[Winstonm]

http://news.bbc.co.u...ure/6589157.stm

Two seperate questions:

For the religious, would finding of life on this planet shake up your religious veiw?
For the non-religious, would finding of no life on this planet shake your scientific views?

[PassedOut]

Winstonm, on Jan 6 2008, 12:28 PM, said:

For the non-religious, would finding of no life on this planet shake your scientific views?

No.

I do expect that life exists elsewhere and will one day be found (long after I'm gone, most likely).

And, even on Earth, some life forms thrive in what seem to be very harsh conditions. So its not even necessary that conditions fall within a narrow earth-like range to produce life naturally.

[gwnn]

It's an interesting possibility but I think some of your choices are phrased weirdly. I'm religious but I wouldn't be shaken by life outside Earth.

[Winstonm]

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So its not even necessary that conditions fall within a narrow earth-like range to produce life naturally.

Certainly this is true, but here on planet Earth there is greater diversity within a moderate climate range. If the temperature makes a distant planet likely to encourage life, it would be curious as to the reason life did not begin.

[Winstonm]

gwnn, on Jan 6 2008, 01:05 PM, said:

It's an interesting possibility but I think some of your choices are phrased weirdly. I'm religious but I wouldn't be shaken by life outside Earth.

Perhaps I phrased the question poorly, as my interest is in how this would impact those who believe in creationism or intelligent design.

Religious is probably a poor choice of words.

[Gerben42]

This discovery is important for one reason only: To sell future research.

I've been in the exoplanet-business for 4 years and it was clear this moment would come. I also personally know Stephan Udry who is mentioned in the link.

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For the non-religious, would finding of no life on this planet shake your scientific views?

No. We didn't find fossils on Mars (yet) either. Even if the conditions for life exist, it is not a certainty. But I do think the likelihood of life on such a planet is very high.

Now if it gets past single-cell type life is a different question...

I don't see how this would be a problem religiously. Other "problems" have been discussed away successfully before. So far any reason to think we're special has been refuted.

[helene_t]

Hey Winston, aren't you insulting the religious people by implying that they are not concerned with the scientific implications of the (non)finding of life Gliese581? Besides, I don't see how it could contradict religious dogmae if some extra-terrestrial bacteria were found. Neither the Tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster nor Freud's Entwurf speak about a sterile Gliese581, AFAIK.

FWIW, I would expect Gliese581 to have bacteria but nothing more complex than that. Would be interesting if there is advanced life. What I would find shocking would be if life on Gliese581 was either
- almost identical to life here, to the point that a Gliese581ian could pass for an Earthling
- completely different, for example based on silicon instead of carbon.

[cherdano]

Winstonm, on Jan 6 2008, 12:14 PM, said:

gwnn, on Jan 6 2008, 01:05 PM, said:

It's an interesting possibility but I think some of your choices are phrased weirdly. I'm religious but I wouldn't be shaken by life outside Earth.

Perhaps I phrased the question poorly, as my interest is in how this would impact those who believe in creationism or intelligent design.

Religious is probably a poor choice of words.

Winston, this is worse than poor wording. It makes about much sense as saying Americans when you really mean Mormons.

[Gerben42]

I think life would probably be carbon-based also, but with a different coding scheme. DNA is probably just one way to build a biological language.

[helene_t]

Gerben42, on Jan 6 2008, 08:31 PM, said:

I think life would probably be carbon-based also, but with a different coding scheme. DNA is probably just one way to build a biological language.

A couple of years ago, an article in Scientific American reported a computer simulation experiment that reconstructed the evolution of the codon/amino-acid table, leading to the same table as is used by almost all organisms. But maybe it is conceivable the set of amino acids could be different, I think the simulation assumed the same set.

As for a different genomic raw material, I dunno. I'm not aware of any other possibility. If life on another planet is based on RNA and proteins only, it would be very primitive, I think.

[Winstonm]

helene_t, on Jan 6 2008, 01:28 PM, said:

Hey Winston, aren't you insulting the religious people by implying that they are not concerned with the scientific implications of the (non]finding of life Gliese581?

