"Thomas Lee Elifritz" wrote in message
...
October 2, 2004

Paul Lawler wrote:

Thanks for the ad hominem attacks... now show us the bodies (or spacecraft,
either will do).

By analogy, your claim of supreme ignorance, also implies that there is also
*NO* evidence of (or for, it doesn't matter) Earthlike planets,

There isn't, expect possible for those orbiting
PSR 1257+12 if you class B and C as 'Earthlike'.

http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/1257+12.html

so you sit back
and *DEMAND* that we show you these non-existant Earthlike planets, thus
conveniently exempting yourself from the work of actually designing and
building the instruments necessary to detect these non-existant Earthlike
planets,

On the contrary, the fact that there is currently no
evidence is what justifies building the instruments to
obtain it.

which we surely know must actually exist by the billions, from the
totality of scientific evidence.

.... which we can infer probably exist in numbers which
have not been measured but can be estimated from ...

Your particular perversion of scientific methods appears to be widespread in
the scientific community, ....

We can _predict_ how many are out there based on the
evidence of the _measured_ frequency of larger planets
in systems, the known limitations on our ability to
detect them and our ideas on planetary formation, but
the scientific method then suggest that we confirm
those ideas by actual measurement.

If you don't follow that, show the calculation by which
you obtained the value of "by the billions" and cite the
specific observational data on which it is based.

Oh, and don't just say "If you take a big enough volume,
there must be a billion in it.", let's see a result in
the form of Earthlike planets per system or per galaxy
or per cubic mega-parsec, whatever you like.

George