back to article Boffins spot 7 ALIEN WORLDS right in our galactic backyard

Boffins are putting together a new catalogue of all the confirmed planets that could harbour extraterrestrial life, with seven worlds in our Milky Way making the list so far. Seven worlds in the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog, a project of the Planetary Habitability Lab at the University of …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Boffins?

    Just because you're a redtop doesn't mean that ... oh whatever.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Boffins?

      You must be new here. Welcome.

  2. TRT Silver badge

    Sheeeeeeeeetttttt!!!!

    When that image came up, I thought they'd photographed the almost completed Dalek Reality-Bomb hidden inside the Medusa Cascade!

    1. ukgnome

      Re: Sheeeeeeeeetttttt!!!!

      That would be impossible, it has been time shifted by one second to make it appear invisible to probes.

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: Time shifted by one second...

        Nah, just use a longer exposure.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sheeeeeeeeetttttt!!!!

        "That would be impossible, it has been time shifted by one second to make it appear invisible to probes."

        You forget a certain mobile phone powered Torchwood radio transmitter allowing those with advanced enough technology to follow the signal through the time-shift.

        I have also just decided to go get a life.

  3. SuperHoopMango

    Isn't it time that someone made Christmas baubles that looked like that?

    They would look great hanging off the tree!

    1. Elmer Phud

      baubles

      You can -- there was a link on I Fucking Love Science on Facebook the other day

      1. Stoneshop

        Re: baubles

        http://glasssculpture.org/artglass/holiday/ornaments.html

      2. SuperHoopMango

        Re: baubles

        http://glasssculpture.org/artglass/holiday/ornaments.html

        And here IS that link!

        But at $345 for the Solar System.... *gulp*

        Don't think I'll get that past the missus!

    2. Kharkov
      Trollface

      Thor - Marvel films teach us so much...

      They ARE hanging off a tree! Yggdrasil (look it up), as explained by Thor (sorry, The Mighty Thor), is the 'world-tree' and we are all hanging off its branches.

      I laugh in scorn at those deluded fools who think we're on the back of a turtle! As the hammered one said, we're all well-hung from a tree.

    3. Steven Roper
      Go

      Make your own!

      Why pay ripoff prices when you can easily make your own planetary Christmas tree ornaments as a fun project for the whole family?

      Go here: http://eo.nso.edu/node/26

      All you need is some polystyrene/plastic balls (I suppose you can use existing ornaments if you can't source these), some string, and the Waldseemüller maps on that page, designed to be printed out and wrapped onto a sphere. It provides complete instructions on how to make your own planetary tree ornaments.

  4. Zuts

    How accurate can they be?

    If they were looking at our solar system from afar would they classify Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars as potentially habitable or just Earth?

    1. Vulch

      Re: How accurate can they be?

      Probably depends on how big they think they are, and the rules are derived from here anyway. Earth is fairly near the inside edge of the habitability belt, Mars is usually considered to be a bit far out. If Mars was bigger then that may nudge it towards habitable.

      1. JDX Gold badge

        Re: How accurate can they be?

        Well Venus surely SHOULD be categorised as POTENTIALLY habitable by any scan which can't measure atmospheric conditions. They presumably want false positives rather than ruling planets out as well.

        Anyone - can we even tell Venus is uninhabitable from Earth-based telescopes, or only from probe data?

        1. sisk

          Re: How accurate can they be?

          I believe there's some method having to do with the refraction of light through the atmosphere that allowed up to make some good educated guesses about the gasses in Venus' atmosphere before we were able to send probes out. It wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it was enough for us to know that we can't breath there. However the same technique can't be used for exoplanets. They're just too far away for us to see them that well. The guesses they're making now aren't likely to be anywhere near as accurate as the ones they made about planets in our own neighborhood.

          1. 0laf
            Boffin

            Re: How accurate can they be?

            I believe they've been able to make some progress on the composition of some extrasolar planet's atmospheres by picking up changes to the star's spectrograph. Can't find the story now.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Boffin

          Re: How accurate can they be?

