III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

H. Stellar Planetary Systems: A Stochastic Profusion of Galaxies, Solar Orrerys, and Habitable Zones

Rospars, Jean-Pierre. Terrestrial Biological Evolution and its Implication for SETI. Acta Astronautica. 67/11-12, 2010. In a special issue on Searching for Life Signatures, the French National Institute for Agricultural Research agronomist and director contends that revisions of earthly evolution to rightly perceive its parallel ascent of creatures and cognition can provide a better guide for imagining and encountering extraterrestrial intelligences. In so doing, five cases are made against the reign of pure contingency: that of unicity, optimality, convergences, physical constraints, and macroevolutionary trends. Nextly, four reasons are stated in favor of encephalization: constant recurrence, neural plasticity, complex behaviors, and cultural phenomena. These qualities taken altogether imply that sapient, tool-using humanoids ought to grace a plethora of earth-like neighbors.

A frequent opinion among biologists upholds that biological evolution is contingent and, consequently, that man's apparition is a random event of very small probability. We present various arguments against this view, based on chemistry, molecular biology, evolutionary convergences, the existence of physical constraints on the structure of living beings, and the evidence of acceleration in the evolution of many features, e.g. brain size, over geological times. Taken together they suggest that “laws” of evolution exist and may have a universal validity. (1361)

Sage, Leslie. Exoplanets. Nature. 513/327, 2014. An introduction to a special collection as this celestial spacescape of neighbor worlds increasingly beckons. A main paper is Advances in Exoplanet Science from Kepler by Jack Lissauer, Rebekah Dawson, and Scott Tremaine. See also Exoplanets by Adam Burrows and Geoffrey Marcy in PNAS. herein for a similar, concurrent survey.

Sandford, Emily, et al. On Planetary Systems as Ordered Sequences. arXiv:2105.09966. Astrophysicists ES, Cavendish Laboratory, UK and David Kipping, Columbia University, along with computer scientist Michael Collins, Columbia U. post an overview perception just now possible as myriad worlds are detected across the galaxy. After Gilbert & Fabrycky 2020, it is proposed that entire solar systems ought to be viewed as a unitary network arrangement due to geometric and mathematic patternings. We note this appreciation necessarily implies an intrinsic ecosmic reality.) A further advance is the use of computational linguistics via natural language processing to identify a textual quality. By this extension to planetary objects and host stars, a working analogy is achieved by way of word-like worlds and grammatical conventions that they may express. The paper explains how suitable this identity and correspondence appears to be for all manner and classifications of stellar forms and globular groupings. By this historic synthesis, as sunny stars and orbital orrerys may become the primary ecosmic formation they can take on semblance of an inscribed literary narrative. The 25 page contribution has been accepted by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A planetary system consists of a host star and one or more planets, arranged into a particular configuration. Here, we consider what information belongs to the configuration, or ordering, of 4286 Kepler planets in their 3277 planetary systems. First, we train a neural network model to predict the radius and period of a planet based on the properties of its host star and the radii and period of its neighbors. Second, we adapt a model used for unsupervised part-of-speech tagging in computational linguistics to investigate whether planets or planetary systems fall into natural categories with physically interpretable "grammatical rules." The model identifies two robust groups of planetary systems: (1) compact multi-planet systems and (2) systems around giant stars, although the latter group is strongly sculpted by the selection bias of the transit method. These results reinforce the idea that planetary systems are not random sequences -- instead, as a population, they contain predictable patterns that can provide insight into the formation and evolution of planetary systems. (Abstract)

Here, we have explored two avenues to understanding planetary systems as ordered sequences, in which the arrangement of individual planets contains information beyond that contained in the planets themselves. In other words, we have explored ways to understand planets in the context of their systems - their host star, sibling planets, and their position among them. (22)

Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, the endeavor draws upon linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, logic, philosophy, cognitive science, cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, anthropology and neuroscience. (Wikipedia)

Sasselov, Dimitar. How We Found Hundreds of Potential Earth-Like Planets. http://www.ted.com/talks/dimitar_sasselov_how_we_found_hundreds_of_potential_earth_like_planets. Circa 2102 the count is into many thousands. A July 2010 TED talk by the Harvard University astronomer and director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative who expands on findings by the Kepler Telescope within a novel, imaginative cosmic context. The Copernican revolution of earth orbiting the sun is often seen as starting a long demotion of human centrality that is now engulfed by an abysmal multiverse. But Sasselov reminds that in the 16th century it was conjectured that if home Earth circled a star, then the starry heavens ought to similarly be filled with companion worlds. This alternative view is at last fulfilled: “The galaxy is rich in small, Earth-like planets.” By these lights and vista, as his concluding quotes affirm, life and persons are actually of vast, unrealized importance and promise, if we can just save precious earth for such a creative destiny. See also Sasselov’s January 2012 book Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet.

