Posted on 01/23/2011 9:38:58 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard, made the claim that we are alone in the universe after an analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far showed all were hostile to life.
Dr Smith said the extreme conditions found so far on planets discovered outside out Solar System are likely to be the norm, and that the hospitable conditions on Earth could be unique.
“We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own. They are very hostile to life as we know it,” he said.
He pointed to stars such as HD10180, which sparked great excitement when it was found to be orbited by a planet of similar size and appearance to Earth.
But the similarities turned out to be superficial. The planet lies less than two million miles from its sun, meaning it is roasting hot, stripped of its atmosphere and blasted by radiation.
Many of the other planets have highly elliptical orbits which cause huge variations in temperature which prevent water remaining liquid, thus making it impossible for life to develop.
A separate team of scientists recently declared the chance of aliens existing on a newly discovered Earth-like planet “100 per cent”.
Professor Steven Vogt , of the Carnegie institution in Washington, said he had “no doubt” extraterrestrial life would be found on a small, rocky planet found orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581 last September.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Complete nonsense.
LOL it’s addicting eh?
1. You only believe in things you can see?
2. What makes so confident that this planet which is invisible just a few astronomical units away from our tiny star, is such an important destination?
Fact is, the universe is so large there could be millions of planets harboring intelligent life, but the distances are so great, interstellar travel is just not possible. Who knows.... There could be millions of reasons.
To be honest, I personally would be much more surprised if the only life existing were here on this tiny, astronomically microscopic planet.
The current Kepler telescope was designed to do just that, and has been finding planets for about 9 months now. The telescope will give us an order of magnitude more data about other solar systems, and is the first telescope that can find earth sized planets. As you can see from the posts on the article and here, the data will be very controversial up until the end of the mission and beyond. It will give us the best set of data on this for the next few decades.
That's ONLY if you assume that a planet has to be identical in chemical make up to Earth, and in the same proximity to a similar star. Even the tilt and orbit would have to be the same to produce the same lifeforms we have on this planet (which are uniquely adapted to this planet).
Even so, given the immeasurable numbers of galaxies and stars out there, it stands to reason that there are many planets that are a close match to Earth.
That aside, life has a curious knack for filling the oddest niches. A planet could have a different chemical make up, and be in a different proximity to its star, and still support life. It wouldn't resemble the life we see here, but it would be life.
It’s interesting to me how emotional people get on this subject. Just look how people on this thread reacted when I proposed an alternate thesis. I don’t want to be flippant and say, “People get angry when you tell them that there really aren’t any Klingons”—but beyond that I don’t understand why it bothers them so much.
To my mind, if earth life is unique in the universe, it would be the most profound statement on the sanctity and preciousness of life.
I can definitely see how that could be read for terrestrial exclusivity.
Thanks.
Is there life on other planets?
The theological implications of the answer are astounding.
Either way.
If life on Earth is unique in the universe, then that acknowledgment would mark the return to Earth being unique in all the universe, which is something that science has been at pains to disprove for going on two centuries.
This is particularly open and prominent in astrophysics. Certain observations and potential conclusions have been completely avoided because so doing might lead to exceptionalism. Edwin Hubble candidly admitted “horror” at the prospect.
You know, it’s sort of like Baptists and dancing.
Hmmm. Examining 500 planets and claiming life is impossible? Just the fact that there is life on earth throws his study upside down.
He apparently has Judaic mysticism religious motivation:
“THE UNIVERSE BEGAN out of nothing 13.7 billion years ago and has expanded in an evolving process that resembles one that Jewish mystics envisioned centuries ago. In ‘Let There Be Light’, astrophysicist Howard Smith clearly explains the modern scientific understanding of the cosmos and explores how it complements Judaism’s ancient mystical theology, Kabbalah. He argues that an underlying harmony exists between science and religion, and he uses cosmology and Kabbalah as detailed examples to show that a dialogue between the two sheds light on ethics, free will, and the sanctity of life. At the same time he rejects fundamentalist misinterpretations and the pseudoscience of creationism........Accessible yet based on the most current scientific research, this extraordinary book investigates the intriguing parallels between the Big Bang theory and biblical images of creation as developed in Kabbalah. Along the way, the author explores modern quantum mechanics, relativity, dark matter, and cosmic acceleration. Smith delves into complex ideas without resorting to jargon or mathematical equations, creating a lyrical, authoritative work that brings new and surprising insights to the deepest mysteries of the cosmos.”
I don’t disagree with his assessment of the improbability of earth like life being found elsewhere (my thinking is biased from religious belief - may as well be truthful). However, it did strike me as odd for someone from Harvard. “Kabbalah”...isn’t that what Madonna is into?
I had this debate with the abiogenesis believers (before most of them got banned) several years back. They have trouble accepting the scientific facts that show that the probability of necessary molecules forming by chance is something on the order of 1 in 10^210. Then those molecules have to survive the whole process. Most scientists use 1 in 100 to represent this figure, which is off by more than 200 orders of magnitude. That’s like saying the primary cause of elephants dying is due to kinetic energy of mosquitoes hitting them.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1471892/posts?page=78#78
... big science is becoming a necessarily highly inductive and specialized pursuit more along the lines of a religion. Our society is becoming more like Persia under the Stargazers with each passing year. What you should know is that I am not a biologist/geneticist, but I invite their comments. My comments would be limited to pointers on inductive reasoning. Please, by all means, feel free to take on the study that was mentioned and tell us all why SETI is worthy of our tax dollars in light of the Drake Equation modifications. This is not a creationist thread. Please give us the actual figures that are pertinent here. What I note from the differing views on what should go into the Drake equation is that it stops becoming a deductive pursuit and becomes more inductive because all the data are not in. When scientists argue with scientists over what the data really means, usually there are some baseline data that both sides rely on. I’m not interested in debating the creationist/evolutionist issues on this particular thread.
