James Webb Space Telescope begins historic mission

[ArlyA]

Seems I read somewhere they already found thousands of planets in what we consider the Life zone...

 

[Snobdds]

Seems I read somewhere they already found thousands of planets in what we consider the Life zone...

This sounds really exciting until you realize you're looking back at hundreds of thousands of years and we have no idea if the entire orbit is in the life zone.

orbits are super important to understand and one of the hardest to confirm.

 

[Snobdds]

The JWT is more about deciphering the chemical make up of galaxies and to a lesser extent planets, more than anything else.

 

[Snobdds]

Understanding the deflection of light through a prism forms the entire base knowledge of astrophysics. It seems to be producing already.

 

[ArlyA]

This sounds really exciting until you realize you're looking back at hundreds of thousands of years and we have no idea if the entire orbit is in the life zone.

orbits are super important to understand and one of the hardest to confirm.

But what we see, some galaxies are still in the nursery stage.

 

[tradosaurus]

CGI and cartoons. Gimmee a break.

 

[sd455dan]

Cough.

 

[BravoXray]

We only know life to live and thrive a specific distance from a star, due to temperatures needed to support life. Not saying it's impossible, but having a planet evolve like ours did with other planets affecting gravitational pull to have a specific orbit is not likely to be replicated. Other planets and their orbit contribute to our orbit. Our moon and it's distance from the sun and the relationship to our planet are very important to having seasons for life.

When I was in College, a former NASA scientist taught Astrophysics and astronomy. He was so good at teaching and reasoning, he uncovered a love of space I never knew I had. Space is so fascinating and full of mystery. When I retire, I'm going to go finish my astrophysics degree. I have about 6 classes left. I have a pretty strong telescope at my cabin where it is really dark at night. I can look into the past for hours some nights.

When you consider the number of galaxies in the universe (hundreds of billions), the number of stars in each of those galaxies (hundreds of billions to trillions) and how many planets are in each of those stellar systems (none to dozens possibly),
the apparent wide availability of organic compounds that we assume are necessary for life to exist, I would wager a fair amount there is a lot of life out there, from simple single cell organisms to intelligent species like ourselves. The odds are greatly in favor of it, since it happened here more than once.

 

[Snobdds]

When you consider the number of galaxies in the universe (hundreds of billions), the number of stars in each of those galaxies (hundreds of billions to trillions) and how many planets are in each of those stellar systems (none to dozens possibly),
the apparent wide availability of organic compounds that we assume are necessary for life to exist, I would wager a fair amount there is a lot of life out there, from simple single cell organisms to intelligent species like ourselves. The odds are greatly in favor of it, since it happened here more than once.

I was wondering when this point was going to surface. Yes, the fact there is one planet that has defied the odds and supports life makes the statistical case that there are other planets out there that can also support life. No-one can argue against that simple exercise in probability, but it's also just that, a very simplistic way of thinking about this. The good thing is, there is math to try and quantify this. However the problem lies in the variables and their consensus around a definition on how to report them. There is an equation called the drake equation that attempts to put a number on a possibility of life in our own milky way galaxy. I'll save you the time and just tell you it's very very very small. If you want to do the math yourself, look up and enjoy.

The universe is more than 13 billion years old. That means that even if there have been a thousand civilizations in our own galaxy, if they live only as long as we have been around, roughly ten thousand years, then all of them are likely already extinct. Asteroids are bad for civilizations, it turns out. Then others won’t evolve until we are long gone. For us to have much chance of success in finding another "contemporary" active technological civilization, on average they must last much longer than our present lifetime. Given the vast distances between stars and the fixed speed of light we might never really be able to have a conversation with another civilization anyway. If they were 20,000 light years away then every exchange would take 40,000 years to go back and forth. So in reality, by the time we know of life out there...they already may be extinct in real time.

 

[riptides]

“Time is basically an illusion created by the mind to aid in our sense of temporal presence in the vast ocean of space. Without the neurons to create a virtual perception of the past and the future based on all our experiences, there is no actual existence of the past and the future. All that there is, is the present.”

Abhijit Naskar
Author "Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost."