Is Extraterrestrial Life More Whimsical Than Plausible? 344
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."
Paywall ... (Score:5, Funny)
is keeping us from discovering extraterrestrial life.
Re:Paywall ... (Score:5, Informative)
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 ... (Score:4, Funny)
...either he doesn't understand his own site's paywall, or it's one of the worst slashvertisements in a while...
Well, it wasn't blocked by Adblock, so I'd say it works pretty well.
Wait... does that "disable Advertising" checkbox remove things like this?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paywall ... (Score:4, Insightful)
"We are made out of the most common elements in the universe. Only the height of arrogance would say that life couldn't happen anywhere but here".
It's not arrogance to say that you should only believe in the existence of something if there's evidence for it.
Otherwise it's just a form of religious faith.
To borrow a familiar example, Bertrnd Russell's teapot orbiting the Earth could be made out of common elements too. That doesn't mean it exists.
I don't see any way at present of estimating the likelihood of extraterrestial life existing somewhere. I'm sure it does, but that's only a belief in the absence of evidence..
Re: (Score:3)
"We are made out of the most common elements in the universe. Only the height of arrogance would say that life couldn't happen anywhere but here".
It's not arrogance to say that you should only believe in the existence of something if there's evidence for it.
Otherwise it's just a form of religious faith.
Dr. Tyson isn't saying you should believe that there is any specific life out there. He's saying you shouldn't believe that there is no life out there. Any reasonable, sceptical, person has to acknowledge that there is a reasonable chance that life exists on other planets. Accepting the possibility that other life may actually exist is fundamentally different from firmly believing it exists. To continue you religious analogy: Dr. Tyson seems to be saying we should be extraterrestrial life agnostics unti
Re:Paywall ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Paywall ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary: ETs are laughing at you. (Score:2)
... but you can't always believe what they say.
Dude, we just flew here in that saucer thing!
Dude, we totally can't walk up stairs!
It's a [tokes] Cookbook, man!
Extoiminate! Extoiminate! Nyuk nyuk!
Bad link (Score:2, Informative)
Looks like the article is behind a paywall.
It's not Optimism, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It's statistical probability, you Philistine!
Heh. Well, to be fair, that probability is a measurement of what we don't know, not what we do know, so all of the elements used in determining how probable it is that ET life exists ends with something like "hopefully..."
The point I'm getting at is that 'statistical probability' is going to change a LOT once we start getting out there. In that case, it may very well be fair to call that 'optimism'.
Nearly a certainty (Score:5, Insightful)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson gives a good talk on this, as usual with things related to astrophysics. He points out that the elements we find in our bodies are the same elements you find in the universe, and in the same order (hydrogen is the most common in the universe, and is the most common in us) and that you can trace the atoms in us to the crucible that formed stars. We are, literally, stardust. Well that is almost certainly not a coincidence. We are made of what we are made because the universe is made of what it is made. Same shit with carbon being our building block: Carbon is THE building block, you can make more molecules with it than with all other elements combined.
So looking at all that, we look pretty damn typical, pretty damn common. Thus when you have galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars, and 100-200 billion (observed) galaxies in the universe it becomes a near statistical certainty that such a thing would happen elsewhere. We aren't some special collection of elements that you are highly unlikely to see, we are precisely what you'd expect based on cosmic observation.
Re:Nearly a certainty (Score:5, Insightful)
But no one knows what the odds are of a getting all the conditions right for life to start.
If you assume that life must be everywhere, then you have to assume that those odds are pretty good.
If you assume that life isn't everywhere, then you have to assume that the odds are not very good.
So, In the end that little nugget of information doesn't really help at all. Its just more information that will be viewed through the colored lense of the beholder. In a small kind-of-sort of way, that's what this study is saying.The probability of life existing is determined in a large part by how much researchers assume it to be, rather than on any hard scientific method.
Re:Nearly a certainty (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Philosophically, this is a wonderful question but those wh
Re:It's not Optimism, (Score:5, Insightful)
It's statistical probability, you Philistine!
