Five Out of Five Researchers Agree: Earth's Solar System Special

SPACE.com ^ | 31 March 2005 | Sara Goudarzi

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

It's only because I'm here.

If it wasn't for me, the universe wouldn't exist.

[tet68]

This would be like calling up one random person in Peru to get the average political opinion here on the entire world.


Ahh yes, the Kerry/Edwards campaign poll.

[AntiGuv]

I only read over material from Hugh Ross, the astrophysicist. Based on his bio, Dr. Ross thinks he sees the imprints of God, and is a Christian first and foremost. Gazing at the universe through that prism is fine with me if it makes him happy, but it does rather little to commend his scientific reason and objective judgment so far as I'm concerned. His "unshakable confidence that God's revelation of Himself in Scripture and nature do not, will not, and cannot contradict" obviously drives his mental exercise to reconcile the two. He may be better off for that, but the scientific merit of his hypotheses are clearly not as a result.

[AntiGuv]

PS. There is no reason for me to bother reading their books because there is nothing down this line of reasoning that would induce me to change my view in this regard. At most, they would reinforce a view that I already tend toward: that civilizations are rare. I have no problem with even the notion that we are one of a handful of sentient beings in the universe, although I would guess there are tens of billions (just one on average per spiral galaxy very similar to ours would give that result).

[Hebrews 11:6]

Suit yourself. But I warn you, now you've got me praying for you! Your screen-name implies rejection of authority, and God is the ultimate authority, so I think I'll start there.

[gathersnomoss]

Al Gore thought the sun was a General Electric space heater. Who would have thunk?

[Drammach]

Here's some stuff on planetary orbits (Java)

http://burtleburtle.net/bob/physics/orbit101.html

Here's the site's main page.. Lotsa science stuff..

http://burtleburtle.net/bob/index.html

[AntiGuv]

Well, rest assured I can use all the prayer I can get! ;^)

[Hebrews 11:6]

That's the right attitude--we all can. Best wishes.

[hosepipe]

[ When you consider the millions/billions of galaxies each with millions/billions of stars the possibility of Earth being unusual becomes a little difficult to believe...the odds are simply against it. ]

Actually the opposite is more logical...
The more the count, the more probably their are "usual charactistics".. and less options..

[AndrewC]

Bon voyage. Don't forget to take alot of food.

[RockinRight]

How is that statement true? If Earth were 1% farther from the sun-we'd be colder, but not as cold as we already have been in ice ages. The ice age didn't break down our water cycle, so why would a slight difference in orbit do it?

[Tymesup]

The 1% is a quote from a previous post. Beats me if it's true or not.

My point was that we know, to an extent, how things work here on Earth. We may know that we need evaporation and rain to live and that a different climate would disrupt this.

I don't see how we can prove that there are no other ways for life to exist. We are only recently finding life in some very hot and some very cold places, for example.

[Purple GOPer]

Your parameters only work if you believe that the universe has worse tolerances for differences than the most complex machine ever devised. I prefer to think of it as a cooking recipe, if you have the basic ingredients you will get something good.

BTW the number of ~known~ stars is 70 to the 22nd so the total number is probably high enough to beat even your pessimistic average.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Sorry, your conclusion (your preference, as you characterize it) is completely at odds with the growing--indeed, now overwhelming--scientific consensus by cosmologists that there are far too few stars to beat these odds. That's why they've fled to the "infinity of universes" dodge, because this real universe doesn't help them.

Please see Dr. Hugh Ross' website, reasons.org.

[Purple GOPer]

I listed the number of stars as an example. My primary difference has always been the stipulation that life can only exist in the very limited parameters Dr. Ross lists. The varied discoveries of the vast range of possibilities of life discovered here on Earth and the growing scientific possibility of simple life on Mars, and some of the moons of the outer planets lead me to believe that life is not that rare.

Please see the NASA Astrobiology Institute http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/

[Hebrews 11:6]

Thanks for the link.

Any "simple life" found on Mars (eventually, it is inevitable) will be earth-life blown into outer space by meteoritic collisions with earth and then blown to Mars by solar wind.

Life is fragile, and Ross' limited parameters are sensible. Bear in mind that it is not the tightness of those limitations, but rather the great number of limiting parameters, which squeezes the odds so unbearably tightly.

The fact that the scientific consensus is that this universe cannot support more than the single life-development planet we live on, and that therefore the only hope is in other universes, is fatal to your speculation.

[Purple GOPer]

The fact is that no scientific consensus exists on extraterrestrial life, that is why I use words like prefer.

As far as Dr. Ross' parameters, I am not a cosmologist (although I do know a couple that I may pass the link onto) but I think that several of the parameters are contained in other categories.

For instance he lists "star luminosity change relative to speciation types & rates" at a minuscule .00001%. Aren't some of those odds already contained in the other requirements i.e. mass, age, chemical composition, galaxy configuration, etc. etc.?

[Hebrews 11:6]

We'll have to agree to disagree where the scientific consensus rests, although the cosmologists' fanatically desperate invocation of multiverses certainly suggests I'm right.

As to that list of parameters: over the past twenty years I've watched it grow from less than forty to over two hundred. Each is independent and based on solid research, as indicated by the references below the list. Naturally, I'm not going to argue thjem individually with you, although I honor your willingness to grapple with them. Instead, I'll point out that Dr. Ross has covered them in depth in his books; moreover, Reasons to Believe has a daily hotline, so you can pose these challenges to his volunteer staff--see the reasons.org website for the phone number and times.

Best wishes.