Posted on 08/25/2016 7:40:44 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Our solar system is in a unique area of the universe that's conducive to life, says John Webb and his colleagues at the University of New South Wales, who have carried out intensive study that threatens to turn the world of theoretical physics upside down.
The team studied the fine structure in the spectral lines of the light from distant quasars from data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile with stunning results that showed that one of the constants of nature --the Alpha appears to be different in different parts of the cosmos, supporting the theory that our solar system is in a part of the universe that is "just right" for life, which negates Einstein's equivalence principle, which states that the laws of physics are the same everywhere.
The "magic number," known as Alpha or the fine-structure constant, appears to vary throughout the Universe, concluded the team from the University of New South Wales, Swinburne University of Technology and the University of Cambridge.
"What they found threatens to turn the world of theoretical physics upside down," said theorectical physicist, Paul Davies of Arizona State in an article in Cosmos this past January. "On the face of it, α has slightly different values in different parts of the Universe, implying that the fine structure constant is not a constant at all, but varies over cosmological distances and times."
"This finding in 2015 was a real surprise to everyone," said John Webb of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailygalaxy.com ...
Correction to a previous post:
“Up until a few decades ago they believed the universe was expanding at a constant rate.”
Up until a few decades ago they believed the universe was infinitely slowing down due to gravitational attraction. However, it would be darn near a constant rate, given the infinitesimal small degree of deceleration.
It’s always easier to say the math is simple ... than to provide that supposedly simple math.
...
As of post #28 it still isn’t supplied.
The earth is flat. Water on its surface does not curve. EVER. This phenomenon is observable and repeatedly, accurately measurable.
The earth does not move. This phenomenon is observable with any standard gyroscope. Spin one up, place it in a fixed position, and observe it over the course of 24 hours. If the earth were spinning, the gyroscope would precess. The gyroscope will NEVER precess.
We do not live on a spinning, spherical earth. We live on a flat, still earth.
Click on the link for a mind-blowing expandable diagram of the Local Group of galaxies, of which Andromeda and our Milky Way are by far the largest members of the 54-member group. Andromeda has approximately 1 trillion stars. The MW, 200 to 400 billion. The 3rd largest member, the Triangulum Galaxy, ‘only’ around 40 billion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Local_Group_and_nearest_galaxies.jpg
tl;dr
An overly pedantic way of saying:
Show me an alien right now or else there is no such thing as life outside of Earth, and I refuse to believe that there could ever be such a thing.
The math absolutely works out in my favor. To date thousands of planets have been found around other stars, only a tiny portion we have been able to observe so far. We have found a variety of them with system configurations that mirror ours, with an Earth-sized planet in the star’s habitual zone. Extrapolate that out, and we could be looking at a lot of worlds with at least simple life.
So baring the limits of our equipment to put the issue to rest, your long-winded response is already on shaky ground as we finding that the conditions that led to life arising on Earth isnt all that unlikely to exist for some of these planets if only a few other conditions are met.
But then again, we dont have the equipment, but the likelihood is getting better with each passing year that we could get a signature that some sort of biological process is taking place on these worlds.
“We do not live on a spinning, spherical earth. We live on a flat, still earth.”
Is this seriously what someone on FR actually believes?!?
“tl;dr”
Yeah, that’s a real scientific argument there...
“An overly pedantic way of saying: Show me an alien right now or else there is no such thing as life outside of Earth, and I refuse to believe that there could ever be such a thing.”
Wrong, I made a simple mathematical argument that you can’t poke a hole in. You don’t want to accept that because it conflicts with your established biases, so you are getting emotional.
“Extrapolate that out, and we could be looking at a lot of worlds with at least simple life.”
ONLY if there is a non-zero probability of life arising at random, which you cannot establish. I’m sorry that you don’t like to confront that fact, but you must if you want your argument to actually be rational. Right now it is not, because you are avoiding dealing with the weakness in your own argument, something an actual scientist would not do.
Well, duh!
You mean you already knew that much of the universe (allegedly) wasn't conductive to life?
conducive! Lol.
Well fine.
You can clutch that as if that is the definitive proof of no life outside of Earth, because if you actually read what astronomers are doing and finding (which is based on real observation), you would realize that you are standing on nothing but a string of your self-congratulatory ability and saying that you have mathematically proven that there is no life outside of Earth, and then demanding that I prove your wrong.
Your math isnt any more proof than a guy 120 years ago, who could have used the same statement to say “there are no other galaxies other than our own” or a guy 50 years ago saying “there are no other planets other than the ones in our solar system”.
