Posted on 08/25/2010 9:58:27 PM PDT by Nachum
A solar system containing up to seven planets orbiting a sun-like star has been detected 127 light years from Earth.
The planetary system is believed to be the largest ever discovered beyond the sun.
Astronomers have confirmed the presence of five planets and have tantalising evidence of two more.
And it comes as Nasa has said that it plans to make an announcement about an 'intriguing' planetary system that it has discovered using the Kepler space telescope Kepler looks at the telltale 'wobble' as planets pass in front of distant stars and, earlier this year, astronomers announced that it had discovered more than 700 possible planets. The conference is scheduled for 1pm EDT (6pm BST).
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Just over the back fence, really.
Can we tax it?
I beleive there’s life across this galaxy. I also believe the intelligent life won’t save us from Barack Obama.
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This is just the tip of a galactic sized iceberg.
Wow, what wonderful news. There might be life out there after all!
What great timing for an historic anouncement, just about the time that their budget was going to have a huge $ cutback.
Amazing find, amazing fund!
Sounds like a Klingon system to me.
Worf! You don’t eat the napkins.
Klingons around Uranus?
Sure! Just as soon as we can trick ‘em into passing a 16th-like Amendment.
Aw, jeez, not another Ken Mehlman thread.
Probably George Carlin.
That said, how long would it take to get there?
Roughly.
Because either I have to go, or about 3 million other earthlings have to go. It’s them or me :)
LOL
It appears that these ‘visitors’ have been visiting for centuries, millenia perhaps! Could it be that they are waiting until we develop some societal system similar to their own before they make official contact? ... Think about it: we humans aren’t likely to go ‘hive style’, so what if that is the system the visitors use? What religious or societal systems approach a hive mentality in our day? ... Islam anyone?
A new place for the ground zero mosque.
“Can we tax it?”
I believe the answer is YES, if it moves.
The "back fence" would be the heliopause at about 100 AU or 800 light-minutes. That's barely half a light-day, so I think 127 light-years is way past the back fence.
Let’s discover carbon based life! Let’s send some astronauts there! Let’s see for how long their immune systems can protect them against the myriad of pathogens humans have have never been exposed to nor have protection against.
Recently I heard a professional commentator say on this subject that we would be arrogant to presume that we are the only life in the universe. However, why is it not more arrogant to believe that other life in the universe would be identical to us, in terms of how we define life, such as carbon based and water dependent? We do we keep looking only for planets like our own just so we can find life as we want to difine it? Who’s is to say that life is not the magnetosphere, or a commit is not a form of life, or a photon? Who is to say which creatures in heaven on earth are deemed to be called life? Is that not the real definition of arrogance?
I say we push some nukes in their direction now. Even if they aren’t a threat now they will be by the time the missiles get there.
NASA can`t go there because its job is to appease muslims, and the muslims haven`t reached the 7 heavenly planets yet.
Think about your immune system and the implications of coming in contact with life forms your immune system has no evolutionary protection against.
aquila48 ~ I believe the answer is YES, if it moves.
...or doesn't move.
Point a radio telescope in that direction and take a listen.
I dunno, ‘Texas Style’ seems to have worked for anyone who’s tried it.. promise us free land and five generations later we’ll be running the whole planet we find ourselves on.
Don't know if they'll have a naturally developed hive mentality, but be willing to bet they will have an artificially developed hive mentality, highly computer aided (not Borg but close).
Step ahead, beyond just the primitive immune system, to think about having a DNA transplant, which grows the ‘societal style’ you want to ‘evolve’ in the species.
Except then the Californians would follow us there and ^uck it all up yet again.
“It appears that these ‘visitors’ have been visiting for centuries, millenia perhaps!”
Well, I love listening to Kook to Kook AM, I still, however, remain an extreme skeptic about being, or ever have been visited, by ET.
A trip of 127 light years, even at the speed of light, would be a bit exhausting to say the least, and not many gas stations along the way.
I remember back in the fifties there was a buzz about
listening for radio signals from a star that is 11 light years away.
The thinking was that the then new TV signals (not reflected by the ionosphere) that had originated 22 years prior would have reached this system and it would be time to look for any reply.
SETI was established to look for radio signals from other stars.
Of course, we have picked up only static.
Most of the kooks can not even imagine what a light year is.
