Speculate about the new super-earth recently detected

Robert Carnegie wrote in message
:

In article , Mr. 4X
writes
David Silberstein wrote
in
message :

I don't think I'm being too daring to predict that any life
on that planet will be either very small, very flat, or both.

And maybe Si based?

Sorry to Trekkers, but that's very doubtful. The Universe barely
allows carbon-based life to exist - a point which causes some
scientists to go thoughtful and and to talk about many-worlds
quantum theory and the anthropic principle and.... well, if the
anthropic principle is what I think it is. I hope it's not Intelligent
Design. Anyway, silicon life is located on the plausibility scale
between us on the one hand (since we're actually here) and life
making similar use of nearly any other element towards the zero-
probability end of the scale, but it isn't very close to our end. And
neither is the chlorine-breathing sort of life.

Small and flat is relative - at least, small is. We consider bacteria
small. Dinosaurs consider us small. It's a fair prediction, though
- but the universe is able to surprise, and specifically it's a
prediction already made (in respect of Jupiter, perhaps by an
author who didn't fully appreciate the nature of Jupiter) by the
Guardian Angel of the planet Mars in C. S. Lewis's _Out of the
Silent Planet_ - a book much of whose action takes place in the
Martian canal system.

Most of the history of life on Earth was unicellular; I don't know if I
can say that most of it that wasn't, was based in the sea - look it
up, eh? But if you're floating in water, gravity isn't so much of a
problem. Of course, this particular planet seemingly will have
water way above terrestrial boiling point, if any at all, which could
be a problem too...

The boiling point goes up with increasing pressure, and some special
bacteria here on Earth (in the deep sea 'smokers') live in temps AFAIK well
over 200 C.

Robert Carnegie at home, at large

::: And maybe Si based?

:: Sorry to Trekkers, but that's very doubtful. The Universe barely
:: allows carbon-based life to exist

Once upon a time, there was some speculation (I think I read it
in an Asimov essay, but am not sure) that silicone (not silicon)
might form the basis of a chemistry complicated enough to support life,
yet be robust enough be workable in considerably harsher environments.
How it would evolve is a problem.

Dunno if that every went anywhere.


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

In article , Mr. 4X wrote:
The boiling point goes up with increasing pressure, and some special
bacteria here on Earth (in the deep sea 'smokers') live in temps AFAIK well
over 200 C.

Nope. I can't remember what the highest recorded temperature is, but
it's a lot lower than that. Above 100°C for sure (your main point, because of
the confining hydrostatic pressure raising the boiling point), but nowhere
near 200°C.
My memory is telling me that it's about 120°C, but I can't remember the
reference. The news was a couple of years ago. Since normal medical autoclaves
go to 130/ 140°C with steam pressure, I think that the discovery of a microbe
that can survive (let alone thrive) at even 150°C would be greeted with very
loud wailings and gnashings of teeth.

--
Aidan Karley,
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: 57°10'11" N, 02°08'43" W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233

Mr. 4X wrote:

The boiling point goes up with increasing pressure, and some special
bacteria here on Earth (in the deep sea 'smokers') live in temps AFAIK well
over 200 C.

No. There are some that survive up around 110 C (IIRC). There was a paper
in Nature (?) that claimed evidence for bacteria surviving at much higher
temperature, but it was almost certainly an experimental artifact.

Paul

On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 21:31:55 +0100, Robert Carnegie
wrote:

In article , Mr. 4X
writes
David Silberstein wrote
in
message :

I don't think I'm being too daring to predict that any life
on that planet will be either very small, very flat, or both.

And maybe Si based?

Sorry to Trekkers, but that's very doubtful. The Universe barely
allows carbon-based life to exist - a point which causes some
scientists to go thoughtful and and to talk about many-worlds
quantum theory and the anthropic principle and.... well, if the
anthropic principle is what I think it is. I hope it's not Intelligent
Design. Anyway, silicon life is located on the plausibility scale
between us on the one hand (since we're actually here) and life
making similar use of nearly any other element towards the zero-
probability end of the scale, but it isn't very close to our end. And
neither is the chlorine-breathing sort of life.

A sample of one does not make much of a scale to judge the
possibilities by. And you can't say that the Universe barely allows
carbon-based life to exist. Where'd you get that from? Life here
does exist, and there are those that use that to say the existence of
life is actually easy and will be found everywhere.

We just don't know either way. I don't think we can know very easily
from what we can see from here, but we're learning more ever day.

Swyck

In article ,
writes
On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 21:31:55 +0100, Robert Carnegie
wrote:

In article , Mr. 4X
writes
David Silberstein
wrote
in
message :

I don't think I'm being too daring to predict that any life
on that planet will be either very small, very flat, or both.

And maybe Si based?

Sorry to Trekkers, but that's very doubtful. The Universe barely
allows carbon-based life to exist - a point which causes some
scientists to go thoughtful and and to talk about many-worlds
quantum theory and the anthropic principle and.... well, if the
anthropic principle is what I think it is. I hope it's not Intelligent
Design. Anyway, silicon life is located on the plausibility scale
between us on the one hand (since we're actually here) and life
making similar use of nearly any other element towards the zero-
probability end of the scale, but it isn't very close to our end. And
neither is the chlorine-breathing sort of life.

