There can be only one.Guster: I accept your bet and state that by June 13th, 2019 there will be promising and verifiable signs of organic life within a 5 light year radius of our solar system.
Stakes: A Fine Dining Experience will be procured from the loser of this wager by the winner of this wager.
Additionally the winner of this wager will gain ultimate shit talking mastery over the loser for all eternity.
(Ed note: Any and all contributors/readers of Praise Science may place side wagers on this, the penultimate* of all planetary astro-biology wagers.)
So it shall be written.
So it shall be done.
*(Let us not forget the Great Sagan/Hawking wager of '84)
9 comments:
Do you perhaps mean 50 lightyears? There's only one other star system inside of 5 lightyears.
no, i meant 5. too bad for kyle. but i would be willing to increase that distance to 50 light years as a measure of my skepticism/pessimism
Yeah, um, Bulltrout's got this one in the bag. Enjoy your steak.
i think kyle is pretty convinced that we will find traces of simple life within our own solar system, like on Io or something, which is why he accepted such a small distance. but i can't really remember, because i was really drunk.
Ten years though? It takes ten years for NASA to go to the bathroom. really guster?
i would argue we have 4 stars within 5 light years of the edge of our solar system, which is more than a light year from our sun. Proxima Centauri, Centauri A and Centauri B, and Barnards Star. If we increase the distance to 50 light years we include exponentially more stars in the wager. But i think this is pretty mute because of my belief that it is likely we will find some bacterial shit clinging to the bottom of an ice sheet on Io or some such. A 50 year bet would kinda suck, ten years is long enough. We can always renew our wager if I lose.
Only if you define the edge of the solar system as the edge of the Oort Cloud. If you pick the edge of the heliosphere then the radius of the solar system is an insignificant portion of a lightyear, and bernards would be out. All the Centauris are in the same system.
heliosphere? who gives a shit about solar wind, its gotta be gravitational dominance that matters. but again, how are we gonna confirm life signs from other star systems, i don't think its really gonna happen unless you consider an atmosphere out of chemical equilibrium to be a life sign (some might). Its gotta be something hella close to make those kind of biological determinations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8118014.stm. Thats what im talking about!
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