Talk:Extraterrestrial life

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Former good articleExtraterrestrial life was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
December 11, 2005Good article nomineeListed
July 16, 2009Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article


Extraterrestrial.[edit]

Accordind to the National Bord Of Inturnal-Trialstial, it is said that there is another - Lifeform in the (StarWarsWeaponsPrograms). All in all, It speaks. ( # 569 )000 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.153.48.25 (talk) 20:27, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 5 December 2018[edit]

In the article the reference to viruses is completely missing. Some evolutionary biologists see viruses as the precursor to cellular life (virus first hypothesis or fourth domain hypothesis), so that there are demands to search for viruses on other planets (for example Mars), not just cells. (see paper: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2018.1851). 2A02:810D:4AC0:2B90:F9B5:25CB:92B8:3CFC (talk) 08:28, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: - I agree that viruses should be mentioned (although not discussed too much per WP:NPOV as this is a minority viewpoint). However, you haven't made a specific request, so it's difficult to answer this request since you're the one who has the idea and not us. If you could post the text you'd like to have included here (with good sources) and say where you want it to go, I would be happy to add it. Feel free to post on my talk page to get my attention if you do this. A2soup (talk) 22:17, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

"Ceres has a thin water-based atmosphere"[edit]

Come on, are you serious? You can say sth similar about the Moon or planet Mercury. Those bodies just have exospheres, no thicker atmospheres that would be necessary for surface or atmospheric life. 212.186.15.191 (talk) 09:46, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Science Fiction - have you heard of it?[edit]

It is so ridiculous that not even in the See Also section
there is no mention of this being a major topic
of science fiction writing, art, movies, etc.
50.70.236.24 (talk) 06:28, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

It's in the lede, 3rd paragraph. What are you asking?--Dmol (talk) 06:47, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
I would add somewhere at the beginning of the article that there is no (or at least, insufficient) evidence of the existence of Extraterrestrial life. The Drake Equation is speculative. 2600:6C48:7006:200:B056:6066:1296:EF0B (talk) 22:17, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
The introduction already states such life is "hypothetical" and that the Drake equation is "speculative". Rowan Forest (talk) 23:12, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Recentism[edit]

@Brachney: Hello. Yes, the opinion by Green is WP:Recentism and has absolutely no informational value. The Mars 2020 rover will be launched next year and it will be focused on searching biosignatures. If the rover finds any, then NASA will make the announcement. That is the factual context. The headlines are click-bait that suggest they already found something that will be revealed soon. That is not accurate nor informational. In other words, his opinion that NASA is getting closer to discovery of life on Mars is only related to the readiness of the rover as the launch date approaches. Now, if what you find valuable in that news report is that he believes that humanity is not ready for ET, then it may be mentioned in that context at Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 16:26, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Earth just happens to have been lucky - enabling intelligent life to evolve[edit]

There is a minority opinion which maintains that our planet just happens to be extremely fortunate; i.e., advanced life developed only because Earth was blessed with a series of favourable astronomical and geological circumstances and events:

1. For example, compared with the size of its mother-planet, apart from the Pluto-Charon pair our moon is much bigger than all the other satellites in our Solar System. Because it is so massive, the moon's gravity ensures that Earth's axis of rotation does not undergo large fluctuations in its angle of inclination. Without that constraint, the variations in our surface temperature and in our climate would be insufferable, making it much more difficult for advanced life-forms to survive. In comparison, Mars only has two very tiny satellites, so its spin-axis is free to oscillate through a wide range of angles; thus, on a time-scale of millions of years Mars does not enjoy a stable climate.

2. Also helping to avoid extreme temperatures, is the fact that 70 percent of Earth's surface consists of oceans, seas and lakes. That water is of course indispensable for life, and at the same time it guarantees that our summers will not be scorchingly hot, and that our winters are not impossibly cold. No other planet in our solar system has large areas of water on its surface. At the same time, we can be thankful that our planet does not have too much water. Without large continental land-masses, advanced terrestrial life (including human beings) would not have evolved. By a lucky chance, we could say, our land-sea proportion happens to be a good one. (It is difficult to imagine sub-marine creatures becoming capable of inter-stellar travel).

3. In the Solar System, the orbits of most planets (including ours) are almost circular. Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets belonging to other stars, and it seems that, in general, their orbits are markedly elliptical. Configurations like those would not remain stable, because the varying gravitational pull of the largest planets would disrupt the orbits of the smaller ones (like ours).

Thus, advanced civilizations capable of rivalling ours are unlikely to be found close to our Solar System - perhaps not even in our own galaxy - thereby explaining the "Fermi Paradox".

There is only a very brief acknowledgement of this theory in the main article here: reference [190] cites Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, together with a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis#The_right_location_in_the_right_kind_of_galaxy

Other authors supporting this view include:

Paul Davies: The Eerie Silence: Searching for Ourselves in the Universe; (Wikipedia reference [1] links to an article which he wrote);

John Gribbin: Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet is Unique; (the main page's "Further Reading" section mentions an article written by him);

Max Tegmark: Our Mathematical Universe. --DLMcN (talk) 10:39, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

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