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The Song of the Swan

Posted Monday, March 27, 2006 by Gerald Vreeland

With this entry, I will conclude my treatment of The Privileged Planet.  I hope you have had as much fun with it as I have had. 

 

Gonzalez and Richards Synopsis, Conclusion

And What About Panspermia?

 

Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, The Privileged Planet: How our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004). 

 

Assumptions and implications are not the same thing.

 

Their conclusion is subtitled: “Reading The Book Of Nature.”  It is not a very long and involved piece and so I have decided to include a brief discussion on Panspermia or the seeding of microbes from elsewhere.  Because it has been so long, though (and because the Blog-Meister asked me to!), let us begin with a brief synopsis of what has gone before. 

Synopsis

 

In their introduction, Gonzalez and Richards introduce their thesis and that is that there is a correlation between measurability and habitability.  They also indicate that this should be contrasted with the common notion of the principle of mediocrity – that we’re nothing special in the universe. 

 

In chapter 1, we are told about solar eclipses and how much real science was jump started by the seeming coincidence of our have a moon and sun with nearly the same apparent sizes.  We are also told how rare this is not only in the solar system in which we live, but most probably in the universe at large. 

 

In chapter two, the discussion surrounds the chemistry of life and the stability of the environment over the millennia.  This would, of course, be necessary for the development not only of complex life, but more to the point: industrial life as we’ve experienced of the last few thousand years. 

 

In chapter three, we are introduced to the larger world of geology.  The discussion surrounds such things as plate tectonics and the breakdown of slower radio-isotopes.  It is suggested that such movement in the earth’s constituent parts is crucial for the cycling of carbon necessary for life. 

 

In chapter four, we are introduced to the advantages of a clear atmosphere.  Not only can we breathe it, but we can also see through it.  This is advantageous not only for driving in inclement weather but for peering into the vast heavens.  Again habitability and measurability correlate.  Although we might see better from outer space, an opaque atmosphere might have precluded the curiosity and impetus to get there to take a look about. 

 

In chapter five, the situation with other planets in our solar system is placed “in relief” with our home world.  We see such things as atmosphere (breatheability and opacity), tectonics, gravitation, distance from the sun and too hot/too cold issues and such, provide a control group for the notion that the earth is in the solar system’s habitable zone.  This will inaugurate a set of expectations when we discuss planets in other systems. 

 

In chapter six, the previous discussion is continued with the notion that our neighbors do provide us some pretty good service.  For instance, the huge gas-giant planets provide something of larger targets when it comes to collecting space junk that might be headed our way (comets and meteorites).  In short, we have not had as many planet-killer hits as we might expect.  Our relatively small size is also an addition – in several ways, including tectonics, gravity, air pressure and being a smaller target. 

 

In section two, chapter seven, we begin to look out at other stars.  We discover what we can know about them by their spectral signatures.  We also learn that some burn faster than others.  We also see that the circumstellar habitable zone move over the lifetime of the star.  Hence, like our sun, we should expect to find life – if at all! – in planets orbiting main-sequence M class yellow dwarves.  They burn slower and are more stable over the period necessary, according to the paradigm, to generate complex, industrial life.  In addition, we are introduced to the weak anthropic principle: “. . . we should expect to observe conditions, however unusual, compatible with or even necessary for our existence as observers” (p.136).

 

In chapter eight, we expand the quest to a galactic habitable zone.  We discover that it is necessary that we be free of the radiation and space junk toward the galactic core that would render our existence untenable.  Oddly, because of the star-furnaces, we need the heavy metals produced there – less available out where we live.  Conversely, this lack of radiation and space junk where we hang out – in clear water between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms of the galaxy – is not only safer, it makes it convenient for us to look around and make discoveries about our galaxy and those far away.  The lack of space dust and gas also facilitates this as well. 

 

In chapter nine, we discover that not only is our place in space right for existence and discovery, but our place in time is as well.  Due to the time it takes to form galaxies and the breakdown of matter and energy, we find that we are in the optimum location in time.  There are just enough heavy metals for our existence as complex, industrial organisms and the breakdown is not so complete that we cannot make inferences about the origin and conclusion of the universe from such things as the cosmic background radiation (residual, it is thought, of the “big bang”). 

