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Uncommon Earth - Simulation shows the solar system could only form under rare conditions
Science News ^ | August 7th, 2008 | Ashley Yeager

Posted on 08/07/2008 9:57:23 PM PDT by neverdem

Goldilocks isn’t the only one who demanded everything to be “just right.” The Earth and its fellow seven planets also needed perfect conditions to form as observed, and those right conditions occur rarely, a new computer simulation shows.

The new simulation, described in the Aug. 8 Science, is the first to trace from beginning to end how planetary systems form from an initial gas disk encircling a baby star.

“The really striking result of the new model is how chaotic and even violent the average story of a planet’s birth is,” says Edward Thommes, an astrophysicist now at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

The process is typically a big mess. “Planets get into each others' ‘personal space,’ gravitationally scattering each other. They compete with each other for gas from the disk that gives birth to them and lots of planets are lost along the way,” he says. “It's almost like reality TV.”

(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Technical
KEYWORDS: astronomy; astrophysics; catastrophism; cosmology; crevo; donaldbrownlee; peterward; rareearth; rareearthnonsense; simulation; xplanets
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To: neverdem
Probability of the universe forming the way it did: 1 in Billions / Trillions / Gazillions / Brazilians (LOL-great joke, btw)

Probability of individual sperm cell containing "you" impregnating the egg: 1 in Millions

Combine all that, and...

Probability of you actually coming to exist: RIDICULOUSLY SMALL.

I like thinking of it that way, haha.

81 posted on 08/08/2008 8:42:37 AM PDT by cdbull23 (What's going on in my brain? Check it out: www.cainsbrain.com)
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To: LiteKeeper

See In the Beginning Was Information


Thanks for the interesting source. Just glanced through it but the part about statistics being the lowest form of information bears repeating.

Our society regards statistics as the highest source of info with surveys etc.


82 posted on 08/08/2008 9:06:00 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple ( Seeking the truth here folks.)
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To: ModelBreaker

I thought string theory admitted unlimited numbers of parallel universes - some of them would certainly be configured with fundamental constants sufficient to harbor stable systems long enough to evolve life, and all that.


83 posted on 08/08/2008 9:21:31 AM PDT by GregoryFul
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To: MrB
I am going to be SO disappointed when I die that I didn’t live a more narcissistic and hedonistic life... /sarc

As I said, place your bet. You are either a random act of “nature” or a creation of God. No in between that I can see. We will know the truth soon enough.

“There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know....” Lazarus Long

84 posted on 08/08/2008 9:32:12 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple ( Seeking the truth here folks.)
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To: exhaustguy
"very unique"

I hate when people say that!

85 posted on 08/08/2008 9:32:45 AM PDT by GregoryFul
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To: neverdem

bump


86 posted on 08/08/2008 9:35:00 AM PDT by VOA
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To: GregoryFul
"very unique" I hate when people say that!

It's right up there with #1 priority/top priority.

87 posted on 08/08/2008 9:35:56 AM PDT by ninonitti
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To: ops33

Will I’m a little confused, how many planets are there in the Solar System?


I think we all might be. There was a process of redefining what a planet was awhile back. Not sure what the final conclusion was.


88 posted on 08/08/2008 9:36:30 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple ( Seeking the truth here folks.)
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To: agere_contra
The so-called ‘universes’ of Brane theory, hyperdimensional regions of dark matter interacting weakly with our own - these are part of “the” Universe, which is revealed to be a multiply-connected region.

Not useful!

89 posted on 08/08/2008 9:39:58 AM PDT by GregoryFul
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To: neverdem

It’s as if the universe was designed... Hmm... :)


90 posted on 08/08/2008 9:42:10 AM PDT by dmanLA
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To: agere_contra
(”Hey! I've detected a Universe which (by definition) is totally orthogonal from this one” is a statement that cannot be true).

Well, Godel would allow this statement.

91 posted on 08/08/2008 9:42:14 AM PDT by GregoryFul
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To: ops33

Pluto has been under attack for a while now.