Mathematical argument < empirical observation
And those observations are showing precisely how narrow and desperate your reliance on that “argument” is.
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but Nick Bostrom’s hypothesis makes some sense.
I subscribe to the theory we just exist in a higher being’s computer simulation. Like one big ant farm.
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Meaning no disrespect and as I’ve said before. I fantasize that a little boy is running down the street. In his pockets are a bunch of marbles. Each marble is a universe that he just plays with.......
Duh. There’s life here, so it’s hospitable to life.
If us ignorant rubes bother you so much, maybe it’s you who should refrain from responding. Might be easier on your blood pressure.
Unless you’re a mod and have the right to tell folks to stop responding.
An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet that orbits a star other than the Sun.
Starting in 1988, and as of 16 August 2016, there have been 3,501 exoplanets in 2,623 planetary systems and 592 multiple planetary systems confirmed.[3]
HARPS (since 2004) has discovered about a hundred exoplanets while the Kepler space telescope (since 2009) has found more than two thousand. Kepler has also detected a few thousand[4][5] candidate planets,[6][7] of which about 11 percent may be false positives.[8]
On average, there is at least one planet per star, with a percentage having multiple planets.[9]
About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars[a] have an "Earth-sized"[b] planet in the habitable zone,[c] with the nearest expected to be within 12 light-years distance from Earth.[10][11]
Assuming 200 billion stars in the Milky Way,[d] that would be 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way, rising to 40 billion if planets orbiting the numerous red dwarfs are included.[12]
The least massive planet known is Draugr, which is about twice the mass of the Moon. The most massive planet listed on the NASA Exoplanet Archive is DENIS-P J082303.1-491201 b,[13][14] about 29 times the mass of Jupiter, although according to some definitions of a planet, it is too massive to be a planet and may be a brown dwarf instead.
There are planets that are so near to their star that they take only a few hours to orbit and there are others so far away that they take thousands of years to orbit. Some are so far out that it is difficult to tell whether they are gravitationally bound to the star.
Almost all of the planets detected so far are within the Milky Way, but there have also been a few possible detections of extragalactic planets.
The discovery of exoplanets has intensified interest in the search for extraterrestrial life. There is special interest in planets that orbit in a star's habitable zone, where it is possible for liquid water, a prerequisite for life on Earth, to exist on the surface.
The study of planetary habitability also considers a wide range of other factors in determining the suitability of a planet for hosting life.[15]
Besides exoplanets, there are also rogue planets, which do not orbit any star and which tend to be considered separately, especially if they are gas giants, in which case they are often counted, like WISE 0855−0714, as sub-brown dwarfs.[16] The rogue planets in the Milky Way possibly number in the billions (or more).[17][18]"
“If us ignorant rubes bother you so much...”
Acknowledging your problem is the first step to recovery.
Jupiter-sized and larger/more massive planets are much easier to discover than earth-sized due to their much stronger gravitational effects on their host star, as the technique most commonly used involves the observation of a star’s “wobble” due to a large body pulling on it. Earth, for example, barely pulls on the sun, in contrast to Jupiter. So, just because most of the planets discovered so far are Jupiter-sized and beyond doesn’t mean there aren’t many more Earth-sized planets out there. They’re just harder to detect.
Also, I'm told Earth is positioned just right in our galaxy to have a clear view of the universe.
Well, I’m not an idiot, and I will try to resist the temptation to stoop to name calling.
Now as to the argument that there was no evidence of other plants orbiting stars years ago, I could counter that there was no evidence that unicorns existed then either, and I doubt there will be many centuries from now. It seems to me that the numbers argument is persuasive, but not conclusive. I believe the estimates of grains of sand on Earth exceed the number of stars in the known universe, or at least the estimate of those stars which might have a planetary system capable of supporting life. Yet no naturally occurring grain of sand will be found in the shape of a cube, with six sides of the same size flat, at ninety degrees to each other, within the tolerance achieved by a skilled machinist using a non-CNC milling machine. No matter how many tons of sand are sifted through, factors beyond numbers prevents such a discovery.
If it turns out that life exists only on Earth, it might be evidence of the existence of God, but not proof. On the other hand, life on other planets does not necessarily mean God does not exist. It’s perfectly rational that an infinitesimally small chance of the exact combination of factors for life to arise, or perhaps survive, occurred only once.
The experts say there is no one center to the universe. That EVERYWHERE can be considered the center. That, on the grand scale, everything is moving away from every other thing (galaxies, primarily). And this is precisely how the expansion appears from our observation point. They say that this must be the case because it would be a near impossibility that we were in some “special” location in the universe. ie, the “center”. Therefore, everywhere is likely the center.
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