Goldschmidt Conference
A new study indicates that some exoplanets may have better conditions for life to thrive than Earth itself has. “This is a surprising conclusion”, said lead researcher Dr Stephanie Olson, “it shows us that conditions on some exoplanets with favourable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth.”
The discovery of exoplanets has accelerated the search for life outside our solar system. The huge distances to these exoplanets means that they are effectively impossible to reach with space probes, so scientists are working with remote sensing tool such as telescopes, to understand what conditions prevail on different exoplanets. Making sense of these remote observations requires the development of sophisticated models for planetary climate and evolution to allow scientists to recognize which of these distant planets that might host life.
Presenting a new synthesis of this work in a Keynote Lecture at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Congress in Barcelona, Dr Stephanie Olson (University of Chicago) describes the search to identify the best environments for life on exoplanets:
“NASA’s search for life in the Universe is focused on so-called Habitable Zone planets, which are worlds that have the potential for liquid water oceans. But not all oceans are equally hospitable–and some oceans will be better places to live than others due to their global circulation patterns”.
Olson’s team modelled likely conditions on different types of exoplanets using the ROCKE-3D software*, developed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), to simulate the climates and ocean habitats of different types of exoplanets.
“Our work has been aimed at identifying the exoplanet oceans which have the greatest capacity to host globally abundant and active life. Life in Earth’s oceans depends on upwelling (upward flow) which returns nutrients from the dark depths of the ocean to the sunlit portions of the ocean where photosynthetic life lives. More upwelling means more nutrient resupply, which means more biological activity. These are the conditions we need to look for on exoplanets”.
They modelled a variety of possible exoplanets, and were able to define which exoplanet types stand the best chance of developing and sustaining thriving biospheres.
“We have used an ocean circulation model to identify which planets will have the most efficient upwelling and thus offer particularly hospitable oceans. We found that higher atmospheric density, slower rotation rates, and the presence of continents all yield higher upwelling rates. A further implication is that Earth might not be optimally habitable–and life elsewhere may enjoy a planet that is even more hospitable than our own.
There will always be limitations to our technology, so life is almost certainly more common than “detectable” life. This means that in our search for life in the Universe, we should target the subset of habitable planets that will be most favourable to large, globally active biospheres because those are the planets where life will be easiest to detect–and where non-detections will be most meaningful”.
Dr Olson notes that we don’t yet have telescopes which can identify appropriate exoplanets and test this hypothesis, but says that “Ideally this work this will inform telescope design to ensure that future missions, such as the proposed LUVOIR or HabEx telescope concepts, have the right capabilities; now we know what to look for, so we need to start looking”.
Commenting, Professor Chris Reinhard (Georgia Institute of Technology) said:
“We expect oceans to be important in regulating some of the most compelling remotely detectable signs of life on habitable worlds, but our understanding of oceans beyond our solar system is currently very rudimentary. Dr. Olson’s work represents a significant and exciting step forward in our understanding of exoplanet oceanography”.
Professor Reinhard was not involved in this work, this is an independent comment.
EXOPLANETS
The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, and currently more than 4000 exoplanets have been confirmed so far. The nearest know exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, which is 4.25 light years away. Currently much of the search for life on exoplanets focuses on those in the habitable zone, which is the range of distances from a star where a planet’s temperature allows liquid water oceans, critical for life on Earth.
*See ROCKE-3D website, https://data.giss.nasa.gov/rocke3d/maps/
Conference website: https://goldschmidt.info/2019/index
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Of the Milky Way Galaxy’s (MWG) approximately 300 billion stars, “mass ratios” indicate that 6-billion (2.0%) are long-lived, Main Sequence Red- or Yellow-dwarf F- and G-type suns. Extrapolating 21st Century observations, at least 2.4 billion (40%) of these six billion cool, dim systems incorporate geo-physically active, warm-and-wet Earth-type planets orbiting in “habitable zones” amenable to spontaneously self-emergent life.
