Over at Evolution News & Views, David Klinghoffer notes a recent claim making the rounds that at least 8.8 billion Earth-size, just-right planets have been found, enough for every Earthling to have their own, with some summer planets available as well.
Found? “Found” is the new “extrapolated.”
The findings also raise a blaring question, Marcy said: If we aren’t alone, why is “there a deafening silence in our Milky Way galaxy from advanced civilizations?”
Better still, why must some joker always come along and ask a question that spoils the fun?
Is the Milky Way really teeming with billions of Earth-size planets?
Hard to say. The discovery hinges, we are told, on the fact that the astronomers calculated rather than estimated. As Klinghoffer puts it,
Oh. They calculated in the sense of “extrapolating” to “come up” with a figure. In other words, they estimated. The figure of “8.8 billion stars with Earth-size planets in the habitable temperature zone” comes down a bit too when you talk about actual planets that have been observed instead of being merely conjectured and “calculated.” More.
They didn’t say they observed any planets. Only ten Earthlike planets have been found to circle the Sun in a habitable zone.
All the rest is one astronomical extrapolation. And the Copernican Principle (that Earth cannot be special or unusual) confers on it the status of science, beyond question or reproach.
See also: Behold, Countless Earths Sail the Galaxies … That Is, if You Would Only Believe