Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

Re:Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Give... by pavel_lishin on Monday November 13, 2017 @03:45PM (#15690055)

This articles concludes that we are average, but I don't really understand how - we're only average in age, but we differ in just about every other data point (no super earths, low-eccentricity orbits, no close-in planets): http://aasnova.org/2015/09/25/how-normal-is-our-solar-system...

This article says we're definitely weirder, but points out that the detection technology matters, and we may not have the full picture yet: https://planetplanet.net/2016/07/12/exactly-how-unusual-is-o...

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Re:Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Give... by mitchty on Monday November 13, 2017 @04:12PM (#15690291)

Exactly, we're weird only in that we can only detect weird planetary systems right now. The super earths, super Jupiter type systems are so common if only because that is where our light detection is best right now.

Until we start getting probes out to solar systems or have some way to detect orbits of planets that aren't perpendicular to our own we won't have much of an idea how weird we truly are or aren't.

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