Bad journalism?

[iamjulian]

On the radio this morning it said one of the Sunday papers (think they may have said the Times) was reporting that a US astro physics lecturer at a university (Arizona?) said that because the 500 odd planets we have found so far are all way too hot or way too cold to contain life, we are probably alone in the universe.

Anyone read the actual story? Is this bad journalism, or bad astronomy? Seems like a massive conclusion to jump to based on the search so far. Surely the 500 odd planets have been found because they are easy to detect, because they are so big or so close to their suns.

[Neil English]

Naah, it's just his/her opinion I reckon.

[Nexus 6]

It has'nt been that long since we started to discover these EXO planets, I can imagine in a few more years we will be picking up signatures of such planets that show signs of possible life.

That should change his opinion.

[E621Keith]

I think this is a case of bad journalism. The current technology is not good enough to find planets similar to earth. Radial velocity Doppler and transit method works best if the planet is big and close to the sun because that induces maximum wobble, or is able to cover part of the star's disk. This is why we find so many hot Jupiters.

The technology is improving and they found the first hot super earth just a month ago.

[AWR]

I heard this on the radio too and I remember thinking that it was rather presumptive to make this kind of prediction based on only 500 planets.

The story has been reported elsewhere:

Alien life deemed impossible by analysis of 500 planets - Telegraph

Still not able to say whether he has been mis-reported or shocking science.

Andrew

[yoda]

You can not say that with 500 planets under our belt concidering that thear are millions yet to be discoverd.

And who says life has to be on one of the planets? most of the planets have moons.

[ollypenrice]

This seems an absurd conclusion to me. Ten to the eleven stars in a galaxy, ten to the eleven galaxies in the observable universe... Come on!

Olly

[brianb]

Either the scientist is a crackpot, or there's some serious misreporting going on. Judging by the historical standard of the science reporting in the Torygraph, guess where my money is.

[kniclander]

i suppose it depends whether we think that the 500 is a fair sample of the rest. eg if i ate 500 tesco value meat pies and spent a week on the bog after each one, i would not be optimistic of the 501st (or the 10 million and 7th etc) but i would not let that cloud my view of waitrose deli chicken and ham pies

[brianb]

if i ate 500 tesco value meat pies and spent a week on the bog after each one, i would not be optimistic of the 501st

If you ate 5 tesco value meat pies (whatever they are) and spent a week on the bog after each one, you'd deserve to be sectioned if you started on a sixth.

OTOH if you examine 500 (or 5000, or 5000000) tropical coral islets and find them all unsuitable to support polar bears, jumping to the conclusion that polar bears don't exist may be a dangerous extrapolation.

[FraserClarke]

Having just read the telegraph article, it looks like a case of bad overreaction based on not properly reading the bad reporting founded on a scientist not being careful enough with their words. The comments at the bottom of the telegraph webpage are pretty shockingly reactionary. At no point in the article does he actually say "earth is unique" (he says *could* be unique, apparently). In fact the end of it seems to be more that he's claiming life humans could make contact with would be very rare (and that's *very* different statement). That's a fair point. As he says, you only have ~1000 light years radius you can communicate in (and that's a 2000 year "satellite lag"!), and there are only so many stars in that volume. The chances of one of them having the right conditions for intelligent life that we can understand/understand us, may well be very small indeed.

One of the major surprises from extrasolar planet work is that the solar system does look rather odd these days. We're not that good at finding direct analogues of the solar system yet (i.e. Jupiter at 5AU), but we can do it. And we don't find many of them at all. So, out of those stars within 1000 lightyears, only a small fraction of them are going to look like the solar system. Most of them, with planets, are going to look very 'alien' to us, and probably uncapable of supporting life like our own. The Kepler results in a few years should be informative on how many "earth-like" planets exist, but still it is unclear whether you need something like Jupiter in your system to make it stable enough for long term evolution to happen. I don't think anyone knows the answer to that yet.

Steve Vogt's apparent claim that Gl581 will definitely have life is equally outlandish.

[brianb]

Steve Vogt's apparent claim that Gl581 will definitely have life is equally outlandish.

If not more so!

[markophoto]

Typical lazy journalism really.

Most media outlets are just re-hashing stories that have already been published without understanding or questioning them. Let's not assume that all journalists are reporting facts !

[Luke]

I found this quote, seems to me it's more like he is saying there could be life but it might be too far away to contact (at least in the short term), so we might just as well be alone, don't expect us to phone ET any time soon.

That's how I read the quote anyway!

"The new information we are getting suggests we could effectively be alone in the universe. There are very few solar systems or planets like ours. It means it is highly unlikely there are any planets with intelligent life close enough for us to make contact."

We are alone, aliens unlikely in the universe, says expert

[Nexus 6]

Maybe for now we are isolated, but who knows what amazing changes we may discover to open up the prospects of visiting nearby solar systems in the next few dozen years. Only been a 100 years or so since we were travelling by horse!

[Luke]

Maybe for now we are isolated, but who knows what amazing changes we may discover to open up the prospects of visiting nearby solar systems in the next few dozen years.

Ditto, and anyway, maybe ET has a cool telephone, they might reach us first.

Imagine if they are a mere million years more advanced than us. Like you say, when you consider the progress in the last 100 years, a million looks one big number for once.