'Second Earth' found, 20 light years away | Hacker News Reader

'Second Earth' found, 20 light years away

guardian.co.uk

54 pointspg78 comments

> "We wouldn't be surprised if there is life on this planet," said Stephane Udry, an astronomer on the project at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

I sincerely hope we find definite proof within my lifetime.

The possibility excites me. I wonder what the sociological consequences will be if we can conclude that we are not alone in the galaxy.

Precisely why I hope it happens in my lifetime. I want to be part of something truly historic. Besides, I have to know!

You will soon be able to store the Library of Congress in a pocket-sized device. And yet you're holding out for something "truly historic"?

Wake up and smell the history! :)

How much data is the library of congress? I bet we could store all the text in a portable device right now.

The 20-terabyte size of the Library of Congress is widely quoted and as far as I know is derived by assuming that LC has 20 million books and each requires 1 MB. Of course, LC has much other stuff besides printed text, and this other stuff would take much more space. Thirteen million photographs, even if compressed to a 1 MB JPG each, would be 13 terabytes. The 4 million maps in the Geography Division might scan to 200 TB. LC has over five hundred thousand movies; at 1 GB each they would be 500 terabytes (most are not full-length color features). Bulkiest might be the 3.5 million sound recordings, which at one audio CD each, would be almost 2,000 TB.

This makes the total size of the Library perhaps about 3 petabytes (3,000 terabytes).

-Lesk.com

Not quite pocket-sized yet, but frighteningly close. If the LoC is 3 petabytes, we're at the point where I could mindlessly surf to Buy.com and get 3,000 1TB external drives for $200 each:

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=205001869&Sear...

...and store my own personal LoC for $600k. That's cheaper than a lot of houses here in Boston. And that's just the stupidly inefficient way to store a personal LoC.

(With peer-to-peer, of course, the problem of giving me instant access to the LoC from my portable phone is essentially solved. The movies are still a bit slow.)

Isn't it odd how important this is to people? I don't mean this in a bad way - it's important to me as well, far out of proportion to how it would impact my life. I would be extremely pleased if we found overwhelming evidence of life on another planet, even if it's just single cell life 20 light years away.

I think you are underestimating the impact. Think of what this would mean for philosophy and our understanding of the universe.

Think of what it means to the answer of these questions:

Where did we come from? Why are we here?

where did we come from? The explanation I can piece together through memory is that we most likely come from organic matter that (though processes that are not yet well understood) formed the basis for cellular life. Random mutation and natural selection over hundreds of millions of years led to the speciation that includes homo sapiens.

I'm not sure that finding life on another planet would change the science much. Maybe there would be some connection, maybe not - they could be parallel processes, or maybe some kind of seeding function took place.

Either way, it would still be immensely satisfying discovery, one of the greatest ever.

"I'm not sure that finding life on another planet would change the science much. " -- Maybe not, but it would shut up the religios nutjobs, and the creationisms freaks...

If there is life in another planet (even a non-intelligent one) means life is a normal part of the universe, and it is another blow to their idiotic books that claim god created everything.

Interesting...This possibility fills me with profound dread. People meeting other unknown alien people has happened in this planet in the near history _so_ many times. And not in a single one of those meetings was there anything to feel mushy about. It was blood all the way. Pizarro and Atahualpa didn't sit together and play chess over a hot cup of coffee and exchange notes on their childhood crushes.

Bonus question:

Let's say you run across an alien during a walk in the woods. How could you ever tell whether the alien was friendly or not? Aliens might act friendly, right up until the time they put you in the big alien stew pot. Likewise, friendly aliens might use deadly force and extreme caution to make sure you pose no threat. Would you want to be sending "Howdy There! We're new in the block! Drop by for some free pizza!" messages to a civilization 20 light years away?

It may be hard to even tell whether they're acting friendly or not..

There's a fairly easy example of how this can go bad here on earth. Cats and dogs don't innately hate each other, but everyone knows how they get on.

