Life on other planets?

[Stargazer]

3 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Thank you for the comments. I knew it would attract your attention!

Yes, I am very predictable. 

3 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

It's amazing to see Abraham, Moses, Enoch, and Joseph Smith being vindicated by modern science, at least in this matter. (Pun intended). Except in the "spiritual" impact I referenced in the OP.

When it comes to cosmology, Latter-day Saints should be more knowledgeable than they are -- we have so many scriptures that confirm secular science.

3 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

I'm a bit of a dabbler. I suscribe to the daily NASA space photos, use a couple of apps and several really nice amateur guide books, keeping a diary of objects I have found with my big Celestron binocs and a modest reflecting telescope. I had hoped the skies of Kentucky would be darker, but we are too close to Lexington - darker than our area of Washington, at least. Growing up in the mountains of northern New Mexico was a star watcher's dream. That's where I got the bug.

This chart, or one like it, in one of my books put things into perspective for me.

https://www.namahariplaasmark.com/2021/12/the-universe-in-perspective.html

 

I finally bought a telescope a few years ago, but found that it was too difficult to use. On top of that, we're too close to London and the nearby conurbation of Worthing-Littlehampton-Shoreham to get a dark sky. And then there's the weather... oh, my.

The weather here notwithstanding, there was the Royal Greenwich Observatory at Herstmonceaux, which is not far from our house. A description of this observatory is featured in one of my YouTube videos. To bypass the part of the video about the castle next door, skip ahead to 13:13.

 

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Yes, I am very predictable. 

When it comes to cosmology, Latter-day Saints should be more knowledgeable than they are -- we have so many scriptures that confirm secular science.

I finally bought a telescope a few years ago, but found that it was too difficult to use. On top of that, we're too close to London and the nearby conurbation of Worthing-Littlehampton-Shoreham to get a dark sky. And then there's the weather... oh, my.

The weather here notwithstanding, there was the Royal Greenwich Observatory at Herstmonceaux, which is not far from our house. A description of this observatory is featured in one of my YouTube videos. To bypass the part of the video about the castle next door, skip ahead to 13:13.

What a great video! Thanks for sharing. Did you do the aerial shots? A guy who fought at Argincort...how cool is that!!! I wonder if he was one of those who went into the breach one more time. Fascinating info on the observatories. I fell off a stage once in the dark.

 

Quote

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

 

[Bernard Gui]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

The Olympia Brewing Company is long gone, alas. I used to drive by the brewery in Tumwater every weekday on the way to work. The brewery buildings are still there, but after a series of buyers, the final owner, Pabst, closed the brewery down in 2003. The brewery whistle still sounds at 5 pm every day, however. It's heard all over the Olympia area. I can't hear from where I am now, however.

So your hearing is failing too.

I loved the Rainier brewery motorcycle/beer commercials. Rrrrraaaainnnneeerrrrrr Beeeeerrrrrrrrrrr.

[rodheadlee]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Yes, I am very predictable. 

When it comes to cosmology, Latter-day Saints should be more knowledgeable than they are -- we have so many scriptures that confirm secular science.

I finally bought a telescope a few years ago, but found that it was too difficult to use. On top of that, we're too close to London and the nearby conurbation of Worthing-Littlehampton-Shoreham to get a dark sky. And then there's the weather... oh, my.

The weather here notwithstanding, there was the Royal Greenwich Observatory at Herstmonceaux, which is not far from our house. A description of this observatory is featured in one of my YouTube videos. To bypass the part of the video about the castle next door, skip ahead to 13:13.

 

Nice video! The only time I get to see stars is when we are out in the sailboat. It's always overcast in Eureka and there's too much light pollution in Redlands and Ensenada. I have to tell you though when you're a thousand miles offshore it is awesome to look up at night. When I get south of the Equator I see new constellations that I don't know their names so I  give them my own names. I know the Southern Cross. But this one constellation is 12 stars in a big giant Arc so I named them the 12 apostles. I feel lost when I can't see the constellation Orion. It's a rare thing but it happens to me in Idaho. I believe it's blocked by the mountains.

