So what if fossil bacteria are found on Mars? Polls show many Americans expect Star Trek!

Marc Kaufman informs us in "Search for Alien Life Gains New Impetus" (Washington Post, July 20, 2008) that

Few believe that the discovery of extraterrestrial life is imminent. However, just as scientists long theorized that there were planets orbiting other stars -- but could not prove it until new technologies and insights broke the field wide open -- many astrobiologists now see their job as to develop new ways to search for the life they are sure is out there.

The most intensive effort at the moment is focused on Mars, where NASA's robotic lander Phoenix is digging up soil and ice in search of organic material. The automated lab has excited scientists by finding many of the nutrients needed for life, although it has not found anything that was, or is, living. Also, photos and other data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter produced dramatic new evidence this month that the planet was once home to vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life.

Of course, there is much talk of the implications of finding life on other planets but

To some, debating the implications of discovering extraterrestrial life is premature at best, because -- all UFO "sightings" aside -- none has ever been found.

"Premature?" No, it's passe!

For one thing, as Kaufman's reference to UFOs points up, many people already believe that advanced ET civilizations exist and are even trying to contact us.

In a 2005 poll, two-thirds of Americans believe life exists on other planets and of these, eight out of ten think that alien civilizations are more advanced than ours. In other words, whatever the effect on public attitudes of finding life on other planets would be, that effect has already happened.

Why does that matter? Because the oft-heard claim that finding extraterrestrial life would be a world-changing science discovery is off side.

In reality, it would only confirm what people already believe - in the absence of any actual evidence - that They are out there.

The photo, from NASA, shows ancient fossil bacteria.

Extraterrestrial life: Are media "hypocritical" or just not able to change their story at this point?

Regarding the discovery of perchlorate on Mars - bad news for finding life there - a friend draws my attention to this comment in an August 4 AP press release,

"Scientists say the Phoenix spacecraft has found a substance in the Martian soil that might be detrimental to possible life. ... NASA is investigating whether the substance could have gotten there by contamination."

and comments,

Funny how the press never reports NASA studying whether life-friendly substances are the result of "contamination."

My friend thinks this is hypocrisy - but it isn't exactly. Many journalists have a grand story to tell, and any deviations must be treated as a minor plot inconvenience. The grand story goes like this:

- We find life on Mars
- That proves there is life - and lots of intelligent life - throughout the galaxy
- That in turn proves life got started on earth by chance
- That in turn proves that all religions except atheistic materialism are sentimental gush (standard newsroom wisdom)

In this dreamlab, the cameras zoom in on an amiable Francis Collins type who points out that you can still believe, of course. In other words, he tells the world loud and clear that it is not illegal to be an idiot.

The legacy mainstream media who front this stuff will probably go under (for unrelated reasons) before anyone notices that their grand narrative is falling apart and has become about as plausible as daytime TV drama. But ... it is very difficult to change a grand narrative in mid-flow, and most show no sign of even trying.

Here are some difficulties the storyteller journalist who did try would encounter:

- we find perchlorate on Mars (which, we are told, does not rule out life, though it makes life less likely). This is just the sort of unexpected finding that must be played down, not up, because it doesn't fit into the grand narrative. Excuses and forlorn hopes that would be questioned elsewhere will be readily accepted here.

- That proves there is perchlorate - and lots of intelligent perchlorate-based life - throughout the galaxy! Huh? No, wait! Send that one back to rewrite ... we're not quite ready for that yet ....

- That in turn proves life got started on earth by chance (How? If abundant life shows that life got started by chance, what would rare life imply? Oh wait, we better not let logic be our strong point.)

- That in turn proves that all religions except atheistic materialism are sentimental gush (standard newsroom wisdom - reaffirm that, but subtly!)

So, if they do get hold of Collins, they will pump him with a well-worn theme and tack away from specifics.

Grand narratives are altered when a civilization's philosophy changes. When nature merely fails to confirm the expectations of the philosophy, narrative byways are offered instead (= perchlorate doesn't really mean there's not likely to be life).

It's all fun to watch.

See also: Perchlorate on Mars? Neither good nor bad (but actually bad) for life?

Extraterrestrial life: NASA says could be life on Mars - or could be rocks

There is an interesting debate unfolding over at Uncommon Descent about NASA's announcement yesterday that methane gas on Mars may signal early life. Dave Scot makes a prediction based on intelligent design but Granville Sewell urges caution about NASA's supposed find ... we've been here before.

The most likely explanation for life on Mars is contamination between Earth and Mars, though that says nothing about ultimate origins. Hoyle, an atheist wh later became an agnostic, believed it was intelligent design.

One thing to keep in mind is that NASA not only wants but needs to see life. We are in the midst of a financial meltdown in which people are losing their homes and jobs, the price of food is rising across the globe, and the expensive Mideast conflict rages on. NASA is an expensive operation. If Mars were doubted to have life, that could impact its budget.

