Rare Earth; compared to others (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, February 19, 2016, 18:53 (2989 days ago) @ David Turell

Rare Earth and Privileged Planet are two books that point out how special the Earth appears to be, and now planet studies are confirming that impression:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exoplanet-census-suggests-earth-is-special-after-all/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20160218-"A new tally proposes that roughly 700 quintillion terrestrial exoplanets are likely to exist across the observable universe—most vastly different from Earth.-"More than 400 years ago Renaissance scientist Nicolaus Copernicus reduced us to near nothingness by showing that our planet is not the center of the solar system. With every subsequent scientific revolution, most other privileged positions in the universe that humans might have held dear have been further degraded, revealing the cold truth that our species is the smallest of specks on a speck of a planet, cosmologically speaking. A new calculation of exoplanets suggests that Earth is just one out of a likely 700 million trillion terrestrial planets in the entire observable universe. But the average age of these planets—well above Earth's age—and their typical locations—in galaxies vastly unlike the Milky Way—just might turn the Copernican principle on its head.-***
"The scientists also have similar concerns about the galactic and cosmological inputs of their model but nonetheless they suspect that their final numbers are accurate to within an order of magnitude.With the estimated errors taken into account, the researchers conclude that Earth stands as a mild violation of the Copernican principle. Our pale blue dot might just be special after all. “It's not too much of a fluke that we could arise in a galaxy like the Milky Way, but nevertheless, it's just enough to make you think twice about it,” says Jay Olson from Boise State University, who was not involved in the study. Both he and Zackrisson think the Copernican principle could be saved by some unknown caveat to the findings. “Whenever you find something that sticks out…” Zackrisson says, “…that means that either we are the result of a very improbable lottery draw or we don't understand how the lottery works.'”-Comment: Just another suggestion that our planet is special.