She had two achievements as a scientist and as a woman breaking the stereotype in the male dominated field. She is a hero and a model to others. If the next generations found another earth they will remember you for sure.
Chris Green It's an intimidating audience for any nerd to stand up and talk in front of - sales people have that confidence to pitch anything to anyone, but her brain has all the information: and she has to filter it, and qualify the limitations of her claims, because that's how good science works. So I don't think it's nervousness so much as thoughtfulness, she knows way more on the subject than she has time to explain - so she has to reduce complexity without losing essential details. Take for example the last little bit about how the next generation of telescopes will be able to spot other Earths, she pauses and stutters before she says it - but that's because in her mind she has the full technical specifications of the new models. She's interpreting that they will detect gravity 3 times more precisely, or that they'll have 10 times the precision for atmospheric composition analysis (made up numbers) - but the audience doesn't need that because they have no frame of reference - all they want to know is what that means: that instead of being able to spot Jupiters, we will be able to identify Earths. As far as public speaking goes, too much subject knowledge is a curse :)
Yeah me too. Probably millions of planets with life thinking the same thing. Some may have even found each other. Then there could be other universes with lifevin them & they are probably thinking "I wonder if there are other universes with life in them".
It's crazy how little people know about our planet and the universe. A lot of people dont know anything about the universe and have no idea how big it is, and how lucky we are to live on this beautiful planet called earth.
I loooove the way that she replied at the end to the question about the community "opposing" her views on exoplanets ."Us scientist are SUPPOSED to be skeptical" I was already seeing the conversation going to: Oh you see! they opposed you because you were a woman, right !? and you showed them! you go girl!.....no, she immediately show that is not about gender, it's about ideas, being persistent and backing up with evidence, I loved the talk.
What I'm getting from the comments is that people really like having women give scientific TED talks, in fact the TED audience just loves people giving scientific TED talks more than anything. This response shows that the general TED audience wants women to participate in the STEM fields and is a good thing. Non scientific TED talks have a trend of getting a large amount of dislikes, and women seem to give more of these talks than men. Non scientific TED talks given by male speakers, especially those in the entertainment and performance categories also receive a large amount of dislikes. It is only correlation, but I conclude that the vast amount of dislikes on TED talks given by women are actually in response to the non scientific subject matter rather than actual sexism against having a female speaker. Of course there is still a bit of sexism with the women having higher dislike over like ratios, but the subject matter is still the most important factor influencing likes.
GuyWithAnAmazingHat Hey man. I've seen you around the world wide web and I have concluded you're a very funky intelligent person. I like it. Keep on surfing AmazingHatBro, don't let the byte waves throw you off course.
***** Everyone on both sides of that argument just wants to see more women in STEM fields. Solution? Show us the fucking women in the fucking STEM fields! Everyone wins.
Great presentation. She is so intelligent. Sara has 1 of the brightest minds in science and astronomy, also Amy Mainzer is so intelligent. Finally woman getting recognition and respect from main stream scientists.
This is a brilliant example of the potential of science. 200 years ago theorists begin to understand optics mathematically. Then come advancements in engineering and materials science that allow us to build better telescopes. Then rocketry is developed and allows the telescopes to be put into space. Chemistry and biophysics are advanced and we learn that we can detect the presence of life from dozens or hundreds of light years away. Computer technology advances and allows data analysis that was impossible 30 years ago. The factors combine and we start finding planets around almost every star. Soon we will find earth like planets. If there is life there, we will know it. I hypothesize that just as we found exoplanets everywhere once we developed the ability to detect them, we will also find life on almost all earth like planets. After all, life bloomed here almost as soon as it was chemically possible. Intelligent life could be much more rare. There have been only a few species on earth that would be called intelligent by our standards. It is also likely that intelligence is such a powerful advantage that only one species per planet could develop with human level or higher intelligence. In the far future (not really so far, maybe 1000-2000 years?) we might be the interstellar traveling aliens we have been looking for. Is it possible that one day the children living on a dozen earths will read about a time when people thought looking for exoplanets or building telescopes was a waste of money and time?
