that Kepler-22b may be home to beautiful blue skinned cat people who want to have sex with you:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100121950/kepler-22b-probably-not-home-to-interesting-aliens/
I still say we launch the B-Ark at it. Don't worry guys, we'll be right behind.
It's all fun and games until we are wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
So it's just like Earth?
I, for one, prefer to believe that the beautiful blue-skinned cat women are lusting for me.
I prefer to think that every alien planet is like a Frank Frazetta painting.
Cantilevered naked chicks riding polar bears? Sure!
It's just mind blowing we can even have this conversation.
From loonatic112358's Article: 'But there are major bottlenecks between bacteria and interesting, complex life like fungus, plants and science journalists.'
He's not shy this one, is he?
Do they have Jesus?
"It's just mind blowing we can even have this conversation." - Ogre
We are the most recent form of hydrogen that has learned to name itself.
Assuming there is intelligent life on other planets, it's not unreasonable to assume that some of them want to fuck us just as badly as some of us want to fuck them.
Do they have Jesus?
Very funny, adlib. No, he's a different sort of alien.
Stupid scientists! They ruin everything with their "facts".
[From loonatic112358's Article: 'But there are major bottlenecks between bacteria and interesting, complex life like fungus, plants and science journalists.'
He's not shy this one, is he? - skippydoorknob]
Notice he didn't say intelligent life.
From the Article: "The eukaryotic cell only evolved once because the union of two prokaryotes, in which one gains entry to the other, is truly a rare event, a genuinely fateful encounter." Lane even goes so far as to say that it was so unlikely that it may not have happened anywhere else in the universe.
{looks at the vastness of the universe}
You...you mean we could be all alone here in the cold and dark?
{shivers}
Hold me!
Well, there go my plans for New Year's Eve...
cynicallarry:
{looks at the vastness of the universe}
You...you mean we could be all alone here in the cold and dark?
I don't buy it. The first rule: being unusual is, by definition, unusual. So you probably aren't. Given our extremely small set of data points (three planets within the predicted habitable zone of a single star), I'm incredulous that we can even begin to suggest that terrestrial life is in any way unique.
oh well - back to the humane society
Let's just assume that anything that squats, crawls or slithers on Kepler-22b wants to kill us and eat our eyes for Jujubes.
We are Earthbound mammals with immune systems designed to repel invaders from Earthbound organisms.
Either we'll spread our contaminating filth to other worlds, or they'll send theirs to us.
Either way, we lose.
Nice use of paragraphs, keebiejeebie.
Bite
me.
"Let's just assume that anything that squats, crawls or slithers on Kepler-22b wants to kill us and eat our eyes for Jujubes. We are Earthbound mammals with immune systems designed to repel invaders from Earthbound organisms. Either we'll spread our contaminating filth to other worlds or they'll send theirs to us. Either way, we lose."
- the paragraph Nazi
Except that the reverse is true as well. They have no defense against our earthbound agents. We might wipe them out visiting them or accidentally off any visitors here.
Um, they did confirm bacteria on Mars right? So there are at least two planets, within a single solar system, that have had life at some point in time.
Suggests to me odds are pretty good for life somewhere else (though granted, maybe not on Kepler22b).
I can't wait to see what happens to fundies when the first contact missions start...
No, that's incorrect. Turned out those bacteria were from Earth.
They've confirmed liquid water, though, and the possibility (not confirmation) of bacteria. They've also found strong evidence that terrestrial bacteria will survive there (our probes may have already destroyed Martian life with invasive species).
Who needs aliens.
I'd be happy enough if I could find some one here that wanted to have sex with me.
"I can't wait to see what happens to fundies when the first contact missions start." - Anachronist
ts a certainty that life exists elsewhere among the stars, and a pretty good chance that it might exist in multiple places within our own galaxy.
Whether its advanced life or close enough by that humanity will ever know of it, that's another matter.
At any rate, everyone is so sure of it that even the Pope has hedged his bets in its favor. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/popes-astronomer-insists-alien-life-would-be-part-of-gods-creation-828303.html
So if they do find life, probably nothing much will change with religion.
If it's advanced and we can talk to it, there may even be an interesting exchange of theological views (because its a safe bet that they will have their own views on life, the universe, and everything).
Fundies are ready to accept E.T.
They just wont accept him if he's gay.
