Sic Semper Tyrannis

Whatcha' Readin'?

I just got done reading an interesting book called _Rare Earth:Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe_ by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. The authors are two scientists in the relatively new scientific field called astrobiology and the basic premise of the book is that, while previous research says that life may very well be present, perhaps even flourishing elsewhere in the universe, the chances of complex life are incredibly slim, if the history of life on earth is used as a model. (Of course, life, even basic life like bacteria and single-celled organisms, has not been discovered "out there." "Research" really just means mathematical probability equations.)

The authors cited all kinds of things that have possibly affected and allowed the development of life over our earth's history. Most of the stuff they were talking about I had never even heard about before: Snowball Earth, multiple mass extinction events like comets and radiation, the Cambrian explosion. But they also mention situations in the case of earth that are close to unreproducible elsewhere in the universe, such as being just the right distance from the right kind of star, with a Jupiter-like planet just the right distance away to shield the planet from comet and asteroid bombardment, yet not affect the planet too much, gravitationally, etc.

It was all very interesting to me. Paleontology and biology are not my areas of expertise to say the least, but the idea that ties all of this together is that all of the variables in the formation of life here on earth would have to be present on other planets as well, for complex life to form.

Pretty interesting stuff...

posted by Mike @ 2:00 PM