          @ JDX

          Through a terrestrial telescope you can do basic spectography of Venus' atmosphere and cross it off the habitable list once you get back a reading that tells you that the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.

          1. NomNomNom

            Re: How accurate can they be?

            from the atmospheric composition you can also figure out venus has a super greenhouse effect and the surface is many hundreds of degrees C

  5. Eddie Edwards
    Headmaster

    "with seven worlds in our Milky Way making the list so far"

    Well I'd be impressed if they could detect a planet in Andromeda!

    1. Zaphod.Beeblebrox
      Alien

      Exactly - I imagine it will be quite some time before they are able to detect planets around a star in another galaxy, whether or not they could harbour extraterrestrial life.

    2. ukgnome
      Alien

      extragalactic exoplanet

      A quick search brings up http://www.gizmag.com/exoplanet-outside-galaxy/17055/

      It seems that they can detect planets in other galaxies.

      No one would have believed, in the years of the twenty-first century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless galaxies of space.

      1. Laurie
        Facepalm

        Re: extragalactic exoplanet

        Sorry ukgnome; close, but no banana.

        The star that that exoplanet (HIP 13044 b) orbits is actually inside our galaxy, and is a mere 2000 light years away. The star originated elsewhere, but was captured by the milky way at some point.

        As far as I'm aware, they can't yet detect exoplanets that are actually inside other galaxies.

        1. ukgnome

          Damn!

          Fair do's - missed the whole captured by the milky way bit.

  6. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Alien

    I for one welcome

    Our new, if somewhat controversial, Gliesian overlords!

    p.s. Did they include Sol III in that list?

  7. Richard Wharram

    Names

    Couldn't they call one of them Lave?

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Names

      Jita? But don't send any probes there as they might end up stuck in slow time :)

      1. Omgwtfbbqtime
        Black Helicopters

        Re: Names - Jita?

        What, and get ganked?

        Its a capsule not a black helicopter.

  8. rurwin
    Boffin

    Drake?

    I wonder what this does to the Drake formula. I suppose we would have to know what proportion of stars are known not to have planets, which this article doesn't hint at.

    1. MJF

      Re: Drake?

      Not much change, I'd think. The Drake formula is just a long catalogue of things you would need to know to make an informed estimate of the likelihood of life elsewhere: values for all the terms were guesses depending on how keen you were for SETI funding. Fraction of stars with planets was an optimistic guess of around 1.0; just a guess. All we have now is a tiny bit of data suggesting there may be a a lot of planets, making the fraction somewhere in the range >0 to 1.0.

      Still no information on all the other terms in the equation.

      (I do wonder at the habitability index: for all we know, that's a guess too, and we may as well be using OLGA's formula of Gy=c)

  9. Falanx
    Alien

    Alfheim, Jotunheim, Asgard...

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. IronSteve

    Maybe other lifeforms don't need liquid water

    1. Lord Raa

      Then they would be very simple lifeforms.

      It's been a while since I looked at a biology textbook, but I recall that water is involved in many of the biological processes of lifeforms more complex than bacteria.

      1. JDX Gold badge

        On Earth yes. Is it safe to assume all life requires water-based processes?

        1. tojb
          Paris Hilton

          Silicone lifeforms anyone?

          Or for that matter, life with ammonia serving as the pervasive solvent. Or, for that matter, any amount of other weird sh*t that no-one has yet proved impossible.

          Spock: "We've never seen anything like this before captain"

          Jim:"You mean apart from the weird energy-being last episode"

          Spock:"Well, apart from that one we've never seen anything like this before"

          Jim:"And what about three weeks ago?"

          Spock:"That one was different"

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    I really wish they would hurry up and find a new home to live on as we only have just over a week left according to the Mayans :)

    1. madestjohn

      sorry but ain't ever gonna happen

      no new home for us, ..ever

      we evolved on this earth after a long history of unlikely events, earth formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago within a billion years there was likely some form of life so ups for that but it took until roughly 600 million years ago for multi-celluar life to form and even more important during the vast majority of the last 600 million years earth atmosphere/biosphere was incredibly toxic to us. In 600 million more years the sun will likely be bright enough to reduce life back down to single cell lifeforms.

