Milky Way Estimate: 50 Billion Exoplanets

If there are any space-faring alien races out there, "the next question is why haven't they visited us?" Borucki asked. He responded with: "I don't know."
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Well considering the huge investment it would take to travel between the stars, there could be a species out there that is aware of our existence, but doesn't want to visit. And if that's the case, can you really blame them? :D
 
EvilWays said:
Perhaps we as a species need that kick in the ass, so to speak.
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Yeah somehow I think it would be a little bit more than a "kick in the ass". Maybe more like an on your knees, bullet in the back of the head summary execution. :eek:

SpeedRunner said:
And if that's the case, can you really blame them? :D
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Not at all, but some people have an exaggerated sense of self importance. :D
 
Dylan80 said:
Wow... hahaha, some of you are way too technical and don't get what I am saying.

And I have a college degree, I know a little about science ;)
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Oh, sweet! Sorry, we were all wrong about you. Having a college degree means your knowledgeable regarding physics.


But then....
Dylan80 said:
I am a realist, while you guys are obviously not....

And yes, trillions have been spent by NASA.... believe it or not, that's a fact. Wasted IMO, it hasn't brought us much for mankind.

Hopefully it does in the future, of course, but some of the things I've seen them piss money away on is really frustrating.
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Really?? I would be very surprised if your degree is related to any science.
 
Deluded said:
The question is: where will we find an intact alien cache that will jumpstart our FTL travel by 200 years?
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Who needs aliens?

"Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area.There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
 
Survival
The Universe - some information to help you live in it.

Population
Population - none.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
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http://cantbeatfun.com/Mars/hgttg2.htm
 
I've heard/read a couple of times that we do have the means the travel at high speeds through the galaxy, but any humans on-board would essentially be smear marks on the wall once the vessel passes a certain speed. No idea how accurate that is, but is interesting nonetheless.
 
Load of crap... most of the galaxy itself is uninhabitable due to massive random bursts of radiation let alone all the other factors that go into making a planet habitable. it's not just composition, size and distance from the sun. this says that 1 out of 100 exoplanets are habitable. what a load of crap. with my very limited understanding of astronomy i'd guess it'd be way closer to 1 in a million or billion than 1 in 100. chop that number even further if your talking planets in a stable enough region of space to support millions of years of evolution. odds are we're fucking alone in the universe get used to it. space is simply a large potential mining operation. study probably conducted by a bunch of ultra-darwinists trying to convince themselves and everyone else that perfectly rational and credible science such as evolution and astronomy somehow supports WITH EVIDENCE that there is no possibility of a creator and belief in such is an irrational delusion. 500 million habitable planets according to our VERY loose science means there must be no god. redo your calculations or get some physical evidence. 1/100 planets is so ridiculous they should be ashamed.
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Plague_Injected said:
I've heard/read a couple of times that we do have the means the travel at high speeds through the galaxy, but any humans on-board would essentially be smear marks on the wall once the vessel passes a certain speed. No idea how accurate that is, but is interesting nonetheless.
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That depends on whether you're referring to conventional propulsion or continuum distortion. Conventional propulsion, yes. You can use nuclear-powered ion engines to reach incredible speeds over time, but acceleration is a problem for organic beings. Unless you put the people in some kind of stasis you can't go over 1 earth gravity for a long period of time, and that's pretty slow. You'd need a "gravity couch" and stasis to handle needed acceleration and deceleration. You'll be lucky to hit .5 of C at the apex of your trip, and then you have to turn the engines around and decelerate the rest of the way. That's assuming you don't get pulverized by micrometeor impacts along the way.

Continuum distortion is real, as we live in a distortion pocket called a gravity well. Creating it artificially and on a scale to be of any use is the question. Continuum distortion, more popularly known as warp drive, is nice in that you can just shape space itself and you're not really moving, the space is being changed, so you'll not encounter relativistic effects or even acceleration problems. The problem with it is that, presently, the only way known to generate something similar to how gravity works is to get a planet and fall towards it. You need a planetary mass for that. If there are other means they don't exist in the mainstream yet, only in the realms of science fiction, speculation, and conspiracy theories.

If any humans have developed a continuum distortion device they're not readily sharing it, and for good reason. Traveling at faster than light speeds to reach another star is nice. Accelerating a heavy mass to faster than light speeds and crashing it into a city is not. It would make the Tzar Bomba look like a firecracker. The crater would be a few miles deep, without any radioactive fallout, and the subterranean geologic shock would cause any nearby fault lines to rupture, causing strong earthquakes. Whoever had this technology could end civilization overnight if they wanted. Imagine something like that in the hands of fanatics of any persuasion. Suddenly "boldly going" doesn't sound so nice, does it?
 