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

What a great video! Thanks for sharing. Did you do the aerial shots?

Thanks! Unfortunately, the drone I had at the time wasn't adequate for it, and so I borrowed footage I found on YouTube. In a later video, Drone Flights in Sussex and Devon, I got the footage from my very adequate new drones.

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

A guy who fought at Argincort...how cool is that!!! I wonder if he was one of those who went into the breach one more time. Fascinating info on the observatories.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.

That wasn't Agincourt, it was the siege of Harfleur. But I don't know if Henry V actually said this, or if it was Shakespeare's invention. Henry didn't actually capture the city by force, but by negotiation. The city leaders told Henry that if they were not relieved by French forces by 23 September, they would surrender the city upon terms. And that's what happened.

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

I fell off a stage once in the dark.

Ouch!

At least you didn't get upstaged!

Edited September 26, 2024 by Stargazer

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Stargazer said:

And if life could develop on this one, it must have developed at least one other time

Why “must have”?  Maybe it was an extremely odd and extremely rare combination, a lighting bolt that hit just far enough away from a soupy mixture that was just the perfect distance from a magnetic source that happened to be in the full on dark just when it needed to be and was located in just the right spot for the speck of new life to drift into a more protected spot where it would never had come to life in, but needed in order to be protected from the harsher elements into order to survive?  And it just happen there was a long enough gap in sunspot activity that it didn’t get fried, but thrived.  Etc etc etc

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Herstmonceaux

What does this rhyme with…wiki says the ending is zoo or soo…but that seems unlikely, but you know, English…

Edited September 26, 2024 by Calm

[Stargazer]

4 minutes ago, Calm said:

Why “must have”?  Maybe it was an extremely odd and extremely rare combination, a lighting bolt that hit just far enough away from a soupy mixture that was just the perfect distance from a magnetic source that happened to be in the full on dark just when it needed to be and was located in just the right spot for the speck of new life to drift into a more protected spot where it would never had come to life in, but needed in order to be protected from the harsher elements into order to survive?  And it just happen there was a long enough gap in sunspot activity that it didn’t get fried, but thrived.  Etc etc etc

Why? Because if a thing is possible, and happens, it must continue to be possible and happen again, if the same conditions in which it happened exist again. However long it takes, if the laws of nature or of the universe don't forbid it, it will take place again. It's kind of like the universal Murphy's Law. If something can happen, it will happen. I'm not arguing some extremely outlandish and speculative principle. At least in this I am backed up by scientific consensus. 

Really, Calm, we're dealing with 300 million possibly habitable worlds in one galaxy whereon many if not most of the same conditions will occur as occurred on earth. And not just 300 million, but over the galaxy's lifetime there will be multiples of 300 million. 

If life evolved once, it will evolve again. 

Of course, we could all be wrong and in the entire trillion star universe there is no other planet supporting life than ours. Seems doubtful, however.

[Stargazer]

15 minutes ago, Calm said:

What does this rhyme with…wiki says the ending is zoo or soo…but that seems unlikely, but you know, English…

It's the English. They pronounce things weird. I wanted to say Herst - mon- so. But everyone around there pronounced it the way I did in the video.

We are vacationing in Devon at the moment, and today we visited a coastal town called Teignmouth. Because it's at the mouth of the River Teign. You'd think the name of the river would be pronounced "Tane" as in the word "deign." But no. It's pronounced "Ten," almost exactly like the number. And though everyone pronounces the word "mouth" as "mowth" (as it should be), the town name Teignmouth is pronounced "Ten-muth." Years ago I lived in a town named Cheltenham. You think you see three syllables there, but no. It's two: "Chelt-num."

Check this out. It's funny:

 

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

So your hearing is failing too.

LOL! The sound heard 'round the world...

2 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

I loved the Rainier brewery motorcycle/beer commercials. Rrrrraaaainnnneeerrrrrr Beeeeerrrrrrrrrrr.

