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billvon

Alpha Centauri B has planets!

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After decades of science fiction writers penning stories about the planets circling our closest neighbor, we just found an Earth-sized planet circling one of the stars that makes up the Alpha Centauri system. It's way too close to its star to be anything like Earth (closer than Mercury is to our sun) but once a star system has one planet discovered, the odds of it having more than one planet are fairly high.

The system is four light-years away, and thus it will be a while before we could consider launching anything towards it. Using our best available technology it would still take over a hundred years to reach Alpha Centauri with even a small probe. Still, it's pretty cool that our nearest neighbors have the planets that writers have imagined for years.

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>Maybe I've misunderstood something but isn't it more likely that a star has planets
>circling it then it not having any?

Way too soon to say. The percentage of stars observed so far that have planets is around 5%, but that's because it's easiest to detect very large planets - so it would be more accurate to say that perhaps 5% of stars have large planets. However they are definitely much more common that we thought 20 years ago.

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Well, Centauri women look nice apart from one disturbing facts: They ought to shave their heads (clicky just to imagine a bed-scene...) and males wear their hair in a pompous hairspray-infested crested way... Just to remind you.
The sky is not the limit. The ground is.

The Society of Skydiving Ducks

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Thanks for the post. It lead to me looking up Alpha Centauri and reviewing some things. I had forgotten that Pluto was no longer a planet, so I delved into the reason for that while I was at it. Interesting stuff.
I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

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Well, Centauri women look nice apart from one disturbing facts: They ought to shave their heads (clicky just to imagine a bed-scene...) and males wear their hair in a pompous hairspray-infested crested way... Just to remind you.



Another fantasy of mine shot to hell:)

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Bill, Why would "REALLY" smart people think that planets are not the norm? I like to think that common sense would lead you to believe that planets are very common and life is also very common, We are not special in any way, shape or form... Just a very small part of the cosmic soup....;)

But then everyone likes to think they are specail..:P

Killler

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This is a great time in which to live. We're making advances that point to humanity moving in a lot of neat directions (space, medicine). Assuming we don't annihilate ourselves in the meantime... but that's a conversation for another thread, probably in SC.

But WRT space exploration, I am honestly a little bummed: we're at a point where we can SEE all this really cool stuff out there, but we're not technologically advanced to GO there yet. It's like we're stuck outside the candy store, leaving smudges on the plate glass window, while all those tantalizing sweets are just out of our reach.

And when I say "GO there," I mean ME. Going to other planets. Preferably in some sporty, faster-than-light spaceship, like anything from the Hitchhiker Guide series of books.

Elvisio "Well, anything other than the ship powered by bad news, or a Vogon Constructor vessel" Rodriguez

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REALLY smart people might wait for evidence of that fact before concluding that . . .

Really smart people accept that they are not special in time or space, but merely typical. :)
Anyway, it'll take at least four years to get pictures back from our 100 year old space probe. :D

Damn, I feel like a 12th century European right now, just imagining what lays beyond the ocean's horizon.

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>I thought the " Drake equation " was widely held as good starting point for our quest for knowledge ?

It is indeed! And we are filling in more of those coefficients all the time.


We sure are. This might useful for determining "Fp" in the equation, but I'm still trying to figure out a ballpark value for "Bs" :P

http://xkcd.com/384/

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>Bill, Why would "REALLY" smart people think that planets are not the norm?

Smart people might think that planets are the norm. REALLY smart people might wait for evidence of that fact before concluding that . . .



+1

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>Bill, Why would "REALLY" smart people think that planets are not the norm?

Smart people might think that planets are the norm. REALLY smart people might wait for evidence of that fact before concluding that . . .



+1

Ahh, but concluding and supposing are two different things. If we are just supposing, wouldn't the smart thing to suppose is that we and our situation are nothing special?

To imagine we are the only system with planets and the only place with intelligent life in the universe seems to me to be the height of conceit. ;)

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