Interesting Article:study: 8.8 Billion Earth-Size, Just-Right Planets

[Mimimom]

Just came across this article on Yahoo:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/study-8-8-billion-earth-size-just-planets-212232920.html

 

As a Christian I never paid much attention to these types of things, but now it fascinates me. I've always kind of wondered about the possibility of other life in our universe though. I don't consider myself all that intelligent in these kinds of matters so I'm curious what all you science geeks out there think of it. 

[slave2six]

You ever read C.S. Lewis' Perelandra series? It's Christian sci-fi in which the evil scientist is hell-bent on finding new planets on which to expand humanity and of course he's a completely nefarious jerk who is all for killing off anything that is not human. Actually, he's just like the fragging Christians who took over North America, but that never gets mentioned in the story. I used to love those books but now I see his writings as simply another form of supporting a completely idiotic notion. Interesting how someone so smart could be so wrong on so many levels.

 

If there are other human-life-sustaining planets out there, let's figure out how to get there. The human population isn't shrinking.

[Mimimom]

No I've never heard of those books...never been much into sci fi...but they sound interesting. I am totally into our space program though and I agree, we may need to find a new home someday. My hubby was a technician on the space shuttle before the program ended and he became a pilot, so we are really into everything NASA related and I'm super bummed that our space program is at kind of a stand still and we now have to rely on the Russians to get us to space. I know it's expensive, but I think it's so important!

[creative]

The probability that life exists on other planets is as big as the probability that the bible god doesn't exist

If there is no other life out there what a wast of space

Probably not in my time, but would love to visit some other planet one day

[Bhim]

No I've never heard of those books...never been much into sci fi...but they sound interesting. I am totally into our space program though and I agree, we may need to find a new home someday. My hubby was a technician on the space shuttle before the program ended and he became a pilot, so we are really into everything NASA related and I'm super bummed that our space program is at kind of a stand still and we now have to rely on the Russians to get us to space. I know it's expensive, but I think it's so important!

 

Definitely agreed on the space program.  This would put me out of a job, but I would prefer for NASA to refocus its efforts on manned spaceflight instead of all these scientific missions and unmanned probes.  The scientific benefits are of course not as great, but the space race of the 60s did wonders for America's prestige.

[Jedah]

This study increased the chance of intelligent extraterrestrials by a massive amount. There even may be civilizations out there on the exact same level we are now, on the verge of becoming a type I civilization on the Kardashev scale.

 

If it happened once, it can happen again. The only thing we don't know is the exact statistical chance.