      So, we humans/mammals/animalia evolved within a specific environment at a very specific time, that is the result of a long history of life/chemical and interstellar accidents .. even if we could time travel the vast majority of earth's history would be incredibly toxic to us, this include the last 600 million years, if even one of those historic accidents had rolled different results, the moon, purple winning over green photosynthesis, right handed over left handed molecules and so on to things much more trivial, we would not only not be here, but the here would be toxic to us.

      So even if we find a planet roughly the same size and composition, and while were at it day/night rotation , orbiting a similar star at a similar distance, with a living carbon based biosphere that just happens to be in the incredibly small percentage of its existence where complex multiple cellular organisms actually exist and have built a biosphere which is not toxic to us, and lets just say not only does it meet this incredibly improbable string of coincidence but is close enough within our light envelop that actual travel to it is possible, and of course there is no "native" intelligent life-form which with all of these conditions is the only one thats likely , not only would it be likely credibly difficult and unpleasant to occupy but from any ecological biological perspective morally reprehensible

      ... * and breath

      so basically ... beside uncomfortable cramped temporary lodgings in space, this is our one home, the only place we will ever, ever, be able to go about in short sleeves

      ... and I think we broke it.

    2. madestjohn

      sorry but ain't ever gonna happen

      no new home for us, ..ever

      we evolved on this earth after a long history of unlikely events, earth formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago within a billion years there was likely some form of life so ups for that but it took until roughly 600 million years ago for multi-celluar life to form and even more important during the vast majority of the last 600 million years earth atmosphere/biosphere was incredibly toxic to us. In 600 million more years the sun will likely be bright enough to reduce life back down to single cell lifeforms.

      So, we humans/mammals/animalia evolved within a specific environment at a very specific time, that is the result of a long history of life/chemical and interstellar accidents .. even if we could time travel the vast majority of earth's history would be incredibly toxic to us, this includes the last 600 million years, and if even one of those historic accidents had rolled different results, the moon, purple winning over green photosynthesis, right handed over left handed molecules and so on to things much more trivial, we would not only not be here, but the here would likely be incredibly toxic to us.

      So even if we find a planet roughly the same size and composition, and while were at it day/night rotation , orbiting a similar star at a similar distance, with a living carbon based biosphere that just happens to be in the incredibly small percentage of its existence where complex multiple cellular organisms actually exist and also by incredibly unlikely random chance have built a biosphere which is not fundlementally toxic to us, and lets just say not only does it meet this incredibly improbable string of coincidence but is close enough within our light envelop that actual travel to it is possible, and of course there is no "native" intelligent life-form which with all of these conditions is the only one thats likely , not only would it be likely credibly difficult and unpleasant to occupy but from any ecological biological conservational perspective morally reprehensible cause the one thing we've proven about us is that we can screw a biosphere up.

      ... * and breath

      so basically ... beside uncomfortable cramped temporary lodgings in space, this is our one home, the only place we will ever, ever, be able to go about in short sleeves,

      ... and I think we broke it.

      its our room, we should clean it up.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Down

        Re: sorry but ain't ever gonna happen

        Thanks for the Rare Earth screed, but all those "unlikely" circumstances merely resulted in intelligent life exactly like us being here. Implicit in your diatribe is the assumption that we're the best case scenario, and no other set of circumstances could have resulted in complex or intelligent life appearing sooner than us, or being smarter than us. That's quite a wild assumption to make, given that we have direct knowledge and experience of exactly one world Earth-like world where life has arisen, and exactly zero Earth-like worlds where life has not arisen.

