
artist’s concept of
Astrophysicists who modelled the magnetic fields of exoplanets found that:
They contend that techniques for finding exoplanets the size of Earth are more likely to find slowly rotating planets locked to their host star in the same way the Moon is locked to Earth, with the same side always facing their host star.
The lead author of the study, Ph.D. scholar Sarah McIntyre, said strong magnetic fields may be necessary to keep wet rocky exoplanets habitable…
“Venus and Mars have negligible magnetic fields and do not support life, while Earth’s magnetic field is relatively strong and does,” she said.
“We find most detected exoplanets have very weak magnetic fields, so this is an important factor when searching for potentially habitable planets.” Royal Astronomical Society, “Strong planetary magnetic fields like Earth’s may protect oceans from stellar storms” at Phys.org
Paper. (open access)
This means that the search for extraterrestrial life should focus on planets with strong magnetic fields.
Meanwhile, why is it that a thousand coincidences pointing in the same direction never seem to add up to a pattern, just something to explain away?
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See also: Hugh Ross: The fine-tuning that enabled our life-friendly moon creates discomfort Was it yesterday that we noted particle physicist Sabine Hossenfelder’s view that fine-tuning is “a waste of time”? Not so fast. If the evidence points to fine-tuning and the only alternative is the crackpot cosmology she deplores, it’s not so much a waste of time as a philosophically unacceptable conclusion. Put another way, it comes down to fine-tuning, nonsense, or nothing.
and
What becomes of science when the evidence does not matter? (fine-tuning)