There may be no life outside earth, say scientists

By Ubaid Mughal Apr 28th, 2012 ( 1 Comment )

London: A new study claimed that the perception that there is life outside earth in the billions of planets in our Milky Way galaxy may just be a wishful thinking.

Two Princeton scientists used what’s known as “Bayesian analysis”—a technique that “boils down” ideas to the actual data, as opposed to scientists’ own ideas about what ‘should’ be true.

Two Princeton scientists suggested that it was a possibility that Earth is a one-off exception where life exists, and on the average alien planet, the chances of life are very low indeed.

“Fossil evidence suggests that life began very early in Earth’s history and that has led people to determine that life might be quite common in the universe because it happened so quickly here, but the knowledge about life on Earth simply doesn’t reveal much about the actual probability of life on other planets,” the Daily Mail quoted Edwin Turner and David Spiegel as saying.

“Information about that probability comes largely from the assumptions scientists have going in, and some of the most optimistic conclusions have been based almost entirely on those assumptions.

“If scientists start out assuming that the chances of life existing on another planet as it does on Earth are large, then their results will be presented in a way that supports that likelihood.

“Our work is not a judgment, but an analysis of existing data that suggests the debate about the existence of life on other planets is framed largely by the prior assumptions of the participants,” they said.

Deep-space satellites and telescope projects have recently identified various planets that resemble Earth in their size and composition, and are within their star’s habitable zone, the optimal distance for having liquid water.

“When we use a mathematical prior that truly represents prior ignorance, the data of early life on Earth becomes ambiguous,” Spiegel said.