There were all kinds of rumors today (from Drudge, of all places) that NASA was going to announce some major discovery related to life elsewhere in the solar system. While that would be incredibly cool, I was dubious—anyone remember the Martian “bacteria”? NASA has a rather poor reputation for this sort of thing.
Anyway, Bad Astronomy has the actual news: it’s interesting, but the media blew it way out of proportion. Plumes of water (they think) have been observed on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.
I’d be more enthused if the earlier hype hadn’t switched on my skeptical gland and flooded my system with cyniclin, the hormone of disillusionment.
The sad part is that, if & when extraterrestrial life is discovered, Drudge will have the scoop.
Wake me up when they send back pictures of igloos.
I wonder what the hype will be like when we finally do find something lifelike on another planet? I mean, how much more could the media hype things. Find life is a pretty “ultimate” achievement.
On second thoughts, they’d probably bring God into it somewhere. Completely ignore the real consequences of an amazing scientific discovery in order to harp on about how this will affect some misguided peoples’ divine rules about haircuts and how much ankle to show.
Similiar stuff was said about Europa, and Titan. In April 1997, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft beamed back pictures of Europa from its back-up antenna, and many expected something amazing, because Europa is covered with ice and slush. The idea was that water was synonymous with life. After all, the word “desert” means devoid of life, and “deserts” are places devoid of water.
The NASA mission scientist Richard Terrile said, “Put all those ingrediants on Earth, and you get life in a billion years.”
But “water” does not necessarily equate with “life”. We don’t even know exactly what life is yet, anyway.
When the Sun’s heat intensifies in the future, it may warm the frozen moons sufficiently to produce some lifeforms. Or not. Who knows?
Finding life on another planet would help restore to humans a lot of the dignity of which science has robbed them. It would mean life isn’t a freak phenomenon of asronomiacal improbability. And of course, INTELLIGENT alien life would mean conscious intelligence is not an accident, undermining the Gouldian argument.
I must say, Enceladus is a surpising candidate. Mars yes, but Enceladus? To parhrase a question that some Christians would ask, do Enceladeans require a supernatural saviour in Enceladean form?
At least you also have lots of natural cynicillin to protect you against all those infectious religion memes though. It’s just a shame so many people are apparently allergic to critical thinking.
Or maybe it would just mean that the occurrence of life is more probable than you have assumed it to be (and I say ‘assumed’ because I don’t see any math up there). But thinking in a parsimonious fashion is for scientists, and I don’t think I could live with myself if I robbed you of your dignity.
I didn’t assume that life’s origin is unlikely, I just meant to state that many hold this view. To propnents of this view, no amount of water, even if laced with fancy chemicals, will come alive on cue, and life’s origin is a feakish series of chemical events unique in the cosmos.
Science, not scientists, HAS certainly dehumanised and marginalised and de-centralised humans: the discoveries of Copernicus, Darwin, etc. The majority of people WANT to be arrogant, and believe we are the most important things.
One of the most depressing things about the last 300 years of science is the way it has tended to marginalise, even trivalise humans. This idea, that human life has no meaning outside that which humans themselves invest in it, has become the leitmotif of science. It may be a reason why so many ordinary people are turned off science (even though they live off the sciece education of others every time they use transport faster than horses, or computers, or modern medicines): science has, in a sense, alienated them from the universe in which they live.
Freeman Dyson said, “I do not feel like an alien in this universe. The universe in some sense knew we were coming.” If alien life of any description is discovered, then life and consciousness may be, in some sense, inevitable given enough time and the right conditions.
The search for life elsewhere in the universe is a search for ourselves – our significance and our place in the scheme of things: are we fortuitous freaks or expected products? The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
Well, if Arthur C. Clarke is to be believed, that should happen in about four years, when the Monolith aliens turn Jupiter into a second sun to warm Europa sufficiently for intelligent life to evolve.
Plumes of water! Dood! That’s not exciting? You wouldn’t even be alive today if not for plumes of water.
Which is to say, happy birthday, PZ. Do you count birthdays from your actual passage down the birth canal and emergence into the world, or do you do as I do, and celebrate your Conception Day as the beginning of life?
Actually, what they found was that, although there now appears to be water on one of Saturn’s moons, no other beverages are available there at the present time.
“Cyniclyn, the hormone of disillusionment.”
