And So, Earth #2 is Discovered

Originally Posted by Yamamanama

Fun fact: One of the speculations about what was below the clouds on Venus was a carbonated sea.

Fun Fact #2: The Russians landed a probe on Venus quite some time ago, only a few pictures were transmitted back to Earth before the probe melted/died a few hours later.

Also, our orbital eccentricity doesn't cause the seasons on Earth, only our axis tilt.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Please don't confuse laws of physics, with astrobiology. The laws of physics are understood to be universal (at least what we understand of them).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Infinite Universe != Infinite mass. The universe is expanding, not creating infinite number of stars/planets. In a hundred billion years from now, the universe will probably dim out of existence. I think a lot of you would be interested in seeing the Drake Equation:

Quote:

The Drake equation states that:

N = R* × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L

where:

N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy, with which we might hope to be able to communicate;

and

R* is the rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

Considerable disagreement on the values of most of these parameters exists, but the values used by Drake and his colleagues in 1961 were:

* R* = 10/year (10 stars formed per year)
* fp = 0.5 (half of all stars formed will have planets)
* ne = 2 (2 planets per star will be able to develop life)
* fl = 1 (100% of the planets will develop life)
* fi = 0.01 (1% of which will be intelligent life)
* fc = 0.01 (1% of which will be able to communicate)
* L = 10,000 years (which will last 10,000 years)

Drake's values give N = 10 × 0.5 × 2 × 1 × 0.01 × 0.01 × 10,000 = 10.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

They're understood to be universal, yes, or else we wouldn't understand even 1/10th of astrophysics that we understand today. Are we calling them universal? No. Is there a reason to believe that physics behaves wildly at any given place in the universe? Not at all. We know what we know because we're able to make such a leap of faith.

And yes, there have been instances in which physicists have been proven wrong, Newton was proven wrong by Einstein, for instance, but that just means we can figure out when we are wrong. It's pretty self-defeating if we just go around saying we don't know much of anything, and the universe is one giant wildcard because we only know physics that affects us here on Earth; thus somehow can't apply anywhere else in the universe.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?