should U.S. start controlling population growth?

[MattTheSkywalker]

Suggestion - stop wasting tax money on frivolous things such as welfare, social security, yada yada yada and dump it into space research. There has to be another Earth-like planet out there waiting for colonization.

A recent article in teh Journal Science indicates that the likelihood of a planet similar to Earth in our galaxy is remote. In fact, it appears unlikeyl in much of the known Universe.

This was concluded by studying the distribution of heavier metals throughout the galaxy. There is a band which Earth falls into, where the distribution of metals is favorable to an oxygen rich atmosphere. There are no other known planets in this band.

You should read the article. it explaisn it better than I do.

 

[Warik]

A recent article in teh Journal Science indicates that the likelihood of a planet similar to Earth in our galaxy is remote. In fact, it appears unlikeyl in much of the known Universe.

This was concluded by studying the distribution of heavier metals throughout the galaxy. There is a band which Earth falls into, where the distribution of metals is favorable to an oxygen rich atmosphere. There are no other known planets in this band.

You should read the article. it explaisn it better than I do.

I don't think early 21st century human science is sufficient to conclude that there are no other planets in the universe capable of sustaining human life. It's absurd to state as such. Billions of galaxies composed of billions of stars around which there is often at least one planet. A billion billion planets and only one can sustain human life? Bullshit.

True, there are no other known planets. But then again, do we really know ANYTHING outside of our own solar system? Not really.

-Warik

 

[MattTheSkywalker]

Read the article. it doesn;t say there are none. it says based on the distribution of heavy metals, 99.99% of these planets can be ruled out immediately. It is telling of other galaxies because we can determine the elemental composition of other galaxies throgh wavelengths and spectral analysis.

Thus the likelihood of one is greatly reduced. I agree with you - there is a lot(understatement) we don;t know...it;s a good article.

 

[HappyScrappy]

also the distance from the sun, the size of the sun, etc etc.
the earth will get closer to the sun soon (millions and millions of years - soon in astophysics terms) and our ecosystem will change dramatically and therefore life as we know it would as well.

it is impossible to say there are none like us out there b/c there is so much out there - but the odds, from a statistical standpoint are pretty funny. but since it is technically infiite and expanding and growing - when dealing with infinity in statistics, then that means you have a definite positive at some point in time - just that point is unknown.

 

[Warik]

Read the article. it doesn;t say there are none. it says based on the distribution of heavy metals, 99.99% of these planets can be ruled out immediately.

Oh, then that's different. 99.99% of one billion billion possible planets leaves us with 10,000,000,000,000,000 potential candidates.

And they speak as though it's "impossible." bwahaha

-Warik

 

[MattTheSkywalker]

You should read the article, or look into it yourself.

You can throw numbers like "trillion" around, but in the face of some real data, it seems less likely that we will discover carbon based life forms anytime soon on another planet.

And I am discouting the reality that we lack the ability to travel very far.

 

[gwl9dta4]

There are more planets out there then grains of sand on every beach on this planet. The numbers like billions, trillions and sexillions do not even begin to encompass the true number of planets out there.

Our science is still too primitive to tell things like that. It's all just theory and hypothesis. Too early to tell. But one thing is for sure, we must not be so arrogant to belive there is not another planet out there like ours, I mean what about all the ufo's?

 

[JuicyGirl]

I plan on having no more than 2 children for the reasons of population control.

Financially, we could support more but it is a moral issue to us. One child to replace myself and one child to replace my husband.

If everyone on the planet did this we would be able to maintain a good standard of living.