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| Biruwa |
Posted
on 11-Oct-02 04:21 PM
ASTRONOMERS said there was an "odds-on" chance of intelligent life in space after new observations produced the best evidence yet of planets circling stars outside our solar system.
A team led by the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC) in Edinburgh announced yesterday that they had found the dusty wake of a Saturn-like planet around one of the brightest stars in the sky.
The discovery of a huge, distorted disc of cold dust around Fomalhaut, 25 light years away, follows indirect observations of 100 other planets outside the solar system. They had been detected by the way their gravitational forces causes their stars to "wobble".
http://news.scotsman.com/archive.cfm?id=1125742002
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| czar |
Posted
on 13-Oct-02 01:53 AM
Biruwa,
I recollect reading something about there being a zone within solar system and galaxies where formation of planets would occur in conditions favourable to sutaining life.
Might this lead to the possibility of there of eventually seeing a method to mathematically estimate with greater confidence the possibilities of life. Or more likely, at least the factors necessary for it.
Of course, the universe is going to surprise all and sundry with it myriad complexity. There are more planets lurking about just outside the orbit of Pluto. Even our own backyard is relatively unexplored !
The sheer scale and beauty of the known universe is an experience of powers that may yet defeat our comprehension. Still, undaunted, we gaze up into the sky and wonder. And hope.
Happy dasain to you !
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| czar |
Posted
on 13-Oct-02 02:44 PM
Correction: not planets, but planetoids approaching the size of Pluto.
With the technology available so far, Jupiter sized planets have been observed around other stars.
Which begs the question: are we alone in the universe ? If not, are we then perhaps a relatively 'new' development in one of the less glamorous sections of the universe ? Even the Milky Way galaxy in which we float clearly posseses other possibilities in the planetary habitable zone that us earthlings !
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| bhedo |
Posted
on 13-Oct-02 02:52 PM
Yeah. But some of those ice thingies are bigger than Pluto. That's why some scientists have come to believe that Pluto isn't a planet.
Who knows there might be life on some distant planet.
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