 

In chapter ten, we speculate what it might have been like were things slightly different in our universe.  For example, we play with changes in such things as mass density, the age of the universe, the expansion rate of the universe, the speed of light, the weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, gravitational force, electromagnetic force, the cosmological constant, and the proton to electron mass ratio.  We discover that not only would observation be hampered, life as we know it could not exist. 

 

In section three on implication, in chapter eleven, we are reintroduced to how the Copernican Principle was hijacked and became the principle of mediocrity.  We are also disabused of the notion that Christianity was the villain in the drama and that true scientists were victims of the church’s oppression.  We are also reintroduced to several professed Christians who were the grandfathers of modern cosmology. 

 

In chapter twelve, there are a series of expectations that we ought to have if the principle of mediocrity or the modern incarnation of the Copernican Principle is true.  What we end up doing is chasing those predictions to the ends of space and time – until they are non-falsifiable!  We begin with: “Earth, while it has a number of life-permitting properties, isn’t exceptionally suited for life in our Solar System.  Other planets in the Solar System probably harbor life as well” (p. 251).   And we end with: “Our galaxy is not particularly exceptional or important.  Life could just as easily exist in old, small, elliptical, and irregular galaxies” (p. 258).  For reasons given in other chapters we can narrow that down to galaxies that are similar to our own (medium-large open spiral-armed galaxies).  But, until we can look under every rock in the universe, we cannot falsify the prediction. 

 

In chapter thirteen, we deal more with time and deal with one final “Copernican” prediction: “The universe is infinite in space and matter and eternal in time.”  Because of the development, expansion and relationship between matter and energy in the observable universe, this is no longer the universal scientific opinion.  It apparently had a beginning, and in only 150 billion years – give or take a few, I suppose – it is expected to have all winked out of sight and gone inert to boot.  Surprise, surprise!  We no longer live in an Aristotelian universe. . . .  In this chapter we are given what I call the list – what it takes to support complex industrial life:

 

. . .  a large stabilizing moon, plate tectonics, intricate biological and nonbiological

feedback, greenhouse effects, a carefully placed circular orbit around the right kind of

star, early volatile elements – providing asteroids and comets, and outlying giant planets

to protect us from frequent ongoing bombardment by comets.  It depends on a Solar

System placed carefully in the Galactic Habitable Zone in a large spiral galaxy formed at

the right time.  It presupposes the earlier explosions of supernovae to provide us with the

iron that courses through our veins and the carbon that is the foundation of life.  It also

depends on a present rarity of such nearby supernovae.  Finally it depends on an

exquisitely fine-tuned set of physical laws, parameters, and initial conditions (pp. 271-2). 

 

In chapter fourteen, we are introduced to the passion of some that are looking for extra-terrestrials.  It reviews some of the absurd ideas from as recently as the 20th century about intelligent life on the moon, Venus and Mars, etc.  It was at this point that we are encouraged to debunk the Drake Equation on the ratio of life in the universe and the authors offer their Appendix A and a much more complicated – and restrictive! – revision of the Drake Equation. 

 

In chapter fifteen, we are given the parameters for discerning design in the universe.  We are told that “We live in a universe with laws and initial conditions finely tuned for the existence of complex life.  Although narrowly constrained, they do not inevitably give rise to such life.  [The conditions] are necessary but not nearly sufficient for it” (p. 311).  So, we are invited to speculate as to how it got here apart from some divine fiat. 

 

In chapter sixteen, we are give a series of skeptical rejoinders beginning with “It’s impossible to falsify your argument” (p. 314).  Having passed beyond the solar system and its impossible conditions for supporting complex industrial life, we see that every time we find a new exo-planet, we not only have the possibility for falsifying the argument, but – most discoveries having been of huge gas giant in impossible orbits – we have heretofore proven the argument true.  Passing through 14 such rejoinders, the authors demonstrate the reasonableness of their naturalistic contentions and suggest “. . . a designer sufficient to design the universe as we see it” (p. 330).  And that brings us up to the present. 

