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 ...
They obviously didn’t look in Washington D.C.
Lots of people talk about the number of potential planets that could support life. But the universe is a finite number of years old.
What if we're first?
Hopefully, this moron is old, and will die before he's embarrassed for all time by this stupid, premature pronouncement. History is replete with examples of scientists making wildly inaccurate predictions.
I suppose that he never stopped to realize that it's just possible that his sample size is too small, and that the incidence of earthlike planets might be 1 in 10,000. Perhaps it's only one in a million.
This is yet another example of modern day scientists weakening the public's confidence in the field.
Ok, so they analyzed 500 liberals - what does that prove?
Pinheads like him have been making false conclusions since the beginning of time. He hasn’t seen but 0.0000000000001% of all planets, yet, he thinks that’s a good enough sample.
If he believes in global warming, then he already lives in an alternate universe, with skittle-pooping unicorns and such. How many planets were checked over there?
You should take that idiot's job and his salary.
Even if only .001 percent of stars have planets with life,
with billions of stars per galaxy and billions of galaxies,
that’s still a pretty big number.
The same can be said about Planned Parenthood.
Professor Steven Vogt , of the Carnegie institution in Washington, said he had “no doubt” extraterrestrial life would be found
Ah, another one of those annoying articles where the headline totally contradicts the article.
Possible. Wouldn’t count on it though.
More likely we are alone than first.
With comments like this, Dr. Smith is clearly an attention whore, and probably should not be teaching.
I confess to, and apologize for having taken cheap, joking shot at someone who said nothing ever afaik about global warming.
500 planets isn’t even a drop in the proverbial bucket. I have no doubt extraterrestrial life is rare, given the conditions needed for a planet to be in the habitable zone. But impossible? If even only one out of a hundred million planets is capable of producing life as we understand it, that still leaves 40 or 50 likely candidates in the Milky Way galaxy alone.
There is, of course, also the possibility that life has evolved in ways we haven’t fully grasped. Don’t want to head off into Star Trek land, but we do have bacteria right here on Earth that feed on jet fuel and other exotic materials. It’s not impossible that there is some form of bacteria or other primitive life to be found in the seas of Titan and several other moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
They have not even seen a planet nor another solar system only the effects they have on the stars they orbit the tiny little tug on the stars themselves so how can they tell anything?
We can’t even detect earth sized planets yet!
Let alone pinpoint the system location either. Anything over 50 light years away we could be out by a light year from the true distance. Lots of work still to do.
Heck, I can't find intelligent life amongst 500 democrats.
He's going to have to look harder.
But the 500 planets studied are the rule. Too cold, too hot, too irradiated, too something. Study 500 million planets and you’ll find the same thing: The conditions for intelligent life are incredibly, infinitesimally rare.
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