"The researchers used a Bayesian analysis—which weighs how much of a scientific conclusion stems from actual data and how much comes from the prior assumptions of the scientist—to determine the probability of extraterrestrial life once the influence of these presumptions is minimized." Source [rdmag.com]
...possibility of also finding Earth-like life on those worlds
Whoever said extraterrestrial life had to be "Earth-like?"
Thus is the fallacy of the analysis.
Re: (Score:2)
earth like as in "wet and 'warm'."
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know, as the summary's reference article is paywalled.
AC's source makes no mention of the terms 'wet' or 'warm.'
Re: (Score:2)
They've thought of this.
FTFA:
"Our analysis suggests that abiogenesis could be a rather rapid and probable process for other worlds, but it also cannot rule out at high confidence that abiogenesis is a rare, improbable event," Spiegel said. "We really have no idea, even to within orders of magnitude, how probable abiogenesis is, and we show that no evidence exists to substantially change that." ..also...
"It could easily be that life came about on Earth one way, but came about on other planets in other ways,
Re: (Score:3)
The odds would have to be astronomical, which isn't actually all that unusual in the universe, as it does exist on an astronomical scale.
You can't just say, "the universe is very big, so there must be other life out there" any more than you can say a container is very large and so must contain what you are looking for.
Re: (Score:3)
Well that depends on what you mean by "earth-like" and what you mean by "had to be".
If "had to be" is taken to mean is most probably and "earth-like" is using the unique ability of carbon to form a ridiculous variety of molecules then your question becomes:
Who ever said that extraterrestrial life was most probably carbon based?
And the answer to that is virtually every biologist who's ever thought about what alien life would look like at the bio-chemical level.
Re: (Score:3)
Various chemistry teachers have said that. Carbon atoms have an unusual ability at linking together in various ways to form large, complex, molecules. Silicon, e.g., just isn't in it. (Not that silicon is an impossibility at considerably higher temperatures, but it would also require a considerably stronger gravity, as it needs to work through silicones rather than via Si-Si linkages.)
IOW, Carbon based life has lots of advantages, and it more likely in more environments than other possibilities. It is t
Re:It's not Optimism, (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Just as we can't make the assumption that life is on every non-earth-like planet. In fact making any assumption about extraterrestrial life whatever is pretty silly and certainly not science. More philosophy or religion than science. Perhaps a few hundred thousand years after we develop a practical interstellar space drive we will have some evidence upon which to base a conclusion. Until then the most scientific thing one can do in response to the question of life on other planets is to STFU. Which, for som
Re:It's not Optimism, (Score:5, Insightful)
Garbage in garbage out. There is currently insufficient data upon which to base any sort of 'estimate'. There is currently no way to know how many earth-like worlds there are in the galaxy. It certainly seems likely that the number of earth-like worlds in any galaxy would be a non-zero number, but currently all we can do is speculate wildly. So far we haven't found even one other earth-like world. All we have found is that there seem to be a large variety of planets orbiting many, perhaps most, stars at a large variety of orbital distances, including some in the goldilocks zones. Now we have some evidence from which we can conclude that planets are relatively common, but we simply cannot say how common earth-like water planets are.
Re:It's not Optimism, (Score:5, Insightful)
It's statistical probability, you Philistine!
"The researchers used a Bayesian analysis—which weighs how much of a scientific conclusion stems from actual data and how much comes from the prior assumptions of the scientist—to determine the probability of extraterrestrial life once the influence of these presumptions is minimized."
Source [rdmag.com]
Which amounts to, "my filter hasn't found any papers on extra-terrestrial life we've found yet, so clearly no evidence of extra-terrestrial life exists." I don't need a Bayesian filter to figure that one out, and it's actually pretty stupid to use one. We already know that we haven't found any life outside the Earth.
