Discovery of the First Earth-Like, Habitable Exoplanet Will Be Announced in May 2011

TheUsual

slade_x wrote: »

some parts of mars crust have been magnetised which confirms for them mars had a siginificant enough magnetic field in its distant past. evidence thanks to the mars global surveyor. All the current expanded wealth of knowledge of mars has been acquired through satellites and rovers send to the martian planet.

Exactly my point. It is known that Mars had flowing surface water and a real magnetic field at some point in it's history. But not now and unless human technology in the future can start a planet's core - it never will naturally.

slade_x wrote: »

What has been found so far does absolutely not preclude any possibility of what we may find or may not find in the future. the unlikely is not fact and absolutely unequivocally not Science. and no i am not a teenager nor do i have any sentimental hope invested on finding present day life on mars or even past life (of which there is cause for further study) to reiterate I never stated that i hope they find life on mars and my belief on the matter is irrelevant for this point. not finding evidence at this stage is not proof there of.

Past life - maybe. Living, no.
But it's good practice for when a possible planet or moon is explored for similar life at the moment, maybe Europa if liquid water is beneath it's ice covering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_%28moon%29
"A new mission to Jupiter's icy moons, the Europa Jupiter System Mission[14] Conjecture on extraterrestrial life has ensured a high profile for the moon and has led to steady lobbying for future missions" (EJSM), is proposed for a launch in 2016 with answers relating to whether there is life or not in 2019.

maninasia

Haha but if you believe Mars did have life in the past it is 99.99% certain it still does now. Why? Their amazing diversity and ability to evolve quickly.

Any change to Mars atmosphere would easily occur over timeframes that bacteria could adapt to. It's even likely that there were bacteria there already in the subsurface rock which have not evolved to any great extent for billions of years who were hardly affected by any change in atmosphere.

We KNOW 100% there has been large amounts of material exchanged between Earth and Mars over billions of years, they most likely have cross 'infected' each other numerous times in the past.

Mars has huge subsurface areas where there are ice deposits, bacteria can produce their own antifreeze and create pockets of liquid water in their environment. They can also live off sulphur and even radioactive minerals.

I am very disappointed in plans for the next Mars explorer, it merely looks for the chemicals that support life rather than looking for life itself (which it should do by looking for nucleic acids). No brainer really...

Duiske

Remember this story from a couple of weeks back ?

Odds of Life on Newfound Earth-Size Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer Says

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth-like-exoplanet-possibly-habitable-100929.html

There are whispers coming today from the International Astronomical Union Symposia in Torino that a slight error has been made. It seems Gliese 581g may not actually exist.

Plug

Duiske wrote: »

Remember this story from a couple of weeks back ?

Odds of Life on Newfound Earth-Size Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer Says

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth-like-exoplanet-possibly-habitable-100929.html

There are whispers coming today from the International Astronomical Union Symposia in Torino that a slight error has been made. It seems Gliese 581g may not actually exist.

Thats a real kick up the backside, what are they playing at? Have they even telescopes to vew small earth like exoplanets?

I wonder when we will get the next update from Kepler?

Alliandre

It was never officialy confirmed in the first place. It seems that HARPS can't back up the claims of the other team. They also can't confirm planet f.

Hauk

Yeah, one thing to note is the differentiation between the list of confirmed and candidate planets.

I think they should really change the terminology of "candidate" planet. "candidate" planet really means they have data that suggests there is a planet there, but is perceived by the public to be a potential habitable planet.

Confirmed planets are planets confirmed by follow up observations/research.

djhaxman

Plug wrote: »

I wonder when we will get the next update from Kepler?

From Kepler Mission Manager

Science team members are preparing to announce the mission’s latest discovery in early November. Additionally, the science team is expected to validate the Kepler 9d planet in the near future. Kepler 9d, which is about one and a half times larger than Earth, was announced as a planetary candidate at a media telecon held Aug. 26, 2010.

http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/mmu/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=63

maninasia

Beeker wrote: »

I have always found the topic of alien life fascinating. I believe that the universe is packed full of life, however I am not so sure about intelligent life. It is out there but it may be very rare.
Life has been on the Earth for almost 4 billion years. There are millions of species around today and have been many more millions that have ever existed. Yet out of all those possibilities over all those years, intelligence {at least as we define it} has emerged only once. Perhaps intelligence is very rare indeed. I would love to hear other people’s views on this.

Well I'll give it my best shot with my view. I think you are looking at it the wrong way. Intelligent life has

1. The ability to construct tools and machines to conquer alien habitats
2. Extremely fast evolutionary time scale due to technology accelerating competitive pressures...evolution becomes directed and partially planned
3. Ability to point itself to areas with useful resources in a planned manner
4. Competitive pressure between competing intelligent life forms would probably force some members/races to move further afield for survival

Intelligent life evolving in the galaxy/universe is a no-brainer. We've got 1000s of examples right here on earth. Sure only,we, have evolved such a level of technological ability, but the fact is that we HAVE evolved it means the statistical chance points to possibly 100,000s to millions of intelligent lifeforms in the Milkyway Galaxy alone (just due to the sheer number of star systems). Now understand the fact that intelligent life begets intelligent life, it is a runaway train due to fast evolution and planned evolution..as we can with humans now as we are fast becoming wedded to machines in all aspects of our lives. It is highly likely most intelligent lifeforms are not biological drawing on our own experience.

Now add in the age of the galaxy, 14 billion years old. Now think that it actually takes just ONE civilisation/intelligent life-form fully adapted to living in the vast and most consistent environment there is the universe - interstellar space to decide to explore the whole galaxy and give them 10 millions years at sublight speeds..and you've got extremely high odds other intelligent life forms are in our vicinity and have been for a very long time. It just takes ONE but the odds are there are THOUSANDS of lifeforms who have evolved aeons ago with interstellar exploration as part of their life cycle.

Why can't we see them or detect them...that's another question but not too hard to answer in some ways.