Here's NASA's release: "The Red Planet is not a Dead Planet":

Methane -- four atoms of hydrogen bound to a carbon atom - is the main component of natural gas on Earth. It is of interest to astrobiologists because much of Earth's methane come from living organisms digesting their nutrients. However, life is not required to produce the gas. Other purely geological processes, like oxidation of iron, also release methane. "Right now, we don't have enough information to tell if biology or geology -- or both -- is producing the methane on Mars," said Mumma. "But it does tell us that the planet is still alive, at least in a geologic sense. It's as if Mars is challenging us, saying, hey, find out what this means."

Find out what this means, and don't cut the budget!

The release finishes with "Whatever future research reveals - biology or geology - one thing is already clear: Mars is not so dead, after all."

Equating life to rocks is, at the very least, a most unusual interpretation of not being "dead." Having not definitely found life in the rocks of Mars, they now imply that life, rocks, it's all the same. People in this state of mind should be heard with patience ... but also with prudence.

Here's Fuz Rana's view, giving reasons why the methane is more likely geochemical than biological in origin.

This summer's fashion in origin of life theories is - diamonds!

Well, diamonds go with everything. And what would summer be without another brand new theory of the origin of life? So far, I have heard at least fifty (soup, stew, pizza, sulphur, clay ... ) - now diamonds.

Yes, the latest is that diamonds are a swirl's best friend, as Robert Roy Britt notes in "Diamonds May Have Jump-Started Life on Earth" (Fox News, July 28, 2008):

When primitive molecules landed on the surface of these hydrogenated diamonds in the atmosphere of early Earth, a few billion years ago, the resulting reaction may have been sufficient enough to generate more complex organic molecules that eventually gave rise to life, the researchers say.

[ ... ]

The new research does not conclusively determine how life began, but it lends support to one possible way.

Well, here are a few other possible ways, as per recent stories:

Could life on Earth be much older than supposed? (700 million years older?)

"Sci-fi writer reminds us that life from outer space is not life from Roswell" (= an extraterrestrial origin of life is a respectable hypothesis)

"Origin of life a perfect circularity" (Even the concept can be difficult to define.)

"Why the origin of life is such a difficult problem" (because the many theories are in fundamental conflict with each other)

"Origin of life: Tangled skein continues to tangle"

Oh, and let's not forget "Talking to origin of life scientists: Like giving a bobcat a prostate exam?"
It's nobody's fault. Origin of life probably isn't a solvable problem.

Remember, even if someone creates life in a lab, that does not prove life started that way - only that that way is possible. It is somewhat like the Crown prosecutor showing that the defendant "might have" committed the murder. That won't get the defendant convicted; it only means that the trial continues. (If the prosecutor cannot show that the defendant's guilt is at least possible, the trial must end.)

Study: Sun not special - therefore alien life should be common?

New Scientist's Hazel Muir tells us (May 22, 2008), reporting on recent research: "Sun's properties not 'fine-tuned' for life", adding

The finding adds weight to the idea that alien life should be common throughout the universe.

I am not sure how one can add "weight" to an idea, but never mind. Re the sun:

With his ANU colleague José Robles and others, Lineweaver has now analysed 11 features of the Sun that might affect its ability to have habitable planets. They included its mass, age, rotation speed and orbital distance from the centre of the Milky Way.

Then they compared these with well-measured statistics for other stars to answer the question – overall, does the Sun stand out from the crowd any more than some other randomly chosen star would?

The Sun did stand out in two ways: it is more massive than 95% of nearby stars and its orbit around the centre of our galaxy is more circular than those of 93% of nearby stars.

This research (in press at Astrophysical Journal) contradicts Guillermo Gonzalez's "privileged planet" hypothesis concerning the sun, so I asked him about it:

Lineweaver concludes that even though the Sun is obviously exceptional in two properties he considers (mass and Galactic orbit -- both of which I have pointed out in previous papers), it is not exceptional when you consider it in the context of 11 properties. Of course, this is not the correct conclusion. Not only is the Sun exceptional in these two properties (and probably one or two others), there are good reasons to believe that the Sun's mass and Galactic orbit need to be close to their actual values for life.

It's not clear whether Muir thinks that the alien life that should be common throughout the universe would be intelligent, complex (but perhaps not intelligent), or simple.

Lineweaver's approach is reminiscent of Carl Sagan's Copernican Principle (there must be lots of Them out there by definition, because otherwise, we would be unique). And - to judge from the Top 10 admittedly "controversial" pieces of evidence for extraterrestrial life accumulated so far (September 4, 2006) - the New Scientist staff can survive on regular infusions of hope.

One underlying assumption is that life will evolve under favourable conditions. The doctrine of the common ancestry of life on Earth would seem to suggest, however, that even where conditions are favourable, it is hardly a common event.

Also: Science and ethics: When the devil offered a no strings research post.

Nature's IQ: Intelligent design from a Hindu perspective

Science journalist warns against the "institutionalised idolatry of science"

Expelled film pre-trashed by United Kludgies of Canada (Trashing a film you haven't seen is way less work.)

Is everything determined by forces over which we have no control?

On Jane Goodall, apes, human uniqueness, and God

Extraterrestrials: They're not there, but they must be !

Extraterrestrials: They're not there, but they must be !

Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, reviews Paul Davies's latest book, The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence/Are We Alone In The Universe? , which argues that we should expand the hunt for intelligent life:

McKay considers why we should look closer to home — perhaps even in our DNA.