That said, the existence of life on Earth is all the evidence you need for life elsewhere. The chance of life arising is bigger than zero, and the amount of planets is large enough that for anything with probability not zero, it's going to happen more than once. The only valid question is just how full of life is the universe? Is it mostly lifeless or chock-full of it?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We're talking Science here. Leave your absentee landlord out of it.
Re: (Score:2)
What does your work of historic fiction have to do with this?
Why bring up some unrelated literature?
Re:It's not Optimism, (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are willing to stipulate that God exists this actually makes for an awesome thought experiment.
Would God, being omnipotent and omnipresent want multiple worlds of beings?
What if he was curious* as to silicon based life, that would appear to be incompatible with a world configured for carbon life, so he would need to spin up another world.
What if God wanted a world of fire to play with creatures for whom consciousness existed in the flickering of flames?
There appears to be no reason why he wouldn't want other worlds, of course there is also no reason why he would either.
Imagine the possibilities, something akin to the final scene of MiB where the galaxy is really in a marble being played with, maybe there are other marbles?
Whether or not you choose to believe is a decision only you can make, doesn't mean you can't have fun with various viewpoints. That said, I think the God talk on /. is the new troll. Guaranteed to get a response every time ;)
-nB
* Of course being omnipotent means there is no curiosity, as God already knows everything... Thus why bother with the first world (assuming that's us) in the first place?
Re: (Score:3)
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"
by Epicurus
Re:It's not Optimism, (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Not only do you have a god given free will but you are allowed to have questions even if you were a person of faith. How many religions allow people to have doubts? How many religions allow people to question what is taught? A faith is not worth anything if it cannot stand up to questions.
So, given the history of every single religion, you basically state outright that no faith is worth anything.
There is not a single semi-organized religion or faith, that did not at one point or another declare people with doubts (or simply people who were in the way, politically, militarily or socially) as heretics of one form or another. The Catholics had the Jews, Albigensian, Protestants, Orthodox, Muslims, African/American natives etc. pp. Those each in turn had others they at some point persecuted with
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If "he" were "real", he'd have more problems than that. Just imagine what would cause an omnipotent intelligence to have that kind of raving paranoia.
FWIW, I'm quite convinced that gods are real, but also that their reality is as a kind of mental sublayer roughly analogous to Jungian archetypes. Think of them as the microcoding of the minds, not only of humans, but of at least all mammals. Occasionally we externalize these mental processes, and they can be *extremely* impressive. But don't expect them t
In My Father's house are many dwelling places ... (Score:3)
In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. - Johm 14:2
The usual interpretation of this has to do with Heaven, but who knows? It could mean that we are meant to 'go forth and multiply' and populate the universe. It's just possible that we are the first, the only, and have the potential to propagate Life from its only original source. Maybe that is our calling - to seed Life everywhere. Truly, if/when we do move into space, we will be bringing many other forms of life with us - a significant part of our entire ecosystem.
I predict that someone will use this qu
broken link (Score:2)
"Sorry!
You are not authorized to access this page..."
They found intelligent life on Earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
In all seriousness, we haven't even got a foot on the next planet over. I think we can afford to not bicker and argue over the prospects for life elsewhere for a bit. Give science a chance to discover what it will.
Some article links... (Score:5, Informative)
...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: (Score:2, Insightful)
I find it pretty stupid, to be honest.
By all counts, maths, physics, biology, chemistry, there is life anywhere else outside of Earth, period. Unless we really are in a magical fantasy world made by some bored deity playing Sims Universe.
Life develops easily with the right requirements, we know this from quite a lot of evidence. We even recreated genesis by accident, twice, and once on purpose just recently.
We see evolution right in front of us every day, and can even tweak it. We have been doing so for
Re:Some article links... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Life develops easily with the right requirements, we know this from quite a lot of evidence. We even recreated genesis by accident, twice, and once on purpose just recently."
Really? Can you provide a link? I've not heard this. I've heard that we've created environments SIMILAR to early earth -- and basic proteins developed... the BUILDING BLOCKS of life. But I haven't heard anything about creating life.
