From ScienceDaily: One team’s estimate:
Based on their simulations, the researchers estimate that planets very close to Earth in size, from three-quarters to one-and-a-half times the size of earth, with orbital periods ranging from 237 to 500 days, occur around approximately one in four stars. Importantly, their model quantifies the uncertainty in that estimate. They recommend that future planet-finding missions plan for a true rate that ranges from as low about one planet for every 33 stars to as high as nearly one planet for every two stars.
“Knowing how often we should expect to find planets of a given size and orbital period is extremely helpful for optimize surveys for exoplanets and the design of upcoming space missions to maximize their chance of success,” said Ford. “Penn State is a leader in brining state-of-the-art statistical and computational methods to the analysis of astronomical observations to address these sorts of questions. Our Institute for CyberScience (ICS) and Center for Astrostatistics (CASt) provide infrastructure and support that makes these types of projects possible.”
The Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State includes faculty and students who are involved in the full spectrum of extrasolar planet research. A Penn State team built the Habitable Zone Planet Finder, an instrument to search for low-mass planets around cool stars, which recently began science operations at the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, of which Penn State is a founding partner. A second Penn State-built spectrograph is in being tested before it begins a complementary survey to discover and measure the masses of low-mass planets around sun-like stars. This study makes predictions for what such planet surveys will find and will help provide context for interpreting their results.Paper. paywall – Danley C. Hsu, Eric B. Ford, Darin Ragozzine, Keir Ashby. Occurrence Rates of Planets Orbiting FGK Stars: Combining Kepler DR25, Gaia DR2, and Bayesian Inference. The Astronomical Journal, 2019; 158 (3): 109 DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ab31ab More.
Is this a high-tech Drake Equation or is it a good bet?
See also: Researchers: Toxic Gases Would Slow Emergence Of Life On Exoplanets
In order to get a planet that is able to support life, there are many more factors that have to be considered than just the size and orbital periods of a planet.
There is a well researched statistical analysis of the many independent ‘life-enabling characteristics’ that gives strong mathematical indication that the earth is extremely unique in its ability to support complex life in this universe. The statistical analysis shows, from a naturalistic perspective, that a life permitting planet is extremely unlikely to ‘accidentally emerge’ in the universe. The statistical analysis, (which is actually a extreme refinement of Drake’s probability equation), is dealt with by astro-physicist Dr. Hugh Ross (1945-present) in the following paper:
A few of the items in Dr. Ross’s “life-enabling characteristics” list are; Planet location in a proper galaxy’s ‘habitable zone’; Parent star size; Surface gravity of planet; Rotation period of planet; Correct chemical composition of planet; Correct size for moon; Thickness of planets’ crust; Presence of magnetic field; Correct and stable axis tilt; Oxygen to nitrogen ratio in atmosphere; Proper water content of planet; Atmospheric electric discharge rate; Proper seismic activity of planet; Many complex cycles necessary for a stable temperature history of planet; Translucent atmosphere; Various complex, and inter-related, cycles for various elements etc.. etc.. I could go a lot further in details for there are hundreds of known parameters which have to be met for complex life to be possible on Earth, or on a planet like Earth. Individually, these limits are not that impressive but when we realize ALL these limits have to be met at the same time on the same planet and not one of the limits can be out of its life permitting range for any extended period of time, then the probability for a world which can host advanced life in this universe becomes very extraordinary.
,,, And that is just the probability of getting a life supporting planet in the universe,,, that does not even take into account the probability against ‘simple’ life appearing on that life supporting planet or against advanced life forms accidentally evolving from that ‘simple’ life on that life supporting planet,,
There is also found to be a “Privileged Planet’ principle, i.e. a correlation between habitability and observability, which, simply put, is stated as such; “The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole.”
The ‘Privileged Planet’ principle, which holds that any life supporting planet in the universe will also be ‘privileged’ for observation of the universe, has now been made into a excellent video.
Moreover, Robin Collins, building off the habitability/observability prediction of Gonzalez, predicted and confirmed that the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) is such “as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers.”
On top of that, when researchers ‘smeared’ and/or ‘averaged out’ the tiny temperature variations in the CMB, they were able to detect the anomalies in the CMB which ‘strangely’ line up with the earth and solar system.
At the 13:55 minute mark of this following video, Max Tegmark, an atheist who specializes in this area of study, finally admits, post Planck 2013, that the CMB anomalies do indeed line up with the earth and solar system
Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” that explains these ‘anomalies’ in the CMB that line up with the earth and solar system in an easy to understand manner.
