Tag: Earth (as fine-tuned for life)

Exploration of new worlds, space and universe, new galaxies. Planets in backlight. Exoplanets. Solar systems. 3d rendering

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News
Date
July 23, 2022

Categorized
Science

Tagged
Earth (as fine-tuned for life), Exoplanets (life on exoplanets), James Webb Space Telescope}

Exoplanets: As the Data Streams Back… the Picture Comes In

_{China is now focusing on the search for a planet like Earth, using the Earth 2.0 Telescope (ET). Astronomer Jian Ge believes his team can find 17} _{News
July 23, 2022

5

Science}

In recent exoplanet news: ● China is now focusing on a search for a planet like Earth: Most likely, such a planet does exist, but in the relatively nascent field of exoplanet research, no one has yet been able to find it. That is not for lack of trying. Kepler spent nine years searching over 150,000 stars, and while it detected almost 3,000 new exoplanets, none met the criteria of being Earth-sized in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. Bad luck might have played a role – the new paper’s authors even calculated that statistically, Kepler probably should have found at least one Earth-sized planet in a habitable zone. Andy Tomaswick, “An Ambitious Plan to Find Earth 2.0” at Read More ›

The Earth from space. This image elements furnished by NASA.

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News
Date
November 14, 2021

Categorized
Environment, Philosophy, Science

Tagged
Earth (as fine-tuned for life), Fine-tuning (Earth for life), Marcelo Gleiser, Principle of Mediocrity}

Astronomer: We Can’t Just Assume Countless Earths Out There

_{He points out that the Principle of Mediocrity is based on faulty logical reasoning} _{News
November 14, 2021

4

Environment, Philosophy, Science}

Dartmouth physicist and astronomer Marcelo Gleiser wrote recently that the Copernican Principle has been misused to imply that Earth is somehow insignificant. That, he says, is a philosophical attitude, unrelated to the science. We don’t know where Earth stands in relation to other planets because we do not yet have telescopes capable of getting much detail about planets outside our solar system. Gleiser, author of The Island of Knowledge (2014), has also tackled the Mediocrity Principle (because Earth is nothing special, there must be countless intelligent civilizations out there). According to Britannica, “Widely believed by astronomers since the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, this principle states that the properties and evolution of the solar system are not unusual in any important Read More ›

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News
Date
October 30, 2021

Categorized
Science, Technocracy

Tagged
Earth (as fine-tuned for life), Mars, Mars (water), Sabine Hossenfelder, Terraforming}

Theoretical Physicist: Colonizing Mars Is a Ridiculous Idea

_{Making Mars habitable (terraforming) has been kicking around engineering circles for decades. What are the chances, given Moore’s Law-level increases in technology?} _{News
October 30, 2021

5

Science, Technocracy}

And so what does a theoretical physicist know about it, you ask? Well, when it’s Sabine Hossenfelder, she is alwaysworth listening to: The biggest problem is not that Mars is “minus 60 degrees Celsius or minus 80 Fahrenheit,” she explains, but that it has no magnetic field so the atmosphere was blown away by the solar winds. So to form Mars into a second Earth, we would first need to give it a magnetic field. How easy is that?: In a paper that was just published in April in the International Journal of Astrobiology, two physicists explain that all you have to do put a superconducting wire around Mars, simple enough, isn’t it? The circle would have to have a Read More ›

Venus against the background of the sun. Elements of this image furnished by NASA

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News
Date
August 28, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
Carl Sagan, Earth (as fine-tuned for life), Exoplanets, Fine-tuning (Earth for life), Lisa Kaltenegger, Pale Blue Dot concept}

Carl Sagan Institute: Who Can See Us From Outer Space?

_{Most exoplanets are spotted when they dim a star’s light while crossing it. Earth does the same thing} _{News
August 28, 2021

8

Philosophy of Mind, Science}

We’ve all heard of astronomer Carl Sagan’s pale blue dot (Earth from a billion miles away, 1990). But Jaimie Green reminds us at Slate that Sagan (1934–1996) also published a paper in 1993 that looked at Earth from that distance as if it were an exoplanet. What signals would prompt them to suspect life here? That approach is still followed by astronomer and director Lisa Kaltenegger at Cornell University’s Carl Sagan Institute. One question is, where would an intelligent, technologically advanced civilization need to be to see us? Kaltenegger and her collaborators used new data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission to figure out which stars have, have had, or will in the next 5,000 years have the right Read More ›