PB666

The perils of statistics

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OK, maybe not. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36976777

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Yes but science works off of evidence, it works most poorly when it guesses.

There is a lower limit that cannot be statistically sorted from the noise. The smaller the planet the more transects need to be made to verify The smaller the star the smaller the transect zone The younger and redder the star the more transects need to occur because of instability. K2, the method by which we have seen the most planets, does not survey for long periods, therefore it tends to see planets from smaller stars with closer orbits, if gas giants are typically more abundant in outer stellar systems because of initiation phase dynamics, then we cannot see them because their orbital periods are two long.

It think the planet hunters defocus on obvious gas giants, they spend most of their focus on characterizing rocky planet sized things. There are alot of gas giants in that database just they are not well characterized. The mars sized planets will become more obvious with JWST, largely because its abou 10 fold better at inspecting stars in the red dwarf range. Although honestly, apart from the hype, I see these with the very rare exceptions as being lifeless duds. Productive photochemistry shares both ends of the visible spectrum.

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But his critique is partially wrong, given all the stars were we see transits, lots of planets, none of them what I would call earth-like, even though they are called earth like because they are in earth like orbits, or earth-like size. But none have earth-like atmosphere, few have the same surface temperature, none have stable temperatures similar to earth. Of 2400 observed so far, nothing I've seen so far is remotely earth-like IMHO. You can dredge web-sites and hand wave all you want about the potential for life, but the reality is that Earth is not a surrogate for potential earth-like planets that have not been discovered.

That's true for nearly all methods.

IKR, seriously who really cares about company hype when we know companies are going to hype.

Abbr. pic? Cheater.

Duck the popups! https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130852-800-ghostly-particle-groups-could-explain-why-gravity-is-so-weak/

Evidence?

Fault report The previous value of -43 was correct. -44 (-)

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I think its suppose to be a guinea pig. Banned for inappropriate misspelling.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/03/a-new-reason-why-we-havent-found-alien-life-in-the-universe/?tid=pm_pop_b Basically probability of life is a function of the age of comoving space time, the earth is an early arriver for life, the chance of life of our complexity existing at any point in time increases from zero for billions of years and then begins its climb, that probability has yet to peak. The flip side for this, is that in many supergalaxies, new star formation has collapsed before the best windows have opened, and consequently may not have life at all. Where as in a few billion years smaller galaxies might be abundant with sentient life.

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Yes.

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