Looking Upward Part Two - The Rare Earth, A Privileged Planet?

"Pale Blue Dot" is a photograph of planet Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles). In the photograph, Earth's apparent size is less than a pixel; the planet appears as a tiny dot against the vastness of space, among bands of sunlight scattered by the camera's optics.

Voyager 1 (still sending back data over 38 years after its launch) was initially expected to work only through the Saturn encounter. When the spacecraft passed the planet in 1980, Carl Sagan proposed the idea of the space probe taking one last picture of Earth. He pointed out that such a picture would not have much scientific value, as the Earth would appear too small for Voyager's cameras to make out any detail, but it could have been meaningful nevertheless as a perspective on our place in the universe.

In 1994, Sagan wrote a book titled after the photo, "Pale Blue Dot." Here is a quote from Sagan:

"To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." — Carl Sagan, speech at Cornell University, October 13, 1994

I agree with Sagan that it is "our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish" the earth, but I think he missed the point. He says because of our insignificance, we should be humble. I think we should be humbled that a Creator God would love us so much that He would share His handiwork with us and nurture and protect us in the vastness he made to sustain us.

Another premise of Sagan's book is that the Earth is just an insignificant bit of space fluff, lost in an extremely vast and expanding universe. He states that:

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

On the contrary, the fact that our planet is so "rare" in the cosmos leads me to believe that our existence can only be attributed to a Creator God; one who loves us - all of us - such that He would create the vast array of wonders as we now see in space. He did this not only to challenge us to learn and understand it to some degree, but to make it possible for our "pale blue dot" to exist at all as it does with its own array of wonders that support life as we know it. The Universe, with all of its expanse is necessary to allow our habitable planet to exist, and to be able to support His cherished creation on it.

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Do Other Planets Exist with Intelligent Life?
Or Are We The Only Ones Home?

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Now lets look at how rare our planet really is.

In 1961, Frank Drake proposed an equation to arrive at an estimate of the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. This was to stimulate scientific dialogue at a meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Called the Drake Equation, it is a probabilistic argument not intended to actually be solved as most of the factors can not be determined with any degree of accuracy. His equation was written as follows:

N   =   R∗   X   fp   X   ne   X   fl   X   fi   X   fc   X   fL

Where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible

and

R* = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
fL = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space

Although this equation was not intended to be calculated, it was supposed that the number "N" would be somewhat large and thus the SETI program had a good chance of finding another advanced civilization within our galaxy. This was the prevailing expectation for many years, even though SETI has not "made contact" as of yet.

In 2000, Peter Ward, a geologist and paleontologist, and Donald E. Brownlee, an astronomer and astrobiologist wrote a book entitled: "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe". In it they argue that the universe is fundamentally hostile to complex life and that while microbial life may be common in the universe, complex intelligent life, like that found on Earth, requires an exceptionally unlikely set of circumstances, and therefore complex life is likely to be extremely rare. The book basically expands on the Drake Equation to include additional factors that must be met for complex life to exist. Their formula looks like this:

N   =   N*   X   ne   X   fp   X   fpm   X   fg   X   fl   X   fi   X   fc   X   fm   X   fj   X   fme

Compared to the original Drake Equation, the new terms are:

N* = the number of stars in the Milky Way
fg = the fraction of stars in the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ)
fpm = the fraction of metal-rich planets (rocky surfaces)
fm = the fraction of planets with a large moon
fj = the fraction of systems with Jupiter-size planets
fme = the fraction of planets with a critically low number of mass extinction events

They also do not calculate "N" but based on their premise, it could be as low as 0 or 1. In the 2001 book "Life Everywhere" by David Darling, written largely in reply to "Rare Earth," Darling states:

"What matters is not whether there's anything unusual about the Earth; there's going to be something idiosyncratic about every planet in space. What matters is whether any of Earth's circumstances are not only unusual but also essential for complex life. So far we've seen nothing to suggest there is."

Three years later, something suggested just that.

In 2004, the book, "The Privileged Planet", by Guillermo Gonzalez, astrophysicist and proponent of intelligent design, and Jay Richards, an analytic philosopher and intelligent design advocate, took the Rare Earth formula even farther. They identified 20 finely tuned factors as required for a planet to have intelligent, technological life. Although it is not possible to set a value for every variable, when using 10% as the fraction for each (most are likely much smaller), the result is approximately 100,000 planets in the Universe that "could" support intelligent life. This is much, much smaller than the number of galaxies in the Universe, 100 trillion, such that only one galaxy in a billion would have such a planet.

The authors used most of the factors from the "Rare Earth" equation, with some being defined more precisely. They also introduced some new factors that required fine tuning to produce life, including - the presence of liquid water and carbon based molecules, steady plate tectonics and associated magnetic fields, a clear and proper atmosphere (high oxygen and low carbon dioxide), the right distance from the sun to support water in all three phases, the right size and type of sun to provide consistent heat and luminosity for billions of years, the right age in the formation of the Universe (reduced star formation and radiation), a stable circular orbit, and the right type of galaxy (able to be in the GHZ for an extended period of time).

But this was just the beginning.

In 1986, Reasons to Believe (reasons.org) was founded by Hugh Ross, a Canadian-born astrophysicist and creationist Christian apologist. Reasons mission is to demonstrate that "sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature."

They have since continued to expand on the Drake equation concept proposed in "The Privileged Planet." They have currently identified as many as 154 such finely tuned factors required for any life to exist on any planet. Even using just half of these factors, each at 50%, gives just 165 possible "earth-like" planets in the Universe. This is based on 100 trillion trillion stars in the Universe, each with 2.5 orbiting planets. Using all 154 parameters the chances of finding even one planet with life in the Universe is less than one in a billion trillion. To me, this shows that Genesis 1:2 (NIV) is correct:

"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

The Hebrew word for "hover" is "rachaph," which means to be moved by tender love, to cherish. God "cherished" the earth as the future home of His creation so much that He made sure that it had all of the "right conditions" to become that one "Privileged Planet" that He would send His only Son to live for three years and to die and rise again to save His creation from sin.

This exquisite fine-tuning of the Universe to allow for life as we know it seems to demonstrate such a tender care. If any of the 154 cosmology or nuclear parameters were changed even slightly we would not exist. It is extraordinarily improbable that all this came together through undirected, random, natural processes — it may, however, reflect hypernatural manipulation by a Creator-God. The conditions in our Universe really do seem to be uniquely suitable for life forms like ourselves, and perhaps even for any form of organic chemistry.

Physicist Paul Davies has observed:

“There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all... It seems as though somebody has fine tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe... The impression of design is overwhelming."

Psalm 19:1-2 (NIV) - The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.