COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Sunday, February 20, 2011

We Are Not Alone - 50 billion planets in the Milky Way.



Scientists have estimated the first cosmic census of planets in our galaxy and the numbers are astronomical - at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way.
And some 500 million of those planets are in what is known as the Goldilocks zone, where the climate is thought to be not-too-hot and not-too-cold, and life could exist.
The numbers were extrapolated from the early results of NASA's Kepler telescope, almost two years though a three-and-a-half year mission which has cost an estimated $600million. More at The Dail Mail

19 comments:

  1. Great post, Deuce. Watched the whole thing. Thanks.

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  2. Imagine, these estimates are from the Milky way alone, Scientists think there could be some 100 billion galaxies. These ratios were announced at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington, on Saturday.

    Milky Way

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  3. Wonder if it's possible that we're not alone but we ARE the most advanced.

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  4. Sam, I think it is all a matter of time. The rules of physics apply equally everywhere on the planet. The elements are all the same. The biosphere requires certain components. Meet those requirements and you get life. You need eyes to see, ears to hear, hands and opposing fingers to make tools. You need to make tools to develop a brain to develop technology.

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  5. I believe we would find more familiar than strange, exotic for sure, but recognizable. It is obvious that the universe is truly on scales that strain our ability to comprehend, but we get the wonderful and awful privilege to see it and understand some of it for a short period of time.

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  6. That stat he threw out there about earth remaining habitable for tens of billions of more years AFTER the sun goes red dwarf.

    That was pretty interesting.

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  7. Sam: Wonder if it's possible that we're not alone but we ARE the most advanced.

    Every planet gets their fifteen minutes of fame in the universe. Then they evolve races that vote themselves Cadillac health care and pension plans with no buy-in right around the time when they run out of oil. As a result of this inexorable process, no two planets are "awake" and talking to each other at the same time.

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  8. Certain atoms, like hydrogen, don't like being separated from other atoms, like oxygen... that's why when you see a "hydrogen car" know that it took burning methane or propane pumped from the ground to separate the hydrogen so that some "environmentalist" can watch water dripping from the tailpipe.

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  10. We have 32,000x more $'s of deficit than planets in the milky way.

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  11. Perhaps we're not the most advanced.

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  12. Probably the least advanced.

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  13. Dumbest fuckers in the universe.

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  14. Some alien race should pay a visit and put us out of our misery.

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  15. China cracks down on the word "Jasmine" used by social media to rally protestors.

    The communists are pissing their pants.

    Ghaddafi is already toast.

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  16. Although if you take that 50 bil number of planets in the milky way and extrapolate it out to the estimated 100 bil galaxies, we might be in pretty good shape on a universal scale but we're sure as hell dipshits on a galaxial level.

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  17. Wan Yanhai, an AIDS activist who fled to the United States last year because of political repression, said that many of the prominent activists he knows were reluctant to be involved and even refrained from re-tweeting messages about the demonstrations. The anonymous postings, he said, first appeared about 10 days ago, and the location of the planned protests was announced Saturday.

    ...

    According to Wan, university students in many provincial cities were told Sunday that they should not leave campus for fear that they might be heading toward the protests.

    Before the call for demonstrations, Chinese authorities detained or put under house arrest as many as 100 people, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.


    Hint of Protests

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  18. How many other planets in the milky way do you know of that are running a $1.6 tril budget deficit?

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