Unless you are talking about XNA research...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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: (Score:2, Insightful)
Doesn't it seem that to believe the Earth is the ONLY place in the universe where sentient life has evolved shows extreme conceit?
But then these people are from Princeton University so they'd know a thing or two about conceit.
Re: (Score:3)
Finding/communicating with extratarestrial life is an entirely different set of probabilities than the existance of extratarestrial life.
Re:Some article links... (Score:5, Funny)
The depth of intelligent discourse, the subtle give-and-take of reasoned debate — these are the reasons I love slashdot!
Re: (Score:2)
Pot, may I introduce you to kettle.
Re: (Score:3)
And yet there's a Slashdot user named mbone that repeatedly claims otherwise [slashdot.org] ... either he's an extremely well researched troll or he's on to something.
Thanks, that link is way more interesting and informative than anything on this thread
Life is like a Cockroach (Score:2, Insightful)
Life is Like a cockroach, where there's one, there's a billion. The whimsical part is the notion that we will ever interact with one another. The distances and natural laws just won't allow it.
Define Life? (Score:2)
Re:Define Life? (Score:5, Funny)
Because if life doesn't look like us, there's no point in finding it. Seriously, do you want to have a hot makeout session with a 5-limbed cross between a cockroach and a slime mold from Rigel 7 No, of COURSE you don't.
You'd much rather do a little heavy petting with a light-green hottie with blonde hair and 4 boobs from Proxima Centauri. If Star Trek (and the Secret Service) have taught us anything, it's that getting it on with hot chicks in other places is pretty much the only reason to explore.
Re: (Score:2)
If there's life on a planet like Venus, I think that would be pretty amazing and a whole lot of people would be interested in it.
Re:Define Life? (Score:5, Interesting)
The physical differences between Asian, Aferican and European decendents exist because of the time it took for our species to propogate around the world, isolation, enviornmental factors, boarders, politics, and the slow speed of travel at the time.
In the forseable future, humanity may spread to other planets via generation ships with pressures not unlike those faced by our genetic ancestors. The limited communication between colonies, limited travel opportunities, and enviornmental pressures between habited planets will probably mean that humans on distant stars will begin to take on traits that are very different than those of us who live on earth.
It's entirely plausable, and even likely, that as humanity spreads around the stars, we will evolve into something not unlike the aliens of star trek. In the future, there just might be a green woman out there waiting for you - someone Alian, but also someone human.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Define Life? (Score:4, Funny)
There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens.
Re:Define Life? (Score:4, Funny)
do you want to have a hot makeout session with a 5-limbed cross between a cockroach and a slime mold from Rigel 7
Oh, like your taste in women is so great.
Re: (Score:2)
Why can't their be "life" on planets that would cook us alive?
Because meat tastes much better when it has been properly aged before cooking. Anyway, humans are full of saturated fats and artificial additives.
But seriously folks - its easy to speculate about forms of "life" beyond our imagination, but if you're talking about trying to find life on exoplanets simply by estimating their surface conditions or maybe, if you are lucky, a bit of spectroscopic data about the atmosphere then the only signs you could look for are the ones you know to be associated with "life
Re: (Score:3)
You seem to be assuming that SETI is expecting to find radio leakage from other worlds. That simply is not the case. SETI is based upon the idea of civilizations who might choose to attempt to communicate intentionally either with the entire galaxy using some method quite similar to pulsars or via an automated EM beam that settles on a star system for some period of time before moving on to another. Either way whatever technology they use to communicate with each other on their own planet doesn't factor int
eeeehhhlliott (Score:2)
Whoever wrote the tagline for this piece should get a beer and day off. Well played.
Sigh... (Score:2)
This is a case where the statement "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Yes, we have no evidence as of yet, but at the same time we have a sample size of exactly one, so trying to making any claim on the frequency or infrequency of life elsewhere in the Universe is utterly ludicrous.
Re: (Score:2)
Sensible Crowd: We're not even sure what to look for, we're not even sure of how abiogenesis occurred, so attempting to answer the question is extremely premature.
