Strange Alien Planets and the Possibility of Life

S&F from me. Absolutely great thread. There is so much for us to learn the goings on beyond our reach. Oh how the imagination just flows.

HD 189733b, this methane rich world must be where the methane breathing aliens from Halo are from originally, eh?

reply to post by DocEmrick





Good job my friend; it is good to see threads like this instead of the common political threads.
I always loved astronomy since I was 10.

we may have not found YET but

there are billions of stars in our galaxy

there are billions of galaxies that we can SEE with our machines

so, just do the math ... and the possibilities are endless ...



many scientists believe we have life in our own solar system, soon we will find out, 2016 I think

It never ceases to amaze me that there are so many different types of planets in our universe. It seems they are like snowflakes - no two are ever alike. For a universe controlled by all the same limitations of physics, it's just baffling that we can have so much variety. I can't wait until we start imaging some of these alien worlds.

Great thread. Thanks for sharing.

Dude, very cool thread. I found this so freakin interesting. As soon as we can develop terraforming then I think we will have a chance.

Life should defintly be able to exist anywhere since we dont even know exactly what life even is. whether how complex or intelligent that life is a totally different question.

Yeah, I have to admit it is great to see threads such as this one. I had no idea about how many planets have been discovered. . .lost count years ago, What a great and refreshing thread.

Im following this Website for quite a long time, and this is my first post...

Since i am 8 Years old (honestly) i am consuming everything about astronomy that exists. This thread remembers me of a presentation i made about 4 years ago.
For me it is a fact that we are not alone in this universe, this can be almost proven by simple maths.
I really hope that we will find some extraterrestial live within the next few years, maybe this event could cause humanity to think again about our situation on this small ball of stone and water.
When my childrens ask me about the stars i tell them that they are the homes of other people :-)
Hopefully this is right so i dont lose my face in front of my kids...

Talking too much, simply thank you for this thread!

greets

We have new rocket technology that can reach mars in 40 days!
Who knows what technology we will have in ten or twenty years.

Someone mentioned terraforming - this kind of reminds me of a question I'd been meaning to ask on here for a while, but never got round to it, and this seems as relavent a place as any:

What would happen if you planted a tree on the moon and watered it regularly?

What would happen if you planted 10,00 trees on the moon and watered them regularly?

Not the dark side obviously, and assuming you found some way to get water into them without it floating off! Could you somehow pump CO2 in there and generate an atmosphere which once set in motion could be sustainable.

This isn't a question based in any scientific reality, I'd just like to encourage people who know more than me to speculate as I think it'd be interesting!

Thanks in advance.

reply to post by Nova


It would wither and die.

Unless you terraform the planet for a few decades.

reply to post by SuperSlovak


very well put together. I enjoy learning things with a post such as this. I hope you got a well deserved applause. What I find most amazing about the possibility of other planets harboring life, is if a planet is 15 times the mass of earth, and it has life on it similar to ours, wouldn't it stand to reason that the inhabitants might well be 15 times the size of us? Just imagine how big their toenail clippers must be.

Again, great job.

edit to fix bad speling

[edit on 9-3-2010 by network dude]

Great thread OP. I love this stuff. Keep it comin

Originally posted by Karmon
Since i am 8 Years old (honestly) i am consuming everything about astronomy that exists.

When my childrens ask me about the stars i tell them that they are the homes of other people :-)
Hopefully this is right so i dont lose my face in front of my kids...

greets

8 years old and you already have children. I think we found our first alien on ATS All joking aside though, There defiantly has to be alien life. I think in one of Jkrog08(God bless his soul) debates he said something about around over a sextillion stars or something around that. If we have that many stars imagine the amount of solar systems that can be around them!

[edit on 9-3-2010 by Maddogkull]

S+F

GREAT THREAD.
Just imagine. We are only starting to open a tiny window into our Universe.
And already there are plenty of planets showing up.
I´m sure the diversity will be much richer. Also there´s no doubt we shall find plenty of Earth type planets all over the place.
However, finding intelligent civilizations and being able to comunicate or interact with them, that´s another matter I think.
Look at our own planet. This Earth is filled with millions of different life forms right?? Well, out of all this MILLIONS of different life forms, how many have developed electronic comunication technology?? How many have developed transportation technology?? How many are interested in ET life?? Just ONE. Out of all the millions of life forms in our own planet, just one life form has come up with these technologies.
I don´t mean to be the party killer here, I wish for a "Star Trek" Universe just as much as the next guy.
But I do think that if there are other intelligent life forms out there, many of them might be at a stage were they aren´t looking beyond their planets, or they are simply too far away.

Definitely a well presented thread. The information was interesting, and the computer graphics of what the planets would look like (if we actually had the technology to view them) totally helped to form a mental image.

Since I've heard of a few of these planets already, it wasn't news to me. But the graphics added a new dimension to the information... if that makes any sense.
And, of course, having them all listed in one place is nice too.


My thoughts on the subject: What we know as "life" could possibly only be defined as such through our limited observations on earth... so although we have certain requirements to live: water, oxygen, etc; maybe there are life forms which don't have those specific requirements, and therefore can exist on worlds that life-on-earth could never survive on. So... maybe extrasolar planets don't necessarily have to resemble earth to harbor life. Interesting to contemplate.

Thank you for this very nice thread.

I am just watching Discovery channel about the influence of the moon on life here on earth.
So, it looks like to have life on a planet, they need to have a moon at the right distance.

But then again, who knows how the universe really works.

Love the work that you did..

There are plenty of moons in our universe. I am almost certain at least somewhere there are the same life suitable conditions.

Fantastic thread, man. I find Astronomy to be eternally fascinating to me. I devoured your thread hoping it would never end. And now I'm googling anything I can find about what we know about the universe.

One thing that has always bothered me about the science community, however, is that they seem to try and define what life should be like on other planets according to our knowledge, our terms. I find that to be arrogant and plain stupid. The universe/nature has never limited itself by following our rules, our understanding and knowledge. That is why fact is always stranger than fiction, because fact doesn't have to make sense to us.

So, my point is, who says water is an essential part to all life in the universe? Us? Maybe liquid nitrogen is an essential part of life to some other race and they don't believe there could possibly be any life on our planet because we have too much water.

(not that you made this claim. But the arrogance of mainstream science bothers me sometimes)

reply to post by Katerna


I'm glad you and many other people liked the thread. It seems scientists are hard wired to look for planets with water. If it doesn't have water then they assume it has no life. I also find this very short sighted. I'm sure life elsewhere can survive without water.