LOL, thank you PZ. When I first saw this on MSN of all places, it hooked me. Then I checked The BA site and learned the truth. Interesting how twisted things can get…… Especially on a slow news day.
Stupid Phucking Media Cretans: Check your goddamned facts before publishing……..OK? Now, if you don’t want to do that, the go back to work at Burger King. Idiots.
i don’t think the discovery of life elsewhere in the solar system — at least in the inner solar system — will carry the majesty it once would have. i mean, there’s evidence that Earth and Mars are a weakly coupled joint ecosystem, with estimates that microorganisms might have hitched a ride on meteor impact ejecta. in other words, panspermia is plausible, if unlikely.
Plumes of water on a frozen world can only mean one thing: Global warming. I wonder how the Cassini space probe did that!
I mean it must have been our fault. ;)
But it’s a pretty cool discovery. Those ‘tiger stripes’ on Enceladus look interesting too. They look greenish.
The brothers at the monastery wish to wish you a Happy Accident Day, PZ.
Shalom,
Bro. Bartleby
I knew that the US had been keeping a lid on the discovery of the monolith on the Mon since 1999…
Clarke has such a limited engineering imagination. why would Monolith aliens do such a thing?
I still think the most likely candidate for life in this system is Titan: – water-ice + hydrocarbons a-plenty.
It would probably “only” be single-celled, but ….
I get the impression no-one has been looking there …..
The other place for life would be under the ice-cap of Europa’s frozen ocean …..
Clarke has such a limited engineering imagination. why would Monolith aliens do such a thing?
Because they are inscrutable and beneficent.
“Science, not scientists, HAS certainly dehumanised and marginalised and de-centralised humans”
I agree on the decentralisation but not on the dehumanisation. Most scientists seems to feel that science puts us closer to nature. But in the mindset of some religions and others, who refuse to change from its ‘huminism’ (in analogy with animism), it’s the converse. Others outside the endeavour of science, like buddists, I think, accept gracefully the new knowledge to strengthen its humanism.
“there’s evidence that Earth and Mars are a weakly coupled joint ecosystem”
Coupled systems, yes, but coupled ecosystems remains to be seen, doesn’t it?
Hopefully we can distinguish common and separate birth places, by looking at the biochemistry. No, or different amino acids, genetic materials, et cetera.
“I still think the most likely candidate for life in this system is Titan: – water-ice + hydrocarbons a-plenty.”
I think the deal with Enceladus, apart from explaining the amount of oxygen found in the saturnian system, is that there is an nontrivial energy source that liquefies water and drives the jets right at the water. Apart from Earth, this is the first water source there this connection has been seen so far, I think.
Europe may have lowlevel energy sources only, so is not as interesting yet, under the assumption that more energy may mean more interesting water chemistry. But time is also a factor that speaks for your candidates, really. I agree that Enceladus is an extremely low probability for life.
Oh you cynics!
Plumes of water => intelligent life on other planets. How could you doubt such solid evidence? If you keep treading that slippery cynical slope, pretty soon you’ll be doubting the existence of Iraq’s WMD.
The existence of the plumes was first announced last year; what’s happened now is the appearance of the first round of peer-reviewed papers about them. I suppose it’s nice to see the big media blitz not jumping the gun on publication, though there’s always a strange deja vu quality to these things if you noticed the initial discovery.
“If you keep treading that slippery cynical slope, pretty soon you’ll be doubting the existence of Iraq’s WMD.”
Can’t help it, cyniclin is very powerful stuff!
“I suppose it’s nice to see the big media blitz not jumping the gun on publication”
I believe I saw some signs of distress from the current blitz somewhere on the behalf of the authors. I guess they don’t like the hyping. Imagine that!
“…switched on my skeptical gland and flooded my system with cyniclin, the hormone of disillusionment”
IIRC, cyniclin is secreted transiently from the skeptical medulla in response to preganglionic misanthropic nervous system activity. The skeptical cortex, regulated by pituitary skepticocorticotropin, secretes the steroid scientificone over longer time periods.
Surely the possibility of alien molluscoids from Saturn must stir some excitement in you. ;)
Long comment. Apologies to PZ:
Re comments above re ‘dehumanization’ and science.
‘Dehumanise’ isn’t a term that makes much sense to me here. We can ‘dehumanise’ humans by studying their origin?
