Alex's Livejournal

Vast amounts of money should be spent on gigantic space telescopes to get a good look at the planets in nearby solar systems. Here's why:

What's actually *on* those planets is completely unknown. Bold statements have been given to what's in the rest of the universe given our (laughably incomplete) knowledge of the macro-scale; however, the contents of planets in the goldilocks zone remains a total mystery. There is *no* sound reason to think we won't find life (or something similarly weird) on them, they're full of interesting chemistry, and we've never seen one where life like ours hasn't evolved. It's a "no probability calculation possible" situation, we know almost nothing about them, and have no data set to work with.

So far we're one-for-one for goldilocks planets and life, but the sample size, and the anthropic principle make that a poor basis of judgement. The Drake life equations are similarly awful, as they tend to result in life being either certain, or staggeringly unlikely[1], and are based on one sample. 

Another reason given for absence, is that if life was there it'd be obvious, but it's not. As a Victorian might muse, if there is life, where are its airships? Surely we'd see the space telegraph wires! Looking up at the lots of odd and inexplicable stuff we're seeing and saying, "Well, we don't know what that is, but it clearly *isn't* an example of something we have no comprehension of what it might look like" seems previous to say the least.

I grant, that there's a fair chance we might find little on them, but even then, we'll probably find lots of curious new facts. The other possibility is fascinating though, just the discovery of other life would be profoundly inspiring, and potentially open a vast new range of ideas. Then there's the even more tantalising possibility of discovering a planet which had/has intelligent life on it, the knowledge from which would be beyond value, and possibly change everything. (It could be grim, we could discover: "Intelligent life kills itself", but even there, there might be valuable lessons, which could keep us alive longer).

[1]If they're *too* unlikely, even the anthropic principle has problems. There being a 1 in 10^12 chance of any life starting *anywhere* in the universe asks very serious questions as to the nature of the universe given the fact that we're here. There doesn't have to be a planet with life on it, they could all be dead, so in this example, there's something fishy about the universe. Maybe there are 10^13 universes, but without evidence of this it isn't a good answer to the apparently extremely unlikely event.