Assuming that 480 mm (one-in-five, 20%), habitable planets evolve indigenous organic strains, while one in a thousand (.001) well-situated Earth-type worlds matures at least one Advanced Extraterrestrial Civilization (AETC) –a high-tech culture capable of interstellar communication, perhaps quantum-physical telesponding– then (pace Frank Drake) over a typical galaxy’s coherent span of c. 12½ billion years our Island Universe’s number of star-faring AETCs becomes a minimum .20 x 10-4 x 2.4 x 109 = .48 x 105 = 48,000 per Milky Way-type galaxy to date.
To answer Enrico Fermi’s 1950 question, “Where are they?” we reply: Our galaxy, thereby Minkowski’s visible Universe, is very young, while star-faring super-cultures are widely dispersed in space-and-time (likely no more than 4.8 / 1.25 = four per galaxy every million years). This is fortunate, because all full-fledged AETCs pose existential threats to developing competitors. (Think Earth’s socio-culturally imbalanced technological advances over the negligibly short time-span from AD 1750 to 2000+.) Though isolated AETCs in the Milky Way alone may already have appeared by tens of thousands, even the most ancient star-faring cultures rarely interact.
As for extra-galactic visitants, who knows?
Meantime… in the long run, rather than suffer entropic “heat death” over the next few hundred-billion years virtually all stable galaxies will gestate bloomin’, buzzin’ swarms of cosmic life. What that portends for future aeons, on scales all but incomprehensible, lies beyond human ken.
However, physical life must one day end,as the proton is speculated to have a half life,albeit long
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Particles/proton.html
It has long been considered to be a stable particle, but recent developments of grand unification models have suggested that it might decay with a half-life of about 10/32 power, years. Experiments are underway to see if such decays can be detected. Decay of the proton would violate the conservation of baryon number, and in doing so would be the only known process in nature which does so.
In particle physics, proton decay is a hypothetical form of particle decay in which the proton decays into lighter subatomic particles, such as a neutral pion and a positron.
The proton decay hypothesis was first formulated by Andrei Sakharov in 1967. Despite significant experimental effort, proton decay has never been observed. If it does decay via a positron, the proton’s half-life is constrained to be at least 1.67×10^34 years
https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0550321316301596
Threshold corrections to dimension-six proton decay operators in non-minimal SUSY SU(5) GUTs
Dean…It is one thing to have faith in a creator who just simply created everything perhaps in an instant out of nothing, but what we are discussing is the ‘chemistry’ about how all those basic chemical parts were able to self organize and become life. It is probable that this process in ubiquitous throughout the universe given the proper ingredients and circumstances. If so, it is probable that life, given enough time, evolves into a similar type of life we have with a similar RNA/DNA architecture complete with binocular vision when it becomes more advanced life. The entire universe is filled with pretty much the same basic elements, so it is probable that water exists fairly much everywhere in any of its phases. And probably so life.
While I am not particularly religious, I do think that the religious folk who see the explanation of science as part of God’s work is perfectly valid. No one can disprove an existence of a creator, and so it isn’t necessarily a stretch to think that that life comes about due to the rules of science. If there is a creator behind the science, no one can say for sure, but no one can say there isn’t a creator who created the science.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight:
Life couldn’t have developed complexity over 3,500,000,000 years, but it could have been poofed instantly. How does that work?
Dean,
It is a 100% certainty that life arose on Earth within a billion years of the planet’s formation. Probably in half that time.
There is zero evidence whatsoever that God was involved in that process, but you’re free to inject Him into it at whatever point you want. Which is what I told my students at the traditionally Baptist college where I taught biology and genetics.
It’s just that there is no need for supernatural intervention. But also no valid scientific reason for ruling it out. Even atheists, if honest, must admit that they can’t rule out God. But the God hypothesis is not scientific, since not testable and falsifiable, and explains nothing.
Which is how God wants it.
“Function-specifying, highly complex information comes only from a mind, and intelligence. So a mind, an intelligence, must have been the agent for the creation of biological information in genetic and epigenetic systems.”
False.