Although supporting the current quest, Davies recommends bold and sometimes bizarre avenues of exploration. For example, if migratory Galactic civilizations passed this way some time ago, they might have posted an alien message in our DNA or depleted our region of the Universe of some resource, such as (undiscovered) magnetic monopoles. Perhaps they left a device in the Solar System as a calling card, and are patiently waiting for us to discover and activate it. There are many places to look, many ways to expand the search.

Davies devotes pages to what will happen if a signal is received and how we should respond. Most readers will find these questions remote and hypothetical — not least because once a signal is received, events are likely to be quickly taken out of the hands of the astronomers.

The greatest joy of The Eerie Silence is the ending, in which Davies gives his own perspective. He splits his personality into three: scientist, philosopher and human. As a scientist, he is sceptical that we will detect extraterrestrial life, yet he finds that possibility plausible as a philosopher and longs for it to be true as a human. Read at least this page, even if you do not have time for the rest of this excellent book.

- Chris McKay, Is there anybody out there? (Nature, 464, 34 (4 March 2010) doi:10.1038/464034a)

Why does all this remind my of a woman wittering alone at home by the telephone (Why doesn't he call? Why doesn't he text?) waiting for a familiar knock on the door and checking her e-mail every two minutes. No one can cure anyone else of this romantic disorder just by talking sense to them. Usually, women cure themselves when they are ready by asking a simple question: What would happen if I just forgot about him and lived my life and was happy?

Well, he's already forgotten her, so ....

But she, at least, knew for sure that he existed.

So, now, what's the matter with Paul Davies? SETI? Why can't they just let go?

And don't tell me that this is all just about finding bacteria on another planet. That's like the lonely, pacing woman claiming she's really only worried about him. Sure.

Comments? To comment,go to Uncommon Descent.

Here's more on extraterrestrial life:

Extraterrestrials: The recent pilgrimage to Darwin's shrine

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe or just an ordinary one?

Rare? Solar systems like ours are rare?

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

Serious push to find more exoplanets

Exoplanets: Will intelligence be common or rare?

Extraterrestrial life Life is simple All ya gotta do is ...

The simplest known organism which is capable of independent existence includes about 100 different genes. For each of 100 different specific genes to be formed spontaneously (in 10 billion years) the probability is 2 raised to the power of -100 raised to the power of 100 (or one chance in 10 followed by 3,000 zeroes). For them to be formed at the same time, and in close proximity, the probability is much lower.”

- Michael Hart, "Atmospheric Evolution, the Drake Equation and DNA: Sparse Life in an Infinite Universe" Extraterrestrials – Where Are They? (Cambridge University Press, 1995 pp. 222-223)

Oh wait, let me check my notes.

For other extraterrestrial life stories, go here.

Exoplanets: The recent pilgrimage to Darwin's shrine

At Britain's Telegraph (November 04, 2009), Tom Chivers advises that "Darwinian evolutionary theory will help find alien life, says Nasa scientist."
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution may give pointers in the search for alien life, says a Nasa astrobiologist. Here, we learn two competing views:

And so the limits of Darwinian evolution will define the range of planets that can support life – at least Earth-like life."

but

... alien life may not be entirely Earth-like. Dr Baross said: "I'd like to point out there are many different ways for non-Earth-like life to not use light or chemical energy but use some other form like radiation energy, wave energy, or ultraviolet energy."

. And then how can we know that the way they proceed is by Darwinian evolution?

We also learn

"I think all of us really believe that rocky planets, like Earth, are going to be found at some point," said Baross.

Well, lots of people have really believed lots of things that never happened. I happen to agree with him re rocky planets, because in a galaxy the size of ours, we will doubtless find lots of things, possibly extraterrestrial life ...

I am a little more concerned about the underlying agenda in some cases. NASA could be undermining its chances via Darwin worship.

Some more exoplanet stories:

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe or just an ordinary one?

Rare? Solar systems like ours are rare?

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

Serious push to find more exoplanets

Exoplanets: Will intelligence be common or rare?

Hat tip The Mustard Seed.

Murchison meteorite claimed to hold genetic materials ... well, maybe

In "Aussie rocks may hold key to life on earth", the Sydney Morning Herald advises us that "Scientists have found DNA molecules in a meteorite that landed Down Under":

GENETIC material from outer space found in a meteorite in Australia may have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth, a study to be published tomorrow has found.

European and US scientists have proved for the first time two bits of genetic coding, called nucleobases, contained in the meteor fragment, are truly extraterrestrial.

Previous studies had suggested the space rocks, which landed near Murchison, Victoria, in 1969, might have been contaminated on impact.

The two molecules identified, uracil and xanthine, "are present in our DNA and RNA", said lead author Zita Martins, a researcher at Imperial College London.

An interesting characteristic of pop science media, is that you only find out what is seriously wrong with one theory about the origin of life when the article is promoting a different one. So we read,

Competing theories suggest nucleobases were synthesised closer to home, but Dr Martins said the atmospheric conditions of early Earth would have rendered that process difficult or impossible.

Shoot that guy. He is some kind of creationist, isn't he, just like the Big Bang fundies.

