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Are We Alone in the Universe?
cynic10508 writes "CNN is running a story about how ours might be a unique solar system. Of the 100+ systems currently known to contain planets, all contain seemingly only gas giants. However, this may be a case of current technology and techniques being unable to detect planets similar to Earth." There are also
BBC and Space.com stories.
Its too early to say there are none or few rocky body systems out there. First off, we haven't even come close to surveying a representative portion of the sky, and second, we don't yet have good enough technology to detect small planets. If we were 500 light years away from our system, we probably wouldn't be able to detect earth.
Moo.
"... this may be a case of current technology and techniques being unable to detect planets similar to Earth ..." Yeah, exactly. If the only way you have to detect planets orbiting other stars is to look for the gravitational effects of large, massive planets orbiting close their stars, then is what you're going to find.
It occurs to me that a useful way to think about these "hot Jupiters" may be as failed double stars, not planets equivalent to our own gas giants. And we already know that double stars are more common than singletons like the Sun. (Er, I think -- someone please tell me if I'm wrong.)
One thing that frustrates me about the articles I've seen on this subject is that they don't explain why formation of big, close-in gas giants precludes formation of Earth-like planets farther out. Accretion disks are really, really big; surely parts of them can clump into gas giants while others slowly form smaller, rocky planets?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
We have a hard enough time getting along with each other on Earth. I almost don't want to know how we would get along with inhabitants of another solar system.
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Those factors may mean nothing. We don't know the exact circumstances and timeframe for life to begin. What if our situation is unique or we are the first? You can't build any assumptions from a sample size of one.
There's probably a good chance that there is other 'life' out there. But what about 'intelligent life', that would be more rare, we might just be an evolutionary fluke. Now try this: What are the odds of intelligent life existing out there at the same time as us. How long have we been around since radio was invented? 100 years? How much longer can we survive before we blow ourselves up? What if every other intelligent civilization never invented radio, or they did and then invented nuclear weapons, but didn't survive their cold war. If you actually think about it, we can be very VERY rare.
Yes we're alone. And even if we weren't, I don't think another race is just going to drop in and say, "Hi".
Take a look at any of the alien visitation movies we make. Aliens come to Earth. Aliens attack humans. Humans unite (that's the truly unbelieveable part of these movies). Humans destroy all Aliens.
What species in their right minds is going to come to a planet who's inhabitants immediately imprison and disect anything remotely extra terrestrial?
my take is, we are searching for signs of intelligent life based upon technologies that we have mastered. Perhaps, we are the infants of interstellar communications and they communicate in a fashion thats completely, well, alien to us and our technology. I would not ruled out other dimensions either. Plus, if you were an advanced civilization would you make yourself know to or allow yourself to be discovered by a planet of savages constantly on the verge of destroying themselves? Its like going on safari and walking in on a pack of lions to introduce yourself........
K
Our technology really is no where near good enought to prove the non existance of Earth like planets elswhere.
However in astronomy class I did learn one quite interesting thing about the Earth. Apparently the Sol system was forming just as a near by super nova happend. This caused a lot of short term radioactive material to be injected into our solar system. This stuff has mostly long since decayed, but it provided some extra heat to melt the earth's crust and cause the "iron catastrophy". Basically the Earth became molten and heavy elements began to fall the earth core, this caused more heat melting the crust further.
This is why most of the earths heavy metals are in the core. So it is possible (though no proven) that the Earth might have had very different geological properties AND that a different mix of elements would have been around when life was forming had this "lucky" coiencidence not happend.
WTF are you talking about? Most people cant really comprehend the true size of the universe but feel that on the scale we do understand its almost impossible for there not to other life out there somewhere.
We have been looking for "life" outside of our planet for quite a while with nothing even approaching a hit
Five billion years of evolution for this planet alone, any you consider your lifetime a significant timescale? We have barely begun to even scratch the surface of exploration at this stage. You may ultimately be correct and we are alone but to base that assumprion on what we have done so far is truly premature.
I agree though though that if we did encounter intelligent alien life in the next few years the problems would be manifold.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
and it would be seen as a threat
As it should be but if anything it would make people fight against each other even more. Religion fuels a lot of our current social problems. What the hell is it going to do when we fight intelligent life that wasn't created in what our cultures felt was "God's vision"?