The universe and life are both in space and time. If that was the age of the universe, then this is the age of life on Earth. Think about those oldest living things on Earth, but in a cosmic proportion. This is not insignificant. This is very significant. So life might be insignificant in size, but it is not insignificant in time. Life and the universe compare to each other like a child and a parent, parent and offspring.

So what does this tell us? This tells us that that insignificance paradigm that we somehow got to learn from the Copernican principle, it's all wrong. There is immense, powerful potential in life in this universe -- especially now that we know that places like the Earth are common. And that potential, that powerful potential, is also our potential, of you and me. And if we are to be stewards of our planet Earth and its biosphere, we'd better understand the cosmic significance and do something about it.

Scharf, Caleb. Extrasolar Planets and Astrobiology. Sausalito, CA: University Science Books, 2009. When a realm of celestial objects, first definitively viewed only in 1995, can merit an excellent, thorough textbook then a certain maturity has been reached. As Director of the Columbia University Astrobiology Center, Scharf dutifully covers all aspects of planetary composition, various atmospheres, habitable zones, prebiotic cosmochemistry, and so on. And it would seem that the implications of such a novel filling in of the cosmic neighborhood, similar to the finding of myriad galaxies in the 1920s and 1930s, has not yet registered. For it reveals a cosmos which by its innate nature spawns a prolific expanse of earth-like abodes for life to generate complex and conscious forms. In the final pages, Scharf indeed broaches a view quite at odds with the current mechanical model, in so many words that an organic genesis universe is being found with its own essence and destiny.

At the start of the book, we posited that life is a phenomenon that emerges in this Universe as naturally as physical “laws,” such as Newtonian gravity. It certainly seems that many of the pieces that go together to enable life as we know it are indeed inevitable. Star and planet formation, and complex carbon chemistry, are generic features of the cosmos, and these appear to be critical for life. (450)

Schneider, Jean, et al. The Far Future of Exoplanet Direct Characterization. Astrobiology. 10/1, 2010. Some 21 space scientists from across Europe and the U. S. look ahead to at last being able, conceivably, meet cousin creatures on other companion worlds.

We describe future steps in the direct characterization of habitable exoplanets subsequent to medium and large mission projects currently underway and investigate the benefits of spectroscopic and direct imaging approaches. We show that, after third- and fourth-generation missions have been conducted over the course of the next 100 years, a significant amount of time will lapse before we will have the capability to observe directly the morphology of extrasolar organisms. (Abstract, 121)

Seager, Sara. Exoplanet Atmospheres: Physical Processes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. The MIT astronomer provides the first book length treatment of a subject hardly imaginable until just now, via the epochal discovery of an organic cosmos filled with habitable worlds. A chapter with this title by the author and Drake Deming can be found in the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics (48/631, 2010).

Over the past twenty years, astronomers have identified hundreds of extrasolar planets--planets orbiting stars other than the sun. Recent research in this burgeoning field has made it possible to observe and measure the atmospheres of these exoplanets. This is the first textbook to describe the basic physical processes--including radiative transfer, molecular absorption, and chemical processes--common to all planetary atmospheres, as well as the transit, eclipse, and thermal phase variation observations that are unique to exoplanets. (Publisher website)

At a few special times in history, astronomy changed the way we see the universe. Hundreds of years ago, humanity believed that Earth was the center of everything – that the known planets and stars all revolved around Earth. In the late sixteenth century, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus presented his revolutionary new view of the universe, where the sun was the center, and Earth and the other planets all revolved around it. Gradually, science adopted this “Copernican” theory, but this was only the beginning. In the early twentieth century, astronomers concluded that there are galaxies other than our own Milky Way. Astronomers eventually recognized that our Sun is but one of hundreds of billions of stars in our Galaxy, and that our Galaxy is but one of upward of hundreds of billions of galaxies. Wen and if we find that other Earths are common and we see that some of them have signs of life, we will as last complete the Copernican Revolution – a final conceptual move of the Earth, and humanity, away from the center of the universe.” (Chapter, 668-669)

Seager, Sara. Exoplanet Habitability. Science. 340/577, 2013. The MIT astro-atmospheric researcher and spokeswoman for a prolific universe filled with exoworlds contends that “habitable zones” around a star wherein life can form, along with the wide range that planetary objects can take from small rocky to gas giants need be held in abeyance as we explore and learn about a stochastic, contingent cosmos.

