http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/27/sun-like-star-may-have-more-planets-than-our-solar-system/



Dear Fox News,

F*** you!

Signed: Pluto.

Sorry Pluto you're just not hardcore enough!


*rimshot*

This is seriously cool news, but I'm really curious to know when we will find a planet 1-2 times the mass of earth within the habitable zone around a yellow star like ours. It's just a matter of time. These red dwarfs seem fishy to me. Maybe it's Krypton? LOL. We will find another earth this century. I just hope I'm not dead when we do. Will be very exciting times.

Jason

SUN: (calling on the phone).
PLUTO: (answering the phone) Hello?
SUN: Hi man, how are you doing? Hey man, it's been a while since we last talked, and I was wondering if you are doing OK and coping well with all this...
PLUTO: Who's this??!!
SUN: Pluto... don't you recognize me anymore? It's me...the Sun!...
PLUTO: SUN?!!! SUUUNN?!!?!?!.... I HAVE NO SUN!!!!! (Hangs up).
SUN: Snifff....

Jason, just an addendum - it's not only yellow stars, as orange dwarfs could be as interesting as yellow ones.

Red dwarfs not so much, as a planet in the habitable zone probably would be tidal-locked and not rotate, furthermore red dwarfs are prone to flares.

Roflmao


Bullet

Earth also has a large moon pulling on it, contributing to its stable, pleasant spin. You can have an Earth like planet with other right ingredients, but if it's spinning randomly on its axis, or two fast, or too slow, it's going to be harsh world, one that doesn't have seasons or day and night cycles as we know it.

And if we find another "Earth" this century it will probably take us another 500 years to get there at the current rate we're going!

You can also have an earth-like planet with a thousand other variables different from out own
that would support life just fine. Some of the factors you mention are non-factors frankly.

I tell my friends and family that extraterrestial life will not be found by SETI or by flying saucer landing on the White House, but by telescope. They look puzzled when I tell them that. A lot of the public is clueless as to how close we actually are.

I agree that these Red Dwarfs are rife with planets, but they just seem a little too exotic. Yes an orange or yellow start would be much better. There are an infinite amount of factors that determine a habitable planet, but all it takes is one green, blue world out there to change everything. Then you'll see the race to get there Panzer. Let's hope there is one within 100 light years or so that could motivate the human race enough to try and at least send a probe there. Ion engines anyone?

The current issue of Astronomy magazine talks about detecting rogue planets?!!? There are planets everywhere, just like in the movies, we just need to build the optics to see them better. The magazine also talks about a planet covered by a deep ocean, but it is too close to the host star for life as we know it, but it does have a butt load of water. All we need is one with water in the right spot to cause a research frenzy. Pray our government isn't bankrupt or the free enterprise system is still intact when it happens so something can be done about it.

Jason

By themselves- no, not necessarily. An atmosphere is probably required to support life, but by itself, it's not enough- a crushing atmosphere or one that is too thin or too toxic doesn't say so much. As far as we know, the conditions seem very particular, or you'd be seeing life on the terrestrial type worlds like Venus, Mercury, Mars, the moons in the solar system, as such.




See above, or else what about that do you specically think is negligible? So you're saying that if a planet has one side that's hot enough to melt lead, and the other that's made of frozen ammonia in perpetual darkness because it spins very slowly is a non factor? What makes you think that's dissmissible?

Well if given the extremes you mention, then that's another consideration.
I'm just saying the parameters that would support intelligent life are likely much more wide
than you're taking into account - if I understood your post correctly.

For all we know there are technologically advanced races that are not even carbon based, but silicon based, and live
in conditions that would kill us instantly. Our atmosphere might do the same to them.

Tidal forces certainly will the conditions for life- on other planets this is rather a disadvantage, say for example one that has a side that always faces the sun or is orbiting a large body with a tremendous gravity field. On Earth, the right combination of things happening is astonishing, including a moon of just the right size.

It appears to me from the evidence that the window for life is pretty narrow- otherwise, there's no reason that Earth is so special and you wouldn't be seeing it in more places in our solar system. Moreoever, the arguments are always like "Well, it could be silicon-based;" which nicely ties up the loose ends to speculate than anything could be possible such as that. Then again, why aren't we seeing that- that seems even more likely than carbon based life-forms, given the amount of rocky worlds with harsh environments, that would seem more likely to be flourishing everywhere. You can always speculate that life might be something that could survive in clouds of sulfuric acid on Venus or in a gaseous environment with atmospheric pressure hundreds of times that of Earth deep down in Saturn or something- there's no way to disprove that for the time being, it remains unfalsifiable.