The problem is that cats and dogs have opposing body language; when a dog acts excited and happy, the cat interprets that language as aggression. For example, a cat with its ears down and tail wagging is a cat that's about to fight. A dog doing the same thing is being submissive.

Of course, this all assumes that any intelligent extra-terrestrial life even has any sort of body language or capability to communicate that we can even recognize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE

Long answer to bonus question has already been written and published. "Speaker for the dead" by Orson Scott Card. I am restraining myself from giving a summary here. I don't want to spoil your couple of weekends spent well. Be sure to read the introduction as well.

Thanks. It's in my stack. I gave up sometime during the second Ender book, but I'll give this one a read.

Speaker for the dead is the second ender book. No?

Gee yep. Sure enough (sheepish grin)

I must have stopped reading it fairly early, because looking at the cover I don't remember any of it. I remember the first book, however -- that super guy they brought back for Ender's training and the planet and all. It's been a few years, though. Good thing I kept all the books.

Apologies for the poor memory.

I think Orson Scott Card wrote "Speaker for the Dead" first and decided he needed another book just to set up the backstory. That book became Ender's Game, and he found it a bit ironic that he's remembered more for the prequel than the book he really felt compelled to write.

http://xkcd.com/304/

I've thought of this a lot. What if the alien way to show the finger is to blink or something completely normal like that? They would get pissed up fairly quick.

We have been sending radio and TV signals for a very long time, maybe they have seen some Pizza Hut commercials ;)

That depends on how much we know about them and how much they know about us. They might not even know how to act friendly and we might not know whether our potential shock and awe attack would be either shocking or awe inspiring. Knowing nothing, I for one would simply walk away and buy a pregnancy test ;-)

I think the greatest danger by far would be viruses. Culturally I'm not as pessimistic. Our perception of historical events is influenced by what historians find interesting. All the boring, more or less peaceful, mingling, cohabitation and assimilation going on for thousands of years is rarely mentioned.

Our civilization reaches a critical point as we reach Type 1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) and see if there is life that has already claimed the close parts of the galaxy. If there is nothing out there, we get to expand and grow. If space is already claimed, then we will probably get gamma ray bursted or something. Either way, it's something we have to and will try.

hopefully religious folks would loosen up a bit

Unless there's intelligent life, that seems out of the question (assuming no breakthroughs in lifespan extensions). 20 light years is a long way from home.

If you took a picture of the night sky with a 1 zettapixel camera (mega giga tera peta exa zetta) this planet would be about 1 pixel.

Maybe he's hoping his life will be long.

There is probably a better chance if we can become cyborgs fast enough.

Another possibility is that everyone, or better everything that has ever been, can be ressurected providing Heisenberg was not completely right. It seems reasonable that sometime along our civilization we will find a way to trace back and reconstruct every part of history.

Most importantly, when we do eventually meet an alien, always remember to count in radians.

Orson Card's "Redemption of Columbus" is based on this idea. They figure out how to calculate a change in history that will create a better future. This leaves the possibility open that technology can reach a state where the meta-timeline can be retraced and everyone resurrected.

Guess I'll have to wait a long time to hear back from that YC-clone I applied to out there.

Second Earth is not a startup hub. The aliens should move to Silicon Valley.

But can that get working visas? I don't think a UFO-1 visa category exists yet.

This conference was organized to promote Second Earth as a new startup hub, so it's very rude of you to come here and say that.

Whew. I guess the Wumps are safe for now.

I almost wet myself when I read that.

P.S This guy must have seen some really amazing stuff not to be amazed by aliens.

A relevant quote that stuck to my mind from the movie "contact":

"Young Ellie: Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?

Ted Arroway: I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space."

Heh... I wonder how many people don't even know that Contact was originally a book by Carl Sagan. Although the movie was more true to the book than most, the book was much better than the movie, as is usually the case.

The last 2 pages is the best part, and there's no way it could get into a movie.

Which are?

When Ellie (or is it another scientist?) finds a message from God buried deep inside Pi.

"The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover a miracle--another circle, drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. There would be richer messages farther in. It doesn't matter what you look like, or what you're made of, or where you come from. As long as you live in this universe, and have a modest talent for mathematics, sooner or later you'll find it. It's already here. It's inside everything. You don't have to leave your planet to find it. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe.

