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.
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?
I don't remember who said this, but I didn't originate it myself (thus the quotes).
This activated my bullsh|t detector. Astronomers do not refer to other "solar" systems, since there is no such thing. "The Solar System" refers to our sun (Sol). The correct term is "other stellar systems". All real astronomers know this, and any astrophysicist should be equally well informed.
This is the kind of ignorance that would cause one to refer to other moons as "other lunas", other planets as "other earths", and other galaxies as "other milky ways". This is like an auto mechanic referring to all cars as "fords", an accountant who doesn't know the difference between debits and credits, or a software engineer who doesn't know the difference between a compiler and an assembler.
Dead things don't become alive. Science has never observed dead things becoming alive. Yet it's assumed that it can happen? Life didn't develop.
If evolution is factual, then the scientific evidence here on earth indicates that the chance of life existing on any other planet is practically nil.
Furthermore, if evolution is factual, the scientific evidence of life here on earth also indicates that if there is any kind of life existing on another planet, the odds that there would advanced, intelligent life on that planet would be exceptionally small.
From the Determinist outlook alone, the astrophysicist’s conclusion in ludicrous. No sample of star systems - all of them in one spiral arm of one galaxy (and we now know there to be more observable galaxies than there are stars in this one galaxy alone) can be large enough to reach such a conclusion - even if Earth is the only planet with life in the Milky Way, or even in the Local Group (and perhaps even in the Virgo Super Cluster).
And I thought UFOs were unlikely.
Heck of a waste of space.
"Where are the Von Neumann (sp?) probes?"
IIRC, Von Neumann & his contemporaries were involved in a discussion along the lines of...
1) We on Earth are obviously a later (3rd?) generation star system. If sentient life had evolved elsewehere, then surely by now we would have seen some automated probes from one of these earlier civilizations! (exasperatedly)
or
2) If such a civilization has ever existed in the galaxy, they must have destroyed themselves before they had a chance to build the probes.
...which isn't very encouraging. Some people think perhaps no such civilization has ever survived, for instance, their Atomic Age.
I actually think it's a pretty decent argument.
Zer0 is likely an illegal alien.
>> after an analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far showed all were hostile to life.
Leftwing planets.
Hmmm. Examining 500 planets and claiming life is impossible? Just the fact that there is life on earth throws his study upside down.
I had this debate with the abiogenesis believers (before most of them got banned) several years back. They have trouble accepting the scientific facts that show that the probability of necessary molecules forming by chance is something on the order of 1 in 10^210. Then those molecules have to survive the whole process. Most scientists use 1 in 100 to represent this figure, which is off by more than 200 orders of magnitude. That’s like saying the primary cause of elephants dying is due to kinetic energy of mosquitoes hitting them.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1471892/posts?page=78#78
... big science is becoming a necessarily highly inductive and specialized pursuit more along the lines of a religion. Our society is becoming more like Persia under the Stargazers with each passing year. What you should know is that I am not a biologist/geneticist, but I invite their comments. My comments would be limited to pointers on inductive reasoning. Please, by all means, feel free to take on the study that was mentioned and tell us all why SETI is worthy of our tax dollars in light of the Drake Equation modifications. This is not a creationist thread. Please give us the actual figures that are pertinent here. What I note from the differing views on what should go into the Drake equation is that it stops becoming a deductive pursuit and becomes more inductive because all the data are not in. When scientists argue with scientists over what the data really means, usually there are some baseline data that both sides rely on. I’m not interested in debating the creationist/evolutionist issues on this particular thread.
It’s also acknowledged that this doesn’t stop the anti-evolutionists from posting the same crap again next week as if no objections had ever been raised before...
***As I noted, this is not a creationist thread, so feel free to tell us what the pertinent figures should be and why the esteemed scientists who are spending our tax dollars are not wasting them.
And what in the hell is a “lower amino acid” — you’re not even making sense here.
***Sorry about that, I was proceeding from memory and I am not a biologist/geneticist. You seem to have figured out what the gist of the controversy was.
The chances of getting accidentally synthesized left amino acids for one small protein molecule is one chance in 10^210. That is a number with 210 zeros after it! Such probabilities are indeed impossibilities. The number is so vast as to be totally out of the question.
Nice straw man you’ve got there. You’re calculating something that most likely is “impossible” in a statistical sense (even though you’re garbling it when you try to say it — “accidentally synthesized left amino acids” are the *easy* part...), but it’s a bait-and-switch since that “something” you’re calculating is *not* among the many scenarios being considered for abiogenesis.
***I pulled if from the www as a representation of the controversy. Thanks for setting us all straight. As I noted, I’m not a biologist/geneticist. There is a triangulation going on here. Many people will read through threads like this and decide for themselves. I notice that evolutionists seem to have a lot of scorn for people who aren’t experts in their particular field, but when they run up against folks who are experts, the dialog tends to evolve into one of those finer point discussions similar to theologists who discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Such digressive discussion furthers my point that science is becoming a religion. That’s the first part of this inductive triangle. The second part is the science that was relied upon for getting federal dollars so that we could do the SETI program. When renowned scientists such as Stephen Hawking start acknowledging that the odds against abiogenesis are astronomical, it makes your average conservative look askance at the money being spent on SETI. The third part of this triangle is in the evolution/creation debate, which is full of acrimony. I don’t have time to get into it for now, just lurking on that one for the time being, but I do think that eventually some baseline data will be agreed to by both sides. It’s the baseline data inside the inductive triangle that I’m interested in.
HOWARD A. SMITH, PhD, is a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and is the former chair of the astronomy department at Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. A well-known research scientist with several hundred scholarly publications, he served as a visiting astronomer at NASA headquarters. Active in public education, he has been recognized by Harvard for excellence in teaching. He is a traditional, observant Jew, and has lectured on cosmology and Kabbalah for over twenty years.
On the other hand, it was pretty risky to posit life on a planet of a red dwarf star. The red photons are too weak to provide the energy necessary for things like photosynthesis.
Dr. Smith has a problem: The planets we are capable of detecting are usually gas giants.
Once we can see the smaller ones, the Doctor's opinion might need to change.