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Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com.

 

Earthlike planets may be very common

1:30:49 am mst / 21 February 2001 found by paul / filed in science / source New Scientist 84 hits / 2 comments / 1 e-mail

Although all the extrasolar planets currently known are gas giants like Jupiter, astronomers now have indirect evidence that Earthlike planets (rock with an iron core) may also be quite common.

So where are the aliens?

Comments

This comment board has been retired.

We're waiting... by MysteriousStranger 2:58:11 pm mst / 21 February 2001 / # 1

Where are the aliens? We are waiting for you to become more umami, of course. Then we'll invite you over for, uh, dinner.

aliens impolded by MysteriousStranger 5:48:42 pm mst / 21 February 2001 / # 2

As we're about to discover: 1) Space is boringly self-similar and not much worth exploring 2) Intelligence will recurse, and in a subjective reality that runs over a million times faster than what we 30-Hz humans perceive, distance becomes much vaster. So, no reason to go and too far to go means that any intelligence that achieves recursion obviously implodes into a subjective reality of it's own creation. Our only possible glimpse of alien intelligence is in that short 100-year span when they radiate radio energy like mad before imploding into optical nirvana. 100 years out of billions. What are the odds of spotting such a synchronous event in our own 100 years of radiance?