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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
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[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
“We’re on the verge of finding out how frequently habitable planets occur in the universe.” That was astronomer Alan Boss at the AAAS meeting on February 14th. “And I think we’re going to find out that that number is very close to one.” Meaning that each solar-type star is probably orbited by, on average, one Earth-type planet. So how many habitable planets might be out there?
“10 to the 11th in our galaxy and then there are something like 10 to the 11th galaxies. We’re up to about 10 to the 22 Earths, plus or minus a few.
“You don’t have to just believe that this speculation is going to be correct or not. NASA will be launching the Kepler space mission, and Kepler’s entire purpose is to count how many Earths there are around a population of stars in the constellation Cygnus.” Kepler launches on March 5th.
“Then about three or four years from now, there’ll be a press conference at NASA headquarters, and Bill Borucki, the Kepler PI will stand up and tell us just how frequently Earths occur. And once we know that we’ll know how to take the next steps in the search for living planets, and some of that work will involve not only telling if the planets are habitable, but actually searching for signatures in their atmospheres if they could be inhabited, as well.”
—Steve Mirsky
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23 Comments
Add CommentYa gotta love the fantasy world some scientists live in. Every extrasolar system we've looked at to date has worlds in highly unusual orbits. There seems to be mounting evidence that a certain composition in a solar system's planets is required to keep the orbits stable over any length of time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYet, despite all this evidence, the scientist, on nothing other than his heart-felt desire that "it be so" is predicting earths everywhere you look.
Might have something to do with the fact that current technology only allows us to detect quirky planets. They have to be big so that we can detect their impact on the star's motion or light coming to us, and they have to be close so that the periodic effect is seen several times over the period in which we look at the star.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfrgough - You're forgetting the one reason all those planets we've found so far are in weird orbits (and are in general way too big to be Earth) -- it's that those are the only kinds of planets we can find with current techniques. (i.e., to find a planet via a gravitational perturbation or dimming, it has to be big or really close in - preferably both).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's called a selection bias - look it up.
And behold; God created, the Heavens and Earths...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand brought forth life.......
Mr burke, you forgot...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.
Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom,
He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid,
Who made the spikey urchin,
Who made the sharks, He did.
All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.
AMEN.
- Monty Python
The interesting thing about the Enlightenment was that it introduced "the dignity of the disciplines" - science, theology, art all have a role to play in knowledge and cosmology but they play a different role, and each can be respected and appreciated. In the past theology dictated what science could discover (Case in point - Galileo. Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30 state that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." In the same tradition, Psalm 104:5 says, "the LORD set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." Further, Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place" etc.[86]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGalileo defended heliocentrism, and claimed it was not contrary to those Scripture passages. He took Augustine's position on Scripture: not to take every passage literally, particularly when the scripture in question is a book of poetry and songs, not a book of instructions or history. The writers of the Scripture wrote from the perspective of the terrestrial world, and from that vantage point the sun does rise and set. Galileo did, however, openly question the veracity of the Book of Joshua (10:13) wherein the sun and moon were said to have remained unmoved for three days to allow a victory to the Israelites.
In 1616 Galileo went to Rome to try to persuade the Church authorities not to ban his ideas. In the end, Cardinal Bellarmine, acting on directives from the Inquisition, delivered him an order not to "hold or defend" the idea that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still at the centre. ) When theology is done intelligently with the purpose of deepening life's meaning rather than restricting other disciplines and the exploration of truth, it has much to contribute. For example - what kind of story do you hope to base your life on - the point of Christianity is to base your life around a story of self sacrifice and having that story work it's way into your own story. That's quite a different way of reading the Bible than a mythic literal approach. There is no reason to repeat the mistakes the church has made in the past with regards to science.
