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In the past few decades, thousands of extra-solar planets have been discovered within our galaxy. As of July 28th, 2018, a total of 3,374 extra-solar planets have been confirmed in 2,814 planetary systems. While the majority of these planets have been gas giants, an increasing number have been terrestrial (i.e. rocky) in nature and were found to be orbiting within their stars' respective habitable zones (HZ).
However, as the case of the Solar System shows, HZs do not necessary mean a planet can support life. Even though Mars and Venus are at the inner and the outer edge of the Sun's HZ (respectively), neither is capable of supporting life on its surface. And with more potentially-habitable planets being discovered all the time, a new study suggests that it might be time to refine our definition of habitable zones.
Welcome to the Inhospitable Zone.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday July 31 2018, @05:06PM (22 children)
Maybe our definition of habitable is wrong? Consider our sample size of environments. Even considering extreme-o-philes.
Sometime back there was an SN article about whether we would recognize intelligent life. After it was old news, something occurred to me. Maybe we have the question backward. Would They recognize Us as life, or intelligent life? Would they regard our planet as being in a habitable zone?
Probably. Since chemistry and therefore biochemistry work the same everywhere. The only close counterpart to carbon long chain molecules seems to be silicon. Either one we would recognize. And so would they. Even if their complex carbon-oxygen-hydrogen biochemistry didn't build the same kind of cellular machines. Not even DNA perhaps. The chemistry itself would still likely be recognizable as life. Especially if there is any kind of eating, excreting, or reproduction going on.
Therefore, I would speculate that we've got a reasonable idea about what a habitable zone would be. We just don't have as much information about the exoplanets as we would like, such as if we could magically send a probe there.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday July 31 2018, @05:38PM (4 children)
I'm guessing that near mindless microbial life is much more common than intelligent life. Consider Earth's history. For about 3 billion years, microbial life was all that existed on Earth. It's only the last 0.5 to 1 billion years that had animal and plant life, and then, life intelligent enough to begin figuring out the cosmos has been around for a mere 0.0002 billion years or so.
And, the microbial life of Earth changed radically over that long period. Early Earth had only trace amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere.
Getting into the Drake equation here. Our own solar system has just one out of 8 (or possibly 9 or 10 large planets) that support life, so far as we can tell at this time, though there is of course speculation about Mars mostly, and the larger moons such as Europa. Perhaps our moon gives Earth necessary rotational stability, without which Earth could chaotically heel over and stress life beyond the breaking point. If such is a necessary property of a habitable planet, that makes life a lot rarer. Maybe only 1 in 1000 solar systems will have life, and of those, possibly 75% or more will be microbial only.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:13PM (3 children)
Who told you microbial life cannot be intelligent? A single neuron isn't that much brainier than a bacterium; a single transistor, even less so; and still, a number of them exchanging signals is what produces intelligent thought, or at least simulates it.
Given a robust enough messaging protocol, a community of bacteria can do everything a brain of neurons or a chip or transistors can.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday July 31 2018, @08:55PM (2 children)
It's an intriguing idea I want to happen and I'm sure it's possible. I can see some possible problems though. Once neurons in the brain have built a network of connections to one another, that pattern of connections mostly stays there for a long time. If you've got microbes that aren't physically attached to one another, perhaps drifting around in slime or a liquid, mightn't it be harder for them to maintain a single pattern of connections to one another? It might be possible to save state even when they move about if a microbe passed its state to a neighbor that drifted into its spot, before moving off itself, but only if there was some confidence that the new arrival would stay put in that place for a while. If they're all stationary microbes, it might solve that problem but I wonder if their communication might be slower to propagate and / or require more energy than in a dense, physically connected brain. Beyond that, what would they use the intelligence for? They'd be wanting limbs to start manipulating their environment. I suppose huge clusters of them could assemble en masse to move objects but by that point haven't you really just evolved a larger animal?
Just idle speculation and rambling on my part.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:10AM (1 child)
Living cells always communicate using chemical signals, even in multicellular organisms and even in animal bodies. Neural cells are just an adaptation useful to shorten reaction times by electrically commanding release of chemical signals at remote cell boundaries.
Now, when you have a community of cells without specialized, channelized information pathways, then the selectivity of information reception must be achieved by some sort of chemical addressing and receptors specialized for each of the signals (and we still have those, it is "endocrine system", hormones and receptors). Supposedly, the "intelligence", or complexity of interactions and cooperation between undifferentiated uni-cells contained in group entities should be proportional to number of kinds of different receptors they have, but their decision making ability should be limited by the size of their group, unless some sort of hierarchy (tiers, like in neural networks) or specialization is introduced.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:09PM
FTFY.
Also, our not-necessarily-complete experience in this is limited to this planet, something that in no way provides an ironclad framework for what might be going on on other planets and in other star systems. Ergo, "habitable zone" may well be complete nonsense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday July 31 2018, @05:40PM (8 children)
NASA Asks: Will We Know Life When We See It? [soylentnews.org]
I think these questions are pretty overblown and you have the right idea. There could be major differences, but there will probably be enough information to figure it out (once our telescopes are capable enough).
