Astronomers Discover a Planet Almost Identical to Earth

Originally posted by havok
My thoughts? I am taking this into a new direction.

After many more "discoveries" and articles from these scientists...
A perceived threat will come from the skies in the form of "extra-terrestrials".
Just like the plan I read about years ago...

It will be the largest threat to ever hit modern civilization.
Global chaos will ensue.
But will it be real?

What will happen, you ask?
Everything from nationwide riots, to modern warfare.
The television will be it's greatest ally.
Striking fear into households daily.
Fear drives this nation to consume.
It will also drive it to accept whats coming.

More control.


(You wanted my thoughts. That's exactly what came to mind)

It's funny you say that because a guy called Reinhardt who predicted the crash of 2008 thinks this is what is going to happen.
He thinks the new perceived external threat by tptb will be from space, and that the new industrial revolution will involve space exploration and mining.

Originally posted by Xterrain

"It's a big deal -- It's definitely a good candidate for life," said astrophysicist Mario Livio about KOI 172.02. "Maybe there's no land life, but perhaps very clever dolphins."

So, by only slightly reading into his comment, is this new Super-Earth covered in liquid water? What might this comment be alluding to that wasn't directly disclosed in the article???

Very good question. It would be a heck of an assumption for him to make.. I wonder how they were able to determine that it is indeed a water world, because the conditions necessary for that to occur, as I covered earlier, hang on the very thinnest of a razor's edge.

Someone posted earlier an important distinction between "Earth-like planet" and "Earth-twin". The first describing a planet that is rocky and about the same distance from its star as our own. This would include a planet like Venus or Mars. Which doesn't guarantee life living on its surface. This is what has been discovered in the OP, not an Earth-twin which describes a planet that has almost the same characteristics as Earth: atmosphere, liquid water, gravity, pressure, etc.

We have not found an Earth-twin and will likely not find one anytime soon. And even an Earth-twin does not guarantee intelligent, technologically advanced life. For all we know, all civilizations destroy themselves within a brief timescale. Or maybe all civilizations leave their physical forms and upload themselves into some kind of digital form. Maybe they become so advanced that they discover a way to leave the universe. And most likely of all, if there exists intelligent life out there, they are probably so much more advanced than us that we are just not interesting enough to deserve a second glance.

The more we learn about exoplanets and the structure of other star systems, the more I become convinced that alien lifeforms as we imagine them to be is probably extremely rare. We would have a better chance at communicating with a squid from Earth than an alien from some distant world. They will be NOTHING like us.

Seed of Life

The Cosmological Integrity of Man

The intriguing thing about the earth-moon-sun relationship, relative to man as observer, is that not only is it at this moment in earth's evolutionary history, when there are earth-based observers, does the moon perfectly eclipse the sun (it started closer and moves away from the Earth at 3cm/yr), while rising at night like a mini-sun, but it also mimics the sun by achieving perihelion and solstice, at equidistant points equal and opposite from due north/south, to that of the sun, thus moving through the months in such a way that this becomes possible (tracking of the sun). Such an occurrence however, can only be meaningful from the POV of an earth-based observer!

When we then add in the coincidence of the solar and lunar eclipse phenomenon, as well as the moon-earth geometrical relationship (squaring the circle), and then consider the conditions within which we find ourselves, what we're left with is either an astronomical coincidence of the farthest reaching proportions imaginable (thus dramatically reducing the probability of other earth-twins by many orders of magnitude), or, evidence of intelligent design, and even one with a marker, like a wink and a nod, to mankind, left by none other than God himself for us to discover.

Oh there may be other living worlds, but something, a great cornerstone if you will, seems to have been laid right here of all places, beginning as always with the end in mind, and with man included. It's more than integral, it's a first last cause, the alpha and omega of existence if you will, that what we have here is the prime model upon which the others, if there are any, are but an imitation, because as I said earlier, where else but here can a ten fingered bipedal, self aware intelligent (to a degree) observer, look up at certain times and see his sun perfectly eclipsed by his planet's single, giant moon?

So at the very least, let us never forget just how extraordinary is the very fact of life itself, right here and now, and let us begin to consider the reason and the purpose..

