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Is the Earth Special?
Hugh Pickens writes "Planetary scientists say there are aspects to our planet and its evolution that are remarkably strange. In the first place there is Earth's strong magnetic field. No one is exactly sure how it works, but it has something to do with the turbulent motion that occurs in the Earth's liquid outer core and without it, we would be bombarded by harmful radiation from the Sun. Next there's plate tectonics. We live on a planet that is constantly recycling its crust, limiting the amount of carbon dioxide escaping into the atmosphere — a natural way of controlling the greenhouse effect. Then there's Jupiter-sized outer planets protecting the Earth from frequent large impacts. But the strangest thing of all is our big Moon. 'As the Earth rotates, it wobbles on its axis like a child's spinning top,' says Professor Monica Grady. 'What the Moon does is dampen down that wobble and that helps to prevent extreme climate fluctuations' — which would be detrimental to life. The moon's tides have also made long swaths of earth's coastline into areas of that are regularly shifted between dry and wet, providing a proving ground for early sea life to test the land for its suitability as a habitat. The 'Rare Earth Hypothesis' is one solution to the Fermi Paradox (PDF) because, if Earth is uniquely special as an abode of life, ETI will necessarily be rare or even non-existent. And in the absence of verifiable alien contact, scientific opinion will forever remain split as to whether the Universe teems with life or we are alone in the inky blackness."
While most planets are obviously not suitable for life, life itself has a strong tendency to overcome the challenges of its environment. Life endures climate fluctuations, extraterrestrial impacts, and even extreme radiation, all here on Earth. While many of these protective characteristics are conducive to the emergence of higher life, life itself has already shown its capacity to adapt and overcome.
All life really needs is a liquid solvent, energy, and enough time.
I can already hear the "intelligent design" folks jumping on this topic as proof that we aren't here through random chance but were assembled by some creator.
To be fair, sometimes I think planetary scientists can be extremely narrow minded, especially given the focus of their study has a sample size of 1.
"In the air, there is no way for Oxygen to enter our gills. Therefore, water is extraordinary!"
Agreed. Because life evolved a certain way here, and under certain conditions, doesn't mean that it can't evolve in a different way elsewhere, on possibly more (or less) challenging conditions. As long as you have variations and some selection mechanism, you'll get evolution (within reasonable bounds, of course).
"You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!"
Just because our "route" resulted in our "life" situation, doesn't mean that other routes couldn't produce equally valid and viable "life" conditions. We're not that special.
My UID is prime!
If our solar system is so special that it is one in a million then there are about 200,000 systems that are as special as ours in the Milky Way. Multiply this by 100 billion to one trillion galaxies and we are really not that special.
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
Didn't the Earth get hit by another planet, causing it to shoot a ton of crust into orbit..creating the moon?
Clearly, life requires a mars-sized object to hit the planet where life wants to form.
Jury's still out on that one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Formation#Difficulties
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
It seems that life, intelligence, and civilization are the things that we find most interesting, in ascending order, when discussing exobiology. And, in ascending order, much, much more difficult to achieve. In other words, simple life is almost common, complex life is rare, intelligence even rarer, and civilization the rarest of all. Each step requires more time, stability, and opportunities for differentiation, than the last. A lot of the uniqueness of the Earth, according to the article, has to do with its suitability for developing land-based life. I wonder if achieving a land-based civilization is rarer than a liquid-based one. If there are aliens sending probes over here to investigate us, maybe it's to study this weird, land-based civilization. I admit that one advantage to land-based life development is that it's much easier to form divided ecosystems on land than it is in an ocean. This could create more opportunities for divergent evolution, speeding things up if you want to see a particular result, like intelligent life. However, it seems to me that there could be situations on other planets that can create a similar effect in a liquid environment. Perhaps not common, but possible. My point is, it might be chauvinistic to focus so much on conditions that allow the development of land-based life. The other, hidden chauvinism is towards carbon-based life, but it's hard to blame ourselves for that since it's so difficult to figure out how other kinds of life could work.
