Observations of faraway planets have forced a near-total rewrite of the story of how our solar system came to be.
Start at the center, with the sun. Our middle-aged star may be more placid than most, but it is otherwise unremarkable. Its planets, however, are another story.
![An array of images of protoplanetary disks with bright suns at the centers surrounded by rings, arcs, filaments and spirals.]](https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2022/06/Planet-Formation_2880x1620_Lede.jpg)
First, Mercury: More charred innards than fully fledged planet, it probably lost its outer layers in a traumatic collision long ago. Next come Venus and Earth, twins in some respects, though oddly only one is fertile. Then there’s Mars, another wee world, one that, unlike Mercury, never lost layers; it just stopped growing. Following Mars, we have a wide ring of leftover rocks, and then things shift. Suddenly there is Jupiter, so big it’s practically a half-baked sun, containing the vast majority of the material left over from our star’s creation. Past that are three more enormous worlds — Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — forged of gas and ice. The four gas giants have almost nothing in common with the four rocky planets, despite forming at roughly the same time, from the same stuff, around the same star. The solar system’s eight planets present a puzzle: Why these?
Now look out past the sun, way beyond. Most of the stars harbor planets of their own. Astronomers have spotted thousands of these distant star-and-planet systems. But strangely, they have so far found none that remotely resemble ours. So the puzzle has grown harder: Why these, and why those?
The swelling catalog of extrasolar planets, along with observations of distant, dusty planet nurseries and even new data from our own solar system, no longer matches classic theories about how planets are made. Planetary scientists, forced to abandon decades-old models, now realize there may not be a grand unified theory of world-making — no single story that explains every planet around every star, or even the wildly divergent orbs orbiting our sun. “The laws of physics are the same everywhere, but the process of building planets is sufficiently complicated that the system becomes chaotic,” said Alessandro Morbidelli, a leading figure in planetary formation and migration theories and an astronomer at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France.
Still, the findings are animating new research. Amid the chaos of world-building, patterns have emerged, leading astronomers toward powerful new ideas. Teams of researchers are working out the rules of dust and pebble assembly and how planets move once they coalesce. Fierce debate rages over the timing of each step, and over which factors determine a budding planet’s destiny. At the nexus of these debates are some of the oldest questions humans have asked ourselves: How did we get here? Is there anywhere else like here?
Indeed, we come from a diffuse cloud of gas and dust. Four and a half billion years ago, probably nudged by a passing star or by the shock wave of a supernova, the cloud collapsed under its own gravity to form a new star. It’s how things went down afterward that we don’t really understand.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is designed to detect light from cool, millimeter-size objects, such as dust grains around newborn stars. Starting in 2013, ALMA captured stunning images of neatly sculpted infant star systems, with putative planets embedded in the hazy disks around the new stars.
Astronomers previously imagined these disks as smooth halos that grew more diffuse as they extended outward, away from the star. But ALMA showed disks with deep, dark gaps, like the rings of Saturn; others with arcs and filaments; and some containing spirals, like miniature galaxies. “ALMA changed the field completely,” said David Nesvorny, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Quanta
A key point made here is that after cataloging thousands of extrasolar planets, astronomers still have found “none that remotely resemble ours.” Earth’s status as The Privileged Planet continues to be upheld with ongoing research.
With such a wide variety of planets being discovered and none exactly like Earth, it’s looking more like luck than judgement. If there was intelligent agency involved it’s looking more like the method was trial-and-error than intelligent design..
What does this do to the Drake equation?
“What does this do to the Drake equation?”
It completely blows the simplistic Drake equation out of the water.
As the following article noted, “The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations. We show that this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters. We examine these parameters, incorporating models of chemical and genetic transitions on paths to the origin of life, and show that extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude. This makes a stark difference. When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it.”
In short, the Drake Equation is far too simplistic and optimistic in its assumptions for the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in this universe.
Much to the disappointment of Star Trek fans, an avalanche of recent scientific evidence has found the probability of finding another planet with the ability to host advanced life in this universe is not nearly as likely as astronomer Frank Drake, and Carl Sagan, had originally predicted.
As to Seversky claiming “it’s looking more like luck than judgement. If there was intelligent agency involved it’s looking more like the method was trial-and-error than intelligent design..”
Contrary to what Seversky wants to believe beforehand because of his atheistic predisposition, we now have fairly strong empirical evidence in hand that gives us strong indication that the earth was ‘teleologically’ intended from the creation of the universe and that the earth was not just the result of some ‘trial and error’ and/or ‘luck’ process as Seversky is trying to hold.
Specifically, anomalies in the CMBR, (anomalies that were recently discovered by both the WMAP and Planck telescopes), ‘strangely’ line up with the earth and solar system,
Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” that explains these ‘anomalies’ in the CMBR, that ‘unexpectedly and surprisingly’ line up with the earth and solar system, in an easy to understand manner.
Moreover, as the following paper highlights, we also find that Radio Astronomy now reveals a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe, “implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which the standard cosmological model is based upon”,,,
And it is these large scale structures of the universe, combined on top of the CMBR anomalies, (via supplying us with proper x, y, and z coordinates), which overturn the Copernican principle and support the antiquated, and quaint, ‘medieval’ Theistic belief that the earth should be considered ‘central’ in the universe.
As the following article, (with a illustration) explains,
Thus, directly contrary to what atheists, and others, have erroneously presupposed with the fallacious Copernican principle, the observational evidence that we now have in hand from cosmology, (and even from our best scientific theories of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics), now reveals teleology, i.e. a goal directed purpose, a plan, that specifically included the earth from the beginning of the universe. The earth and the solar system, from what our best science can now tell us, is not the result of some random quantum fluctuation at the beginning of the universe as atheists have erroneously presupposed within their (ad hoc) ‘inflation’ model(s).
Supplemental notes: ,,, the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity has now been overturned by both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, our two most powerful theories in science: (as well as by several other lines of scientific evidence)
March 2022
https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/neil-thomas-on-evolutionary-theory-as-magical-thinking/#comment-748883
Further notes
Podcast
First three parts of the interview with Dr. Denton are here
Book
What I find problematic with things like the Drake equation, is that they assume an ergodic process, which, as we know from those who specialize in defending the putative abilities of biological evolution, life is not. You can’t have it both way, guys.
EugeneS, along that line, Dr. Ross’s ‘conservative estimate for a planet capable of supporting intelligent life is 1 chance in 10^1032,
And that ‘conservative 1 chance in 10^1032 estimate is just the probability of getting one planet in the universe that is capable of hosting intelligent life,,, that does not even take into account the probability against ‘simple’ life spontaneously appearing on that life supporting planet,,,
Nor does it take into consideration the probability against scientifically advanced, i.e. intelligent, life accidentally evolving from that ‘simple’ life on that life supporting planet,,
Let’s just say that the blind faith required to maintain an atheistic worldview makes the faith of even the most fervent Christians look very rational in comparison.
Darwinists are always wrong…
Anyway, comparing the planets, they somehow forgot to mention Earth’s water. Of course, Darwinists don’t have a clue where the Earth’s water comes from.
@1 Seversky
“With such a wide variety of planets being discovered and none exactly like Earth, it’s looking more like luck than judgement. If there was intelligent agency involved it’s looking more like the method was trial-and-error than intelligent design..”
Well Sev, I guess that depends on what assumptions you make about the Creator and His purpose for creating the stars.
Meanwhile, back on Alien Planet eArTh…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/06/16/things-nasa-climate-scientists-say/
Andrew