Lonely Planets by David Grinspoon

Author:David Grinspoon
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins

THE GOOD NEWS FOR MODERN MAN

The recent discoveries of extrasolar planets are quite encouraging for our ultimate chances of finding extraterrestrial life. They confirm a mode of thinking that all our theories for life elsewhere depend upon. As seers, natural philosophers, and astronomers have long surmised, for reasons ranging from mystical to mathematical, there are indeed many worlds out there. Score one for arguments by analogy. You do get the impression that we really can figure out some of the details of the rest of the universe even while confined, as we are, to our tiny little cosmic corner. Even when we had no way to find other planets, most of us believed, because it seemed so unlikely that our star alone should have orbiting companions. Like our belief in extraterrestrial life today, this was based more on informed intuition than direct evidence. Can our strong faith in the existence of other living worlds make the same extraordinary passage, from deeply felt belief to confirmed knowledge? Whether or not there are a lot of places like Earth in the details, we’ve already discovered something important for life out there. We know there are a huge number and variety of environments on various kinds of planets that we have barely begun to detect, catalog, or explore. Each of these, in our current ignorance, should be regarded as a potential niche for some kind of life.

Extrasolar planet detections have contributed to a new air of excitement and optimism about alien life, and a new respectability in scientific circles for the serious study of exobiological questions. Following our nonlinear childlike curiosity, we approach the truth of the universe through successive approximations. Every answer leaves us unsatisfied and provokes in us new questions. Planets elsewhere? The answer is yes. Yet they are not what we thought they’d be. Are we allowed to change the question? Can we get one more wish? What we really want to know is if other worlds are as friendly, fecund, and funky as our gurgling, green Earth. In searching, we’ll repeatedly be surprised by avant-garde solar systems that we would never have thought up, and nontraditional orbital arrangements that we didn’t even know were legal.

Life is a capacity the universe has to make small pockets of intense order and beauty. It thrives on certain physical conditions found on Earth. How specific and rare the required conditions are, we don’t know. All of our ideas about life elsewhere are still educated guesses based on an extrapolation from this single example. Yet, any way you look at it, no matter what the planetary census ultimately shows, these exoplanets popping up around numerous stars in our galaxy are comforting on many levels. The question “Are we alone?” is really many questions. In answer to one of them we can now definitively say, “No. Ours is not the only family of planets.” Phew. Didn’t think so, but it’s sure nice to know. It’s reassuring when our widely accepted conjectures become empirically supported truths.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.