Posted on 08/22/2019 6:03:03 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A new study indicates that some exoplanets may have better conditions for life to thrive than Earth itself has. "This is a surprising conclusion", said lead researcher Dr Stephanie Olson, "it shows us that conditions on some exoplanets with favourable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth." ....
There will always be limitations to our technology, so life is almost certainly more common than "detectable" life. This means that in our search for life in the Universe, we should target the subset of habitable planets that will be most favourable to large, globally active biospheres because those are the planets where life will be easiest to detect--and where non-detections will be most meaningful".
Dr Olson notes that we don't yet have telescopes which can identify appropriate exoplanets and test this hypothesis, but says that "Ideally this work this will inform telescope design to ensure that future missions, such as the proposed LUVOIR or HabEx telescope concepts, have the right capabilities; now we know what to look for, so we need to start looking"...
The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, and currently more than 4000 exoplanets have been confirmed so far. The nearest know exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, which is 4.25 light years away. Currently much of the search for life on exoplanets focuses on those in the habitable zone, which is the range of distances from a star where a planet's temperature allows liquid water oceans, critical for life on Earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Rare Earth is a book length just-so story, and antedates the discovery of the most recent 3000-4000 exoplanets (IOW< it's not based on any data at all).
For life to exist as we know it,there are conditions that have to be perfect. First our sun has to be a single star of the right size and type. Second our planet has to be the right size and distance from the sun. Our orbit cannot be too eccentric or our axis too tilted. Our moon is a stabilizing effect on our rotation and when we are closer to the sun in January the southern hemisphere receives direct solar radiation which is moderated by the fact that there is more ocean area. And vice versa in the northern hemisphere. Anyway it’s obvious that a miracle explains our world and if it exists somewhere else it would have to be duplicate condititions. My opinion is that God gave us a perfect planet that is unique. All we have to do is get rid of Satan and his disciples.
I think they MAY be making this up.
Absurd.
IOW, like all fans of Rare Earth, you're falling back on evolution to defend the uniqueness of Earth.
In related news, some studies show that global warming in man-made.
I don’t think I was inferring evolution in describing the awesome creation of God. I don’t know about the Rare Earth hypotheses. I’ll check it out.
And then again, they may not.
LOL you’re on the wrong site for that.
clck bait not science
A single variable in what makes for life on this planet does not alone, all by itself, make for life on some “exoplanet”.
Life as we know it in all its forms we know it in has been made possible by a complex mix of planetary atttributes and not a mere one, or two, or few.
The statment:
“it shows us that conditions on some exoplanets with favourable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth.” ....”
is not science; it’s pure sepculation pretending to be science.
Yeah man. The Dinosaur era on Earth was far out. Imagine the biodensity needed to support a T-rex.
Telescopes and sensors will eventually develop so that they can reveal the conditions on distant planets through analysis of their reflectance. The green color spectra of chlorophyll would indicate one form of life, while a mix of industrial chemicals in the atmosphere would show a civilization.
Well, it certainly is a field in which speculation is the norm.
Looks to me like the artist’s conception of the 3rd planet from the left probably has an abundance of popsicle sticks. Then again, they may have been outlawed via some advanced thinking processes.
But I’m only speculating.
They stuck a finger up their collective nostrils and pulled out a bugger and examined it closely and yelled "Eureka! DATA!"
But, it’s still a bugger. . . and worth nothing more despite all their posturing and claims!
Scientists up to and including Carl Sagan were certain that Venus had huge oceans and lots of greenery on islands as well with a surface temperature of about 140° F at the equator, with an atmospheric pressure similar to Earth, and roundly criticized Velikovsky in the 1950s for claiming it had a surface temperature almost 900° F and an atmosphere pressure of 90 times Earth’s.
Those scientists were examining their buggers too. They were shocked when they actually got instruments there and measured the conditions on Venus. Average surface temperature is 864° F and pressure at 89 Bar. Although they never admitted it, Velikovsky nailed it in every thing he said they’d find. . . 25 years before they launched the probe. So, before we look, it’s nose picking. I guess Velikovsky must have had better buggers.
This study is fiction, masquerading as science.
In a related fairy tale, some fantasies say that global warming is man-made magic.
There, fixed it for you.
Until they put a democrat on them.
The Fermi Paradox ("where are they?") was born dead anyway, and the use of "realistic distributions of uncertainty" is yet another way to make the conclusion fit the underlying assumptions.
The lead author notes that the study makes it possible to produce future scopes with the capability to confirm or disconfirm the model. That's just good science, not "nose picking". And I'm plenty familiar with the phony scientist Carl Sagan -- but be careful, there are those around here who I think would lick his ass clean if they could.
Operative weasel words: may, if, then, perhaps, could be, some say. I hear a lot of those phrases on the ancient alien shows for example.
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