How do you know WE aren't the extremophiles?
Oceans full of a solvent, we breathe a caustic gas... and so on.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
There's more. The "uniquers" are clueless. Is the magnetic field because of our unique liquid core?
No. We have a lot of iron and rotate. Duh.
Moons! Look at the moons! Statistically most of the other rocks going around the sun have 'em, too.
And so forth. Statistically, we're in a zone that allowed the chemicals to make whoopee and produce life, leading to us. People believe they're special, but they evolved something that they narcissitically believe is "intelligence". Do they treat their little planet with care? I don't think so. And they kill each other with glee, and deny the world around them, waiting for magical-thinking to become real.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
That's one going theory, but there are good arguments for orbital capture also. The biggest one being the concentration of elements on the moon is different than those found on earth. The moon has a LOT of silicon on it for example, and very little carbon. If it was created by the splash from an impact, one would expect it to have at least a similar concentration of elements as the parent body. Elemental concentration doesn't change a lot over the course of a planet's existence, since elements are formed within stars and planets have to play with the hand they were dealt when they formed. Comets may bring in a little, and atmosphere may bleed away, but the lion's share of the ratio remains unchanged from beginning to end.
Right now the big hangup on that is we don't know a lot about the interior of the moon, other than it's solid. It's possible the surface of the moon just happened to wind up being mostly Si, and the interior is more of an earth-like distribution of elements. But when planets cool, heavy things go to the core and light things float on top, which is why earth has lots of carbon on the crust and iron in the core. You'd expect the same of the moon.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Actually - if there is a God, he could have created life on an infinity of worlds, and separated all the worlds intentionally. The absence or the presence of life and/or intelligent life that is visible to us has absolutely nothing to do with the existence of God. Nothing.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
For that matter, most of the things in their list are very odd things to choose for a "Rare Earth" argument. Gas giants in the outer solar system- there's no reason to assume that they're rare. Plate tectonics are believed to be a symptom of planet size (so larger-than-Earth rocky planets should have it), and several of Jupiter's moons show tectonic-style surface patterns. A magnetic core- ditto to planet size (where a solid core needs to be formed by pressure), with a possible proviso on planet age and planet chemical composition (influencing how long the core would take to cool). As there are only two Earth-sized planets in the Solar system, it's almost impossible to draw conclusions about frequency of occurrence.
The Moon is just about the only item in that list which I can agree with as being "rare", and as you say, its influence is debatable.
Contrary to popular belief among religious fundamentalists, most atheists are not anti-Christmas. It has become more of a cultural holiday than a religious one anyway; If you asked 100 people at random what Christmas was about, how many do you think would say "the birth of Christ", and how many would say "presents", "family" or "Santa Claus"?
The people screaming bloody murder about nativity scenes and whatnot are a small but vocal minority. Usually those zealous types are former Christians themselves, the rest of us don't really care.
Yup, but only Earth has a moon we don't "deserve", given our size. No other planet in the solar system has any moon even remotely as large as ours compared to its own mass. At least since Pluto has been demoted.
Yes, yes, yes, all the things that happened here are so incredibly unlikely to happen... but then again, the universe is incredibly large and here the law of the large number fits perfectly: NO matter how insignificantly unlikely something is, if there is ONE case where it is true and your sample size is (nearly) infinitely large, the chance to find another case is 1.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Even if the probability is infinitesimal, it only has to happen sometime, somewhere, and boom, here we are asking the questions. It's a lot more likely that "DNA just evolved" than "the magic man in the sky just appeared and was smart enough to create DNA".
which is totally what she said
Face it, religion is a business. Same as any others, the corner stones are money and power. Only difference to any other ordinary business is that the priorities are reversed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Face it, religion is a business. Same as any others, the corner stones are money and power. Only difference to any other ordinary business is that the priorities are reversed.
