Comments on: A Profusion of Planets: Astronomers Spot 32 New Worlds Around Distant Stars

By: dumisani

dumisani — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:28:21 +0000

tank u

By: mikinakn

mikinakn — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:42:35 +0000

It seems a very short time ago the earth was flat, there was no China, no Africa, no Australia, no North America, no South America, no Antarctica and the moon was made of cheese. Now, ‘that’ bespeaks a highly evolved intelligence.

A few days ago a couple of harmless gays were beaten and killed…I wonder what we would do to an alien.

A grown, supposedly intelligent man, in the sauna last evening said of Obama, ‘…where the hell is the Ku Klux Klan when you need them…’ laughing long and loud like it was profound and humorous.

Myself, Native American, a young Bolivian and a young Mexican just looked at each other and through our eyes we understood, clearly, the nature of our worlds.

By: Edgar Waga

Edgar Waga — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:00:29 +0000

The more we search for life and see how hard it is to find a replica of the same,then the more you see how unique we really are.All this searching just tells me how special we are that in this vastness,we exist.Persistent as you say,but we do.I refuse to simply take the idea that we are here by ‘chance’.This is too big an occurrence you simply cant attribute to chance or luck or whatever…we are here by design from a higher being.He is our God.

By: Nick talks too much

Nick talks too much — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:14:15 +0000

I don’t think we’ll be around long enough to visit any other big blue marbles.

The shocking and sad way we treat our own house makes me glad we are grounded!

By: liu

liu — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:21:44 +0000

If we expands the forms of life in our mind ,we will find more!!

By: Kimberly S Lewis

Kimberly S Lewis — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:09:54 +0000

We once thought the earth was flat and whales were sea monsters! We are a very arrogant species, violent, greedy, destructive and selfish. But, there are and have been so many wonderful human beings. Right now, I hope man kind stays far away from those planets, but, well it’s like seeing your child, such a wonderful creation! Such wonderful possibilities! What a gift!

By: CH

CH — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:23:48 +0000

I hope they find one with spectral traces of alunium phosdex, the shaving cream atom. I hear the world’s supply of it is alarmingly low.

indubitabubilabubbily!

By: JD

JD — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:51:53 +0000

This article got me excited to learn more about the worlds discovered. I love finding out that our universe is gradually becoming smaller and smaller (figuratively, of course). And I love to try to ponder the possibilities and potential that this brings.

…And then I read tMax E.’s and scribbler’s comments above and got depressed.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:25:10 +0000

Carl Sagon said it best…..

In ALL of space, if we are the only intelligent life-forms, what a great waste of space!

Narrow-minded and stubborn is the human race, especially to accept new ideas.

Well, something to think about anyways.

By: Max E

Max E — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:37:23 +0000

I feel as though Earth has been created in such perfect and improbable circumstances to make it extremely improbable to find anything which can support life as we know it. By all means, if we’re looking at possibilities of other galaxies being to the values that Nick mentions, then you’d have to think that the improbability of us ever surfacing would have to have occurred elsewhere a few times over.

But if there are, in fact, 10^10^16^Infinity-plus-one-no-returns-i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i galaxies out there…then the discovery of 400 exoplanets isn’t even scratching the electron cloud of the surface. It’s certainly interesting work, and hey, if you can bleed funding from somewhere to find other planets, then by all means keep yourself employed…but I truly think that the pursuit of extraterrestial life is as futile as any pursuit comes.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:45:52 +0000

Yes, and let’s pretend that if a person never leaves her house that nothing else exists outside of it.

By: scribbler

scribbler — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:48:36 +0000

Let’s stick to science and not speculation: There is only one planet/moon/whatever proven to have life on it. The more of these lifeless rocks, for that is what we know so far, we find, the more unique Earth becomes.

By: nick

nick — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:56:19 +0000

We need to stop thinking of ourselves as beautiful and unique snowflakes.

If we live long enough, I believe we’ll find life everywhere. Life as we know it is too persistent. Life as we don’t know it is just as likely to be as persistent.

I mean, how many times has a sizable chunk of all life on Earth been wiped out? Didn’t stop it for a second!

I predict that a sizable percentage of stars will have planets. This will probably be limited by neutron stars and black holes – but we’ve seen how far out planets in our own solar system can be, so they may indeed survive long enough to still orbit ‘dead’ stars.

We also have to consider that planets much smaller than earth could host life. Planets smaller than Earth make up 20, 30% of the planets in our solar system? Not to mention planets could have satellites that host life. The jury is still out on this in our own solar system.

There are trillions of stars in our home galaxy. There are hundreds of billions of other galaxies.

And that’s not even if you take into account the possibility that the multiverse theory may be true (which, from everything we’ve discovered as time goes on, seems much more likely than us being the only universe. 100 years ago the Milky Way was the universe, and all other galaxies were just nebula. 20 years ago we were the only solar system with planets. etc.).

The other day, some scientists released a number that was a result of their calculation about how many other universes there could be with physics laws that didn’t result in their immediate collapse. The number? 10^10^10^7 – that’s ten to the tenth power to the tenth power to the seventh power. The limit on the amount of galaxies a human could comprehend is something like 10^10^16 – also an astronomically huge number, and one that’s literally limited by the amount of connections available in the human brain. By comparison, there are 10^80 atoms in our visible universe.

Just for the sake of those who don’t know powers of ten intimately, 10^10^16 = 10^100,000,000,000,000,000 which equals one followed by 100,000,000,000,000,000 zeros. That number is so large I’m pretty sure we don’t have a computer built yet that could actually hold that number in it’s memory.

Infinity is very infinite indeed.