If there is one important lesson from exoplanets, it is that anything is possible within the laws of physics and chemistry. Planets of almost all masses, sizes, and orbits have been detected (Fig. 1), illustrating not only the stochastic nature of planet formation but also a subsequent migration through the planetary disk from the planet’s place of origin. The huge diversity of exoplanets and the related anticipated variation in their atmospheres, in terms of mass and composition, have motivated a strong desire to revise the view of planetary habitability. In parallel, there is a growing acceptance that even in the future, the number of suitable planets accessible to detailed follow-up observations may be very small. (577)

Seager, Sara. Exoplanets Everywhere. Sky & Telescope. August, 2013. With the Kepler planet finder satellite now offline, yet fulfilling its promise beyond expectations, the MIT planetologist surveys this revolutionary universe dawning in our midst. “Putting all the results together, we’ve learned that, on average, every star should have at least one planet.” (19) A galactic cosmos is suddenly filled with suns orbited by objects of every possible variety, size, shape, and trajectory. Earthkind’s collaborative telescopic, instrumentation, and computer capabilities are lately able to image moons, atmospheres, and spectroscopic signs of organisms.

Seager, Sara. The Search for Habitable Planets with Biosignature Gases Framed by a ‘Biosignature Drake Equation.’. International Journal of Astrobiology. Online May, 2017. The MIT astrobiologist continues her frontier project to finesse ways to better evaluate the life-bearing state of myriad exoplanets which are constantly being found. Some 50 years on, the Drake equation (search Vakoch) is thus modified to express the degrees of atmospheric conductivity for living, evolutionary organisms.

The discovery of thousands of exoplanets in the last two decades has uncovered a wide diversity of planets that are very different from those in our own Solar System. Ideas for how to detect signs of life in the variety of planetary possibilities, by way of biosignature gases, are expanding, although they largely remain grounded in study of familiar gases produced by life on Earth and how they appear in Earth's spectrum as viewed as an exoplanet. What are the chances we will be able to observe and identify biosignature gases on exoplanets in the coming two decades? I review the status of the search for habitable planets and biosignature gases framed by a ‘Biosignature Drake Equation’. (Abstract)

Seager, Sara, ed. Exoplanets. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010. Synoptic chapter by leading contributors cover the many subjects of this grand revision as to what kind of celestial spacescape we persons might awaken to. But within a multiverse scheme that prohibits anything at all going on, with life and mind a merest patina, we have not begun to appreciate this discovery of a placental cosmos that innately seeds itself with myriad ovular worlds. An Introduction by Seager and Jack Lissauer gives a good entry to our Earth’s early amazement with a galaxy and cosmos seemingly filled with siblings and neighbors.

The discovery of exoplanets is arguably the greatest scientific revolution since the time of Copernicus. Simply stated, humanity now knows for the first time as a scientific fact: there actually are planets around other stars. (Richard Binzel, Space Sciences Series Editor)

Seager, Sara, organizer, moderator. The Next 40 Years of Exoplanets. http://seagerexoplanets.mit.edu/next40years.htm. Full video talks can be found here from this May 27, 2011 event at MIT where advocates and researchers waxed on this grand vista just opening for our intelligent, technological world. But all is not well in this endeavor. Pioneer finder Geoff Marcy denounced NASA cuts of future search projects, due much to a myopic, pinched bureaucracy. Anyway, speakers such as David Charbonneau, Vikki Meadows “A Futuristic Virtual Planetary Laboratory,” Shawn Murphy, Natalie Batalha, Dimitar Saselov “Life, the Universe, and Everything,” William Bains “New Life and New Civilizations,” and others extoled many promising pathways. The meeting was covered in Science for August 19, 2011 as “A Distant Glimpse of Alien Life?”

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