Is Extraterrestrial Life More Whimsical Than Plausible?

coondoggie writes "Princeton University researchers are throwing some cold water on the hot notion that astrobiologists and other scientists expect to one day find life on other planets. Recent discoveries of planets similar to Earth in size and proximity to the planets' respective suns have sparked scientific and public excitement about the possibility of also finding Earth-like life on those worlds, but the expectation that life — from bacteria to sentient beings — has or will develop on other planets as on Earth might be based more on optimism than scientific evidence."

Bad link

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the article is behind a paywall.

Some article links...

[daveschroeder]

...since the one in the story appears dead.

Expectation of extraterrestrial life built more on optimism than evidence
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2012/04/General-Science-Expectation-Of-Extraterrestrial-Life-Built-More-On-Optimism-Than-Evidence/ [rdmag.com]

Is the search for ET pie-in-the-sky fantasy?
http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/is-the-search-for-et-pie-in-the-sky-fantasy/ [futurity.org]

We Really Hope ET is Out There, But There’s Not Enough Scientific Evidence, Researchers Say
http://www.universetoday.com/94838/we-really-hope-et-is-out-there-but-theres-not-enough-scientific-evidence-researchers-say/ [universetoday.com]

Re:Paywall ...

[Dahamma]

Don't worry, finding an in depth article about astrobiology on *Network World* is even less likely than finding extraterrestrials on Mars.

Even better is that the submitter *works* for Network World - either he doesn't understand his own site's paywall, or it's one of the worst slashvertisements in a while...

Re:Paywall ...

[siddesu]

And it is a paywall to a blog. What kind of world are we living in these days? Anyway, I suppose this: https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S33/52/89I01/ [princeton.edu] is the news the article was supposed to link to.

Re:The lack of evidence

[CanHasDIY]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance [wikipedia.org]

Re:It's not Optimism,

[Tmann72]

Which means nothing. The primary focus of the argument was more specifically the fact that just because life here started so quickly doesn't mean its a good expectation that life occurred as quickly anywhere life is supportable in the universe. Perhaps we were a statistical outlier and we had life appear far faster than the average. The fact is we just don't know, but because we don't know we can't make the assumption that life is on every earth-like planet.

Link to Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a link to the article on arXiv

http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.3835

Re:Some article links...

[s.petry]

I heard the story before, and believe it to be pure BS. Some guy claims to have made his own primordial soup by sloshing around chemicals. There was no Science I could find to back his claim. It was some anti-creationist on Youtube, but I can't remember the name.

Re:Nearly a certainty

[ceoyoyo]

Except that for there to be a lot of life around the odds can be terrible. In order for us to be the only ones, or nearly so, the odds have to be extraordinarily, next to impossibly bad.