Re: (Score:2)
Statistician: probably yes, but on the other hand...
heh.
However it's not premature to ask the question. You must ask the question before you begin to find out.
Can man \harness electricity needs to be asked before we could have cell phones.
Too many stars (Score:2)
That being said, there still might not be any "near" us.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I just think about how many stars there are--especially in light of how many planets we are finding--and I can't help thinking life is common.
They say there are more planets in the Universe than there are grains of sands on all the beaches on Earth.
Oh, but it's most likely that we're unique among them all? All the geo/helio/etc.-centrisms are just human hubris projected upon the known world.
Re: (Score:3)
It is, indeed, quite likely that we are unique. This isn't an argument that life doesn't exist elsewhere, just that it will be different. And we can't readily put bounds around how different. (Though I believe that carbon based life will be overwhelmingly dominant. But I'm less certain about liquid water. We really need to take a better look at Titan before I commit myself. It seems quite plausible that low gravity worlds with ammonia or methane based chemistries would be more common than earthlike wor
Re: (Score:2)
Common is a poor choice of words. You could have a million thrives space faring species in the universe, and it would still be rare.
Where is my flying car? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we are at a point where most adults have grown up their entire lives with the assumption that certain great discoveries and advancements will be made in their lifetime. Moon bases. Mars missions. Evidence (at least) of extra-terrestrial life. As these folks (I am one of them) hit the downward slope of their life expectancy (which itself hasn't seen the expected advancements), I expect much more wild speculation, straw-grasping and fallacious conclusions about what "must" exist.
If the universe is so immense that it is unlikely that extra-terrestrial life doesn't exist, then it is immense enough that we will probably never find it. Then there is the whole issue of whether that life evolved and died a billion years in the past.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of real problems to be solved and discoveries to be made here on Earth, if anyone is still interested.
Not saying don't look. Just saying be realistic.
Re: (Score:3)
Meanwhile, there are plenty of real problems to be solved and discoveries to be made here on Earth, if anyone is still interested.
I'm pretty sure the human race can multitask...
no shit, sherlock (Score:2)
We really don't know what the odds are for life evolving, nor the factors that make it more or less likely except on the grossest scale. But as another post, not yet modded up still at 0 points out, the current lack of evidence for life is not evidence of lack of life.
So in summary... (Score:5, Funny)
Princeton University researchers are [speculating] on the [speculation] that astrobiologists and other scientists [speculate] to one day find life on other planets. Recent discoveries [...] have sparked [speculation] about the possibility of also finding Earth-like life on those worlds, but the [speculation] that life - from bacteria to sentient beings - has or will develop on other planets as on Earth might be based more on [speculation].
observable data set - 1 planet with life (Score:5, Insightful)
The science is severly limited by the fact our observable data set of worlds with life consists of a single sample.
It is vary hard to do science with a single sample.
Re:observable data set - 1 planet with life (Score:5, Insightful)
This. We can't even confirm or deny the existence of life on Venus or Mars.
Re: (Score:2)
Science starts with a single example.
It's hard to come to a conclusion with one sample. Other then life can exist.
The same old tirade about wishful thinking (Score:2, Insightful)
It's okay to say we don't know (Score:2)
WRONG FIELD (Score:2, Insightful)
This is once again more moronic bullcrap that says other planets are not like earth, so life can't evolve on them.
Most of the universe is composed of dark matter. We know nothing about dark matter, so saying you won't find life there is like saying you don't think there is any thing in a closed bo
Re:WRONG FIELD (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy is an astrophysicist, not an astrobiologist. Don't trust a chemist to talk about physics, you don't trust a geologist about climate science, and you don't trust a astrophysicist to talk about biology.
He could be a janitor for all I care. The only important question is: is his science sound or not.
Actually it's based on statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of finding life on other planets is actually based on statistics. There are literally billions of Earth-like planets in the universe. The chances are that conditions on at least some of those planets has given rise to life.
There is also a very good statistical chance that there are non-carbon life-forms on other planets.
