“Astrobiology - The Hunt for Alien Life encompass[es] research
into the origins and limits of life on our own planet, and where life might
exist beyond the Earth. But what actually is ‘life’ and how did it emerge on our
own world? What are the most extreme conditions terrestrial life can tolerate?
And where in the cosmos might we reasonably expect to find ET? Join Dr. Lewis Dartnell
on a tour of the other planets and moons in our solar system which may harbour life, and
even further afield to alien worlds we’ve discovered orbiting distant stars, to
explore one of the greatest questions ever asked: are we alone...?”
Ah! My favorite subject and one I teach every summer – Alien
Worlds!
This is the question I invariably start out with: “Let’s
start out simply. How many of you believe that there is ‘life’ somewhere off of
Earth – and by life, I mean anything from microorganisms to vast, interstellar
alien empires?”
In the class, every hand is raised. When faced with the
parameters of “from microorganisms to…”, most young people are willing to go
out on that limb. Actually, so are lots of adults. In a 2013 HuffPost survey
(PLEASE consider the source here!), half of the people who took it said that
they believed that there was SOME sort of life elsewhere.
Confidence dives when I press on: “How many of you believe
that there is COMPLEX life somewhere off Earth?” Some hands drop.
More drop when I ask, “How many of you believe that there is
INTELLIGENT life somewhere off Earth?”
I then ask them to give their reasons and the ensuing
discussion is lively and one of the main reasons I’ve been teaching the class
three or four times a year for the past 17 years. But when I ask my final
question...you might hear crickets chirping in the room. “Can you give me
scientific proof that there is life anywhere else but on Earth?”
Speaking into the silence, “I am a science fiction writer,”
I tell them. “I WANT to see or know that there are aliens. I write about it. I
dream about it. I teach this class because of it. But the incontrovertible,
scientific FACT is that there is absolutely nothing except faith and hope that
life exists anywhere else but here.”
And so astrobiology is, by definition, a pseudoscience: “a
collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on
scientific method.”
No matter how much we
want to believe that it’s a science that is laying the groundwork for future
work it is, at this point, a pseudoscience. It’s an imaginary job.
*sigh*
So let’s talk about the basis of this imaginary job.
We have planets and moons and “stuff” in this Solar system
that run the gamut from a tumbling rock in hard vacuum (http://www.space.com/28375-nasa-pings-asteroid-and-its-moon-during-flyby-video.html)
to comets (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/11/12/rosetta-comet-landing-is-space-game-changer)
to moons like our own (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing),
moons like Titan (http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens/Titan_s_swirling_polar_cloud_is_cold_and_toxic),
planets like Jupiter (http://www.spaceanswers.com/space-exploration/the-probe-that-survived-for-78-minutes-inside-jupiter/)
and Venus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRGTk0KQhf4),
to our homeworld, Earth.
Astrobiology pseudoscientists, in preparation for the day
they get real evidence of life off of Earth, have become instead experts on
life at its most extreme on Earth. Creatures who live on these edges are called
extremophiles.
The one I find most fascinating are the hyperextremophiles
and the psychrophiles – bacteria that can survive and reproduce at temperatures
as high as 121 C (250 F) down to – 20 C (-4 F). Data returned to Earth from
space probes allow us to speculate that if life can exist on Earth at these
extremes, then certainly life can exist on other worlds that are constant at
these extremes.
With the recent announcement that “we’re going to Europa!” (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26902-green-light-for-mission-to-jupiter-moon-europa.html#.VOCdCWd0zIU),
astrobiologipsts stand ready to
develop experiments that can offer incontrovertible proof that there is life
somewhere besides Earth.
That it will give them a real job to do instead of the pseudo job they claim today goes without
saying.
More on this same subject next time around!
References: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/21/alien-poll_n_3473852.html,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychrophile,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthermophile
Program Book: http://www.loncon3.org/documents/ReadMe_LR.pdf
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