One tenth of stars may support life

[Iron Star]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?...p?id=ns99994525

One tenth of stars may support life


19:00 01 January 04

NewScientist.com news service

One tenth of the stars in our galaxy might provide the right conditions to support complex life, according to a new analysis by Australian researchers. And most of these stars are on average one billion years older than the Sun, allowing much more time, in theory, for any life to evolve.

The concept of a "galactic habitable zone" (GHZ) for the Milky Way was first proposed in 2001. Now Charles Lineweaver of the University of New South Wales and colleagues have defined a life-friendly GHZ using a detailed model of the evolution of the Milky Way to map the distribution in space and time of four major factors thought essential for complex life.

"We're looking at what we think are the most robust and conservative pre-requisites for life - but they are very, very basic," Lineweaver says.

[LiquidX]

Very interesting document, I myself have always been fascinated with the idea of other livable planets. I think they are right because there are just so many solar systems and planets within those solar systems that eventually somewhere down the line one of those planets would be able to support life.

With that said it's also interesting to note that they say that those solar systems have been around much longer and therefore could have allowed for much more time for that planet to evolve. I'm very curious as to how evolved they would actually be (if we are saying in theory that they do exist).

[toastedmonkey]

Surely life could exist on any planet, i have a vague memory of a scientist on tv saying, "there couldnt be life on Venus, the pressure and heat are too high"
But surely the theory of evolution means that a single life cell could adapt and evolve on any planet in any conditions?

[revolutionindia]

i Believe there are 50 billion stars out there.
Instead of putting all our efforts in colonizing space, humans spend their time fighting for a few square miles of land(kashmir,palestine,etc)
The universe and human stupidity are infinite

[SirJayofHinde]

Comrade,

You are mentioning Kashmir, but isn't it quite so that the radical fascist-islamic terrorists, based in and armed by Pakistan, are waging war on the People of India, in Kashmir and elsewhere.

It is not India that is fighting for land, comrade, but it is India fighting for the rights of the People to be free and safe. It is Pakistan that is fighting for the land, and India that is fighting for the People.

-Jay

[redstar2000]

Way off topic, Sir Jay, and historically wrong as well. Everyone with the slightest acquaintance with the history of the partition knows very well that Kashmir (with its Muslim majority) "should" have been part of Pakistan...and the fact that it was not was due to the decision of a Hindu "maharajah" who was the nominal ruler of that area.

Playing the "Islamic terrorist" card will avail you little on this board; we are not supporters of "Islamic terrorism" but neither are we terrified of them "hiding under our beds" nor do we see them as "the root of all evil in the modern world".

If you want to discuss Kashmir, start a thread in the Politics Forum, and you will get plenty of discussion...probably more than you want.



The RedStar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas

[SirJayofHinde]

Everyone with the slightest acquaintance with the history

Comrade,

All to often aquaintances play good men as fools, and true understanding is a frightfully hard lass to nab.

Your "facts" are as incorrect as the topic is off and the words you put in my mouth wrong, and I shall be starting a thread in the politics section in a couple days when I have free time. You can tell the sad tale of your misguided tryst with the lovely lady history then.


Till then, good day to you, sire,
Jay

[ComradeRed]

back to the subject, comrade toasted monkey

"there couldnt be life on Venus, the pressure and heat are too high"
But surely the theory of evolution means that a single life cell could adapt and evolve on any planet in any conditions?

that is true, the life would be scilicon based however, we are carbon based and so is everything on earth. silicon

[Rasta Sapian]

Sorry but I beleive your numbers are incorrect!

We have something going on here on earth! We are the shepards of this great land and navigators of our mighty seas!

The fact is that:

- our planet is at the right distance from the sun, rotating like a rotissarie chicken
keeping most of the planets mass livable (tempurature wise) 365.25 days a year!
ie. leap year every 4 years to make up the difference!

- what about mars you say, why can't mars support life? It is realitively the same distance from the sun, and close to the same size?

- allow me to explain, the earth rotates around the sun, and our moon (1/10th the mass of earth) rotates around the earth every 24 hrs. this ratio is a miricle in the planetary physics.

- anyway this combination of gravitational properties, keeps earth tilted at 23.5 degrees
- as well spinning balanced, the earth has a wabble cycle which adjusts every couple of million years (which may alter weather patterns on the planet, and change our perception of other stars, and clusters light years away)

- so basically our planet unlike others does not rotate ( or wabble ) in different directions, like mars does! and I garantee 99.9 percent of other planets do as well, which in turn, prevents life form existing on other planets, (don't burn the chicken&#33

- ex: it's a nice 125 degrees today, going down to - 125 tonight ( which may last 8 to 260 hrs. ) life could not exist in these conditions!

