ancient star raises prospects of intelligent life
May 7, 2015 2:22 PM   Subscribe

can life survive for billions of years longer than the expected timeline on Earth? as scientists continue to discover older and older solar systems & galaxies, it’s likely that before long we’ll find an ancient planet in a habitable zone. knowing if life is possible on this exoplanet would have immense implications for habitability and the development of ancient life according to researcher Tiago Campante's paper "An Ancient Extrasolar System with Five Sub-Earth-Size Planets". this animation starts by showing us Kepler's field-of-view in the direction of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, and then we're taken to the vicinity of the Kepler-444 planetary system, located some 117 light years away.
posted by talaitha (24 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
If the ancient ones are 117 light years away, we ought to have heard something by now.
posted by humanfont at 3:37 PM on May 7, 2015


Maybe they know better, or maybe we already did hear from them. Plenty of folks claim to have met, seen, been kidnapped by, have the technology of, etc. What are they supposed to do, bring us a better lightbulb, or fire up the big monkey barbeque? Well, or have we received our eviction notice, and this is the why of new urgency to move to new worlds?
posted by Oyéah at 3:51 PM on May 7, 2015


If the ancient ones are 117 light years away, we ought to have heard something by now.

This assumes they want us to know they are out there, and that they know we are here — and care.
posted by Dark Messiah at 4:06 PM on May 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


They've all sublimed.
posted by Poldo at 4:27 PM on May 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


If the ancient ones are 117 light years away, we ought to have heard something by now.

What did you think Twin Peaks was?
posted by Thorzdad at 4:46 PM on May 7, 2015 [9 favorites]


I think people are kind of missing the time scale here. Kepler-444 is five or six billion years older than our system, so the question isn't "Where are they?", but "Where WERE they?".

Of course personally, since Kepler-444 it's a low metallicy system, I doubt live ever arose there at all- the planets probably look more like small gas giants than terrestrial planets, and I doubt there would be enough heavier elements for life to arise.
posted by happyroach at 5:30 PM on May 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's all explained here ...
posted by Falling_Saint at 5:44 PM on May 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's all explained here ...

I thought this was the explanation.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:00 PM on May 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's all explained here ...

I thought this was the explanation


That sounds a lot more plausible.
posted by Sleeper at 6:03 PM on May 7, 2015


Point taken, Doktor Zed. Occam's razor strikes again.
posted by Falling_Saint at 6:12 PM on May 7, 2015


Ok, to inject a minor note of seriousness here: the distant galaxies link is a red herring. Yes, it's a galaxy at a redshift of 7.7, so we're seeing it as it was 13 billion years ago, when the Universe was a baby (only 700 million years old) and the youngest stars were burning hot on primordial Hydrogen and Helium. The heavier elements hadn't even been synthesized yet! Forget about life - there wasn't even any oxygen or carbon.

So that distant galaxy is a neat result - very exciting - but it has no relevance to planetary systems or life. Even in our fondest dreams, we don't imagine that we'd detect planets in a different galaxy, or communicate with a civilization two galaxies over, let alone a distant one. The distances are just too large. The center of our own Galaxy is like 25,000 light years away, so a round trip "Hello? Hello!" would take 50,000+ years. That's our own galaxy, not even Andromeda, which is 2.5 million light years away.

Space is big. Like, really, really, big.
posted by RedOrGreen at 6:16 PM on May 7, 2015 [11 favorites]


I like the theory I first heard offered by Brian Cox on the Nerdist podcast. I don't think he's the originator of it, but that's where I heard it. The premise was so if life in the unverse is inevitable (which was part of a larger question), why haven't we found intelligent life? Should the universe be abuzz with intelligent life? Well one possibility is complex life is rare and intelligent life is rare to the point that we're the only ones out here. But the other suggestion is much grimmer, that intelligent life, by its very nature, is short lived because it implodes. Any intelligent life that evolves quickly extinguished itself (in a galactic timescale), thus, the likelihood of two intelligent lives occurring at the same time to find evidence of each other is extremely small.

I do it no justice, but it was very compelling. We certainly aren't any evidence of the longevity of intelligent life. We've been here 200,000 years, but only could produce radio waves for the past 100 ish years. We have no realistic idea if that can continue and how long that it may.

Dark thought.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 7:11 PM on May 7, 2015 [6 favorites]


one possibility is complex life is rare and intelligent life is rare to the point that we're the only ones out here

We don't even have to be the "only ones". Even if there are multiple instances of technologically advanced life in the galaxy right now, if the distribution is so thin that the nearest one is say, 1000LY away, then in the absence of some sort of FTL/Wormhole magic, any conceivable form of contact would be a pretty hopeless prospect.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 7:26 PM on May 7, 2015


I prefer the explanations that leave us a glimmer of hope for the future of humanity.

Perhaps 100 billion humans have ever lived, and at most 1% of them in the standard of living that the first world enjoys today; if we settled down with a stable population of 10 billion based on renewable technology (apart from solar energy input) and employed a modest amount of environmental engineering as the sun ages (something we've got a billion years to sort out), a billion billion humans might live full and fulfilling lives without even needing to colonize beyond the earth, let alone beyond the solar system. Even winding down civilization before the home world becomes uninhabitable need not be a tragic affair (though I imagine it would be bittersweet).