“… an irreducibly complex system might arise by gradually co-opting parts that initially were dispensable but eventually become indispensable ….”
William A. Dembski 2004, p. 24.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
‘Michael Behe’s term “irreducible complexity” is, to be frank, plainly silly — and here’s why.
“Irreducible complexity” is a simple concept. According to Behe, a system is irreducibly complex if its function is lost when a part is removed1. Behe believes that irreducibly complex systems cannot evolve by direct, gradual evolutionary mechanisms. However, standard genetic processes easily produce these structures. Nearly a century ago, these exact systems were predicted, described, and explained by the Nobel prize-winning geneticist H. J. Muller using evolutionary theory2. Thus, as explained below, so-called “irreducibly complex” structures are in fact evolvable and reducible. Behe gave irreducible complexity the wrong name.’
Hmmm, tell me how all mass/energy space/time came into existence from nothing at a finite time in the past. (FYI, a quantum vacuum and the law of gravity are not nothing).
You quoted Dembski, key words “might arise”. Or they might not arise. That is opinion not science.
“standard genetic processes easily produce these structures.” Where in reality do you see this happening? More speculation, which is what a lot of evolution is. Scientifically, evolution is not really science as it is not falsifiable. You can look at the fossil record and say “look, universal common descent.” While others may look at the same data and say, “universal common design.”
I read the talk origins essay and I felt it was too simplistic for the real world, and mostly opinion, not science.
Dean,
I’ve repeatedly engaged the information whinings. There is no argument. It is simply a repeatedly observed fact that new genetic info is generated by mutations all the time, as I’ve pointed out time and again.
Biological and medical researchers, genetic engineers, applied scientists using directed evolution and synthetic biology base their entire careers on the fact of gain-of-function neomorphic mutations. They are legion and especially important in cancer research.
Just one of hundreds of recent papers on neomorphic mutations:
Neomorphic mutations create therapeutic challenges in cancer.
Neomorphic mutations create therapeutic challenges in cancer.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27841866
That mutations produce new protein-coding genes and other functional genetic changes is a fact, ie an observation seen over and over again for decades.
Those in the past can be traced through various lineages. Again, you’ve fallen hook, line and sinker for blatant lies.
Michael,
Of course evolution is falsifiable. Its predictions have repeatedly been tested and is always confirmed. Creationism is always shown false.
As Haldane famoulsy quipped, “Pre-Cambrian fossil rabbits” would falsify evolution.
But you can’t falsify a fact, ie a repeated scientific observation.
Since there are no pre-Cambrian organisms that are not even close to the Cambrian ones, would lead me to think Neo-Darwinism has be refuted. Darwin even said that would falsify his hypothesis. The recent announcement of Dickinsonia and the first animal has been shown to be false.
“People who say that intelligence is ruled out as a cause “because Science^TM” are engaging in a sleight of hand.”
It takes 600,000 doctors in the U.S. to deal with the problems of our “intelligent design.” If you are correct, and you obviously aren’t, your God HATES US TERRIBLY.
Dean,
We’ve repeatedly addressed your spewing of creationist lies.
You just aren’t paying attention.
The bogus thought experiment is based upon ludicrous, preposterous, ridiculous, unphysical assumptions, not upon objective reality. GIGO climate models are far closer to reality than the garbage creationists want to put in.
Life started with a tiny genome, which grew over time. This growth is visible in the many genomes which we have now sequenced. Whole genome duplication has been an important mutation in growing genomic size, but so too have been substitutions and even deletions. We can now see precisely which mutations led to novel functions and proteins.
Please realize that you’ve been lied to by paid, blasphemous liars, and educate yourself on real life science.
Thanks.
Funny how we can know more about the planets that are light years away and which are barely detectably by their influence on the light and gravitational effect of their nearby stars.
Oh wait, we are just creating a bunch of models about exoplanets. That’s then same way we learn about the effects of the complex interactions in earth’s atmosphere so they must be accurate.
