back to article Exoplanet ranking suggests INTERSTELLAR WAR imminent

An international team of boffins has ranked the various extra-terrestrial planets and moons known to humanity in order of ability to sustain life. It's bad news for the human race, as the planets of the Gliese 581 star system are near the top of the list: and if an intelligent race is present there, we have already mortally …

COMMENTS

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  1. Liam Johnson

    oh no!

    Is there still time for CERN to beam out a neutrino encoded message of apology to arrive shortly before Bebo’s unfortunate content?

  2. Chemist

    It's more likely ...

    they'll have already read HHGG and will turn up expecting Bournemouth ( or was it Eastbourne ?) to be 'one of the most exciting places in the galaxy'

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Not to worry

    We'll have destroyed ourselves by then. They'll turn up and be completely unsurprised by the fact judging by the content they received.

    Then those plucky Glieseians will head off into the dark and colonise the Universe leaving humanity a forgotten failed race.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And the other reason not to worry...

      ...will be when the Glieseian invasion fleet finally arrives, after having spent thousands of years tearing across the empty wastes of space, and finally dives screaming onto planet Earth, only - due to a terrible miscalculation of scale - to be accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

  4. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Interstellar war

    Might just be the thing our economy needs!

    Provided we win...

    1. Stoneshop

      @Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      And if we lose, I doubt there will be much worrying over the state of the economy, as there won't be anyone left to do the worrying. That is, if those Gliesians take that Bebo-insult as seriously as I would take it.

    2. CJ Bill
      Alien

      What's with the "we" Earthling?

      I for one welcome our new alien overlords...

    3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Big Brother

      I have a Mr. Krugman on the phone, he wants to employ you...

      Once the US gets around to masturbating about Space Hitler instead of about <random country of interest du jour> Hitler, they will loosen some freshly printed money for Star Conquest Operations again.

      Forever War in Space, here we come! SIEG!

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        With that spirit

        You may one day become citizen. Would you like to know more?

  5. MonsieurInconnu

    Justin Bieber is our saviour

    After all, presumably there'll be a pic of him in the guff so they'll just leave us alone out of pity/terror of it being contagious

    1. BorkedAgain
      Facepalm

      I think you're missing the truly terrifying scenario:

      What if they arrive demanding MORE?

      1. VinceH

        Optional

        In that case, we hand Bieber over and say "You probably have the technology to clone him. Make as many copies as you like, provided you keep them. And the original."

        Your fears are unfounded, I'd say - in fact, it looks like a win-win to me.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Devil

          > What if they arrive demanding MORE

          What if they find out that the true masters are the lolcats?

      2. unitron

        MORE? Like...

        ...the final episode of "Single Female Lawyer"?

      3. Stoneshop
        Holmes

        More?

        Then we will unleash the terrible power of Nyancat onto them.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Very interesting, however...

    Very interesting, however being habitable and having life are two quite different things.

    There are many theories that require not only a habitable environment, but a sequence of ‘luck’ events to kick start life in the first place. Until we understand how life starts, it is possible that even habitable planets could very well harbour no life at all.

    And of course, having intelligent life is quite another thing entirely – even Earth for the vast majority of its life bearing time has not had intelligent life.

    Oh, and I don’t think much of those comments!

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      "There are many theories that require not only a habitable environment, but a sequence of ‘luck’ events to kick start life in the first place."

      I think "luck" is required for life not to appear where it remotely can.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I am not sure Earth has intelligent life even now.

  7. Jim 59
    Thumb Up

    this horrendous guff-blast

    That's a pretty apt summation of all Web 2.0 !

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Send a new message

    We were kidding about all that dancing with the stars, we are really replicators on our way to suck all the resources out of your planet, and turn it into space dust, we wanted to keep you calm so you wouldn't try to escape. Man I am hungry now, see you soon food planet!

    This will stave off the attack for sure! USE Fear. like the DHS does

  9. Anonymous John
    Unhappy

    For all we know, they invented the Internet 70 years ago and we will be receiving some even crappier Web 3.0 content from them in the next year or so.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      70 Years?

      Does the signal have to go uphill from there then ?

      1. Dan 10

        No...

        ...but it is a headwind, any fule no's that.

        What if it's just an endless datastream of ewoks?

        Oh god [shiver]

        What if it's.... a planet's worth of Jar Jar f***ing Binks?! [gasp]

  10. Phoenix50
    Unhappy

    To be honest I'm not bothered about an impending alien invasion.