So unless you've got a "God created the Earth" mentality, there being life on other planets is a foregone conclusion.
Does that mean we'll encounter life from other planets? Perhaps not. That depends on whether any forms of FTL ever prove feasible, beyond which there's the roll of the dice of the rarity of planets with life. The odds are you'd have visit and explore a fair number of dead worlds before you'd encounter one with life.
Only those who think we are "created in God's image" would stick their heads in the sand and claim otherwise. God has no image, and it's form is the universe itself. To think we look anything like the universe is ludicrous!
Re: (Score:2)
" foregone conclusion."
hmm. probability approaching one.
Re:Actually it's based on statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of finding life on other planets is actually based on statistics. There are literally billions of Earth-like planets in the universe. The chances are that conditions on at least some of those planets has given rise to life.
And what, if I may be so crass as to inquire, do you base that assessment on? The fact that "billions" is a large-seeming number? What if the probability of life (as we know it) forming on an earth-like planet is 1:10^12? The point of the article is that we simply don't know what that probability is, so arguments like the one you are making here are based on fantasy rather than evidence.
There is also a very good statistical chance that there are non-carbon life-forms on other planets.
Again: How do you know? Before, you were making a statistical argument from a sample size of one, which is bad. But now, since we know of zero planets that host non-carbon-based life, you are making an argument based on literally nothing but maybe old Star Trek episodes.
Re: (Score:3)
And what, if I may be so crass as to inquire, do you base that assessment on? The fact that "billions" is a large-seeming number? What if the probability of life (as we know it) forming on an earth-like planet is 1:10^12? The point of the article is that we simply don't know what that probability is, so arguments like the one you are making here are based on fantasy rather than evidence.
What is more unlikely, that Earth is the special seed in the hundreds of billions of galaxies out there, all composed of a few billions stars each, or that we're just one of many such planets carrying life. Now, as the previous poster said, that doesn't mean we're ever going to encounter said life, but it is a HELL of an assumption that the qualities for production of life are so remote that only Earth managed to fit the criteria, especially when the biological evidence so far speaks to life being surprisi
Re: (Score:3)
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks--those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.
Don't worry, some of us who believe in some sort of God also believe that we have brains and logic for a reason. And that any human attempt to simp
ET? (Score:2)
--
No chance, English bed-wetting types. I burst my pimples at you and call your door-opening request a silly thing, you tiny-brained wipers of other people
Science (Score:2)
I think if anything it will make us redefine what is life, not to mention that it's going to be hard to prove or disprove life on other planets without evidence to support or lack or evidence to refute it, just because we don
born of soup, evolved, self-destructed... (Score:2)
the problem that NASA etc. isn't really considering is that some of the planets they're looking at could well have had life borne out of the primordal soup, evolved to sentience, discovered genetic engineering, created plants and food crops that went out-of-control and destroyed the entire ecology and turned the entire planet into a barren wasteland... all hundreds of millions of years before NASA or anyone else took a peek at the barren rock that is left from a distance of billions of miles away.
so in othe
Yup, it's crap (Score:2)
Because even if there's some non zero probability of existing, people of earth will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever find it. Never. Not ever. Mankind will never find any direct evidence of life anywhere else.
Scientific facts (Score:2, Interesting)
1) on a planet with water, life can rise up.
2) There is a lot more water out the in the universe then we every imagined.
3) There are billions of planet that can have liquid water.
So the existence that life is in the universe is a fact.
The idea that it can only happen once is a guess.
Link to Article (Score:2, Informative)
Here is a link to the article on arXiv
http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.3835
Article & preprint (Score:3)
Their article is at PNAS [pnas.org] (with an accessible preprint on Arxiv.org [arxiv.org] and has the following abstract:
Someone should take the time (Score:3)
Wow, this sounds like just what scientists were saying about the likelihood of discovering extrasolar planets themselves... before a bunch were discovered. And then I remember a flurry of stories full of similar nay-saying, but just about the idea of discovering Earth-sized planets. Until they discovered some of those, too.