Yeah, because Tim Tebow makes a fortune doing his charity and missionary work. That whole football thing is just a ruse. Of course, we all know that Tebow, or Colt McCoy or even Baylor's Robert Griffin III would never complete a pass if they didn't serve their time serving others. The receivers would simply refuse to catch the ball. For that matter all the people who sell all their belongings to go help the poor in destitute parts of the world are making a huge investment, trading their belongings for unlimited power and wealth.
I'm not saying that there are not those that use religion as a business, but they are the exception, not the rule. For every megachurch you see on TV, there are thousands of small town, churches full of people who are not there for money and power. Turn off the 700 Club and go see what real religion is all about. It's not on TV.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
No, it just gets really old seeing the same joke on every damn thread. It adds nothing to the discussion.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
There are 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and there are probably many billions of planets. Out of all those possibilities, how rare could it be for a planet to be in the "habitable zone" of a star, with a few gas giants farther out? And isn't iron a fairly common element in planets, hence molten core, hence magnetic field protecting the surface from cosmic rays and all that.
If we suppose that Earth-like conditions are one in a billion, which seems exceedingly conservative, nonetheless we're talking about dozens or hundreds of Earth-like planets out there. It's reasonable to suppose that our conditions are not that uncommon, and there might be an order of magnitude more Earth-like planets.
There also would be millions of planets that are much harsher than Earth, yet perhaps some form of life could have evolved.
A counter argument might be that even our world was not always friendly to life; during Earth's first billion years it was quite a harsh place indeed. Subsequently there were several mass extinction events, the last one a mere 60 million years ago. During pre-Cambrian times, it's believed the planet was basically a giant snowball. Alien probes sent here during those periods might have concluded that there was no sustainable life.
I think it will be a good 200 years before we can get out to some of our neighboring stars and investigate up close. Even the closest stars would take multiple lifetimes to get to using any current or upcoming propulsion technologies. Ultimately it will be some kind of intelligent robotic explorer that we send out as a kind of trans-generational emissary, that may come back to entertain our distant descendants with tales of foreign worlds. Sad that trans-light propulsion is nothing but a pipe dream, for now anyway.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Actually - if there is a God, he could have created life on an infinity of worlds, and separated all the worlds intentionally.
Yup. Every observation is compatible with the God Hypothesis.
Thus it has no predictive power. A hypothesis that "explains" anything actually explains nothing. You might as well say "something made it happen".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Maybe, but it's pretty obvious that the GP to your post is anti-Christian.
Just like reality. Ok, reality isn't anti-christian, it's just that christian beliefs are disproved by reality.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
The whole point of the Fermi paradox is that if the earth isn't special, then where the hell is the evidence of alien life? All these posts explaining how we aren't special, and how "life will find a way", just lead right back to it. Why haven't we found so much as a single piece of evidence of any kind?
Probably because the lifespan of technological civilizations isn't that long. Human civilization is about 3000 years old, but only about two centuries of that is technological civilization with enough power to do much. We've had the ability to send radio signals into space for less than a century. We're already starting to run out of natural resources. There are arguments over how many decades are left for some resources, but nobody sees many centuries of resources left. Trying to mine low-density resources requires greater energy inputs for the results obtained, and eventually that stalls out.
If our understanding of physics is roughly correct, fast interstellar travel is hopeless. Slow interstellar travel might be possible, but it currently looks like the closest interesting place is about 500 light years away. Sending a generation ship to a system with no habitable planets is pointless. Sending one to an active civilization means it gets there after they've run down.
If you plug reasonable values for extrasolar planets into the Drake equation and set the lifespan of a technological civilization to 500 years, you get 24 civilizations currently active in the Milky Way galaxy, which is about 100,000 years across.
Maybe, but it's pretty obvious that the GP to your post is anti-Christian.
