NASA Press conference on Wednesday - Major discovery

[the-pi-guy]

Seems these planets are the some of the most likely habitable planets found, and that these type of planets should be incredibly common. IE our solar system setup seems common.

EDT: one planet they've detected signs of water.

Aliens!!! Aliens!!!  

Oh, the boys in the lab laughed at me!  Thought I was crazy!  Now who's laughing!!!  Hahahaha.  
Hahaha

Spoiler for Hidden:

Seriously though, that&#39;s neat! <br>Aliens got to be coming next. &nbsp;In the form of tiny squishy bacteria<br><div style="margin:20px; margin-top:5px"><div class="smallfont" style="margin-bottom:2px"><b>Spoiler</b> for <i>Hidden</i>: <input type="button" value="Show" style="width:60px;font-size:10px;margin:0px;padding:0px;" onClick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.value = 'Hide'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.value = 'Show'; }"></div><div class="alt2" style="margin: 0px; padding: 6px; border: 1px inset;"><div style="display: none;">No aliens. &nbsp;<br>There&#39;s never any aliens.<br></div></div></div>

[Legend]

Oh wait could Trappist-1 E be even more Earth like than Venus?!?

[DD_Bwest]

pretty amazing.  cant wait for james webb to help look at these

[Xevross]

Fascinating. I'm looking forward to discoveries about their atmospheres in the future!

[Legend]

At this point it's safe to say the right conditions for life are everywhere. Next step is the search for evidence of life itself.

JWST could view the atmospheres of a lot of these planets and potentially find biomarkers.

[Xevross]

At this point it's safe to say the right conditions for life are everywhere. Next step is the search for evidence of life itself.

JWST could view the atmospheres of a lot of these planets and potentially find biomarkers.

I think everyone knowledgeable around the subject is 99.999999% certain that there's life out there. Like you said, all we need is evidence.

I think the main issue is that the evidence needs to be conclusive. The first announcement of alien life will probably be something along the line of "well we have some evidence which makes life look very likely but we can't be certain", and of course there will be lots of debates about it

[Legend]

I think everyone knowledgeable around the subject is 99.999999% certain that there's life out there. Like you said, all we need is evidence.

I think the main issue is that the evidence needs to be conclusive. The first announcement of alien life will probably be something along the line of "well we have some evidence which makes life look very likely but we can't be certain", and of course there will be lots of debates about it

I think it's better if it's not conclusive. It sure would be fun for NASA to come out and announce the discovery of aliens, but that would be such a world changing moment that'd cause everyone to overreact.

Slowly building evidence of alien life over the course of a decade would be much less world changing.

[Xevross]

I think it's better if it's not conclusive. It sure would be fun for NASA to come out and announce the discovery of aliens, but that would be such a world changing moment that'd cause everyone to overreact.

Slowly building evidence of alien life over the course of a decade would be much less world changing.

Eh, I enjoy drama. Its not like it would affect the economy or anything like that

[Legend]

Eh, I enjoy drama. Its not like it would affect the economy or anything like that

Well it would affect the economy at least some. There'd be so much fear over the unknown. Aliens discovered within our own solar system would be less worrying imo since we'd know there wasn't any threat to our way of life.


Also some images from the conference.

Spoiler for Large GIF:

<img src="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/1_main_pia21423-png.png" alt="" class="bbc_img" loading="lazy">

Spoiler for Large GIF:

<img src="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/system/downloadable_items/315_TRAPPIST-1e_PRINT_E.jpg" alt="" class="bbc_img" loading="lazy">

[nnodley]

I always love seeing artist renderings of what something might look like.

[darkknightkryta]

Still when scientists do find "life" in the universe, it's going to be anti climactic.  "Hey look we found aliens, they're little microbes."

[Xevross]

Still when scientists do find "life" in the universe, it's going to be anti climactic.  "Hey look we found aliens, they're little microbes."

That wouldn't be anti climactic for me. I'm fully expecting it to be microbes and I think that would be an amazing discovery

[darkknightkryta]

That wouldn't be anti climactic for me. I'm fully expecting it to be microbes and I think that would be an amazing discovery

I'm expecting it too (So are the scientists), but I don't think the rest of the world is.

[Xevross]

I'm expecting it too (So are the scientists), but I don't think the rest of the world is.

Yeah but if people are expecting all aliens to be intelligent beings like in movies then I don't really care about their reaction or opinion on discovery of alien life  

[nnodley]

It would be cool if we found little sea animals that are still tiny and non intelligent, but bigger than microbes.  But yeah it's definitely gonna be microbes 99.9% of the time if we find other life.