No there doesn’t ‘have to’ be life in space – nor a manned trip to Mars

What I’ve called “secular metaphysics” or similar in the past, when on the lips of Carl Sagan, is now on the lips of our latest space shuttle astronauts:

“If we push back boundaries far enough, I’m sure eventually we’ll find something out there,” said Mike Foreman, a mission specialist on the Endeavour.

Unfortunately, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi agrees that “life like us must exist.”

NO. That’s where the whole set of Drake equations behind SETI is like holding pudding in your hands. We simply don’t have enough empirical evidence yet to make anything close to a stab at most the Drake parameters. To quote Wolfgang Pauli, SETI enthusiasts who ramp the Drake numbers up high “aren’t even wrong.”

But Foreman sounds the soul of rationality next to the quasi-mystical Gregory Johnson.

“I personally believe that we are going to find something that we can't explain. There is probably something out there but I’ve never seen it.”

“Believe” would be the right word indeed for this.

Fellow astronaut Dominic Goree trots out a twisted analogy, claiming that Columbus, et al, didn’t know what was awaiting them, either.

Wrong in so many ways. First, Columbus et al were looking for spices, not alien life. Second, especially once Dieu got around the Cape of Good Hope for Portugal in 1487, the Portuguese, at least, knew exactly what was awaiting them. Most Spaniards laughed Columbus out of court for underestimating the size of the world, but Ferdinand and Isabella had to do something.

Oh, and working on a trip to bring Martian soil samples back to Earth? Great idea. Seeing the trip as prep for a manned journey to Mars? Stupid idea.

Science news roundup – more ‘little people,’ Alpha Centauri, moths

More “little people” found in Melanesia

A new set of small-stature human skeletons, similar to the “Flores people,” have been found in Palau. Researchers say they have a variety of cranial and facial features, some similar to Homo sapiens and others to Homo floresiensis, which is sure to stir the debate pot as to just what has been discovered both on Indonesia’s Flores Islands and at Palau. Biggest difference is that “Palau man” doesn’t have the small brain of the Flores folk, which could add credence to the idea that those people suffered from severe iodine deficiency.

Is extra-solar life that close

Some astronomers think it is – as close as Alpha Centauri B. Statistical calculations say planets should have formed around the star. Now, I don’t know how being part of a triple-star system would affect the development of life there, if there is a planet that is habitable. That said, I’ll stick by my extremely conservative estimate on the Drake number for our galaxy.

Moths remember caterpillar life?

Simple Pavlovian avoidant conditioning says yes.

Is Frank Drake right about an intelligent galaxy?

Write your own Drake equations and make your guess on intelligent life in other solar systems!

Those of you familiar with the SETI project will love this. MSNBC lets you fill in your own guesstimates on the parameters of the Drake equations.

I tried it more than once. The first time, I got a Drake number of “1,” meaning I believe we’re all alone in this galaxy. The second time, being much less conservative, my calculations returned an estimate of 7,650 planets, still below Drake’s current guesstimate of 10,000.

While my “1” may be low, I think it’s a lot closer to the truth than 7,650, let alone 10,000; a third calculation gave me a Drake number of 988. I think Drake and some other people like him are somewhat of what I’ll call “secular salvationists,” wanting science to provide a quasi-metaphysical jolt to life on mundane Tellus Mater. In any case, I think they are WAY too optimistic.

The main bottleneck I see is on Drake point 3, how many planets in a solar system are habitable by virtue of having liquid water. I think that number is less than one per average solar system, something like 0.7 or so. I see lesser bottlenecks in the likelihood of life to develop, point 4, and that life to develop to our level of intelligence or more, point 5.