Timothy Birdnow

I've always thought so. The primary assumption of science since Galileo is that we are nothing unusual. We have downplayed our roll in Creatiion. So it was assumed we were probably just one habitable, indeed, inhabited world among many. There was the Drake equations which calculated the number of inhabitable planets and argued from statistics that we must not be alone. But I always found those self-serving and doubted the assumptions. We now know most solar systems are quite different from our own. Most have "hot Jupiters" for instance, gas giants near the stars. This would radically change the structure of such a solar system. It would also lead to more solar flares. We know many solar systems have "super Earths" planets twice the size of Earth. It is strange Earth is so small. Most stars are flare suns too, and ours is quite stable - something unique. It just may be ours is REALLY, REALLY unique and we are alone, or if life started somewhere else it is simple. Everything seemed to happen right for Earth. We are the right temperature for liquid water, have plenty of it, are safe via our magnetic field from radiation, are safe from asteroid strikes (by and large), etc. And then there is the Fermi Paradox, which asks "where are they". Fermi realized we should see evidence of advanced alien civilizations if they were around. But we do not. No radio waves, for instance. The Fermi paradox pretty much guarantees we aren't withing a hundred light years of any civilization on a par with our own (as we would be detecting their radio transmissions) and likely far longer as older civilizations would have put such transmissions out in the past. So where are they? They may not be there at all.


Rare Earth hypothesis: Why we might really be alone in the universe
astronomy.com

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 06:57 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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