 

Conclusion

 

Their brief conclusion is subtitled “Reading The Book Of Nature” and begins where the book began, with a discussion of the Apollo 8 astronauts and their encounter with earthrise from the moon.  We are told that the jury was split two to one: for Borman and Lovell, their conviction was strengthened that “human beings were at home in the universe, that there was more than mere matter in motion, that they, and we, existed for a purpose” (p. 331).  From the moon on Christmas eve of 1968 he said many things that civil libertarians would sue him for as well as “The earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space” (quoted p. 331).  Oddly, for Anders there was the opposite effect.  He felt that our home was “. . . so tiny and isolated within the cold emptiness of space, suggested a lonely purposelessness” (p. 331) and suggested that his impression was that “We’re like ants on a log” (quoted p. 331).  How can such divergent opinions exist from an evaluation of the same data? 

 

For some naturalistic explanations are good enough; for others the universe admits of purpose, design, and intention.  Opponents suggest that we intelligent design people come at the issue with a preset agenda.  It is a scimitar of a double-edge, though since they would then have to admit that they come at the issue with an alternate preset agenda.  If we can look at the same data and employ the same equations and end different places, the only difference is presuppositions.  The authors, in addition, contend: “

 

. . . such “skeptics” may have blinded themselves to the existence of real patterns in the

natural world.  The reasonable skeptic – as opposed to the hardened skeptic for whom no

evidence is sufficient – should at least consider the possibility that nature exists for a

purpose.  For those open to such a possibility, the correlation between habitability and

measurability should be a compelling discovery (p. 332). 

 

The authors go on to discuss an “epistemological hindrance” to such investigation.  Because of the nature of the game in the universities, scientists have been discouraged by their superiors and peers from investigating a line of inquiry that might end in intelligent design. 

 

            To recognize the correlation as a meaningful patter, rather than a mere curiosity or

            coincidence, requires that we re-awaken certain atrophied intellectual abilities. 

            Fortunately, scientists have never really neglected this ability, even if many of them have

            suppressed its widest application (p. 332). 

 

We do this by admitting that “We know more than we can tell” (Chemist, Polanyi quoted p. 332).  This is something we do daily, for instance, in facial recognition.  It would be hard for us to describe in words the people we see often; yet, when we meet them we recognize them instantly.  Patterns arise in our minds that we cannot describe well that conform to a set of expectations surrounding a particular person.  These patterns are different from those of other persons.  This theory of pattern recognition is extended to our ability to discern the meaning of words.  For those who have learned a new language, the first confrontation with a text is daunting.  As a personal example, on the first day of Arabic class, Dr. Gleason Archer wrote the Lord’s Prayer from the Arabic Bible on the board, from memory.  One of my colleagues, a linguist from China already holding advanced degrees, put his pen down so I knew I wasn’t the only one out of my depth.  I had no idea even that it was the Lord’s Prayer that the Prof was writing on the board.  I could only guess that it was Arabic because that was the class I was supposed to be in.  However, the seemingly mystifying arrangement of symbols became less and less unintelligible to the point that at the end of two quarters of study we could not only read the Lord’s Prayer the rest of the Arabic Bible, the Koran and the Hadith, we too could write the Lord’s Prayer flawlessly on the board, as I did for the Hebrew class I was teaching at the time – showoff that I am! 

 

Paleontologists know where to look.  Hubble had to get outside the mental straightjacket of the static universe theories of his day to suggest that redshifted galaxies indicated an expanding universe.  This opened the door to several decades of productive research – none of which precludes the possibility of intelligent design. 

 

            Herein lies a virtue in seeing the correlation between habitability and measurability as the

            result of purpose rather than mere coincidence: we should expect to find it elsewhere, and

            we should expect to continue making discoveries because of it.  To one who has

            discerned that the cosmos is designed, this correlation is much like the sublime beauty

            and the mathematical elegance of the natural world – no longer a troublesome

            anomaly to be explained away but something simultaneously fitting and wonderful. 

            Viewing it as a mere coincidence, in contrast, is both theoretically and aesthetically

            sterile (p. 333, emphasis mine). 

