Tri Earth
Triple-triple-triple your guesses:
STOP. Catch your breath, Rebecca dear. Yes, yes; three "super earths!" And...and...and there's little grey aliens with big googly eyes and unicorns and faeries and huuuuuge intelligent butterflies that communicate in beautiful music!
I hate to be the wet rag here (actually I don't; I rather enjoy it), but I'm going to remind you that none of these so-called exo-planets have been confirmed through verifiable observational methods. Not even one. It's all inference based upon supposition based upon hypothetical we-think-this-is-how-it-works. We don't have one confirming piece of evidence that other solar systems even exist. NOT EVEN ONE. The Enterprise may have sensors that can pick up the heartbeat of Kirk's next floozy from three light years away, but those of us stuck here in reality do not. Actually seeing a planet around another star is a physical impossibility given our current and foreseeable level of technology. But that doesn't stop people like Rebecca from hyperventilating over the possibility -- primarily because they don't understand what's really going on. The reality is that it has less to do with the hunt for extraterrestrial planets than it does with the hunt for extra-annual funding.
Astronomers face a constant challenge in that they have a very difficult time getting anyone to pay them. Telling a politician or academic bureaucrat you want a million dollars to study the relative x-ray brightness of quasars isn't likely to get you a lot of financial sympathy, because nobody outside of astronomical circles gives a fig about the x-ray lives of quasars. It makes for bad moments for those bureaucrats when they're at a fundraiser and the alumni starting asking where their money is going. But if you can tell them you're looking for alien worlds -- and not just looking for them but See Here We Just Now Found Some More of Them! -- well by God we can run that as front page copy!
But barely detectable spectrographic wobbles are not the same thing as a verified planet. Many "enthusiasts" (I don't use that word kindly) seem convinced that the James Webb telescope is going to be only a half-step below having Mr Spock run a sensor scan on "that solar system ahead of us." That, as they say, is a breakdown in the dialogue. The problem is that human beings cannot comprehend the scales involved. Interstellar distances are simply unimaginable. Even analogies break down, because we can't get our heads around the relative scales within the analogy. Human brains have not evolved to think in such terms. For example: trying to see a planet orbiting a star 22 light years away is like standing on top of your house trying to see a single dust mote an inch away from a million watt aircraft landing light -- which is in orbit around Neptune. See what I mean? You can't get a grasp on the scale, because even the reference scale is too big to comprehend. So how likely is it that a telescope -- any telescope -- is going to be able to provide us with incontrovertible proof of the existence of extrasolar planets? I'll give you a hint: the odds are somewhere between infinitesimally small and zero. These "planet hunters" are being deliberately misleading and they damned well know it -- or if they don't, they should.
What's this in my pocket...? Oh! It's another analogy! Let's have a look, shall we?
Say I'm sitting in my house one evening when I start hearing a clicking sound from the ceiling above my head. There's a number things it could be, of course. Maybe there's rats in the attic. Or squirrels. Or raccoons. Or possibly the neighbor's stupid cat. Maybe it's not animals at all, but the water heater is filling up after I just took a shower. Or perhaps there's a problem with the air conditioner. On the other hand, it could be rain. Or hail! On no! Hail would be bad... But no, I don't want it to be hail. So it's not. It must be that damned cat. I've been wanting to shoot that stupid cat for weeks. Best I go get the .22 and start pumping some rounds into the ceiling until I get it. And even if it's not, it could still be rats... Yup, definitely not hail. Or the air conditioner.
Now, what have I done? I've assumed, right? I heard a noise. I didn't verify by any means. I just started shooting based upon what I wanted to be true. That is precisely what these self-appointed planet hunters are doing. They are acting upon supposition and they're leading a whole lot of gullible, ignorant people on a merry ride indeed. But it's not your fault, Rebecca. You're as excited as a little girl on Christmas morning because Mom and Dad have sworn to you there is a Santa Claus. And Mom and Dad wouldn't lie to you, would they?
I am as anxious as anyone to know if there are extrasolar worlds, and especially if any of them are habitable for humans or similar forms of life. If anything, I'm probably more excited by the prospect, as I've been an avid reader of sci-fi for over thirty years. Wishful thinking mixed with obviously ridiculous exaggeration, however, is not going to help us toward that long term goal. So how 'bout we cool it with the triple super-earths and the planet-a-day "discoveries" until we have some technology that can actually prove their existence. Like going there. Like going into the attic and seeing what's actually there, (preferably with the gun). Because truth be told, until we can go there, it's all academic anyway, now isn't it?. Otherwise it's just Tooth Faeries and Old Saint Nick, and won't little Rebecca be disappointed when she discovers the truth.
___
Twenty-two light years away in the direction of the constellation Scorpius lies a system of three stars known as Gliese 667. Today, scientists have announced that a close examination of one of those stars, Gliese 667C, has revealed a solar system simply loaded with planets, with six or possibly seven planets, three of which orbit within the star's habitable zone -- the not-too-close-not-too-far region that could potentially sustain liquid water.
That is the moment we live in -- one in which we can begin to ask not whether something is out there, but whether we might actually be able to find it. With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018, we'll have a chance to look for "detectable biosignature gases" in the atmospheres of identified exoplanets, and that's when things will really start to get interesting.
Do more planets mean that life is out there? We don't yet know, and the reason we don't yet know is because we don't know the probability that life begins at all, even given the right conditions. But, because we apparently have an abundance of laboratories in our galaxy (some 17 billion)--
STOP. Catch your breath, Rebecca dear. Yes, yes; three "super earths!" And...and...and there's little grey aliens with big googly eyes and unicorns and faeries and huuuuuge intelligent butterflies that communicate in beautiful music!