So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed.

~ Isaiah 28:16 NIV

I tell you it's a message, the "fingerprint" of a creative act, with you and me in mind already always, from the beginning of time until the present day.


"The moon is the mother of the universe."
~ Ancient Egyptian saying

"It was the stone that was rejected by the builders that became the keystone."

~ JC

Things that make ya go hmmm.....

reply to post by NewAgeMan


But the moon was not always at the distance it is now, it took millions of years for it to get where it is. The dinosaurs saw a much larger moon in their era. So why did God wait for the moon to reach a certain distance before creating humanity? Couldn't he just push the moon to its current position instead of waiting the hundreds of millions of years? It just seems like a nice cosmic coincidence to me. Our distant descendants, if we live that long, will no longer see the moon perfectly covering the sun, as it will have drifted farther out. Eventually the moon may break from Earth's gravitational pull and float off into space, leaving the Earth to wobble around on its axis and probably kill every living thing.

I find it weird that we discover all these "earth like" planets, have a lovely media field day about it then afterwards.... Nothing.

reply to post by TheReclaimer

I've already pointed that out to further highlight the magnitude of the coincidence.

A much closer moon in the far far distant past also would have created tidal forces capable of drawing the oceans far inland every day, a process favorable to the evolution of cellular DNA via continual disintegration and reintegration, thus accelerating the process of evolution, until the big meteor whack killed off the Dinos and created the perfect "vaccuum" within which man was able to evolve.

If you want to call all the coincidences, taken together, nothing but "fluke" even if an "astronomical" coincidence of the highest magnitude, fine, but then be prepared to argue rather vehemently against the probability of finding of other "earth-twins" within our own galaxy, let alone the small portion of the galaxy that we're presently searching.

Also there is and always was only one "now", and what I'm saying is that what we find here and now isn't simply the byproduct of a random happenstance but rather of an intelligent design and process who's very fingerprint can be found in the numerous and strange earth-moon-sun "coincidences", all the way to your own present moment experience and the fingerprint on your own thumb.

Me I choose gratitude, deep, heartfelt gratitude as my response, but to each his own..

Best Regards,

NAM
January 11, 2012, Vancouver Canada, Earth.

P.S. Just remember also that it's Jesus who wants you to be "with him" beside the throne (Godhead) "where he is" as a fully self-realized and actualized, and fully Liberated, child of a loving God, whereas it's the "PTB" who want you to think that you are nothing but a minion under the Doh-minion of their rule over "Zion".. and who revel in the mindless debate between the right wing fundies and the atheists, while they alone possess the truth about the nature of man and the earth in God's creation. Seriously, look around at their signs and symbols, and how often they employ the earth-moon-sun relationship, something just bypassed by the masses as being of no significance whatsoever.

This message has been brought to you by the Shaw Media empire.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Thanks for clarifying your point, and I agree that the moon is vital to our existence. Without it or with a different moon or moons, and who knows how our evolutionary tree would have looked like. It has probably saved us on a few occasions from meteor impacts judging by all the craters. And in comparison to Earth, our moon is pretty large compared to other planets and their moons. I think our system configuration is rare and probably not easily duplicated throughout the universe. Our methods of finding exoplanets still has a long way to go before detecting systems like ours. But if they do find them eventually, it will either make us less special. Or it will prove your theory.

Yay! There are so many beautiful worlds out there, and a soul that chooses to incarnate as a water-bearing planet is VERY special since water is a conduit/element that can host so many forms of life. All planets are sentient, self-aware beings; it's been awesome over the years to "talk" (really, listen to) to Mother Earth and learn bits and pieces about this vast universe and the many, many forms of sentient life here. Of COURSE there are many other worlds like Earth! But nobody is quite as special as her, in my humble, mystical opinion.

Originally posted by TheReclaimer
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

But if they do find them eventually, it will either make us less special. Or it will prove your theory.

No, either way, it will make us more special, not less so - see my earlier posts in this thread to see what I mean.

reply to post by miniatus


You are right that we could never see the planet itself, but people would immediately look at the star and the surrounding space.

