For years now many people have thought we are not alone – that there must be life on other planets, it has just been a question of finding it. However, Howard Smith a senior astrophysicist at Harvard University has other ideas. In a paper to be delivered to the American Association for the Advancement of Science he argues that the discovery of Kepler 10b and other recent planets, suggests that Earth may be very unusual in its ability to support life; “The new information we are getting suggests we could be effectively alone in the universe.”
He said this is because all the planets which have been discovered so far are totally uninhabitable, they have either been too hot, too cold or in some cases have elliptical orbits which mean the temperature varies greatly, it seems as if extremes are the norm for most planets in contrast to the kindly atmosphere enjoyed on Earth.
Kepler 10b
Even Kepler 10b, which has a rocky surface and is roughly the size of Earth is just a few million miles from its Sun making its surface a scorching 1,300C, but it has no atmosphere and is bombarded with radiation, making life as we know it Jim, impossible there.
New planets
Smith does not entirely rule out the idea of intelligent life or life of any form in the universe, he just thinks it is so rare there is little chance of us ever finding it. Yet, not everyone agrees with Smith. Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy and also at Harvard said “the techniques we have used to find them (the new planets) are biased towards finding big fast moving planets…the question now is how common is it to find small rocky planets like the Earth.
Kepler
Kepler is doing that survey work now, and in a year or two we are likely to get the answer. My belief is that Earth like planets are actually very plentiful”.
It seems then that we are either in a universe teaming with second Earths or we are basically alone in the universe, the jury is out for now…but my view is that we ARE NOT alone.
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