A sample of one does not make much of a scale to judge the
possibilities by. And you can't say that the Universe barely allows
carbon-based life to exist. Where'd you get that from? Life here
does exist, and there are those that use that to say the existence of
life is actually easy and will be found everywhere.

We just don't know either way. I don't think we can know very easily
from what we can see from here, but we're learning more ever day.

In place of looking any of this stuff up, I'm going to go on vague
memory and hearsay -

Life as we know it, seen as complicated chemistry, seems to
depend very heavily on it being possible to create various
tremendously complicated molecules - proteins and others -
using carbon. Carbon has a valence which makes this
mathematically possible, and the chemistry works. Life exists.

Carbon is uniquely useful for this. Silicon also has valence which
makes it mathematically possible to have polymers, but silicon
polymers are quite a different game to carbon ones, and won't
really do the tricks that need to be done for life.

I haven't checked, but I presume that the thinking on chlorine
versus oxygen as life-sustaining gases is similar - that either will
serve as a chemical energy source, but, when you get into the
details, chlorine is not really suitable for a newly designed
organism after all. Of course, this is to overlook that we only have
oxygen around because of plant life producing it as a waste
product from processing and consuming carbon dioxide.

As to "barely allows carbon life to exist", I'm referring to the point of
view that certain processes in the universe necessary to life
depend upon the numerical values of certain scientific constants -
relationships between physical quantities which are believed to
have a unique value that applies everywhere in spacetime -
whose values have no scientific reason to be what they are; they
are arbitrary; perhaps random. This is what Sir Martin Rees's
book _Just Six Numbers_ is about, for one. And if one of these
constants, I forget which, had a very slightly different value, then
not only silicon but carbon would be unsuitable for life as well, at
least according to Rees.

This might make one think either that the constants aren't
constant in this universe, or that different independent universes
exist with different constants, in order that the Earth can exist in a
location where the relevant constant is just right for life to exist
using carbon. For that matter, perhaps somewhere it works for
silicon, but not in our universe, or not in our part of this universe.

And you're right in principle that we /do/ only know about life on
one planet and there /could/ be surprises in outer space. But this
would be one of the more surprising surprises, seemingly.

Robert Carnegie at home, at large
--
I am fully aware I may regret this in the morning.

In article , Robert Carnegie
writes

Sorry to Trekkers, but that's very doubtful. The Universe barely
allows carbon-based life to exist - a point which causes some
scientists to go thoughtful and and to talk about many-worlds
quantum theory and the anthropic principle and.... well, if the
anthropic principle is what I think it is. I hope it's not Intelligent
Design. Anyway, silicon life is located on the plausibility scale
between us on the one hand (since we're actually here) and life
making similar use of nearly any other element towards the zero-
probability end of the scale, but it isn't very close to our end. And
neither is the chlorine-breathing sort of life.

The Weak Anthropic Principle basically says that the Universe/Earth must
be capable of supporting us, because, we're, well, here. (For example,
if life-bearing planets are extremely rare the Earth has to be one of
those extremely rare cases.) There's also a Strong Anthropic Principle
and a Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle, and possibly a few more
variants.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley said:

The Weak Anthropic Principle basically says that the Universe/Earth
must be capable of supporting us, because, we're, well, here. (For
example, if life-bearing planets are extremely rare the Earth has
to be one of those extremely rare cases.) There's also a Strong
Anthropic Principle and a Completely Ridiculous Anthropic
Principle, and possibly a few more variants.

So what, in general, are the Strong and Completely Ridiculous ones?

--
William December Starr

In article ,
David Silberstein wrote:
In article ,
Bill Bonde ( ``Soli Deo Gloria'' ) wrote:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...th_040825.html

#begin quote
In a discovery that has left one expert stunned, European astronomers
have found one of the smallest planets known outside our solar system, a
world about 14 times the mass of our own around a star much like the
Sun.

[snip]

At 14 times the mass of Earth, the newfound planet -- circling a star
similar in size and brightness to our Sun -- is about as heavy as
Uranus, a world of gas and ice and the smallest giant planet in our
solar system.

Paging a Mesklin Survey Team.

Theorists say 14 Earth-masses is roughly the upper limit
for a planet to possibly remain rocky, however.

Wait, Mesklin isn't possible???


Mesklin gets a pass - it has a collapsed matter core (if i recall
"Whirlygig World" correctly, Clement may have hand-waved a dwarf-star
matter core - in any event, not your normal terrestrial molten iron).

At least as calculated by the best minds in the business, with the
highest-powered slide rules available (1950s story, for those
unfamiliar with *Mission of Gravity*).

Besides, methane oceans and hydrogen atmosphere disqualify it as
terrestrial.


I don't think I'm being too daring to predict that any life
on that planet will be either very small, very flat, or both.


Hmm, the Mesklinites were both.

--
-john

February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 19:14:30 -0700, "Bill Bonde ( ``Soli Deo Gloria'' )"
wrote, in part:

In a discovery that has left one expert stunned, European astronomers
have found one of the smallest planets known outside our solar system, a
world about 14 times the mass of our own around a star much like the
Sun.

It should have been a carbon star, with anomalous neutrino emissions.

Then, after the planet is destroyed in a titanic explosion, one of its
former inhabitants might land here, and, after the passage of time,
obtain employment with a major metropolitan newspaper... an inhabitant
almost indistinguishable from Earth people, except that our Sun's
neutrino emissions augment the impressive strength gained from being
adapted to such high gravity with other abilities.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html