What is Digg?123 Comments
- JSager, on 03/20/2008, -5/+40Yes yes, organic molecules, blah blah. The question is, does the planet have oil? Because if so, I think we need Colin Powell to take those pictures to the UN. Methane is a weapon of gas destruction.
- justok, on 03/20/2008, -2/+28alien cows fart in our general direction.
- KaiUno, on 03/20/2008, -0/+18I think he's talking about statistical probability.
- slapded, on 03/20/2008, -5/+22we already know the answer. its just proving it thats harder
- yillip, on 03/20/2008, -5/+18Amazing.....so glad that NASA is repairing Hubble in August; it will practically be a better, brand new version of itself!
- DrDragun, on 03/20/2008, -0/+11I used to believe that based on probability, there must be alien life on a planet out there somewhere. I still hold to that belief somewhat, but I find it extremely unlikely we will ever find them. I will try to explain quickly with ASCII art.
= Planet formation
- Planet devoid of life
* Life begins on the planet and starts to evolve
^ Life finally inolves into an intelligent species capable of spaceflight
Imagine 3 planets evolve life. Each ASCII character represents ONE HUNDRED MILLION YEARS.
EARTH =----------*********************************^
PLANET A =------***********************************^
PLANET B =--------------*******************************^
All these planets reached the "sentient species capable of spaceflight" within about 10% of the amount of time of each other. However this amounts to HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS head-start for some races over the others.
Now, how long did it take mankind to evolve from stone age to spaceflight? 10 thousand years? How long until we are colonizing other planets? 100-300 years? Technology grows exponentially.
Basically what I'm saying is, if you have thousands of planets with life on them, then chances are one of them has a HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS headstart over us. And if we are going to develop interstellar colonizations, then I would hope it would be within the hundres of millions of years timeline.
Thus, we should have seen them by now already, visiting us with technology that is hundreds of millions of years headstart over us.
So basically, one of the following I believe to be true.
EITHER
1) Faster-than-light travel is not possible and spacefaring races will only colonize nearby planets expanding incredibly slowly
2) There is no alien life
3) There is alien life but the natural evolution of technology/society leads them to be removed from the universe before they would have found us. Stephen Hawking said this. Either they naturally go extinct from nuclear war or they have some form of engineered transcendence where they can go off to a better place. - jaobedoza, on 03/20/2008, -7/+18we are a step closer to answering whether we are alone or not in the universe
- NoCt1, on 03/20/2008, -2/+12Wow dude.. I mean thats all i can really say.. You think that out of the billions of planets there isnt life out there... that somehow earth is the only planet with life... Thats a Sad view on things.
- tjmb9, on 03/20/2008, -1/+10All they found was methane?
"Although methane has been detected on most of the planets in our Solar System, this is the first time any organic molecule has been detected on a world orbiting another star"
Not that exciting anymore.... - DrDragun, on 03/20/2008, -1/+9Seriously. It's methane, as in CH4, not some protein or nucleic acid. Methane is found on most planets/moons in our solar system.
- displacednomad, on 03/20/2008, -0/+7Or,
1) We're actually first. Perhaps all the other life forms are a million years behind us. No opposable thumbs for them yet.
2) Maybe there is another species that is a million years ahead of us, technologically, but they are more than a million years away from us too, on the other end of the galaxy, and will reach us 1000 years from now.
3) or, building off your #3, they do exist and are very aware of earthlings but refuse to visit us until we grow up a little.
Very interesting times we live in, indeed. - aladrin, on 03/20/2008, -3/+10Are you talking about religion or extraterrestrials?
You already -believe- something. You can't -know- it without some kind of actual knowledge. - consoneo, on 03/20/2008, -3/+9That's pretty retarded.
- fuhcough, on 03/20/2008, -0/+6while i doubt they're little green men, i think that to assume we are alone would be extremely ignorant.
- derekmas10, on 03/20/2008, -0/+6What, like God couldn't create creatures in HIS image on other planets HE created, too?
I think the only impact this will have on the creationist movement is that if there is, in fact, life on another planet, how long will it take us to get there so we can convert the savages? - TheG2, on 03/20/2008, -1/+7"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams
- akkibaba, on 03/20/2008, -0/+6Money spent on space programs usually is an excellent investment, by promoting research in diverse fields like mechanical engineering, chemistry, materials science,supercomputing etc. This is not frivolous spending.
- Logicexe, on 03/20/2008, -0/+6eouw0o83hf, I think you're looking at this too simplistically. You're absolutely correct about all those things being very unlikely, but you're assuming that those are the only ways in which life can arise. That's an assumption we have little basis for making. We just don't know how many different "configurations" could result in life forming on a planet, are there millions? Hundreds? Dozens? Or just 1? I don't know, and neither does anyone else.