I see. Does doing the same to fish ‘defish’ them? And we must be terribly careful what we do with porpoises. The potential for really bad puns is terrifying.
Semantic amusements aside, I’ve never had any respect whatsoever for such endlessly nebulous rhetorical claims about the allegedly deleterious effects on the human psyche of studying the natural world. Yes, studying the natural world tends to disabuse one of certain rather juvenile notions about how terribly important we are in some barely coherent grand scheme we ourselves imagined was real. But then, honestly, I think that scheme’s pretty hollow, anyway, really, and I don’t think that’s just because my personal impression is it makes considerably less sense than the plot of the average prime time sitcom.
I mean, what’s validating about being told you’re essentially a rat in some kind of bizarre moral maze dreamed up by an all-powerful invisible sky fairy who has decided for you the purpose of your existence, and, apparently, will grade you according to its own capricious whims at the end of term? What’s ‘humanizing’ about being told, essentially, this universe was created as a stage for you… and that’s the only reason you’re here… Oh, and the guy building the maze doesn’t like to be questioned, isn’t real interested in explaining or justifying himself, isn’t much interested in making any sense whatsoever, and generally is gonna smoke your ass if you’ve got the temerity to point this out to him? He might, however, be ‘merciful’… insofar as he’ll be slightly less psychotically arbitrary in your case, personally, if you grovel sufficiently before him.
That’s not ‘humanizing’, not in my view. That’s enslaving. Visit those kind of conditions on a child in your custody and you’d probably get a well-deserved visit from Children’s Aid in short order… and never mind what a mentally healthy adult would make of your treating them that way.
Contrast that with the view that, sure, teleology is a term that has no applicability whatsoever given what we know of how the world works, but the world does, apparently, follow some very consistent laws we can learn, bit by bit, and at bottom, there’s nothing arbitrary about it whatsoever. And oh, it would seem, that in a sense, we got where we got entirely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, bit by bit, base pair by base pair, peptide by peptide over billions of years. Sure, the fact that we’re now able to appreciate in some fashion how big is our universe isn’t anything we wished upon ourselves consciously–it’s an odd product or byproduct how our genes reacted to our environment over the last little while–but it’s still a very lovely thing–something we can now enjoy however we came by it.
Sure, this doesn’t give you nice, easy-to-follow prescription for what thou shalt do with thine life. But look at what it tells us we can do…
Which is, pretty much, anything at all. There’s no apocalypse coming (apart from one we ourselves might make) any time soon to render meaningless and destroy all we’ve done in this world. Sure, we each, individually are going to die… but the universe, at least, will endure for a good long time. I think a few more billion years is enough for me, anyway. And our species or its descendants just might as well endure for quite some time, depending on how well we play the hand we’ve got now. Our learning might endure some time longer, if we made this a priority.
Sure, too, we may be entirely alone. The occurrence of intelligent life elsewhere may be so rare a thing, we’re the only thing going right now. I personally doubt this, given the sheer scale of our universe, but honestly, if it’s true, look on the bright side:
If this is true, we’re it. We’re the only ones here who can write this down, work all this out, piece together how it is the stars shine, what happens when the photons they emit strike chlorophyll.
That’s not validating for you?
What more do you want? However common sentient life is, it’s not something you find everywhere. You’re human, you’re sentient, you’re rare, and you’re damned lucky. Go out, study, learn, enjoy, while you live.
And that’s my answer, too, in part, to the claim that the ‘idea, that human life has no meaning outside that which humans themselves invest in it, has become the leitmotif of science’.
The other part of my answer is this: that notion is a product of honest inquiry into our universe. Neither ‘science’ nor ‘scientists’ made it so, except by doing what they do: seeking the best explanations they can find as to how our world works. The fact that it is jarring to some is even less a part of ‘science’ proper so much as it is a product of the fact that there were institutions and traditions that taught otherwise, once… and in the complete absence of any particularly coherent reason to do so.
So why knock ‘science’ for this? There are others you might complain to: those who sold you the line that made mere truth so uncomfortably alien to you.
Finishing with that theme: it’s so often claimed that people are turned off science because it does not square properly with these ‘traditional humanizing myths’, as Russell put it.
