Fine tuning update: Earth-sized does not mean Earth-like, but might mean continued funding

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 9, 2014

Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, News}

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As of 2013.

Further to: Possible evidence of life on Mars?

Here, at Forbes:

Does the Kepler news about earth-sized planets in habitable zones change anything for you?

Not a thing. We know that earth-sized planets are out there. That does not make them “earth-like” necessarily.

In “Rare Earth” you and Brownlee wrote that not only intelligent life, but “even the simplest of alien life is rare” in the cosmos. Have your views changed?

Animals are going to be extraordinarily rare because so many planetary processes are going to be detrimental to their [evolution].

The majority of planets are going to be where metallicities are highest — close to the centers of galaxies. But in the galactic center you are also so close to other stars. There, gravity is going to pull comets out from other stellar systems. How can complex life form if you get your ocean sterilized by a comet of 20 to 30 kms in diameter every 200,000 years? …

Are astrobiologists forced to be overly optimistic about the chances of finding life in the cosmos simply to garner funding?

You hit it. Funding comes from the possibility of finding life out there. NASA is funded to go to other planets to find life. We don’t want to go back to the moon, there’s no life there. More.

See also:

Does nature just “naturally” produce life?

Can all the numbers for life’s origin just happen to fall into place?

Hat tip: Wintery Knight

Comments

Of related note:
"If the earth were slightly larger, it of course would have slightly larger gravity, which has interesting implications. It's not just that a person who weighs 150 pounds would weigh more. It's that if the earth had slightly more gravity than it now has, methane and ammonia gas, which have molecular weights of sixteen and seventeen, respectfully, would remain close to our surface. Since we cannot breathe methane and ammonia, which are toxic, we would die. More to the point, we would have never come into existence in the first place.,,, On the other hand, if earth were just a tiny bit smaller and had a bit less gravity, water vapor, which has a molecular weight of 18, would not stay down here close to the planet's surface but would instead dissipate into the planets atmosphere. Obviously, without water we could not exist." Eric Metaxas - Miracles - pages 38-39 The Cold Trap: How It Works - Michael Denton - May 10, 2014 Excerpt: As water vapor ascends in the atmosphere, it cools and condenses out, forming clouds and rain and snow and falling back to the Earth. This process becomes very intense at the so-called tropopause (17-10 km above sea level) where air temperatures reach -80°C and all remaining water in the atmosphere is frozen out. The air in the layer of the atmosphere above the troposphere in the stratosphere (extending up to 50 km above mean sea level) is absolutely dry, containing oxygen, nitrogen, some CO and the other atmospheric gases, but virtually no H2O molecules.,,, ,,,above 80-100 km, atoms and molecules are subject to intense ionizing radiation. If water ascended to this level it would be photo-dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen and, the hydrogen being very light, lost into space. Over a relatively short geological period all the water and oceans would be evaporated and the world uninhabitable.,,, Oxygen, having a boiling point of -183°C, has no such problems ascending through the tropopause cold trap into the stratosphere. As it does, it becomes subject to more and more intense ionizing radiation. However this leads,, to the formation of ozone (O3). This forms a protective layer in the atmosphere above the tropopause, perfectly placed just above the cold trap and preventing any ionizing radiation in the far UV region from reaching the H2O molecules at the tropopause and in the troposphere below. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/05/the_cold_trap_h085441.html Privileged Species - How the cosmos is designed for human life - website http://privilegedspecies.com/ Dr. Michael Denton Interview Excerpt Question 14: 14. Q: ,,,you also detail that nature isn’t fine-tuned for just any kind of life, but life specifically like human life. Would you expound on this for our readers? A: there are certain elements of the fine-tuning which are clearly for advanced being like ourselves.,,, http://successfulstudent.org/dr-michael-denton-interview/ The Privileged Planet – video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ohuG3Vj_48&list=PLbzQ4aXdqWD-9kjFsSm-cxNlzgrkJuko7 The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole. - Jay Richards Does the Probability for ETI = 1? Excerpt; On the Reasons To Believe website we document that the probability a randomly selected planet would possess all the characteristics intelligent life requires is less than 10^-304. A recent update that will be published with my next book, Hidden Purposes: Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, puts that probability at 10^-1054. http://www.reasons.org/does-probability-eti-1 Linked from Appendix C from Dr. Ross's book, 'Why the Universe Is the Way It Is'; Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. equals 10^-1333 dependency factors estimate approx. equals 10^324 longevity requirements estimate approx. equals 10^45 Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. equals 10^-1054 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. equals 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^1032 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles. http://www.reasons.org/files/compendium/compendium_part3.pdf Hugh Ross - Evidence For Intelligent Design Is Everywhere (10^-1054) - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4347236