I think life and intelligent life are quite rare. Even if it argued that the chances are very high there is intelligent life everywhere in the universe, I think on relatively local scales, that is, in practical reach, are rare if practically non-existent.

For this reason I think things like SETI are over-optimistic, it basically works off the presumption that at a given moment they are going to tune into an alien signal. These broadcasts would have to be within relatively short range, radio waves are subject to the inverse square law, given enough distance they will attenuate to be indistinguishable to cosmic noise and buried within all the other cosmic radiation.

Our solar system is representative of the tiniest fraction of all possible planetary conditions, and an
in comprehensibly tiny fraction of all the planets in the universe.

What I'm saying is that if life is so abundant in the Universe, it should be so abundant locally as well. There's no reason why it would happen only on Earth and not on the other terrestirial worlds and planetary moons in our Solar System for the same reasons- they underwent similar conditions in the primordial state, yet, we only see it here on Earth. This seems to me indicative of what we're dealing with.

If people expect to see silicon based life forms popping up to counter the apparent problem with few worlds with conditions that are Earth-like, why aren't we seeing that in our solar system, or else why aren't we seeing that on Earth? Why aren't these things all around us here on Earth? I think people just join speculation with more hope that could happen than the chances of that actually happening. Even with species like cockroaches and certain bacteria which are capable of surviving under much more severe conditions, there's no evidence of those on the Moon or on Mars, either. It therefore follows that they couldn't evolve on Venus or Mercury, either, since conditions on those planets are worse. Those types of planets are typical- just the wrong conditions. There are many, many of them. But the odds of one of them with the right conditions within local reach- just really hoping against hope.

That logic doesn't follow, thus my post above.

And life IS abundant locally, out of 9 or so planets there's at least one that has life on it.


You post is like sitting in the middle of the desert and saying "if eagles are so common worldwide, I should be seeing
them all around me right now"

Our solar system is like one grain of sand sitting amongst all the other grains of sand on all the beaches in
all the world.

It does follow- you just don't agree with the conlusion. Logic is simply just that the conclusion follows logically from the premise, it doesn't mean that it's true or that it corresponds to a real thing. The premise doesn't even have to be true for a statement to be logical. But if logic is all we have, because we have no physical examples of this anywhere else, then it's my logic against yours.



No- all that shows is that life is unique here on Earth in our Solar system, not that it's abundant (and Pluto has been downgraded- no longer a planet). It's abundant here on Earth, it's apparently rare though outside of that little sample.




Yours are based on what- idle speculation. Even though you've not seen life anywhere else, it must be the case that it's abundant because, well, the chances are likely. Yet you have no evidence for that- pure thought experiment. Your line of thinking is like trying to prove that God exists- even though there is no emirical data to support that, you exercise imagination for it. Under any other circumstance if I asked you there was an elephant in the room, you would say no, since there is no way to detect one. For certain other things though- God, aliens, astrology, paranormal activity, our measurements simply tossed out for what we wish to be true.

Once again, if life is abundant in the Universe, it doesn't mean that it's abundant anywhere within a million light years or us. Life could be all over the place, but because the universe is so vast, on a local scale this is meaningless to us.

Can you answer this question- why not life on Mars? Why aren't we seeing silicon life forms there? What's the reason for that?

It absolutely doesn't.
You're not following, but I don't have the time really to explain further.

Cheers

I always find these kinds of epistemolgical explorations to be the oddest kind- someone who has no proof anything 'knows' that it's so obvious that alien life is everywhere- yet could never show that to me. That doesn't usually work for most other thought processes.

I'm the skeptic, I need to be convinced. I've neard heard of an alien. I've never seen one, I've never seen any concrete evidence that someone else has. Tell me what I'm supposed to be seeing here. This sounds to me like a lot of superstition that gets passed around- in other words, no connection at all between belief and what materially exists, but I would certainly amend my thinking if I actually had something to work with.

Classic cop out to say "Nope, I'm leaving."

Seriously, the day that one of you shows me something verifiable, then it becomes a verifiable fact. Until then, speculation is what you and I both have, and then it's a matter whose ideas are more convincing. So far, I've not seen you explain why life hasn't evolved on other planets or moons in the Solar system, that's just conceding to me what I've been saying- that conditions on earth that life requires are probably very, very rare.