1. The tale-tell sign of life on Earth is not water, it is the high level of very reactive oxygen in the atmosphere.
Exobiologists need to be looking for signs of things purely random natural processes won’t produce.
2. All the mega-molecules of a living thing have to be produced simultaneously in same place in order for life to
arise. What are the initial conditions (temperature, pressure, chemical mixture, denity, etc) that produce all
the random combinations that will randomly form all the parts of a living thing that can randomly form the
the structures and systems and information of a living thing? What changes randomness into order?
No “intelligence” required. Just chemistry under the right conditions.
Biochemistry is chemistry, not magic. This has been known for over 200 years.
Life results from purely natural organic chemistry.
Dean,
The “ideas” you’ve bought into are lies, out of date in the 19th century, shown false by all the evidence in the world.
‘There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.’
-Mark Twain
“Making sense of these remote observations requires the development of sophisticated models for planetary climate and evolution”
Given we cannot even model our OWN climate, one wonders how much ‘garbage out’ there is in this ‘research.’ And we live on Earth and the ‘evolution’ process here is full of holes gaping so wide it is a stretch to even call it a Theory.
I think this ‘research’ should be called Science Fiction and published as such.
What “holes” do you imagine exist in the fact of evolution, repeatedly observed in the wild and created and recreated in the lab?
I saw article about 40 years ago, they took a muddy puddle which is a soup of chemicals. Hit it with an artificial bolt of lightening, and presto, strands of chemicals formed. These were like the chemical chains that are the basis of life.
Maybe a warm world with lots of storms and lots of primordial soup started life and a billion years or so of mutations, gave us what we have and what went before us.
With laser frequency combs, we are approaching the ability to measure time to 1 part in 10E18. Once that is accomplished, we will be able to establish synthetic aperture optical space telescopes with baselines on the order of 80 Astronomical Units. We would be able to resolve the pupil of a human eye at 10 light-years distance, and the license plate of a car – albeit not the number – at 260 light years distance.
For the first time ever, I am optimistic that we may be able to observe large-scale life on other planets within a 1,000 light-year radius, if any exists.
It probably does.
Dunno how many stars lie within 1000 ly, but assume over a million.
Odds are good that some of their systems include bodies with life, but not sure about large-scale.
Thanks for the info.
“We would be able to resolve the pupil of a human eye at 10 light-years distance, and the license plate of a car – albeit not the number – at 260 light years distance”
Only theoretically if there was absolute vacuum in interstellar space (i.e., no intervening gas or dust that could refract/diffract EM waves), no interstellar magnetic fields to interact with the given EM signals, and there was no gravitation warping of the intervening spacetime between the source of the EM and the SAO telescope receivers, any of which would ruin the EM wave coherence necessary for SAO telescopes to function to the resolving precision you suggest.
There is the purely theoretical universe, and there is the actual universe . . . the two are not close to being the same.
“This study is the blind leading the blind leading the blind.” Hey, I had no idea you were an expert in guvment thinking! 😉
“May have” To really make such a determination we will have to send probes with plenty of sensors including landers and rovers to the most likely candidate planets. How long is that going to take and at what cost? We have yet to send a probe to a body outside of our own solar system let alone planets that are tens of hundreds of light years away. Maybe all the current candidates are more like Venus or at best have alien populations that would be very hostile towards us. If there is life out there that is more intelligent then we are than they will find us long before we can find them.
I’m late to the party, but this reminds me of the learned opinions about canals and diversity of life on Mars from back in the 20th Century. This continued right up into the 1960s.
Statistically I’m sure there are some amazing planets out there in the universe. So far everything looks pretty sterile once we leave our own atmosphere.
In the mean time, help me find the Stargate in Egypt.
How do we know if this particular rock actually came from Mars.
One day we will really have a rock from Mars, but not yet, so what are we
basing this on ?
MJE VK5ELL
Its chemical and physical traits are characteristic on Mars. Thanks to recent martian probes, its age and provenance have been narrowed down.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/328/5976/347
A Younger Age for ALH84001 and Its Geochemical Link to Shergottite Sources in Mars
A new study indicates that some exoplanets may have better conditions for life to thrive than Earth itself has.
