What is Digg?23 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12so when do we get a seti@home for this kind of project?
I'd much rather spend my spare cycles finding planets - howski, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7"I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life out there in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
-Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes - GiggleStick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I don't think this is really a Planet Hunter. I didn't see any thing about it actually going to the planet and killing it.
Seriously though, I'm sure it will find some planets, but I wonder if it will be able to find very many. It says they will look for rocky planets just a few times the size of earth. In our Solar system though, all rocky planets are About Earth's size or smaller, and the smallest Gas planet (Uranus) is over 14 times Earths Mass (which is what they're looking for because of Star wobble). Maybe there is a reason for this. There may be very few rocky planets larger than Earth, sort of a missing hole in the planet mass probabilities. I don't really know, just thinking out loud. Interesting search though.
I think they can already find planets about the size of Uranus & Neptune. - Zoids, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5What makes you think that aliens will not be exactly the same in terms of hostility towards our own species?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Finding habitable planets will increase our chances of finding life and intelligent life, then we could concentrate signals to those worlds.
- Junkyarddawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Jared Diamond makes a very good point in "The Third Chimpanzee": we already know what happens.
We know what happens when a more advanced species encounters less advanced species - because we've met our closest relatives the chimpanzees, which are intelligent but not as intelligent as we are, and we know how we treat them.
We also know what happens when a more advanced civilization encounters less advanced civilizations - because it's happened hundreds of times in the Earths history, always with the same depressing results.
Jared Diamonds conclusion is that it is unwise, even suicidal, to be sending signals out into space - because someone might hear them. - mongrel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4U N I C R O N ! ! !
- Junkyarddawg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Not to rain on their parade or anything, but personally I'm a little disappointed with this project. Don't get me wrong, finding planets is great and all, but I'd like them to concentrate on finding habitable planets.
The problem with this effort is that it, too, will find only large planets orbiting very close to the star. The estimated lower limit for this telescope are planets twice the size of the Earth, with an orbital period of less than 150 days (roughly halfway between the orbital periods of Mercury and Venus).
This means it's pretty much guaranteed that the planets it finds will be too hot to have liquid water, and therefore unlikely to support life. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Planet hunters have identified a large number of gas giant size planets in the the immediate neighborhood. This satellite is suppose to help in trying to identify smaller planets(by smaller I mean several sizes larger than Earth). Its a step in the right direction until we reach the point of detecting Earth size worlds.
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Can you imagine if we were looking in one direction for the next 50 years and all of the time, there's a great planet in the opposite direction? Ha.
- decar66, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Correction... NOT French led but European led Project
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3They may very well be like us. And if they are, then as bub says, there's not much reason for them to deal with us, just like a 'civilised' country on Earth is a bit reluctant to deal with an uncivilised one. I think this would be the same for seeking out new life.
- cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"I didn't see any thing about it actually going to the planet and killing it."
That's because it's European and not American. - cochonou, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The prime contractor of the Corot satellite is the CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales), therefore it is French led. However, for a lot of other european scientific missions, the prime contractor is the ESA (European Spatial Agency).
- NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah its totally not A planet hunter, It doesn't even have a pet.
- baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Zoids, you been watching way too much Sci/Fi television...
- arjayl642, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I love how 68% of science news comes from SciFi.com
...and the fact that the French have an idea to do something cool, yet they launch from Kazakstan.
Maybe Borat went with them. - baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4as violent and ignorant the human race is i doubt extraterrestrials would want anything to do with the human species, even the most powerful and greatest leaders of us humans can not get along and are as corrupt as your average white collar gangster, i would believe extraterrestrials would either avoid humanity or kill us all off before our species achieve interstellar space flight and pollute other planets...
if humanity can not get along with each other what makes you think life would be better if we find another life form on other planets? - dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4I love when someone tries to keep a joke going, but fails miserably because they aren't funny. It reminds me of the kind of thing Michael Scott would do on The Office. I imagine after that joke, people in the room sort of look down at the floor, or look awkwardly at each other, half shrugging their shoulders, and you walk away grinning like an idiot.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -15/+8<French Accent>
Dear aliens. We surrender!
</French Accent> - dtd00d, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2< Voice from Next Room >
We haven't found them yet! Stop your French negotiating.
< /Voice from Next Room> - datastorageguy, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2"A French-led satellite launched on Wednesday"
To bad it will retreat at the first sign of hostile aliens - sundar599, on 10/12/2007, -9/+0WOW!! Amazing.
But I understand that NASA already placed some signals receiver on the Space to receive any signals from any living planets.
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