17 billion 'earth sized' planets in the galaxy

[afleitch]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20942440

"Astronomers say that one in six stars hosts an Earth-sized planet in a close orbit - suggesting a total of 17 billion such planets in the galaxy.

The result comes from an analysis of planet candidates gathered by the Kepler telescope.

The Kepler team also announced 461 new planet candidates, bringing the satellites' total haul to 2,740.

The findings were announced at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California. "

Wow. And that's only earth sized planets too. The chances of life and intelligent life must be fairly high.

[Simfan34]

Cool! Let's hope at least one of them has friendly little green men.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Keep in mind that not all of those will be in the proper Goldilocks Zone to support life.  Conversely, some of those gas giants might have moons with the proper conditions.
Then for the ultimate downer, we are still not certain that intelligence at the level that would be capable for interstellar communication is an evolutionary advantage in the long run.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Think there's another Atlas Forum in a parallel universe? 

[afleitch]

Keep in mind that not all of those will be in the proper Goldilocks Zone to support life.  Conversely, some of those gas giants might have moons with the proper conditions.
Then for the ultimate downer, we are still not certain that intelligence at the level that would be capable for interstellar communication is an evolutionary advantage in the long run.

And there's the problem. There could be two civilisations near us, one at the same stage as we were during the rise of Rome and one that's more advanced than we are but focused on mining the centre of their planet, neither either able or willing to reach out to us.

[DemPGH]

Good find! This is a fascinating area of research, and as technology gets better so does our ability to survey the skies. There are very good chances of life existing elsewhere, but of course the question is whether or not it has evolved to become intelligent. There may not be that much intelligent life elsewhere, but as yet there's not an ounce of evidence.

And intelligent life may be very, very different somewhere else. Just look at Earth: marine mammals (the whale family, especially dolphins) and also primates (us) have evolved a high degree of intelligence. Yet the ability for the whale family to build tools like radios and satellites to reach out is non-existent, yet they are extremely intelligent. We would have to wait a long, long time to find life like that elsewhere, if it exists, and it probably does. The ingredients for life are abundant. Chondritic meteorites contain the basic ingredients for life, and if you put those ingredients in the right spot, life may be inevitable. Not an accident, not an act of Creation in the spiritual sense.

There are a lot of exosolar planets that are gas planets as well, and they are not necessarily arranged the way our solar system is; some of the gas planets are near their star, as our rock planets are. There's a lot yet to be learned. My bet is intelligent life is fairly rare, but likely out there.

But I do not think we have ever been visited by anyone, because "here" is too far away, and there would be no reason for a society of advanced "people" to come here. They wouldn't come here to build anything, and if they are that advanced they wouldn't come here to mine anything. And there's no "Planet X," especially with life because it would be in deep space too long - and would be too cold - for biochemistry to work.

[Vosem]

The thing is, because we're still uncertain how life showed up on Earth in the first place and what exactly caused the Cambrian explosion, it's impossible to quantify the chances someone somewhere has life. As for intelligent life...multicellular organisms have been around for a while. Only one has been known to have developed the technology necessary to say, understand the concept of outer space, which is necessary to consider the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere. So I tend to consider this possibility fairly slim. Alien bacterial life very probably exists somewhere else, as I see it, but the development of multicellular organisms on Earth in the Cambrian explosion is still not well-enough understood to quantify the possibility of Earth-like multicellular organisms. And if they're not intelligent, even if they're multicellular, at present levels of technology it'll be impossible to detect whether or not they're there...just whether or not they could be. Which is interesting in and of itself, of course, but unsatisfying for those hoping for a breakthrough.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Think there's another Atlas Forum in a parallel universe? 

Most string theorists would say there most certainly is an infinite number of them.  In one opebo is still a neo-con fascist and BTRD hates him. 

[Ban my account ffs!]

Think there's another Atlas Forum in a parallel universe? 

Most string theorists would say there most certainly is an infinite number of them.  In one opebo is still a neo-con fascist and BTRD hates him. 

And in another, you got all A's in your first semester of law school

[7,052,770]

We're not far off from being able to use spectroscopy to detect signs of industrialization from alien planets' atmosphere.  It may not necessarily confirm anything, but it would narrow the lists of potential sites of intelligent life.

[Simfan34]

Think there's another Atlas Forum in a parallel universe? 

Most string theorists would say there most certainly is an infinite number of them.  In one opebo is still a neo-con fascist and BTRD hates him. 

And in another, you got all A's in your first semester of law school

And in another, both happened.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

You folks might want to read up on the Drake equation if you haven't already. Some interesting stuff. I know it's hard to put too much faith in these numbers, but some estimate suggest there are between 1,000 and 100,000,000 civilizations in the galaxy. Pretty cool stuff.

[dead0man]

You folks might want to read up on the Drake equation if you haven't already. Some interesting stuff. I know it's hard to put too much faith in these numbers, but some estimate suggest there are between 1,000 and 100,000,000 civilizations in the galaxy. Pretty cool stuff.

I was basically going to post this.  If they think there is 17 billion 'earthy' planets and say, 1 in a 1000 are in the "goldilock zone", that's still 17 million planets.   Even if the odds of life capable of say, radio communications, are tiny, there are still going to be quite a few of them out there.

[7,052,770]

The Wikipedia article on the Fermi Paradox is probably the most interesting page on the entire Internet.

[Simfan34]

The Wikipedia article on the Fermi Paradox is probably the most interesting page on the entire Internet.

Seconded.