Dylan80 said:
And I have a college degree, I know a little about science ;)
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And I have a high school diploma, I know a little about science too! Just because you took 1 or 2 REQUIRED science classes in college doesn't make you a scientist. Troll.

Phoenix333 said:
I love how humans think that finding alien life will be such a wonderful thing. Has anyone ever considered that the Earth might be looked at as being "that" neighborhood where you have to lock the doors on your starship so that the locals don't steal the hubcaps? The human race is barbaric. Why would anyone WANT to visit here? Then there's the other part of this. If man were to develop the capability for faster-than-light travel, and thus be able to spread its depravity throughout the galaxy instead of it being restricted to the earth, then preventative measures might be taken. It would be rather one-sided as well.

Skeptics often bring up why nobody has landed on the White House lawn or sent communications to Earth and use that as proof that intelligent life doesn't exist elsewhere in the universe. They never bother to stop and think that maybe nobody wants to talk to you. Looking at man's history, why should they? Hawking is right in that alien contact with man would be disastrous, at least, at this point in time. The human race needs to grow up first, and stop fighting all the time. As long as humans seek to dominate other forms of life and each other I don't think you'll find any friends among the stars.
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Makes a lot of sense actually. We come in contact with something new and right away we assume that we are better than it.

Plague_Injected said:
I've heard/read a couple of times that we do have the means the travel at high speeds through the galaxy, but any humans on-board would essentially be smear marks on the wall once the vessel passes a certain speed. No idea how accurate that is, but is interesting nonetheless.
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Idk about this, then again I'm not a scientist so idk. But, technically you aren't moving in the vehicle. Think of when you are driving in your car on the freeway at 60+mph, your body itself technically isn't moving at all. Again, I could be wrong.

gaspah said:
Load of crap... most of the galaxy itself is uninhabitable due to massive random bursts of radiation let alone all the other factors that go into making a planet habitable. it's not just composition, size and distance from the sun. this says that 1 out of 100 exoplanets are habitable. what a load of crap. with my very limited understanding of astronomy i'd guess it'd be way closer to 1 in a million or billion than 1 in 100. chop that number even further if your talking planets in a stable enough region of space to support millions of years of evolution. odds are we're fucking alone in the universe get used to it. space is simply a large potential mining operation. study probably conducted by a bunch of ultra-darwinists trying to convince themselves and everyone else that perfectly rational and credible science such as evolution and astronomy somehow supports WITH EVIDENCE that there is no possibility of a creator and belief in such is an irrational delusion. 500 million habitable planets according to our VERY loose science means there must be no god. redo your calculations or get some physical evidence. 1/100 planets is so ridiculous they should be ashamed.
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So, name 100 planets that we have actually been able to get good pictures/date of. I can only name 9. And we still haven't been to a single one of those...

You're logic is flawed.
 
I hope we will find out whether there is life (bacteria and other primitive forms) on any of the gas giant's moons in my lifetime. that will increase the probability of life on exoplanets significantly if life has developed independantly more than once in the same solar system. it would mean that life isn't limited to a cozy planet of the right size with liquid water and the right distance to its sun. I also hope we leave those bacteria there and don't exterminate ourselves with some crazy alien germs.
 
gaspah said:
Load of crap... most of the galaxy itself is uninhabitable due to massive random bursts of radiation let alone all the other factors that go into making a planet habitable. it's not just composition, size and distance from the sun. this says that 1 out of 100 exoplanets are habitable. what a load of crap. with my very limited understanding of astronomy i'd guess it'd be way closer to 1 in a million or billion than 1 in 100. chop that number even further if your talking planets in a stable enough region of space to support millions of years of evolution. odds are we're fucking alone in the universe get used to it. space is simply a large potential mining operation. study probably conducted by a bunch of ultra-darwinists trying to convince themselves and everyone else that perfectly rational and credible science such as evolution and astronomy somehow supports WITH EVIDENCE that there is no possibility of a creator and belief in such is an irrational delusion. 500 million habitable planets according to our VERY loose science means there must be no god. redo your calculations or get some physical evidence. 1/100 planets is so ridiculous they should be ashamed.
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Let's see, who is more likely to be correct, scientists with actual knowledge, or some Tea Party member on the [H].

I'll go with the scientists. Perhaps you and ICP can go figure out how magnets work for us, then get back to us.
 
Dylan80 said:
And yes, trillions have been spent by NASA.... believe it or not, that's a fact. Wasted IMO, it hasn't brought us much for mankind.