92 posted on 08/08/2008 9:45:45 AM PDT by GregoryFul
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To: neverdem

The Fermi Paradox withstands another test.


93 posted on 08/08/2008 9:46:03 AM PDT by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: CurlyDave
Now that we have the technology to see planets, but not earth-like ones, we have started to believe that planets are common, but earth-like planets are rare.

Mars and Venus are Earth-like. Why would we think they are rare?

94 posted on 08/08/2008 9:51:39 AM PDT by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: BuckeyeForever

You are free to believe as you like, fellow Buckeye.


95 posted on 08/08/2008 9:56:27 AM PDT by bethtopaz (The U.S. Mail Service published Obama's resume on a new first class stamp.)
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To: agere_contra
The usual (materialistic or atheistic) counter-argument against the (strong) Anthropic Principle is the theory that there are quadrillions of parallel Universes, one of which is ours. Ours is only special in that we are in it to observe it’s existence. This parallel universe theory (apart from being a tired Star-Trek trope) turns out to be a non-disprovable.

Thanks for the post. I actually discussed this precise issue with the physicist. What annoyed him about the quadrillions of universe argument is that even if universes were being randomly created (that is random in terms of the constants of the General Model) at an unfathomably fast rate, the probability of one having constants that support life still makes our universe surpassingly improbable. We're talking probabilities in the range of, if I recall correctly, 10^-408. Those are silly small numbers--even if you created a new universe once a nanosecond for the entire life of our universe, you would only have shaved the numbers up to, maybe, 10^-400 (some handwaving on the numbers alert--these are WAG's to illustrate a point, not to be precise).

Who knows, the quadrillions of alternate universe thesis may be disprovable someday. But according to this fellow, it still doesn't get you to any reasonable chance that any life-supporting universe would ever occur.

I really cannot say much more his thinking about this subject without making it obvious who he was and this was a private conversation.

96 posted on 08/08/2008 10:49:33 AM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: Gondring
Isn’t it an amazing coincidence that every lottery winner held the ticket with numbers that matched the winning ones? Not conclusive evidence that it’s miraculous, but wow.

You are right as to lottery tickets, but the probability of any given lottery ticket holder are of the order of 10^-5 to, say, 10^-7. The probabilities we are talking about are in the range of 10^-400. I don't know what your technical background is. If you do have a technical background, I'm sure you understand there is no appropriate way to compare those two sets of probabilities to prove your point. If you aren't, 10^-400 would be written out as "0." followed by four hundred zeros and then a one. Each 0 makes it ten times less likely

97 posted on 08/08/2008 11:02:36 AM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: ModelBreaker
If you do have a technical background, I'm sure you understand there is no appropriate way to compare those two sets of probabilities to prove your point.

But in the lottery, there's only one drawing.

In the other case, you keep drawing until there's a winner.

My background is technical enough to recognize that in either case, the winner has 100% chance of being the winner, and in the second case, the chance of winning over an infinite number of draws is unity.

98 posted on 08/08/2008 5:03:15 PM PDT by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: ModelBreaker
[...] at an unfathomably fast rate [...]

Odd physicist, who would not recognize the absurdity of such a statement.

99 posted on 08/08/2008 5:05:25 PM PDT by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: Gondring
In the other case, you keep drawing until there's a winner. My background is technical enough to recognize that in either case, the winner has 100% chance of being the winner, and in the second case, the chance of winning over an infinite number of draws is unity.

Ah. But in the quadrillions of universes scenario, you only get quadrillions of draws--not nearly enough to even begin to make a dent in probabilities as small as 10^-400. You don't get an infinite number of draws--that's precisely the problem my physicist acquaintance was addressing. You have a tiny number of draws (only quadrillions) in the face of odds that make a quadrillion look like a single hydrogen atom in our entire universe (actually, the odds of a single successful draw out of quadrillions are much worse than that but it illustrates the point).

100 posted on 08/08/2008 9:52:05 PM PDT by ModelBreaker
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