I just want to know what star is this planet is orbiting. It seems that information is not available.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

So when we then look to this specialness, not only of man but of the circumstance that's given rise to man, in particular that which is encapsulated in the unique earth-moon-sun configuration, we are forced to ask the question, what does it mean and signify?

Teleology is no longer in vogue, though there's no logical reason why one couldn't ask the question when so much of these "coincidences" are theologically salient.

If I am correct, and you are correct, that it is meaningful, and poses a question to man, even a theological one in regards to origins and destinies, then I may also be right that an old Jewish friend of mine (who also happened to be a trained Magus) examined it, and saw in it, an idea, through a reflected intentionality, whereby in the earth-moon-sun relationship can be seen the manifestation of a SIGN not just in the stars, but plain as day, one of which rises during the day and the other at night but which is a perfect reflection of the greater light ie: as a communication from the designer regarding the true nature of man as child/son of God (reflected light, same circumference).

These are more or less my views. Consistent with the left-right, positive-negative duality is the objective-subjective dichotomy, neither of which, I contend, should be ignored. Science is predicated on an objective take on the world; however, a purely objective or scientific assessment of man AS man would be misleading, applying one metric to a subject inconsistent with the properties of another.

I've been highly influenced in my thinking by Martin Heidegger and especially the Austrian psychoanalyst Viktor Frankl. Frankl stressed that Freudian psychotherapy dehumanized man by applying behavioristic standards of inquiry to man. For example, instead of treating man as man, i.e., in his yearning for truth and meaning, psychology got in the nasty habit of searching for hidden, easy-to-explain reasons: Freud posited a Oedipus conflict to cover the gamut of human experience; Adler saw everything in terms of some hidden inferiority complex. Frankl, conversely, pointed out that psychologists who reason along such lines only reveal their own unconscious intentions: to dehumanize man. Man can't be discovered in his totality unless you address him according to his own nature, which means, according to his being a person, with feelings, dreams, in short, according to his search for meaning. Mans unique capacity for conceptual thinking opens him up to a different world from animals. It's as if his body were animal, could be explained according to behaviorist norms, but his mind, his spirit, defied all such codification. The existentialist perspective is thus as relevant to mans thinkin as the scientific perspective, when it comes to formulating a meaningful philosophy.

If I am correct, and you are correct, that it is meaningful, and poses a question to man, even a theological one in regards to origins and destinies, then I may also be right that an old Jewish friend of mine (who also happened to be a trained Magus) examined it, and saw in it, an idea, through a reflected intentionality, whereby in the earth-moon-sun relationship can be seen the manifestation of a SIGN not just in the stars, but plain as day, one of which rises during the day and the other at night but which is a perfect reflection of the greater light ie: as a communication from the designer regarding the true nature of man as child/son of God (reflected light, same circumference).

Interesting. I think in order to systematize these discrepancies we have to acknowledge the dual nature of the world - the male and female sides, if you will. Many a critic of religion rightly point out that the symbolist way of looking at the world (the way were discussing) stunted scientific progress. There is an inherent struggle between seeing the world as a "thou" as Martin Buber would call it, and seeing the world as an "it". Looking at the world as a fixed object bound by certain inalienable properties mostly strips the world of it's spiritual significance. Nevertheless, looking at the world in this way bequeaths greater understanding of how the world operates. There is thus great practical value to relating with the world in this way.

On the other hand, the world appears to be deafeningly symbolic; this way of looking at the world is always tinged with a subjective "take" and interpretation, implying that the world looks this way for a REASON of spiritual import, reporting to man the metaphysical plan of the architect. Here, logic is used for the purpose of elucidating symbolic reality, whereas in the case of science, logic analyzes the mechanics of things according to measurable properties.

So, again, to make theological sense of these differences requires an a priori assumption that duality is essential. God created the world reflecting two opposite poles - everywhere we look, there's an opposite. In the case of science and symbol, both views are valid; the trick is to strike a reasonable balance where can utilize the gifts afforded b scientific understanding without impairing our spiritual awareness of the symbolisms that run beneath our everyday experiences.

reply to post by dontreally

Even though you're not a Christian theologian (although now amenable to an evolutionary Christian mysticism), I think you would very much enjoy and appreciate The Nature and Destiny of Man by Reinhold Niebuhr.

