Alien life deemed impossible by analysis of 500 planets

The Daily Telegraph ^ | January 23, 2011 | Heidi Blake

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard, made the claim that we are alone in the universe after an analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far showed all were hostile to life.

Dr Smith said the extreme conditions found so far on planets discovered outside out Solar System are likely to be the norm, and that the hospitable conditions on Earth could be unique.

“We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own. They are very hostile to life as we know it,” he said.

He pointed to stars such as HD10180, which sparked great excitement when it was found to be orbited by a planet of similar size and appearance to Earth.

But the similarities turned out to be superficial. The planet lies less than two million miles from its sun, meaning it is roasting hot, stripped of its atmosphere and blasted by radiation.

Many of the other planets have highly elliptical orbits which cause huge variations in temperature which prevent water remaining liquid, thus making it impossible for life to develop.

A separate team of scientists recently declared the chance of aliens existing on a newly discovered Earth-like planet “100 per cent”.

Professor Steven Vogt , of the Carnegie institution in Washington, said he had “no doubt” extraterrestrial life would be found on a small, rocky planet found orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581 last September.

[null and void]

You should take that idiot's job and his salary.

You would make me work at Harvard?

Whatever I did to you, I'm sorry!

[preacher]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/07/22/stars.survey/

Excerpt:

Ever wanted to wish upon a star? Well, you have 70,000 million million million to choose from.

That’s the total number of stars in the known universe, according to a study by Australian astronomers.

It’s also about 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world’s beaches and deserts.

[cripplecreek]

conditions on Earth might be unique

True enough. Conditions on earth are unique....to earth and conditions on Venus are unique to Venus. Its one of those things I tend to think about when thinking about the problem of habitability.

Even a planet 99% earthlike may not be habitable to us without genetic modifications. Humans are specifically made for earth. However, we're the single most adaptable species ever to live.

[redpoll]

>>> Don’t want to head off into Star Trek land, but we do have bacteria right here on Earth that feed on jet fuel and other exotic materials. <<<

I must adjust my tricorder to read silicon-based lifeforms, Captain.

[Nickname]

Sometimes I wish we were as devoted to studying deep sea life. There’s some freaky stuff down there!

[BenKenobi]

We could do an unmanned mission today, for not that much.

Nuclear pulse + slingshot and assembly in space. Cost per tonne, around 15 bucks, not including the cost of the slingshot.

Total cost would be around a couple trillion dollars, for a 50 year one way shot at AC. Of course there is plenty that could go wrong, but it could be done today with existing technology.

You could probably do it manned as well, if you were willing to spend 10x the cost to bring aboard the essentials for life aboard a spaceship for 50 years + the increase in nuclear fuel.

The only question is the will to do something rather silly like trusting 10 trillian dollars to 2 18 year old kids on a one way shot to AC, without any way to know if it’s been done thanks to relativistic effects.

[Windflier]

Apparently, the Harvard guy doesn't think any other planet can meet and sustain these conditions.

Life doesn't need to evolve in the same conditions that exist on earth. We have microbes and bacteria right here that live in conditions that are deadly to animal and insect life.

Our planet is very likely to be inhospitable to life forms that have evolved on other planets.

[BenKenobi]

dang, FReepers are smart.

Thanks for making me not have to post.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

Clarke's First Law:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong."

[BenKenobi]

I’m an agnostic on this question.

I agree that the odds of it happening are astronomical, but I also know that God really has a thing for life.

You’ve got a huge universe and all kinds of factors, and some that we don’t know about yet that are required for life to form here on earth.

Call it a wash and unity? I dunno. Not a question that I expect to be settled before I have to shuffle off this earth, so I’m not too worried about it.

[FormerLib]

Yep, makes about as much sense as taking a decade’s worth of weather readings and trying to build a global climate model from it.

[Alex Murphy]

Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard, made the claim that we are alone in the universe after an analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far showed all were hostile to life.