 

We can talk about the difference between facts and truth until we are either blue in the face or realize we are talking on different planes.  But one line of thought that seems to be making a resurgence these days is the notion of the esthetics of truth.  That is, there will be something symmetrical and beautiful about it.  When the secularist, operating from his naturalistic assumptions, says something is beautiful, we really have the right to ask him what on earth he is talking about.  Beauty becomes something merely at the level of opinion rather than something that can be universally appreciated by all but the most twisted individuals.  If there is a relationship between the Good, the True and the Beautiful (as thought Socrates), then perhaps we should find something affirming and esthetically pleasing about the truths discovered in a universe designed every bit as much as we are ourselves.  Beginning the discussion from the naturalistic assumptions of a cynical secularist not only disintegrates the relationship between the good the true and the beautiful, it insures that one cannot make any meaningful statements about them. 

 

            Of course, to see design and purpose embedded in nature, we may have to do what

            scientists in so many other respects have learned to do, learn to “read” the relevant

            patterns, to cultivate the ability to consider the book of nature as a whole, to read through

            nature to its meaning (p. 333, emphasis theirs). 

 

The authors go on to suggest that anyone from archaeologists to SETI researchers have specialized expertise in recognizing patterns. 

 

            But just as a grammar book can’t substitute for reading great literature, knowing

            arguments for design, and knowing the criteria by which we may infer design cannot

            substitute for developing the capacity to discern design in nature.  Undertaking such an

            exercise requires, above all else, a mind open to an almost forgotten possibility (p. 334). 

 

And so the whole discussion is reduced to a single question:

 

            Is it possible that this immense, symphonic system of atoms, fields, forces, stars,

            galaxies, and people is the result of a choice, a purpose or intention, rather than simply

            some inscrutable outworking of blind necessity or an inexplicable accident?  If so, then

            it’s surely possible that there could be evidence to suggest such a possibility (p. 334). 

 

Science does not evaluate data that are meaningless.  In each thing we look at, from quarks to galactic clusters, there are incredible stores of information waiting to be released.  This is because the universe as we know it makes sense based upon its initiating principles and physical laws.  Because of the development of technology, we are able to examine the data in ways heretofore unimagined.  We can look at the book of nature more deeply and understand more profoundly than could our predecessors – secularist or reverent for that matter.  In doing so, we discover a pattern that deserves, if not demands, we pause to reflect upon: “The myriad conditions that make a region habitable are also the ones that make the best overall places for discovering the universe in its smallest and largest expressions” (p. 334).  This statement is balanced by what the authors call “the central irony.” 

 

The more we learn about how much must go right to get a single habitable planet, the

more the naturalistic mindset behind the Copernican Principle and the SETI actually

reduces the hope of finding intelligent beings elsewhere.  Under such a paradigm, that

search may slowly wither before the stingy dictates of chance (p. 334, emphasis theirs). 

 

Up to this point, we have been watching and listening – intently and with the application of our finest technology! – and we have found nothing that suggests that we are anything other than alone in the material universe.  Perhaps we are reading the wrong symbols or reading them in the wrong way.  SETI? 

 

            In reality we have found no such signal.  And yet as we stand gazing at the heavens

            beyond our little oasis, we gaze not into a meaningless abyss but into a wondrous arena

            commensurate with our capacity for discovery.  Perhaps we have also been staring past a

            cosmic signal far more significant than any mere sequence of numbers, a signal revealing

            a universe so skillfully crafted for life and discovery that it seems to whisper of an extra-

            terrestrial intelligence immeasurably more vast, more ancient, and more magnificent than

            anything we’ve been willing to expect or imagine (p. 335). 

 

What About Panspermia?

 

Having concluded the last words of the regular text of the book, I would be remiss were I not to discuss their Appendix B.  Since it is a position entertained by people as notable as Francis Crick (of double-helix DNA fame) and the position by people who entertained us with “Mission to Mars,” it seems that we justify the space for the three pages given to it by Gonzalez and Richards.  The position is simply that we, along with potentially myriad other worlds, were seeded by aliens or by random agency by microbes that later blossomed into life as we see it now.  The Pre-Socratic Anaxagoras seems to have held the hypothesis; but it was revived by Svante Arrhenius about a century ago.  Its current incarnation employs “. . . knowledge from several scientific disciplines, such as microbiology, impact physics, galactic dynamics, and planetary dynamics” (p. 343).  The ramifications for this study are at once interplanetary and interstellar. 