Man has both what's called the "qualia" of subjective experience, and, can stand apart from himself and ask questions about his own value, meaning and purpose, and even wonder about who is the who who's asking and who wants to know..

But if there's a logical cornerstone of reason for faith, I don't think anyone needs to put forth an apologia, nor distinguish that inquiry from the pursuit of scientific knowledge and understanding, since both methods of inquiry have arrows of trajectory that are now pointing in the same direction - to the question of who and what IS man, really, and just what the heck are we doing here in the first place, and what is our place, our origin and destiny in the grand scheme of things, even from the POV of the biggest picture imaginable, the cosmic frame of reference.

I agree with you about Frankl who I've also read. By far a superior understanding of the nature of man in the will to meaning, than the will to sex, or to power (Fraud and Adler).

Which brings us, via the will to meaning, straight to the self aware difference between necessary or meaningful suffering, and unnecessary or meaningless suffering, which also dovetails with Jungian psychology whereby "all neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering".

High art then, in some form or another, born of the will to meaning, and the will to love, is the highest pursuit of man (and "the son of man").


"There is no greater love than that of a man who is willing to lay down his life for his friends."


I am not a thing. I am a human being! (The Elephant Man, paraphrased).

What I like about the Christian interpretation in this regard is that it rationally and logically assigns a meaningful value to man, and to the individual human being, of infinite measure, a valuation whose meaning and purpose it is to Liberate man to pursue his final destiny, which may be thought of in terms of the "revelation of the sons of God" for which the whole of the creation is yearning with urgent anticipation, to allow "everyone" to find their true place as an integral part of the entire phenomenon and occurrence of life, whereby "the last shall be first and the first, last."

There's a joke to bad had there in the final analysis, I am absolutely convinced of it, a joke at the expense of our human ignorance and atheist proclivity, capable of saving the whole world, even one person at a time.

I will go ahead and laugh first if need be, but for God's sake, I cannot be the only one to "get it".

I knew ATS had some great minds.
I am currently playing catch up from quite a few pages back but so far this has turned into one awesome read.

Thank you all

Great stuff.

it doesn't matter, there could be people flying around their earth like planet and limited by distances like we are, we would never be able to reach each other.

our communications would never be able to reach each other...

That was quick. They were sitting on this information for weeks or months it seems, probably just until they could ultimately confirm I suppose.

This article from December 27, 2012 states just that:

Astronomers discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star in 1995. Since they, they’ve spotted more than 800 worlds beyond our own solar system, and many more candidates await confirmation by follow-up observations.

“The first planet with a measured size, orbit and incident stellar flux that is suitable for life is likely to be announced in 2013,” said Geoff Marcy, a veteran planet hunter at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the Kepler team.

Notice G. Marcy says "likely to be announced in 2013." Which obviously means they 100% believe and have confirmed they found it already, just waiting to break the news. Any significance to the date of announcement??

Very ground breaking stuff!!

news.discovery.com

reply to post by Brainiac


unless we find local intelligent life we will never contact alien life.

reply to post by Brainiac


Why should this be important?
We should develop some sort of 'Prime directive' tho

Well I've been reading on and on about how long it would take to get to this planet if we could travel at light speed. Well personaly i disagree with what was posted, and here is why. So people say that if a craft would travel at lightspeed a distance of 20 lightyears it would take them 20 years to reach and us hundreds because of time dilation. But that makes no sense at all. If they travel at lightspeed it would take us 20 years to see them reach the distance and not the other way around and it would take them less because of time dilation.

Just like if you take a longhaul flight, for the people on the ground it takes just the amount of time thought it would but for you the flight was shorter with a couple of milliseconds.

Basically what I am saying is that I think it's the other way around on what was said here. It's the only thing that makes sense according both to phisics and logic

reply to post by Krakatoa


before we build TPF we need to find out where earth analogues are within 100ly