Considering that the sun isn't going to die anytime soon, and I don't think humanity is going to destroy itself ultimately (though we may get damn close), I'm willing to bet eventually we'll hook up with aliens, but hopefully we'll be a bit beyond all the silly exclusivity by then. The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if that's what all the 2012 crap is about, and the Pope just got word from governments that it's coming so he can ease the masses into it without having widespread panic that "OMG! We aren't the only sentient beings God created in the universe! WHAT DOES IT MEAN???!!"
In the meantime, I'll be standing by with popcorn if anyone wants to join me.
It amazes me still that in this day and age where it should be common knowledge that everything and anything can happen in a Universe with multiple possibilities, (which defy and challenge the most basic rules and fundamentals behind human knowledge and understanding), that scientists still claim "this could have only happened once, and it had to happen this way or it isn't possible."
I'm sure if a fish could, it would look outwards from the water it lives in and assume that life couldn't have possibly developed in any other way that doesn't resemble its own form, but the truth is that the concept of reality doesn't stop at the waters edge, except to the fish.
Ignorance is bliss.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if that's what all the 2012 crap is about, and the Pope just got word from governments that it's coming so he can ease the masses into it without having widespread panic that "OMG! We aren't the only sentient beings God created in the universe! WHAT DOES IT MEAN???!!"
>> 2012 crap
>> the Pope
KMH07, you think the Pope is a Mayan, Nazi, time-traveling secret agent, leading a conspiracy to sell out mankind to the aliens? I mean I'd buy tickets to the matinee showing, but really?
No.
I think it's possible that aliens visited ancient cultures in the past, let them know they were coming back, governments and scientists have figured this out, but are keeping it under wraps (War of the World scared the bejesus out of them), they know something's on its way and brought the Pope in to prevent mass panic and hysteria. Would YOU want to deal with millions of fundamentalist members of the Abrahamic religions suddenly realizing their entire universe-view is fucked? Would not be pretty.
Much more plausible than what you outlined, but far less entertaining.
If we're imagining things, I'm just going with 'Men in Black' being a documentary.
Wow this reminds me of a friend of mine. We had a discussion and my point was why can't there be say, silicone based lifeforms?
He went all over about carbon and how it was impossible. Oh nothing is to say that the rules that apply here don't apply somewhere else. But who is to say that they do?
I think its asinine to be closed minded and think that theories are the truth. Right now we think we know what we know and that it is the truth. But time and again we have added something to the knowledge that questions how things work.
(I'm personally looking forward to our new alien overlords.)
Proshot22: Wow this reminds me of a friend of mine. We had a discussion and my point was why can't there be say, silicone based lifeforms?
They not only exist, but they subsist on $1 dollar bills.
Huh? I don't get it...
Strippers
Oh, yeah. Heh. Silicone, fake boobs, dollar bill tips in their g-strings. Got it. I see what you did there. Kudos!
So aliens visited the Mayans and influenced their religion so that when they came back, members of another religion - which the aliens could also have influenced, but didn't bother visiting - would have a leader that would, you know, let them down gentle. Too bad for the Mayans that the aliens didn't give them a heads-up about the Spanish.
Make up some more shit, it's funny.
What good is any of this if we still crawl around space like a snail.. Shouldn't we be dumping money in how to actually move faster in space before finding cool shit to visit?
The central question should not be, "Is life on other planets intelligent?" Rather, it should be, "Is life on other planets horny?" Remember why we're out there, people.
I conjecture we're never going to leave this planet, and our species will go extinct on Earth. But all's not lost. We're probably less than 100 years away from the technological singularity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
At which point we can skip the chemical rockets and frail bodies and just beam our consciousness at the speed of light wherever we want to go.
I bet it's that Mormon heaven planet and it's full of tasty, easily domesticated and farmed Mormons.
Makes me happy and a little sad that my girlfriend and I have an agreement that if we ever do encounter life of any kind external to Earth, I get to have sex with it if that is in any way, shape or form possible. No restrictions.
But I'm hoping for Tali'Zorah please
Yeah, you wish you had a girlfriend.
Buncha geeks.
Democrat geeks, but still geeks.
The only thing that article missed was "b-b-but.. God".
It's sad to assume that since we haven't yet found life off this planet, it must not exist. Or even that the probability of existing is very low. We haven't been looking that long! And we're very near-sighted.
So basically the article is saying life on Kepler-22b could be anything from bacteria to the Vorlons.
Or it could not exist at all.
Thanks guys, way to narrow that down for us.
Hoping it's not Vorlons. You know those guys would exterminate us lickety-split, because we'd totally ally with the Shadows if given the chance.
Do they have Jesus? -- adlib
On Earth, you eat Zombie Jesus and become as gods.
