Milky Way Inhospitable?

tdfunk writes "Space.com reports that life in the universe may be more rare than previously thought. In an article published today, Space.com quotes Guillermo Gonzalez, an Iowa State University researcher, who has studied the structure of our galaxy and has concluded that life may not be as common as we may have believed. Apparently, conditions around the Milky Way Galaxy are generally less hospitable than once thought.

Comments

Many galaxies

[nucal]

Still, remember how many galaxies there were in some of the Hubble Photos? Even if the number of inhabitable planets/galaxy is low, there are still a lot of galaxies out there.

How do we know what is hospitable?

[mini me]

What if there were life forms on the sun? Or in the milky way. Maybe we, or anything else on earth could not exist in those regions but who's to say something else can't?

Scientists were suprised when they found life in the hot vents on the sea floor because they thought it was too hot for anything to survive there, yet there was something there. Humans couldn't survive there, but we were never designed to live there. If an organism was native there they would be formed in such a way to be able to withstand what it takes to live there. If they tried to come here maybe they'd die immediatly from something that makes the earth inhospitable to them.

Also organisms can adapt, and they might be able to adapt way beyond what we have witnessed thus far.

Re:How do we know what is hospitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

What dumbass called this drivel "Insightful"?

Re:How do we know what is hospitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me.

Re:How do we know what is hospitable?

[cardshark2001]

There's no evidence that water or carbon are necessary. Many scientists have suggested that ammonia-based life is possible. It has to do with the number of things that will combine with it.

I think carbon combines with more elements than any other element or compound as far as we know, but ammonia (yes, I know it's a compound) combines with a lot of other elements/compounds as well.

Water and carbon are necessary for carbon based life. So what?

Re:How do we know what is hospitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

no me

Re:How do we know what is hospitable?

[letxa2000]

This maybe so, but I hope, just to prove a point, that an "Independence Day" scenario happens. Not only would it answer the question of life outside of us, but also it would be a step in the right direction for unity within humanity.

Nah, that's why there was never an Independence Day Part II. 2 years after being almost anhilated by ETs, the world would be bickering about a Palestinian State, one or two Chinas, and export tarrifs.

We have a very impressive ability to work together when we HAVE to. We also have an impressive ability to stop working together as soon as possible.

Unless a second wave of ETs attacked the earth, I doubt a post-ID4 world would be much different than a pre-ID4 world.

Old news...

[Boulder Geek]

Guillermo is well known for the "Rare Earth" hypothesis, which boils down to the thesis that planets identical to Earth are extremely uncommon. This has even been covered on Slashdot before.

I don't entirely disagree with Guillermo, but he does make one major blunder, IMHO: He assumes that complex life can only develop on planets with all of the same characteristics as Earth. That sub-hypothesis is not proven.

Regardless, lets say that a exact Earth analogs occur around one out of a billion stars. That still leaves 100 Earth analogs in the Milky Way alone.

The real issue for finding ET, IMHO (that sure gets tossed out a lot when discussing life in the Universe ;-) is that time is so much longer than we humans can perceive. Humans have been around in our present form for only a few thousand years, with only a couple of decades when we could be detected by extra terrestrial civilisations. In terms of the age of the Earth that is nothing, and compared to the age of the galaxy it is smaller than nothing. Our window in time is so narrow that it seems unlikely that it actually overlaps with other civilizations.

Re:Flip flop

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's better than religion, where the preferred method is killing those that disagree with your "truth".

It's more of a synergy thing; new theories lead to new technologies that lead to new tools that let us see new things that let us create new theories, and so on. Einstein couldn't have come up with Relativity without the Michelson-Morley experiments (which required good interferometers) and very accurate methods for measuring Mercury's orbit.

Re:Hey! I already say that!

[NanoGator]

"I said that "D" that is probability of life on planet is nearly ZERO"

Question: Do you mean intelligent life like human beings, or are you including microbes, bacteria, and so on?

In the case of Human-esque 'intelligent' life, I agree that the scale of time indicates low probabilities of life existing within our own life time. (I mean human kind, not me and you...)