However, the guys who say it's a certainty because there are trillions and trillions of planets are also committing a similar error. Nobody knows how likely life will arise in the universe so while it's fun to speculate, we should admit our massive uncertainties on both sides. - JamesDiggem, on 03/20/2008, -0/+5I hope they finally discover life outside this planet in my lifetime... I'm curious what kind of an impact it would have on the creationism movement
- TheG2, on 03/20/2008, -4/+9Heh, I was wondering how long it would take for the tinfoil hat brigade to jump on this.
- CheeseburgerBro, on 03/20/2008, -0/+4Out of curiosity, have you compared NASA's 2007 budget to the Pentagon's 2007 budget?
The results may surprise you.
Space is CHEAP! - Logicexe, on 03/20/2008, -0/+4Methane can be used as an indicator for life depending on its ratio to other molecules in the atmosphere. Methane gets broken down with other molecules in the atmosphere fairly quickly. Since living things keep producing methane, Earth has a abnormally high amount.
Now of course, methane content alone can't determine whether a planet has life or not, but it could be used as one of many possible indicators. - Marty4975, on 03/20/2008, -0/+4Tinetti is however quick to rule out any biological origin of the methane found on HD 189733b. “The planet’s atmosphere is far too hot for even the hardiest life to survive — at least the kind of life we know from Earth."
- ligyron, on 03/20/2008, -1/+5Billions of planets? There are billions of GALAXIES in the universe. There are like a googlian(?) planets in the universe
- jimmy17, on 03/20/2008, -2/+5You are maybe correct in thinking that the chance of finding life on any individual planet may be extremely small but considering there are hundreds of trillions of stars in the universe kinda balances that out.
- Zaneris, on 03/20/2008, -0/+3Pretty hard to find a dead guy.
- piesforyou, on 03/20/2008, -0/+3no.
- geekdw, on 03/20/2008, -0/+3Goa'uld and Ori...duh!
- Logicexe, on 03/20/2008, -0/+3Stop poverty? Cure world hunger? Save the planet? Do you have any idea how small NASA's budget is compared to most other government institutions? The amount of money NASA gets would hardly put a dent in these things.
Even if they did have insanely large budgets you can't just throw money at a problem and expect it to get fixed just because you spent a lot of money, just look at Iraq. - no2gates, on 03/20/2008, -1/+4They can't find Bin Laden on THIS planet, but they can find a MOLECULE on a planet BILLIONS OF MILES AWAY???? WTF?
- Logicexe, on 03/20/2008, -0/+2Maybe they could, but not with NASA's budget, which is the point I was trying to make.
- Morky, on 03/20/2008, -0/+2That's pretty incredible, considering in the not to distant past (pre-1988) we could not even detect any extrasolar planets.
- zeabu, on 03/20/2008, -0/+2But what, if they don't look like us (and I'm sure of that). Is it still his image? What if they're more advanced, are they his image, or are we.
Yes, I'd like to see the impact on religions. - displacednomad, on 03/20/2008, -0/+2http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/ - matt510, on 03/20/2008, -0/+2You cannot base statistical probability on one example. You can GUESS at certain factors that lead to a certain statistical probability, but one case does not tell us anything.
- rodrigo74, on 03/20/2008, -3/+5Thanks for the tip aajjcckk, this website is hilarious.
- JorgeGT, on 03/20/2008, -2/+4That's what they said to Cristobal Columbus when he was asking money to cross the Atlantic...
- piesforyou, on 03/20/2008, -0/+2How to cure world hunger: Attack the problem from both ends and feed the hungry to the hungry!
- eouw0o83hf, on 03/20/2008, -1/+3Not exactly...we are a step closer to finding out if there is possibly another planet in the universe which maybe has the potential of possibly containing life, based on its observed atmospheric chemical makeup.
- nallelcm, on 03/20/2008, -2/+4blocked
- DeathMarcher, on 03/20/2008, -0/+2*What does toilet paper have in common with the Enterprise?
- moviefreakusa, on 03/20/2008, -8/+10OLD NEWS: http://digg.com/space/Hubble_Detects_Organic_Molec ...
- thumperings, on 03/20/2008, -1/+3look ***** there are literally more stars in the universe than there are grains od sand on Earth. X 100000 ... Anything is possible. Got I hate narrow minded fearful twerps.
- zodieman, on 03/20/2008, -0/+2All that money and effort and they can't detect any intelligent life forms in the White House...
- TheBrain21, on 03/21/2008, -0/+1"Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life here..."
- KaiUno, on 03/21/2008, -0/+1I'm not. I'm not even considering this "find". I'm just taking the huge-ass nature of the universe as a basis.
- TheG2, on 03/20/2008, -0/+1Technically the Ori were in another Galaxy, but then we killed them, so its all good.
- inactive, on 03/20/2008, -1/+2Dude, get back to work! You're wasting your time here at digg.
- piesforyou, on 03/20/2008, -1/+2or 4) they know we exist but are planning a surprise attack, followed by our total annihilation!
- TheBrain21, on 03/21/2008, -0/+1Spectral analysis. They split the light coming from the planet using a prism and study the broken up light. Different materials give off different light.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 122 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is