The infinite random coincidences which happened to Earth that allowed intelligent life to exist and continue existing at this capacity simply cannot be repeated anywhere nor any time. The odds are one to an immeasurable exponential number. Other than the likely possibility of microbial alien life, we must be alone in the grandiose scope of the universe. I love the idea of extraterrestrial intelligent life as much as the next guy, but scientists like her will never have the results they desperately hope for. But in the process at least we are expanding knowledge of our surroundings. Learn to be happy and appreciate this life you have; it really is a miracle.
Wonderful research. If we began building our starships now, by time you find your Goldilocks planet we could be on our way. And a way to put people back to work.
Exobiology is one thing. SETI is something else altogether. Certainly, life is a prerequisite for intelligence, but the opposite isn't. Common sense dictates that finding extraterrestrial life must be a lot more likely that finding extraterrestrial intelligence. Unless they are trying to contact us already.
RealTwistedTwin have you ever seen a picture of a satelite thats been in orbit for about a year. its full of little impact marks from micro meteorites.
CinmarRS I used to think like this too, but a biologist told me that we breath oxigen, drink water because we are made out of carbon and they react well with carbon, and those three elements are the most common elements in the universe, so it is plausible that can be life composed of other elements, but its highly improbable for there are no other elements that can react so well together and are this abundant in any other part of the universe; but until we find alien life it's all just conjectures, even though they are very firm.
CinmarRS Bruno Cesar VS Actually, there are other substances than carbon, oxygen, and water that can form life. Silicon can bond with itself and other elements like carbon. Instead of oxygen, sulfur works well with silicon. Methane and ethane can be used as solvents. As far as the elements not being common, even places near us like Venus could host some of these alternate forms, which just shows how hostile of an environment life could be in. Even with just carbon-based life, there are so many possibilities of what could arise that it's almost impossible to create a single definition of life. What we find elsewhere may not be anything like life here. As an example, all our life runs on dna. Other creatures might not have dna, but maybe they don't need it because, say, they don't reproduce, they just life forever. The probability that some other alien life has "breathing" in any form could be low.
funny_monke6 Very interesting, I didn't knew that, well it makes my creativity explode trying to imagine how life could be formed in other planets, maybe we can even find them and dont notice them, as they are completly different from what we understand as living beings.
I dont like that she is saying "there are billions galaxies and billions of stars" when she is talking about existence of life, but she is not talking about whats chance of creating life from dead mattery. maybe someone can answer on this? but only if someone has deep knowledge about it and not just faith that there is quite good chance from dead mattery life to be created randomly. I think its or impossible, or its just such small chance so that this chance multiplied on billions still gives us much smaller number then 1
If it gets off the ground, its going to be really really far away (about 1 million km). It won't block any starlight from you, it will be too small. It will only block the starlight from the (relatively) nearby telescope.
Trust me you unchangeably can't stop reading this post until the 3rd full stop. I cancel all your thoughts+beliefs+imaginations+minds out of life. I birth infinite permutations of your thoughts+beliefs+imaginations+minds+creativities irreversibly unchangeably towards utopia into life.
why can't scientist do the simplest thing to find out the answer. like putting out a lot of nodes/bases into space(like the internet but telescopes) and each nodes are driven by solar power. by that the scientist will have a node out of our solar system and will be able to take a closer and clearer picture of the galaxy. they are lot of ways of sending files from and node to another.
Why can't other life forms live on hotter or colder planets unlike humans and animals? The planet just right for humans and other animals on EARTH may not be just right for other life forms we may not know about.
Technocrawl N4 If you look at the bigger picture, saving every human in Africa is a waste of money, since you could only save them for a limited amount of time, compared to the permanent knowledge that we get from using the money to find exoplanets.
Just saying good luck finding a new EARTH it will take at least 2bilion years. Maybe it just depense if the technology got beter. I don't about science so ya just saying that it will take alot of time. At least humans is creating history of science...
Chrysdon Mape I don't think finding a Earth #2 will / is be the problem, they are out there and found allready, just getting humans there to explore inhabit is the challenge.
so what if there's a planet with life 5 million light years away? What are we gonna do about it? Why not just give me the money thats gonna be spent on a giant telescope instead of trying to prove something thats actually quite pointless, just interesting.