I don’t know if this is true. Personally, I’d say if it is, the only response with any promise is just to keep doing what science does, but to do it better, and with more passion. To speak, finally, of the fresh air that brings vigor, and of the splendor of the great spaces that much more enthusiastically. There is much that is delightful about being human, being sentient. Learn to appreciate it, and you’ll have no more need of traditional myths, with its cranky, cobbled-together deities and its dismissive, belittling view of humanity. Learn to appreciate it, and I think you’ll find much more to love about this world.
“What more do you want? However common sentient life is, it’s not something you find everywhere. You’re human, you’re sentient, you’re rare, and you’re damned lucky. Go out, study, learn, enjoy, while you live.”
I couldn’t agree more.
By “dehumanise”, I wasn’t referring specifically to the human physical species, but to their conscious intelligence; I meant “if humans’ consciousness/intelligence is an accident of evolutionary history” might this not downgrade their importance in the scheme of things. Is consciousness an accident? Homo sapeins is certainly far from pre-ordained but isn’t the existence of intelligence that is able to probe the very laws of nature that gave rise to its existence, significant?
The world as revealed by science is certainly breathtaking and magnificent. But wouldn’t it be even more breathtaking and magnificent if we discovered that the laws of nature had rigged themselves in order to engineer their own self-knowledge (i.e. through us)?
Is our ability to probe the laws of nature significant? To us. But only to us. It’s so hard for our species to learn humility.
Our ability to ponder isn’t any more breathtaking or magnificent than other manifestations of nature. In terms of longevity, biomass and adaptation the universe is much more bacteriocentric than anthropocentric.
Right now I don’t think the evidence is good that the evolution our particular intelligence will count for much more than an extinction event driven by a single species and a very short entry in the history of life on Earth.
Plumes of water – are they staying that way for long? Or is there an atmosphere on this moon? As I recall, liquids only exist because of ambient pressure, so why is the water not boiling off as it jets into the air? (Or is it?)
I meant “if humans’ consciousness/intelligence is an accident of evolutionary history” might this not downgrade their importance in the scheme of things.
If? Where’s the if, here? And as to it ‘downgrading their importance’… ummm… downgrade from what?
I think that ‘from what’ is illuminating, here. If we go all the way back to the old myths, and postulate something itself conscious ordaining that consciousness shall be, my answer’s actually a resounding ‘no’. That presumption, that‘s the downgrade. Because if we’re just a conscious thing created by another conscious thing, we’re not unique in our consciousness. Nor are we particularly surprising. And that conscious entity, it really hasn’t come up with anything particularly new, has it?
Contrast, again, the notion that we’re it: the only thing around that can write all this down, the only thing that appreciates it in any sense whatsoever, even if our ability in that sense has its limitations. There’s nothing out there that made it so, and that makes us something entirely unique. Limited, frail, finite, mortal, sure, and certainly no creator of entire universes… but conscious, and alone in that respect, and thus about as remarkable a thing as you’ll find in the universe, nonetheless. Easily as cool as a pulsar, if you ask me, at least.
You can try to go a lot less far than anything so naive as a conscious creating entity, and suggest that the physical laws somehow make sentient life inevitable. I actually wouldn’t find this a particularly surprising result: it does look like life, at least, is pretty close to inevitable, and I’m not sure sentient life is so unlikely either, again, given the sheer scale of the universe.
This, I guess someone could argue, tends to make us sound a mite quotidien. How commonplace is still questionable, and is probably associated ultimately with a probability that’s awfully low, solar system per solar system. Calling us commonplace is still probably going to seem a bit of a stretch, in light of that number.
But again, why do you care? You’re human, you’ve got telescopes, microscopes, a universe to explore, and you’re here. If you find it somehow depressing that you’re ultimately not that an unlikely result of physical laws, I have to wonder about your expectations. What, you’re not the end result of creation? You weren’t planned by something else? It bothers you that your consciousness did not have to happen, in some sense?
It seems to me, if you say yeah, that bothers me, that’s a rather odd hangup to have.
And conversely, if you find it somehow ‘breathtaking’ that consciousness is so inevitable… ummm… well… okay, I guess that’s nice for you. But we’re getting awfully close to the weak anthropocentric principles and the confusions that abound there. Insofar as it’s unlikely, naturally, we’d be observing a universe where consciousness was less likely.
