Earth-like planets around most stars: study

Finally scientists are waking up to what is just common sense. There is nothing special about our solar system or our planet. We are not the centre of the universe. We are more than likely average life forms, with average intelligence, living on an average planet, orbiting an average star.

They have concluded that each star has on average 2 planets in the 'goldilocks zone' that are capable of sustaining liquid water.

From the article:
""The ingredients for life are plentiful, and we now know that habitable environments are plentiful," said Lineweaver, from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Unfortunately it seems they still have their heads in the sand when it comes to the extraterrestrial presence on our planet:

"However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them."

When will they take the next step and admit/realise that we are being visited daily? (I have personally seen 3) I think it's coming, and within the next decade we will have a concession from mainstream western science that there is virtually an infinite number of intelligent lifeforms in the universe.

Link:
www.business-standard.com...

a reply to: Andromedabound

So wht you saw must be intelligent life from another world?.
I have seen two UFO's but I will not jump on the it was ET bandwagon because I simply don't know what they were.
My problem with intelligent life visiting us is in two parts.
1) Not the distances but the time lines, what are the odds that two civilizations will bump into each other before one wipes itself out?.
2) Why would they come here? to what end?.

Oh and I really want to believe btw.

Until they come down and say Hi I don't think we will ever know.

But yes it is great news we have more planets to strive to get too.
Imagine If we spent our money on space travel instead of war...I bet we would be stepping on earth 2.0 in 100 years.
Oh to add also they better look like this.

However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them. 

However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them. 

we assume that any technologically advanced society will of followed the same route as us to form scientific understanding. That's why main stream cant accept any other view the pyramids are just elaborate tombs, or that any other intelligent species will use radio astronomy to communicate. It could be and probably is the case that radio astronomy is not what they use, they use a much more advanced and ingenious method unknown to science. We listen and hear nothing and assume the universe is one giant back water when in fact its us we are the backwater yokels.

a reply to: Andromedabound

However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them." 

if it takes 8.20 minutes for sun light to reach the earth and planets on other star systems evolved around the same time as we evolved I can imagine that something like space time differences could cause problems with radio signals.

Maybe our radio signals are still on there way to that same star system we just discovered and when ours reach theirs and visa versa , it may be that some day we could be flooded with signals from all the star systems operating on the same level as we do?

Not mention that gravity also bends light so I do think it also happens to radio signals ?


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"However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them.

That's quite an ignorant comment really , the lifespan for radio if we judge from our own example is short so alien radio signals may have headed this way and we didn't hear them in the short time we've been looking , perhaps they are still traveling this way and haven't reached us yet or perhaps they passed us centuries ago.

Anyone who claims the Universe is not "teeming with aliens" is talking from their butt , anyone who claims similar of our Galaxy is talking from the same area , just because we haven't detected it doesn't mean it isn't there.

The Universe and our Galaxy are big , light and radio waves are by comparison slow.

a reply to: Andromedabound

Finally scientists are waking up to what is just common sense.

Really? Why do people say things like this?

Long ago it was "common sense" that the world was flat. It was "common sense" that the Sun revolved around the Earth. It was "common sense" more recently still that all there was in space were the stars in our galaxy.

Scientific research takes time because actual data needs to be reviewed, studied, and calculated.

You act like science is somehow catching up to you.

a reply to: boymonkey74

I know what you're saying but if it was "ours", and it's so secret, then why have I seen 3? What are they saving them for? If some are ours I believe we copied them. Roswell was not a balloon.
After spending a decade researching what is being built here, I have concluded that many UFO's are likely from elsewhere. Where that is, I don't know.
You don't have to believe me, I don't care, but if you had read what I have, and saw what I saw, i think you'd agree with me. But again, each to their own.

originally posted by: Andromedabound

"However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them."

Considering that we are a tiny speck in our own huge galaxy, let alone the entire universe (which could be infinite in size), I find it quite possible that there's an unlimited amount of intelligence out there somewhere. The problem is down to the sheer size of the space around us, the amount of time it takes for a radio signal to traverse across the galaxy is massive, our technology is just too slow at the moment.