FWIW, I would expect Gliese581 to have bacteria but nothing more complex than that. Would be interesting if there is advanced life. What I would find shocking would be if life on Gliese581 was either
- almost identical to life here, to the point that a Gliese581ian could pass for an Earthling
- completely different, for example based on silicon instead of carbon.

I guess I was simply lazy in constructing my question - hey, it's Sunday here and I'm off work.

I really only wonder how the finding of any type lifeform on another planet would affect those whose beliefs extend to creationism as the sole method of life creation.

I, too, would be hugely surprised to find any but basic lifeforms such as bacteria.

[helene_t]

What I find strange is that the article mentions the possibility of finding chlorophyll in its spectrum. If it orbits it star in 13 days and nevertheless has a mean temperature between 0 and 40 C, the sunlight must be too redish for chlorophyll-based photosyntesis. Maybe my intuition is wrong or maybe some other kind of photosynthesis can work with more redish light, but otherwise we're stuck with anaerobic life.

[Gerben42]

You're right, it's a red dwarf star (surface temperature near 3500 K). To make things worse for our wannabe-Gliese581ians:

* It is so close to its star it is probably tidally locked, i.e. one side is always the sunny side. This side is quite hot, whereas the other side is freezing. Also the star has so large stellar spots that they will reduce up to 33% of the light (gonna be a COLD day!).

Maybe life exists in the eternal sunset and sunrise...

[helene_t]

Yes of course, I didn't even think of tidal locking.

I voted "yes" but now I'm more skeptical.

Actually, those problems of too redish light and tidal locking will apply to all the planets we can hope to find with the current methods. Is there hope for other methods that would allow us to find planets in more distant orbits?

[Fluffy]

What I think is that if there are life form outside, they will find us before we do, at least from a scientific way of thinking.

[matmat]

i haven't read the paper/report (yet), but given the proximity of the star to the planet I'd wonder about cosmic rays and such, and how much of an effect those would have on any life that may be present.

[helene_t]

Fluffy, on Jan 7 2008, 02:30 PM, said:

What I think is that if there are life form outside, they will find us before we do

Hmm .... I think the vast majority of planets with life will have life too primitive for space exploration. OTOH if there are, say, 100 planets in our galaxy with life capable of, at some point, developing space exploration, it is conceivable that at one point one of them will find all the other within a relatively short time frame (1000 years is a lot in the evolution of space exploration but the gaps between the invention of the telescope on various planets would almost certainly be in the millions of years). And then the a priori probability that we will be the first is 1/100, or maybe somewhat less because we have no evidence that we have already been spotted.

So maybe we have already been spotted by ET's, but before we make contact with them we will discover a few planets inhabited by anaerobic life only.

[Gerben42]

Quote

i haven't read the paper/report (yet), but given the proximity of the star to the planet I'd wonder about cosmic rays and such, and how much of an effect those would have on any life that may be present.

Not a big problem around red stars. The hotter the star, the higher the radiation pressure and the stronger the solar wind.

Quote

Actually, those problems of too redish light and tidal locking will apply to all the planets we can hope to find with the current methods. Is there hope for other methods that would allow us to find planets in more distant orbits?

Darwin mission: http://sci.esa.int/s....cfm?fareaid=28

[Winstonm]

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Hmm .... I think the vast majority of planets with life will have life too primitive for space exploration.

And even if an intelligent alien bateria built a microspopic craft and visited earth, how would we know it?

[helene_t]

Winstonm, on Jan 7 2008, 03:17 PM, said:

And even if an intelligent alien bateria built a microspopic craft and visited earth, how would we know it? 

I think we would notice if we got visitors from outer space. Maybe if the visited us 100,000,000 years ago and went extinct shortly afterwards, they would have left no traces. But much more likely (yet still not really likely), we have been spotted by an ET telescope some one billion years ago, and they went extinct 999.999.000 years ago.

My guess is, though, that there is no other planet in the galaxy with life even remotely close to our level, and even if there is, we will never find it. And even if we do find it, we will not be able to communicate with them, nor to travel to their planet. Of course this is pure speculation.