M.I. Lastman's Blog, page 23
January 13, 2015
Aforementioned: Aphorisms and questions for 2015
Jan. 10 What if earth is the only one?
Science can imagine a universe teeming with life. It has a harder time imagining one in which life is so rare as to render the Earth unique (Rare Earth, http://www.amazon.ca/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387952896 ) If I were a betting man, intuition would lead me to bet on teeming life (somewhere on the trillion x trillion objects in the observable universe), but so far the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of rare earth. Fifty-five years and forty space craft sent to Mars and we still don’t have a single fossil of life. That doesn’t mean we won’t find them, but it is suggestive. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/22/the-martian-chroniclers
Science can imagine a universe teeming with life. It has a harder time imagining one in which life is so rare as to render the Earth unique (Rare Earth, http://www.amazon.ca/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387952896 ) If I were a betting man, intuition would lead me to bet on teeming life (somewhere on the trillion x trillion objects in the observable universe), but so far the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of rare earth. Fifty-five years and forty space craft sent to Mars and we still don’t have a single fossil of life. That doesn’t mean we won’t find them, but it is suggestive. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/22/the-martian-chroniclers
