[ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg

>...Of course, maybe a century of astrophysicists have all barked up the
wrong tree. But in that case they managed to build a self-consistent false
family of models that accurately reproduce most features of the H-Z diagram
and empirical data from nearly every star...
--
Dr Anders Sandberg
_______________________________________________

Can you imagine what it must have felt like to be Russell and Hertzsprung
when they started plotting magnitude against spectrum and discovered that
relationship?  What must it have been like to go to a conference with that
paper in your briefcase?  How about when you are next up?  They would be
sitting there with some silly goof droning on while the other astronomers
dozed, knowing that your data is about to knock their socks off.  Oh that
would be cool.  Now it is a century later, and the H-Z diagram still blows
my mind.

Regarding an earlier comment by Kelly, hands evolving in sea creatures, and
the implied prerequisite of hands for tech-enabled life, that really has my
wheels spinning.  Reason: of all those Goldilocks planets, I have having a
far easier time imagining a Goldie completely covered in ocean, probably
deep.  That shouldn't be so hard for us to imagine: this planet is almost
deluged.  If you go that route, it is easy to picture ice caps, so the sea
creatures could have access to the atmosphere, and if the ice goes down to
bedrock, it would be theoretically possible for lifeforms to dig thru the
ice and reach the rock, so that metals could be brought to the surface.  Of
course actual dry land is a good thing for growing smarts.

spike