Chapter 17, The Lonely Self (II): Why Carl Sagan is So Anxious to Establish Communication With An ETI (Extraterrestrial Intelligence), excerpted from
Walker Percy's Lost In The Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book:

     Sagan is right in saying that despite all the claims of UFO sightings and encounters of a third kind, extraterrestrial creatures, and such, not a single artifact, e.g., a piece of metal, a bit of clothing of a visitor, a piece of tissue, a fingernail, has been recovered.
     Yet Sagan has written whole volumes promoting the probability of the existence of intelligent life on the billions of planets orbiting the billions and billions of stars in our galaxy, let alone the billions of other galaxies -- this in spite of the fact that there is no evidence that life exists anywhere else in the Cosmos, let alone intelligent life. Of all the billions of electromagnetic waves from the Cosmos received here on Earth, not a single one can be attributed to an ETI.
     Therefore, one might ask Sagan the same question he put to UFOers: Of all the countless bits of data received from outer space, the observations of astronomers, the millions of units recorded by radio telescopes, why has not a single bit of information been received which could not be attributed to the random noise of the Cosmos?

Question: Why is Carl Sagan so lonely? (pick one)

    (a) Sagan is lonely because, as a true devotee of science, a noble and reliable method of attaining knowledge, he feels increasingly isolated in a world in which, as Bronowski has said, there is a failure of nerve and men seem willing to undertake anything other than the rigors of science and believe anything at all: in Velikovski, von Daniken, even in Mr. and Mrs. Barney Hill, who reported being captured and taken aboard a spaceship in Vermont.
     (b) Sagan is lonely because, after great expectations, he has not discovered ETIs in the Cosmos, because chimpanzees don't talk, dolphins don't talk, humpback whales sing only to other humpback whales, and he has heard nothing but random noise from the Cosmos, and because Vikings 1 and 2 failed to discover evidence of even the most rudimentary organic life in the soil of Mars.
     (c) Sagan is lonely because, once everything in the Cosmos, including man, is reduced to the sphere of immanence, matter in interaction, there is no one left to talk to except other transcending intelligences from other worlds.

[hoosierham]

The pschological effects of such a trip preclude normal people,and just how do you know which type would complete the mission?Plus there could be physical health problems.Any human-crewed ship would need to be very large;the whole generational ship concept has been the subject of many a writer.Some were more plausible than others.Keep in mind the size of crews and iron discipline required in the old sailing ship exploration days,even though they were at sea months at worst.Some voyages lasted years but landfall and resupply ,even if only fresh water,meat,and fruit, occurred during those long voyages.

Too bad about TAU,never heard of itIF only we would send a Hubble clone or similar "up" and one more "down" we might get a huge amount of positional data.But better save the money to give bonuses to government slugs and Wall Street money-mismanagers .

Look at our society: it is considered normal for a kid to spend hundreds of dollars and hours avidly playing some video game extolling car theft and street violence but spending a similar amount of effort in amateur astronomy,amateur radio,woodworking, or something productive is seen as "odd"!!!!

[Las Vegas Dave]

FYI ping.

[3niner]

Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard, made the claim that we are alone in the universe after an analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far showed all were hostile to life.

This is really stupid. The number of planets in the universe is truly "astronomical". When you multiply an astronomical number by a small number, and the product of the two is already known to be at least one (life exists on Earth), it is the height of idiocy to insist that it must be exactly one.

[kennedy]

From outside of our solar system, Earth and Venus probably appear identical. Up close, not so much.

So far, we have not found any exoplanets that even vaguely resemble Earth and Venus. Once we do, how many Venus-like planets will we go through before finding one that is Earth-like?

[sand lake bar]

Get me a *random* sample of 500 planets, then we’ll talk.

[Windflier]

The comment argues that being B+1 in a string is much more unlikely than being 1+B+1, somewhere in the middle. The larger the string the more likely this is true.

I'm not a mathematician, but I conclude that what you mean by the above statement, is that the chance of life beyond earth is unlikely.

Is that correct?

[jla]

Get me a sample of one alien, then we’ll talk.

[3niner]

"When a scientist says that something is possible, he is almost always right, when he says that something is impossible, he is almost always wrong."

I don't remember who said this, but I didn't originate it myself (thus the quotes).