The circle had closed. She found what she had been searching for.

http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/contact.shtml

Sagan intended this as an allusion to Thomas Carlyle. 'A sad spectacle!' exclaimed Thomas Carlyle, contemplating the possibility that millions of planets circle other suns. 'If they be inhabited, what a scope for pain and folly; and if they be not inhabited, what a waste of space!' Contact is not the only place this allusion occurs in Sagan, who previously quoted Carlyle during a conference on extraterrestrials; Google makes a video of the conference available online.

Very cool!

I thought the technology wasn't ready for all of the claims the article makes. An atmosphere? Rocky world? If they're able to do this now, imagine what it'll be like with the James Webb scope NASA is putting up in a few years.

And if we ever do discover intelligent ET in our lifetime, perhaps a good way to get to know each civilization is to hook up our internets. Or then again, maybe that's an awful idea.

Does anyone know if quantum entanglement has been proven enough to allow for at least a glimpse of being able to make data transmission occur at "faster than the speed of light"?

I mean, if a quantum object represents a bit, and gets flipped here; and its counterpart is on... Mars; the counterpart should get flipped instantly, no?

Theoretically it will work, but the problem is getting the counterpart there. If you want instantaneous communication to something 20 light years away, you've got to travel 20 light years to get it there first.

IIRC, entanglement does not allow for communication of data.

There is no flipping of data it's more like you hand 2 people (Bob and Ted) a box with the same number in it. They walk to other sides of the world and then Ted opens his box. As soon as Ted opens their box they know what is in the other box but that has nothing to do with the speed of light and there is no way for Ted to use what he knows about the number in Bob's box to send Bob new information.

Gah, Okay; This is why quantum mechanics drives me nuts. I guess what confuses me is if the state in Bob's box changes, then the state in Ted's box should also change as well regardless of distance.

However, reading a little more about the quantum teleportation process leads me to believe I'm wrong on this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation

Thanks for the great explanation, btw.

That's not quite the right analogy -- it misses the point a bit. In that analogy the two numbers have definite values right from the start -- they're just ordinary boxes with ordinary numbers written in them. In a more quantum mechanical analogy, the numbers inside the boxes would be undetermined until the observation was made, and yet you would always find that the boxes had the same number inside, even if they were opened simultaneously and many light years away from each other.

Under the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, there is in fact some kind of spooky "instantaneous" communication going on between the particles -- one of them needs to tell the other "oh no, my wavefunction has just collapsed in such-and-such a basis and your value now has to be |X>".

Complicating this even further is the fact that relativity tells us there's no such thing as "simultaneity" when we're talking about things happening at different points in space, and so while it looks to one observer like the faster-than-light signal must have gone from Ted's box to Bob's box, to an observer moving relative to the first observer it might look like the faster-than-light signal actually went from Bob's to Ted's.

Some other interpetations of quantum mechanics (in particular, no-collapse aka "many worlds" interpretations) this faster-than-light signalling doesn't occur... though these interpretations have other counter-intuitive features instead.

Even if there _is_ faster-than-light signalling between particles, though, you still can't use this to send a message, because the information you get is always just a random string of bits -- there's no way to actually send useful information.

Hey, the technology doesn't exist yet. The atmosphere, rocky, etc.. are all speculations based on theoretical modeling. If you're curious, go to http://www.oklo.org/ and download Systemic. This allows you to fit models to data, to see how the planet-hunting game is played.

The planet was found by repeatedly observing the same star over and over, and measuring how fast the star is moving away or towards us. This wiggle is produced by the motion of planets. It's really small. Currently the best team (full disclosure: one of my advisors is on it) can measure velocities of 30 centimeter per second. Pause and reflect. It's an amazingly difficult and important detection.

That's what I thought.

Although the discovery is amazing, there's a bit of over-selling in the article. It's a detection based on a wiggle that means the model says there's a world where the model says it would be mostly rocky where the model says....

