[2011/02/02] Planets a-Plenty, but Are They Lively?
Planets a-Plenty,
but Are They Lively? 02/02/2011 Feb 02, 2011 — The Kepler spacecraft has found
over 1,235 planets so far (Space.com),
54 in their star’s habitable zone, and some Earth-size or smaller. Science
media are having a field day reporting the discoveries, portraying them with
artist imaginations, licking their chops at the possibility of life in outer
space. What does this mean? Space.com is racking up the most headlines:
tabulating
the leading earthlike candidates, posting videos
with expert prognosticators, posting a gallery of the strangest,
keeping the tally
current. So far, the number of habitable planets with life is: 1. (That’s us,
folks.) “The number of Earth-size and Earthlike habitable planets confirmed
to exist with intelligent life. We call this planet Earth.” That’s
assuming we can agree on a definition of intelligent life. Scientists
were surprised to find a six-pack of planets around a star named Kepler 11,
reported Space.com.
The smallest in the system is 2.3 times the size of Earth; others are the size
of Uranus or Neptune. The planets’ orbits do not fit planetary evolution
theories unless the planets migrated: “the close proximity of the inner
planets is an indication that they probably did not form where they are
now,” one scientist commented. No sense looking for life on these planets;
none are habitable by any measure. You can take a tour of the system on Space.com
anyway. Another Space.com
article described the 54 “potentially habitable” planets Kepler has found
(see also the BBC News
article by Jason Palmer). One of the leading contenders for Earthlike Planet,
named Kepler 10-b (see Space.com
gallery), was announced last month: the “first rocky planet ever discovered
outside our solar system” according to David Tyler writing for ARN.
Trouble is, its rocks are hot – 1500°C – because the planet is closer to its
parent star than Mercury to our sun. What are the implications of
Kepler’s unquestionably exciting finds? Before the latest Kepler tally was
announced, one of the leading planet hunters gave his thoughts in an interview
on Space.com
(see also MSNBC
News). Geoff Marcy had participated in finding more planets than anyone
else. The first questions concerned technology and statistics, but then he
admitted a scientific embarrassment: hot Jupiters. No one predicted gas giants
close to the star. All the scientists expected extrasolar planetary systems to
resemble ours, with the rocky planets close in and the gas giants farther out.
It was silly reasoning, based on a sample size of one, he agreed: “It would be
like trying to characterize human psychology by going to one distant Indonesian
island and interviewing one person, and thinking that that gave you the full
range of human psychology.” We also don’t know how long planets last, he said,
or how common Earth-like planets are. The existence of life is the big
question. According to the UK Mail
Online, Dr. Howard Smith (Harvard) has lost hope of finding intelligent
life. Of the first 500 planets found, none are habitable; they are downright
hostile. “The new information we are getting suggests we could effectively
be alone in the universe,” he said. Geoff Marcy is mildly pessimistic, too:
“We might be rare,” he remarked. “Where are the SETI [search for
extraterrestrial intelligence] signals?” he asked. “There is a
non-detection that’s like the elephant in the room.” Forty years of
searching has turned up empty. “So there’s an indication – not definitive –
that maybe the Earth is more precious than we had thought.” He was not
considering intelligent design as an option. He said, after considering how
comparatively young our solar system is in an ancient universe, “maybe
habitable planets that sustain Darwinian evolution for a billion years
–maybe they’re rare. Maybe.” Asked if he has a “gut feel” about
cosmic loneliness, he said,
I do. If I had to bet – and this is now beyond
science – I would say that intelligent, technological critters are rare
in the Milky Way galaxy. The evidence mounts. We Homo
sapiens didn’t arise until some quirk of environment on the
East African savannah – so quirky that the hominid paleontologists still
can’t tell us why the australopithecines somehow evolved
big brains and had dexterity that could play piano concertos, and
things that make no real honest sense in terms of Darwinian
evolution. Why the high chaparral on the East African savannah
would’ve led to a Tchaikovsky piano concerto, never mind the ability
to build rocket ships – there’s no evolutionary driver that the
australopithecines suffered from that leads to rocket ships. And so that –
and the fact that we had to wait four billion years without humans. Four
billion years?
SPACE.com: Yes, it took four billion years to get there.
Marcy: Since the Cambrian explosion, we had hundreds of
millions of years of multi-cellular, advanced life in which, guess what
happened with brain size? Nothing.
He was speaking
of the giant dinosaurs ruling the earth with chicken-size brains. He could not
point to anything making sense in Darwinism, but he dismissed purposeful
direction out of hand:
We humans came across braininess because of
something weird that happened on the East African savannah. And we can’t
imagine whether that’s a common or rare thing.
SPACE.com: People assume evolution is directed, and it’s always
leading toward higher complexity and greater intelligence, but it’s
not.
Marcy: It’s not. Dinosaurs show this in spades.
From there, the interviewer and Marcy pepped themselves
up with dreams of a souped-up SETI project. He implied it would be easy to
separate an intelligently-designed signal from a natural one: “We know what
to look for,” he said. “That would be the rat-a-tat-tat of a radio
signal. We don’t know exactly what the code would be, but we’d be
looking for pulses in the radio, in the infrared maybe, in the X-ray or
UV. We’d have to think broadly. But this is a great quest for
humanity.” David Tyler drew different conclusions from the same evidence
for the uniqueness of our planet. In the ARN
article, he said, “Based on evidence, some argue that the Earth is a Privileged Planet. The basic
approach of that book is being vindicated as research discovers just
how extraordinary the Earth is.”
Are you sometimes undecided whether to laugh or
weep for the SETI cultists? Both responses can make you shed tears. Marcy and
his interviewer both admitted they are clueless, surprised, ignorant, and
resigned to “Stuff Happens” as their scientific explanation for everything.
Swallowing the whole Darwin baggage of billions of years of evolution, he could
only say that “something weird that happened on the East African savannah” – a
hominid got a brain, and presto: a Tchaikovsky piano concerto. Now, while
Dr. Marcy and the Kepler scientists deserve
honors for collecting data with intelligently designed instruments, they’re not
likely to rank very high as philosophers or theologians. If the best philosophy
they can invent is “stuff happens,” they have flunked out. And if they cannot
be convinced they are hopelessly lost via the evidence of the Privileged Planet, the SETI silence,
the origin of life, the
Cambrian explosion, and a Tchaikovsky piano
concerto, is there any hope for today’s secular scientists being rescued
from self-deception? Remember, these are the same people who refuse to
let criticisms of Darwinism be heard in the schools or research labs. Emperor
Charlie is not only naked himself, he is surrounded by naked soldiers arresting
the clothed little boy for indecent exposure. Added to that, when you hear of
communist and Muslim radicals calling for the complete overthrow of Western
civilization, and the brutal murder of Supreme Court justices (video)
and the news media totally ignoring their hate speech while calling out
peace-loving conservative Christians for alleged violent rhetoric, it is hard
not to conclude that most of the world has gone completely crazy. Don’t
be surprised; it has gone crazy many times before. Escape the craziness with
power, love, and a sound mind (II
Timothy 1:7). Then rescue a neighbor.
[2011/02/02] Planets a-Plenty, but Are They Lively?
