What is "Earth-like"?

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What is "Earth-like"?

Post by rainbow » Mon Aug 29, 2016 2:04 pm

https://www.yahoo.com/news/stop-describ ... 09020.html
Stop describing a planet as 'Earth-like' unless it really is

Miriam Kramer•August 28, 2016

The discovery of a new, possibly habitable alien planet is always met by media coverage marked by sweeping pronouncements about our place in the universe, and even *gasp* alien life.

Wednesday's announcement of a newfound, possibly Earth-sized planet in a potentially habitable orbit around a star not far from our sun threw that kind of breathless coverage into overdrive.
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Aug 29, 2016 3:05 pm

Hmm. "A star not far from our sun" eh?

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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by cronus » Mon Aug 29, 2016 4:23 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:Hmm. "A star not far from our sun" eh?

Image

It's a computer simulation. The universe, all of it, is scarcely larger than your house. And Earth does not exist outside of the small amount of disk space it is written onto. :coffee:
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by Forty Two » Mon Aug 29, 2016 4:44 pm

rainbow wrote:https://www.yahoo.com/news/stop-describ ... 09020.html
Stop describing a planet as 'Earth-like' unless it really is

Miriam Kramer•August 28, 2016

The discovery of a new, possibly habitable alien planet is always met by media coverage marked by sweeping pronouncements about our place in the universe, and even *gasp* alien life.

Wednesday's announcement of a newfound, possibly Earth-sized planet in a potentially habitable orbit around a star not far from our sun threw that kind of breathless coverage into overdrive.
I really hate articles that are phrased like this "Stop [doing whatever...]." They are invariably dopey articles, as this one is, written by someone who has little science education, other than a degree in "science, health and environmental reporting." LOL.

She is scolding scientists and writers for using the term "Earth-like" because, to her, it conjures up something so close to Earth that it's teaming with life. The reality is, nobody involved in science and cosmology thinks that the term "Earthlike" means that we've discovered an inhabitable planet. That would not just be the "discovery of the century" as she laments this proxima b discovery is being hailed as -- rather, it would be just about the most monumental discovery in the history of human civilization. Ever. It would be so Earth-shattering a discovery, that it would not be merely described as a discovery of the century.

This discovery - confirmation that a world is approximately Earth-size, probably rocky, and located in the goldilocks zone where liquid water can remain liquid some of the time -- in a world around the closest star to us, is itself groundbreaking in a "discovery of the century" kind of way. Only those with barely any real knowledge of the subject would minimize the discovery, by suggesting we shouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops just because we aren't sure there's life on it, and can't be positive 100% about some of its qualities.
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by laklak » Mon Aug 29, 2016 5:13 pm

In a few short years we've gone from exoplanets as a theoretical possibility to an earth-like world orbiting our nearest neighbor. If that ain't a massive, major discovery then I don't know what is.
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by Tyrannical » Mon Aug 29, 2016 6:06 pm

The earth is only earth like because single cell organisms spent roughly a billion years making it so.
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by Tyrannical » Mon Aug 29, 2016 6:12 pm

But they'll call anything earth like within a certain distance from a sun (not too hot or cold) that has a gravity that is not too high or low. Then they look for a light spectrum that shows oxygen if possible.
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by Rum » Mon Aug 29, 2016 6:55 pm

I think they are barking up the wrong tree in any case. Just because our version of 'life' is carbon/water based means nothing. Given the sheer number of possibilities out there - more stars than grains of sand on earth, it is anybody's guess what forms so called life might take. Some of it may be extraordinarily different.

And given the variety of species here and the huge numbers and variety that has become extinct, even if life was similar in origin to ours on some planets, evolution, assuming its processes are like ours, could have taken it to wildly different places. Rather than thinking big, the exo-planet seekers are, in my opinion, thinking too small.

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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Aug 29, 2016 9:14 pm

Aye, but if you want to release the energy from chemical bonds you need some sort of solvent and some substrate on which to build the transfer. Water and Carbon seem to be plentiful elements, so their coexistence somewhere in this vast, unfathomable, cavernous, mind-boggling, hugely massive universe at least reduces the possibility of there being fuck all life, by at least a smidge. Given the aforementioned stupendous enormity of space even such a smidge is still a truly massive number.
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by JimC » Mon Aug 29, 2016 9:22 pm

By treating planets of similar size to Earth that could have liquid water as good potential sites for life similar to Earth's biota to evolve one is not ruling out the possibility of life springing from much more exotic ingredients in stranger locales...
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by rainbow » Tue Aug 30, 2016 8:13 am

Rum wrote:I think they are barking up the wrong tree in any case. Just because our version of 'life' is carbon/water based means nothing. Given the sheer number of possibilities out there - more stars than grains of sand on earth, it is anybody's guess what forms so called life might take. Some of it may be extraordinarily different.
Prezactly.

If life is considered inevitable by the laws of thermodynamics, then there is no reason to suppose that those laws only apply to carbon/water systems.
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by JimC » Tue Aug 30, 2016 9:13 am

rainbow wrote:
Rum wrote:I think they are barking up the wrong tree in any case. Just because our version of 'life' is carbon/water based means nothing. Given the sheer number of possibilities out there - more stars than grains of sand on earth, it is anybody's guess what forms so called life might take. Some of it may be extraordinarily different.
Prezactly.

If life is considered inevitable by the laws of thermodynamics, then there is no reason to suppose that those laws only apply to carbon/water systems.
No one considers life "inevitable by the laws of thermodynamics". We simply do not know enough to make such a statement. The key feature of life is not a principle of physics, but involves replication with a low but non-zero level of errors, which sets the scene for evolution by natural selection.

Given carbon chemistry with its spectacular range of possible molecular combinations, and the range of complex compounds available that involve reactions in liquid water, it makes sense that we see such environments as likely birthing places for life, without ruling out alternatives.
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by Brian Peacock » Tue Aug 30, 2016 9:53 am

rainbow wrote:
Rum wrote:I think they are barking up the wrong tree in any case. Just because our version of 'life' is carbon/water based means nothing. Given the sheer number of possibilities out there - more stars than grains of sand on earth, it is anybody's guess what forms so called life might take. Some of it may be extraordinarily different.
Prezactly.

If life is considered inevitable by the laws of thermodynamics, then there is no reason to suppose that those laws only apply to carbon/water systems.
But carbon/water life is the only form of life we have a handle on at the moment.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by rainbow » Tue Aug 30, 2016 11:30 am

JimC wrote:
rainbow wrote:
Rum wrote:I think they are barking up the wrong tree in any case. Just because our version of 'life' is carbon/water based means nothing. Given the sheer number of possibilities out there - more stars than grains of sand on earth, it is anybody's guess what forms so called life might take. Some of it may be extraordinarily different.
Prezactly.

If life is considered inevitable by the laws of thermodynamics, then there is no reason to suppose that those laws only apply to carbon/water systems.
No one considers life "inevitable by the laws of thermodynamics".
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Perhaps when you've read it you might want to reconsider your statement?
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Re: What is "Earth-like"?

Post by pErvinalia » Tue Aug 30, 2016 12:00 pm

Dude, have a Snickers.
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