Shaquille Davis Hey, when the magnetic force was first discovered, all they could do with it was make a little wire wiggle. Faraday would just show it off because he thought it was interesting. Now it powers literally everything and is how electric motors work. Just because it seems pointless doesn't mean it is. That mentality is how the middle east went from being one of the most scientifically advanced places in the world to what it is now.
This research is cool, but how could we ever put it to use? The closest exoplanet in the habitable zone is about 11 light years away. The fastest thing we as humans have ever made is only able to go 0.0000013% the speed of light which is about 90000 mph. Which means it would take about 718483311 years to get to the closest exoplanet. I think we could be using funds to develop more practical things for right now, like alternative, greener and renewable energy sources or medical research. If the oppurtunity presents itself, I say we pump money into it. But we need to focus on being able to get near light speed to make any of this applicable.
I'll say the same thing I said to the other guy. This research is so unspeakably cheap that, by government standards, its practically free. Hubble cost less than $2.5b, which is about what this would cost. If the options are a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe, or another GM bailout, I know where I think the $ should go. To put things in perspective, $2.5b is about what the candidates will spend on the next presidential campaign. In government terms, its chump change.
GingerJesus28 We needed to know the moon was there before we built something that could get there. This is sort of the same thing. If we find a planet that is almost Earth's twin, within a reasonable distance, then we could start spending time figuring out how to get there fast enough. Once a goal is established, then the means to achieving the goal can be created.
DynamicUnreal my main point is that these distances are unreasonable, and the odds of us finding a planet habitable, like earth, that is reasonably close, is astronomically small. These planets are not all like earth, some are too massive and have too much gravitational pull and some are not massive enough. some are extremely cold or extremely hot, meaning we could survive there but not thrive there. It's so unlikely that we would find any that it is really not worth researching.
Matt Conbeer 2.5 billion dollars is a small portion of the government, but it can go a long way in developing education or one of the US's other problems like infrastructure or alternative energy research, both of which have budgets where 2.5 billion would be a huge boost. I don't want another bailout and we won't be needing any bailouts any time soon because the economy is recovering. We should be taking scientific research that MIGHT be useful in the far future and put on hold or slash its budget to figure out our domestic problems first.
GingerJesus28 Education's budget in the U.S. is 100 billion dollars, and what they teach is things that are already known. 2.5 billion is only 2.5% of the budget for Education and will discover things that are not yet known. The chances of us finding a true Earth-like planet is not that small, 20 years ago we thought most suns wouldn't have planets at all. Now we know that almost every star has at least one planet and most have multiple planets. There are so many planets in the galaxy that the chances of finding another Earth are quite high if the technology for finding it are available.
Aliens do exist. They do visit our planet. All I hope for is that the cover-ups are uncovered and officially acknowledged by the governments. Would be cool to have them walking around with us. Would be cool to call some of em as my friends, go for a drink with em perhaps? Jokes apart.. all I look forward to is acknowledgement of what is already out there.
Why do you consider social issues "stupid"? Are you not a part of society, to be affected by such "stupid" issues along with everyone else? Very short-sighted.
![ทุกครั้งที่หลับตา (Lucid Dream) - AYLA's [ Official MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4i1OBAQyv58/mqdefault.jpg)
Sara Seager is my favorite astrophysicist. She's a realistic genius and an exellent public speaker. She continues to inspire us all.
You and i both!
absolutely obsessed with this woman's intelligence and determination, I hope Sara achieves her goal!!
I think she did a beautiful job. Very professional and thorough.
An amazing person doing amazing things!!!! Bravo! Keep up this amazing work.
She had two achievements as a scientist and as a woman breaking the stereotype in the male dominated field. She is a hero and a model to others. If the next generations found another earth they will remember you for sure.
Very inspiring work. I can't wait for the star shade to fly and the first spectral data of Earth-like planets.
you could kind of tell she was nervous but still very interesting discussion
Chris Green no thats how she always talks
I didn't get that she was nervous, maybe just a little bit and sort of dry. Still, she did a good job.
