Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigS
Ahhh … good ol' Julius-the-optimist at it again ??  
During my break, I had someone attempting to argue that if all the exo-planets out there had zero water, then you could say that the probability of exo-life was zero. (I agreed).
and then .. that if this were the case, (by the same logical premise), then if all the exo-planets out there DID have liquid water, then the chance of life as we know it, are increased. Everytime we find a planet with liquid water, then the chances of life as we know it, are increased.
I disagreed, as the 'life as we don't know it' component, may significantly swamp the proportion of 'life as we do know it' component, thereby swinging the chances back to even. (I decided that I started to sound too much like 'Sir Julius-the-renormalised' … so I went for another beer …
Cheers |
It's got nothing to do with optimism and everything to do with what we think to be the case. The laws of physics appear to be the same no matter where we look. Since we rely on those laws for our existence, all things being equal, the probability of life being elsewhere is just the same as it was (and is) for this planet.
Only one problem with the contention of all the exoplanets not having any water....they've detected water everywhere in the Universe. Given its ubiquitous nature and presence in all star forming regions, some of the planets which form in those regions
must have water as a consequence of where they form. Even if they didn't, there's more than one substance around which can act as a medium and solvent for organic (or even non organic) life.
As far as life as we know it, or don't know it, is concerned, we have no way of knowing anything about the proportions of either. Until we go out there and look for ourselves. The likelihood of either is an unknown quantity.