100 systems is what, the first 10 light years radius? (If that?) How large is our own galaxy, how many galaxies are there, and much is all this constantly changing?
"Gee, we've sampled 100 star systems out of 900 trillion, and none so far are like our own. Nevermind that the technology we have can't even detect earth-like planets except by the dumbest luck, I think we have a CNN science story! Don't forget to add something vaguely religious the last paragraph of the article."
You're absolutely right - there's no doubt that we are Very Rare.
...
But on the other side of that coin, the entire Universe is Very Large - and the vast majority of it is completely unmapped / unexplored (from our perspective) to any reasonable degree.
I'd argue that our two "Very"s cancel each other out nicely.
The odds of us being fairly Unique? They're probably pretty high. But the odds of us being COMPLETELY Unique?
And plus your argument of timing is very good. But I'd argue that the finding artifacts from a long-doomed alien civilization would be almost as tasty as finding the civilization itself.
Certainly if they were already gone, at least we wouldn't have to worry about forming (and maintaining!) good relations with them.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
Ok:
A G type yellow dwarf star. A narrow band of radiation and thermal emissions. Planetary body with a core that generates enough of a magnetic field to create an ionization field around the planet capable of stopping most (but not all) of the hard radiation. A prevalence of carbon in the chemistry, and a temperature gradient in the narrow band between the solid and gaseous state of hydrogen ash when held at a pressure in also a very narrow range. NOW. Find that combination, see if life arises, then in the billions of years of its existence barring a mass extinction event, find if INTELLIGENT life arises. Odds of all this are pretty slim but the difference between pretty slim and not at all is a lot. and the universe is made up of just that: "a lot".
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
From the article: Either way, it is time to start thinking about the possibility that our system is unique or at least unusual, Livio said.
:)
OK. Perhaps this is true but ultimately I wonder; so what? Even if another M class planet doesn't exist what's the big deal? Even in that model of the universe that doesn't exclude the idea that there may be other life forms. It also doesn't end the possibility of human expansion. While it is possible it's also trivial on many levels.
And with the rate we're going it gives plenty of time for other planets to form...
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Being a Christian myself, I'll take a crack at this.
My personal belief is that believing the Bible does not preclude belief in other life forms. In my mind, the book of Genesis clearly shows what God's hand did in our world, our solar system, our planet, etc. However, nowhere in the book of Genesis does it specifically say He didn't create life somewhere else. While it does say He created man in his own image, that does not mean it was impossible for Him to create life elsewhere in a different or similar form.
Though I don't think many other Christians share my viewpoint...
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
I think that a lot of people are missing the point this article is trying to make. Astronomers have a theory about solar system formation (accretion theory) that will result in a solar system like ours, with large Jupiters far out and in fairly circular orbits. However, astronomers have been finding a lot of "hot" (close-in) Jupiters with very elliptical orbits. True, these are the only ones that can be found with current techniques, but accretion theory predicts that few hot Jupiters should be found at all. So just the fact that many hot Jupiters are being discovered at all casts doubt on accretion theory, and if accretion theory is wrong, then perhaps other theories (which don't bode well for the formation of earth-like planets) are right.
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040726/full/040726 -14.html
"Most of the planets around other stars, known as extrasolar planets, are detected from the wobble that they induce in their own sun's motion. This wobble is caused by the gravitational tug of the planet on the star. Because stars are much bigger than planets, the effect is tiny, and it is only in the past decade that telescopes have been sensitive enough to detect it.
"Even then, the wobble is detectable only for giant planets, which are those about as big as Jupiter, the bloated ball of gas in our Solar System. It is not possible at present to detect planets as small as the Earth."
*clears throat*
And this says _what_ about the possibility of planets such as Earth??? (hint: 0*12521623)
"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."
It's amazing that not knowing the answer to this is somehow more comfortable than knowing the answer, either way.
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
The CD analogy isn't that good. The universe could be infinite, or big enough, in size allowing for anything to happen multiple times.
The meme police, They live inside of my head
To have something like Star Trek where several spacefaring nations simultaneously arise and carve out competing empires is going to be even less likely. Imagine a race that had a 2 million year head start over us in settling the planets in our galaxy. Somehow I don't see us having the technological ability to even compete, much less even be an equal. The same goes for us if we explore even just the Milky Way. If we travel 10,000 light years to find a planet who is technologically at the Bronze Age (building pyramids and basically like Egypt when it was "THE" major political power on the Earth), do they have a chance against us after we have developed interstellar travel capabilities?