And the "Running of the Rainiers."

 

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Why? Because if a thing is possible, and happens, it must continue to be possible and happen again, if the same conditions in which it happened exist again. However long it takes, if the laws of nature or of the universe don't forbid it, it will take place again. It's kind of like the universal Murphy's Law. If something can happen, it will happen. I'm not arguing some extremely outlandish and speculative principle. At least in this I am backed up by scientific consensus. 

Really, Calm, we're dealing with 300 million possibly habitable worlds in one galaxy whereon many if not most of the same conditions will occur as occurred on earth. And not just 300 million, but over the galaxy's lifetime there will be multiples of 300 million. 

If life evolved once, it will evolve again. 

Of course, we could all be wrong and in the entire trillion star universe there is no other planet supporting life than ours. Seems doubtful, however.

@Calm, the above was written in the point of view of someone who believes in random chance in the emergence of life.

What I myself believe, however, is that while God is capable of building a universe which will spontaneously generate life that will of itself evolve intelligent species over time, I feel He actually engineers the rise of life and its development into intelligence. And He does not rely upon chance. Moses chapter one makes it clear that He is highly involved in the process.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

It's the English. They pronounce things weird. I wanted to say Herst - mon- so. But everyone around there pronounced it the way I did in the video.

We are vacationing in Devon at the moment, and today we visited a coastal town called Teignmouth. Because it's at the mouth of the River Teign. You'd think the name of the river would be pronounced "Tane" as in the word "deign." But no. It's pronounced "Ten," almost exactly like the number. And though everyone pronounces the word "mouth" as "mowth" (as it should be), the town name Teignmouth is pronounced "Ten-muth." Years ago I lived in a town named Cheltenham. You think you see three syllables there, but no. It's two: "Chelt-num."

Check this out. It's funny:

 

Map men videos are the best. 

[Calm]

10 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

@Calm, the above was written in the point of view of someone who believes in random chance in the emergence of life.

What I myself believe, however, is that while God is capable of building a universe which will spontaneously generate life that will of itself evolve intelligent species over time, I feel He actually engineers the rise of life and its development into intelligence. And He does not rely upon chance. Moses chapter one makes it clear that He is highly involved in the process.

Once God gets invoked, there is no reason to talk about probability. God wants a habitable planet there, he gets it. 

[The Nehor]

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

I wouldn't be so certain of all that, if I were you.

You’re not me. Count your many blessings.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

We always need more data. That doesn't mean we don't have enough data to sustain a valid opinion.

Opinions are largely worthless when seeking facts.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Lots of clickbait. Science writers have to make a living, too. As of 24 July 2024, a total of 5,759 confirmed exoplanets are listed in the NASA Exoplanet Archive. How many exoplanet announcements have you heard that sound like life would have a hard time? We say "confirmed exoplanets" but it is believed that every star has at least one planet. Finding planets is hard anyway, and our methods of finding them can't find them all. There are something like 60,000 stars visible with a telescope within 100 light-years of our solar system. At least 512 of these are G-type yellow dwarfs (sunlike stars). I haven't been able to find how many of these are believed to harbor habitable rocky planets.

There are hundreds of them in the habitable zone but we don’t have a way of knowing how many are rocky. The larger ones are almost certainly not.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Oh, yes, there are a lot of factors. There are others besides the ones you list, but that's a good summary. From a purely secular point of view it might seem that the chances are low, but if God is the maker of worlds, then He knows perfectly well how to engineer as many habitable worlds as He likes.

How many does he like? If there were one planet supporting life per five galaxies God could still talk about them being innumerable.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

One thing to consider is that most star systems with exoplanets seem to have Jupiter-sized and larger gas giants. So at least that factor is likely to exist for every system with habitable rocky planets in their habitability zone.

Not really. Jupiter is in a rare position to both deflect potential hits while also not destabilizing the orbits of other planets. Some rough models of close exoplanets suggest that planets in the habitable zone there are likely to be yanked around a bit by the gas giants which would be bad for life there.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

You seem to be a "glass is half-empty" kind of guy. At least in this respect.