    I'm more concerned that those boffins who have come up with the index system didn't use Star Trek as inspiration.

    Whatever happend to M-Class!

    Though I suppose there's still time for that, given that "M" stood for "Minshara" - a Vulcan word...and we've not met them.

    Yet.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Our last, best hope

    Is that I find it impossible to understand what the Beboids say, so we must pray it's even harder for the tentacled beings FROM BEYOND SPACE! (cue theramins)

  12. John I'm only dancing
    Coffee/keyboard

    Eric Idle

    He summed things up perfectly with the 'Galaxy' song in the Meaning of Life.

    Pray to god there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, because their's bugger all down here on earth'

    Thank you and good night.

  13. Jason Hindle

    Well then

    Let's hope that when their gargantuan alien battle fleet arrives, it gets swallowed by a small dog.....

  14. ravenviz Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Hope I'm still around to hear their reply in 2050.

  15. Lloyd
    Facepalm

    Ahhhhh Bebo

    The dictionary definition is MySpace with less users but a higher teenage pregnancy rate.

    1. Maty
      Headmaster

      'Fewer users' shurely?

  16. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Joke

    Wouldn't any Gliesean Spaceship be rendered helpless

    by the Trojan which no doubt hitchhiked along with this horrendous guff-blast?

    After all, if SF movies are to be believed, all spaceships can be hacked using a Win-XP based laptop or MacBook.

  17. MJI Silver badge

    Send them some TV

    Old Star Trek episodes

    1. Gary Heard
      Alien

      Or even better

      Hope they are not like the aliens in Galaxy Quest.

      Imagine some aliens rocking up to take a geriatric Kirk to defeat the nasty Alien overlord, only to find he will not even leave the ground in a Virgin spaceship

      p.s. Quoting E.E. (Doc) Smith is seriously sad, there will be references to Arisians next!!

  18. Bunker_Monkey

    Justin Beiber!?!!

    I can hear them now....."Best we.. take off and nuke the entire site from orbit"

    At least give us a chance ppppllllllleeeeaaassseeeeee!!!!!

  19. Occams_Cat

    Worse still...

    ...what if our new alien overlords actually *like* Bebo & Beiber?!

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Earth Destroyed By Huge LIKE Button

    Just that.

  21. a cynic writes...
    Coat

    I feel a song coming on...

    ...So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,

    How amazingly unlikely is your birth,

    And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,

    'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

  22. farticus

    Not to worry

    An alien race advanced enough to destroy us very likely has better spam filters. They will never see this crapola.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Greetings Earthlings!!

    While we appreciate your interest, you have found to be in violation of the Interstellar Anti-Spam Act of Glorknich 12984.6. Under the penalty clauses of this act, we have excercised our right to charge each of your revolving credit instruments 500 Standard Galactic Credits as compensation for our time in reading your traffic and cleansing the hard drives of our electronics. We notice that your clans of Ire-Land, Grease and Portogal are already over their credit limits, and have been referred to our cosmic collections department and possible enforcement activity by the Galactic Debtor Destruction Corps.

    We regret the necessity of taking this course of action, but our tolerance for further discussion of Hannah Montana, capri pants and how "hot" Johnny Depp is has reached its limit. ("Hot"? Is this human feverish or infected? Does he represent an interstellar health threat? Please notify Galactic Sector R Health Services if so.) We hope that this note and the associated debits of your accounts will conclude this affair.

    Please desist from further vacuous harassment of our civilization. Thank you for your compliance with the judgement rendered against you, and do be more careful in the future.

  24. unitron

    Why sell us so short?

    Surely we deserve an ESI of at least 1.1?

  25. mfritz0

    Not to worry, the only life to be found on that planet is a microscopic form of mold along with a very hardy species of moss. The gravitational field is to strong to allow proper efficient skeletal development.

    1. Stoneshop
      Boffin

      Life?

      Well, according to http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/17/blighty_exoplanet/ the Gliese D environment is not unlike Middlesbrough, and consequently any life that will have evolved there will be too dumb to realise it can't have evolved, and therefore will have.

      Whether they'll be dumb enough to realise you can't build an interstellar fleet without some rocket scientists around, we'll find out in a couple of decades.

  26. Zmodem

    quicker to just send a probe there, with some decent xenon, it be there in 15 yrs

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