Planet formation may be much more common than previously thought:

Scientists say the latest finding should shed light on how planetary systems form.

"It shows that planet formation is really ubiquitous in the universe. It's a very robust process and can happen in all sorts of unexpected environments," said lead researcher Deepto Chakrabarty, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The infomation content of the Drake equation is only equal to what you put into it from other sources.

I wonder if NASA is still planning on launching TPF? It would be seriously interesting to find other smaller terrestrial planets around other star systems, and possibly even tell if they have earth-like characteristics.

No science on my part, but . . . . .DUH!

Anything that can attract enough ejaculate from an exploding mass, nova, supernova, broken planets, blah blah blah, anything willing to collect enough ejaculate, will eventualy create a self sustaining celestial body. A 10 meter, thousands of tons body of heavy metal will naturaly EVENTUALY attract enough ejaculate to create a self sustaining celestial body.

One tiny egg, is bigger than all the sperm that comes into contact with it, but it manages to find just enough to live alone. A baseball made of iron, could start the course of creating planets, and prolly, was the thing that started the creation of stars. Hell, one little determined piece of ejaculate might have found enough matter to create that baseball of iron.

DUH! get 20 kids sitting on a marry g0 round? spin it fast enough, the strong kids find their way to the middle, and use eachother as catalyst. Or don't you remmber being a kid?

(and I deliberately used ejaculate, though I forgot why :)

Also, why is "g0ro" a disqualifying comment in your comments server?

Planet formation in that system is likely to be rather different from the Solar system. Very different mix of elements, and the quantity of short-lived radioisotopes may be so large that anything but a very small (or very large) body becomes so hot that it distills itself to a refractory core.

Why isn't the title of this posting "Tell Us Something We Don't Know"? Is it any mystery that somewhere in the complexity of space there is a situation that fits some complex model?

Until after WWI, the words 'intercourse', 'ejaculate', and 'erection', among many others, were used by normal people in everyday speech and writing.