http://www.ted.com/talks/dimitar_sas...e_planets.html

I don't want to ask anything lol stupid but I thought I read somewhere that it's theoretically possible that in the future we will be able to build telescopes large/sophisticated enough to directly image exoplanets?

A photo interferometer like this one could do it.

So it will be possible to actually detect and map surface features?

depends on what you mean by "detect and map surface features".

Below is Hubble Space Telescope's mapping and detecting of the surface features of Pluto. This should give you an idea of what to expect when the first earth like exo planet is actually photographed "in detail".

This would be amazing for an exoplanet, but even more amazing would be yet more differentiated continents or large impact craters, striations, oceans of whatever methane, water, lava.

One possibility is using the transit method to detect an exoplanet. Then by analyzing the type of light shining through that planets atmosphere it may be possible to determine whether life is there. For example, if they find light corresponding to a large amount of oxygen in the atmosphere on that planet, then that would be a good indicator that the planet harbors life.

I've read about that method and in relation to the OP, it's really interesting. I'd like to see some alien planetscapes too tough, because while life may not be abundant, every celestial object has a surface of some kind or another.

I think solving the Drake equation got harder

Why's that?
Seems like more data should improve our ability to estimate...

Anything like this from an exoplanet is almost certainly not going to happen. Even if we can build something powerful enough to capture the light from an exoplanet we're not going to point it at one for the same reason we don't point Hubble at Mercury

I think you underestimate how fast astronomy is advancing these days.

http://nexsci.caltech.edu/sagan/gsfRecipients.shtml

It would be easier if the number of Earth like planets was 0. Now that we know it isn't you have to think seriously about some of the other terms that nobody has any idea about.

Whether easier or harder to solve, the actual equation got simpler.
Part of the equation was to determine the number of current habitable planets in the Milky Way galaxy. Kepler will deliver a decent accounting of those. The 1995 reference I found had Drake putting the number of communicative civilizations in our galaxy at 10,000.
From the Kepler Mission comment - "The figures suggest our galaxy, the Milky Way [which has more than 100 billion stars] will contain 100 million habitable planets,.... "

If I'm following correctly, that would mean 1 in 10,000 habitable planets would need to be have communicative civilization for Drake to be in the ballpark. Once we get some feedback on what percentage of habitable planets are showing signs of life we'll be down to the key issue.

The video is a bit misleading. The hundreds of new planets are candidates and still need to be confirmed.

How many photons arrive to your eye per second from an exoplanet 100 light years away on a star solar system like ours and the planet is like earth in size ? How many photons arrive to your eye by say Venus which is very visible to almost everybody for comparison. What if you use a telescope? How many photons arrive to the entire planet Earth anyway from that exoplanet if the "telescope" is the planet itself in size?

I think life is inevitable endgame of complexity . I think solar systems is the rule (or at least a rather typical inevitable part of the usual case) of second generation stars . I also think we are the first to acquire critical mass so to speak (in a relativistic proper sense of that statement) and this is why we see no signs of "prior" civilizations. That statement is actually in terms of probability spectacular until of course you realize that someone has to be the first and the observations would inevitably lead to that realization making it less surprising since its conditional.

If indeed someone is the first and has a significant lead over others even a few million years its massive as i expect we will have signs of us all over the galaxy within 200k years if not "sooner" if we re-understand relativity and quantum mechanics within the next scientific revolution and paradigm shift. As is i expect 100-200k yrs is enough to have probes all over the place and large scale structures that are extremelly visible and inconsistent with what you would call natural chaos...

It is crazy to think that we are the first civilzation to become this advanced just because we see no evidence of another. We can't even rule one out at the next closest star.

I find extremelly narrow minded to think that this possibility i offered is crazy!

I will author a big post next to show you how wrong you are to take that hard line position as soon as i get the time later today.

Not sure what you are going to say, but we do not have the technology to rule out civilizations as advanced as ours at any star but our own. There are billions of stars.

When we look for evidence of other civiliations and find none then its appropriate to ask why. We can come up with all kinds of valid reasons why this might be the case. However one civilization is going to be the first....what evidence or solid reason do you have to believe its definetly not this one?

You did not parse his sentence correctly.

Reread. The second half of that sentence is very important. There might be other reasons to think we are the first, but not finding any without even looking is not a very good reason.

How often has this forum done the Fermi paradox thing? Is it too old hat to chime in?

Don't worry about it... there wouldnt be many threads if they all had to be original