Often in general but I hope my emotions have little to do with what I am saying. Facts don’t care about whether I am an optimist or a pessimist.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Do we understand biogenesis? No. And from a strictly secular point of view it doesn't seem that we're going to figure it out anytime soon. But again from a secular point of view, it has happened at least once. That means it can happen again. It would seem to me, at least, that if conditions on an exoplanet were the same as on earth, the likelihood of biogenesis is high. And how many exoplanets are there expected to be in a galaxy the size and type of ours? NASA says that there are 100 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and that there are at least the same number of planets.

You are speculating from a sample size of one. That is not good data. Also it is a biased sample because it isn’t random. If life hadn’t developed on Earth there would be no one to put it into a sample set.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

An article on NASA's website, entitled "About Half of Sun-Like Stars Could Host Rocky, Potentially Habitable Planets," [HERE] has this to say:

"According to new research using data from NASA’s retired planet-hunting mission, the Kepler space telescope, about half the stars similar in temperature to our Sun could have a rocky planet capable of supporting liquid water on its surface. Our galaxy holds at least an estimated 300 million of these potentially habitable worlds, based on even the most conservative interpretation of the results in a study released today and to be published in The Astronomical Journal."

“Could” and “potentially” and “capable of supporting liquid water” do a lot of heavy lifting here. Again, we don’t know how likely any of those are. Planetary systems like ours could be very normal or they could be one in a trillion.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Let's assume the conservative figure of 300 million habitable rocky planets in our galaxy (there are other estimates going as high as a billion). How much would you like to bet that there isn't at least one other world like ours, with life? I'd say it is certain that there is no chance we're the only one. And if life could develop on this one, it must have developed at least one other time -- and probably hundreds of times in the past and hundreds of time more in the future in our galaxy alone. This because there are stars not yet born that will eventually host the conditions necessary for life to spring up. This is just our galaxy. 

Again you are assuming that because we have evidence that suggests there might be exoplanets that could be like the Earth that there must be a lot more of them out there and that the likelihood of life appearing is reasonably high.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

David Kornreich, an assistant professor at Ithaca College in New York State, estimated that in the observable universe there are at least 1 septillion stars. [HERE] That's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. It is believed that every star has at least one planet, with most having many. Applying the same ratio of total stars to stars with habitable planets in our galaxy to all these others, this yields at least 1 quintillion habitable rocky planets in the observable universe. Even if an actually habitable planet is as rare as you seem to think, that still yields an astonishingly large number of potentially inhabited worlds.

I don’t “seem to think”. I am saying WE DO NOT KNOW! I try not to have an emotional investment in scientific questions. I want to believe we are in the Star Wars galaxy and that I will find a lightsaber from outer space on my doorstep tomorrow morning. I would love to find out we are not alone in this galaxy. I also know that there is nothing convincing to back either of those up.

Also the current belief is that there is an average of one planet per star and not that there are no stars without planets. It is also much harder to prove a negative in this sense. We can pretty definitively say there is a planet when we find an exoplanet. It is much harder using current techniques to say a star has no planets. Current theories of star formation posit that a planet or planets are likely to be around most stars.

And we don’t know what the odds of life appearing are. It could easily be one in a quintillion. Or one in a septillion. Again, we don’t know.

We can speculate all we want for fun but we should take our ignorance seriously and not pretend that the vastness of the Universe tells us anything about how inhabited it is. It could be that we will find that life is super likely to develop and that there are millions of planets really close by with life all over them. We may find that our form of life is rare but that life flourishes in a bunch of different ways we never even thought of in conditions we would consider life unlikely. We might find that our galaxy is a desert when it comes to life. It could also be anywhere in between these or something else entirely.

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

That's the purely secular science on it. When it comes to theological science, biogenesis is not a matter of random chance, as it might be in the secular science. If God creates a world for habitation, He makes it habitable and then he generates the biome. No need to hope for a chance things will come together.

