I’d rather see the world burn than fall before that corrupt, evil religion. As the Jem’hdar would say, “Victory is Life”.

Being Islamophobic, racist and stereotyping much there Raven?

A. “Smallest exoplanet yet is found”
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/43038/title/Smallest_exoplanet_yet_is_found
Finding a planet just under twice Earth’s size puts astronomers closer to discovering an Earth counterpart.

B. What is “an Earth counterpart”?

An “Earth counterpart” may be either a still “pre-lifed” or an already “bio-sphered” planet.

The features that would render a pre-lifed planet a pre-lifed Earth counterpart would include the environmental and compositional parameters of the 4.6 BYA Earth.

The features that would render a bio-sphered planet a bio-sphered Earth counterpart would include a bio-sphere comprising the Planet’s primal organisms, its genes, and the chemical constituents of their evolved organisms, where:

Organism = a self-replicable temporary constrained-energy genetic system that supports and maintains a planet’s biosphere by maintenance of its genes.

Dov Henis
(comments from the 22nd century)
“Life’s Manifest”
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/112.page#578

No post on Omid yet from the BA? Seems not. Pity I’d like to see his views on it and have an on-topic spot to discuss it too ..

@ Raven saying :
February 4th, 2009 at 9:07 am

“StevoR: I’m not worried about Iran in particular, but Islam in general certainly worries me. I’ve read enough of the Qur’an to know that Muslims are specifically told to go out and forcibly convert all non-Muslims … Anyone who can’t be converted is an Enemy of Allah, and must be, as the Daleks would state, exterminated.’

Nonsense! That’s exactly the sort of Islamophobic cartoon villain simplistic misunderstanding I feared we’d get.

Its also totally wrong. In doctrinal terms – respecting the “people of book” (Jews & Christians) and treating all people as equal before God Islam is actually the most egalitarian and tolerant of all the big three monotheisms.

You can’t have read much of the Qu’ran or had some very bad & biased teachers of it to come to your mis-understanding about what Islam means. Do you have any Muslim friends? Have you studied or read more widely about it and its history? I suggest you invest in doing so & learn what you’re talking about before spouting ignorant Islamophobic tripe like that.

Raven : “As the Jem’hdar would say, “Victory is Life”.

Lets see now : Real, complex, multi-faceted global civilisations of Muslims and Islam

Versus

Fictional Star Trek alien baddies.

Big difference there! Can’t you spot it?

Oh & for the record I’m an atheist with a long-standing interest in the South-West Asian (”Islamic world”) region who has studied this area for many years and sucecssfully completed an Honours thesis on the Palestinean issue.

QuietDesperation :

“A country can’t be a villain, but it’s leaders can. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists on doing his best Snidely Whiplash impression on a daily basis, what am I to think?”

About the same as when Dubya Bush tells the world that God told him to invade Iraq.

Actually, Ahmadinejhad is a lot saner and more legitimate a president than Bush, George II the lesser ever was. Okay he uses a bit of OTT rhetoric which is part of that cultural style – Muslim poetry tends to hyperbole and poetic exaggeration – like a lot of other political oratory round the world ..

But then you need to look at the actions & their context – how many nations has Iran invaded lately? None! Not a one since before World War I – during which incidentally, the Arabs fought on the Allied side only to be betrayed by the Zionist lobby.

How many times has the USA and Israel attacked and threatened to wipe out other nations – ones that pose them far less threat than Iran faces from its foes? Lots! Gaza, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cuba, Panama, the list is long and blood-stained….

Iran lacks WMDs, Israel has them -in violation of UN laws.
Iran obeys international law. Israel & the US flout it.

Iran has US troops and a number of US proxies on its immediate borders – & a bellicose nuclear-armed Russia to its North as well.

So you can hardly blame Iran for wanting to be able to defend themselves against the real, clear and present dangers to them.

Look up the CIA role in the Shah’s regime – that might give you some inkling why they see the US as the “Great Satan.” They *don’t* hate us because we’re supposedly so free and democratic (both arguable claims btw.) they hate us because we threaten them and have done tonnes of really nasty stuff to them in the past.

Try and see the other side of the story for once QD.
Just try I dare you!

QD : “And you can see no room for debate on the practicalities of major theocracies (especially ones with a tradition of martyrdom) having nuclear weapons? No room for debate whatsoever in your mind? That’s not hysteria. It’s an honest question asked by many people with several orders of magnitude more geopolitical experience than you or me combined.”

I do know what I’m talking about in this area – you’ve made it very clear that you don’t!

Ideally there’d be NO nuclear weapons – or all the WMDs would be in UN hands with NO single nation given the power to destroy any others. I’ve been to Hiroshima. I know what even the first most primitive A-bombs can do. I grew under the threat of nuclear extinction in the Cold War.

I’ve concluded that perhaps the nation *least* trustworthy with regard to having WMDs is the USA. After all it has been responsible for more attacks and aggression against other nations that really are “peace-loving” rather than war-mongers who spew pro-Peace rhetoric as they invade, occupy and terrorise with “shock & awe” bombing campaigns.

If ever a nation needed to swear off using aggression against other nations and limit itself very strictly to a small military restricted to genuine self-defence only – as they forced the Japanese to do post WWII – that nation is the USA.

Plus if everyone has WMD’s then everyone is equal and has a deterrent – USA vs USSR, India Vs Pakistan and everyone knowing just how bad nukes are is evidence that Mutually Assured Destruction – nasty, ugly and frightening as it is, works.

I hope one day NO nation alone has WMDs – that they are banned and this ban enforced by a genuine global government.

Until that time, Iran having a real deterrent against US or Israeli attack is about the last, best hope for peace.

I know this is off-topic – but some points were raised by others that just *had* to be answered.

That’s three & a half days -small ‘a’ naturally NOT star in “3 And half days” whatever they are? 3 half And-romedan days maybe?

Editing BA, please!
Pasted from word & there’s still typos. How annoying. Sigh.

… Haven’t some exoplanets had both their diameter and mass measured, and thus their density measured? I seem to recall some news about a so called “balsa wood” exoplanet with a density of about 0.2 grams per cubic centimeter. TrES-4 I believe it was called. Was it a transiting planet too?

My info on this (I’m keeping my own exoplanets liszt for reference!) :

TrES-4 The “Balsawood planet” : Discovered October 2007. This Hot Jupiter is the record-holder for largest diameter being 70 % larger than Jupiter’s radius but with a density of just 0.2 grams per cubic centimeter making its density equivalent to balsawood and thus less dense than Saturn. If there was an ocean big enough to float this planet –like Saturn would do so. It would also sizzle being around, 1,330 degrees Celsius (1,600 Kelvin) from orbiting its star in 3 And half days. It was discovered through transiting and directly measured by a team from the Lowell Observatory as part of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (hence TrES) and presents a problem for the theorists being much larger than current models can explain. The Balsawood planet is 1,400 light years distant.

Hope that helps and isn’t too late!