Occams' razor and extraterrestrial life.

[Aethon]

To paraphrase Occam : We will accept as the truth, the simplest explanation, that fits all the data. Wiki says : "...among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected."

It has been a good thing for science, but is crippling the search for extraterrestrial life, and in some ways science itself. Nothing we see will be explained as the actions of extraterrestrial life. As I stated in another recent post :

"When we look into space we see some pretty hard to explain, hard to understand, highly powerful things. Alien societies could be quite visible, if you know what to look for. Occam's razor tells us to accept the simplest explanation that fits all the data, and unfortunately at our current level of understanding, advanced extraterrestrial civilization isn't an acceptable explanation for anything we may see.

What happens to our science and our theories about the universe if we are mistaking visible alien action for natural processes occurring in the Universe."

I just read an article on Saturns' moon Titan in the Journal Icarus. I think you have to pay to read it so here's a summary on space.com :

http://www.space.com/26444-saturn-moon-titan-salty-ocean.html

So frustrating- here's my favorite part of the article :

"The new data could also provide some insight into Titan’s unique atmosphere, which is consistently around 5 percent methane. It is still a mystery how Titan maintains methane in its atmosphere since sunlight quickly breaks up the gas.

Scientists believe some kind of natural process must be cycling the methane into the atmosphere; from there, it falls back down to the surface as methane rain, similar to the water cycle on Earth. Since Titan’s surface is mostly frozen, researchers think any methane rising into the atmosphere must be coming from a few scattered unfrozen "hot spots."

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but I wonder what it's gonna take?!?

[Superfluous J]

It's gonna take extraordinary proof. Or mundane but obviously non-natural proof.

Like a series of signals sent to us that form a picture. Or a song. Or the Fibonacci Sequence even.

Even then, the "Aliens did it" crowd would need to work very hard to rule out lots of other possibilities.

Is this hurting the search for Extraterrestrial life? I don't think so. Tossing our hands in the air and saying "Musta been aliens" though would have done a lot of damage to science over the past 500 years.

[Aethon]

Agreed, but (as far as I know) methane producing bacteria don't send pictures, or sing songs.

Tossing our hands in the air and saying "Musta been aliens" though would have done a lot of damage to science over the past 500 years.

Agreed. Insert 'God' for aliens and it begins to sound like what christianity did to science during the dark ages.

[Tex_NL]

It's a good thing to apply Ockham's razor as much as possible when observing celestial phenomenon. When you have eliminated all other options, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

[Kryten]

When you have eliminated all other options, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Or there's an option you've missed, or there's an error with one of your eliminations. Be careful using logical advice from somebody that believed in fairies.

[vger]

Rather ironically, "Extraordinary" is vastly open to interpretation. What is extraordinary to one person is typical every day life to another.

[GoSlash27]

Unfortunately, "life" is a pretty huge assumption. Therefore Occam's razor would have us reject biologic origins of phenomena in favor of inorganic chemical interactions.

[RockoDyne]

The problem is people don't think using Occam's razor. Instead, people make logical conclusions based around existing prejudices, I suppose this case being what defines organic chemistry.

It might just be a cultural thing these days too. There seem to be people that are hoping to find a rock fall over on mars, just to say it was because an alien farted.

[K^2]

Titan should be very high on priority list for research. The conditions on that moon allow for a possibility of a life form that uses methane for solvent and catabolizes acetylene and hydrogen to produce methane. And we see that something is breaking down a hell of a lot of acetylene, releasing methane into atmosphere. It would be an extremely simple life form, limited by energy supply from evolving into anything complex, but it would be extraterrestrial life that's entirely distinct from anything on Earth. Even if we find life on Mars, for example, we'd need to spend a lot of time to convince ourselves that it's not cross-contamination with Earth. That life on Earth and Mars don't have the same origin. Titan environment is too different for this to be possible. We find life on Titan, and that's check and mate. It's the second data point. Two origins of life in the same star system would make it a statistical impossibility that universe isn't filled with life.

Of course, we might find nothing. We might find a sterile cold world with some natural mechanism for breaking down acetylene. Which would still be pretty cool, because no known naturally occurring catalysts allow for that sort of conversion rates at temperatures so low. But the very possibility that life is there, given what we would learn from it, makes it worth all the risks. We need another lander on that moon. If we are going to send a robotic mission past asteroid belt, Titan has to be the first choice.

[vger]

I hate to burst your bubble about Titan, but I have a feeling we'll be aiming at Europa's ocean first.

[p331083]

Considering we have yet to pick up a single anonymous radio single anyone in the universe, id say advanced life is insanely rare.

[K^2]

I hate to burst your bubble about Titan, but I have a feeling we'll be aiming at Europa's ocean first.

Which is silly, because Europa has no better odds of holding life, but even if we find some, it could still have the same origin as Terrestrial life. So mere existence of life on Europa would be fairly useless information. If you are going to put a lot of money on a long shot, might as well go with the one that gives you way better results, no?

Oh, and mission to Titan would be way cheaper, seeing how you wouldn't need to drill through a crap load of ice to get to the water. Titan's relatively easy to explore. The sort of equipment we've delivered to Mars would do fine.

[Brethern]

Considering we have yet to pick up a single anonymous radio single anyone in the universe, id say advanced life is insanely rare.

Why would we assume that advanced life would still be using radio signals?

Even at our tech level radio's have a few thousand down sides so wouldn't the first thing an advanced space faring culture do after realizing the drawbacks is design a new long range communication method?