Hopefully it does in the future, of course, but some of the things I've seen them piss money away on is really frustrating.
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We share your frustration. You are, of course, correct that this money is being wasted and could be spent on better things, like increasing the nutritional value of your phytoplankton for aqua-colonization.

Continue the fight for the future of mankind, Human. I recommend focusing your energies on the immediate [strike=1]dismantling[/s] recycling of all radio telescopes and military installations.
 
.... I'm not sure how I know that though. Hmmm, maybe a movie or two or three? Movies are a good source of knowledge after all.
 
Sinister_kid said:
And I have a high school diploma, I know a little about science too! Just because you took 1 or 2 REQUIRED science classes in college doesn't make you a scientist. Troll.

So, name 100 planets that we have actually been able to get good pictures/date of. I can only name 9. And we still haven't been to a single one of those...

You're logic is flawed.
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you don't need to directly observe 100 exoplanets to know the odds involved in the very credible "rare earth" theory. we are in the goldilocks zone not only of our solar system but of a very old and massive galaxy unusually abundant in the heavy elements. there is almost limitless number of these goldilocks factors that make the earth (intelligent life) so rare that once you multiply them all together the probability becomes so tiny that its not even worth mentioning. not taking into account that we still don't know how living cells started. the best we can replicate is creating amino acids by passing electricity through chemicals. my logic is not flawed the logic of someone making claims that 1 in 100 planets are habitable is flawed. the more and more you learn about the origins of life and the universe the more ridiculous this figure seems. there's talk of the possibility of extremophiles to the extent of living in liquid methane rather than liquid water but they are so radical that they need to be taken with a galaxy of salt. finding water or methane on another planet is not the same as finding life. no credible scientist will say otherwise. it's a bleak lonely universe out there no matter how interesting it may be.
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NKDietrich said:
Let's see, who is more likely to be correct, scientists with actual knowledge, or some Tea Party member on the [H].

I'll go with the scientists. Perhaps you and ICP can go figure out how magnets work for us, then get back to us.
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Magnets? they be tools of the devil! such blasphemy!

yeah. i'll listen to the credible scientists who did the 50 billion exoplanet calculation but as for the two-bit hack who tacked on the 500 million habitable exoplanet part... i'm quite happy to make a mockery of such ridiculousness. or hey lets just believe everything we hear no matter how much a theory lacks credibility. after all they are scientists.
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I saw that earlier on Yahoo....all this proves is the X-Files, and the Stargate Series is actually real. Not just some TV show.
 
gaspah said:
Magnets? they be tools of the devil! such blasphemy!

yeah. i'll listen to the credible scientists who did the 50 billion exoplanet calculation but as for the two-bit hack who tacked on the 500 million habitable exoplanet part... i'm quite happy to make a mockery of such ridiculousness. or hey lets just believe everything we hear no matter how much a theory lacks credibility. after all they are scientists.
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It's not like they claimed 500 million intelligent species. Merely 500 million planets that have the potential to be habitable, as opposed to the other 49.5 billion that don't have any potential.

Every time we make an advancement in what we know about the universe, the odds of Earth being the only planet with any form of life on it become slimmer and slimmer. First, people thought that star systems with planets in them were incredibly rare, that almost every star would be sitting by itself. Turns out they are not. Then people thought that exoplanets that were anywhere NEAR a habitable zone would be incredibly rare. Turns out they are not.

Certainly you see where this is eventually headed. Of course, you can hold on to your belief that this is the only planet in the entire universe with any life on it, since it's unlikely it will be definitively proven otherwise in your lifetime and you'll never have to admit "Well I was wrong."

But I think the rest of us will be happy to watch our understanding of the universe advance and know that our children and their children and so on will continue expanding that knowledge.

Ignorant myopic views of the universe will fall away.
 
gaspah said:
Load of crap... most of the galaxy itself is uninhabitable due to massive random bursts of radiation let alone all the other factors that go into making a planet habitable. it's not just composition, size and distance from the sun. this says that 1 out of 100 exoplanets are habitable. what a load of crap. with my very limited understanding of astronomy i'd guess it'd be way closer to 1 in a million or billion than 1 in 100. chop that number even further if your talking planets in a stable enough region of space to support millions of years of evolution. odds are we're fucking alone in the universe get used to it. space is simply a large potential mining operation. study probably conducted by a bunch of ultra-darwinists trying to convince themselves and everyone else that perfectly rational and credible science such as evolution and astronomy somehow supports WITH EVIDENCE that there is no possibility of a creator and belief in such is an irrational delusion. 500 million habitable planets according to our VERY loose science means there must be no god. redo your calculations or get some physical evidence. 1/100 planets is so ridiculous they should be ashamed.
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You don't need 500 million planets to disprove any religious creator, the 10,000 religions already here on earth do perfectly well as a visible, verifiable, repeatable, logical disproof, despite the majority of us who are atheist to 9,999 of them being too afraid to make the +1 atheistic leap and acknowledge our skepticism.