A biology major friend informs me that to call uracil "genetic material" is like calling silica "computer material". Uracil is one of many small molecules found in RNA, a molecular complex that transfers the genetic information from DNA to proteins. Another friend advises that in life forms xanthine is a metabolic intermediate involved in the breaking down of purine nucleotides (not in building them up).

Of course, at the end, the punch line is offered to co-author Mark Sephton, of Imperial College, London:

"As more and more of life's raw materials are discovered in objects from space, the possibility of life springing forth wherever the right chemistry is present becomes more likely."

Well, not exactly. Given that we do not know how life originated, we can't really calculate the odds of it happening more than once.

Hope springs eternal. Sure, I wish that "they" were really out there too, but if "they" never return my calls, well ... at a certain point, long passed ...


By the way, another friend points to Stanley Miller's paper on RNA:

Stanley L. Miller*
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0506
Accepted May 8, 1998.

Abstract
High-temperature origin-of-life theories require that the components of the first genetic material are stable. We therefore have measured the half-lives for the decomposition of the nucleobases. They have been found to be short on the geologic time scale. At 100°C, the growth temperatures of the hyperthermophiles, the half-lives are too short to allow for the adequate accumulation of these compounds (t1/2 for A and G ≈ 1 yr; U = 12 yr; C = 19 days). Therefore, unless the origin of life took place extremely rapidly (<100 yr), we conclude that a high-temperature origin of life may be possible, but it cannot involve adenine, uracil, guanine, or cytosine. The rates of hydrolysis at 100°C also suggest that an ocean-boiling asteroid impact would reset the prebiotic clock, requiring prebiotic synthetic processes to begin again. At 0°C, A, U, G, and T appear to be sufficiently stable (t1/2 ≥ 106 yr) to be involved in a low-temperature origin of life. However, the lack of stability of cytosine at 0°C (t1/2 = 17,000 yr) raises the possibility that the GC base pair may not have been used in the first genetic material unless life arose quickly (<106 yr) after a sterilization event. A two-letter code or an alternative base pair may have been used instead.

Could life on Earth be much older than supposed?

A team of researchers based at the Curtin University of Technology near Perth, Australia, believe they have evidence that life may have begun 700 million years earlier than traditionally assumed. According to their July 3, 2008 announcement,

The 4.2 billion year old diamonds found trapped inside the Jack Hills zircon crystals are the oldest-known samples of Earth’s carbon. The Curtin led team’s discovery of very high concentrations of carbon 12, or “light carbon” within these crystals is remarkable as it is a feature usually associated with organic life.

[ ... ]

Evidence for ancient life stretches back in time to at least 3.5 billion years ago, in the form of single-celled organisms that did not require oxygen. The discovery of light carbon in the Jack Hills crystals raises the question – did a simple life form exist on Earth 700 million years earlier than previously thought?

According to geologist team leader Alexander Nemchin,

The discovery challenges our fundamental understanding of processes active in the early history of the Earth. It suggests that life may well have appeared on Earth long before the period of heavy-meteorite bombardment believed by some to have initiated the emergence of life on Earth.

Alternatively, light carbon doesn't necessarily signal life.

If life really appeared on Earth long before heavy meteor bombardment, theories that involve any kind of gradual Darwinian process for the origin of life are pretty much dead. We are then left with either an extraterrestrial origin of life or an origin coded into the formation of Earth itself - an intelligent design hypothesis.

Note: This is a NASA image of the Jack Hills.

Space exploration: Stephen Hawking urges, Boldly go ... but why, exactly?

In "The final frontier," an online feature at Cosmos magazine (24 September 2008), Stephen Hawking, probably the world's best known living cosmologist, argues that we need to take space exploration seriously again:

In a way, the situation was like that in Europe before 1492. People might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase over an almost unimaginable distance. Yet, the discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the old one.

As it happens, a friend writes to say,

People did argue that, and they had good reasons, namely, that it was too far to sail to India. Columbus with some wishful thinking affecting his judgment gave a smaller circumference for the Earth. Lucky for him, North America turned out to exist. He wouldn't have been able to reach India. So Columbus's critics were right about India and the size of the Earth, but Columbus got lucky.

He advises us to read J. B. Russell's Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, which points out that

Neither Christopher Columbus, nor his contemporaries, believed the earth was flat. Yet this curious illusion persists today, firmly established with the help of the media, textbooks, teachers--even noted historians. Inventing the Flat Earth is Jeffrey Burton Russell's attempt to set the record straight. He begins with a discussion of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages, examining what Columbus and his contemporaries actually did believe, and then moves to a look at how the error was first propagated in the 1820s and 1830s--including how noted writers Washington Irving and Antoinne-Jean Letronne were among those responsible. He shows how later day historians followed these original mistakes, and how this "snowball effect" grew to outrageous proportions in the late nineteenth century, when Christians opposed to Darwinism were labelled as similar to Medieval Christians who (allegedly) thought the earth was flat. But perhaps the most intriguing focus of the book is the reason why we allow this error to persist. Do we prefer to languish in a comfortable and familiar error rather than exert the effort necessary to discover the truth? This uncomfortable question is engagingly answered, and includes a discussion about the implications of this for historical knowledge and scholarly honesty. (Product Description)

For the record, Columbus is one of those figures whose historical significance was accidental, which makes him ideal for myth-building. Many penniless adventurers like him washed up or drowned somewhere. He washed up in the Caribbean, and did not even know where he was - thus famously bequeathing the name "Indians" to the earliest known inhabitants of two great continents and all their surrounding islands.