In the case of bacteria and so on, I find it unlikely that the Sol system is one of very few occupied planets. There's evidence that life can exist anywhere it is inclined to.

But you know, if you think about it, what good is probability? What are the odds of me arriving home safely tonight between 6:15 pm and 6:20 pm? Well, first there are a number of intersections I have to cross. Then there's the factor of me leaving the office at the right time. Somebody might want a last minute change. There's the factor of my speed, which is a little inconsistent since it is raining today.

If you sum up all of the various factors, the odds of me arriving home between 6:15 and 6:20 today are heavily against my favor. Yet, if I work at it, I'll manage it.

I'm not saying you're wrong about the possibility of life, I'm simply stating that probability doesn't affect outcome. If life exists, it's already out there. In this case, it's just a matter of finding it, not proving it does or doesn't exist.

I do agree with you, though, that we have needs ahead of looking for ET life. But I don't agree that SETI should be shut down. The benefits of SETI have already been worthwhile, like the massive supercomputer they created with the internet to process their data.

less hospitable to HUMANS

[jimmcq]

Why does everybody always assume that life can only form in conditions that are hospitable to humans?

Who's to say that there aren't other strange forms of life that have evolved to survive in conditions that would be downright hostile to humans?

Re:less hospitable to HUMANS

[barawn]

Because if you think about it, the life that we have (as humans) is, in many ways, analagous to a "minimum-energy solution" to a problem.

Think about it. Life on Earth begins, fundamentally, with long carbon chains and water cycles. Why carbon? Carbon is the only element that can form arbitrarily long, stable chains. Silicon can form chains - but only short ones. Longer silicon chains break down. There are additional reasons for carbon later, too. Why water? Take a list of molecules, starting from the simplest you can make. That is, H2, LiH, etc. Many of these compounds won't exist, though. Keep going. Water will stick out like a sore thumb when you get to it - because it's the first strong dipole you'll come across that's covalently bonded. The covalence is important because in a liquid form, the molecules are still there, rather than just ions. Ammonia (NH3) is a dipole, but not of the same level as water is. So, a water solution provides literally TONS of bonding possibilities. Hydrogen bonds form all over the place, and you get extremely complex chemicals popping up everywhere.

The basic requirements for life, in my opinion, would have to be the possibility for many, many combinations of molecules. That's what allows life to exist, really. So carbon/water based life suddenly becomes your 'minimum-energy' solution to generating life.

The other reasoning here is that if you look at the basic life on Earth, the elements it uses are, well, a little bit "unique" on a stellar scale. The most important elements for life on Earth are undeniably carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Without a doubt, you could probably make living objects from just these few elements (probably really basic, but still life). Here's the kicker: hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, and carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are the elements produced in the second most common stellar nucleosynthesis event, the triple-alpha process (the pp chain is the most common: it turns 4 protons into 1 alpha particle). So flat out, you are NOT going to have carbon somewhere and NOT have water, not for stellar abundance reasons. Temperature-wise, it's possible, so in very bizarre temperature regions, you might get life - I will admit that - but I do consider it unlikely, since high temperature regions don't really allow for molecules to form easily. :)

That being said, I want to note that I don't agree with the author here: I think he's being exceptionally restrictive. My opinion is all you really need for life is carbon and water. You probably also need nitrogen for variety, but as I've said, where there's carbon and water, you'll have nitrogen as well. Now, the 'livable for humans' bit: I honestly think that anyplace that has carbon, liquid water, and nitrogen could be made livable for humans. You need trace elements (iron, for instance, for hemoglobin), but in general humans recycle them - they don't get 'consumed' - so a well designed colony could probably survive by taking some small amount of trace elements along with them. But as for life developing THERE? I think with the above ingredients, they would find a solution that doesn't use a trace element that they don't have.