The sum of my views are this: Earth is unique. Earth is special, yet not- special in the sense that conditions here are not common, not special in the sense that there is no broader meaning that can be extrapolated from that, it just represents another point in the Universe, which does not know or care about it.

The rest of our Solar system is I think, in on average what the rest of the Universe looks like: barren, lifeless- even moreso than ours because they don't have Earth like planets. The 1:8 ratio in our solar system is a freak, other solar systems don't have statistics like that. I seriously doubt the chances are one in eight that you will find a planet with life on it orbiting a given star.

I might have missed it if someone mentioned it, sorry if I did, but mainly what I've seen was everyone talking about across the Web is life as we all know it. What, or who's, to say that there isn't life outside of what we know?

Everyone seems to look at this from only the perspective that we know and are comfortable with, here on Earth. It's possible that there is life in the vastness of space that doesn't meet our rather narrow "requirements" of sustainment. The majority of people seem to think that you have to have oxygen and water to survive. We here on Earth all have to have those things, but to think that it's the requirement for every possible "living" thing in other "worlds" in the infinite area of space is a bit tunnel-visioned.

There could be people on another world saying the same thing about us. Their "internet" is probably full of statements like "There's no way that anyone cannot survive with *Illudium PU-36, so there cannot be life anywhere unless we find some of it to prove the possibility of their existence."



* A Bugs Bunny reference for all you that grew up after the good cartoons went the way of the dodo.

There is bascially a problem that everyone has- neither side has perfect or certain knowledge. One side has to prove a negative, the other side can't prove anything until and only until the day comes when you actually have something. One side says there is nothing to show, the other has nothing to show. The problem is you can never practically survey enough planets to be sure either way. From that, you can either be agnostic, or, you can argue one of the other sides. I don't fault people for doing that, that not's the problem I have- I just am not convinced.

We only know what we've seen in this solar system, my arguments are based on that, it's true- but what else would would we base if off of- the possiblity that anything can happen anywhere, that's basically in a nut shell what that argument rests on, that given enough time and space, anyhting is possible. From that of course, you can always speculate something, just because you haven't seen it yet, doesn't it mean it's not there.

Still, from that idea I see alot of people forming conclusions they aren't entitled too, either- it seems to exclude a middle premise and seems to say, "Just because you haven't seen it yet, it does mean it's there." It may as well be a fact, that's how certain it is- so obvious, and so assured, that it's obviously a corrupt mind that wouldn't jump in the water with reasoning like that. I can argue just as convicingly that there is no reason at all to believe that- what is that based on? Well, nothing except more the hope that there are other life forms given the apparent size of the universe, how can it not be?

I understand that as well, I think I have done enough in my life that would trade it all to watch an alien civilization arrive to destroy the Earth. I think that would be worth the price of the show to see something like that, I've seen everything else I care to see, and that would be something really different.

I found this rather fascinating .. not necessarily a yellow sun -

One thing I always think about when reading the theories of life on other planets...there was a time on this very planet that people thought the Earth was flat and you would fall off of it if you went too far. If you spoke different to that theory, you were labeled a heretic. Sure, we've come a long way in the education of man since that time...but, it's still only compared to what we know and have as a reference, mankind.

Five centuries from now, people here on Earth, if there's still even an Earth as we know it, could be thinking the same thing about us, concerning the possibility of life elsewhere, as we now think about those that knew the world was flat in their time.

Yep - "earth is flat" analogy is apropos.

The 'flat Earth' ideas are new- this is happening relatively recently. The ancients knew the Earth was round, they observed the hulls of ships disappearing below the horizon before the masts dipped, they had Euclidean geometry which allowed them to make local observations based on the apparent movements of shadows. It's been recently people have tried to advance that flat Earth stuff- so, I could just say that superstitious belief in alien life forms- being a newer idea rather than old, correlates with the 'flat Earth theories' more.

I still don't see anything from this side that actually explains anything- not why you don't see life on other solar planets, which there is no reason to believe aren't just average throughout the galaxy. Every once in a while, they come out with a new report about finding new planets and such, it gets everyone excited, but are always tempered when you read the fine print: "These worlds are not Earthlike, they only increase the chances of finding more planets that are not like Earth, but which is hoped out of some of them there are Earth-like planets." Everyone still gets excited, though.

