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feelingbutter t1_iu1et9a wrote

I would think that planets around white dwarfs would have had a bad time when those stars became white dwarfs.

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lughnasadh OP t1_iu1jcgs wrote

>>I would think that planets around white dwarfs would have had a bad time when those stars became white dwarfs.

True, but they remain stable (albeit much cooler/smaller) for billions of years afterwards. I assume they are looking for life that might have evolved after the star's red giant phase.

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Aanar t1_iu68upt wrote

Wouldn't the orbits of any planets that would be in the habitable zone of a white dwarf had been within the radius of it during it's red giant phase? That would leave only the native planets that somehow migrated inward or where captured from elsewhere.

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lughnasadh OP t1_iu19tpl wrote

Submission Statement

It seems in the next few years we may get to scan dozens of exoplanet atmosphere's for signs of extraterrestrial life. Apart from using the JWST, the other big effort is the SPECULOOS Project using telescopes in Chile and the Canary Islands to scan 1,000 of the nearest ultra-cool stars and brown dwarf stars. Should simple single cell life be common throughout the universe, it seems plausible we will discover evidence of it soon.

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saleemkarim t1_iu2cbzt wrote

JWST has dramatically increased the chances of finding evidence for ET. Try not to die right before it's discovered.

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lilevilhart t1_iu3f2bw wrote

You alien creatures better hide. Humans eat or smoke every living thing at least once.

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cwn01 t1_iu1atuw wrote

Can we please delay for a few years any notifications to aliens? Humans are not mature enough to treat all other living beings with respect or as equals.

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Tinctorus t1_iu1ho35 wrote

It wouldn't much matter, any civilization capable of traveling across space and "visiting us". Would be so far technologically advanced that we would look like what we really are "smart monkeys" to them I would imagine several million more years advanced than us right now to be able to traverse the stars effortlessly

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Islanduniverse t1_iu1rwlc wrote

An AI with general intelligence could theoretically speed up the rate of advancement exponentially.

I wonder if there is an alien species out there that somehow figured that out relatively fast in their evolution and was thus able to head out into the cosmos faster than we have been able to.

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MuchJuice7329 t1_iu1wpki wrote

If that were in this galaxy, wouldn't we know about it by now?

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rytl4847 t1_iu3hl47 wrote

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi paradox

That's a topic of a lot of interesting debate/discussion. Because we haven't been able to explore much of anything in detail yet there just isn't much data to go on. It's been pointed out that an advanced civilization would likely send satellites to other star systems to transmit data back to them long before they'd ever consider visiting (if visiting is even possible). We don't yet even have the technology to scan our own solar system for such satellites. I don't believe it is the case but we can't actually prove one way or another yet if there are any alien satellites surveiling us currently.

We can't see other star systems clearly enough to have any idea what's going on out there. There's so much we just do not know. And that's why the project in the article is interesting. It's a first step in scanning the atmospheres of exoplanets for chemicals that we think only come about from life.

To drive the point home even further, the first exoplanets were discovered only 30 years ago. Before then there was debate about whether our star having planets was unusual or not. Think about that. We're only 30 years after the first detection of a planet outside of our solar system! We are just at the very beginning of looking out into the galaxy.

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Islanduniverse t1_iu1ylxy wrote

Maybe they don’t want us to know?

Also, just to be clear, I don’t actually believe any of this to be the case. I’m speaking hypothetically.

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Silentstrike08 t1_iu4ybu0 wrote

Oh man if we ever prove life on other worlds religions are going to have a difficult time

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FuturologyBot t1_iu1els2 wrote

The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:

Submission Statement

It seems in the next few years we may get to scan dozens of exoplanet atmosphere's for signs of extraterrestrial life. Apart from using the JWST, the other big effort is the SPECULOOS Project using telescopes in Chile and the Canary Islands to scan 1,000 of the nearest ultra-cool stars and brown dwarf stars. Should simple single cell life be common throughout the universe, it seems plausible we will discover evidence of it soon.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yf2b84/astronomers_have_outlined_how_the_jwst_may_be/iu19tpl/

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MajorIceHole1994 t1_iu1hrot wrote

Ok but, they need to not signal them or radio call them. No First Contact shit after the pass 2 years we have had. Let’s slow down there.

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