        If things had been different, we wouldn't have been here, but it says nothing about the possibility of other intelligent life being here in our place. Given the range of possibilities and how soon it is on geologic timescales since our intelligence arose, sure, changing some might have killed the chances of complex or intelligent life, or delayed it by hundreds of millions of years. But changing others might have resulted in it happening much more quickly, and whoever lived here now might have flying cars and interstellar travel that would have spread them to a few of these Earth-like worlds.

        Who's to say whether the particular set of circumstances that resulted in us happening now was good or bad luck, measured against the question "how soon does intelligent life arrive?" We have no idea whether our appearance on the scene now is extremely good fortune unlikely to be repeated again throughout an entire galaxy, or just about the worst case scenario and intelligence is a billion years late on the scene compared to the expected average for an Earth-like world. Maybe we're the smartest life in the history of the visible universe, or maybe some of those who inhabit our galaxy have pets more intelligent than us.

        1. JDX Gold badge

          Re: sorry but ain't ever gonna happen

          It doesn't matter if there are no other planets on which we could just step out of a ship and wander about. Thinking in the long-term, terraforming or building sizable closed cities are both feasible. EVolving to suit an environment is one thing; a technologically advanced species is another.

          1. madestjohn

            Re: sorry but ain't ever gonna happen

            yes in theory we could terraform a planet, and genetically alter us as it seem likely we would have to meet the planet at least half way, but why?

            Ignoring the moral ethical objections of destroying an existing biosphere, lets assume this is a barren world, like maybe mars, there is still the fundamental question of motivation.

            the technology and timescale involved in even the most optimistic estimations on what would be required are on the extreme end of any imaginable civilization scale. Were talking a project that from our current historical perspective would have been started by the ancient Mesopotamians and still not be half done.

            Also any attempt of starting such a project would almost certainly preclude the ability of us to survive for extended periods in space.

            So the mayor question is once we, assuming we actually do, learn to survive in space, in large habitats, hollowed out asteroids, or floating bubbles of nano-foam, why would we go back down the gravity well?

            ignoring the immediate cost, would life on such a terraformed planet be safer?

            I don't see how?

            yes your buying yourself a large gravitational mass the hide behind and perhaps an atmosphere, maybe even a magnetic field if your very very lucky or clever, but in order to even start this project you already would have already had to solve the issues of survivability in weightlessness and space born radiation.

            Resources?.. if our own solar system is an example it appears there are far more easily accessible resources floating around out side of planetary gravity wells than down them.

            Does a planet buy you more security? I don't see how, ignoring seismic upheaval, atmospheric feedback loops, orbital permutations, and countless other issues planets have they also lack the one fundamental advantage of a space habitat ... the ability to get out of the way.

            The best defence is to not be there to get hit.

            Then we are back to time scale, were roughly halfway thru the estimated 1200 million year period that our planet is likely capable of supporting multi-cellular life on it surface at this distance from the sun, this is assuming things continue peacefully, that the sun doesn't burp us to a cinder that a local gamma ray event or supernova, or any other countless other thin we don't yet know about doesn't scours us clean.

            If we were gonna spend millions if not tens of millions of years building a home wouldn't it be nice to take it with us when the neighbourhood went south? If were talking about civilizations with the technology and timescale of planning of doing such a thing I admit we have no idea of their motivation, they could just being doing it to watch it burn prettily, but this still seems unlikely.

            The problem here is that we have certain tropes in our thinking, We live on earth, earth is a planet, there are other planets, we will live on them. The issue is that in order to get to them we necessarily undergo a shift in perspective, the amount of resources and effort to make planets livable is so huge and the advantages and reason for doing so becomes so small that once we have the ability to do so, if we ever do, we can't see the reason why we would want to.

            This doesn't fit the amazing world of science fiction image we all grew up on, but very little we actually learn does.

        2. madestjohn

          Re: sorry but ain't ever gonna happen

          no.

          ... seriously, you need to read twice before you respond, or at least need to work on yir reading comprehension

          I said nothing denying the possibility other intelligence life, ... except they would have to be the result of the same series of unlikely events as we did.