In other words, the “tiny temperature variations” in the CMB, reveal teleology, (i.e. a goal directed purpose, a plan, a reason), that specifically included the earth from the start. ,,, The earth, from what our best science can now tell us, is not some random cosmic fluke as atheists had presupposed.
On top of that, in the following video physicist Neil Turok states,
Whereas, the following more recent graph by William Dembski states that 8.8 x 10^26 M is the observable universe’s diameter. Whereas 1.6 x 10^-35 is the Planck length which is the smallest length possible.
Thus with Dembski’s new graph, we find that the geometric mean is at 10^-4, which just so happens to be the smallest scale visible to the human eye, as well as being the size of a human egg.
Needless to say, these findings directly contradict the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of mediocrity,
Besides human vision and human eggs being at the geometric mean of the universe overturning the Copernican principle, both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, (i.e. our two most powerful theories in science), have themselves now overturned the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity as being a valid principle in science.
In regards to the 4 dimensional space-time of Einstein’s General Relativity, we find that each 3-Dimensional point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe,,,
,,, and since any 3-Dimensional point can be considered central in the 4-Dimensional space time of General Relativity, then, as the following articles make clear, it is now left completely open to whomever is making a model of the universe to decide for themselves what is to be considered central in the universe,,,
Even individual people, as the following article makes clear, can be considered to be central in the universe according to the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity,,,
,,, In fact, when Einstein first formulated both Special and General relativity, he gave a hypothetical observer a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements in the universe.
Whereas, on the other hand, in Quantum Mechanics it is the measurement itself that gives each observer a privileged frame of reference in the universe. As the following article states, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”,,,
Likewise, the following violation of Leggett’s inequality stressed the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.
Moreover, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Because of many such experiments as this, Richard Conn Henry, who is Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, states “It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.”
In fact, as Steven Weinberg himself, an atheist, states in the following article, “In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and also because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
Although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
Moreover, contrary to the supposed ‘working assumption’ in science of the Copernican Principle, and according to our most powerful theories in science which have now overturned the Copernican principle, humans, and the earth beneath their feet, are not nearly as insignificant in this universe as many brilliant people, including many Christians, have been falsely led to believe by the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity.
Moreover allowing free will and/or Agent causality into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level has a fairly profound implication for Christianity in particular.
Allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
As Isabel Piczek and Chuck Missler note in the following video and articles, the Shroud of Turin reveals a strange ‘event horizon’:
The following study states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’
Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with, the shroud also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics was dealt with. In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms.
Kevin Moran, an optical engineer working on the mysterious ‘3D’ nature of the Shroud image, states the ‘supernatural’ explanation this way, “This suggests a quantum event where a finite amount of energy transferred abruptly. The fact that there are images front and back suggests the radiating particles were released along the gravity vector.”
Moreover, the following article found that it would take 34 Trillion Watts of what is termed VUV (directional) radiation to form the image on the shroud.
Thus, when we rightly let the agent causality of God back into the picture of modern physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned), and as quantum physics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the free will loophole, (Zeilinger and company), then a empirically backed reconciliation, (via the Shroud of Turin), between Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, (i.e. Quantum Electrodynamics), and General Relativity, i.e. the ‘Theory of Everything’, readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead. i.e. The infinite gap between the eternities of special relativity and general relativity was bridged when Christ was resurrected from the dead.
“Based on their simulations, the researchers estimate that planets very close to Earth in size, from three-quarters to one-and-a-half times the size of earth, with orbital periods ranging from 237 to 500 days, occur around approximately one in four stars. Importantly, their model quantifies the uncertainty in that estimate.”
Are they NUTS?? Entire GALAXIES are written off for being “too young” (lacking heavier elements” or “too old” (having too many heavy elements). That is, only 3rd and 4th generation galaxies have the right mix of elements. And then there is the fact that any star “too close” to its galaxy’s center is continuously bathed in enough radiation to sterilize any planet that might form around that star. And of course a buncha stars are either too big or too small. And then there is the problem of stars that form next to the stars that are gonna go nova. Etc., etc.
So I’d make the wild guess that stars are that can support Life are 1 in 1,000, probably much less.
And then there is the problem, as demonstrated by Venus and Mars, that the planet requires a WHOLE LOTTA other restrictions (um, a crust thin enough to allow tectonic plates [the crust on Venus is too thick]). And it MUST have a center with LOTS of iron so as to generate Van Allen Belts.
So, chance of right kind of star: 1/10 (or less)
Chance of right kind of iron core: 1/10 (or less)
Chance of proper axis tilt to cause slowly changing seasons: 1/10 (or less)
Etc., etc.
Basically, Earth is the ONLY planet Earthlings will EVER find that is able to support complex life (lizards, frogs, fish, etc.). We need to learn to live with that.