All of this has been pointed out by people like Sagan and Hawking. While there may be intelligent lifeforms other than mankind on another planet, the likelyhood of us actually finding a species that can deal with abstract symbols and advanced toolmaking is quite unlikely. If you had come to the Earth 5 million years ago (short time compared to the age of the universe), all you would have found are some very primitive humans, or even just chimpanzees that roamed open savannahs. Certainly not a technological civilization.
I would be very surprised if we found something like the Klingon empire, or even just the Kzinti. Alien races make wonderful science fiction, but I don't see how they can be found.
My father being highly religious debated the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
His thought was that if ETs exist they would be free from original sin, as God would not have continued creating intelligent life until the situation here was cleared up once and for all. If humankind was the first, then there would not be any other intelligent life for the same reason.
On a different note, if aliens studied humans before making contact, then they would probably give themselves the guise of spiritual entities of some sort. (For example angels or demons)
And would there livestock automatically be considered non-kosher and non-halal
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
The bigger question is are we stable enough to have the time to find or be found by intelligent life? We haven't been here and aware but for the briefest period of time, and unless we diversify out into the universe, we're only here until the next big earth crossing body doesn't quite cross and we join the earlier earthlings (dionsaurs) as a natural resourse on this rock.
Don't bunch up, one grenade will get us all.
You recall correctly, wish I had some mod points for ya.
-dave-
The pig browse. With Google. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.
Well if religion's brought up, I feel I must chime in with my islamic 2 dinars. As to the problem from a Christian perspective, which I for obvious reasons don't share though (raised Catholic mind you, and my Dad's a minister currently), what I wonder would be what does that say about Christ being God's unique son, whose atoning sacrifice is supposed to save humanity? What about all the other supposed species of beings out there who probably have not heard of Jesus? Are they all damned? Why would God only send his "son" down to one species. If one then thinks "well maybe He incarnated amongst them too" that definately throws the Christian doctrine in bind, about Jesus being unique and all, and rather relativizes the whole thing. Plus, multi incarnations (reincarnations?) definately seems to be drifting far out of accepted Christian orthodoxy.
;-) The imam (for us shias, one of the twelve successors of the Prophet Muhammad) says something like: Do you think yours is the only Adam God has created, rather, He has created thousands upon thousands of other Adams, and yours is but the last.
Anyway, that's your faith, I can only really comment best on mine. I'm a shia muslim, and in the corpus of our traditions, there are a number of references to there being many other Adams out there, other worlds with living beings. Like one that goes something like (don;t have the exact reference in front of me, Im at work
There are other traditions like this, and the Quran does mention a plurality of worlds. Since we don't believe in the Christian paradigms, original sin, Christ being the incarnation and son (we believe in him as a human prophet, not a god-man), the atonement through crucifixion, etc., these concerns wouldn't really affect our theology.
That said, I'm not holding my breadth for us to soon, or even ever, make contact through means of technology. The universe is a mighty big place, our galaxy being only one many many more. Add to that, the enormity of the ages since it was created, who knows where or even when to look for other beings as us or otherwise? But as we say, God knows best....
I suggest you read some Ed Babinski. An excerpt from one of his works:
... let's get to the big questions. The biggest one is, "Are there intelligent beings elsewhere in the cosmos?" The cosmos as it is presently known, contains over 50 billion galaxies, each galaxy containing between 100 to 200 billion stars. Recent advances in telescopic magnification have allowed astronomers to detect rings of matter and planets that circle stars other than our own. It is conceivable that intelligent beings exist, or have existed in the distant past, or will exist in the future, on planets other than the earth. Are we the only intelligent beings who have evolved in the cosmos' vast dimensions of space and time?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/4/part1.html
Even a "Biblical creationist" might find himself unable to believe that we are the only intelligent beings "God created" in a cosmos of countless blazing stars and (who knows how many) planetary bodies? So much cosmic "real estate" going to waste. Doesn't sound very "purposeful" does it?
