Listen to the podcast. Then tell me where they are wrong and why. The two who gave the cast are Ph.D's, one in astronomy, one in astrophysics. One of them does research at Cal-tech. There is a 3rd with RTB, Ph.D. physics, who, though semi-retired, has been with JPL for decades - he has worked on many of the space shots, including Casini.

Who are you again?

edit:

This is just silly. Are you a dummy account for Max Raker?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile

Biggest, most hardcore facepalm evar lulz

You forgot arrogant. Max never admits he is wrong...never cites a source....he just expects us to take his word as gospel.

Hey, you got one right. What does an overview of the progression of scientific knowledge tell us, more than any one thing? That a paradigm 'so simple a child could see it' is prima facie insufficient to describe reality. To talk about 'common sense' in this context is plain silly.

You really associate this phrase with MR? That's 2 with no commonsense.

I didn't realise he'd flunked out of NotReady U - still, the world needs ditch-diggers too, eh?

Your sense is indeed very common.

Nobody would hire him.

Thanks. If you try hard you might find some of your own.

I have no idea if anybody but you listened to the podcast (I'm sure as hell not going to), but what you are saying is just wrong. Europa is considered the likeliest non Earth object to have life in our solar system and it's surface temperatures are like 100 K. No competent person can make any non trivial restrictions about where life can form on this new planet. The parts furthest away from the side facing the star could be the most likely if there is a sub surface ocean like on Europa.

Lol @ you posting those guys resumes as if they are huge authorities. Those are very normal for scientists and there are dozens of SMPers with equivalent (or better) accomplishments.

Every time you post here you prove my point. You have exactly zero understanding about anything we've ever discussed and your refusal to familiarize yourself with the subject matter but your willingness to blindly and self-righteously pontificate ad nauseum like some kind of expert is truly entertaining.

Lol wat? It's fine to just say you were wrong either because you got info from a bad source or because you didn't understand them. Nothing I wrote is controversial. Which part do you not agree with? Or if everything I wrote is correct, how is it possible to say that life can't exist on the dark side of this planet (if it has a subsurface ocean) given that life is possible on Europa?

And I obv am not an expert on this and never claimed to be. Most of what I know about this comes from the internet and popular level articles, but even just based on that it is pretty clear experts would find the things that you are saying to be totally ridiculous.

Here's RTB's analysis of Europa. I think there's some other stuff on their site about it as well.

http://www.reasons.org/oceans-under-ice

RTB doesn't deny the possibility of microbial life elsewhere in the universe. Their main interests are origin of life and possibility of advanced life. Their position is that the existence of extremophiles doesn't establish the possibility of those organisms originating in extreme conditions. They also said in their podcast that any comments about this new exoplanet, by them or anyone else, is sheer speculation because we know almost nothing about it.

There's a lot more in the podcast and tons more they have said over the years about habitable zones. When people say microbes may exist on planet or moon X they agree to the possibility but then question both the origin of any life at -279 F and, even given microbes, the possibility of advanced life.

All I've tried to do is provide some information about this from a Christian perspective. You jump in here, insulting people without a clue about them or their sources, belittling valid resumes (which at least they have, where's yours?), and demonstrating you have no concept of the points being made.

If you want to gain some credibility, try providing a substantive argument against a position. Insulting people as if that's some kind of evidence just continues to confirm that you're probably some junior high nitwit posing as a "bright".

I guess I don't have the right software to listen to it. I'll try to download and listen tomorrow.

No one important. I normally don't get involved in religious debates, but I'm very interested in most aspects of science.

Obviously, you didn't get what I meant. You're using yourself as a reference point to define what's extreme. A microbe living in a 300 degree acidic thermal vent, might wonder how anything could live in such an extreme environment of >8 atmospheres and >110 degrees.

I'm not going to debate this last point with you further, because I find it common among religious people to get caught up in their own sense of self importance. If you're convinced that humanity holds some special place in the overall scheme of things and that everything else should be referenced from a human center point outward, I'm not going to argue with you. There's no win in it for me. I'll listen to the podcast tomorrow.

You think the Wiki was written by self important religious nuts?

Yeah, you're Max.