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Erich K - 2007-04-26 11:27:57
I agree!!
I was just slogging through a hideous old movie called FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE where they land on the 13th moon of Jupiter since it's "the only planet in our solar system that can support life as we know it."
Life--as we know it!!!
I've been so focused on intra-dimensional quantum blah blah consciousness that I forgot there might be genuine other "life as we know it."
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Philip - 2007-04-26 16:43:12
I often wish this planet were more earth-like.
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Paula - 2007-04-26 16:48:44
"Ha" to both comments.
My meta-observation is: why wasn't this bigger news? It did not appear above the fold in any of the papers I saw this week, and the Times had it relegated to their science section. To me it's not only dizzyingly romantic and hopeful and interesting (like Knut!) but could potentially solve a lot of problems, like where can we live after we've destroyed our planet?
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Chris - 2007-04-26 16:59:52
Paula
The last decade in science has really given the "life is easy and probably all around" view a real boost. Water on Mars, Life here on earth in the most remote harsh areas (very very bottom of ocean, artic), strong evidence of Mars once having had water, Titan with its methane oceans, and a plethora of planets around other stars. The funding has only recently followed. I spent one of my summers when I was still doing astrophysics working on planetary detectors. The one that I helped my friend with just got put into the permanent collection at the Natural History Museum here in NY. So to make a short story long; yes I agree with you....
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iwombat - 2007-04-26 17:24:02
Well I think that the hope that we can make a clean start on a new planet ( even stephen Hawking!) is evidence of our cultural childishness, if our wasteful polluting technology manages to launch a few "lucky" individuals the 20 light years to this "new" (maybe not, indians anyone?) planet this will do next to nothing to alleviate human suffering here on earth, the very effort and focus of such an endeavor would probably tend to make things worse. I do tend to belive that life and even consciousness is easy, but we can barely recognise it and deal with it here on earth, most likely the entire animal kingdom is much more similar to us than any aliens we may find, and we are wiping them out, and destroying their habitats, like the juggernaut we are. consciousness arises from complex dynamic systems, maybe the sun is conscious, maybe the earth is. We don't know how to communicate. I have been a fan of science and discoveries all of my life, now I think I see more context.
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Paula - 2007-04-26 21:34:08
very effort and focus of such an endeavor would probably tend to make things worse
I'm not sure what the world will be like, or how countries will be governed, by the time any of this comes to fruition (if it does). But for right now, in this particular country, with the right leadership, we could have a thriving space program (with goals beyond nationalism), and take care of the people here. But not if we are spending billions of dollars on a war.
The one that I helped my friend with just got put into the permanent collection at the Natural History Museum here in NY.
That's very cool.
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Greg - 2007-04-29 00:43:04
Religious fundamentalists of many... larger... organizations, are vehemently opposed to the idea of a planet similar to earth, and the search and study for such an entity. They seem to think that such a beast would preclude the idea of a God that could have created firmament and heavens in more than one place at the same time.
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