by EbensR4Real
Think man is alone in the universe?
With worlds unnumbered, maybe you should think again.....
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'Get a grip' on the real size of things in the known universe:
http://htwins.net/scale2/
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Love this quote:
Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
...... Bertrand Russell 1952.
Basically, he's saying people who make big claims, should prove them.
So..... What is the bigger claim?
'That man is alone...' or 'That man is NOT alone....'
Mainstream science is makeing a U-turn on the old dogma. While still only able to prove that the Earth is the one and only place in the universe known to harbor life, they are very aware of recent advances in planetary science that have changed fundamental assumptions about the possibility of life in the universe, thus raising the estimates of habitable zones around other stars and the search for extraterrestrial microbial life.
The planets Venus and Mars (The possibility of life on Mars, either currently or in the past, is an active area of research), along with several natural satellites orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, and even comets, are suspected to possess niche environments in which life might exist. A subsurface marine environment on Jupiter's moon Europa might be the most suitable habitat in the Solar System, outside of Earth, for multicellular organisms.
Panspermia suggests that life elsewhere in the Solar System may have a common origin. If extraterrestrial life was found on another body in the Solar System, it could have originated from Earth just as life on Earth may have been seeded from elsewhere (exogenesis). The Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, developed by the Planetary Society launched in 2011 was designed to test some aspect of these hypotheses, but it was destroyed along with the carrier Fobos-Grunt mission.
Mainstream science is now of the view 'That man is NOT alone'.
The burdon of proof now fall's on the sceptics.
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Man has only been arround for a cosmic heart beat:
Universe born: 14.6 billion years ago.
Earth forms: 4.54 billion years ago.
Life starts: 3.5 billion yrears ago.
Photosynthesis starts: 2.5 billion years ago
Mamals evolve: 0.25 billion years ago
Modern humans apear: 50,000 to 100,000 years ago
Human space exploration begins: 12 April 1961
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life )
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...... we really are a new and inexperienced team on the field.
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So how many 'other' worlds are there, that could host life? What are the numbers?
The Drake equation is a mathematical equation used to estimate the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. It is used in the field of the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The equation was devised in 1961 by Frank Drake, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The equation gives an estamate of 10000 communicating civillizations in the milky way. Remember, this is useing estamated numbers. Not high, not low, estamated on what we know.
Got your own estamates? Play with the nunbers here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/drake-equation.html
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