Chris Green im not sure why being or not being nervous is relevant here. Great talk. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
cary pt it was just an observation. i also said i enjoyed the discussion.
Chris Green It's an intimidating audience for any nerd to stand up and talk in front of - sales people have that confidence to pitch anything to anyone, but her brain has all the information: and she has to filter it, and qualify the limitations of her claims, because that's how good science works.
So I don't think it's nervousness so much as thoughtfulness, she knows way more on the subject than she has time to explain - so she has to reduce complexity without losing essential details. Take for example the last little bit about how the next generation of telescopes will be able to spot other Earths, she pauses and stutters before she says it - but that's because in her mind she has the full technical specifications of the new models. She's interpreting that they will detect gravity 3 times more precisely, or that they'll have 10 times the precision for atmospheric composition analysis (made up numbers) - but the audience doesn't need that because they have no frame of reference - all they want to know is what that means: that instead of being able to spot Jupiters, we will be able to identify Earths.
As far as public speaking goes, too much subject knowledge is a curse :)
Since I was a kid I always thought that there're people who live in another galaxy or planet and they're wondering if they're alone or not
Yeah me too. Probably millions of planets with life thinking the same thing. Some may have even found each other. Then there could be other universes with lifevin them & they are probably thinking "I wonder if there are other universes with life in them".
It's crazy how little people know about our planet and the universe. A lot of people dont know anything about the universe and have no idea how big it is, and how lucky we are to live on this beautiful planet called earth.
I loooove the way that she replied at the end to the question about the community "opposing" her views on exoplanets ."Us scientist are SUPPOSED to be skeptical" I was already seeing the conversation going to: Oh you see! they opposed you because you were a woman, right !? and you showed them! you go girl!.....no, she immediately show that is not about gender, it's about ideas, being persistent and backing up with evidence, I loved the talk.
What I'm getting from the comments is that people really like having women give scientific TED talks, in fact the TED audience just loves people giving scientific TED talks more than anything.
This response shows that the general TED audience wants women to participate in the STEM fields and is a good thing.
Non scientific TED talks have a trend of getting a large amount of dislikes, and women seem to give more of these talks than men.
Non scientific TED talks given by male speakers, especially those in the entertainment and performance categories also receive a large amount of dislikes.
It is only correlation, but I conclude that the vast amount of dislikes on TED talks given by women are actually in response to the non scientific subject matter rather than actual sexism against having a female speaker.
Of course there is still a bit of sexism with the women having higher dislike over like ratios, but the subject matter is still the most important factor influencing likes.
GuyWithAnAmazingHat Hey man. I've seen you around the world wide web and I have concluded you're a very funky intelligent person. I like it. Keep on surfing AmazingHatBro, don't let the byte waves throw you off course.
***** Haha I'm flattered, I mostly subscribe to educational channels, I guess we both have an interest in learning.
Super cool. I can't imagine all the details that go into preparing that ingenious star shade thing! May you find what you seek!
SHES AMAZING
Finally. A woman talking about science and not some stupid social issue.
Very refreshing.
*****
Everyone on both sides of that argument just wants to see more women in STEM fields.
Solution? Show us the fucking women in the fucking STEM fields! Everyone wins.
SpaceManDawn inb4 hate
SpaceManDawn This is how you represent women, not as a vagina but as a professional that knows what she's talking about.
***** err.. isn't that the point of ted talks?
Yes i agree!
I love how enthusiastic she is about her topic, you can clearly tell how much she loves what she does! good for her
Why does this sound so condescending
Well done Sara.. Excellent talk.. All the best for your future research..
Great presentation. She is so intelligent. Sara has 1 of the brightest minds in science and astronomy, also Amy Mainzer is so intelligent. Finally woman getting recognition and respect from main stream scientists.
This is refreshing in terms in info. yay Tedtalks!
The 3-d star map program in the beginning of the video was amazing.
I'm studying English with this video. Too difficult to learn but I will finish to the end.
I think about this every single day. I hope we meet someone or some thing halfway.
