Tuesday, February 17, 2009

It's So Easy, Even Nothing Can Do it


AAAS: 'One hundred billion trillion' planets where alien life could flourish

One hundred billion trillion. That's even more than the spending package congress just passed.

Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, said there could be as many Earths as there are stars in the universe - one hundred billion trillion.

Because of this, he believes it is "inevitable" that life must have flourished elsewhere over the billions of years the universe has existed.

"If you have a habitable world and let it evolve for a few billion years then inevitably some sort of life will form on it," said Dr Boss.

"It is sort of running an experiment in your refrigerator - turn it off and something will grow in there.

"It would be impossible to stop life growing on these habitable planets."

Is this guy a scientist? How can you compare life forming on a planet somewhere in the universe to an unplugged refrigerator? Life already exists in and around the fridge so it's not such a big deal to find it growing and multiplying in the now warmer microclimate of the warm fridge. That's vastly different than life forming in the universe when none had yet existed. Slightly different circumstances those.

Life from non-life. That's about as big a jump as the universe exploding out of nothing. It's not a gap we can bridge.

I'm not saying it is impossible for there to be life out there of some sort or another - I don't know, and neither do they - but it didn't just spontaneously form on it's own. Give the Creator His due.

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