Mars and beyond.

29,000 miles away, and they still don't know what the bright spots on Ceres are.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/feb/26/bright-light-ceres-scientists-baffled/

March 6, it will be in orbit. We won't be getting any closer than that for quite awhile. Maybe they will figure it out. If not, that will certainly create a long term mystery.

Quote: rxwine

29,000 miles away, and they still don't know what the bright spots on Ceres are.

Aliens! ;)

That is so cool.

Dawn is in orbit around Ceres, but I read it won't send back new pictures until April. Eventually, it will orbit as close as 250 miles from the surface.

I'm sure they'll really try to figure out those shining spots, but seems to me it's possible they'll still be guessing

they do know now that it is reflection, when Ceres faces away from the sun, those spots go dark - surely there was not much doubt to start with, but now we know

btw I always get a bit amused by the idea of substance unknown to science, since all the possible elements are known, any new ones having to be too heavy in atomic weight to last more than a fraction of a second ... as for compounds and crystals, meh, nothing could be too surprising. Nothing on Earth shines like that, but we have an oxidizing atmosphere too

Quote: odiousgambit

they do know now that it is reflection, when Ceres faces away from the sun, those spots go dark -

Solar powered devices!

heh.

Quote:

The largest moon in the solar system harbors a salty ocean beneath its icy shell, the latest member to join a growing club of watery moons, NASA said Thursday.

The ocean on Jupiter's Ganymede is estimated to be much deeper than the oceans on Earth — about 60 miles thick and buried under 95 miles of ice. The moon's ocean is believed to have more water than all of Earth.

Maybe it's just me, but it's hard to imagine a body of water larger than the Earths and not a single living microbe.

Even the "Dead" Sea has microbes.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/solar-systems-largest-moon-ocean-lurking-29583021

Quote: rxwine

Even the "Dead" Sea has microbes.

The Dead Sea has the advantage of existing on the surface of a planet teeming with life.

If Earth (we) discovered signs of an advanced civilization, should we have a discussion about contacting them.

I'm asking for the opposite reason. What could you discover from afar that would actually make you not reveal yourself. Can you actually learn enough to know much at all.

This is on the contingency that we have already been discovered.

BTW, anyone know the odds for Earth being the first planet to discover another planet with intelligent life. Seems like being "first" is also at the rare odds.

Also, maybe dark energy or matter is somehow being used for advanced communication by other civilizations? Maybe that is another reason why the Universe is blacked out, to us. Who knows? Not me.

Or it's only us, of course.

Quote: rxwine

BTW, anyone know the odds for Earth being the first planet to discover another planet with intelligent life. Seems like being "first" is also at the rare odds.

We know we can't know the odds. Not yet.

Consider exoplanets. The early discoveries were bizarre by Solar System standards. Ergo we have no clue how typical or atypical our system is. Extrapolating from this, we don't know how typical or not "life as we know it" is.

If it is typical, then the odds for intelligent civilizations are very, very low.

The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, or 4,500,000,000. Life has existed on it for about as long. But multicellular life only for a fraction of that time. Land-based multicellular life is even younger. Intelligent species have existed here for only a couple of million years. Civilization for under 10,000. Advanced civilization (ie meaning one possessing massive industry and massive energy production) is less than 300 years old.

If we're average, then odds for other civilizations is slim. If we're above average, well, we can't really know right now.