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Vancouver Off-Topic / Current EventsThe off-topic forum for Vancouver, funnies, non-auto centered discussions, WORK SAFE. While the rules are more relaxed here, there are still rules. Please refer to sticky thread in this forum.
Roughly one out of every 37 to one out of every 70 sunlike stars in the sky might harbor an alien Earth, a new study reveals.
These findings hint that billions of Earthlike planets might exist in our galaxy, researchers added.
These new calculations are based in data from the Kepler space telescope, which in February wowed the globe by revealing more than 1,200 possible alien worlds, including 68 potentially Earth-size planets. The spacecraft does so by looking for the dimming that occurs when a world transits or moves in front of a star.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., focused on roughly Earth-size planets within the habitable zones of their stars — that is, orbits where liquid water can exist on the surfaces of those worlds. [The Strangest Alien Planets]
After the researchers analyzed the four months of data in this initial batch of readings from Kepler, they determined that 1.4 to 2.7 percent of all sunlike stars are expected to have Earthlike planets — ones that are between 0.8 and two times Earth's diameter and within the habitable zones of their stars.
"This means there are a lot of Earth analogs out there — two billion in the Milky Way galaxy," researcher Joseph Catanzarite, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told SPACE.com. "With that large a number, there's a good chance life and maybe even intelligent life might exist on some of those planets. And that's just our galaxy alone — there are 50 billion other galaxies."
After three to four years of Kepler data are investigated, the scientists predict a total of 12 Earthlike worlds will be found. Four of these have already been seen in the four months of data released so far, they added. Kepler mission scientists have estimated that, altogether, there could be 50 billion planets in the Milky Way, though not all would be Earth-size worlds within the habitable zone of their local stars. [NASA's Kepler Telescope By-The-Numbers]
When it comes to the 100 nearest sunlike stars within a few dozen light years, these findings suggest that only about two might have Earthlike worlds. Still, Catanzarite did note that red dwarfs might host Earthlike planets as well, and that such stars are far more common than sunlike stars.
Although researchers will find it much harder to detect an Earth-size planet transiting in front of dim red dwarfs, scientists are currently trying to detect such planets around these stars by the gravitational tugs they would exert on each other.
"I'd expect to hear one day about habitable Earth analogs around these stars," Catanzarite said.
Catanzarite and his colleague Michael Shao detailed their findings online March 8 in a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.
astronomy was by far my favourite class in undergrad!
my undergrad astro courses NEVER had interesting stuff like this... it was all about composition of stars, light emitted by stars, size of stars and a bunch of other BS.. =(
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to think what kind of neat stuff we would have if govts invested in groups like NASA as $much$ as they did in their military (outside of war related sci projects)
maybe even a Galaxy class ship? sigh if only communism was allowed to work
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Originally Posted by StylinRed
to think what kind of neat stuff we would have if govts invested in groups like NASA as $much$ as they did in their military (outside of war related sci projects)
maybe even a Galaxy class ship? sigh if only communism was allowed to work
I agree. Forget other governments. Just the US war budget for the last 50 years dumped into science and we'd be laughing.
we can barely get out pass beyond neptune, let alone leave our solar system, voyager 1 and 2 which was launch back in the 70s, are our fastest man made ship that is currently travelling at the speed of a bullet out of our solar system
The rate we are developing our technologies in the last few centuries have been pretty amazing though.... There are many in the world who say that if mankind would stop waging wars on each other and focus peaceful co-existence with all then we would be light years ahead of where we are now.
I personally think that if anything the truth should begin to dawn upon us now more than ever if were ever going to push beyond the limits imposed by our selfish and violent instincts and live together in this planet before we can move to others. If history is doomed to repeat itself a few more times, then maybe we'll get wiped out as a humanity, if not, who knows
There are many in the world who say that if mankind would stop waging wars on each other and focus peaceful co-existence with all then we would be light years ahead of where we are now.
As I previously mentioned, technology advances faster during wartime with the ongoing R&D for military might
The rate we are developing our technologies in the last few centuries have been pretty amazing though.... There are many in the world who say that if mankind would stop waging wars on each other and focus peaceful co-existence with all then we would be light years ahead of where we are now.
Ignoring the wars now, if we never had the dark ages, imagine where we could be now!
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I watched this BBC documentary on Infinitity a long while back and they used the Infinite Monkey Theorem to prove that we're not alone in the Universe. Currently at work so I can't look for the title of the doc nor a video (sorry, but wiki Infinite Monkey Theorem yo)
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sigh if only communism was allowed to work 