The confusion Columbus accidentally created thereby lives on long after him. For example, today we have many Canadians of Aboriginal descent who resent being called "Indians" and many South Asian-born Canadians who really are from India. So Hawking's choice of Columbus to make his point was not altogether happy. Goodbye, Columbus.

Why go boldly into outer space? To explore inner space perhaps ...

Hawking's main point is to encourage more money for space exploration, specifically bases on the Moon and Mars:

Going into space won't be cheap, certainly, but it will take only a small proportion of world resources. NASA's budget has remained roughly constant in real terms since the time of the Apollo landings, but it has decreased from 0.3 per cent of U.S. GDP in 1970 to 0.12 per cent today.

Even if we were to increase the amount spent on space endeavours internationally by 20 times, to make a serious effort to send people into space, it would only be a small fraction of world GDP.

There will be those who argue that it would be better to spend our money solving the problems of this planet, like climate change and pollution, rather than wasting it on a possibly fruitless search for a new planet. I am not denying the importance of fighting climate change and global warming, but we can do that and still spare a quarter of a per cent of world GDP for space. Isn't our future worth a quarter of percent?

This argument sparked a lively discussion among friends. Is the analogy of space exploration with Europeans colonizing the Americas a fair one? Not really. The Europeans were looking for a quicker, cheaper, and safer route to India, a civilization with which they already had dealings. They already knew what luxury items they hoped to buy there. If space exploration were like that, we would now be trying to improve exchanges with an extraterrestrial civilization with which we already have fruitful contacts.

The fact that the Americas blocked the western route to India was a surprise discovery for the European explorers, but not a remarkable one. Other inhabited continents on a very life-friendly planet are nowhere near the odds of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. For these reasons, the analogy to early modern European explorers does not really work.

However, a friend comments that the techniques developed for space exploration can be put to other uses:

It has been nearly 40 years from our original venture into space and moon landing and we are still reaping many benefits from the event. Most of the discoveries and applications were huge and largely unexpected. For example integrated circuit technology, biotelemetry monitoring, national defense and communication were forever changed as a result of our successfully putting a man on the moon. No doubt even larger technological breakthroughs will be made from learning how to accomplish deeper space travel and colonization of other worlds.

So instead of finding new continents, we will be founding new technology. In that case, the real purpose of the venture is to explore inner space (our own creativity) rather than outer space. On these lines, another friend, Edward Sisson, points to the spiritual value of such an exercise:

Colonizing other planets is basically the same as building a glorified space station. And what do we really do with that? All that effort so that two or three people at a time can spend a few months cramped in a can doing make-work.

The only real benefit of space travel is for mankind to exercise its collective mind accomplishing a worthy challenge. That is, in fact, a worthy reason to do it. But that is no justification for pretending that other benefits are likely.

We will now recite the Creed: "We believe that life arose spontaneously on the Earth."

In his article, Hawking also sums up current thinking about the origin of life, for which he hopes that space exploration will provide an explanation. In its own way, his comments are most illuminating. Not illuminating about the origin of life but about current thinking, for example:

We believe that life arose spontaneously on the Earth. So it must be possible for life to appear on other suitable planets, of which there seem to be a large number in the galaxy.

But we don't know how life first appeared. The probability of something as complicated as a DNA molecule being formed by random collisions of atoms in ocean seems incredibly small. However, there might have been some simpler macromolecule which was a building block for DNA or another molecule capable of reproducing itself.

Honestly, I've heard all this before, and I am not sure I would want to invest .25% of Earth's resources in it.

Panspermia, or an unidentified factor or force?

Hawking also gives a plug for panspermia, the theory that life originated elsewhere in the universe, and some other unexplained factor:

One piece of observational evidence on the probability of life appearing is that we have fossils from 3.5 billion years ago. The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago and was probably too hot for about the first half-billion years or so. So life appeared on Earth within half-a-billion years of it being possible, which is short compared to the 10-billion-year lifetime of an Earth-like planet.

This fact would suggest either panspermia or that the probability of life appearing independently is reasonably high. If it the probability very low, one would have expected it to take most of the 10 billion years available.

I am not sure what Hawking means by his suggested alternative to panspermia, that "the probability of life appearing independently is reasonably high." If so, something currently unknown must be driving it, because the probability is obviously not "reasonably high" if we assume random assembly, a fact that Hawking admits himself. Perhaps in his next essay, he will outline what he thinks that factor might be.

Were we meant to explore the universe?

Personally, I think that Guillermo Gonzalez's view that Earth's favourable position for astronomy suggests that we are somehow meant to explore the universe is far more inspirational for raising the required .25% of world GNP than anything Hawking cites in his article. After all, if we were meant to explore our universe, we can be sure that we will find something of consequence out there. Otherwise, maybe not. And the "otherwise" seems much closer to Hawking's position. And, after all, it is a lot of money.

