Posted on 06/24/2024 11:46:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
Webb Ping!........................
Excellent work...
That’s all fine but when will we see pictures of the exoplanets showing evidence of life that we were promised would more than justify the massive cost and schedule overruns?
Not sure who promised you evidence of life, but ya might want to give it some more time. The universe is really a big place.
In NASA's own words from a 2016 crawl stored by the Wayback machine:
"Data from JWST will be used to study the formation and evolution of habitable worlds, and will be invaluable in understanding processes that have shaped habitability in our own Solar System. JWST is capable of making detailed observations that might allow astrobiologists to identify signatures of life on Earth-like planets beyond our Solar System."
https://web.archive.org/web/20160703200716/https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/missions/jwst/
The media and their scientific sources, scientific publications, the SETI cult, etc.
No, I don’t think scientist or the people that developed and operate JWST promised you that evidence. It has been discussed, but never promised.
Btw, on another note, I won’t be surprised if life in some form is discovered to exist outside earth within the next 10 years. We’ll see.
Perhaps but what fundamentally gives you that confidence?
The shear numbers, which makes for unlimited possibilities.
But those numbers reduce profoundly when one starts considering things like the type star earth has and how uncommon stars like ours are believed to be in the universe.
Finding a star like our sun is not enough because it has to be within the habitable zone of a galaxy. This criteria then wipes out a vast swath of stars in each galaxy.
It doesn't appear that any of the known exoplanets exist in solar systems resembling our own and the composition of our solar system with gas giants in the outer belts trapping interstellar debris is important for life on earth. This then brings up the possibility that our type solar system is itself uncommon which further reduces the probabilities.
On and on the reducing factors go.
There are many, many more reducing factors which Carl Sagan had to know of when he spewed his billions and billions of galaxies containing billions and billions of stars. reasoning for the probability of life out there.
“””Finding a star like our sun is not enough”””
We might not have to find anything. There’s a good chance it may find us. 🙂
Actual imagery.
The staple of SciFi is that extraterrestrials are more advanced than earthlings. Guess it doesn't make for good books, tv and movies if we Earthlings are the most advanced in the universe, or even the only one.
Humans are so arrogant. I don't consider humans advanced at all. We can't even put a human on our closest planet which in astronomical terms is literally sitting on our lap. We can't even cure common diseases which have existed thousands of years. We're talking about a species that routinely murders each other by the thousands.
Advanced? C'mon.
Ok but as compared with what/who?
There are multiple *trillions* of planets in the universe...Man has not scratched the surface in it's search because we're not capable. Man is primitive. Yet we're declaring life probably doesn't exist because we've look at a few hundred systems? C'mon.
Don’t need to compare. Do you think a species that routinely murders each other, can’t cure common diseases that have been with us thousands of years, and can’t even put a person on our closest planet are advanced? Really?
That's theory but reasonable. Time and better instrumentation will reveal more exoplanets. I share your faith in that.
Never-the-less, citing absolute numbers is very misleading.
There is a long list of factors which dramatically reduce the number of exoplanets that might be out there capable of supporting life as we know it. Then there is another long list of unknowns concerning how life as we know it might have first begun in a sterile environment.
It should tell you something that no scientist popular with the media will address those reducing factors. This is no different from no scientist popular with the media coming out and saying my natural gas appliances, gas lawn tools and gas automobile are not causing global warming.
Man is primitive.
As compared with who/what?
Yet we're declaring life probably doesn't exist because we've look at a few hundred systems? C'mon.
No, just that life as we know it is sufficiently unlikely and poorly understood that odds are against us finding it anytime soon... if ever.
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