Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: Mirage on 25/04/2007 18:17:38
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So I was looking through the Metro (free newspaper) and came across the story that a planet has been discovered and has similar qualities to Earth.
So what do you think? In years to come could this planet be our New Earth?
If it were to become a new home would we make the same mistakes as we have with ours?
Here is the story on the BBC web site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6589157.stm
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First question - if it can sustain life, then is it not unreasonable to assume it does sustain life (not necessarily intelligent life, but life nonetheless).
If it does sustain life, then is it not inevitable that our establishing a colony on that planet would come into competition with the existing life on that planet.
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When you say life, what kind of life do you mean? Can you narrow it down at all?
And surly part of human nature is to be competitive [:-\]
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"And surly part of human nature is to be competitive "
Yes, we are surely surly when we compete.
I think the point he's making is that if we went to live there we would trash the resident ecosystem. If we did that would it be the greatest act of vandalism ever known or just the only hope for the human race given the finite nature of our planet.
I will leave that question to the ethics committee.
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I am not saying it would or would not be an act of vandalism.
The original question asked "would we make the same mistakes as we have with ours" - the inference there being that our modifications and competition within our own ecosystem was a "mistake". All I was saying was that our very landing upon the soil of another Earth would be to change that system, and so if our changing our home planet was somehow a "mistake", how could we not repeat the same "mistake" on another planet?
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would we make the same mistakes as we have with ours
We've survived! Well at least so far. Who knows whether or not the current eco-problems will be resolved successfully and/or we still have the opportunity for a significant nuclear war? I'm sure that as a race we will try to survive whatever happens.
As someone once said: "I consider myself immmortal... Well, I'm not dead yet and that's a working definition."
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Who knows? Maybe my alien friends would be on New Earth.
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I read it today that the gravity of the planet was the same, although the planet was 5 times bigger. The average temperatures are to be of around 0-40 degrees centigrade, which is very similar to ours.
The star which the planet orbits around is 3 times smaller than our sun (and even our sun is smaller than other stars). Because of this, the planet is very close to the sun, and at sunset or something, the sun appears to be 10 times bigger than when we look at the sun in earth.
Also, one complete orbit around the sun is 13 days.
This means that if the planet has an axis of some sort, then we would change seasons around every 3 days! [:o]
Oh, one last thing. The sun which that planet orbits around is 50 times colder than our sun! [;)]
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So I was looking through the Metro (free newspaper) and came across the story that a planet has been discovered and has similar qualities to Earth.
So what do you think? In years to come could this planet be our New Earth?
If it were to become a new home would we make the same mistakes as we have with ours?
Here is the story on the BBC web site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6589157.stm
...and here is the link to the short News Article that I know you have all read and enjoyed !!
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=3633.125 LOL
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Hold on, alien friends! I am almost home!
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I was listening to an interview on the radio last night about it and the guy was saying that it was very unlikely to have any intelligent life.
What they are suggesting is that it may have some form of privative organic life, algae and such.
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Blast, my alien family is not on that planet then..darn.