This is a brilliant example of the potential of science. 200 years ago theorists begin to understand optics mathematically. Then come advancements in engineering and materials science that allow us to build better telescopes. Then rocketry is developed and allows the telescopes to be put into space. Chemistry and biophysics are advanced and we learn that we can detect the presence of life from dozens or hundreds of light years away. Computer technology advances and allows data analysis that was impossible 30 years ago. The factors combine and we start finding planets around almost every star. Soon we will find earth like planets. If there is life there, we will know it. I hypothesize that just as we found exoplanets everywhere once we developed the ability to detect them, we will also find life on almost all earth like planets. After all, life bloomed here almost as soon as it was chemically possible. Intelligent life could be much more rare. There have been only a few species on earth that would be called intelligent by our standards. It is also likely that intelligence is such a powerful advantage that only one species per planet could develop with human level or higher intelligence. In the far future (not really so far, maybe 1000-2000 years?) we might be the interstellar traveling aliens we have been looking for. Is it possible that one day the children living on a dozen earths will read about a time when people thought looking for exoplanets or building telescopes was a waste of money and time?
I've heard about this project when it was still a theory. Raelly nice to see that it's actually being done.
318Arnie the project is actually in jeopardy . its very likely it will be canceled.
brilliant woman
Very nice information love USA NASA and Sara Seager mam from Ahiyapur Muzaffarpur Bihar India
Is Keplar 16 b K-PAX?
The infinite random coincidences which happened to Earth that allowed intelligent life to exist and continue existing at this capacity simply cannot be repeated anywhere nor any time. The odds are one to an immeasurable exponential number. Other than the likely possibility of microbial alien life, we must be alone in the grandiose scope of the universe. I love the idea of extraterrestrial intelligent life as much as the next guy, but scientists like her will never have the results they desperately hope for. But in the process at least we are expanding knowledge of our surroundings. Learn to be happy and appreciate this life you have; it really is a miracle.
she is my hero!
Anyone knows where the picture at 0:33 was taken ?
Wonderful research.
If we began building our starships now, by time you find your Goldilocks planet we could be on our way. And a way to put people back to work.
There is a lot more out there than anyone can imagine..
Love this!!
Spectacularly brilliant.
There is nothing more arousing that a smart woman. She is one hot looking woman!
Exobiology is one thing. SETI is something else altogether.
Certainly, life is a prerequisite for intelligence, but the opposite isn't.
Common sense dictates that finding extraterrestrial life must be a lot more likely that finding extraterrestrial intelligence.
Unless they are trying to contact us already.
It moves fast now!
Very interesting talk.
Space contains an infinite amount of stars and galaxies. Saying 100 billion, is an underestimation.
I love her!
I loved her first
Ironic. Humans wanna search for life on other planets but don't even value the life we have on this planet.
Very cool. But I don't think the star-shade would survive the space debris flying around. It would rip it to shreds.
foggyblues13 yeah i'm sure they didn't think of that...
foggyblues13 you do realise that it's very unlikely for any collision to happen. You seem to underestimate the "vastness of space"
RealTwistedTwin have you ever seen a picture of a satelite thats been in orbit for about a year. its full of little impact marks from micro meteorites.
sol no sorry. Can you send me one?
I can't imagine that the satelites have huge holes in them.
RealTwistedTwin search near eart objects and space debri. Micro meteorites are very real and an increasing concern for low earth orbit satellites.
Cool I think she's an alien but I love her anyway.
anyone know, If there is a possibility of other life having different type of lungs, to breathe different things to survive?
CinmarRS I used to think like this too, but a biologist told me that we breath oxigen, drink water because we are made out of carbon and they react well with carbon, and those three elements are the most common elements in the universe, so it is plausible that can be life composed of other elements, but its highly improbable for there are no other elements that can react so well together and are this abundant in any other part of the universe; but until we find alien life it's all just conjectures, even though they are very firm.
Bruno Cesar VS that makes sense, thanks for answering.
CinmarRS No prob, knowledge is to be shared :)
CinmarRS Bruno Cesar VS Actually, there are other substances than carbon, oxygen, and water that can form life. Silicon can bond with itself and other elements like carbon. Instead of oxygen, sulfur works well with silicon. Methane and ethane can be used as solvents. As far as the elements not being common, even places near us like Venus could host some of these alternate forms, which just shows how hostile of an environment life could be in.
