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"We have to figure out why our solar system turned out different from all the others." Not entirely—we have to understand statistics and the anthropic principl
by calinet6 13y ago
"We have to figure out why our solar system turned out different from all the others."
Not entirely—we have to understand statistics and the anthropic principle, which states "observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it." (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle). In other words, our situation appears "perfect" because it was one of the many random combinations available which produced an observer able to look at it. In other words, the fact that our solar system is so stable might just be a random anomaly, but the fact that it was so stable resulted in our existence, and therefore our contemplation of the fact.
As an analogy, winning the lottery is extremely rare—if you go and interview the person who won the lottery, they must think themselves very lucky. But on the grand scale, the probability of someone winning the lottery in the entire pool is exactly one. We know that a winner necessarily exists—just as we know that we, as winners of the cosmic lottery, necessarily exist. But that just tells us that someone won the lottery—something we already knew.
It may be that the lottery is rigged, and that there are some characteristics of our particular solar system which are amenable to life, and those things are definitely valuable to study and find out, so that we might be able to recognize other solar systems capable of supporting life in some way.
But by no means is our solar system special in any light: it's only special in that its particular conditions produced lifeforms able to observe it.
"We are a way for the cosmos to understand itself." - Carl Sagan
Another random question: are the planetary systems we've discovered similar to each other? If ours is significantly deviant from a significant clustering that would be pretty interesting. And of course, that's surely what the original findings were probably about.
- stephenhuey 13y agoUnlike a cash lottery for which we intend there to be a winner, winners of a cosmic lottery do not "necessarily" exist--a winner like us is not guaranteed, I mean.
- calinet6 13y agoNot guaranteed, no, but it has been verified experimentally.
- stephenhuey 13y agoAn experiment has verified that there is a cosmic lottery, and that the winner of a cosmic lottery gets a planet like ours?
- kpierre 13y ago> But by no means is our solar system special in any light: it's only special in that its particular conditions produced lifeforms able to observe it. sorry, but i don't understand what's the logic here? it's not special, but it's only very special in sustaining/producing life? isn't that more than enough to call it special? :-)
- calinet6 13y agoIt's special from our perspective, certainly. It's just not special in a cosmic sense: it just happened, and the universe produced something that could observe it. It could have happened anywhere, but it happened to happen on Earth. To me, that's the special part, and I find it fascinating and mind-blowing to think about.
- kpierre 13y agoi see your point, but i just find that 'not special in a cosmic sense' is scientifically meaningless and therefore irrelevant here
- pekk 13y agoNot in the requisite sense. Suppose that our existence depended on a purely random roll of a six-sided die coming up as 1. If the roll had come up anything else, we would not be here to reflect on it. But if it did come up as 1, that does not mean a mystical force guaranteed that it came up as 1. Our existence (whether likely or not) does not constitute evidence that our existence was guaranteed or predetermined. Low-probability events happen sometimes, their actually having happened once does not make them high-probability.
- kpierre 13y agoit seems like you, and the top comment are interpreting this news story as some attack on atheism? i don't see how that's even related. is that your preemptive strike against non-atheistic interpretation?
- 13y ago
- ajross 13y agoYou misinterpreted. The point of the article isn't to explore the epistemology of why or how we perceive ourselves to be "special". The point was that a few years ago we had a solid, broadly-agreed-upon scientific theory of planetary formation. And it was wrong. That's interesting for scientific reasons, not philosophical ones.
- calinet6 13y agoIn most articles investigating how our solar system or planet is different from the others, they take a pop-sci tone (which I may be reading too much into, for sure) about scientists studying why our special planet got this way. That is absolutely true to some degree—we want to find out what conditions support life, and why the Earth did end up how it did, and resulted in conditions stable enough and correct enough to allow life to evolve for millions of years essentially uninterrupted. It's the tone that I read into, and I have a tendency to look out for the earth-centric perspective, mainly because I find the alternative way to look at it basically mind-blowing and fascinating. That doesn't make study of the development of our solar system any less important, any more than the study of evolution makes biology less important. The study of planetary formation, the solar system, geology and every other related field are all extremely important to broadening and deepening our understanding of how the universe works. Understanding statistics and the anthropic principle just gives us a framework in which to view that knowledge that is even more true and complete, in my opinion.
- banachtarski 13y agoThis article definitely isn't communicating what you interpreted. Why are your comments about "most articles" relevant?
- asr 13y agoAgreed. For anyone else who routinely reads comments without reading the article, if this is still the top comment, I'd suggest you just go skim the article. (Aside: I'd guess it's because there are people like me, who often read comments before or without reading the article, that a well-written but not on-point comment like this can get upvoted. I wonder how you'd fix that?)