It doesn't matter, really. We have one data point to play with, and we can do whatever we want with it. His instinct says "no life anywhere, it's really complex" my instinct says "life everywhere there's water and carbon: it has this 'knack' for showing up everywhere."

a galaxy full of germs

[bcrowell]

Unfortunately, popular articles, including this one, don't usually do a good job of making the distinction between unicellular and multicellular life. There's every reason to believe that unicellular life is common in our galaxy. Microbes are tough. They can survive and/or permanently adapt to extremes of temperature and chemistry. It's quite possible that even within our solar system, there is unicellular on three different bodies: Earth, Mars, and Europa. When the "rare earth" folks talk about the dangers to life, such as ionizing radiation and comet strikes, those are really more like hazards to multicellular life. An unknown, but probably very big, percentage of the earth's biomass consists of microbes living deep underground or underwater, where they're relatively invulnerable to these things.

Multicellular life is a whole different story. It's a lot more delicate, and in our planet's geological history, it appears as an afterthought. Germs are and always have been the dominant form of life here.

Sorry if you're in love with the Star Trek/Star Wars picture, but most likely if our species ever manages to send probes to the nearest 10,000 solar systems, all we'll find is unicellular life. I'll bet your great-great-great-great-great grandkids a six-pack on it!

Old theory?

[the bluebrain]

Beat me with a clue-stick and mod me down, but here's an idea which probably is decades old and has a nifty name:

Space is rather inhomogeneous in this age. Matter and energy (well, yeah, essentially the same thing) is concentrated in points - stars and surrounding planets - and merrily radiating itself into the great heat sink which is the sky, and into oblivion. Life, as we understand it, but also how we may come to understand it in the future, thrives on the "interface", physically speaking simply slowing down flow of energy toward the heat sink by a very minute bit. For instance - all energy the human race uses is "old energy": either from the sun (food, oil, ...) or good old mother earth (geothermal, the fact that the earth isn't an ice planet, nuclear etc.). This interface is where "Things Happen" - where there is a source of energy on the one side, and a sink on the other. Within such a thin "biosphere", things at least have the possibility of becoming complex - as they have done on earth.
Now my point is that there are plenty of other places even within the solar system where things have the potential for complexity, moreover steadily so over the millennia necessary for systems as complex as life to develop: the surface of the sun, the surfaces of the inner planets (the outer ones might be too cold), the moons of the gas giants, or the atmospheres of the gas giants themselves.
So, especially if we include the surface of stars, there are at least as many places in the galaxy where life might occur as there are stars - even more, life we might be capable of recognising as such. Just don't expect SETI to pick up radio signals off the "surface" of stars - I think interference might prove to be a bit of a hindrance there. We might not have very much in common with the majority of conceivable forms of life out there, and thus little to communicate about, but we might at least discover it some day, and recognise it as life.

Why this post? ... Just a counterpoint to the idea "life = water, carbon , median temperature ~ 20 deg. C, ozone layer against radiation, bla bla".

I posit that "life (*may*) = some kind of building blocks, plus an energy differential of some kind."

Re:Rarity and coincidence

[RovingSlug]

Yes, you're asserting the anthropic principle, for which one interpretation is, "The parameters of the universe have consipired to support Human life if for no other reason than if they hadn't, we wouldn't be here to observe them."

And the argument you're ignoring is the Copernican principle, "We are not unqiue". Assuming the opposite ("we are unique") got astronomers trying to show lots of dumb things (earth at the center of the universe, of the solar system, planetary epicycles, ...).

So, at a minimum, given the history of science, if you want to show the Earth is unique in the galaxy or the universe, you have to go out and prove it, you can't assume or assert it.

Re:Gamma ray bursts and the Milky Way

[crsm]

I was recently reading up some more on gamma ray bursters, which are a recently discovered thing with explosions (so far only seen a very long way away) that appear to have an amount of energy equivalent to about the rest of the Universe put together.

Yes. Gamma-bursters are really the biggest bang since the Big Bang and if one was go off anywhere near the Milkyway we would be toast in a matter of milliseconds. But you're forgetting this: Until now we've only seen gamma-bursters really far away from us - which is the same as saying, that we've only seen gamma-bursters really long ago.

And thats the point: So far we've only observed Gamma-bursters in young galaxies in the early stages of galaxy formation. Not in old galaxies like our own.