Too bad Gonzalez's position proved so costly, and Hawking's position is so rewarding. Hawking worries in the article that young people are turned off science today. That, at least, should not be a mystery.

See also:

On Hawking

Stephen Hawking, miffed over science funding cuts, to move to Ontario, Canada?

Who reads popular books on cosmology? Well, almost everyone who actually reads, it seems

On Gonzalez

The truth hurts - and it can leave you seeing stars too

"Privileged planet" astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez: Dissing St. Carl Sagan in his own church

Study: Sun not special, therefore alien life should be common?

Paul Davies on avoiding a hullabaloo when the flying saucers land

In “Newsmaker Interview: Imponderables Complicate Hunt For Intelligent Life Beyond Earth”, Science (23 April 2010), Yudhijit Bhattacharjee asks cosmologist Paul Davies some questions about the SETI search, in aid of his Eerie Silence book. Two stand out:

Q: Why is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence any different from the search for goblins or unicorns?

P.D.: Good point. Well, when it started out 50 years ago, it was considered a very quixotic enterprise. The pendulum has swung during my career. I often ask around why it is now okay to talk about ET when it wasn't 40 years ago. And people will often cite irrelevant factors like—oh, we've discovered all these planets, and we've discovered that life can exist in a wide array of conditions. But the truth is that we still don't have an acceptable theory of life's origins, we really have no idea whether it was a stupendous fluke that happened only once or whether it pops up all over the place. It's now fashionable to say that the universe is teeming with life, but there is not a shred of evidence.

[ ... ]

Q: You devote a chapter in the book to how governments, the media, and societies need to handle news of the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence, if and when that happens. What are the outlines of the plan?

P.D.: If there's a signal, the scientists should be allowed to evaluate it before there's a hullabaloo. In practice, that will be very hard to achieve without a cloak of secrecy, which I am usually against. But there's one thing on which we are all agreed, which is that we should not disclose the coordinates in the sky of a transmitting source. Because otherwise, any self-appointed spokesperson of humanity could get hold of a radio telescope and start beaming crackpot messages, and present themselves as a spokesperson for mankind, when it is not at all clear whether we should respond. (Paywall)

Okay, but how would the crackpot messages differ from stuff we hear all the time? Presumably, ET has noticed that and is used to it.

Extraterrestrial life? Well, maybe, but I am not putting any money on it

Apparently, Alan Boss thinks that the Kepler mission will find planets crowded with life:

I'm a bit skeptical myself, much as I would like it to be true. A vacation in another solar system would be just the thing, but ...

The thing is, Boss cannot promise more than bacteria (or - this might be wiser - archaea?), and the difficulty is (this much should be obvious): Extraterrestrialists tend to agree that bacteria (or at least archaea) could travel on asteroids.

So they might all tend to look somewhat like this. Maybe the started on Earth ...

Somewhat disappointing for a person of my "Take me to your leader" generation.

Bill Dembski blogged on this here ("Cook the primeval soup for billions of years and voila!").

Here's the YouTube:

Multiverse incompatible with naturalism (materialism)?

Just as extraterrestrial life is a key theme of the grand narrative of atheistic materialism, infinite universes (the multiverse) is fast becoming another. One hears it more and more - it props up theses that would otherwise be entirely dismissable, and in turn it is propped up by the tiniest whiff of possibility. A friend points me to philosopher William Lane Craig's justifiably skeptical response:

Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1:1010(123), an inconceivable number. If our universe were but one member of a multiverse of randomly ordered worlds, then it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe. For example, the odds of our solar system’s being formed instantly by the random collision of particles is about 1:1010(60), a vast number, but inconceivably smaller than 1010(123). (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison [The Road to Reality (Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-5]). Or again, if our universe is but one member of a multiverse, then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events, like horses’ popping into and out of existence by random collisions, or perpetual motion machines, since these are vastly more probable than all of nature’s constants and quantities’ falling by chance into the virtually infinitesimal life-permitting range. Observable universes like those strange worlds are simply much more plenteous in the ensemble of universes than worlds like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us if the universe were but a random member of a multiverse of worlds. Since we do not have such observations, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On naturalism, at least, it is therefore highly probable that there is no multiverse.

So naturalism both needs it, and disconfirms it? Well then, contrary to the grand narrative, neither naturalism nor the multiverse is true or well-founded.

Some scientists hope that the aliens are NOT out there!

Enrico Fermi's "napkin" question is "Why do they never write? Never phone?"

In Technology Review (May/June 2008), Where Are They? [freewall], troubled genius Nick Bostrom offers a fretful hope, "Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing":

... it seems unlikely that the galaxy is teeming with intelligent life and that the reason we haven’t seen any of them is that they all confine themselves to their home planets. Now, it is possible to concoct scenarios in which the universe is swarming with advanced civilizations every one of which chooses to keep itself well hidden from our view. Maybe there is a secret society of advanced civilizations that know about us but have decided not to contact us until we’re mature enough to be admitted into their club. Perhaps they’re observing us, like animals in a zoo. I don’t see how we can conclusively rule out this possibility. But I will set it aside for the remainder of this essay in order to concentrate what to me appears to be more plausible answers to Fermi’s question.