I still say it could be there is intelligent life in the Universe, but we'll likely never see it- distances are simply prohibitive. Even if intelligent life were abundant on a large enough scale, because the universe is so large, that still doesn't mean that it's abundant on smaller scales like the kinds we have access to.

"Distances are prohibitive"
Heh...they used to say the same thing about traveling to a distant continent.
Then the moon...

Heh. Ok, you're right, it's just right around the corner. They're reporting on it now, it's almost ready.

That's why this is a superstition- despite the rhetoric and sophistry, the problem remains that there are no actual facts to rely on. Looking for connections that don't exist, it is like the flat Earth people- despite our best knowledge for centuries, they believed it is flat, and despite our best knowledge now, aliens are right around the corner, and you know this because we've put people on the Moon.

That anology doesn't work on me- the technology to go the moon, as cutting edge as it is, still does not compare to the distance we're talking about- which are out of reach of the lifetimes of the people needed to pilot them. And you're not talking hundreds of years, you're talking much, much longer than that.

I'd make a bet with you that you'll never see alien lifeforms, but I'll never win, by definition of such a bet.

...they used to say the same thing about traveling to a distant continent.

How far away it is, is neither here nor there.
Everything you type I can apply the same analogy to.
Walking used to be IT, then a horse, then a cart, then a train, then a primitive aircraft, then the SR 71...
All in the snap of a finger more or less.

You're thinking in terms of your current technology, the current understanding of physics - which by the
way is always proven incorrect eventually.

I'm sure this same conversation happened years ago regarding travel to another continent, or the moon, and
one of the persons in the conversation was just SURE he had it all figured out. Because you see, science
of the time told him so.

When I'm talking with someone who realizes this, and realizes that WE'RE the Neanderthals, and is smart
enough to grasp this, and I'm not running into a wall of tunnel visioned thinking - that's when I know I have someone worth talking to on the line.


Not happening here.
Ciao

You go would go further to show me what's happening now instead of inventing analogies that don't hold. All anologies are false anyway, by definition of what an anology is- it's comparing two different, but subjectively similar things, supposedly.

To show you what I mean, I could create a false analogy by saying you guys believe they're going to find alien life forms soon, well, they used to believe in alchemy, they used to believe in phrenology, some people still people believe you can ground up rhino horn to for curative medicines. What does that prove in relation to this topic? Nothing, except that people can believe in things that are wrong.


Eveything you've said I could re-direct back at you: the tunnel vision that is grotesquely optimistic, if I've asked you to explain to me why you think that life doesn't have appear to have evolved on other solar planets, but you're arguement rests on what people have done or presumed to have done wrong in the past. I assure you I'm not doing that- I'm aware of those arguments, which are very flimsy to connect them here, and I still say you guys rely on more hope than on a detailed description of the basis for what you believe.

It's just my opinion, but that's the problem right there...."Earth-like". The majority of people on Earth are so caught up in their own self-importance and delusions as the premier species on Earth that we think "life" somewhere else HAS to be just like ours is on Earth, it cannot be any different and cannot exist unless it has the same environment as Earth does. We cannot say that life doesn't exist outside of our known world...we can only say that we haven't found any planets that could support life as we know it, using what we as humans need to survive.

We'll all just have to wait until Cochran perfects warp travel and the Vulcans passing by our insignificant, underdeveloped planet notice his flight signature and make contact somewhere in the Dakotas.

I assure you, that's the not the point I'm starting from, I've even said in this topic that Earth isn't special in regards to its importance.

But I am saying it's not knowledge to say that that alien life forms exist, and we're on the cusp of communicating with them- that is certainly not knowledge, it is pure speculation, and at that, passes itself off as knowledge.

I at least am basing my arguments on what we know and observe already- even if you want to argue that it's an insignificant sample, what are you basing yours on, if not that? Well, nothing- it's not based on knowledge, it's more based on the notions that either you can't conceive of it not being the case, or you hope that it's true. Any odds you would come up with from there are totally invented- they're not based on any surveys.

How about this- point me to a discovered world that seems likely to have life on it, and explain why.

I think you're reading more into my comments, Kontakt, than are there or are including me in comments I've not made.

I've never said that there WAS life out there. What I've said is it's pretty narrow-minded of us to think that life only exists as we know it and that it cannot be any other way in the vastness of space. There have been too many things throughout history that the human race "knew" at one time or another that have proven to be false, just on our own little planet....and all of those things were "known" by academics and scholars that were based on their "surveys".