I guess I can stop painting those "Welcome E.T." signs now.

I didn't explain myself properly. The planet is almost certainly there.

The atmosphere, color, etc.. of the planet is still in the speculation stage.

I understood what you meant. The wobble prediction method is a lot more mature than various models of planetary formation. And the planet cannot be directly observed, only properties about it inferred from the wobble. No spectral measurements of the planet or its atmosphere were made.

It'll be great when we can start making direct observations instead of doing a lot of inference.

There is no way that planet can ever support any kind of civilization. With a 13 day year, in less than 300 days they can drink legally!

Or maybe I'm confused about where to draw the line with chauvinism. (shrug)

That's an interesting point. Then depending on the tilt of their planet, seasons go full cycle in about two weeks. I wonder what implications that has for the equivalent of photosynthetic life there. Are they "awake" and soaking up the sun for about a week before "sleeping" the second? Or do they just kinda ride it out?

That would also influence the "animals" (i.e. non-photosynthetic life) there and its behaviors.

That's all assuming they get energy from the sun. Maybe they can produce energy in other ways.

Vernor Vinge had an excellent novel named "A Deepness in the Sky" that dealt with the development of intelligent life on a planet whose star would extinguish and re-ignite itself predictably. Something like 3 decades of ignition and then 7 or 8 decades of darkness. The dominant life form was a spider-like being that could hibernate and ride out the darkness by creating a "deepness" (essentially a den).

Great book, with interesting insights about unusual planetary configurations with life. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes hard science fiction.

The on-off star spent 215 years off, according to Wikipedia.

A Fire Upon the Deep, set in the same universe, is excellent too.

The answers can be inferred on Earth. Most photosynthetic organisms on Earth are not deciduous trees and don't have seasonal cycles. All of them do maintain circadian cycles to cope with the much faster and more dramatic day/night cycle.

Or most? I know the cyanobacteria do and I'm pretty sure the purple bacteria do. The bacteriorhodopsin-users might not. If you call that photosynthesis.

Why do people (sci-fi writers and scientists alike) generally seem to assume that extra-terrestrial life would be Earth-like life in Earth-like conditions?

You know, it's funny, I work with one of the competing teams (the best one.) Every time I hear about planet-hunting in the news, I think to my self, "screw startups." :)

I really don't want to crash this party, but has anyone taken a look at the date of the new? It isn't exactly..."new".

That's crazy. I used to think if anything like this happened, I'd be one of the first to be aware. I guess not. O.o

Well,

To be fair, there's a huge PR machine behind these kinds of discoveries. In other words, there's fuzz associated with a planet being an "earth analog." There will be more and more "earth like" planets discovered in the future.

I mean, we've only discovered 212 extra-solar planets so there's plenty more to find :)

Oops, sure enough. I think I saw it on popurls. I've seen this happen before, where an old story makes the rounds of the news aggregators, probably getting more traffic than it did when it was first published. Dominews.

Oh... I didn't look at this date and figured this was a "new" might-be-habitable planet. I thought it was a good sign we were finding more than one... but having found just one is still pretty good.

BTW, if you have $1M to donate (or some fraction greater than 10%) I can put you in contact with the right people.

Seriously, depending on how much you give, your name might go on one of the most important telescopes in the world.... maybe you could even name the first true earth analog :)

Pretty good deal.

If we're accepted to their YC clone, that would be a sign of intelligent life.

It would be awesome to discover intelligent life, I think that realizing that we are not alone in the universe will make us all think about being part of the world and not just being some country's citizens.

If it takes that to get us to that mindset, then we'll be in real trouble when we need to all think about being part of the universe and not just some planet's citizens.

Maybe when we discover intelligent life in another universe. :P

I hope aliens know the trick to cheat death, because I'd sure love to see that discovery.

I was gasping. I'm in shock. I used to dream about something like this. =)

I know I am moving. I am almost sure that there is less evil, hatred, jealousy, envy and competition anywhere outside this world.

Clearly God is testing our faith with such tantalizing discoveries.

What will those Satan-worshipping scientists think up next?

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