 

What we are talking about is how stuff from here gets there and stuff from there gets here.  When there is a meteorite impact, the corresponding explosion, given velocity, momentum and mass, can be blasted out into space.  Depending upon the trajectory, it could then collide with another planet someplace where life is possible.  The big “if” is that if there were some microbe that wasn’t incinerated in the impact, explosion or friction produced by the piece of the planet attaining escape velocity and if it could be protected from the hostile environment of space (vacuum and radiation), probably going dormant within the fragment somewhere; and then if it were to survive reentry into another hospitable location, then we would have interplanetary seeding. 

 

So, a comet hits Mars, the ensuing explosion send debris into space and it doesn’t entirely burn up when it hits Earth.  Some microbes that were once on Mars are thus transported to Earth.  The process is, of course, facilitated if some alien intelligence merely picks them up from somewhere and flies them – in an hospitable environment – and plants them in the hospitable environment here.  Of course, it can go both ways, I suppose.  Lets say that some well insulated microbe floats up in the atmosphere and is blasted into space by the solar wind and lands on Mars or one of the watery moons of Saturn.  Then we would have the Earth seeding other worlds.  This seems to be called “radiopanspermia” (p. 344). 

 

That is at the level of the solar system; what happens it interstellar distances?  In reality, more of the same: the only differences is the time required to traverse the vast void twixt solar systems – and the incredible luck of scoring a direct hit on a hospitable world.  Perhaps this would require some greater dormancy in the organism.  It might require greater velocity of the projectile that is its temporary home (of course the shock, heat and such would render such a blastoff even more tenuous).  It might require that the organism take along with it air, food and water and be able to replicate itself as it crosses light-years of distance in eons of time. 

 

Meanwhile back at hot air (solar wind):

 

            Only when the Sun becomes a luminous red giant star would there be enough light

            pressure to push shielded bacteria out of the Solar System.  But by then Earth would be

            lifeless.  Thus, radiopanspermia is unlikely to succeed in transporting viable organisms to

            other planetary systems (p. 344). 

 

Alright, what about more mechanical means (comet and/or meteorite strikes Krakatoa-like ejecta)?  If it gains enough momentum to leave the influence of Earth’s gravity, what then? 

            With a typical ejection speed of five kilometers per second, a meteoroid ejected from the

            Solar System will travel about sixteen light-years in a million years.  Another planetary

            system is much more likely to capture it if it contains giant planets in large orbits, like

            ours.  . . . Once captured, a rock from our Solar System will dance around the planets in

            its new home system, eventually colliding with one of them.  If there are terrestrial

            planets in the target system, they will receive a small fraction of the captured rocks.  And

            of that small fraction, only a small fraction will survive entry to the planet’s surface; most

            will enter the planet’s atmosphere so fast that they will vaporize before reaching the

            surface (pp. 344-5). 

 

One estimate is that one Martian projectile is captured by another stellar system every one hundred million years. . . .  The odds are bad of that one landing in a terraformed planet. . . . 

 

It wouldn’t matter: on its ways it would be subject to cosmic radiation.  Be that as it may, some panspermia advocates are merely hoping that parts of DNA or RNA might survive.  Try this thought experiment:

 

            Take some bacteria, grind them up, break up their DNA into smaller fragments, and

            sprinkle the resulting bits onto a sterilized Petri dish with agar growth medium; you can

            add a liquid component and even stir it up to aid the reactions.  If you’re ambitious, try

            this hundreds or thousands of times.  Nothing of interest will result.  And if nothing

            results after many trials, then why should you expect dead bacteria to seed a distant

            planet around another planetary system, one that would offer far less friendly conditions

            for life? (p. 345). 

 

It is better to view it having gone the other way; but, that entails another serious question. 

 

            . . . interplanetary panspermia is much more likely.  Earth, Mars, and Venus exchanged a

            lot of material when the Solar System was still young and large impacts were frequent. 

            The shortest transfer times are measured in thousands, not millions, of years.  There is

            little question that substantial quantities of viable organisms landed safely on the surfaces

            of Mars and Venus.  So why didn’t life take on these worlds? (p. 345).  

 

With these words, G & R end their discussions in the book; but, the answer to their last question is, of course, precisely the argument laid out in the book: those two planets are inside and outside the Circumstellar Habitable Zone.  Life as we know it requires certain conditions as met on earth and not much beyond our little ring of habitability.  And with that the Swan has sung. 

 

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