The search for primitive life. Why?

[matter]

I was watching a program on interstellar travel on the Science channel the other night and it made me angry. They were talking about traveling to planets that we might find in different star systems, but they never mentioned intelligent life, or life more advanced than us. Why the hell would we waste time traveling to planets to drop probes to find out what we already know, that there's no intelligent life there. Why is everyone so scared of finding something that makes us look stupid? Why the hell would we explore planets that are unlike ours? I can understand that they may do it for different reasons other than trying to find intelligent life, but to me that just seems like such a waste of time. We finally manage to speed across space and we look for primitive life? It's just so annoying to me. Argh. We should be trying to find something that has more knowledge than us, not less.

[Sayonara]

Stop.

 

Think.

[matter]

Why don't you just type what you think? I'm interested to know why you're scared to find intelligent life.

[Sayonara]

I didn't say I was.

 

Reason numero uno is bloody obvious - it's going to be a lot more difficult to find planets with highly advanced ecosystems, much less intelligent species. It is far more likely that the galaxy is teeming with simple life and perhaps a smattering of sentient races.

 

The second reason is that studying primitive life will answer many questions we have about how life began on Earth, and why it thrived, and why it refused to be destroyed on more than 6 occassions.

 

The third - not so great - reason, is that they'd probably kick our asses.

[matter]

lol. Thanks, thats all I really wanted was an opinion. But, the fact alone that life refused to be destroyed on earth already shows us that under the right conditions life can withstand harsh factors right? Or am I wrong? I mean, what more do we need to know about primitive life? Also, why do you think its unlikely that there are many planets that have an ecosystem like Earth's? Could our solar system really be that unique? Could our planet be even more unique?

[Kettle]

Primitive life is still life - it means that there is another rock out there at least a little bit similar to us. That makes our own existence seem less tenuous.

 

Interstellar travel has other merits as well - observing first hand phenomena that we have only been able to peer at through telescopes, walk on other planets and maybe even establish colonies on them.

 

Imho, whether or not you believe that there's more life out there, space travel is still a very noble quest.

[Skye]

Finding any kind of life on another planet would be one of the greatest discoveries, travelling to another solar system would one of the greatest accomplishments.

 

It's quite reasonable to look for simpler life since it will most likely precede complex life. Presumably, if we can find microscopic life, large and intelligent life would be fairly obvious.

[matter]

I agree that it would be a great discovery to find such life on a planet. After some thought I realize that studying how primitive life evolves on other planets can help us understand just exactly how far life can be pushed before it ends. I'm glad we have many areas of research, where a group of people can look for primitive life, and others can think about intelligent life. Unfortunately, the only way to look for intelligent life right now is through radio waves. To me that sucks. It sucks because our lifetimes are really not that long, and i'm jealous that I won't be able to see these things in my lifetime. I just don't want to waste time. I think after this new telescope is built, maybe in a good 50 years, we may be able to spot smaller planets in star systems like ours. Maybe in that star system on that planet, life has already begun, and has been evolving for longer amount of time than we have.

[Dudde]

but think of what the religious communities would do if other life WERE found on other planets?O.o

the whole theory of God/gods would be thrown into oblivion, especially if contact were made and the other planet didn't worship anything!

 

of course, as it has done in the past, the whole thing would probably just change to mention that God is controlling the universe and created many planets, instead of just one as mentioned in Genesis;)

[IMI]

If there was a species of life out there that was noticably more advanced than are we then they probably would have contacted us by now. Or...are they smarter than to do that Maybe they have been here and realize that if they interacted with us they would be dumber for it.

 

If life does exist elsewhere, and I believe it must, who is to say that conditions that led to it must be similar to our own? Say, for instance, they are not carbon-based. A whole different set of circumstances could have led to their existence.

 

At any rate, if we find it it's more likely to be less advanced than us. If it finds us it is likely to be more advanced than us. Hopefully we won't stumble upon any less advanced lifeforms. If we did we would probably just enslave them. We humans seem to do that to that which we deem to be inferior.

[Sayonara]

Unfortunately, there is little chance we will ever meet or contact even advanced races. The difficulties in doing so are enormous.

 

There is a thread somewhere about non-carbon based life, the consensus was that it's unlikey to have arisen (barring freaky energy-based life that we can't really predict with much confidence).

[Intelligence]

I was playing music and your little banana man was dancing to the beat!

 

Freaky

 

Anyhow - NASA has no particular goal to find life, NASA is merely a gatherer of any information and it weighs it's mission based on a ratio of:

 

possible gain if info

------------------------

expense of mission + time to launch mission

[Intelligence]

The first goal is to use the giant telescope in space to look at stars.