Verse and Music:
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. When Love Came Down To Earth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eTbH_LInk0
bornagain77_{December 9, 2014
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When I was little, I remember the Viking probes landing on Mars and the first Voyager passes of Jupiter and Saturn, and, back then, the point of all this explorations seemed to be, as were the many Gemini and first ten Apollo missions, precursors to sending men out there. Looking back now, it was probably the inborn Trekkie and Star Wars fan in me that missed the post-Apollo shift in NASA's mission. Maybe I felt the first rumblings of it when, after Skylab came crashing down and there seemed to be no real desire to replace it with anything. Even the ISS is a halfhearted effort to put a permanent manned presence outside of our atmosphere. But I really started to notice back when the Sojourner was first rolling around on Mars that the purpose of NASA's interplanetary probes seemed to have more to do with finding life, and thus "proving" that life didn't need a miracle to explain how it developed out of non-living matter here on Earth, than it did with actual "exploration" (that is, to have people actually go out there to look - and maybe even live on other planets). Even culturally movies about exploring Mars ceased to have that Star Trek "let's see what's out there" optimism and turned into horror movies like "The Astronaut's Wive" or "Species II" where all we find out there are monsters. Of course, when I was little, we still envisioned a future where science would bring us flying cars. Back then we didn't realize what really tied our cars to the ground wasn't engineering problems but was red tape and the fear that, the first time a flying car crashed, lawyers would sue the car's maker out of business. May the fears of another Space Ship Two going down not tie the infant private space industry down before it can really take off.liljenborg_{December 9, 2014
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@2 mahuna
the Government is in the business of passing out money that turns into paychecks. None of this passing out has ANYTHING to do with usefulness. It has entirely to do with keeping blocks of constituents happy by letting them hold meetings with each other and pretend they’re doing something important.
Unfortunately what you wrote seems to be a pretty accurate description of reality in many cases.
If you gave the same money to the medical research guys, they’d just do 10-year long experiments on mouse brains. It’s about spreading the paychecks around, not focusing any useful problems.
Well, the folks I know personally have been working on human tissues and models, not monkeys or other animals. That's why I wrote "serious biomedical research". They work closely associated with medical research facilities and labs that collect and provide the assays and data, under strict ethical standards that include patient's consent, confidentiality and professional handling. Obviously, what they do everyday is very high above my comprehension level, but they helped me to have at least a very basic understanding of their work. Some scientists could use any help they can get in order to advance biomedical research to our mutual benefit. The required technology is still expensive, though the cost is decreasing rapidly. Please, believe me, some serious research biologists are not working on 10-year long experiments on mouse brains and they don't care much about our discussions on OOL and Darwinism. From my own experience and after talking to those scientists, engineering design software development is a walk in a park compared to the challenging work many biologists do. In software development the most difficult part is to imagine/define/conceptualize the proposed system and to have a well documented project and clear programming specs. The rest is relatively easier. In biology research, things can get quite complicated, because there are fundamental questions still unanswered and many black boxes all over. Definitely very challenging, but also very exciting. :)
Oh, I’ve read “Rare Earth”. It’s probably a bit dated now, but everyone who’s interested in cosmology should start with “Rare Earth”.
Cosmology is interesting, but not as fascinating as molecular/cellular biology these days. Specially for folks with engineering software development background. Anyone interested in working on information systems design would drool at the sight of the elaborate molecular choreographies seen in biology these days. No comparison. Apples and oranges. :)Dionisio_{December 9, 2014
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Dionisio, the Government is in the business of passing out money that turns into paychecks. None of this passing out has ANYTHING to do with usefulness. It has entirely to do with keeping blocks of constituents happy by letting them hold meetings with each other and pretend they're doing something important. If you gave the same money to the medical research guys, they'd just do 10-year long experiments on mouse brains. It's about spreading the paychecks around, not focusing any useful problems. Oh, I've read "Rare Earth". It's probably a bit dated now, but everyone who's interested in cosmology should start with "Rare Earth".mahuna_{December 9, 2014
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...but might mean continued funding
... squandered funds that could have been much more useful in serious biomedical research? Pathetic.Dionisio_{December 9, 2014
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