SCI/TECH: Scientists Forsee Discovery of Earth Like Planets.

[Baltimore] Scientists attending a week long symposium at the Space Science Telescope Institute are hopeful that the discovery of earth sized extrasolar planets could occur in the near future. The first extrasolar planet was discovered orbiting 51 pegasi 10 years ago. Since 1995 153 other extrasolar planets have been discovered, all of these are believed to be planets similar to Jupiter in size. Some of these discoveries are the result of studying the apparent motion or wobble of stars and others resulting from apparent changes in stars' intensities or magnitude. Some of the attendees indicate that new methods and technologies are within reach that will uncover more earthlike extrasolar planets in the near term.




Tim Brown's rather optimistic view that earth like planets in earth like orbits would be more common than previously considered in mainstream science makes "Fermi's Paradox" even more paradoxical. "Fermi's Paradox" is the name given to a discussion between Enrico Fermi and his associates during the 1940's and 1950's in which Fermi hypothisizes that extraterrestrial civilization should be abundant, given the huge numbers of stars in our galaxy alone.

David Leonard's article "Does science make room for aliens?", published February 14th 2005, discusses issues such as advancements in quantum physics, recent astronomical discoveries, and other science facts and how they increase the probability of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Leonard doesn't mention the more controversial theories put forth by Tom Bearden, Myron Evans and others that would shatter the paradigms of current mainstream science, giving way to further developments in our understanding of the cosmos and our place in it.

The gradual dissolution of these paradigms is evident by the publication of papers in the scientific literature. "Inflation Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitation" by Deardorff, Haich, Macabee and Puthoff asserts that "It has recently been argued that anthropic reasoning applied to inflation theory reinforces the prediction that we should be part of a large galaxy sized civilization, thus strengthening Fermi's paradox concerning "where are they?""





Related News Links:
www.seti.org
www.arxiv.org
www.ufoskeptic.org

I think that intelligent species may exists elsewhere too..

Lets hope that we start detecting smaller bodies around other stars.
Too many of the Gas Giant types can spoil the whole party..Especially if they take up residence in the "Goldilocks Zones".

Jupiter is perfect for us..guarding against large objects, sucking them up, before they cause damage in the inner system..And it's far enough away to
not have a big effect on Earth, like tossing it out of orbit!.

Well what about older star systems that have no gas giants but most of the rubble has already been spent in collisions and planet formation? It may take life a little while longer for life to get a foothold, but once things calm down a Gas-Giantless solar system could support life just as ours does(who knows it may be even a better bet for life). Anything is possible.

[edit on 10-5-2005 by sardion2000]

Although I too think that extraterrestial civilizations must exist, I don't think there has been time yet for Earth to have been discovered to be populated by intelligent technological beings. After all, our electromagnetic signals (capable of traversing the voids between stars) have only been outbound now for around 60-70 years. Even at the speed of light that does not encompass a large volume of space relative to the volume of our galaxy. If Drake's formula has any credibility at all, the potential number of extraterrestrial civilizations that could have heard our signals could still be zero. However, even if someone(thing) has heard those signals there most likely has not been enough time for any kind of response, especially considering that the most likely response would be electromagnetic in nature.

[edit on 11-5-2005 by Astronomer68]

Consider also that our outbound signals were never designed to traverse anything like the distances between stellar systems and they are not on a wavelength that was selected for the least amount of intereference enroute. Further, given that the strength of such signals diminishes with the square of the distance from Earth, they may not be distinguishable from background noise at this stage (even by an advanced civilization).
It would seem more likely that we would stumble upon one or more of their signals long before they would detect ours -- hence SETI.