It won't happen in my lifetime, but I would love to hear that we have found life... and it's not life as we know it. That should rattle a few (for some value of 'few'.. millions maybe).
Kepler space telescope spots 1,284 new planets
It's barely been 30 years since NASA spotted its first planet outside our solar system but on Tuesday the agency reported its biggest collection of sightings to date – 1,284 confirmed planets, along with 1,327 additional probable sightings and 707 possibles. The data comes from NASA's Kepler space telescope, which has been …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 10th May 2016 23:33 GMT Dadmin
Nah, I'm going to guess that the majority of the clueless will claim those exoplanets in the name of their Dear, Dear Lordy. "See?! That's how the god works, he's just doing this and doing that, and then stuff is discovered and we claim it as 'his' work." How fucking convenient.
I'm just happy I learned a new compound word today; astroboffins
That'll do, El Reg. That'll do.
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Wednesday 11th May 2016 09:55 GMT Just Enough
A great deal of traditional religious thinking is based around the idea that we are the special ones, for which the universe was created. You'd hope that finding life on other planets would at least give pause for thought and a reconsideration of attitudes. That would certainly improve life on this planet, before we even consider venturing out to others.
But depressingly I suspect that the conclusion reached by many will be no different from 18th/19th century colonisation. "Oh look, God's prepared another planet, for us. We'll just need to convert the local heathens."
Unless the life there is actually more technically advanced than us. In which case, we better hope that they're not thinking the same.
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Friday 13th May 2016 15:53 GMT <a|a>=1
Finding life would be bad news for us. Finding intelligent life would be really bad news. The Fermi Paradox would then imply that intelligent life is fairly common, but since space-faring civilisations aren't common (where are they all?) this in turn implies that our chances of reaching the level of such a civilization are slim. In fact if you believe that we could reach such a level before going extinct you could reasonably assume that more than 99% of humanity would exist in the future on other worlds, which in turn would question your special status of existing amongst the first 107 billion of our species.
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Wednesday 11th May 2016 09:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I'm calling it !!!!
I would hope it would kill off the prejudices and oppression that many religions use to control their followers, and free up those followers to think for themselves, but I doubt it would kill off belief in a deity.
and I wouldn't want it to..
I believe in both a deity and extraterestrial life.. now what form both of those come in, I won't even attempt to guess....
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Thursday 12th May 2016 04:48 GMT Paul 129
Re: I'm calling it !!!!
%Deity% is just more amazing with each discovery that makes the universe more incredible.
Man however is not %Deity% i.e. not infallible. As such where religion is involved, we tend to make a 'Right royal hash of it'
Existence of %Deity%, should not be provable, and we should not care about it. Those who want to believe, go ahead, those that don't, fine.
Just respect that others don't necessarily share your beliefs, and we all can live happily.
(I'm a Skeptic)
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Wednesday 11th May 2016 13:44 GMT allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Re: So we can start putting some numbers on the Drake equation.
Okay kid, you know you had it coming.
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Wednesday 11th May 2016 08:03 GMT James 51
There is a range of only a few decades that we've been throwing out radio signals that can be detected at any reasonable distance before they are swamped out and that is closing. If some other worldly civilisation did use radio waves this way (and they might not have) if they went through that phase a thousand years ago and are five hundred light years away we might never know they were there.
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Wednesday 11th May 2016 09:08 GMT MrXavia
I agree, there is no guarantee any civilisation would output high powered broadcast radio signals...
Most of our high powered transmissions are highly focussed, I can see us switching to laser communications for space in the future.
And if we discover a way to communicate FTL then we will use that instead..
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Wednesday 11th May 2016 11:18 GMT Adair
Oh dear...
A great story of exploration and discovery, and BTL immediately hijacked by the 'anti-God' fundamentalists. It's like the trope about 'Linux evangelists' hijacking every thread about Windows (see Ask Jack in the Guardian), only sadder.
While there definitely are some people whose religious views struggle to cope with a bigger awareness of the material 'world', there are plenty for whom it is no threat to their faith whatsoever, in fact it is a wonderful example of putting our capabilities to good use - exploring and understanding the world around us.
Some folk here need to prick their bubble of ignorance and prejudice and try engaging with 'reality', but then perhaps they are not really any different to the very type of person they deride on the other side of the fence - those who, from a 'religious' perspective, also cling to their prejudices and 'beliefs' regardless of the reality around them.
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Thursday 12th May 2016 08:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Oh dear...
"...but then perhaps they are not really any different to the very type of person they deride on the other side of the fence..."
All serious religion boils down to whether the universe originated because of a thought ("word" as some would say) or somehow just occurred 'naturally.' These two ideas are mutually exclusive and cannot be proven one way or the other. Thus, both those ideas are highly attractive to thinkers of a fanatical bent. Not different types at all.