Incidentally, this is also pretty much my answer to ‘wouldn’t it be even more breathtaking and magnificent if we discovered that the laws of nature had rigged themselves in order to engineer their own self-knowledge (i.e. through us)?’. And that answer is: obviously, they couldn’t have ‘rigged themselves’ in any conscious way in the absence of consciousness… And though in a sense, consciousness probably is pretty close to inevitable, I can’t say I find that particularly breathtaking. I find that only rather unsurprising.
Keith: Saturn’s gravity probably plays a part, just like Jupiter’s gravity disturb’s Io’s surface….
Quantum theory gives prominence to the role of the observer in reality, so any discussion of the signifcance of consciousness is surely worth having. I don’t find anything about evolution or any science depressing, I just think if the idea that the universe arranged its own self-awareneess is neat, and a nice riposte to creationists who like to argue that evolution renders us worthless.
“Quantum theory gives prominence to the role of the observer in reality, so any discussion of the signifcance of consciousness is surely worth having.”
It does no such thing. It’s true, that the old Copenhagen interpretation did that, and that the new (‘done right’), which is somewhat popular, does too, but it is _not_ a consequence of QM as such.
There are several equally legitimate interpretations of QM, where several does not need a special observer. IMHO, they are therefore better suited.
Can we please all leave quantum mysticism at the door, with the other non necessary faith stuff?
Yes, the Copenhagen interpretation gives prominence, to the role of the observer. But what is the Copenhagen Interpretation an interpretation OF? Of quantum theory! So, YES, quantum theory DOES, in a very real sense, give prominence to the role of the observer in reality!
There are several equally legitimate interpretations, just like Darwinism mechanisms are supported by neutralism and genetic drift etc, but that doesn’t undermine the importance of the aforementioned interpretation.
I wasn’t implying the usual, stupid, boring old misunderstanding that some people have – conflating mysticism with evidence-based quantum theory (i.e. that quantum mechanics is hard to understand, and therefore must be mystical, a contention for which there is ZERO evidence). ALL modern interpretations of quantum theory tell us, at the very least, that ANY quantum entity is influenced in a deep and profound way by the observer, i.e. the act of observing it. We cannot observe nature at such scales from a “hide”. Observers are linked to reality in a deep and profund way. This has implications for nanotechnology, particle physics, and dozens of other undertakings. It is no more a mystical/religious idea, than Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is mystical/religious.
OF COURSE leave mysticism and faith-based interpretations at the door, when discussing such things. Quantum theory is by definition science, and mysticism/faith are by definition not science.
“ALL modern interpretations of quantum theory tell us, at the very least, that ANY quantum entity is influenced in a deep and profound way by the observer, i.e. the act of observing it. We cannot observe nature at such scales from a “hide”. Observers are linked to reality in a deep and profund way.”
I think you are trying to have it both ways.
You were saying that an observer was linked to consciousness. Now you seem to be saying that it is enough with any observer, such as the equipments that does most of our observations. They are responsible for the collapse of the wavefunction in the ‘Copenhagen done right’ interpretation.
But you are also making a more fundamental mistake, IMO. Many of the interpretations doesn’t need the observer to be an instrument. Decoherence for example lets the wavefunction decohere nicely if it’s interacting with any other part of the universe. That is if it pans out, AFAIK there are still some fundamental objections to it, and experiments are slow in making. But there are also ‘Consistent histories’ and other interpretations, that tells much the same story AFAIK.
I happen to think that the mentioned interaction would institute an observation, that is of the same type as usual outside QM. But nevertheless, it removes all uniqueness to the observer, and especially the importance for a conscious one.
The existence of these alternative interpretations completely undermines the importance of the claims of specialness of observers and consciousness, and in fact makes them ludicrous. Thats why I call them quantum mysticism, as apart from the mysteriousness of QM. They are a faulty retreat to dualism, as far as we know today.
BTW, since decoherence also can be coupled to ‘Copenhagen done right’ AFAIK, my mere Ockhams Razor type of objection to that interpretation would fall. It’s more parsimonius to abrogate special observers in lieu of the normal interactions as observers.
This interpretation makes the alternative of taking the existence of wavefunction as real supported. Theoretical physicists seems to prefer to think that, so why shouldn’t I?
“This interpretation makes the alternative of taking the existence of wavefunction as real supported.” The ‘Copenhagen done right’, that is.
“with any other part of the universe”
Technically, I think that is any other thermally equilibrated part of the universe.