I also doubt that disproval of religion was on the list of things that scientist intended for his research to be used for when he wrote it up on his white-board. It is faith that has had a historic problem with science, way before serious scientists, it is they who carry the most grievous of shame.

So re-adjust your microscope, revise your flat earth theory, and see for yourself how far this rabbit hole can go when you don't have religious dissonance on your back about what you should believe, conflicting with what you do, and can.
 
My view of religion has zero to do with belief in aliens or science. i'm fully capable and willing to adopt credible scientific theory into my belief system. i don't think intelligent life from another planet is impossible but in accordance with all the scientific theory at my disposal for now conclude that it is unlikely. it's the easiest thing to look out at the near infinite vastness of the universe and believe there must be something out there. but the more i've put order to that chaos and come to grips with all the observations the less and less i feel compelled to subscribe to a belief in aliens.

have a look into the rare earth theory which is a non-religious scientific theory and see just how improbable an earth-like planet really is. there are just so many factors consider. the main ones being just how rare elements heavier than iron are and just how old a galaxy must be to have them in the abundance we have on earth, how far you need to be from a crowded area of space but not too quiet, the right size planet the right distance from the right star with the right size moon etc etc.

i think its people who haven't looked as long and hard into the universe as i have that believe in aliens. the universe is something that interests me quite profoundly and spend lots of time intrigued on the subject.

i think 1 in a million would be the odds on planets being habitable by man after terraforming etc and much much more minuscule odds of intelligent life that has stood the trials of the passage of time to evolve to or beyond our level.

i also have no problem with people having atheist beliefs but when people use radical very unscientific theories like ultra-darwinism to spout their arrogant hatred of faith that's when i get offended. hur dur religious people dun bad things so god not real hur dur!
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Why can't there be God AND aliens? Why can't there be evolution AND creation? All I know for certain is in a universe with hundreds of billions of observable galaxies that each contain billions of stars and planets, there is very little that any of us can know for certain!
 
Well i believe in creation (well a creator not creationism) and evolution. but i don't believe aliens exist though don't discount the theory as lunacy its far more rational than creationism lol. but definitely with the vastness of the universe nothing is impossible and nothing would surprise me including intelligent extraterrestrial life. i merely think with all the science at hand from my perspective its improbable. recreate rna in a lab from elements and i'll change my tune dramatically.
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Please don't derail a good science thread with God, creation and evolution. PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE. Especially threads with the funny guy that thinks we should be taking photos of stars that are light-years away!
 
GreenMonkey said:
Please don't derail a good science thread with God, creation and evolution. PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE. Especially threads with the funny guy that thinks we should be taking photos of stars that are light-years away!
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Edit: I mean planets that are many light years away, not stars. That's easy.
 
gaspah said:
Well i believe in creation (well a creator not creationism) and evolution. but i don't believe aliens exist though don't discount the theory as lunacy its far more rational than creationism lol. but definitely with the vastness of the universe nothing is impossible and nothing would surprise me including intelligent extraterrestrial life. i merely think with all the science at hand from my perspective its improbable. recreate rna in a lab from elements and i'll change my tune dramatically.
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Take the Big Bang/Evolution theory and compare it diectly to Genesis' creation story, and they're not that different from each other.

Something my Grade 10 "Religious Education" teacher pointed out.
 
EvilWays said:
Considering that NASA gets shit for a budget compared to the military, it may have been trillions, but over a huge number of years. And it sure as shit ain't cheap to get something even into LEO (low earth orbit), at $5-10k/lb. Your idea for launching a bunch of cheap camera probes just proves how much of a moron you really are. You will NEVER get one of those cheap probes to a nearby system within any appreciable time, as it will take thousands of years to get one to even the nearest star, plus the additional time required for it to report back (which is a fraction of the time that is required to get the probe to the observation point in the first place), therefore it's impractical vs. ground and orbit based observations. Besides, we all saw the results of NASA's "faster, cheaper" strategy...not as good as was
intended.

Obvious troll is obvious. :rolleyes:
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First off, I am obviously smarter than you.

