[PatrickHenry]

Opinions certainly seem to vary on this topic.

[PatrickHenry]

Science list Ping! This is an elite subset of the Evolution list.
See the list's description in my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail me to be added or dropped.

[Viet Vet in Augusta GA]

"rarer"?

[Bikers4Bush]

All I know is that if space is infinite then there has to be at least one.

[ECM]

There was a book written on this very topic a few years back, but the name escapes me at the moment.

[ZULU]

"Even then, the wobble is detectable only for giant planets, which are those about as big as Jupiter.."

So what does this tell them about the existance of earth-sized planets? Zippo.

In all the millions of galaxies, each with millions of stars, its hard to believe that whatever conditions were conducive to the formation of life here did not also occur elsewhere.

[RockinRight]

Creationist arguments aside, its hard to say really if another Earth could develop somewhere.

[RightWingAtheist]

I wonder if Martin beer is any relation to the great german astronomer Wilhelm Beer.

[Dead Corpse]

110 out of BILLIONs of stars in one galaxy alone and they are already throwing in the towel? Sheesh... we just got started!

Do these knotheads never stop to think that there may be as many different processes for planet formation as there are dust clouds coalescing into stellar nebula? That each may be radically different from the next depending on the ratio and composition of elements contained therein?

That just because one person uses Nestle and I use Hersey's that the end result couldn't still be one darn tasty chocolate chip cookie?

Don't they teach logic any more?

[RUCKUS INC.]

Big News, the longer we study the Universe the more it invariably points to a Creator who designed this little "happenstance" called Earth.

[ThinkDifferent]

There are 110 of these extrasolar planets, at the latest count, and they are all between about a tenth and ten times as massive as Jupiter. Most of them are, however, much closer to their sun than Jupiter is to ours

Why is this surprising? If we're using gravitational anomolies to detect planets, of course it's going to be easier to find large planets that are close to their sun, because the effects of gravity are much greater.

[fooman]

Drake equation ping. I always go back and forth on this ....

[jimt]

When there are billions of stars in each galaxy, and billions of galaxies, it's kinda hard to believe we're unique.

[Lucy Lake]

Are We Alone (reason to ponder what makes the earth unique)


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1181928/posts

[Physicist]

They suggest that other planets were not formed by the same kind of process that produced our Solar System, so they might not have smaller, habitable companions.

We've been over all this time and again on FR. Current detection methods select a highly specific (and probably highly unusual) sample which tells us little about Earth-like (or even Jupiter-like) worlds.

The idea that these close binary brown dwarf systems formed differently from our solar system in no way supports the title of this article, even if the idea is perfectly correct.

[atomic conspiracy]

I know as much about this as any non-specialist. Rare Earth makes as good an argument as the SETI proponents. One significant difference: the negative case is falsifiable (just find some ETs or an Earthlike extra-solar planet). The positive case can be continued literally forever: "They are there, we just haven't found them yet." It is worth some effort to find out, but anyone who claims to have the answer now is frankly full of crap.

[Junior]

They also tend to have more elongated orbits than those of Jupiter and the Earth, both of which orbit the Sun on almost circular paths.

I thought our planets' orbits were "wildly elliptical."

[jpl]

Planets ten times as massive as Jupiter, those are some big-ass planets.

[Dawgmeister]

HMMPH! Bodes well for the rest of the galaxy, then...

[ASA Vet]

Wow, 6 posts before the hijacking attempts.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

Is the Cosmos a Work of Poor Engineering or the Gift of an Artistic Designer?

The God's Must be Tidy!