Only 4.2 ly away[0]! That'd be like Three Body Problem-tier convenience. : D
Also, class M star:
>In 2017, Nasa scientists used computer models to show that if Proxima b had an Earth-like atmosphere, it could easily be stripped away by the intense radiation and solar flares unleashed by its parent star. Under this battering, the 4bn-year-old planet could have lost its entire atmosphere in 100m years.
Yep. They burn the longest, but they don't burn cleanly. They "sputter", unleashing huge flares that can erode atmospheres, and their luminosities can fluctuate randomly. Imagine if the Earth was plunged into a 13-year-long superwinter because the Sun decided to be a bit less bright for a while.
(In the Three Body Problem books, a planet there has wild climatic instability owing to the chaotic orbit around Alpha Centauri's three stars.)
“We’ve been looking for alien life for so long now and the idea that it could turn out to be on our front doorstep, in the very next star system, is piling improbabilities upon improbabilities.
“If there is intelligent life there, it would almost certainly have spread much more widely across the galaxy. The chances of the only two civilisations in the entire galaxy happening to be neighbours, among 400bn stars, absolutely stretches the bounds of rationality.”
If there are 2 alien civilisations in our galaxy surely it's equally likely they are next to each other or some arbitrary distance.
For each given distance, yes, but the property that's interesting to humans is binary: "near" vs "far". It's also subjective, but almost any definition would put most of the galaxy in the "far" category, thereby making it more likely that a random location is "far".
I’m actually not sure that’s what he meant. I think he meant that if you picked two planets to have life on them at random, and the pairwise distances between planets forms a uniform distribution, then the distance between the two planets randomly chosen is equally likely to be any distance.
No, because the volume of the ball around earth grows with distance cubed. Assuming of course that searching in a bigger space is likely to find more non-earth life.
> The chances of the only two civilisations in the entire galaxy happening to be neighbours, among 400bn stars, absolutely stretches the bounds of rationality.
I think this is dependent on the conditions by which one or more related lifeforms emerged. It's entirely possible life here came from there or from there to here and the reason it's here and there is because it's close. Chances assuming no travel between the two places is just silly.
Yes, probably, but then on the other hand, if panspermia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia) was the cause of life here, whatever mechanism was at work (e.g. interstellar objects, fragments from an exploded system) then it would make sense to have seeded clusters of stars. Fun to think about, obviously, who knows.
This is not true even in an extremely idealized model. For example, if you pick two random points in a unit cube, they are much more likely to be a moderate distance apart (on average, about 0.66 units) than they are to be very close together.
This has been posted several times already. It's sensationalist. Before anyone gets too excited, be aware that Jupiter (as one example) emits radio waves [1].
I don't think the researchers are necessarily suggesting an alien origin (honestly, shame on them if they are). It's more likely sensationalist reporting. It's almost certainly natural in origin.
Maybe the media headlines are sensational (as they always are), and it’s unfortunate that it leaked before the papers were officially released.
But Jupiter emitting radio waves is really not relevant here. The signal they saw is a very arrow frequency, which pretty strongly indicates a technological origin. See [1] for a better overview of the situation.
Humans had better stop farting. There's literally no way the aliens will take us seriously if we continue filling up with gas and having to let it out with a comedy sound.
"If you see such a signal and it's not coming from the surface of Earth, you know you have detected extraterrestrial technology," says Jason Wright, a SETI-centric
astronomer at Penn State University in Pennsylvania. "Unfortunately, humans have launched a lot of extraterrestrial technology."
The UFO crowd is going to have a field day with that quote.
Jason Wright is, of course, the same astronomer who set off the 'Alien Megastructure' theory a few years ago when KIC 8462852 (Tabby's star) was dimming.
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[ 148 ms ] story [ 999 ms ] threadAlso, class M star:
>In 2017, Nasa scientists used computer models to show that if Proxima b had an Earth-like atmosphere, it could easily be stripped away by the intense radiation and solar flares unleashed by its parent star. Under this battering, the 4bn-year-old planet could have lost its entire atmosphere in 100m years.
Yep. They burn the longest, but they don't burn cleanly. They "sputter", unleashing huge flares that can erode atmospheres, and their luminosities can fluctuate randomly. Imagine if the Earth was plunged into a 13-year-long superwinter because the Sun decided to be a bit less bright for a while.
(In the Three Body Problem books, a planet there has wild climatic instability owing to the chaotic orbit around Alpha Centauri's three stars.)
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri
“If there is intelligent life there, it would almost certainly have spread much more widely across the galaxy. The chances of the only two civilisations in the entire galaxy happening to be neighbours, among 400bn stars, absolutely stretches the bounds of rationality.”
If there are 2 alien civilisations in our galaxy surely it's equally likely they are next to each other or some arbitrary distance.
I think this is dependent on the conditions by which one or more related lifeforms emerged. It's entirely possible life here came from there or from there to here and the reason it's here and there is because it's close. Chances assuming no travel between the two places is just silly.
https://people.kth.se/~johanph/habc.pdf
If so, why should we be surprised that we detect those signals which are easier to detect before those which are more difficult to detect?
I don't think the researchers are necessarily suggesting an alien origin (honestly, shame on them if they are). It's more likely sensationalist reporting. It's almost certainly natural in origin.
[1]: https://www.britannica.com/place/Jupiter-planet/The-auroras
But Jupiter emitting radio waves is really not relevant here. The signal they saw is a very arrow frequency, which pretty strongly indicates a technological origin. See [1] for a better overview of the situation.
[1] https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2020/12/20/blc1-a-candidat...
The UFO crowd is going to have a field day with that quote.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabby%27s_Star
https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2015/10/15/kic-8462852wher...