What they ACTUALLY said (Score:4, Insightful)
The title is completely wrong. Nothing about this work suggests extraterrestrial life isn't plausible, nor that there's anything whimsical about it. Here is what they actually said.
We know that life appeared on earth very soon after the surface became cool enough to be habitable. People therefore assume the same would be true on other planets. But having only one data point doesn't give us enough evidence to actually conclude that with any confidence. In particular:
1. It took a few billion years after that for life to evolve to the point where it could wonder about the possibility of life on other planets.
2. If it had taken a few billion years for life to appear in the first place, we might never have reached this point.
3. Therefore this might just be an anthropic effect. Intelligent life forms will always find themselves on planets where life appeared quickly, but that doesn't tell you how often life actually does appear quickly.
Sigh... (Score:3)
Because am not a fucking egocentric cunt who believes he is the center of the world, the universe, and the rest! This is why.
Pointless (and wrong) exercise in Statistics (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly this article will be linked to a thousand times by the ID crowd shouting we need to stop wasting all this money looking for ET and realize how special and God chosen we are.
I’d also add Bayesian analysis sucks when it comes to these all or nothing analysis with such a small sample size. Bayesian analysis can be used to say we have approximately 50-100 years of civilization left. HOWEVER the same analysis 200 years ago would have given roughly the same result. These kinds of statistics mean nothing until you have a large data set that is properly categorized. We don’t even know for certainty our next nearest planetary neighbor is lifeless. Finding life on Mars would sudden explode Bayesian stats to near certainty that life is everywhere.
Obligatory Krauss Quote: (Score:3)
utter nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no support either for or against the existence of life on other planets. Bayesian analysis doesn't transform that lack of knowledge into evidence against life. After Bayesian analysis, people still don't have any facts.
However, I'd say things certainly look better now than they did a few decades ago, given that we have discovered both vast amounts of organic molecules in space, as well as lots of planets in the Goldilocks zone.
What are the odds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did life come about because of a confluence of circumstances unique to Earth or can it develop and thrive with a fairly broad set of conditions?
That's the fundamental question, because there are a variety of conditions on Earth that are relatively unique. But did live develop here specifically because of those conditions or was it only shaped because of them? I mean, if you examine life everything fits just right but what we have is a chicken and egg scenario.
Keep in mind that if life were as resilient and adaptable that we should be finding evidence of it surviving elsewhere within our own solar system. So far we haven't found anything which would imply that specific conditions are required. But how specific are the requirements. Earth isn't tidal locked, we've got a large satellite and a fairly stable star, plate tectonics, amongst countless other things. So who knows what the real odds are. I will concede, however, that it's far from being too late to find something on a neighboring planet.
I do like being optimistic about this, however, so I want to believe that life should be common. However, given the vastness of the universe "common" is an extremely relative term. What are the odds of finding complex multi-cellular life within a distance we can realistically travel? And what are the odds of finding life that is thriving within our time frame. Chances are that most life gets snuffed out long before it's able to evolve into anything noteworthy.
Re:The lack of evidence (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We have buildings of steel and glass
we have put men on the moon
We have a machine on the cusp of leaving the solar system
we have mapped millions of other planets
We can travel faster the sound
We can talk across the globe in an instant
Don't tell me we aren't intelligent.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're an alien with the intelligence and skill to achieve interstellar travel, would you stop and visit a world as hostile as ours, or simply avoid it and classify said planet as "The Ghetto"?
Heck yes; I'd have visited it about a hundred million years ago, to see the dinosaurs!
Who wouldn't want to sightsee to a world with dinosaurs?
Re: (Score:3)
Well, apparently "moon" has become generic, but not "sun".
What's your logical basis for allowing one and not the other?
Some people are using "sun" as a non-proper reference to other stars
By "some people," you mean the media, works of literature, and scientific papers.
but that is being corrected by other people
A futile attempt to keep language static instead of embracing new meanings. Like all other such attempts, you've already lost.