Really? I got the impression that it was more anti-evangelical-megachurch. You know, the ones with the guy on TV wearing a $1000 suit, gold wristwatch, and so forth, begging for your money "GIVE! GIIIIIIVE UNTIL IT HUUURRRTS!" so that you can get your ticket into heaven, and he can make the next payment on his $million yacht where he has cuban rent-boys "lift his luggage".
It's perfectly possible for someone to not be anti-christian, and still think those hypocrites are worthy of scorn. I knew a minister in the United Church who would make jokes about those guys.
How is a post that is so obviously about Zeus considered "anti-Christian"?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Pardon in advance for any meanderings. Several interruptions while composing this.
And yet the Moon might well be the cause of several other factors.
The Moon is massive enough in comparison to the Earth that it is reasonable to consider the two to be a binary planet system in many ways. While the barycenter of the binary revolves around the Sun in a highly predictable ellipse, the Earth itself does not; it meanders inside and outside that elliptical orbit due to the Moon's influence. As a consequence, the location of the Earth's perihelion can shift more than one degree from one year to the next (varies from Jan 2 to Jan 4). The barycenter of the binary system is displaced from the center of the Earth toward the Moon by 75% of the Earth's radius (quick reference here), which from the point of view of a flat Earth theorist means that the barycenter is rushing along 1,000 miles beneath our feet at about twice the speed of sound.
And of course there are the tides.
Not just the ocean tides, but also the much greater tidal bulge of the atmosphere. And a definite tendency to a tidal bulge in the liquid core. IANAGeologist so I don't have a clue how the tidal forces and the weight of the mantle would interact... but then I think that most geologists have never considered this either since they are always looking down into the Earth and the Moon is for them a whoosh in the finest Slashdot meaning.
As far as evolution of life goes wrt planet Earth, the Moon is at the very least a major, significant stirring rod. It is really hard to say how major, since we are in the position of being stirred so everything else that is also being stirred with us looks very normal. It could be that both meteorology and geology need their Copernican revolution and won't really make sense until they meet their Galileos.
Will
I'd bash stamp collectors as well if they actively worked to block the teaching of science in schools, denied funding for legitimate scientific research, and pushed their viewpoint through taxpayer funded faith-based initiatives.
Stamp collectors actually help subsidize the US mail since they boost profits with minimal cost to the post office. What's not to like about them?
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
How 'bout Einsteins "Magic Man in the Sky"? I recall his profession to the effect of "not believing that there 'couldn't' be a God".
The whole quote: I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.
By Spinoza's God he basically means nature, not a religious god. It's hard to resist using Einstein as an authority, but religious people keep missing the boat there. Einstein did not believe in an omniscient god.
For instance, I know that time is relative. If Genisis' time-frame is relative to Gods perspective we can accept the possibility of 7 days to
Same applies to 7 seconds or 7 millennia. If you propose that the scale is meaningless, so is any argument referring to it,
yesterday I even saw something about rats having
empathy).
Yes, that was interesting. How come they can't go to heaven then? But people are more concerned about their dogs. If lawyers can go to heaven, why not dogs? :) Human traits like awareness and morality in animals is something most theists would consider the highest form of heresy.
Like Thomas Jefferson, my faith is know only to me
and my creator and it involves questioning everything, differentiating between thoughts,feelings,knowledge and belief.
Jefferson rejected the church. While he did sustain a belief in a higher entity, I tend to believe that were he alive today, with the body of science that we have discovered since his time, it's likely that he would reject this as well.
Maybe Einstein was on to something there.
I tend to side with his (Spinozan) humanist notion that the likelihood of the religious god is close to nil. It's unfortunate that people, even great people, associate the wonders of nature with a concept that is so easily misused. Which is why I avoid it.
The argument that it is impossible to disprove something does not support the argument, it is a statement of uncertainty. There are many things that are uncertain, almost everything in fact. This doesn't have us running around believing in the infinite number of extremely unlikely things. Nor should it. That there is a remote possibility of a god is meaningless in this context. See the teapot argument.