          The fact that we do exist proves nothing other than that it happen once, if it didn't we wouldn't have been arround to notice, what i actually did say is that even if we do find another planet with all the necessary requirements for life, (and one of those requirements for at least our particular form of life is the existence of previous life so it has a biosphere, and a long series of historic events that made this particular earth biosphere) and even if by an extreme coincidence it happens result in a biosphere that isn't toxic to us, (and according to our own earths history- the only one we have to study- such biospheres are rare, existing a few million ... maybe at a stretch a couple 100 million years out of roughly 4 billion + year history), and such a planet just happens to be in the right range that we could get there in the narrow window that such conditions continue to exist ... that even then,

          .. and even if there wasn't already intelligent life, (which again going by the only history we have and considering we aint found ant dinosaur nuclear powerplants or fossilized cars seems likely), ... even then,

          well,

          .... even then,if would still be illogical, hugely impractical, and just plan wrong to colonize another world.

          we are likely never gonna have the chance and even if we did we'd be idiots to do so.

          as far as other culture having pets as smart as us, ... a kinda pointless attribute in a pet, yes?, ... why would that allow us to live on their worlds?

          I don't see yir point at all

  13. I like noodles

    Do other beings have catalogs?

    Every now and then, we discover life on our own planet in places we thought it close to impossible.

    So, whilst I wonder how many catalogs we are in, more to the point I wonder how many catalogs we were considered for, but rejected as being unsuitable for supporting life?

    1. Rattus Rattus

      Re: Do other beings have catalogs?

      Indeed, with all that nasty highly-reactive oxygen in the atmosphere who could possibly imagine a planet like this being able to support life?

    2. NomNomNom

      Re: Do other beings have catalogs?

      "Every now and then, we discover life on our own planet in places we thought it close to impossible."

      But it's all descended (evolved) from the original life. As of yet we haven't discovered a form of life that has appeared independently which seriously throws into doubt the idea that the emergence of life on Earth-like planets has a high probability.

  14. Winkypop Silver badge
    Alien

    I'm sure they are just hiding from us

    I'd hide from us too.

  15. Chris G

    Sentient Life?

    If the number of potentially life supporting planets is so low, I wonder what the chances are of finding a planet with sentient life?

    Of all the life on this planet; the six billion or so humans make up less than 1% of the total biomass, the percentage of those humans that are actually sentient is even smaller (especially where I live).

    So the chance of having to Kow Tow to our Galactic Overlords is very small!

    Incidentally, the reason why the life supporting band is so narrow and restricted to those planets with liquid water is because life as we know it (JIm) is chemically very complicated and involves mostly compounds involving Hydrogen , Carbon and Oxygen with bits of other elements and compounds thrown in. For these complicated bits of chemistry to work at their best needs a powerful solvent that supports these reactions, liquid water does this better than almost anything.

    Unless anyone knows better!

    1. NomNomNom

      Re: Sentient Life?

      Also think about how long it took for us to appear. With over 500 million years of life on Earth no sentient life appeared (until very recently), which suggests the chance of a life bearing planet evolving a sentient species is very low.

      In addition it looks like life only originated once on Earth. Ie all species known to date share a common ancestor. If the emergence of life on a planet such as ours was easy, why didn't it emerge countless times?

      Then again life did emerge very early in Earth's history - at least while it was plausible.

      This suggests the possibility that only a former state of Earth was able to spawn life. Otherwise why haven't different strains of life appeared in the last 500 million years? We've seen the same originating life evolve, but nothing new appear (unless it died out).

  16. SGreen

    Sounds great but...

    All this is all well and good but does it really matter? Weve not managed to reach mars yet our greatest hope nasa dont even have any ships/shuttles anymore and weve not made any real leaps or research breaks in space travel since we put a man on the moon, knowing the existence of these planets is all well and good but its like spotting france from dover when we cant even swim, we need to concentrate resources on what really matters actually getting out there

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sounds great but...

