alien life possibility is pathetic

[wollery]

Maybe I have gotten it backwards, now it seems he is claiming that a "hot" Jupiter would prevent life. I don't know if makaya is familiar with the inverse square relationship of energy and a "hot" Jupiter would have very little effect on Earth.

Actually, hot Jupiters are a problem for Earth-like planets for the simple reason that, according to planet formation theory, they form by spiralling in to their parent star, sweeping up all the gas and dust on the way in, which would prevent the formation of an Earth-like planet.

 

[Sunstealer]

When you take the number of stars in the universe and subject them to neccessary conditions, and so on and so on, the probability shrinks dramatically

Yes it does. I have agreed that as have others. Why do you not answer my questions? Why do you not perform the calculations? Why do yo not understand probability? You say that Drake's Equation is mere pseudo-science yet you apply the same criteria for your own ideas eg: "subject to neccessary (sic) conditions....the probability shrinks dramatically"

How are you calculating that the "probability shrinks dramatically"? Please show your equations and working as to how you come to this conclusion.

I fully expect mayaka to not address this point just in the same way that he has lacked the bottle to address my last. I expect alot of bluff and squawking.

Aside.

Definition of squawking - any old bollocks.
Proof - mathematics and equations.

 

[iiwo]

Long, i already have provided links supporting the rare earth theory.

No, you have supplied links that explain what the concept of 'rare earth' entails. Explaining the concept is not the same as providing evidence supporting it. HOW were those conclusions reached?

 

[NobbyNobbs]

It was once thought that organisms couldn't survive in the coldest reaches of the Antarctic. Too cold. But they do.

It was once thought that they couldn't survive on the bottom of the ocean. No sunlight. But they do.

It was once thought they couldn't live around thermal gas vents. Too poisonous. But they do.

Given this track record, I would hesitate before claiming it's impossible for life to exist elsewhere in the universe, especially since we don't know what conditions are like everywhere else.


Makaya, go outside at night, look up, and pick a star at random. Do you know whether it has planets? What sizes or types? What conditions exist there? If not, how can you definitively say there is no life there?

Makaya, even if we accepted your parameters about galaxy cluster size and restricted zones of galaxies where life is possible, that doesn't help your case at all. Look at that deep field photo again. Count how many spiral galaxies you can see. Those are just the spiral galaxies in a tiny, tiny subsection of the visible universe.

For the record, there are about 10,000 galaxies in that photo, each with billions of stars. And it would take 12.7 million photos to fill the sky.

Let's use mayaka's stats and assume 50 billion stars per galaxy. Better yet, let's go really low and assume 1 billion

10^4 galaxies times 10^9 stars=10^13 stars in that photo
10^13 stars times 1.27 x 10^7 photos= 1.27 x 10^20 stars. Minimum.

That's 127 quintillion stars.

Once again. 127,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

And if life is a 1 in a trillion shot?

1.27 x 10^8 planets with life. A hundred and twenty-seven million planets out there with life. Low-ball estimate.

Wow. I've never figured that out before. That was fun, and a little bit intimidating.

Christian, Do you realize that extremophiles here on earth would die if put on another planet due to the extremer conditions that make earths extreme conditions look laughable? Even if it is possible to survive on a deadly planet, What are the chances if something like bacteria, which couldnt even survive on most planets, could even ARISE on them?

Actually, it is a high concern of NASA of accidentally contaminating another planet. It's why they use the white room to construct the Mars lander. It's why they burned a probe up in Jupiter rather than risk it hit one of the moons. It's why when they found an organism that could hibernate through the radiation and vacuum of space, they grew extremely concerned.

Answer this: Where are they?-fermi's paradox

The fact that we don't see them is proof they aren't there?

By that logic, kangaroos don't exist. After all, I've never seen one.

Godless, most stars we found exoplanets around, have hot jupiters, erasing the possibility of habitable terrestrial planets forming

And of the 127 quintillion stars out there (minimum), how many do you suppose we have closely looked at?

 

[iiwo]

Maybe I have gotten it backwards, now it seems he is claiming that a "hot" Jupiter would prevent life...

I am not going to judge on backwards or forwards. I would put confused and/or inconsistent as possible words.

After some hunting, the results are as follows. These first two quotes suggest that:

Sun, wrong, there are at most 50 billion stars in the galaxy, and then you have to go through a strict set of criteria:

planet must be right size, sun must be right type, right area in galaxy, right age, large jupiter to protect it from meteorites and asteroids, no black holes near, not near inner rim of galaxy, etc and so on. Why is it that you dont follow the logic that life is non existent elsewhere? Isnt it common sense that the universe is devoid of other life?

Joe, thats not just that. Out of the 100's billions of stars in each galaxy, how many are habitable? How many have hot jupiters? The right location? And so on.

Which, when contrasted with this post:

Godless, most stars we found exoplanets around, have hot jupiters, erasing the possibility of habitable terrestrial planets forming

suggests otherwise.

Not to be nitpicky, but makaya325, make up your mind! Or defend both positions. I would accept either of these as potentially valid hypotheses, but both? Seriously? On the other hand maybe both have some possibility, but the work necessary to support both is more than simply the sum of the amount necessary to support one or the other individually.

I'm sorry, but you have your work cut out for you if you want to demonstrate this (rare Earth) is more valid than...hmm. Not sure of the word, but "none-rare Earth" will fit the bill for now.

 

[wollery]

Small point of order. There's nothing wrong, per se, with the rare Earth hypothesis. That isn't what makaya is arguing. Makaya takes it one stage further and states unequivocally that there is no other life out there, ignoring the actual rare Earth argument.