Look, many women have asked Fermi's question in a variety of much humbler circumstances. If you exist, you may be a part of the solution in a given case. So go do that and decrease the number of such questions.



The rest of us would like to concentrate on questions where existence rather than decency is in doubt.

Extraterrestrial life: Here's a story you could only read in New Scientist ...

"Why the universe may be teeming with aliens" by David Shiga - Have faith, baby, they are really, definitely out there!

After a list of reasons why they are really not likely out there, and in spite of this:

Despite this broadening of the criteria for potentially habitable planets, not everyone is convinced that these new insights are particularly helpful in the search for worlds that might support life. There is a lot left to figure out, even for Earth, says Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona. "I don't think we really understand how or why the Earth has been habitable in its history and what the excursions from habitability really were," he says, "and until we do, it's hard to be anything but sceptical that some of these models are really going to inform the search."

the New Scientist staff are keeping the faith that they are really, definitely out there ...

Faith is so touching ... I wish I could find them some extraterrestrials ...

See also:

Alfred Russel Wallace on why Mars is not habitable (and not much has changed)

Boldly go, but why, exactly?

Extraterrestrials: Several million UFOs later - the state of the question

Extraterrestrials: Younger astronomers less likely to believe than older ones?

So what if fossil bacteria are found on Mars? Polls show many Americans expect Star Trek!

Some scientists hope that the aliens are NOT out there!

Increase in UFO sitings in Canada - what's behind that?

Extraterrestrial life: Immanuel Kant, meet Frank Drake and Carl Sagan

From "Looking for planets like ours", a review by Michael Brown of Alan Boss's The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets:

Even if the Kepler and COROT missions do find an abundance of planets, the Kantian revolution will not be complete. The new planets might be exactly the same size as Earth and orbit their stars at the same distance, and although an astronomer might be willing to call such a thing Earth-like, most people will look for more. Does it have liquid water? Does it have a recognizable atmosphere? And, inevitably, could it — does it — support life?

Finding the answers to these questions will take decades. Kepler and COROT are merely steps along the way. In the meantime, we can take solace from Kant: "I am of the opinion that it is not particularly necessary to assert that all planets must be inhabited. However, at the same time it would be absurd to deny this claim with respect to all or even to most of them."

It took nearly 250 years to prove him mostly right the first time. With a little luck and perseverance — and, as Boss shows, a lot of work by astronomers around the world — the final step may just come a little faster.

I wonder whether Kant would regard the discovery that bacteria had once lived on Mars or might live elsewhere - if it is made - as evidence for his position.

See also:

Alfred Russel Wallace on why Mars is not habitable

See also: Boldly go, but why, exactly?Extraterrestrials:

Several million UFOs later - the state of the question

Younger astronomers less likely to believe than older ones?

So what if fossil bacteria are found on Mars? Polls show many Americans expect Star Trek!

Some scientists hope that the aliens are NOT out there!

Increase in UFO sitings in Canada - what's behind that?

Extraterrestrials: Younger astronomers less likely to believe than older ones?

Science writer Fred Heeren noted in "Home Alone in the Universe" (First Things, March 2002) that there may be a generation gap between astronomers in terms of their expectations of finding advanced alien civilizations - and the gap is growing in the wrong directn for ET believers.

Recalling Robert Jastrow's optimism in the 1990s,

“I think that mankind is on the threshold of entering a larger, cosmic community,” he told me during a visit to his home and then to California’s Mt. Wilson Observatories, where he serves as Director. His words carried a kind of ecclesiastical authority, seeming to reverberate from the seven-story dome above him, the observatory he calls a “cathedral dedicated to mankind’s quest for understanding of the Cosmos.” Less loftily, he added, simply, “We’ll be hearing from those guys soon.”

he contrasts it with today's more sobered view:

Other astronomers belonging to Robert Jastrow’s generation recall the same kind of enthusiasm, but new concerns have since dampened it. “I used to rather enjoy thinking that the early civilizations would have set up an intercommunicating system,” said Senior Astronomer Emeritus Eric Carlson of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium. “Maybe laser beams or something full of information about all the other civilizations in the past history of the galaxy, and that this is all circulating around from star to star around the galaxy, and all we have to do is tap into it.”

The actual likelihood that we’ll hear back from anyone that close, of course, depends upon just how densely packed our galaxy is with civilizations—and upon how long those civilizations last. Today Eric Carlson frets about what might happen to any civilization in the course of a 10-billion-year-old galaxy. What will be left of human culture in a billion years, or even a million? “I tend to get this sense of a galaxy as being sort of like a garden,” says Carlson. “You have the early spring flowers, and then you have the late spring flowers and so on, and you have life with consciousness springing up here and there for a while. And whether it’s ever in contact at the same time, I just don’t know.”

The next generation of cosmologists might still say that the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations is “extremely likely,” as cosmologist George Smoot (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories) told me. “But I think the chances of there being life near to us is pretty low,” he cautioned, “and whether there’s life in our own galaxy, besides ourselves, I don’t know.”