Yet, if intelligent beings exist on other planets, how are they going to react to the "Biblical creation account?" Are they going to believe that the cosmos was created in "six days" as measured from one planet's perspective, the earth's? Such beings might well wonder why the cosmos wasn't created based on the length of a "day" on their own planet, rather than ours.
Neither are they going to believe that five out of the "six" days of creation, or, five sixths of the "creation period" was focused solely on the earth, during which its seas, dry land and sky, and the plants and animals on it, were created. The "rest" of the cosmos with it's 50 billion galaxies, and it's unknown multitude of planets, including the one these other beings live on, took only "one day" out of "six" to create? They'd be on the floor laughing at such earth-centered viewpoints in the very first chapter of the Bible. Only one planet, the earth, took five sixths of God's creation time to complete? No intelligent being inhabiting another planet is going to believe that!
Or, how about this for a "worst case" scenario after meeting a technologically advanced being from another planet: (Being from another planet speaking with Billy Graham's son) "So, you say, five sixths of God's `creation time' was spent on your pitiful little planet full of natural disasters and turmoil and idiocy, and God only spent one sixth of that time creating the rest of the cosmos, including what was to become our vast pan-galactic civilization whose history stretches back before the first pitiful little Biblical book was scrawled on goat skin parchments?"
Hence my next big question, ARE THERE CREATIONISTS ON OTHER PLANETS? Do they quote from a book somewhat like our earth-centered book of Genesis? And, supposing that the name of their planet is "Zontar," does their book read something like this...
In the beginning God created the heavens and ZONTAR, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters OF ZONTAR and God said let there be light, and there was the first evening and morning. And God separated the waters and caused dry land to appear ON ZONTAR, and there was a second evening and morning. And God made the land bring forth green plants and fruit trees ON ZONTAR, and there was a third evening and morning. And God made TWO GREAT LIGHTS, one to rule the day ON ZONTAR, and one to rule the night ON ZONTAR, and he made the stars also, and set them in the sky to light ZONTAR and for signs and seasons, and there was a fourth evening and morning. And God made animals ON ZONTAR, and there was a fifth evening and morning. And God made beings IN HIS OWN IMAGE, and he visited them in the garden where He and they left slimy trials as they moved and talked to each other via their antennae, and there was a sixth evening and morning. And on the seventh day God "rested" from creating the heavens and ZONTAR.
Of course, we earthlings, being raised on the Bible, would know that God
Pathetic humans! Prepare to write down the recipe!
Yeah, sure. An alien disease that evolved for completely and utterly different types of organisms is going to not only infect earth-style life, but humans in particular?
I always find this notion rather amusing. You're far more likely to find a new deadly disease that can infect *humans* in places like the Congo than anywhere off our planet.
People can dream up all sorts of wild ways in which it could evade our best defenses, be immune to quarantine, be unfightable by any sorts of drugs, be able to infect any sort of life (earth life or not), etc, but it's all fantasy. You can dream up any sort of "invincible and deadly super-xenobug", but that doesn't make it physically realistic.
Heck, *our* bacteria, which evolved here on earth in hundreds of trillions to quadrillions of generations, have barely colonized Antarctica. And Antarctica is on earth, exposed to the same bloody atmosphere, hit by the same sort of solar radiation, has the same sort of minerals available, and on the scale of planetary temperature ranges, is not *that* different at all from the temperate and tropical zones on Earth.
Pathetic humans! Prepare to write down the recipe!
I agree, but I think the important question is how common it is.
Are there a hundred life bearing planets in our galaxy or a hundred billion? We just don't know at present.
This sig all sigs devours
We are talking about a very fine tuned universe, and a lot of parameters that had to be set just right not just once but over a long period of time and repeatedly.
Yes, when we observe the universe, it does indeed seem fine-tuned to allow us to exist. If it weren't, we wouldn't be here to observe it!
That's the idea of the Anthropic principle - The only universe we can come to exist in, and observe, is the universe that will be able, at some point in time, to host us.
Have you ever seen a perfectly round stone that was a product of a natural process?
Can't remember I've seen one. I would probably take the finding of a perfectly round stone as evidence that someone has purposefully polished it. However, I do not believe that complex life-forms such as ourselves, and the universe needed to support them are evidence of purpose or intelligent design.