Which is of course, a pagan holiday, so distinctly not atheist. How about a real atheist name? Midwinterfest?
Well you could just continue the "Yule" tradition, as that's what's it still called up here in the cold north (i.e. the nordic countries); Jul. Pronounced pretty much like "Yule".
So, even if your(?) ancestors had to resort to exporting Christianity all the way up here to solve the Viking problem, they couldn't dethrone the name for the seasonal festivities. It's time for us Viking ancestors to export it right back I say. :-)
Stefan Axelsson
How about "Prevent Seasonal Affective Disorder Induced Suicide By Putting Up Lots Of Lights And Reminders That Things Will Get Better In The Spring While Getting Drunk And Exchanging GIfts Day"
It served a much more important and practical purpose before pervasive electric lighting came along. It kept you alive.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
That's just science at work, and every theory has it's "difficulties" answering all of our questions. The fact that this particular wiki article has a "Difficulties" section doesn't disprove the scientific merit of the giant impact theory, it proves that the wiki writer tried to give a complete picture and wanted to list some of the interesting questions still out there. Simply put, the giant impact hypothesis has no rival that provides as many self consistent lines of reasoning right now.
I know that's just science at work and it's still the dominant theory, I don't have anything personal against it :P If you've been paying attention recently, however, you've no doubt noticed the mounting problems with the standard scenario. Even here at slashdot it's been discussed:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/03/1824202/earth-may-once-have-had-two-moons
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/17/2247255/moon-younger-than-previously-thought ...things like this are why I said "jury's still out". Some theories are more robust than others; I wouldn't say that about special or general relativity, for example.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
It's anecdotal, true, but I don't see an "atheists are sooo stupid, can't even see the hand of god in the universe" post on every other Slashdot article - but I *do* see "christians are sooo stupid with their imaginary invisible magic man" posts everywhere. I'm not sure how this makes atheists more generally tolerant than christians. In fact, multiple public posts on unrelated articles calling people stupid for the things they believe in is pretty much the opposite of tolerance...
Aliens don't stop because they are busy searching for INTELLIGENT life.
Dear Aliens,
Don't be racist, Thank you.
The People of Earth.
P.S. Do as we say, not as we do.
Why did the human cross the road?
Because he's still stuck on his planet and can't fly.
A human walks into a bar with some Uropian gas termite his shoulder. The bartender before he throws them out asks, "Where did you get that disgusting thing?"
The gas termite says "On planet Water, these dumb fucks are everywhere."
Do you remember in High School the retarded kids and their classrooms? Did you ever go in them? Did you know the retarded kids? Don't feel bad, nobody did. You knew where they were though so God forbid you stumble anywhere near there and be mistaken for a retard. If retards spoke, you just ignored them. Well I hate to tell everyone, but Earth is the Retard Class of the Galaxy. There are plenty of Aliens out there that know damn well where we are. But do you see them coming here? They don't want any of that "retard" rubbing off on them. Oh sure, we get sightings and such, but nothing official. Do you know why? These are the Aliens that are throwing spitballs at us and calling us RETARDS and running the hell off before they end up in detention or suspended.
"Why?" do you ask????
Well imagine our Alien benefactors who waited breathlessly and patiently for us to come out to space and prove we are intelligent. Who do we send? A dog! Imagine that? So they do a mind probe to find out WTF it wants and it wants a bone. They consider the situation and just leave and chock us all up for being retarded.Word gets around you know. Yeah...that new planet..? It's retarded!
So you ask me, is Earth special? I say yeah, it's special alright, it's Special Ed.
Take the Red Pill.
if there is ONE case where it is true and your sample size is (nearly) infinitely large, the chance to find another case is 1.
Perhaps "nearly 1", but not 1. Case in point: There are infinite counting numbers, but only 1 even prime number (2). Surely with an infinite sample size, by your logic, you would expect multiple examples even primes?