I am not saying that we are the only life form in the universe or the milky way for that matter, but what I am saying is that we are very fortunate and very rare as far as planets go!

[toastedmonkey]

Originally posted by ComradeRed@Jan 10 2004, 06:00 AM
that is true, the life would be scilicon based however, we are carbon based and so is everything on earth. silicon

Thank you comrade, an interesting read.

[Adamore]

people need to start privetly funded space programs if they really want to know or they can just half-ass it and vote more space program we might find out
"but bush aint going to be the one w/ the space program ne help"
- ME

[The Children of the Revolution]

The universe and human stupidity are infinite

Wasn't the quote: "Two things in life are infinite: The Universe and the stupidity of mankind - and I'm not sure about the former!" How wonderfully cynical!

All to often aquaintances play good men as fools, and true understanding is a frightfully hard lass to nab.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!! Wonderful!!!

Back "on topic" however - I think space exploration is a joke. Why the smeg would we want to find any "life" out there anyway? It'd only be a single-celled microbe anyway. Either that or it'd eat us.

[redstar2000]

I am not saying that we are the only life form in the universe or the milky way for that matter, but what I am saying is that we are very fortunate and very rare as far as planets go!

Yes, it seems we "lucked out".

And yet...I wonder.

What makes Mars so cold is that it is not massive enough to hold an "Earth-sized" atmosphere. If a planet with a mass equal to Earth's rotated in the Martian orbit, it would be much warmer there...and almost certainly wetter as well (Mars, by the way, has a 24-hour day just like Earth...a remarkable coincidence).

Or consider Venus...which has just about the same mass as Earth (another remarkable coincidence). A planet in that orbit with a mass somewhere between that of Earth and Mars would have a thinner atmosphere...and be cooler and wetter than it is now.

When you look at the actual conditions that life manages to not only survive but flourish in on Earth--the strange ecologies located in volcanic vents on the ocean floor for example--it would almost seem that the only real requirement for biological life is water.

But for the kind of life that would be really interesting to us--intelligent life with technological civilizations--I have to agree that it is likely to be pretty rare.

We might not meet them for another ten thousand years...unfortunately.



The RedStar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by revolutionindia@Jan 7 2004, 04:33 AM
i Believe there are 50 billion stars out there.
Instead of putting all our efforts in colonizing space, humans spend their time fighting for a few square miles of land(kashmir,palestine,etc)
The universe and human stupidity are infinite

Umm no, from what I have read there are millions of stars for each individual grain of sand that exists on earth. Thats what Patrick Moore said (I think it was him) anyway.

[toastedmonkey]

Originally posted by Enigma@Jan 24 2004, 07:05 PM
Umm no, from what I have read there are millions of stars for each individual grain of sand that exists on earth. Thats what Patrick Moore said (I think it was him) anyway.

i remember that, some space program i presume it was Patrick Moore, but for some reasons i keep picturing Tony Robinson or whatever hes called off time team!

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by toastedmonkey+Jan 24 2004, 11:41 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (toastedmonkey @ Jan 24 2004, 11:41 PM)

Enigma

@Jan 24 2004, 07:05 PM
Umm no, from what I have read there are millions of stars for each individual grain of sand that exists on earth. Thats what Patrick Moore said (I think it was him) anyway.

i remember that, some space program i presume it was Patrick Moore, but for some reasons i keep picturing Tony Robinson or whatever hes called off time team&#33; [/b]

NO&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33; I remember it was Sam Niel from Jurrasic Park, Event Horizion, etc.

Tony Robinson or whatever hes called

Yep thats his name, but he&#39;s a dude, and more importantly he&#39;s on Blackadder.

[Xvall]

We can&#39;t know the number of stars in the universe. First of all, it assumes that the universe is finite, and second of all it assumes that we have scientific devices strong enough to see to the end of the universe. (Both are somewhat far-fetched.) There are probably more stars out there than there are grains of sand on our earth. It doesn&#39;t really matter. We&#39;re never going to get very far away from this one.

Anyways; Mars probably has life, though not in the form of small green humanoids, to this dismay of those of you wearing your tin foil hats. Chances are that those organisms in the universe that are not single-celled aren&#39;t all to interesting. They would likely resemble some types of insects or fish. Chances are they they wouldn&#39;t even contain organs similar to ours, as they would be native to a planet with entirely different physiological attributes. They might smell with their eyes, or even be entirely devoid of them. Assuming these creatures exist, they wouldn&#39;t be able to live on earth without dying. Coming into contact with it might result in some radioactive contamination (to both parties) or the transmission of some new and formerly unknown fatal disease. There probably aren&#39;t any that are humanoids. If you follow the laws of Darwinism, Evolution, and such, it is a miracle that our species even came into existance, let alone survived for this long.

Whatever.