On the other hand.... I have this idea, that we never will be able to know how and why the universe came into being. Also, I don't think the question of what matter and energy really is, have any meaning. We may find smaller and smaller bullding blocks of nature, and with those explain the presence of bigger building blocks - but at the lowest level, I don't think there is any answer to the question of what stuff is made of or why it's there.
So, bottom line, I can't say I know the universe didn't come into being by intelligent design. It is just not necessary for us to exist.
A lot of posts have put forth the "Oh, how likely is it that in all the entire universe we are the ONLY planet to have life?" type argument. (I'll call this the "oh come on" argument.)
But this argument is not exactly correct. If you took a random planet out of the universe and it had life, then you would be justified in thinking that there are probably more life-bearing planets in the universe.
But that is not the position we are in. The earth is not a random planet, it's the one we live on.
Suppose, for argument's sake you had a bag full of, say, a billion marbles. You know that all the marbles are either black or red.
Situation 1: You reach into the bag without looking and pull out a red marble. What are the chances that there are any other red marbles in the bag?
Situation 2: Someone else looks through the entire bag and tells you that there is at least one red marble in the bag. What are the chances that there are at least two red marbles in the bag?
In situation 1, if there is really only one red marble in the bag, then you hit the billion in one chance of drawing it out. Pretty unlikely.
But in situation 2, you have no way of knowing what the chances for more red marbles are. All you know is that there is at least one.
We are in situation 2. We didn't draw Earth randomly out of the bag.
Basically the "oh come on" argument boils down to this:
"But if there is only one planet with life on it, what are the odds that that out of all the zillions of planets we happen to live on the one with life?"
I'm not saying that we are definitely alone in the universe, just that the mere fact that we live on a planet with life does not give us any information on the probability of there being life on other planets.
Maybe the chance of life arising is so miniscule that it really did only happen once.
If the geiger counter does not click, the coffee, she is not thick.
Yup. But you left off the important part:
Life appears as soon as, and everywhere it can - and immediately eats, or infects, or rides parasite upon its neighbors.
I, for one, welcome our alien dinner guests, bringing us the Very Important Book, "To Serve Man."
I want to go with an apple in my mouth
Baked or basted or fried up like down south
I'm nutrients and roughage, vitamins and more
yessir to an alien, I'm a mealtime and more
No one can deny me, my opportuniteeeeeee
Sell me to the aliens
or give me to them free.
These lyrics are originals penned by me today on /. They are herby released into the public domain.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There was actually a science fiction story about this subject, whose name and author i unfortunatly forget.
It was set in a universe with lots of sentient races about. Some explorers found a planet where something very similar to the whole son of god/death/resurection/whetever thing had just happened a few years or decades ago.
One of the explorers decided this must mean that god sends christ down to every planet so that each species would be enlightened or whatever. So he becomes obsessed with having the chance to actualy meet the son of god, and sets out to visit every habitable planet in the universe in turn until he finds one where christ is actually there right then.
This is all told from theperspective of one of the explorers who choose to stay on the first planet and document everything as carefully as possible. I think he had some theory that if it was true, that the other guy would never be able to catch christ in the act and a few years off was the best anyone could do, so they might as well make the best of the current situation. His reason for this was that not only were there the obvious statistical difficulties, humans had already been "saved" once, so as a human the other guy would never be allowed to meet christ and get a "second chance," or something like that. I guess this was building off the "christ is unique" idea you mentioned, which i'd never heard before.
Interesting thought experiment type SF but probably a good thing it was a short story. As a non-christian i most likely would have gotten annoyed at a novel length treatment.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I will never understand how Christians can be scientists, ever.
You might want to take a look at this then.
An interesting quote from the site: "Thus, for sixty years Utah has led the nation in per capita production of scientists. To many people, likely, the fact that a distinctive "religious" state was also notable for scientist productivity, was remarkable, a challenge for some explanation."
I don't know if it explains how Christians can be scientists, but it does show that not only Christians can be scientists, but that there are a lot of them.
(To those who object that Mormons aren't Christians, I reply that Mormons believe in the bible, which I think is the point of the OP.)
I feel that religion is bullshit. No wait, I know that religion is bullshit.
I think Agent K said it best:
1500 years ago everyone knew the Earth was the center of the Universe.
500 years ago everyone knew the Earth was flat.
15 minutes ago you knew people were alone on this planet.
Imagine what you will know tomorrow.
TTFN