Even with just carbon-based life, there are so many possibilities of what could arise that it's almost impossible to create a single definition of life. What we find elsewhere may not be anything like life here. As an example, all our life runs on dna. Other creatures might not have dna, but maybe they don't need it because, say, they don't reproduce, they just life forever. The probability that some other alien life has "breathing" in any form could be low.
funny_monke6 Very interesting, I didn't knew that, well it makes my creativity explode trying to imagine how life could be formed in other planets, maybe we can even find them and dont notice them, as they are completly different from what we understand as living beings.
Oh Sara! How I love thee Let me count the ways
Sara
Our Generation :-)
not to mention all these possibilities are carbon-life based ...
what about non-carbon-life habitable planets ?
With exponential progress we might get to Mars much sooner than 2030.
The search for what could end up being a second home world
Yeah it knowledge about it space.. planet gravity himself and if human 🤔😍😘
❤
Alien life may already be present here on Earth but we haven't detected it because we have a myopic and outdated definition of "life"
Alien- supposedly from another world: extraterrestrial- Oxford English Dictionary
So, no.
KING123 so you say.
Etherlife we know, we know dimensionnal ET exist
I dont like that she is saying "there are billions galaxies and billions of stars" when she is talking about existence of life, but she is not talking about whats chance of creating life from dead mattery.
maybe someone can answer on this? but only if someone has deep knowledge about it and not just faith that there is quite good chance from dead mattery life to be created randomly.
I think its or impossible, or its just such small chance so that this chance multiplied on billions still gives us much smaller number then 1
she's awesome!!! omg i wanna be her
I somehow don't like the idea of sending a kite to block away star light. Couldn't there simply be better technology?
If it gets off the ground, its going to be really really far away (about 1 million km). It won't block any starlight from you, it will be too small. It will only block the starlight from the (relatively) nearby telescope.
Nice talk, but check the mistakes before publishing a book please.
this is 5 yrs old and i thought we were "close" so where the aliens at?
Sara Seager and Amy Mainzer are 2 of the most intelligent women in the world, plus not to be rude but they are hot
I love Sara, she is so passionate about her work. She makes astronomy sexy
Today sky cloud looking
Programming time zone
#SaraSeager_
3:52 Bill Gates???
So now Field human scientist last space X
The larger lady at 4:51 doesn't understand the joke. I don't blame her, she's probably thinking if Kepler 16b has food or not.
Trust me you unchangeably can't stop reading this post until the 3rd full stop. I cancel all your thoughts+beliefs+imaginations+minds out of life. I birth infinite permutations of your thoughts+beliefs+imaginations+minds+creativities irreversibly unchangeably towards utopia into life.
Space is the shiet, yo.
Need first space ship speed need
why can't scientist do the simplest thing to find out the answer. like putting out a lot of nodes/bases into space(like the internet but telescopes) and each nodes are driven by solar power. by that the scientist will have a node out of our solar system and will be able to take a closer and clearer picture of the galaxy. they are lot of ways of sending files from and node to another.
Ermiland Because it would take millions of years to reach our NEAREST star ...
MultiGoban actually it would only take about 17,000 years max.
DiamondToes I was overestimating...
Ermiland It also requires money.
DiamondToes And no-one knows how to make a machine that can keep working that long unattended without material decay and malfunction.
Fascinant !! " Et en matière de savoir vous n'avez reçu que très peu'' Coran
Last till end at moon gravity of human landed how Walk..🤔🤫☠️👽
Nice talk, but sounds like a re-hash of what I already heard on this very channel. Still, thumbs up.
הי 👋
Why can't other life forms live on hotter or colder planets unlike humans and animals? The planet just right for humans and other animals on EARTH may not be just right for other life forms we may not know about.
nice talk, but rly nothing new
Instead of wasting so much money to make a space telescope they could save every human in Africa....
Technocrawl N4 If you look at the bigger picture, saving every human in Africa is a waste of money, since you could only save them for a limited amount of time, compared to the permanent knowledge that we get from using the money to find exoplanets.
alejandrinos we can't even manage our planet and still we want other planets
Technocrawl N4 "Managing" a planet is outside of our technological capabilities. That's why we are looking for other planets.