Unfortunately the early appearance of life on Earth is consistent with an arbitrarily low a priori probability of ABIOGENESIS. So the usual line of argument “Abiogenesis must be an easy step, since life appeared on Earth fast” does not hold water.
We only know the conditional expected value of life’s appearance, that is, “How fast life had to be generated, provided we ask this very question”. And the answer to that, pretty fast, regardless its a priory probability.
The reason for that is twofold:
1. It is amply proven in lab experiments, that one needs a reducing atmosphere to have a chance of abiogenesis. That is, it is not enough to have a nitrogen – carbon dioxide atmosphere, one also needs methane, ammonia and possibly hydrogen.
2. Earth could have a reducing atmosphere only for a very short time, for all the hydrogen not tied down in water, escaped to space fast.
That means life either was generated fast or not at all. We do know it was generated on Earth, otherwise there would be no one to ask this question. Therefore the fast appearance of life tells us nothing about the a priori probability of abiogenesis.
The a priori probability of abiogenesis can be as low as 10-1000 or such, so we are alone in the visible universe.
Even after the hydrogen and helium had escaped, Hadean Earth’s atmosphere would still have been reducing, thanks to remaining reductants such as methane, ammonia, H2S, SO2, etc, plus water vapor and small percentages of N2 and CO2. Toward the end of the Hadean Eon, volcanic activity increased the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Sunlight might also have made O3 high in the atmosphere.
Unless you go for panspermia, it’s self-evident that life did arise on earth in late Hadean or early Archaean time, almost as soon as the planet cooled enough to be habitable, where “soon” is on the order of 100 miilion years.
One of the interesting things to come out in the early sixties was the Drake equation. The goal of the equation was to support SETI, and they were going to come up with numbers that did that. I think SETI is a total waste of time, effort, money, and resources. However, the numbers in the equation are interesting.
The first number is the rate of star formation in the galaxy. Their initial estimate was about 1 per year. (I thought that number was the number of Sun-like stars in the galaxy.) Anyway, this is the only number in the equation where you could base it on actual evidence. Most agreed 1 per year was conservative. Today it’s more like 3 per year.
The second number was the fraction of stars with planets. Now this number in the sixties was completely unknown. It could be zero, it could one, or it could be anywhere in between. There was no way to make an educated guess, because we had no evidence of planets existing around other stars–not a single one.
The three basic methods that could be used to detect planets orbiting other stars required incredibly precise instruments which exceeded our abilities in the sixties. It amazing how the science has advanced, so in the last thirty years we are able to detect planets around other stars. It appears the fraction of stars with planets is one–at least for population I stars like our Sun.
The third number is the fraction of planets that might support life. And this number is still a problem today. The easiest planets to find are large planets that are orbiting close to their star, and that’s what we currently have==lots of so-called hot Jupiters.
Using our Solar System as a prototype, you would expect smaller, rocky planets to form close to the star, with larger gas and ice giants forming outside the freeze line. So what are large gas giants doing close to their star? If they moved in from where they originally formed, then they would probably disrupt those small rocky planets–those planets than could harbor life.
Another problem is we can’t get computer simulations to form planets. We know that planets do form, and rather quickly. Once you get to a size where gravity can take over, then planet formation is easy. It’s getting from dust-sized to gravity-sized that’s the main problem.
Plus, computer simulations of planetary systems from first principles also fail. Either the planets slowly spiral in towards their star, or they slowly spiral out until they escape. This happens on the order of a million years. In order to stabilize these simulations for billions of years, they have to add a damping factor. Where in the physics of orbital mechanics do you find a damping factor? What’s the correct size of this factor?
It appears that on the order of millions of years, planetary orbits are chaotic. This might explain the faint-young-Sun paradox. The Earth is slowly spiraling outward.
The rest of the numbers in the Drake equation are total hocus-pocus. Finding exoplanets, however, is great science!
Jim