Posted on 06/24/2008 6:30:34 PM PDT by RDTF
Planet hunters say it's just a matter of time before they lasso Earth's twin, which almost surely is hiding somewhere in our star-studded galaxy.
Momentum is building: Just last week, astronomers announced they had discovered three super-Earths — worlds more massive than ours but small enough to most likely be rocky — orbiting a single star. And dozens of other worlds suspected of having masses in that same range were found around other stars.
"Being able to find three Earth-mass planets around a single star really makes the point that not only may many stars have one Earth, but they may very well have a couple of Earths," said Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
right. and I might be on the verge of getting a date with Kim Bassinger 20 years ago.
Must be a really slow news day...
Interesting mental gymnastics.
Imagine if 50 years ago we had found that Venus or mars had intelligent life. How do you think that would have changed society and where do you think our space program would be today?
This is great news, I hope they are not too late because if Barack Obama is elected President we are going to be needing Earth’s twin pronto.
Yup, they might be “on the verge”, but, think about it, they are in the business of finding Earth’s twin or twins out there. I’d rather see the effort made to improve life here on our home, Earth, than search for the grain of sand, not the needle, in the haystack that is the universe. Some of the followers of Carl Sagan are smoking some strong stuff, as he did, and are not to be trusted.
And I might be on the verge of picking the winning lottery numbers. Might, maybe, perhaps, possibly etc. When they find it, then let me know.
What a cool movie that was!
Quickly, send Algore Bearmanpig to save it from carbon!
imagine, 2 hillarys, 2 helen thomas................
that was a cool movie, haven’t seen it in a long time
hmmm...Spock with a beard, an Empire intead of a Federation...
That would be cool! I hope they have oil.
and they will be arriving any day now.
Jeez, they won’t have to look far-I’ve been feeling like I’m living in a parallel universe for about 16 months now.
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I heard him say that if we’d spent the money on space exploration instead of Iraq, we’d already have found Earth’s twin, colonized it, and provided abortion services for its inhabitants.
"Your call is very important to us. For all customer service inquiries, press "1" for Venusian. Press "2" for English."
It’s people like you that are tilting the decision we have towards the negative side.
I’m a firm believer in the hypothesis that we’ll come to a point in our civilization where we’ll have the option of moving out, colonizing the solar system and finally getting away from our single sun, or destroying all human life on the planet. And with people like you (on both sides of the aisle) that are so vehemently opposed to exploration (don’t worry, it’s human nature to be afraid of the unknown) we’re tilting more and more to self destruction than to expansion.
Survival of the fittest my backside, it’s survival of the masses, reality and logic be damned.
The “we need to fix things here first” attitude appears to be a primarilly liberal attitude. The reasons are often noble but the reasoning flawed.
I look to space as the answer to many of the same questions that the fix here first crowd asks.
Heard that all the time from Hippies in the 60s and 70s. They were entirely successful in getting the Apollo moon program cancelled, the Superconducting Supercollider cancelled, and the alternative fuels program cancelled. So here we sit on the improved home, Earth.
Screw that. Hippies already derailed our space program once with that kind of logic. I'd GLADLY pay mroe taxes for better space exploration. Especially if they gutted welfare to do it.
I’ve found it prevalent across socio-politico-economic bounds. Well educated, poorly educated, rich, poor, middle-class, it doesn’t matter. Stupidity is permeating the culture.
I’m a space guy, so I guess I’m biased. But people just can’t see the possibilities that exist, for example on Mars.
I suggest you read The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin, if you haven’t already.
It beats reporting on all of the good news from Iraq! (sarcasm)
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