Perhaps even one of the signals we sent was picked up and the reply is currently taking the massive journey across the stars back to us. Who knows.

a reply to: Andromedabound

Remember...

You are unique.... just like everyone else.


At least they are coming around to the obvious.

originally posted by: Andromedabound
When will they take the next step and admit/realise that we are being visited daily?
www.business-standard.com...

Don't you think if we were being visited daily the thousands of 24/7 All Sky/Meteor cameras would be recording tons of UFOs???? Yet the people and organizations which operate them as part of meteor tracking networks don't seem to be logging tons of mysterious spacecraft entering and leaving Earth's atmosphere.

This may also be my MUFON rejected a proposal to set up a network of such cameras similar to the ones which are operated by The American Meteor Society as well as NASA and the SETI Institute.

So logic would tell us the source of the UFO reports you take a light year sized leap of faith to believe are ET actually have a source much, much closer to home.

Way to really diminish a great story by the way.

The headline you wrote is not news. That's been known for quite some time due to the NASA Kepler mission.

The really headline should have been:

"Most stars in Milky Way have at least two Earth-like planets in habitable zone" as this article is titled.


We knew before that at least 22% of stars like our Sun and 48% of lower mass, red dwarf stars had at least one planet in the habitable zone but this new study indicates those conservative numbers from initial analysis of Kepler data in 2012 may have been too conservative now that we have a much larger data set. Scientists have confirmed 1,800 planets discovered by Kepler and an additional 5,000 planets await confirmation (90% of candidates end up confirmed and the list of candidates planets continues to grown). It's been estimated that by the time Kepler's extended mission is over in 2018 it will have discovered 20,000 planets.

Characterization of nearby exoEarths is next phase beyond discovery and it lay ahead in just a few short years when the James Webb Space Telescope launches and soon after that, several extremely large ground based observatories have first light.





There is a chance that within the next 10 years we will detect life on a world around a nearby star. Thanks to this study those chances have doubled.

And that's the takeaway your UFO rant completely missed, ignored or swept aside.

originally posted by: gortex

"However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them.

That's quite an ignorant comment really , the lifespan for radio if we judge from our own example is short so alien radio signals may have headed this way and we didn't hear them in the short time we've been looking , perhaps they are still traveling this way and haven't reached us yet or perhaps they passed us centuries ago.

Anyone who claims the Universe is not "teeming with aliens" is talking from their butt , anyone who claims similar of our Galaxy is talking from the same area , just because we haven't detected it doesn't mean it isn't there.

Why do people always assume radio would only be used for communication..

Radar is uses radio waves.
GPS uses radio radio waves

The planetary radar at Goldstone (which just took a radar picture of that asteroid that made a near earth flyby the other day) is detectable many light years away and such radars are the strongest sources of artificial radio signals we produce on Earth.

So....

Do aliens have no need to track asteroids or their own aircraft/spacecraft?

a reply to: Andromedabound

We can all only talk about what we have seen with our own eyes and to believe what we choose to believe.
Until I get either humanity making contact or myself meeting one I am not going to just accept stories which at the end of the day could just be pop culture.
The whole ET scene could be a cover up for what governments are actually doing none of us know 100%.
Like I said I would love it be be true but that is from my heart not my brain.

originally posted by: longy9999

originally posted by: Andromedabound

"However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them."

Considering that we are a tiny speck in our own huge galaxy, let alone the entire universe (which could be infinite in size), I find it quite possible that there's an unlimited amount of intelligence out there somewhere. The problem is down to the sheer size of the space around us, the amount of time it takes for a radio signal to traverse across the galaxy is massive, our technology is just too slow at the moment.

Perhaps even one of the signals we sent was picked up and the reply is currently taking the massive journey across the stars back to us. Who knows.

Very good reply.

It's not just that but we've BARELY begun to search even with radio.