Technocrawl N4 Why should we take care of them? It would benefit everyone greatly if we didn't help them.
Just saying good luck finding a new EARTH it will take at least 2bilion years. Maybe it just depense if the technology got beter. I don't about science so ya just saying that it will take alot of time. At least humans is creating history of science...
Chrysdon Mape I don't think finding a Earth #2 will / is be the problem, they are out there and found allready, just getting humans there to explore inhabit is the challenge.
Xeno Morph K...
Don't worry about going to find others since they will come here looking for new protein in there diet.
so what if there's a planet with life 5 million light years away? What are we gonna do about it? Why not just give me the money thats gonna be spent on a giant telescope instead of trying to prove something thats actually quite pointless, just interesting.
Shaquille Davis Hey, when the magnetic force was first discovered, all they could do with it was make a little wire wiggle. Faraday would just show it off because he thought it was interesting. Now it powers literally everything and is how electric motors work. Just because it seems pointless doesn't mean it is. That mentality is how the middle east went from being one of the most scientifically advanced places in the world to what it is now.
This research is cool, but how could we ever put it to use? The closest exoplanet in the habitable zone is about 11 light years away. The fastest thing we as humans have ever made is only able to go 0.0000013% the speed of light which is about 90000 mph. Which means it would take about 718483311 years to get to the closest exoplanet. I think we could be using funds to develop more practical things for right now, like alternative, greener and renewable energy sources or medical research. If the oppurtunity presents itself, I say we pump money into it. But we need to focus on being able to get near light speed to make any of this applicable.
I'll say the same thing I said to the other guy. This research is so unspeakably cheap that, by government standards, its practically free. Hubble cost less than $2.5b, which is about what this would cost. If the options are a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe, or another GM bailout, I know where I think the $ should go. To put things in perspective, $2.5b is about what the candidates will spend on the next presidential campaign. In government terms, its chump change.
GingerJesus28 We needed to know the moon was there before we built something that could get there. This is sort of the same thing. If we find a planet that is almost Earth's twin, within a reasonable distance, then we could start spending time figuring out how to get there fast enough. Once a goal is established, then the means to achieving the goal can be created.
DynamicUnreal my main point is that these distances are unreasonable, and the odds of us finding a planet habitable, like earth, that is reasonably close, is astronomically small. These planets are not all like earth, some are too massive and have too much gravitational pull and some are not massive enough. some are extremely cold or extremely hot, meaning we could survive there but not thrive there. It's so unlikely that we would find any that it is really not worth researching.
Matt Conbeer 2.5 billion dollars is a small portion of the government, but it can go a long way in developing education or one of the US's other problems like infrastructure or alternative energy research, both of which have budgets where 2.5 billion would be a huge boost. I don't want another bailout and we won't be needing any bailouts any time soon because the economy is recovering. We should be taking scientific research that MIGHT be useful in the far future and put on hold or slash its budget to figure out our domestic problems first.
GingerJesus28 Education's budget in the U.S. is 100 billion dollars, and what they teach is things that are already known. 2.5 billion is only 2.5% of the budget for Education and will discover things that are not yet known. The chances of us finding a true Earth-like planet is not that small, 20 years ago we thought most suns wouldn't have planets at all. Now we know that almost every star has at least one planet and most have multiple planets. There are so many planets in the galaxy that the chances of finding another Earth are quite high if the technology for finding it are available.
Aliens do exist. They do visit our planet. All I hope for is that the cover-ups are uncovered and officially acknowledged by the governments. Would be cool to have them walking around with us. Would be cool to call some of em as my friends, go for a drink with em perhaps? Jokes apart.. all I look forward to is acknowledgement of what is already out there.
I think looking for life elsewhere in the universe is about the most useless and wasteful thing to do.
waste of money
Roland Gerard Indeed, your education was money wasted.
Why do you consider social issues "stupid"? Are you not a part of society, to be affected by such "stupid" issues along with everyone else?
Very short-sighted.