The problem with hunting for other types of life other than what we find on earth, not that it is a bad idea by any means, is that it is very hard to see it through a telescope which as I insist above is how we will find it. There may be a planet that has sulfur based life for instance, but maybe they appear yellow and maybe the produce some other kind of gas. So when we peer at that planet, we see a color/chemical spectrum that does not resemble earth, which doesn't easily appear to us as life. Since we can't get there to scoop up a sample it's hard to prove life is there unless an alien TV station is blasting their version Big Bang Theory into space.

So, I get most excited about the possibility of finding a rocky world, not too big and not to far from a star like ours, only because that would be, based on what happened on Earth, the place we "could" possibly find life staring back at us. A logical place to start to me. And to erase any doubt, a blue/green exoplanet would very easily tell us if there is life there. With the amount of stars that exist and now 700 planets detected, some not too much larger than earth, I think the chances of finding an exo-earth is growing. Look at far we have come already, we have only been discovering exo-planets for 17 years. 700+ divided by 17 is 41 planets a year. With better instruments that number will skyrocket.

Unfortunately, Earth seems to be on the smallish end of the planet size chart and there may be thousands of other-earths waiting to be found, but our instruments aren't sensitive enough to detect or see them yet.

As I mentioned above, I am 100% confident that humans will create instruments poewrful enough to detect these other-earths and then we will really crank up the tech to actually look at them and see what is there. If it's green, it changes our perception of the universe and all religions die and world peace breaks out. Or so my non-believing friends say. LOL.

Jason

This discussion reminds me about Solaris by Stanisław Lem where humans discovered a planet completely different from Earth, and after decades of studying scientist did not make any scientific breakthrough whatsoever simply because they are trying to apply the earth science.

Which leads to my favorite quote, "We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos".

I'm going by words that you're using- one word you've used is delusional. There's no basis for a word like that. If you don't have knowledge of where life can be found elsewhere, you can't imply people are delusional. You need to have something to show them that they are refuting.



This isn't itself an idea that really tells me a whole lot- why you expect to find life so abundant in the Universe. I don't think you're going to see it so much, I think the basic elements and the basic building blocks won't evolve under common conditions found in the Universe.

That people didn't have complete knowledge in the past does not imply you're going to see intelligent life in the near future- in your lifetime or in mine. I fail to see that connection. All that means is that people didn't have complete knowledge in the past, it has no bearing at all whether life in the universe is abundant enough to be detected any time soon. If you're trying to imply the same kind of ignorance exists today that makes people less optimistic, that's a presumption.

Again...what I've said is there is no way we can know just what might be anywhere outside the world we know, and used examples of things we didn't even know about in our own world in the past. There are still things that we only have theories about concerning our own planet.

Point to me where I've said I expected to find "life so abundant in the Universe". What I've said is it's delusional to state that there cannot be life out in space, given that we really don't know much at all about the majority of the Universe. All the majority of theory, and Internet discussion, is based on is that because there's no water or oxygen, then life cannot exist. To discount the possibilty that there is something/someone/some species out there that doesn't live, eat and breathe like humans is comparable to stating the way to Asia in the 15th century by water is just by sailing west from Spain. There turned out to be a little landmass that we now know as the Americas in the way of that widely conceived theory...it was something no one knew existed at the time.

All we can say right now is we know of no planet that would sustain life as we know it. You seem to be reading what you want to read and not what I'ver been saying.

Certainly I'm not disputing that- but it doesn't merit the natural conclusion that life exists elsewhere. There's simply no empirical knowledge of that at all- any claim that arises out of that is not a proposition in the Universe. What happens however is that it is claimed with a certainty as if that is among the most certain knowledge. It's more the kind of 'knowledge' in Plato's sense- anti-scientific, but more based on the power of the intellect to deduce it, to infer it, or to reason it.

I'm saying that the evidence appears to be that the conditions for life are rather stingy based on what we observe, otherwise life should be finding a way on other planets not like Earth, and we can look to our own solar system to ask the question why that is so. These planets and moons and bodies we find don't appear to have life, and it looks like the harsh or barren conditions they have are rather common based on what we've seen. On the other hand, if life is common, that has to be taken over large, cosmic scales, not just in our neighborhood, which could entail the consequence that life is common across the universe, but for our purposes, it's still rare on a local level and out of reach. There might be billions of worlds with life on them, but the average distance between them could be larger than the technology that anyone has to communicate information across.

