Still Not Enough Planets

For the record I do not believe the Bible is decisive about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.  Therefore I express no commitment to a personal position on this matter.  God may have His reasons for creating life elsewhere.  And if He has, it may well be outside of His purposes for humans to know anything about it.  He certainly has created other intelligent beings who we call angels.  But of their creation we know almost nothing.  Where I will make a bold commitment, however, is to state that the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe rests completely on the purposive and creative will of the everlasting God of the Holy Bible.  If, and only if, God wills it to be, is the existence of life a possibility anywhere in the universe, including right here on planet Earth.   

The recent discovery of seventeen billion earth-size planets in our own galaxy, according to an Associated Press article appearing in the Everett Herald on January 8, sounds at first so very impressive as to demolish my skeptical position on the possibility of life in outer space.  Especially considering the fact that there are conservatively well over 100 billion galaxies that have existed for almost 13 billion years!

Yet in the final analysis these numbers are woefully inadequate to the task of yielding life by purely naturalistic means.  While the newspaper article concedes that not all planets are “potentially habitable,” it does declare that “the sheer number of earth-sized planets is a welcome starting point in the search for worlds like our own.”  But this amounts to a gross overstatement.  The number of factors that are now understood by the scientific community as a whole to be required in order for advanced life to be viable is becoming increasingly large.  Consider the following partial list of the requirements:

Only 3^rd generation stars, which are aftermath of the explosions of previous generations of stars, are capable of producing “rocky,” that is, solid planets.

Elliptical or irregular galaxies do not produce 3^rd generation stars.  Only spiral galaxies (just 6% of the total galaxies), yield stars capable of producing “rocky” planets.

Spiral galaxies must be nearly symmetrical, unlike a bicycle tire overrun by a car.

Only 2% of 3^rd generation stars produce the sufficient list of elements for the existence of life.

That array must include carbon as the basis for life, plus almost the whole range of naturally occurring elements which our periodic table documents.  Uniquely, our own sun is the after-product of two nearly simultaneous explosions of neighboring supernovas.

For stability purposes alone, the parent star of a life-friendly planet must be just the right size.  Either a little too large or too little and that sun will be too erratic to initiate and maintain advanced life.  Our own sun is the most stable star astronomers have detected.

For the same reason as above, the parent star must be just the right age.

To be continued...