In my mind, the answer to the Fermi paradox is: intelligent species divide into two types, those who destroy themselves before they can give a serious start to colonizing the galaxy or even dabbling in effective Active SETI; and those who manage to find a contented and steady-state way of existing which would at a minimum be invisible at our current level of SETI work. It's still not clear which class we find ourselves in, but there is hope.
posted by jepler at 8:07 PM on May 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


the other suggestion is much grimmer, that intelligent life, by its very nature, is short lived because it implodes. Any intelligent life that evolves quickly extinguished itself (in a galactic timescale), thus, the likelihood of two intelligent lives occurring at the same time to find evidence of each other is extremely small.

i think maybe that relates to the fermi paradox and an argument for decreasing the value of one or more of the terms in the drake equation
posted by talaitha at 8:12 PM on May 7, 2015


I dunno. The Fermi Paradox always struck me as being a failure of imagination.

- The universe is abuzz with life, we just haven't developed the right tech to listen in.
- The Universe. Feh. As if there were only one, and as if it was more interesting than the ones we can live in as literal gods...
- Once you get the orbital defense grids in place, you can go back to being a parochial galactic backwater.
- In 1945, an Alien empire, sensing the great powers of the age were at the end of their rope, sends a saucer to demand unconditional surrender, and also a quasi-religious affirmation that the Atom was inviolate and whole. Americans reply to their demands as they usually do... and now we also have protection on a paid subscription basis. If you fall behind, the Magnetosphere fizzles...
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:26 PM on May 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


>> the other suggestion is much grimmer, that intelligent life, by its very nature, is short lived because it implodes. Any intelligent life that evolves quickly extinguished itself (in a galactic timescale), thus, the likelihood of two intelligent lives occurring at the same time to find evidence of each other is extremely small.

> i think maybe that relates to the fermi paradox


Yes - more specifically, it relates to the Great Filter argument, which accounts for the rarity of apparent intelligent life by postulating that we're rare, we're first, or we're fucked.

Wait but why: ... it must be that there are no super-advanced civilizations. And since the math suggests that there are thousands of them just in our own galaxy, something else must be going on. This something else is called The Great Filter.

The Great Filter theory says that at some point from pre-life to Type III intelligence, there’s a wall that all or nearly all attempts at life hit. There’s some stage in that long evolutionary process that is extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond. That stage is The Great Filter.

If this theory is true, the big question is, Where in the timeline does the Great Filter occur? It turns out that when it comes to the fate of humankind, this question is very important. Depending on where The Great Filter occurs, we’re left with three possible realities: We’re rare, we’re first, or we’re fucked.

posted by RedOrGreen at 7:31 AM on May 8, 2015 [6 favorites]


(Note, according to this theory, the discovery of single celled life on Mars or Europa, for example, would be bad news, because it would say that life is not rare. The Copernican principle argues, of course, that there's no reason we should be first. So that leaves ...)
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:33 AM on May 8, 2015


Is it against MeFi rules to ask for a link to the full paper referenced in the FPP?
posted by Sangermaine at 9:27 AM on May 8, 2015


The FPP didn't use the "linkstothedamnpaper" tag, but it did link it --> Tiago Campante's paper "An Ancient Extrasolar System with Five Sub-Earth-Size Planets".

If you find that it's paywalled (I can never tell for sure what the journal's policy is), here's the preprint on ArXiv.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:06 AM on May 8, 2015


Thanks!
posted by Sangermaine at 12:09 PM on May 8, 2015


The FPP didn't use the "linkstothedamnpaper" tag

didn't know there was one! so.. what is it for future reference?
posted by talaitha at 3:11 PM on May 8, 2015


If the ancient ones are 117 light years away, we ought to have heard something by now

Humans can't even effectively communicate with the dog or cat sitting there watching us read Metafilter because we use different forms of expression,tools and language.

On what basis should we be expected to detect, identify and correctly categorize any and all forms of communication any life form evolved enough for intelligence might produce?

We've only been effectively listening for 60 or so years and broadcasting for about that time. Our first broadcasts have yet to reach 117 light years until "I Love Lucy" hits some kind of extra-dimensional gateway.

I believe the universe is full of life, and I bet all of those worlds are just as imperfect as ours, and the beings on it have their own versions of the same struggles with day-to-day BS as we do. When they are able to look to the skies and wonder, all they (like us) can do is send and seek in the language knows. Which is unlikely - highly unlikely - to be the same as ours.

But maybe, someday, we will see and know and then all of this - a lot of this aside from the seach - will be over. Maybe we will set aside our differences now that we know we have neighbors, or we'll do the human thing and get together to start plotting a beatdown. But it will give humanity a new line - before and after.
posted by lon_star at 10:02 AM on May 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


>> he FPP didn't use the "linkstothedamnpaper" tag

> didn't know there was one! so.. what is it for future reference?


Sorry, this was originally a joke - there are so many complaints about not including a link to the damn paper, just the press release, for a science story. I think blasdelb started off the "linkstothedamnpaper" tag. I like it, and I guess this is doing my bit to push it further along.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:14 PM on May 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


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