Honestly, I believe that we are looking mainly for carbon-based life because that’s the kind we’re most likely to be able to interact with. They’ve been able to show that silicon-based life is feasible, as are a couple of other kinds, but at least for silicon-based, there’s every possibility that their life is measured in milllenia as we understand time, and therefore any attempts we might make to contact them would be so short they wouldn’t notice. A carbon-based, water-dependent life form would be more likely to have some similarities with us, based if nothing else on similar chemical necessities, and we would therefore have a better chance of interacting with and understanding them. It’s not that we assume all life will be like us; it probably won’t, but for right now, the only kind that we have any chance of understanding would be life based on chemical interactions similar to our own. Let’s get contact with one or more of them under our belt before we go trying to talk to hydrogen breathers, silicon-based, or even energy/machine life.
Well, one light year is about 5,865,696,000,000 miles.
127 light years is about 744,943,392,000,000 miles.
The fastest spacecraft ever was the Helios 2 that reached about 150,000 MPH, and that was while it’s orbit was falling into the sun.
We are beaming them reruns of Mork and Mindy as an example of life on Planet Earth!
Because we have examples of how a special class in a species can hold technological secrets from the masses (eletric batteries in ancient times, for instance), we can surmise that some intelligence could withhold certain behavioral enhancements or utilize certain behavior enhancements. What one generation decides to make it's ultimate goal may be 'programmable' if enough of a gulf exists between the ruling class and the ruled.
Mostly because of Christianity, we in the West tend ot believe God wants us to have individual freedom, at least to the extent that we may cxhoose to believe or not believe what God offers to us in very limited doses. We have developed this insight due to what we believe is a spirit component of our human souls, a component not in the animal soul of our closest mammalian relatives. If Earth is the only planet where God has placed a spirit component tied to dimensional realities beyond our perceived spacetime, then what would an intelligent, benign species on a planet become without a spirit component to develop the concept of right and wrong? Would such a species even evolve long enough to become space travelers? ...
So many questions to ask when I see Him face to face ...
Mork and Mindy would not have reached them yet, at light speed. Perhaps our first primitive radio transmissions are getting there by now ... btut think of how our planet is literraly bathed daily in porn! What does that say to anyone who might be monitoring our electromagnetic spittle?
You are making the common mistake of assuming these visitors are not dwelling already in our solar system, so they don’t have to come each century from so far away. Yes, if they live in our solar system and didn’t originate on Earth, they had to make a long journey soem where/when now in our past, but they may have made a probe journey two million years ago, and the descendants of the probe are now monitoring us to choose when to take us into their ‘advanced civilization’. BTW: We tend to think of ‘advanced’ as applied merely to technology, and forget that Jesus was so much more advanced than his smartest disciples that we know Him as God with us.
I beleive there’s life across this galaxy. I also believe the intelligent life won’t save us from Barack Obama.
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I have always been intrigued with C. S. Lewis’ notion, that the universe teems with life, but that our fallen world is under quarantine.
cool
I think all intelligent life is bound to have emotions for survival’s sake. We can’t be the only one under quarantine.
Needless to say, unless some new mode of transportation is invented, we are not going to be getting there anytime soon. Even if we could move at the speed of light it would still take over a century. At the fastest speeds we can get currently (and as RFlagg said, the speed of 150K mph was due to the Sun's gravitational well), even a generation spaceship (where many people get on a spaceship, and they breed over many many many many many many many many generations, until when the spaceship arrives it is the nth generation ....Earth can be considered a generation spaceship, with humans breeding as it speeds about around the sun) cannot work. 566,928 years is a long time for something bad to happen, and in space many bad things can happen with rescue being an impossibility. Food, air, energy, fuel, disease, water, system breakdowns and wear-n-tear, external impacts, loss of guidance, genetic breakdown due to interbreeding (again, 566,928 years is a long time and unless you have over a billion people in the spaceship - an impossibility - interbreeding will eventually be the case), conflict ....anyone of a myriad issues that can arise.
Conclusion - I never use the word 'impossible,' but this might be one area that may very well fit the word.
I just hope they have x-tra lobstah and lotsa buttah & no Praying Mantis bug-eye people
“muslims haven`t reached the 7 heavenly planets yet.”
Hell, they haven’t reached the 7th century yet.
“Most of the kooks can not even imagine what a light year is.”
At a dollar a mile, it’s still less than our national debt/s;)
You just boggled my mind with that! Wow! Have a link ....that is a very interesting aspect. Thanks.
Mork and Mindy won’t reach there until around 2105.
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