On Kepler 22B, Zombie Jesus eats you and becomes God.
This joke brought to you by the Planet of the Yakov Smirnoff Clones*, who stole it from a science fiction short story.
*Scientists are 95% certain that there is no intelligent life on the Planet of the Yakov Smirnoff Clones, but they are still looking.
I bet when we decipher the aliens first message it translates to, "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior?"
Kepler 22B has a mean surface temperature of about warm room temperature. That's six or seven degrees warmer than the Earth, which isn't bad--it's about what you would expect the Earth to be like after global warming if global warming turns out on the high end of the predicted range, which it may well do. We've been that warm in the past and can expect to be that warm in the future, either near or distant.
It's a water planet, however, so even if it has an oxygen rich ocean and atmosphere, it would take the Keplerians a long time to invent fire. They are likely to invent the screw before they invent the wheel and the balloon before they invent the inclined plane. It's also a lot larger than the Earth, so the geology may be a lot different, making life less likely depending on the chemistry. An ocean a lot deeper than ours (about four miles) might be too deep to have the kind of circulation needed to support advanced life forms.
The artist's conception shows an aquamarine world--perhaps a world dominated by green slime? Maybe. Or maybe a world dominated by chemotrophic bacteria. Who knows?
As the scientist quoted in the article points out, our best bet for proving that life is common in the universe is to find quite a lot of earth-like worlds with free oxygen in their atmosphere. Oxygen and methane don't last under earth-like conditions unless replenished by earth-like organisms. They are both too reactive to survive, especially together.
Finding anomalous gases in the atmosphere of an earth-like water world is our best bet to detect simple life and also civilizations. We have made quite a few modifications to our atmosphere, including man-made gases that can last for over 10,000 years. That gives our alien neighbours lots of time to look for signs of our existence (even if we perish in a matter of centuries).
A planetary temperature that is completely out of whack with the distance from the central star and the geology of the planet surface might also be a clear and easy to spot difference between a living planet and a dead world.
Radio signals would be a good hint as well, but there's no telling how long an alien civilization would broad-cast, or even if. Deaf aliens might never come up with radio or choose narrow-casting to save energy.
Large scale engineering, such as the use of mirrors to bounce sunlight onto the night side of a planet might be a give-away as well. We'd really need some powerful telescopes and patient measurements to detect anything that small on a cosmic scale, though. But a really advanced civilization could be building Dyson spheres or hollowing out a moon or something. They could even turn an asteroid into a generation ship and travel across space at sub-light speeds.
I have heard a rumor that James Cameron has hired a crack team of scientists to develop Warp Drive or a portal so that Avatar II & III can be filmed there.
crap. I'm fresh out of unobtainium.
What intrigues me is the possibility of completely different life chemistry in wildly different environments. Like.... Life floating around deep in Jupiter, or superflat life on the surface of a neutron star or something... An environment where the conditions are so severely different from our own that we have difficulty conceiving of it and would have difficulty (or it simply may be impossible) ever visiting it and taking samples.
The problem with these scenarios is that we have a pretty good understanding of what happens to anything in these environments. Jupiter is hot, and the conditions on a neutron star are downright silly. At high temperatures molecules are ripped apart, in stars even atoms are ripped apart, and on neutron stars even protons are destroyed. That puts a pretty low ceiling on what such life would have at its disposal. Any attempts at homeostasis or adaptation tend to lose to forces that crush the very atoms we're made of!
If life was that easy to make then the magma from volcanoes could be teeming with exotic life forms. Instead the glowing red stuff is perfectly sterile; there's zero evidence of metabolism or homeostasis. The chemical complexity necessary for life happens in a relatively narrow range of temperatures. A generous scientist might never say never, but in this case any doubts cast on their search criteria require extraordinary evidence, at least a hypothesis of how life would survive in Jupiter. Science is rooted in curiosity, not fantasy.
Damn it! I'm 40, I need them to find alien life soon so I can surrender, gain their trust and volunteer to guard their sexy blue-skinned cat alien harems before things stop working properly!
*grumble* My plans never work...
Happy freaking New Year
My evidence that Kepler-22b is over hyped is that every "news" site on the internet freaked out about the story. Every other time this has happened, it was officially listed as BS within the week.
There may be environments with - just for example - extremely high pressures and the right proportions of elements where different chemistry is at work. Where another molecule takes the place of ATP, something we're used to having as a gas is an essential liquid, etc.... As far as temperatures go, the temperature may be high - but to that form of life using that chemistry it is not, it's the baseline. As long as there is some temperature differential to exploit, then perhaps life processes might be able to take place using different chemicals than we're used to seeing in the only example we actually have.
