RE: Steem Basic Income Giveaway (Anyone out there?...)
The exo-planets were expected to be far fewer in total (rocky and gas giants), and the bias towards gas giants is quite possibly an artifact of our detection techniques which are not really fine enough to detect the smaller planets accurately, however, time will tell as we get better at that....
Agreed, the lottery example was a simplistic one... however, I do disagree with some assumptions that you make for your examples as well.
Yes, I agree that the temperature on a macroscopic scale is practically zero for increasing in the cooler to hotter direction... however, in this particular case, we aren't talking about that sort of thing. We are talking more along the lines of (given the right planet...) if some random chance of a few amino acids or otherwise forming in a soup of chemicals... and not if life would spring from the soup to a bacteria level. So, more along the lines of will a few of the molecules in your example increase in energy due to an odd collision... rather than a large scale temperature change?
Agreed that 1 in 10^50 is pretty improbable in the lifetime of the universe... IF you only attempt once every second. I would argue that you are rolling the dice orders of magnitudes greater than that, once per second is pretty damn slow! The other problem (in both your favour and mine... as it is unknown), is that we just don't know enough about the probabilities involved... orders of magnitude either way would make a huge difference!
Well the 1 in 10^50 was not one guy rolling a die every second. That's one attempt per second per particle estimated to exist in the universe. 1 in 10^50 isn't even an estimate of the probability of a planet existing that is capable of supporting life. It's just a benchmark where even Mr. Spock would say "it's impossible." The probability of a planet existing that is capable of supporting life is 1 in 10^282. Source: https://reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/tnrtb/2004/04/01/probability-for-life-on-earth
Every year, the probability goes down. As scientists discover new things that we never previously thought of. One small example, zinc is required for any sort of advanced life. But if you took the total amount of zinc on Earth and distributed evenly across the entire planet, Earth would be incapable of sustaining life.
We've gone from 1 in 10 planets supporting life (Drake, with no evidence) to 1 in 10^282. And every year I'm guessing that it will continue to go up. Even with billions and billions of stars with assuming billions of planets, we're looking at something so impossible that Earth should not have been able to have been created according to the laws of physics.
Thanks for the reply, I do find the source article that you quoted to be a little short on how the probabilities were arrived at.... and many of the probabilities seem to be linked. I'm not sure that just a simple multiplying of them all together (suggesting independence, and even with the fudge factor at the end) is a wise way of evaluating so many variables... I have the same problems with Drake as well, in that most of the variables are pretty much unknown quantities... but at least with Drake that is restricted to a few terms rather than a gigantic list of unknowns!
I'm not sure that the logic at the end is one that I would make... as it isn't quite completely supported (even by the probability argument that the writer makes). The seeming unlikeliness of the probability of life (as given by the author, not that I accept it yet...) and the obvious evidence of life (here on Earth) would suggest to me that we don't understand some of the terms and mechanism to explain the disparity... I wouldn't make the conclusion that there is a creator (I wouldn't definitely rule it out, but I wouldn't definitely accept it... small difference!).
With your zinc example, this is a clear case for mechanisms to slowly gather the materials required over time (or a divine creator if that is your preferred explaination!) Definitely, if zinc was to be spread evenly that would be weird... but like most things, on a smaller scale, it tends to clump. And in that clumpiness we see the potential for more clumping.... (lol, technical terms...)... in the same way that stars form, despite the large scale uniformity of the distribution of matter/energy... and in these clumpy stellar regions there are things that defy the "normal" state of affairs that are suggested by the most abstract levels of physics.
Again, the lack of detection of "Earth-like" exo-planets is an artifact of our limitations on detection. Large, massive objects are easier to detect due to the effect that they have on the light spectra on the host star. Small objects like the Earth are beyond our current ability to reliably detect... but getting closer!
Anyway, an interesting conversation and insight... I will have an extra SBI share for you!