As you may have read in my earlier post, the theological science says that God is busy engineering habitable planets in numbers innumerable to man, and then placing man on them. We read in Moses 1:34 "And the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many." Many Adams and many Eves. You may not have read the verses I referred to. I am afraid I am extremely wordy, and constantly risk my words suffering from the TL;DR effect. So, if you didn't already, have a look at Moses 1:33-39. 

It doesn't necessarily stop there. In verse 37 God tells Moses "The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine." The heavens are many? What does He mean by heavens? Does he perhaps mean universes? If so, it means that our Father Elohim has many more universes than the one we now inhabit. A lot more. And if so, He is making many men and women in his image in all of them.

Don't allow yourself to limit God to this tired old planet alone. He's a very busy God and has works and wonders going on everywhere, and everywhen.

If you accept these scriptures as absolute truth that doesn’t mean there is life anywhere else in our galaxy. The Universe is massive enough to allow worlds without number with our little unremarkable galaxy having only one such planet. If you posit multiple universes you can even go with ours being the only inhabitable planet in this universe and God could still rule over worlds without number.

The only argument against it is that God wouldn’t waste that much space or something along those lines but that is one of those presumptions about God we should be very hesitant to make. God does a lot of incomprehensible things that seem nonsensical.

[Calm]

6 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Because if a thing is possible, and happens, it must continue to be possible and happen again, if the same conditions in which it happened exist again.

And what law is this?  Where has it been demonstrated?
 

I exist. Since that has happened once, I must exist again on another planet in exactly the same form, same life, same ideas in my head, etc. 

You may argue that is a much more complex set of circumstances, but since we don’t actually know how life started, isn’t it possible, even if unlikely that the circumstances to create life were just as complicated?

I don’t get that reasoning. 
 

I am not saying it isn’t probable and maybe even highly probable assuming the required circumstances aren’t totally outlandish, I just don’t see how you can say it as an absolute certainty as if it were a law of science when it seems more a law of faith. 

Edited September 26, 2024 by Calm

[Stargazer]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

You’re not me. Count your many blessings.

Oh, I do! 😁

But I'm sure that if I were you I'd find that fascinating!

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Opinions are largely worthless when seeking facts.

 

Oh, I don't know. Opinions and speculations on observations often lead to new research, investigation, and experimentation that result in new facts. And even when an opinion is proven wrong, the treasure of facts is increased.

As for the rest of your post,  I was delighted to read it! You may be completely correct, or utterly wrong, but you express it well. I appreciate that! The value of disagreement is often misappreciated.

My opinion (valid or not) remains optimistic as to the number of genuinely habitable worlds in this galaxy being large. But I agree with you that it doesn't need to be, in order to accomplish God's purposes. I don't expect to know these things for a fact until I'm resurrected, but, yes, it's fun to speculate!

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

And what law is this?  Where has it been demonstrated?

It's a law of nature, actually. THE law of nature.

I was a chemistry major at one time. I learned that if one combines oxygen and hydrogen in a vessel, and then triggered a spark, water would always result. 

What I am not saying is what you say here:

2 hours ago, Calm said:

I exist. Since that has happened once, I must exist again on another planet in exactly the same form, same life, same ideas in my head, etc. 

Can that happen? No. I'm talking about completely deterministic phenomena.

Another example of what I am not talking about I found on Reddit, and since it's funny I repost it here:

"I often encounter this when people talk about the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. They’ll say “there’s a universe where we’re having this exact conversation but in the middle of it, we both start quacking like ducks and jump out the window.” But in a deterministic universe, is it a guarantee that the conditions will exist for that to happen? Maybe that event isn’t something that “can happen” given the structure of the brains and my psychology of those people. I don’t think one could assign a likelihood to it. But if it’s one in a 100 Trillion, do we really think we’d find it happening if we could flip through that many universes where those people exist? My intuition is no, but maybe there’s some underlying principle I don’t understand."

