Posted on 01/23/2011 9:38:58 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard, made the claim that we are alone in the universe after an analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far showed all were hostile to life.
Dr Smith said the extreme conditions found so far on planets discovered outside out Solar System are likely to be the norm, and that the hospitable conditions on Earth could be unique.
“We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own. They are very hostile to life as we know it,” he said.
He pointed to stars such as HD10180, which sparked great excitement when it was found to be orbited by a planet of similar size and appearance to Earth.
But the similarities turned out to be superficial. The planet lies less than two million miles from its sun, meaning it is roasting hot, stripped of its atmosphere and blasted by radiation.
Many of the other planets have highly elliptical orbits which cause huge variations in temperature which prevent water remaining liquid, thus making it impossible for life to develop.
A separate team of scientists recently declared the chance of aliens existing on a newly discovered Earth-like planet “100 per cent”.
Professor Steven Vogt , of the Carnegie institution in Washington, said he had “no doubt” extraterrestrial life would be found on a small, rocky planet found orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581 last September.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Did they count Alan Grayson?
How true.
Just as “global warming” is “settled science.”
They’re looking in all the wrong places i.e. they’re looking at solar systems like our present one and not like the original pre-flood system. They should be looking at dwarf stars like Jupiter and Saturn once were and the thing they should be taking the hardest look at would be Proxima Centauri.
What a stupid thing for someone in his position to say.
A survey of 500 planets....out of 4.6 billion in this galaxy alone.
Yeah 500 out of 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000+
planets is a good sample lot
He’s probably just desperately hoping that there is no power in the universe mightier than the state....
500 planets down, unknown but very very large amount to go.
I can’t remember who said it... might have been George Carlin... but a comedian once said that if there’s intelligent life out there, they are proving their intelligence by NOT contacting US.
We have not found life yet, and the 500 planets we can see are too inhospitable for life, so there must not be life anywhere except here.
This DUMBELL should have his scientist license revoked.
I bet he ‘believes’ in global warming too.
And I declare with 100% certainly that we will find a planet shaped just like Alfred E. Newman's head before we find life on another planet.
In related news, the ant colony in my driveway has declared that life outside the block we live on is impossible.
I am absolutely sure that intelligent life exists in the universe ... just not here
Damn!
500 planets, well that settles it...
But if there is no other life in the universe, there soon will be. We’ll spread out sooner or later. Then go back in time and populate it that way too. So there already are other inhabited worlds, just not yet in the past.
That is, of course, deo volente.
In other breaking news:”There are no black swans.”
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