[kool bubba ice]

Heard about it on the news.. 7 planets.. The one most like earth is 40% bigger.. But, main problem, is too close to the sun to sustain life.. Do you think we will ever find a alternate planet like ours? I doubt it would matter since it would be so far away, but would give the assumption of some type of life form.. I know many don't believe in 'little green men,' but this country does a lot to try to contact other life form in space.. With the universe always growing.. There's no end to my understanding.. & billions of suns & who knows how many planets.. It's safe to assume we are not the only one's in this universe.. A Alternate universe always intrigued me..

 

[logwed]

The solar system that you're talking about is certainly within our own universe. I think that it is inevitable that we find a planet capable of supporting life, but I am sure that it will be too far away for us to contact. Even if one is 100 light years away, a fairly short distance, a signal would take at least 100 years to reach them, and then providing that they understood it for another species of intelligent life (another dismally unlikely prospect), another 100 years for their signal to reach us. In that time, the project would almost undoubtedly been scrapped and the signal would be lost on us.

 

[moriez]

That'll be the day, when we find out about different lifeforms. Anything is possible in that regard. Stuff that comes out of 70s sci-fi movies straight into our lives. Even if they are far far far away they are close. Imagine that. Personally, I think at first we will be pretty hysteric about it when news about new found life will be brought to us. No longer we are ''alone''. Kinda creepy huh?
 
The size of the universe is just beyond comprehension. It cannot be that there is no other life. In a fantastic NGC documentary ''Journey to the Edge of the Universe'' they pass a planet ''just like ours'' but lifeless. The narrator then tells that it could have contained life a long long time ago. And when he says long, it might be millions of years ago. That's just unbelievably fascinating.

 

[El_Doug]

How the hell were we able to even measure the existence of a universe other than our own, much less detect a solar system within it?!?!?!? 
 
 
link to source? this is too amazing to be true

 

[revolink24]

Unless we just discovered proof of the many-worlds hypothesis, then I'm guessing he means another galaxy.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

 

[SiriuslyCold]

the universe is too big for there not to have a similar solar system, but too random for there to be an exact same configuration

 

[Rip N' Burn]

.
edit. I though El_Doug was referring to measuring distances to other exoplanets. My bad.

 

[beerguy0]

Quote:

Unless we just discovered proof of the many-worlds hypothesis, then I'm guessing he means another galaxy.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

All of the extra-solar planets we've found so far are in our own galaxy. We don't have the resolving power yet to be able to locate planets in other galaxies.  Other universes are conjecture, and while permitted by physics, it's doubtful we would ever be able to observe them if they did exist.

 

[logwed]

Quote:

Unless we just discovered proof of the many-worlds hypothesis, then I'm guessing he means another galaxy.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

I googled 'new smallest extrasolar planet' and got this http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100824/ap_on_sc/eu_switzerland_new_planets . 
 
Apparently it's only 100 light years away.

 

[Uncle Erik]

We've already found extraterrestrial life. Nothing to communicate with; it was a space mold that was growing on Mir. It apparently was a nuisance, covering sensors and getting into equipment panels.

Intelligent life is another matter. It might be out there. Then again, it might be too busy Tweeting each other what they had for breakfast, sending around stupid pictures of cats or obsessing over which NOS tube is best for soundstage to notice anyone else.

 

[CrazyRay]

Quote:

 Do you think we will ever find a alternate planet like ours?

[size=medium][size=12pt]Eventually we will have to or become extinct. Our Sun will not last forever. [/size][/size]
 
 
"Our Sun is about 4.57 billion years old. About half way through it's life. The Sun will slowly turn into a red giant in about 4.5 billion years and about two billion years later, it will shed it's outer layers and become a white dwarf."
 
For the Earth, this means that when the Sun turns into a red giant, the Suns envelope will expand until it nearly touches the Earth. 
 
For life on Earth, it's not as simple, in about a billion years time, the Sun will have increased it's temperature to such a degree that it will be impossible for life to exist on the surface as it would have become so hot that all water would have boiled away."

 

[ahilal]

Planets are small and dark and it was not until pretty recently that we were able to see them outside our own solar system. 
 
One way of looking for them out there is to look for their gravitational pull on other objects we can see. The presence of a planet's mass can cause a nearby star to "wobble" in its regular orbit, and that's somethning we can see more easily. 
 
 
Another way is to zoom way in on a star and look for dark objects crossing in front of it. These "transits" are a relatively new way to look for planets and are turning up new ones all the time.
 
Still, finding a planet "like Earth" will be a long search indeed. For one thing, Earth is the way it is because of all the life on it. The mix of gasses in our atmosphere would be an instant giveaway to any observer that something is going on here. We won't need to visit faroff planets to detect life there. It'll just be a matter of looking at the spectroscopy of their atmosphere and its chemical makeup.
 
The universe is huge. We're barely able to scry our own neighborhood of this one little galaxy.

 

[nikongod]

Quote:

Intelligent life is another matter. It might be out there. Then again, it might be too busy Tweeting each other what they had for breakfast, sending around stupid pictures of cats or obsessing over which NOS tube is best for soundstage to notice anyone else.

best post in thread.

 

[fatcat28037]

OK, so does this mean there will be an Intergalactic Head-Fi meet?

 

[The Monkey]

Not until the aliens show sufficient local interest by organizing a few meets of their own.