 

[iiwo]

I hear you wollery! While I disagree with the rare earth hypothesis, it is a hypothesis that could garner support with enough research. The odds are against it, but it can't be ruled out completely. For me at least, it's as you noted--namely the extant to which makaya325 is trying to take the argument (Earth is unique vs. another Earth is unlikely) which I don't care for.

 

[wollery]

Even Drake acknowledged that the number of advanced civilizations could be very low. His first calculation of his equation yielded a total of 10 coexisting in the Galaxy at any given time, which is very few when you think about the size of the Galaxy.


Of course, the problem with the Drake equation is that most of the factors are still almost completely unknown.

 

[Ashles]

Still waiting for that other 90% of forum posters who apparently agree with Makaya to wade in and leap to his defence.

 

[Lonewulf]

Life on earth was not a "freaking miracle". Life on Earth was an imminent conclusion, given the atmosphere and the conditions.

These conditions may be relatively rare, but there's a lot of solar systems out there. And life can survive in harsher conditions than people like the OP could even imagine... just take, for instance, life at deep deep deep sea, next to volcanic activity. Even in the extremes of hot and cold, there is life.

 

[Belz...]

Its the fact that since scientists have lost their sense of logic to debunk any possibility of et life, they just sit their looking for imaginary earth-like planets, which will nevet be found.

I'm glad to see you have what it takes to set them straight, then.

 

[Belz...]

Jcr, i view even simple life as a problem. It is not whether life (extreme) can survive on the planet, but could they have formed? The case seems to be no, and that the earth, which is incredibly diverse in species, a couple million, is unique

Yes. So am I. What's your point ?

 

[Lonewulf]

"The case seems to be no"? I don't think that's very true.

 

[makaya325]

Extremophiles may live in extreme conditions, but what are the chances life could form in such deadly conditions? Life on earth formed in a nice safe deep ocean, which no other planets seem to have. Even a water world would be a problem, since you need land to kick start complex life.

Yes, im aware "look at all those stars", and as you plug in many factors for life, it gets smaller. I argue that some planets may have very simple life, but in no way complex life

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

As for how much of the Galaxy we know, maybe this little picture from NASA might help you to visualise it;

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/9574973c8a6aebf9.jpg[/qimg]

What you can see is that, in terms of extra-solar planets, we know a little bit about a very tiny area in the local vicinity of the Sun. I say we know a little bit, because, as I said, our instruments aren't sensitive to lower mass planets, so we don't expect to know anything much about them yet.

Excellent. That's exactly what I had in mind when I was asking Makaya about how much of the galaxy scientists "know". I'd point out further that if you tried to draw the area within which we can detect 100% of planets down to Earth-mass, you're limited to our own solar system--a size that wouldn't show up as an area on this map.

And of the 127 quintillion stars out there (minimum), how many do you suppose we have closely looked at?

I know this answer!

One.

Extremophiles may live in extreme conditions, but what are the chances life could form in such deadly conditions?

We don't know. Neither do you.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Small point of order. There's nothing wrong, per se, with the rare Earth hypothesis. That isn't what makaya is arguing. Makaya takes it one stage further and states unequivocally that there is no other life out there, ignoring the actual rare Earth argument.

While I agree that "unique" isn't what the rare Earth hypothesis argues, I think there are ALSO problems with the rare Earth argument itself.

For one, "rare" is relative. It could be that intelligent life is rare enough that no two forms will ever encounter each other, but still occur thousands of times (spread out in time and space) in our galaxy.

The bigger problem is that it claims a lot of knowledge about the requirements for life that we don't know are necessary. I believe one such claim is that a large moon is necessary to stabilize the orbit. Yet I don't think there's any evidence that an earth-size planet without a large moon can't have a stable orbit. Another is about the necessity of a Jupiter-like planet to vacuum up a lot of the debris so that the potential life-bearing planet doesn't get hit by large rocks with such a frequency that higher forms (and maybe intelligence) can arise. I believe I've already pointed out the problem with this speculation elsewhere in this thread.

And finally, I think (at least as the argument has been made on several of these threads) it approaches the "conditions for life" idea backwards. They talk of the rare constellation (so to speak) of conditions that gave rise to life on Earth as an extremely unlikely set of "coincidences". But life evolves to fit conditions, not the other way around.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Actually, hot Jupiters are a problem for Earth-like planets for the simple reason that, according to planet formation theory, they form by spiralling in to their parent star, sweeping up all the gas and dust on the way in, which would prevent the formation of an Earth-like planet.

I think this confusion was my fault. I misread what I thought was a list of requirements for higher life forms in one of Makaya's posts. Some of them were meant as requirements for higher life and some as anathema to it.

Then I was confusing "hot Jupiters" (something they say is anathema to life) with the "requirement" of a gas giant to protect the Earth-like planet from too many collisions.

Still--how do they know that life couldn't arise on the moon of a "hot Jupiter" or in some other circumstance we haven't even thought of yet?

Even if these things are requirements, how do they know how rare or common these things are in the galaxy?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

An analogy:

Imagine you are on the Hawaiian Islands but have only limited technology to get knowledge about the rest of the Earth. Let's say the only thing you can do is to paddle out some 10 miles from the shore in any direction and then scan the horizon. You see nothing but ocean.

Wouldn't it be foolish for you to declare that other land masses are rare?

 

[Lonewulf]

Extremophiles may live in extreme conditions, but what are the chances life could form in such deadly conditions? Life on earth formed in a nice safe deep ocean, which no other planets seem to have. Even a water world would be a problem, since you need land to kick start complex life.

Yes, im aware "look at all those stars", and as you plug in many factors for life, it gets smaller. I argue that some planets may have very simple life, but in no way complex life

"but in no way"...?

 

[makaya325]

Joe, we know the composition of other galaxies, other system, other planets, and so far... all seem to be unhabitable