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Thoran · 04-11-2005, 09:51 AM

There have been several recent discoveries that have moved the drake equation towards increasing probability of life.

There's the work being done on Mars that hints that it may have once had an environment hospitable to our version of life. There's the discoveries by Cassini/Huygens that Titan HAS the constituents of life... if it was warmer who knows... it might have had life on it by now.

We've got a number of bodies in our tiny backwater solar system that have pieces of the "habitable planet" puzzle... and then we add to that the discoveries that many stars have planetary systems (I believe it likely that virtually ALL stars over a certain age have planetary systems, but that's still debatable) and you end up with a whole lot of potential sites for a earth-like planet to develop. Perhaps the close in gas giants are a problem and perhaps they're not, but they're finding gas giants at jupiter/saturn distances now... so they no longer think that the close in gas giant is the norm. IMO in our little Galexy alone there are likely MILLIONS of star systems with configurations that leave a rocky planet in a temperature zone amenable to a liquid water presence. Hell we almost have two such planets in this system alone.

The only question that I feel is relatively unanswered is what is the probability of life developing on a liquid water planet. I think that's not a question we're going to answer anytime soon, because even if we find microbial life in Mars or another non-terran site, it would be quite possible that it would represent earth contamination not an independantly evolved life. We need to find extra-solar proof of life before we can get a handle on the life part of the equation.

Personally I believe the probability of extra-terran life is very close to 100% (99.999... and a lot more 9's), and the probability of intelligent extra-terran life is also very high. (better than 99%)

04-11-2005, 09:51 AM	#53
Thoran Galvatron Join Date: January 10, 2002 Location: Upstate NY Age: 57 Posts: 2,109	There have been several recent discoveries that have moved the drake equation towards increasing probability of life. There's the work being done on Mars that hints that it may have once had an environment hospitable to our version of life. There's the discoveries by Cassini/Huygens that Titan HAS the constituents of life... if it was warmer who knows... it might have had life on it by now. We've got a number of bodies in our tiny backwater solar system that have pieces of the "habitable planet" puzzle... and then we add to that the discoveries that many stars have planetary systems (I believe it likely that virtually ALL stars over a certain age have planetary systems, but that's still debatable) and you end up with a whole lot of potential sites for a earth-like planet to develop. Perhaps the close in gas giants are a problem and perhaps they're not, but they're finding gas giants at jupiter/saturn distances now... so they no longer think that the close in gas giant is the norm. IMO in our little Galexy alone there are likely MILLIONS of star systems with configurations that leave a rocky planet in a temperature zone amenable to a liquid water presence. Hell we almost have two such planets in this system alone. The only question that I feel is relatively unanswered is what is the probability of life developing on a liquid water planet. I think that's not a question we're going to answer anytime soon, because even if we find microbial life in Mars or another non-terran site, it would be quite possible that it would represent earth contamination not an independantly evolved life. We need to find extra-solar proof of life before we can get a handle on the life part of the equation. Personally I believe the probability of extra-terran life is very close to 100% (99.999... and a lot more 9's), and the probability of intelligent extra-terran life is also very high. (better than 99%)