 

First stars must be tested to see if they have planets - this is done by measuring blinks of stars when planets pass in front

 

Once a star has been shown to HAVE a planet, it must be determined the size of planet and it's distance from the sun to see if it lies within the golden ratio based on sun temperature and distance from the sun

 

Once this is done the planet is labeled as a candidate

 

SETI would then pay close attention to transmissions coming from this direction - which works only if the life sends such things...unlikely.

 

After identifying that hey man it's up to NASA or other countries space orgs to do what they do......

 

...which right now is nearly nothing.

[JaKiri]

Originally posted by Intelligence

First stars must be tested to see if they have planets - this is done by measuring blinks of stars when planets pass in front

 

I'm not sure this is correct, if memory serves

[Dudde]

that banana dances to just about anything you could possibly play music-wise, which is the reason it won the race, it's just too dang cool

 

as for looking for life on other planets, SETI is only looking for a few kinds of transmissions from the planet, which would take bajillions of years to reach this planet anyway, and who the heck said that the race had transmissions coming off of it anyway? maybe they're smart enough to direct their messages and stuff, like through laser, etc.

[JaKiri]

We don't yet, and they presumeably went through an intermediate phase.

[Intelligence]

Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri

 

I'm not sure this is correct, if memory serves

 

Your memory apparently does not serve well. I am completely correct.

[JaKiri]

Originally posted by Intelligence

 

Your memory apparently does not serve well. I am completely correct.

 

I thought it was done by observing gravitational interactions, rather than directly from EM emissions.

[Sayonara]

Apart from that one time where the planet's motion in front of the sun caused gravitational lensing (about 5 weeks ago iirc).

 

What has NASA got anything to do with this thread? By the time we are searching extrasolar planets for life there will be no NASA, and probably no America.

[Intelligence]

Jakiri - Incorrect. This was a rather hacked up method used many years ago which was extremely slow, stupid, and pointless.

 

The telescope now used to study blinking gathers data hundreds of times better and empirically NOT theoretically.

 

Banana man - What do you mean by the time we are searching for extrasolar planets.....

 

......I sincerely hope you aware that there are currently over 160 extra solar planets known and catagorized.

 

And last I checked NASA is still here and so is america

[JaKiri]

He didn't say searching FOR extrasolar planets. He said searching extrasolar planets FOR life.

[Sayonara]

Indeed I did MrL.

 

"Many years ago?" It's still used now. The latest word in planetary detection technology isn't exactly standard all over the world just quite yet.

[Sayonara]

This is 11 months out of date but I found it interesting:

http://astro.estec.esa.nl/SA-general/Projects/Staff/perryman/planet-figure.pdf

 

This is an abysmal web site, but it gives the basics of the currently favoured method:

http://obswww.unige.ch/~udry/planet/method.html

[Sayonara]

ANYWAY:

 

Here is what I was looking for:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2636643.stm

 

The planet, dubbed Ogle-TR-56b, is only the second planet that has been seen to pass in front of its host star....

 

A planetary transit is a rare thing, requiring a precise alignment. But when it does occur it enables many details about the planet to be discovered than is possible by other means.

 

The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (Ogle) uses a telescope in Chile to monitor a crowded starfield in the same direction as the centre of our galaxy.

Apparently only two planets have ever been found this way, with two more candidates being investigated - even though the Ogle focuses on a densely packed part of the galaxy.

 

This is not really a flat-out method for finding planets, it is more a tool for analyzing the atmosphere of known planets.

[Intelligence]

I know what he said and I responded accordingly.

 

You need to do a little introspective and extrapolation and not need it spoon fed.

 

These planets are constantly tested for parameters required for life and the ones which meet them are noted.

 

furthermore, I am well aware of RVM and it is completely and totally a useless method.

 

RVM will answer ones question and one question only:

 

How much gravitational force is pulling on a star.

 

It will not answer whether these are moons of planets, other stars, a belt of comets or asteroids or meteors, other planets, one big planet or ten tiny ones.

 

It is 100% inferior.

 

The telescopic method tells precisely how MANY planets are orbiting the star, there exact size, exact orbit, there own revolution, if they have moons and the moon sizes and orbits...of the solar system has asteroids, how much mass of asteroids

 

It is SUPERIOR in everyway.

 

One extra point for you two since you seem intelligent enough.

 

Life could be on moons as well -we have moons in our solar system which are well developed - yes they're chatoic as hell but they do have atmospheres and environmental activity - unlike our moon.

 

So perhaps the life we find might be on some moon!

 

Of course I still think that NASA mission to..what is it Europa or Io, is a great idea...