I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
.
That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
Maybe humanity is a rarity
April 17, 2008
That is, perhaps humanity is a rarity in the galaxy (and perhaps even the Universe), and perhaps extraterrestrial life is something we will never find — especially not intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Professor Andrew Watson has published his findings ["that humans evolved via a series of four "critical steps" and that the likelihood of all these occurring elsewhere is less than 0.01%."] in the academic journal Astrobiology.
“Complex life may be a rare phenomenon, observers rarer still,” he wrote.
We may have to discover tens of thousands of Earth-like planets before we find one which harbours sophisticated organisms, according to Professor Andrew Watson, from the University of East Anglia.
The reason is that the “habitable lifespan” of an Earth-like planet — estimated at five billion years — will rarely be long enough for complex life to evolve.
“We now believe that we evolved late in the Earth’s habitable period, and this suggests that our evolution is rather unlikely. In fact, the timing of events is consistent with it being very rare indeed,” he says.
“This has implications for our understanding of the likelihood of complex life and intelligence arising on any given planet.”
I never really understood the incredible tendency of some people to automatically assume that extraterrestrial life must exist; frankly, there is nothing to suggest that it does. Life is an amazingly complex thing, and I for one cannot believe that it arose wholly by chance — and if there was any intent behind its arising, then it is perfectly reasonable to believe that life on Earth may be unique in all of creation.
Equally, it might not be — after all, an artist may desire to compose many paintings. But if it’s out there, I very much doubt we’ll ever encounter it, especially when the odds of it being there are so astronomically low.
