Hubble takes the biggest image ever of Andromeda at 1.5 billion pixels

Mags cited Ben Zuckerman as if he believes there is no life elsewhere. Wrong.

http://www.toacorn.com/news/2014-06-12/Community/The_search_for_life_in_outer_space.html


“My feeling is that the origin of life is a very improbable event. . . . If the origin of life is improbable, then few planets, even those in the habitable zone, will contain life.”

Not "impossible" and "few" not "none".

 

I'm a skeptic. It seems to me that if life were everywhere, we'd easily detect it. We don't.

There is a lot of evidence that suggests it should arise all over the place, yet we can't find it in our own solar system.

Focus on earth-like planets in the goldilocks zone may be incomplete. The earth has a lot of other features, like plate tectonics and a magnetosphere and a huge moon in comparison to the planet size.

There's a decent sized list of stars within just 21 light years here: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/nearstar.html. If there were any advanced life on planets within 21 light years, it seems we'd be able to watch their TV shows and hear their radio broadcasts.

I have no reason to believe anything but the origin of life is an improbable event. If you put less optimistic numbers into the Drake equation, you come up with number of civilizations less than one.

 

It's not certain there is life elsewhere at all. Your arithmetic skills lack the possibility of NO POSSIBILITY. Like there's gazillions of stars and planets but the odds of one having a statue of Al Gore carved in ice on it is zero. The odds of there being one on Earth is 1:1.

There is a giant leap to certainty by assuming there is some ascribed chance. You ascribe a "fewer than 1%" chance, which you cannot possibly know to be true or not. The chance could be 1:1x10^1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which would make even life on Earth improbable and sheer luck that we made it at all.

I've seen lots of scientists who are certain and say so.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...xist-on-Earth-like-planet-scientists-say.html

Alien life certain to exist on Earth-like planet, scientists say

 

It's the same kind of faith as the belief that water boils at 212 degrees F.

 

There's the same "hard evidence" of life. You don't know that water will boil at 212F the next time you try. It also matters if you try at the top of the mountain or at sea level or with a lid on the pot.

I get why smart people think there is life elsewhere. It's one thing to say, "it sure seems likely," and another to say "it's a certainty" (virtual or not).

One says "what's been observed suggests it to be likely." This may or may not be true, but there is actual evidence. Experience of life here and knowledge about how it works and what the rest of the universe is made of.

 

The "without any evidence" part of you claim is bogus.

There is evidence. There's life on earth. Life that exists here in harsh conditions. The elements that make up every species ever known to live here are observable in quantities in space.

It's not like belief in unicorns, of which there is little convincing evidence whatsoever.

 

I know those things are evidence, and you claimed there is none. There is no completing the circle, just correcting your error.

 

Live outside earth is probable. The argument is never what you claim it is. The question is HOW PROBABLE.

To me the probability is low at this point. However, if we find one microbe anywhere in the solar system outside of earth that did not originate on earth, then that is good reason to expect life to exist just about everywhere - high probability.

 

Actually, it is evidence. You saying it isn't doesn't make it not so