      I think there's been a lot of relevant progress in the last 40 years. We have ion drives, now, and much better robots, for example. What I'd like to see is a bit more work on solar sails, with perhaps a practical demonstration of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#H-reversal_Sun_flyby_trajectory

      What I don't want to see is a huge amount of money being wasted on sending people into space. The same money spent on ground-based research and the occasional unmanned mission would produce far more progress, even if the long-term were to send people to other planets (which I'm not sure it should be).

      1. NomNomNom

        Re: Sounds great but...

        I think before trying to land man on mars, or even the moon again, we should put a large and sustainable colony in orbit and let it run for a few decades. A much larger scale IIS housing a population of about 1000 people would rapidly advance the pool of experience needed to survive in space. When people are space-walking, fixing stuff, growing food, etc as a matter of everyday routine in orbit then we are in a much better position to move on to colonize mars or the moon.

        Additionally with a such a settlement in orbit shuttles and ships can be built or delivered into orbit that don't ever need to land back on Earth again but are repaired and refueled in orbit and eventually these ships can be what take people to Mars.

        Next step we create another such colony in orbit around Mars. Then finally we could colonize mars. It's the being able to lift stuff off Mars repeatedly which is harder. But reaching this stage by building stepping stones to mars in the form of orbiting colonies seems to make a lot more sense than trying to do a once-only trip to mars and back.

        In fact I wonder if there's even any point building a colony on mars when we can just put them in orbit, or even free floating.

        I know shit all about space. Does anyone know if something like asteroid mining could ever possibly be commercially viable for a space colony? eg selling material to earth for a profit (I suppose you could simply dump materials into Earth's atmosphere if you could predict where it would fall).

        Is there an easily accessible source of hydrocarbons or other fuel in space which such a space colony could obtain which doesn't require the energy to lift as it does from Earth? I guess you can't grab stuff from gas giants without getting too close???

        Or maybe there is a low gravity moon rich in hydrocarbons that would be easily mined?

        Maybe solar or nuclear reactors would be good for energy in space, but where can you get the materials needed to build them other than Earth?

        1. madestjohn

          Re: Sounds great but...

          the dwarf planet Ceres and the Mars -Jupiter asteroid belt are likely a smorgasbord of useful resources.

          I don't know about returning them to earth being economical but they'd likely be an excellent source for use in space.

  17. FanMan
    Alien

    Stop this now

    Let's just stop drawing attention to ourselves. Alien visitation is almost certain to be bad for us.

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Stop this now

      But much more interesting than a typical Tuesday.

  18. NomNomNom

    there can't be life out there or intelligence would have arisen elsewhere by now and our planet would have been colonized millions of years ago and we wouldn't be here

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Aliens are already here

      Probably.

      What would we do if we found intelligent life, but less intelligent than us, on another planet? We'd observe while remaining hidden. My guess is that's exactly what the aliens are doing. Also, each group of aliens would try to remain hidden from the other groups of aliens who have similarly come to observe the Earth.

      Since they are observing the progress of our science and technology we could never catch up with them, and therefore we'll probably never be able to observe them, however clever we get.

      1. NomNomNom

        Re: Aliens are already here

        "What would we do if we found intelligent life, but less intelligent than us, on another planet? We'd observe while remaining hidden."

        They wouldn't have found intelligent life. They would have found dinosaurs roaming about.

        I don't buy the idea that they have cordoned off our world as some kind of zoo. If they were interested in the prospering of life in the galaxy they could have terraformed and seeded life on Mars, but they didn't. If they were interested in intelligent life emerging on Earth they could have sped up the emergence of an intelligent species on Earth, but they didn't. There's nothing interesting here for them to watch. Sufficiently advanced aliens would be capable predicting the structure of DNA and foreseeing everything it could possibly produce, so it would be uninteresting to them. They could probably simulate Earth rather than visiting it. We would be as uninteresting to observe as a particular snowflake in a snowstorm.

        Maybe then I have refuted my original claim. Maybe the reason Earth hasn't been colonized is that no alien civilization has had any motivation to do it. Maybe we haven't even been visited. The plus point is that if they didn't want sentient life evolving on Earth they could have wiped us out a million years ago so evidently they don't mind us existing.