Why does the Scientific American not edit its comments page and remove the primitive jungle myths from it? Either the Scientific American is about science or it is about someone's bizarre and tribal nonsense about Adam and Eve and Genesis...spare me...Science is science and nonsense is nonsense and they do not belong on the webpage that purports to be the former...It is bad enough that America is run by these morons for the most part but it is not necessary to rub our noses in their mischief. What is the next step? The articles themselves will turn into the same rubbish?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnfiertel - you obviously know nothing of history. Yesterday's science is today's primitive myths. Everything you know now as fact is either wrong or woefully inadequate and will be relegated to primitive myth in the future. As far as the use of the word "jungle" - biggoted loser much?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe key word in the name of this periodical is "American" ie. a nation where we have freedom of speech. Even if that speech seems silly or woefully ignorant. No one is forcing you to read these discussions.
LOL.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScrew America. Screw religion. That said, respectful of others' beliefs, be they secular or spiritual. Personally, I'm a secular humanist, bu tI see no reason to insult those who aren't.
Anyway, that estimate is hella high. I'm starting to think that I don't even care how many planets are inhabited, if interstellar travel never becomes feasible.
Thats obvious we are here aren't we???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhich idiot thinks we are alone in 10^30 suns
There are likely loads of earth like planets. It will be interesting to see what's discovered in the coming years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpeculation on other Earths is fascinating. Why does the conversation in the resulting commentary have to devolve into philosophical meanderings and personal insults ? It seems unfortunately many blogs have this same characteristic. I for one would like to hear or read what other informed scientists or laymen have to say about the subject, multiple earths.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would also be very surprised if "life" would only reside on Earth like planets. Life as we know it will probably turn out to be a very restricted subset of all possible forms, and an even smaller subset of life we are able to recognize. Which leads to the next obvious question, in a universe teeming with life where is everyone ? Why has travel and communication been designed to be so difficult if not impossible ? There are no historical parallels to draw upon. Even a prehistorical human being could if so inclined traverse large areas of the Earth and encounter foreign peoples.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisModern 21st century man is completely alone on this blue sphere and unable, as a practical manner, to communicate with other extrasolar life forms. Interstellar travel we can conceive of will be excrutiatingly slow and laborius, of little immediate benefit to Earth dwellers and our less than 10^2 year life spans.
The necessary conditions for life as we know it are so subtle that even the slightest deviation from our conditions as we know it here on this planet make the likelihood of intelligent life, self-conscious beings like us, propagating on other worlds unreasonably remote. We are alone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi agree with this article, i love this idea. so, who ever doesnt believe this. is either scared or just cant comprehened it. i think life can exist just about any where
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk! so there are some comments whose Bone Fide status we can suspect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoesn't anybody 'report abuse'?
What does it matter if there is life elsewhere in the Universe? It is very unlikely we will ever be able to interact with it. We are messing up the only planet we have as it is. So why mess up anybody else's?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is immaterial whether or not we like an idea. The mathematics does not add up. The chances of life like us existing elsewhere in the universe is a ratio of one to a number with more zeros after it than there are particles in the universe! Sentient ife has occurred once. We are it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNever say never.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell there is obviously life on this insignificantly small planet called Earth. Our nears star the Sun is pretty most an average star. Water seems to be a common ingredient in our galaxy. A significant fraction of my body is water(about 60%).. I consider myself pretty average to... and i’m just one out of 6,76 billion or more..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...so "common" is what comes to mind!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe percentage of suns with earth like planets is very small, the numbers still large. Space is a very large place even in our own galaxy. Still, there may be several that are reachable in a mans life time at trans light speeds. We may find that all planets that can support life, do. and a few with in reach intelligent life. A true space drive will be available with in a generation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShould we not now have a programme to launch a craft designed to obtain the maximum achievable speed within today's technology? Speed for it's own sake, some form of nuclear pulse detonation engine?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe Voyager is now the furthest from Earth, and I
believe it travels around 45,000 m.p.h
With a view to developing the first steps towards the stars
we could create a technology demonstrator capable of around 500,000 m.p.h.+?