Slashdot Mirror
Swedish Scientist Suggests That There Is Only One Earth (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: The conventional wisdom has been among scientists is that a myriad of Earth-like planets exist in the universe, some of which have to be the abode of life, even intelligent life. However, Astrophysicist Erik Zackrisson from Uppsala University in Sweden has run a computer simulation of the universe, incorporating what we know about exoplanets thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope, the laws of physics, and the state of the early universe. The computer simulation came up with exactly one Earth, which is to say the one we live on. Every other planet in the universe does not have the conditions necessary to sustain life. Indeed, strictly speaking, Earth itself should not exist, according to the computer model, according to the story in Discover Magazine.
If his model says that Earth should not exist, then there's something wrong with his model.
Also, considering how life thrives even in hostile environments here on Earth, it's simply a mathematical impossibility that there are no other planets in the universe capable of supporting some kind of life.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Computer modeler cranks out computer model that predicts that things we know to be true are not true, and then asserts the universe is wrong....
The huge problem here is that his data is based on what we know about exoplanets so far. Of course his model will show most of the planets are much larger than earth. Those are the ones we're able to find so far.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
...according to the computer model.
Says something about the model, then, doesn't it?
Yeah! God loves you so much that he'll torture forever if you don't love him back.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
If your model doesn't account for reality, is your model deficient? I'd say yes.
Many things are improbable, but in a vast universe, improbable becomes fairly likely.
So, if he can't account for the Earth we have, the estimation of other ones like it is pretty useless.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
When one refers to a "1 in a million chance" they are not implying that they actually tried something 1 million times and it only worked once. They are implying that *if* they would have tried something 1 million times it would have only worked once. So if you win the lottery jackpot, your winning ticket was still "1 in 300 million" regardless of how many other tickets you bought or how many exist.
The title of the article is "Earth may be a 1-in-700 quintillion kind of place", but the article cites the 700-quintillion number as the total number of planets, and then goes on to say that according to the scientist's calculations, the earth should probably not exist (i.e. the odds of an earth like planet are even lower than 1 in 700-quintillion). So what are the odds that earth should exist? Who knows, it's not even mentioned.
This would be like if I reported on some guy winning the powerball and said "This guy bought 100 lottery tickets and one of the tickets won the jackpot. That was an amazingly improbable event that happened, making the ticket a "1 in a hundred kind of ticket.""
I have no idea if the statistical analysis done by this scientists is good or bad. But all I ask is that it is presented in a way that is coherent.
You might be right, but from a human perspective, God can really be a colossal dick.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
This is how I know every god-based theism is wrong. Any sort of supreme consciousness would not care about things like "worship" or "tribute". These are egotistical human constructs and reflect the mindset of the people who lived in ancient times when most religions were created -- where a "god" would behave like a king or overlord. The Bible even uses these terms explicitly to refer to God and Jesus.
Anthropic Principle
We tend not to observe universes in which life is impossible.
-Dave
In Christianity, one does not "love" God like one "loves" a person -- or a dog -- or a sandwich. It's not the same thing.
Lol, anyone that "loves" me enough to drown the entire planet and kill everyone, including babies and innocent people on other continents, is someone whose love I can do without, thankyouverymuch.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The problem is that it misrepresents Christianity completely.
Okay, enough is enough, let's set the record straight...
Christianity
The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
There, now people can judge Christianity for themselves based solely on its inherent merits.
In the exact same sense that you can choose to pay protection money to the mob, or have your shins bashed in with a baseball bat. It is your choice, not something Vinny did to you.
Gamertag: WyleType
How many have truly died out, though?
Rome is a great example -- you can argue that the Western Empire fell in 476, or you could argue that by 476 Roman culture had been so influential for so long that the end of an official government empire wasn't really the end of the civilization -- people didn't suddenly drop every last bit of Roman cultural traits. Latin was still spoken, Roman buildings, cities and roads were still used and so on.
To this day, we call one of senior legislative bodies the Senate in a building that borrows a lot of architectural elements from Rome.
Did Roman civilization end, or did it just evolve into what we now refer to as Western Civilization?
"According to the bible it is."
Then you didn't read the bible very carefully.
"All that makes me is human."
That's right. You are anthropomorphizing God -- who is not human. And attributing contempt to God for actions that would be understandable were it being done by Bob in accounting rather than God.
"It has nothing to do with the myriad lies told in the bible."
Re-read my statement. I wasn't claiming anything other than reasons are far more nuanced than you care to accept. And what I said had everything to do with your over simplification of the bible and anthropomorphizing God.
There is really no need to point this out. Anybody halfway rational already knows that "God" and organized religion are great big meme-based scams, done to control people, to acquire and keep power, etc. Anybody else is deeply infected by that malicious meme and cannot think rationally about things involving religion anymore.
From the numbers (apparently something like 80% infected and hence deeply irrational), things do not look good for the human race. Does explain a lot of things though.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Thanks for hijacking this thread with an offtopic anti-theist thread that goes on forever. I'd like to discuss the fucking article if you fake nerds don't mind.
This is something I've argued for a long time: WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR LIFE ARE. I'm agnostic on the subject. As far as we know the universe could be teeming with life, but in our galaxy we're the only one. It's possible that, as this guys simulations show, this is the universe's only life.
People THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SUBJECT AND EVERY FUCKING ONE OF YOUR RELIGIOUS COMMENTS ARE OFF TOPIC. This has nothing whatever to do with religion.
Fucking high school dropouts... slashdot is turning into facebook.
Free Martian Whores!