It’s also acknowledged that this doesn’t stop the anti-evolutionists from posting the same crap again next week as if no objections had ever been raised before...
***As I noted, this is not a creationist thread, so feel free to tell us what the pertinent figures should be and why the esteemed scientists who are spending our tax dollars are not wasting them.
And what in the hell is a “lower amino acid” — you’re not even making sense here.
***Sorry about that, I was proceeding from memory and I am not a biologist/geneticist. You seem to have figured out what the gist of the controversy was.
The chances of getting accidentally synthesized left amino acids for one small protein molecule is one chance in 10^210. That is a number with 210 zeros after it! Such probabilities are indeed impossibilities. The number is so vast as to be totally out of the question.
Nice straw man you’ve got there. You’re calculating something that most likely is “impossible” in a statistical sense (even though you’re garbling it when you try to say it — “accidentally synthesized left amino acids” are the *easy* part...), but it’s a bait-and-switch since that “something” you’re calculating is *not* among the many scenarios being considered for abiogenesis.
***I pulled if from the www as a representation of the controversy. Thanks for setting us all straight. As I noted, I’m not a biologist/geneticist. There is a triangulation going on here. Many people will read through threads like this and decide for themselves. I notice that evolutionists seem to have a lot of scorn for people who aren’t experts in their particular field, but when they run up against folks who are experts, the dialog tends to evolve into one of those finer point discussions similar to theologists who discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Such digressive discussion furthers my point that science is becoming a religion. That’s the first part of this inductive triangle. The second part is the science that was relied upon for getting federal dollars so that we could do the SETI program. When renowned scientists such as Stephen Hawking start acknowledging that the odds against abiogenesis are astronomical, it makes your average conservative look askance at the money being spent on SETI. The third part of this triangle is in the evolution/creation debate, which is full of acrimony. I don’t have time to get into it for now, just lurking on that one for the time being, but I do think that eventually some baseline data will be agreed to by both sides. It’s the baseline data inside the inductive triangle that I’m interested in.
I think someone wants 15 minutes of fame.
HOWARD A. SMITH, PhD, is a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and is the former chair of the astronomy department at Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. A well-known research scientist with several hundred scholarly publications, he served as a visiting astronomer at NASA headquarters. Active in public education, he has been recognized by Harvard for excellence in teaching. He is a traditional, observant Jew, and has lectured on cosmology and Kabbalah for over twenty years.
On the other hand, it was pretty risky to posit life on a planet of a red dwarf star. The red photons are too weak to provide the energy necessary for things like photosynthesis.
“I had this debate with the abiogenesis believers (before most of them got banned) several years back. They have trouble accepting the scientific facts that show that the probability of necessary molecules forming by chance is something on the order of 1 in 10^210. Then those molecules have to survive the whole process. Most scientists use 1 in 100 to represent this figure, which is off by more than 200 orders of magnitude. That’s like saying the primary cause of elephants dying is due to kinetic energy of mosquitoes hitting them.”
In my opinion, which really doesn’t count for much, for abiogenesis to even be possible would require that “life” is an “intrinsic” property of matter. Meaning that the elements, especially Carbon, Oxygen, etc. would have to have properties that would always cause them to form into “life” whenever the circumstances (temp, pressure, etc.) allowed it (i.e. like water always forms ice when at 1 atmoshere and 0 degrees celcius). Personally, I think this idea to be silly, and I have never seen anyone directly claim to adhere to it. However, they must believe it on some level because they keep speculating that life will be found in some pretty strange places. Call it the “Intrinsic Property of Matter” postulate that no one has openly postulated. To overcome the statistical improbability, an “instrinsic” property to form life would be needed.
Whatever, the scientist in this case is the Jewish equivalent of a Christian theistic evolutionist.
The smallest I believe is 10x the earth’s mass. Not exactly ‘earthlike’.
Not all that much smaller than Uranus which is 15x. So a small Jovian gas giant.
The problem with said analysis is that it’s not observed. One could infer the probability of many reactions occuring as impossible without the understanding of catalysts.
Same, even with the Sun, and the nuclear fusion in the core. We have to understand quantum tunnelling with the photons just to explain how the Sun can heat itself for billions of years, which is observed. Again, thermodynamics would suggest that this was in fact impossible.
Until we actually observe the raw chemical elements and their synthesis into amino acids, all hypothesis on the probability of such an event is conjectural. We don’t even understand precisely how they are put together. We are just now getting an inkling into the workings of the most simplest organisms and what their DNA coding means, let alone figuring out how it’s all put together.
And even then, we are simply co-opting existing genetic material and converting it into something else. We aren’t taking the raw chemical elements and combining them.
The problem is that we haven’t actually observed population I stars. No pure Hydrogen + Helium stars have been found. We have found population II stars which are typically metal poor.
Which raises the question. If there aren’t any of them around, perhaps they are all gone because they were all large stars and no small ones.
If that’s the case, then it’s entirely possible that none of them would have planets, let alone habitable ones. Especially if we are talking upwards of 100 solar masses.
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