What evidence is there that life is more common than it is rare? None- because people people need to find at least one other example besides Earth in order to begin suggesting that life is more common- but that isn't happening. What am I to go on? Speculation? Why? Is that a normal thing to believe people who are passionate but cannot produce results?

I'd think that if liquid water exists the planet must be in the right spot. Now there might be other issues, such as no magnetic field to shield from the solar wind or no outer gas giants to intercept the majority of comets or a toxic atmosphere, but liquid water means the planet is in the goldilocks zone.

It seems highly unlikely to me that we are anything special. We are only scratching the surface with the Exoplanet discoveries we have made to date. Kepler is only looking at a small area of 'sky' and yet it has found a large number of Exoplanets, and it can only identify a small portion within that area because it requires an exoplanet to pass in front of it's star when seen from the telescope's vantage point. The odds of finding a planet using that method are very slim, and yet many have been found using this way.

Exactly Paul. In a decade I bet we are talking about thousands of exoplanets. This can be the golden age of astronomy where we are actually searching for LIFE! Pour some money into astronomy education and divert some funds from wasteful govt. nonsense and put it into R&D for new generations of Space Telescopes. Let private companies build cargo/people carrying rockets, farm that stuff out, let NASA actually search for that special rock out there with new super powerful instruments. Is the JWST still going to go up?

BTW the Kepler mission is awesome. Amazing data it is pumping out. Who knew there were so many planets out there! I love it.

We need a way to filter out the light from the host star. Make a damn X-Prize for that and we are in business!

Jason

^This.

This is probably the most important photo of a century:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/image/a/format/zoom/

Those are billions of galaxies.

Remember we are living in the outskirts of only one galaxy, itself consisting of billions of billions of stars, some with and some without planets - but the sheer mass makes the idea of us being the only life (however defined) in the universe a bit unrealistic. Will it be sentient, or will we even manage to see it if we found it - no idea.
The problem is, as Stanislav Lem put it, the "window of contact" in time, and space. Civilizations may develop into something that cannot be found or is not interested anymore in a civilization at our level, or it has already killed itself by wars, or it is so utterly different that we would not even recognize it, with the senses we have. It sound pessimistic, but indeed it's not - imho technology is not developed far enough now to predict or imagine other forms of contact.

Greetings,
Catfish

P.S. 50 new planets discovered in april 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeQkBwQPI-Y&feature=watch_response

"life" as in bacteria/ single cell mould, I'm with Gambit et al. There's been that kind of life on earth for many millions of years, before there was even oxygen (actually they're largely responsable for O2). I think there's a high likelihood.

"life" as in complex life plant/ animated beings... Good probability.

"life" as in higher sentience? I'm closer to Kontakt: Not very likely. Having a big brain is not a very common evolutionary strategy nor has it been a necessary one in previous eons .Cretaceous etc on Earth. I think we're the product of some very lucky coincidences. A very recent product at that.

With the latest data release, there are now 2321 planet candidates, and if you use the
Planet Candidate Explorer http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/kepler
you can see that there are now a small number within your criteria. Check for example
Kepler number 2474:

http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/kepler/detail/2474.01

There will never be many in this range in the Kepler dataset, as
it is right at the edge of this instrument's ability to detect. Particularly, for
a ~5500K star, the planet, to be at the right temp must be so far away, and @ <2M(e),
so relatively small, that the odds of it transiting from our vantage point become
vanishingly small. It is very impressive that there are as many in the dataset as there
are. It suggests that the actual number must be immense.

(This is why there are so many more K&M (orange/red dwarf) star planets seen in the
dataset. The red stars are necessarily small, and low mass, so the planets have
a large relative size and also orbit close in for habitable temperatures, thus
having a much higher likelihood to transit from our viewpoint. The detection method
is strongly weighted toward selecting large planets orbiting close, at high temperature,
around small stars.)

I think this is an important distinction- intelligent life on Earth appears to have evolved very late with perhaps not so much time left that the Earth will remain hospitable before it eventally becomes a Mercury like planet, on geological scales, the window won't last much longer; if Earth-like worlds are so common as is believed, if Earth is the analogy, then we should expect something similar going on with other worlds. In other words, time is not on our side to come into contact with these supposedly common, intelligent life forms given how large and how ancient the univese is, otherwise, why aren't we comming into contact with this already intelligent life that is supposedly so common and right next door? The evidence contradicts the theory- intelligent life is apparently so common, except for one hitch- it apparently is not.