        But I don't see why they'd want to hide themselves from us though in the few hundred year window before we'll be able to see them whether they like it or not.

      2. Kharkov
        Stop

        Re: Aliens are already here

        Hidden aliens - watching us from hiding.

        Heavy sigh.

        Yes, possibly but really, is it a worthwhile topic? You might as well ask if we're butterflies wondering if we're humans or humans with a strange butterfly fixation...

        It's just navel-gazing which makes it a bit hard for everyone else to join in. My navel is fascinating to me but there really aren't many others who would find it so, so I don't invite others to gaze upon it - I've tried it and I tend to get funny looks from people.

        Let's talke about something more useful & inclusive like how we can, one day, get to those alien worlds.

  19. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    "What would we do if we found intelligent life, but less intelligent than us, on another planet? "

    You might like to look at how "civilized" humans have interacted with primitive (by their standards) tribe in the past.

    It has not ended well.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The past is a foreign country

      If you look back to the 19th century then even so called archaeologists were basically just vandals, looters and grave robbers. Things have changed a lot in the last 150 years, and will probably continue to change. We treat primitive tribes a lot better now. In any case the comparison doesn't make much sense as space exploration will be done by unmanned probes controlled by scientists. There isn't really the opportunity to transport convicts to other planets, for example. If there's no economic incentive then the only incentive left is scientific research. Modern scientists are reasonably careful about not disrupting and destroying what it is they are studying. So, I wouldn't issue any guarantees, but I would guess that aliens visiting the Earth would avoid disturbing us, a bit like humans studying Mars or Lake Vostok.

      1. madestjohn

        Re: The past is a foreign country

        things have changed allot in the last 150 years, but don't fall into the assumption that all that change is progressive or predictable, yes we currently take great care not to contaminate places like Mars and lake Vostok and we have some pretty solid logical reasons for doing so, .. but

        how will we see things 150 years hence ? Honestly we can't say. While we think were doing the logically necessary things now, but so did those exploring 150 years ago, it pretty certain that we will be look back upon with the same "if only they knew better" distain as we currently do to those vandals, looters and grave robber, but the things they object to are things were likely not even currently aware.

        Also its not necessarily so that beliefs 150 years from now will be a logical extension of our current ones, maybe looting and vandalism could be considered the new standard of good, maybe the idea of avoiding contamination rather than actively promoting cross pollination and hybridization would be considered ignorant and backwards to our future critics.

        As far as an alien race having viewpoints, morals or ethics that we are able to deduce ahead of time is the hight of arrogance and folly.

  20. kabuki.usb

    Calm down children we are all alone that's for sure, one day when your ready I will tell you the truth about life and death.

  21. Arachnoid
    Facepalm

    All this talk about planets and I dont see anyone making the comment about Uranus being uninhabitable due to excessive gaseous clouds

    1. Kharkov
      Coat

      Futurama taught me everthing I know...

      That's an old joke (I liked it though - thumbs up)! We need to rename Uranus to avoid that joke.

      As the great Professor Farnsworth said, "We named it Urectum!".

      Yes, I'm leaving now...

    2. Steven Roper
      Facepalm

      That would be

      because Uranus / arse jokes are such old and obvious cliches that they've passed beyond boredom, let alone funny...

    3. Clive Harris
      Alien

      It could have been worse.

      William Herschel, who discovered the planet, wanted to name it after the king of England (to secure his pension, I suppose). It could have ended up as planet "George".

      1. Kharkov
        Trollface

        Re: It could have been worse.

        @Steven Roper: What, we can't do arse jokes? How long have you been on this site? ;-)

        @Clive Harris: How about Urroyal, or, if we're being formal, Urroyalhighness?

        You can tell I'm English. Arse jokes, can't stay away...

  22. Arachnoid
    Trollface

    Well we could have called it Areole now that would have been fun to orbit

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