Quote:
Originally posted by Daradon+Aug 26 2004, 11:51 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Daradon @ Aug 26 2004, 11:51 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Cowperson@Aug 26 2004, 09:12 PM
If I'm not mistaken, only gas giants, probably unhabitable, have been discovered so far. If this is a rocky planet, it would probably be the first ever announced.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/08/...anet/index.html
Cowperson
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First rocky planet discoverer
outside our solar system...
Funny how they say it's earth like but it's 14 times larger, is way hotter, and only has a three day year...
But I know what they are getting at. Mars howver would still be far the most 'earth-like'.
As for the alien thing, I was thinking about the sheer math of that for a long time and it's virtually impossible when it comes to distances. Not saying they aren't out there and there is no other life in the universe, because I'm sure there has to be with that much space, that any stars. I just think the odds of us crossing paths are pretty much nil. To make exploration possible they would have HAD to be able to cross space faster than the flow of time (IE some sort of 'wormhole' as Sci-fi has coined). If they were succesful at that, I would hardly believe they would care about us.
If you could cross space like that, it's possible you would have answered all the fundamental philosophical questions. How did we get here? How did it all start? Etc. Talking to us would be like talking to ants. There might be so many physiological differences in fact it might be impossible. They might be beings of energy, or emotion. A collective consciousness of course.
Of course, if they were a collective consciousness, maybe we're a part of them already, and vice versa...
Things I think about...
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A great science fiction short story I read a few years ago had a rocket leaving earth with frozen human embryos and a life support system, coasting through the stars for millennia before finding a suitable planet to land. Then the machinery coming to life and incubating the embryos to birth. The story ends there but the implication was the machine would raise these embryos and educate them as well.
Cowperson