Second, the only person who trolled here is you... and then called me a moron which is laughable! Sorry for using realist logic, and common sense. And yet, you still haven't proved anything I said wrong so who is truly the moron?
 
Sinister_kid said:
And I have a high school diploma, I know a little about science too! Just because you took 1 or 2 REQUIRED science classes in college doesn't make you a scientist. Troll.



Makes a lot of sense actually. We come in contact with something new and right away we assume that we are better than it.



Idk about this, then again I'm not a scientist so idk. But, technically you aren't moving in the vehicle. Think of when you are driving in your car on the freeway at 60+mph, your body itself technically isn't moving at all. Again, I could be wrong.



So, name 100 planets that we have actually been able to get good pictures/date of. I can only name 9. And we still haven't been to a single one of those...

You're logic is flawed.
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Troll? Again? I didn't troll jack, you are the troll here not me, mister been here 2 days and thinks he's smart (though misspelling 3rd grader words like you're :rolleyes:) -- Go to the options page and deactivate your account now smartguy, thanks.
 
Plague_Injected said:
Take the Big Bang/Evolution theory and compare it diectly to Genesis' creation story, and they're not that different from each other.

Something my Grade 10 "Religious Education" teacher pointed out.
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Curious ... As the big bang and evolution have nothing to do with genesis. Abiogenesis is an entirely different theory, which actually has been reproduced in a lab.
 
Can we please cool it with the "I'm smart, you're dumb" rhetoric and the religion vs science arguing? That's how threads get closed.
 
Draax said:
Curious ... As the big bang and evolution have nothing to do with genesis. Abiogenesis is an entirely different theory, which actually has been reproduced in a lab.
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abiogenesis is exactly what i'd like to see happen and would it send shock waves through the scientific community and the world. but creating a bunch of amino acids is far from the holy grail of creating new life. it will respark my interest when they have a bit more to show than a bucket of slime to show for their research.
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The issue, as I understand it, isn't whether there are planets out there, or even if there is/was intelligent life... but one of timing.

So, if humans have had the means to communicate effectively, in space, for let's say ~60 years (guess). With the distances involved, another intelligent race would have had to identify us, decide they wanted to talk to us, then send a message. Unless they have a better/more advanced understanding of physics and how to communicate faster than the speed of light, their message won't reach us until we've gone extinct. Let alone we respond. Even if we WERE around to respond, chances are THEY would be extinct by the time they got it. The distances involved in this problem are so massive, it hurts the head. Intelligent life could be cropping up all over the universe, even at relatively the same time, and there is still such a small chance of things 'happening correctly'.

Then there is the issue of habitable planets X the chance of intelligent life forming X chance of it happening anywhere close to the same timeframe as humans. You have to realize just how brief the human capability to communicate has been. Now, multiply that by all those systems. A very nearby start could have had an advanced civilization, just like ours.....50,000 years ago.

Then there is the issue of radiowaves. They are so faint and the signal strength fades so fast, not happening.

Basically, we have to have a MAJOR revelation in our understanding of physics to make the timelines and scales manageable.

Again, my understanding after some research. By no means a physicist.
 
And as for the whole aliens visiting us... They would have had to literally stumble upon us or been REAL close for a scenic drive through the neighborhood. Most of the places we are talking about won't even have a chance to know we exist for several thousand years (more like tens of thousands, but whatever). Chances of the knowing, getting their stuff together and visiting.... HA.

I don't like to think this stuff either. Makes me sad.
 
gaspah said:
yeah. i'll listen to the credible scientists who did the 50 billion exoplanet calculation but as for the two-bit hack who tacked on the 500 million habitable exoplanet part... i'm quite happy to make a mockery of such ridiculousness. or hey lets just believe everything we hear no matter how much a theory lacks credibility. after all they are scientists.
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There is literally no way for your mind to comprehend the size of the galaxy, let alone the size of the universe. Are you upset with this theory because it gives other people hope?
 
Dylan80 said:
First off, I am obviously smarter than you.

Second, the only person who trolled here is you... and then called me a moron which is laughable! Sorry for using realist logic, and common sense. And yet, you still haven't proved anything I said wrong so who is truly the moron?
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You aren't obviously smarter than anyone here. You are simply coming off as an ignorant tool. You should simply move along before you embarass yourself further. You attacked someone's grammar in another post. That is the LOWEST form of attack there is on the internet. "OMG, you mistyped something! I spend 6 hours proofreading all of my posts. Why don't you?"
"I'm obviously smarter than others yet don't understand why we don't have full color photos of planets lightyears away from us. It must be hax!" BWAHHAHA
 
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