This made me laugh, especially the quacking part. 🤣

2 hours ago, Calm said:

You may argue that is a much more complex set of circumstances, but since we don’t actually know how life started, isn’t it possible, even if unlikely that the circumstances to create life were just as complicated?

I don’t get that reasoning. 
 

I am not saying it isn’t probable and maybe even highly probable assuming the required circumstances aren’t totally outlandish, I just don’t see how you can say it as an absolute certainty as if it were a law of science when it seems more a law of faith. 

Every day conditions arise on this planet that result in repeatable events. If those exact conditions arise in a given instance, then the events will re-occur. That's practically axiomatic.

Regardless of how complicated biogenesis actually is, and as you know we don't yet know how complicated it is, if the conditions it requires occurred once, then in my humble opinion is this: in a universe of 1 septillion stars, over billions of years there will be a planet on which those conditions will occur again. And when it does, life will result. As surely as H and O produces H2O in the presence of a spark.

Yes, you're probably right that there's no recognised law to that effect. But the determinism of physics assures me that what I am asserting is true.

Now, if biogenesis is actually impossible absent divine intervention, and we can prove this, then we simultaneously prove that a Creator God exists. Wouldn't that be fun!

[Bernard Gui]

On 9/25/2024 at 3:01 PM, The Nehor said:

I know. I don’t think we know enough yet to be able to come up with probabilities. I hope we will soon.

Of course. The article caught my attention because these scientists are speaking with a degree of optimism I have not heard before. So, as instrumentation and understanding improve, I think that time is approaching. Will there ever be certainty? Other things would have to come into play to achieve that. 

I love this connection with Ad Astra…

Quote

Here’s the most basic way to describe it: The Starshade would be sent into space with a space telescope about the size of Hubble. Once beyond the moon, the Starshade would separate itself from the telescope and would then speed ahead for a few weeks, going between 50,000 and 95,000 kilometers away. Its task would be to block the light of a given star so the telescope could see the planets close to it. Once lined up, the Starshade would unfurl itself until it was the shape of a vast flower, petals and all. Siegler shows me an interactive animation of this, and it’s far and away the most beautiful spacecraft ever devised by NASA or JPL.

It’s a work of gorgeous art and a ludicrous feat of ambition. For the Starshade to work properly, after it has traveled that 50,000 to 95,000 kilometers, it would have to be lined up within a meter of the telescope’s line of sight.

“We can do that part,” Siegler says. “It’d work.”

Aaron nods silently. He has no doubt.

“I will always resent the movie ‘Ad Astra’ with Brad Pitt,” Siegler says. “The Starshade was supposed to be in the movie and the producers decided later that it was too complicated to explain it. But what they were going with, and I was selling them, is when Brad Pitt is floating in space, considering whether to take his own life, the Starshade comes into position, blocks the sun, he sees the Earth, and realizes everything he’s ever loved about the world, including his family, was on that blue dot. And the Starshade would’ve saved the day.”

He looks from the screen to me. “Good, right? It would’ve been good.”

 

Edited September 28, 2024 by Bernard Gui

[Nofear]

On 9/25/2024 at 4:34 PM, Stargazer said:

When it comes to cosmology, Latter-day Saints should be more knowledgeable than they are -- we have so many scriptures that confirm secular science.

True. It's also true of the public in general. We humans have pretty much no idea how vast and big the universe is. Heck, it is physiologically impossible for our meat brain to process the size of it. The best we can do is write some big numbers and pretend we understand.

While our theology basically demands a plurality of worlds, there isn't anything that demands that during the mortal phase of our planet's probation that we acquire any evidence of such. Indeed, any kind of confirmation of a kind of trans-stellar humanity would be a severe blow to the ability of atheists to disbelieve and as such I tend not to believe any such evidence will be forthcoming anytime soon.



PS: This is a kind of interesting argument from the rate of technological advancement that lends credence to the idea of a superhumanity--a trans-stellar humanity and God. Many of those who buy the argument tend to like the idea of simulated realities (which I do not) but does not require it. https://new-god-argument.com/