I hate to be the wet rag here (actually I don't; I rather enjoy it), but I'm going to remind you that none of these so-called exo-planets have been confirmed through verifiable observational methods. Not even one. It's all inference based upon supposition based upon hypothetical we-think-this-is-how-it-works. We don't have one confirming piece of evidence that other solar systems even exist. NOT EVEN ONE. The Enterprise may have sensors that can pick up the heartbeat of Kirk's next floozy from three light years away, but those of us stuck here in reality do not. Actually seeing a planet around another star is a physical impossibility given our current and foreseeable level of technology. But that doesn't stop people like Rebecca from hyperventilating over the possibility -- primarily because they don't understand what's really going on. The reality is that it has less to do with the hunt for extraterrestrial planets than it does with the hunt for extra-annual funding.
Astronomers face a constant challenge in that they have a very difficult time getting anyone to pay them. Telling a politician or academic bureaucrat you want a million dollars to study the relative x-ray brightness of quasars isn't likely to get you a lot of financial sympathy, because nobody outside of astronomical circles gives a fig about the x-ray lives of quasars. It makes for bad moments for those bureaucrats when they're at a fundraiser and the alumni starting asking where their money is going. But if you can tell them you're looking for alien worlds -- and not just looking for them but See Here We Just Now Found Some More of Them! -- well by God we can run that as front page copy!
But barely detectable spectrographic wobbles are not the same thing as a verified planet. Many "enthusiasts" (I don't use that word kindly) seem convinced that the James Webb telescope is going to be only a half-step below having Mr Spock run a sensor scan on "that solar system ahead of us." That, as they say, is a breakdown in the dialogue. The problem is that human beings cannot comprehend the scales involved. Interstellar distances are simply unimaginable. Even analogies break down, because we can't get our heads around the relative scales within the analogy. Human brains have not evolved to think in such terms. For example: trying to see a planet orbiting a star 22 light years away is like standing on top of your house trying to see a single dust mote an inch away from a million watt aircraft landing light -- which is in orbit around Neptune. See what I mean? You can't get a grasp on the scale, because even the reference scale is too big to comprehend. So how likely is it that a telescope -- any telescope -- is going to be able to provide us with incontrovertible proof of the existence of extrasolar planets? I'll give you a hint: the odds are somewhere between infinitesimally small and zero. These "planet hunters" are being deliberately misleading and they damned well know it -- or if they don't, they should.
What's this in my pocket...? Oh! It's another analogy! Let's have a look, shall we?
Say I'm sitting in my house one evening when I start hearing a clicking sound from the ceiling above my head. There's a number things it could be, of course. Maybe there's rats in the attic. Or squirrels. Or raccoons. Or possibly the neighbor's stupid cat. Maybe it's not animals at all, but the water heater is filling up after I just took a shower. Or perhaps there's a problem with the air conditioner. On the other hand, it could be rain. Or hail! On no! Hail would be bad... But no, I don't want it to be hail. So it's not. It must be that damned cat. I've been wanting to shoot that stupid cat for weeks. Best I go get the .22 and start pumping some rounds into the ceiling until I get it. And even if it's not, it could still be rats... Yup, definitely not hail. Or the air conditioner.
Now, what have I done? I've assumed, right? I heard a noise. I didn't verify by any means. I just started shooting based upon what I wanted to be true. That is precisely what these self-appointed planet hunters are doing. They are acting upon supposition and they're leading a whole lot of gullible, ignorant people on a merry ride indeed. But it's not your fault, Rebecca. You're as excited as a little girl on Christmas morning because Mom and Dad have sworn to you there is a Santa Claus. And Mom and Dad wouldn't lie to you, would they?
I am as anxious as anyone to know if there are extrasolar worlds, and especially if any of them are habitable for humans or similar forms of life. If anything, I'm probably more excited by the prospect, as I've been an avid reader of sci-fi for over thirty years. Wishful thinking mixed with obviously ridiculous exaggeration, however, is not going to help us toward that long term goal. So how 'bout we cool it with the triple super-earths and the planet-a-day "discoveries" until we have some technology that can actually prove their existence. Like going there. Like going into the attic and seeing what's actually there, (preferably with the gun). Because truth be told, until we can go there, it's all academic anyway, now isn't it?. Otherwise it's just Tooth Faeries and Old Saint Nick, and won't little Rebecca be disappointed when she discovers the truth.
___
Labels: hysteria
posted by Jar(egg)head at 14:59
2 Comments:
depending on the amount of beer involved, pumping 22 rounds at a supposition sounds pretty entertaining.
So, what you're saying is that you have a cat that needs killing, but it's unclear exactly where it is and what it looks like. However, since we know cats exist, it must be somewhere and look like something. Therefore, if I start eliminating the cats in my nearby radius of visibility(ROV), then at some point in the future as I have expanded my ROV, I would likely find and eradicate your suspected cat. If I had a large grant from the same people that spent $2.6 million to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly, then I could develop an ROV with Enhanced Range (ROVER) and after some quick computer generated extrapolation of known and nearly known facts, could probably eradicate all the cats between my house and yours in 1 year or so, with a possible statistical calculation error of plus or minus 1 million years. Wow, it would be nice to finish it a million years ago. I may need a grant for this also, but I postulate, but since it's me, that makes it as close to a fact as you can get without being a total fact (of course who needs total facts when you have facts), anyway, I think the nearly total facts are that the computer modeling is telling me that at some point, really soon, I again postulate (see above for definition), a time machine will be completed (It's almost a total fact that a grant was given years ago to develop one) that will send a ROVER back in time to eradicate the first cat before it can populate the planet. Hmmm, what will I do with ROVER if there are no cats in the first place?
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