Orcot: It is interesting to speculate about the possibility of planets in the Alpha Centauri system. It is in the habitable zone of our galaxy, an important criteria often overlooked by those who expect the universe to be teeming with intelligent star traveling creatures.
Current technology seems to be capable of providing excellent evidence for the existence of planets orbiting stars much farther from us than Alpha Centauri. The cited article describes simulations. Does this imply that we are unable to determine whether or not the system has planets? If I have time I will try to research this possibility.
A binary system might not be stable long enough for intelligent life to develop, but this is not certain. A star not as bright as the sun could have a habitable zone closer to the star than Earth is from the sun. If close to one star and far from the companion, a stable orbit for billions of years seems possible.
Navigator: Are you naive or posting without thinking? Disparaging some aspect of modern physics as
just a thoery indicates that you are not familiar with science and the concept of a theory.
Science is far from absolute, and your opinion is based on theories not fact.
Nobody is claiming that science is absolute. Nobody is even claiming that it is as well established as various mathematical theorems. The first phrase in the above is an attempt to use a fallacious argument so well known that it has a name:
Strawman.
Table salt is NaCl (sodium cloride), Mr. X was born in 1975, London is a city in England, et cetera are facts. Let us not require that level of certainty for various aspects of scientific knowledge. My opinions are usually based on reasonable scientific knowledge.
BTW: You do not read posts very carefully. I said that the first primitive life form developed about one billion years after the solar system formed, not one billion years ago.
When astrophysicists state that some star is about 100 million years old, rather than billions of years old, they should be believed unless you have some damn good reasons for doubting them. Similarly for those who study the history of the solar system and Earth. The age of the solar system at about 4.6 billion years is considered an accurate estimate. Similarly, the currently accepted time line for life forms on Earth is based on very reasonable estimates.
It is my guess that you know zip about astrophysics, archaeology, geology, anthropology, and other subjects pertinent to this discussion. On what do you base your objection to the claim that stars in the Pleiades system are not about 100 million years old?
We have technology that works: TV’s, lasers, computers, airplanes, internal combustion engines, and all sorts of other gadgets. These are all based on concepts which are
just theories. When a scientist uses the word
theory, it is not a synonym for unfounded speculation, subjective opinion, or his current faith based belief.
Most of the theories developed by astrophysicists are as sound as the theories on which TV’s, computers, lasers, et cetera are based. It might be plausible to object to some aspects of Big Bang Cosmology, but most of their other notions are probably correct except for some small details.
It looks like too much trouble to check out the sites you mentioned. I have wasted a lot of time in the past checking out citations relating to UFO’s, only to discover that there is just no plausible evidence supporting the notion that intelligent aliens have visited Earth. Unless I get a URL leading to a specific article, I do not bother hunting.
