5 replies to this topic

[Waspie_Dwarf]

www.bbc.co.uk said:

There could be many billions of planets not much bigger than Earth circling faint stars in our galaxy, says an international team of astronomers.

The estimate for the number of "super-Earths" is based on detections already made and then extrapolated to include the Milky Way's population of so-called red dwarf stars.

The team works with the high-precision Harps instrument.

This is fitted to the 3.6m telescope at the Silla Observatory in Chile.

Harps employs an indirect method of detection that infers the existence of orbiting planets from the way their gravity makes a parent star appear to twitch in its motion across the sky.

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Edited by Waspie_Dwarf, 09 June 2012 - 01:26 PM.
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[kaptn k]

Other Life?

Quote

That's what makes a new report by a group of European astronomers so exciting. Working at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, the scientists have completed a survey of 102 M-dwarf stars and identified a total of nine "super-Earths" -- planets up to 10 times larger than Earth -- circling them. Two of the nine lie in their stars' habitable zones, the Goldilocks region where temperatures are not too hot, not too cold, but just right for liquid water and thus, conceivably, for the existence of life. In the case of an M-dwarf, the star's cooler, dimmer fires mean that the Goldilocks zone is closer than it is around our hotter, brighter sun, but the water principle remains the same. And if you do the math for the entire galaxy, the recent survey means that tens of billions of Goldilocks planets are peppered throughout the Milky Way, with a hundred or so just in our solar system's immediate neighborhood.

Scientists are still trying to determin if there is intelligent life in Washington but that's another can o' worms.  

[Waspie_Dwarf]

I am going to move this topic to the Astronomy and Astrophysics forum, and merge it with the pre-existing topic on the subject.

[space11498]

But if life can exist in unhabitable conditions on earth itself, then why can't every planet in the universe should have some or the other form of life.For ex,life can survive in high as well as low temperatures and even in acidic and alkaline conditions.
If I am wrong , please correct me.

[Kryso]

I believe as more and more information becomes available, due to our advancing technology and scientific equipment, we will find that we are not so special, just one of billions of lifeforms spread across the expanse of space.

[space11498]

You are right Kryso.
And the evolution will be such that there may be some life form that will be more intelligent than man.Like we have monkey-origin,that life form will have humans as its origin.
Can this happen?
If I am wrong , please correct me.