See this chart:



That is a 3D chart of the amount of sky, frequency and sensitivity all the SETI searches have done. As you can see we've just scratched the surface.

It's like dipping a bucket in the water at the beach and concluding that there are no fish in the ocean. Our searches have been shallow and until recently, intermittent.

Also most of this speculation of course depends on two things: the frequency for intelligent/technological life to develop (ie: how dense are civilizations in our Galaxy and others) and how long does the average civilization last (the "L" in the Drake Equation).

If intelligent life lasts a long time but is rare then that would explain why we haven't heard anything.
Likewise, if civilizations are common but don't last more than say 50,000 years then in our local neighborhood of the galaxy we could be surrounded by the ruins of long dead civilizations.

Both of those possibilities are absolutely fascinating to me.

a reply to: JadeStar


''It's like dipping a bucket in the water at the beach and concluding that there are no fish in the ocean. Our searches have been shallow and until recently, intermittent.''

Exactly! I think sometimes that people just don't fathom how big the universe is, it's size is almost incomprehensible to us. We can't just send out a radio wave out across trillions upon trillions of light years of space and expect immediate results, its going to take lots and lots of time.

The graph you provided shows just how little we've done and how much more there is to do but I'm pretty sure we'll get there in the end.

originally posted by: Andromedabound
Finally scientists are waking up to what is just common sense. There is nothing special about our solar system or our planet. We are not the centre of the universe. We are more than likely average life forms, with average intelligence, living on an average planet, orbiting an average star.

This seems like a strawman argument.

Science has been saying exactly this for a long time now. They know our solar system is not special, and they know that we are just one of hundreds of billions of solar systems in our galaxy, and our galaxy is just one galaxy in a universe of billions more galaxies just like it.

Science even figured this was the case long before we had scientific confirmation of the first exoplanet.

In fact, we know and have speculated about all of these things that you call "common sense" because science has speculated about these things and set out to prove it. Without science and scientific speculation, the masses would have taken much longer to believe these "common sense" things.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: Andromedabound
Finally scientists are waking up to what is just common sense. There is nothing special about our solar system or our planet. We are not the centre of the universe. We are more than likely average life forms, with average intelligence, living on an average planet, orbiting an average star.

This seems like a strawman argument.

Science has been saying exactly this for a long time now. They know our solar system is not special, and they know that we are just one of hundreds of billions of solar systems in our galaxy, and our galaxy is just one galaxy in a universe of billions more galaxies just like it.

Science even figured this was the case long before we had scientific confirmation of the first exoplanet.

In fact, we know and have speculated about all of these things that you call "common sense" because science has speculated about these things and set out to prove it. Without science and scientific speculation, the masses would have taken much longer to believe these "common sense" things.

Well said.

It should also be noted that the Kepler mission was first proposed to NASA by Bill Borucki in 1985(!!)

So scientists for quite sometime have suspected this stuff. It was just the common people who didn't.

The ame was true when it was "common sense" that the world was flat or that the Sun and planets revolved around the Earth.

The natural philosophers (the ancestors to modern physicists) knew it was round and suspected the Earth revolved around the sun with the other planets all along but such teachings were frowned upon by the church so they formed secret orders to share knowledge without religious persecution (Bruno was killed for being public with these things.)

BTW one of these secret societies was called the Illuminati (for illuminated or enlightened ones).

My problem with intelligent life visiting us is in two parts.

1) Not the distances but the time lines, what are the odds that two civilizations will bump into each other before one wipes itself out?.

2) Why would they come here? to what end?.

1) It's a problem most don't consider. When we receive any kind of waves from other worlds, often, they are from thousands or millions of years in the past. Makes a two-way conversation a bit difficult. But, seeing as how we've been around for thousands of years, it also makes it more likely that others would be also. So, allowing for tech and detection methods, pretty possible, actually. Eventually.

2) Wouldn't we go someplace we knew there was life? Of course we would. We're just that curious. Maybe they are too.