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Remember when most of the known exoplanets were hot Jupiter-like worlds, so it looked for a moment that perhaps those were the dominant type of planet, but then
by jl6 4y ago
Remember when most of the known exoplanets were hot Jupiter-like worlds, so it looked for a moment that perhaps those were the dominant type of planet, but then it became clear that this type of planet was commonly detected just because they were the only type of planet our techniques were capable of detecting?
Same, but for life. We’re probably only going to find the kind of life that has the characteristics and behaviors that we currently recognize as life, and is in a place we think of pointing our telescopes at, and our telescopes are a fine enough sieve to see.
- polishdude20 4y agoAt some point, if you stretch the definition of life too far, what's the point? Like, what's the point of saying a rock is alive? We've got them everywhere, we know they exist everywhere but we can't really do anything with that info. Knowing something is alive gives us a basis for interacting with it. Saying we found life on Mars isn't important because we found life there. It's important because it challenges or confirms our expectations about so many other things. It's kind of like shooting hoops. The hoop stays in the same place and we try and throw the ball into it from different angles. Each angle we can throw it in from teaches us something new. If you took that hoop and just decided that you get a point by moving the hoop to the ball instead, what does that actually help us with? Another way of saying it. If everyone is a superhero, then nobody is.