We know much more about chemistry than we used to, but that knowledge is still not a substitute for experimentation and observation. Chemistry in the universe is complex, and our intellects only so powerful. If we could simply use our current knowledge of chemistry to understand everything that could possibly be done with the elements and molecules we know about then there wouldn't be any need to experiment, we'd simply already know the answer to any question we posed just by posing it. As it is, we do still need observation and experimentation to answer some of the questions we pose, to discover new materials... etc.
Mitochondria must be extreme pervs. Billions of years ago, they fucked a poor cell so hard that they PERMANENTLY entered that cell for the next billions of years.
"Let's just assume that anything that squats, crawls or slithers on Kepler-22b wants to kill us and eat our eyes for Jujubes. We are Earthbound mammals with immune systems designed to repel invaders from Earthbound organisms. Either we'll spread our contaminating filth to other worlds or they'll send theirs to us. Either way, we lose."
- the paragraph Nazi
"Except that the reverse is true as well. They have no defense against our earthbound agents. We might wipe them out visiting them or accidentally off any visitors here." -obama4life
Or the biology would be so vastly different that contamination isn't an issue. We usually get sick from something that has in some way adapted to living off of our biology. If the creature was different enough, then could the ailments of earthlings bother ET? Like a pine beetle attacking a trembling aspen...
I think contamination would be a serious problem. If an alien "seed" drifted on the wind and landed in your hair, you'd wake up with a tap root in your brain. Your body wouldn't recognize it as a foreign invader, and from the seed's perspective you're just a bag of nutrient rich salt water. Of course it's just speculation, but the reason life on earth doesn't devolve into a putrid mess is a carefully choreographed evolutionary arms race -- introducing new bugs tends to wipe out entire species.
An Asian fungus killed some 4 billion American Chestnut trees in a few decades -- one alien microbe could kill all life on earth. Maybe it's even happened in the past? There are plenty of unexplained mass extinction events. Maybe the K-T event was the first mushroom to fall from space? Maybe it's an alien invader?
I can't imagine coming in contact with alien life being anything but catastrophic.
SiberianRat: "Of course it's just speculation, but the reason life on earth doesn't devolve into a putrid mess is a carefully choreographed evolutionary arms race -- introducing new bugs tends to wipe out entire species."
I would tend to agree -- but it also works the other way around -- that alien seed would be just as covered by earth organisms. You're just supposing that we will end up with the short end of the stick. I suspect there are a great many more organisms that were brought over from Asia that DIDNT kill any trees or in fact were killed very quickly themselves by the local flora / fauna.
The most dangerous organisms seem to be the ones that are already parasitic in their own environment and find the ability to survive off of similar hosts (but not evolved alongside the parasite) in the new environment.
I suggest that the risk is mutual - Populations are threatened most by those outsiders that are most similar to them...We shouldnt be as worried about contaminating Mars with a fish fungus as we should with contaminating it with some bacteria capable of living in the Chilean desert...
Its one of those "only God knows" situations -- it's equally possible that our biologies would be completely uninterested in attacking each other. That alien seed might land on your head and realize you're a big bag of salt water AND iron -- what if all the alien life hates the way we bend certain proteins? What if the alien life has a different ocean composition and the water on Earth has strange gasses and crap dissolved in it?
Whatever the deal with extra-terrestrial life is, I can guarantee that Star-Trek was way off-base with the number and acceptance of inter-species relationships.
"it also works the other way around" -- rantingtommy
I agree. If you could mix two biospheres equally, earth and some other planet, I'd imagine a 5 or 10% survival rate on either side with a lot of death in the interim before some sort of homeostasis was reached. I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm just making the assumption that life forms with roughly the same requirements are going to really interfere with each other's ecological niche.
When it was all said and done, you might have hybridized lifeforms. Who knows what happens when a bacteria eats some extraterrestrial parallel -- a symbiotic relationship is not out of the question -- but I'd bet good money organisms like us would be totally screwed in such a meeting of worlds.
Oh my dear God in Heaven! None of you geeks are getting laid, are you? Time to move out of your parents' basements and get a life, preferably on Kepler 22b.
Happy New Year everybody!
and Doc, please please PLEASE close the comments and put them out of our misery.
Sincerely,
Your female commenters
No problem, ladies. And Happy New year to everybody.
RIP 2011 (2011-2011)
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