He also points out something I mentioned in an earlier post - popular culture is impervious to the reduced expectations:

Incredibly, infatuation with extraterrestrials actually increased in the last decade. The Rockford Files became The X-Files. Mob-fighting “Untouchables” turned into alien-fighting “Men in Black,” also spun into a children’s cartoon series. The biggest hit in late night radio is a national show frequently featuring firsthand witnesses talking about their close encounters with aliens or their spacecraft.

For some people, real life is apparently taking too long to catch up to their media-led expectations—and they aren’t going to wait any longer. During the 1990s, psychologists estimated that 900,000 people claimed to have been abducted by aliens in the U.S. alone, and the trend was increasing.

I think Heeren is right about the aliens being an ersatz religion, one that makes no demands and rewards any amount of gullibility. He also quotes Jastrow as saying, oddly,

“When we make contact with them, it will be a transforming event,” he says. “I do not know how the Judeo-Christian tradition will react to this development, because the concept that there exist beings superior to us in this universe, not only technically, but perhaps spiritually and morally, will take some rethinking, I think, of the classic doctrines of western religion.”

Huh? What does Jastrow think angels are supposed to be in the traditional culture?

See also:

So what if fossil bacteria are found on Mars? Polls show many Americans expect Star Trek!

Some scientists hope that the aliens are NOT out there!

Increase in UFO sitings in Canada - what's behind that?

Increase in UFO sightings in Canada ... ?

Tiffany Crawford (Canwest News Service July 18, 2008) reports,

Canadians in four provinces reported seeing a record number of unidentified flying objects in 2007, according to an annual report released by a Winnipeg-based non-profit organization that has recorded UFO sightings since 1989.

The UFOlogy Research Institute, which compiles data from sources including Transport Canada and the Department of National Defence, said researchers examined 836 alleged UFO sightings in 2007, an increase of almost 12 per cent over 2006.

Does this prove Canucks are Ca-nuts? Well, maybe. But not necessarily.

In the wake of National Geographic's Extraterrestrial and increased funding for pursuit of extraterrestrial life, no doubt many more amateurs are anxious to help.

And the more people look up at the night sky, the more strange things will be discovered - or anyway believed in.

Note: Kind readers have written to advise me that "sitings" should be "sightings." The kind readers are right but right, but for search and link reasons, I cannot change it in the link code, only in the hedder.

Alfred Russel Wallace on why Mars is not habitable

Friend Malcolm Chisholm, who has a wonderful approach to information (= he reads widely) writes to tell me of a book written by Alfred Russel Wallace (Darwin's co-theorist) on the question of the habitability of Mars:

It was written in 1907 when Wallace was living in Broadstone, Dorset (where I went to school).

Wallace takes on Percival Lowell, a supreme icon of American astronomy. Lowell thought there were Martians and they used canals etc. Wallace blows up this theory, ending the book with the statement:

"Mars, therefore, is not only uninhabited by intelligent beings such as Mr. Lowell postulates, but is absolutely UNINHABITABLE."

Remember that Wallace has been derided for his beliefs in ID and spiritualism. Yet he was obviously not afraid to go against the scientific speculative spirit of the age.

Indeed. In the introduction to the 1907 edition, the whole of which is scanned online, editor Charles H. Smith notes,

For many years one of Wallace's least remembered books, Is Mars Habitable? is increasingly being recognized as one of the first examples of the proper application of the scientific method to the study of extraterrestrial atmospheres and geography-that is, as one of the pioneer works in the field of exobiology.

Here is Wallace's conclusion:

To put the whole case in the fewest possible words:

(1) All physicists are agreed that, owing to the distance of Mars from the sun, it would have a mean temperature of about -35̊ F. (= 456̊ F. abs.) even if it had an atmosphere as dense as ours.

(2) But the very low temperatures on the earth under the equator, at a height where the barometer stands at about three times as high as on Mars, proves, that from scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have a temperature as high [[p. 110]] as the freezing point of water; and this proof is supported by Langley's determination of the low maximum temperature of the full moon.

The combination of these two results must bring down the temperature of Mars to a degree wholly incompatible with the existence of animal life.

(3) The quite independent proof that water-vapour cannot exist on Mars, and that therefore, the first essential of organic life--water--is non-existent.

The conclusion from these three independent proofs, which enforce each other in the multiple ratio of their respective weights, is therefore irresistible--that animal life, especially in its higher forms, cannot exist on the planet.

Mars, therefore, is not only uninhabited by intelligent beings such as Mr. Lowell postulates, but is absolutely UNINHABITABLE.

What made Wallace so unpopular compared to Darwin is that he insisted that in science, evidence matters. Carl Sagan-style proclamations like "They're out there! How could we be so arrogant as to think we are all alone!" do not become science just because they are proclaimed by scientists.

See also:

Boldly go, but why, exactly?

Extraterrestrials: Several million UFOs later - the state of the question

Younger astronomers less likely to believe than older ones?

So what if fossil bacteria are found on Mars? Polls show many Americans expect Star Trek!

Some scientists hope that the aliens are NOT out there!

Increase in UFO sitings in Canada - what's behind that?

(Note: The image of Wallace (1823-1913) is from Wikimedia Commons.)