Why is science so concerned with finding planets that may be habitable?

They’ve been searching the skies for years. What else is there for them to look for??

I think they are looking for something much closer.

Would people in the 1900s believe us when we told them we have a device that can take photos, send messages, make phone calls, and play games, and is so small you can put it in your pocket?

Don’t underestimate the power of technology. It can go to somewhere we can’t imagine sometimes.

^^ Oh I’m all for advancement, but we will need to do some real serious techno advancing to come anywhere close to light speed. Which is fundamentally impossible as per physics.

1. for science and discovery and learning, like they’ve been doing for thousands of years
“In the geocentric model, developed in Ancient Greece, then standardized by Ptolemy in the 2nd century, the Earth was believed to be at the center of the cosmos.”
“In the 5th century BCE, the Greek philosophers Philolaus and Hicetas speculated separately that the Earth was a sphere revolving daily around some mystical “central fire” that regulated the universe.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_discovery_of_Solar_System_planets_and_their_moons#Prehistorically_discovered

2. who knows? the discovery of how to streak through lightyears could be right around the corner

3. we’re destroying this planet and if we don’t destroy ourselves first, we’ll need a place to live

4. just finished watching a NOVA in which they found atmosphere and lots of water on a rocky planet just 26 light years away. In terms of the universe, that’s almost next door

5. why not? My mind is blown that anyone would even ask the question

6. you’re thinking small…as in, us. They’re thinking large…as in, the future

Here’s NASA’s explanation: https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/why_we_explore_main.html#.Y_bYqCbMLOM

@Dig_Dug again, would people in the 1900s say a mobile phone is impossible because it violate the law of reality to have so many equipments cramped up in one small piece of plastic?

We have made tremendous leaps in technology in the last 50 or so years. There is a limit to space travel because of physics I can’t help that. Matter (as in a space ship) can not travel at the speed of light because it would require an infinite amount of energy. Einstein and Hawkins couldn’t make that work either.

Science is proven wrong all the time. There will always be some new discoveries that create new pathways to previously established belief or discredit old belief enitrely. From what I can remember, Einstein’s discovery is actually an attack to Newton’s belief. Or maybe the belief is infallible but people find a workaround? We will never know.

Physics isn’t necessarily the be all and end all. A couple of years ago I heard about a black hole that was mystifying scientists and astronomers because it “didn’t act the way it was supposed to”.

We don’t know everything, although we sometimes think we do. We think we know what it takes to support life, but we’re referring to human life. There could be so many more forms of life out there that it would baffle even Einstein.

They’re just looking for alien life.

Planets similar to Earth (in a system with a similar star) are just good candidates because we know life exists here.

I also think interstellar travel is basically impossible and will never happen.

The “closeness” of these supposedly habitable planets just makes studying them more feasible, as new more powerful telescopes could analyse them directly.

They are so ashamed of the way we have destroyed planet earth that they want to go to a new planet and start over.

@Dig_Dug Haven’t you seen Wall-E?

You know I haven’t.

1) A habitable world is more interesting than a cold dead rock.

2) It would be infeasible to communicate or travel there today, but it might be less so in the future…in fact, it’s almost CERTAINLY going to be less so in the future. I doubt we will ever be like Star Trek, whipping around the galaxy like it’s a trip to the corner store…but I suspect that someday, mankind will send some kind of long term ark-like colonization missions out to the stars.

3) Habitable worlds are the superset of worlds with life which are the superset of worlds with intelligent life. And that’s super interesting.

4) It’s good to know more about the world and the universe in general. General knowledge discoveries often seem useless at first, but they can often lead to practical benefits later.

To waste their time and money, but if it’s their time and money then it’s theirs to waste so have at it, but many of us couldn’t care less about their “discoveries”.

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
~ John Lennon

There’s nothing wrong with dreaming, heck I encourage it! But traveling to other worlds and inhabiting them in order to escape our destruction of this planet, will not happen. At the rate we’re going now, we won’t exist long enough to develop “new physics” or keep this planet alive. I won’t begin to go into the science behind my theory because it is far to complex to explain. I do enjoy your ideas, though, very much!

It’s human curiosity. If not for that, we’d still be living in caves.

[Mod says] Flames off, please.

Habitable planets are interesting for many reasons. If we find habitable planets it could possibly harbor life. Finding extraterrestrial life is scientifically significant. Finding another technological society like ours is profoundly significant. Even if we can’t detect life finding habitable planets says something about the uniqueness of our own world. Interstellar travel is probably a while off but it can be done. It just won’t be quick. In all probability, we’ll gain the ability to just live in space before we gain the ability to traverse deep space into other solar systems. On that timeline, we’ll be creating virtual worlds that most of us will choose to inhabit full-time. These won’t be functionally any different than the one we live in now and there is not much theoretical limit to how many we can create. We probably won’t even care to do any interstellar travel at that point.

I really do wish we could traverse space and explore strange new worlds that has always intrigued me immensely. That’s why I’ve been a Star Trek fan forever, but I believe that will stay in the pages of syfy for a very long time. It’s fun to dream though.