We ask stuff like, "Would they recognize us as (intelligent) life?" Well, our hypothetical alien friends would need to have a culture of science, technological development, and astronomy spanning centuries in order to even get to that point. Almost certainly requiring industrial activity and pollution. Let's say they are 1,000 light years away from Earth. At some point they would reach the same awe-inspiring point we've reached in the last 2 decades where we were like "Ohhh, there's exoplanets around nearly every star!" Even though Giordano Bruno [scientificamerican.com] already guessed as much centuries ago. Alien civilizations would probably have the same visions of sugarplums and exoplanets dancing in their heads at some point long before they obtain the capability to directly observe exoplanets.
They would eventually launch space telescopes (assuming high gravity doesn't prevent rocketry) and/or use adaptive optics on the ground (yes, we're assuming they have EYES in this scenario). In about a few years, humans will reach a point where we can routinely observe exoplanet atmospheres. Why wouldn't the aliens be thinking about the possible existence of life on other planets, and coming up with ways to distinguish it, if they have the telescopes?
Fast-forward a few decades. We could use a multi-kilometer aperture space telescope or gravitational lens telescope [airspacemag.com] to potentially observe some nearby exoplanets as well as Hubble sees Mars [spacetelescope.org].
Something like this would allow the clear confirmation of water oceans, industrial activity, vegetation, artificial lighting, etc.
Here's another thought. Alien civilizations around some select binary star systems would be able to more easily use a star as a gravitational lens. Basically, some binary stars are separated by hundreds of astronomical units. Whereas we need to travel over 550 AU to use the Sun as a gravitational lens, a star of the right mass and distance may be readily available to some other civilizations.
Whatever the case, if they develop the capabilities, they will be studying exoplanets and debating the same dumb questions we ask. The bigger question is whether or not there is another civilization observing Earth at the same time interesting things are happening here. How densely populated is the galaxy at any given time? Because if the nearest intelligent life to Earth is only 50 light years away, that's a big difference compared to 250 light years, 1,000, 10,000, or extragalactic. It affects how well they could see Earth and how long it takes the evidence of the industrial revolution, or even a cooled down early Earth with liquid water oceans, to reach them.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday July 31 2018, @06:55PM (7 children)
The odds of them having white people are pretty low, we have entire continents where you're not going to have that kind of technological development. I don't believe that was baked into the Drake equation.
Also there's some geological issues. No matter how smart your pacific islander asian might be on an individual basis, they're not going to industrialize and go to the moon if the best surface or near surface ores they geologically have access to are varieties of lava pumice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:19PM (1 child)
then they'll have to develop a silicate-based material science. :)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 31 2018, @08:05PM
There's some nasty dependency gating... Given a heavy industrial steel civilization, you can implement an aluminum civilization, but there's strong chemistry reasons you can't implement an aluminum based civilization first.
We might be able to develop a silicon based material science... only possible to develop in an aluminum/titanium aerospace civilization as a starting point.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:45PM
boooOOOOOOOooooo
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 31 2018, @08:52PM (3 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:34AM
SN 1054 [wikipedia.org] recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers, the European records are doubious. Fer eff's sake, 'twas visible for two years with the naked eye and for about 23 days was visible during daytime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:10AM
VLM is either a permanent troll or has gone utterly, completely mad on race-hatred. And it's not too easy to distinguish the two, given how at least one actual honest-to-cheese neo-Nazi specifically said part of the strategy was to pretend to be pretending.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 01 2018, @01:26PM
Exactly my point. Pretty weak production for a centuries of empire.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 31 2018, @06:49PM (5 children)
I dunno about you but my definition includes at least one air conditioner and the means to power it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:36AM (4 children)
Your fishing chair is not habitable by this measure, is it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 01 2018, @02:34AM
Nope. Us humans is adaptable and have learned to deal with environments outside what we can normally survive in though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:08AM (2 children)
It almost was before the hideous atmospheric contamination incident brought on by his borderline-cannibalistic hot wings habit :D Puts one in mind of a certain Johnny Cash song...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:28AM (1 child)
Let me guess.... the "borderline-cannibalistic" means he's mostly eating right-hot-wings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @12:03PM
I think she means that chickens are actually dinosaurs. But I like your theory too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @04:54AM
It's LIFE Jim, but not as we know it.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:58AM
Silicon may be involved in structural components, but I think life without carbon is unlikely. Steric hindrance means that here are orders of magnitude more carbon compounds than there are silicon ones. There are just too many options for aqueous carbon chemistry for silicon to compete.
If you are looking for options to expand the habitable zone, I think carbon based life using ammonia rather than water is more likely than silicon based life. Would probably need a larger planet further out, as you need upwards of 100 psi and lower temperatures to get a decent liquid range for ammonia. (and to freeze the water out or the system).
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