As you state, the conditions that happened here seem pretty chancey- when you take into account the mose successful species in terms of numbers, such as protists, non-vertebrate animals, trees and plants, why should they evolve to be intelligent? Why should that necessarily happen? Selection pressures haven't went that way at all but for the last few million years. That's nothing in the lifespan of our planet.

It would be like a single lottery winner who won the the multi-state Powerball jackpot and says, "Hey I won the lottery, look how easy it is, why don't you win the lottery, too."

It's not a matter of thinking that we're 'special' in a teleological sense, that is, there is purpose or meaning to us alone that makes us special- but rather, just given the age and distances we're talking about, we're special in the sense that intelligent life isn't so common, otherwise, we'd be seeing it by now.

Star Wars and Star Trek give the idea that alien races are all over the place throughout the galaxy, certainly, we don't have that situation going on yet- why? From the supposition that intelligent life is so common and given the amount of time an older, more intelligent race should have evolved, perhaps this should be going on, but from our perspective, it's not, that's not the case. If on the other hand, they are analogous to us in the time it took for conditions to be like us, well then the odds are worse, if they're like us that it took so long for intelligent life to evolve and experience the technological barriers remain that prevent contact on cosmic scales, there's not much time left to find one another.

This is way cool. Let's sort through to find possible life giving planets! How should we sort the list to locate the ones closest to earth type?

I sorted by Temp, but I know its a combination of things. I'm having a little trouble understanding the variables in the downloadable spreadsheet. I have it in excel format now. Does anyone want it and we can plot where to base our first earth colony? LOL Serisouly though, let's have some fun with this.

Jason

I used table format, using the basic help information and the Data Column Names information,
and did a quick filter cobble of "Rplanet<2 AND Tplanet<320 AND 5000<Tstar AND Tstar<6000"

This can be abbreviated "Rplanet<2 & Tplanet<320 & 5000<Tstar & Tstar <6000", but note
that 5000<Tstar<6000 is not legal according to the help (though I didn't try it, actually).

Note also that as noted on http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/ , the temperature
computed for earth is 255K, assuming a basic rock at equilibrium. It is the greenhouse effect
mainly of water vapour which gives us the actual average temp of 288K.

The sun has a colour temp of 5500K, just greenish of yellow.

I also did a computation a while back on the relationship between gravity, density and radius,
and also found that earth is density rho(ave)5.5, being ~9 for the core and 3.5 for the mantle.
This means it is unlikely but possible to consider a planet with rho(ave) considerably lower
than earth's. The relationship is g=GM/R^2, M=(4/3)*rho*pi*R^3, so g=(4/3)G*pi*rho*R, if I'm doing
this right, and so R goes as g over rho. So I considered rho(ave)=3.5 with g constant, then R
goes *(5.5/3.5)=*1.6, so you would get 1g @ r=1.6Re. I personally wouldn't want a planet with
more than about 1.2g. As g goes as R and as rho, for the 3.5 density planet you could have R=1.9Re,
but for a far more likely density similar to earth's, you wouldn't want more than 1.2Re.

The planet I highlighted is the closest candidate yet; it has T=263K vs earth's 255K, its star
is 5283K vs our 5500K, so a bit on the orange side, and its radius is 1.45 Re, so we might weigh
anywhere from 1.3 to 1.6 times our normal weight on its surface, if it has formed in the manner
of our system's rocky planets. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size

(The rocky planets and moons of our solar system divide distinctly between those with density around
that of earth @ 5.5, and those (all much smaller) with density ~3.5, such as our moon. The 5.5 density
is consistent with the aggregation of elements in the relative abundances typical of the sun and the
solar system as a whole (after shedding the lighter molecules of gases which cannot be held by these
small objects). The lower density moons have an anomalous elemental distribution which suggests they
may have a history similar to our moon, which is believed to have accreted from upper crustal material
from the earth which was shorn off by a collision, some time after the denser elements had concentrated
out of reach in its core. It is known that at least one planet which was large enough, and existed
long enough to fully differentiate into a crust/mantle and a core, was subsequently shattered, as
this is the source of the metallic meteorites. This would presumably have provided plenty of crustal
and mantle material from which these low density moons could have formed. All of this goes to suggest
that the earth's density is strongly likely to be typical for a planet of its mass or larger, until
the mass gets large enough to retain light elements, and thus no longer being a rocky planet, but a
small gas giant.)