Exoplanets

Added April 3, 2022

Cosmic Milestone: NASA Confirms 5,000 Exoplanets

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/cosmic-milestone-nasa-confirms-5000-exoplanets

"The count of confirmed exoplanets just ticked past the 5,000 mark, representing a 30-year journey of discovery led by NASA space telescopes."

"Not so long ago, we lived in a universe with only a small number of known planets, all of them orbiting our Sun. But a new raft of discoveries marks a scientific high point: More than 5,000 planets are now confirmed to exist beyond our solar system."

My Comments

Years ago I learned in grade school there are nine planets. In 2006, Pluto the outermost planet was demoted to dwarf planet.

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/ice-dwarf/en/

"Pluto is categorized as a dwarf planet. In 2006, Pluto was categorized with three other objects in the solar system that are about the same small size as Pluto: Ceres, Makemake and Eris. These objects, along with Pluto, are much smaller than the "other" planets."

Recently, Nasa confirmed 5,000 exoplanets.

Nasa: Solar System Exploration

"The IAU therefore resolves that planets and other bodies, except satellites, in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:"

"1. A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

"2. A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite."

"3. All other objects, except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".

On the same web page Nasa says, regarding exoplanets:

"As our knowledge deepens and expands, the more complex and intriguing the universe appears. Researchers have found hundreds of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, that reside outside our solar system; there may be billions of exoplanets in the Milky Way Galaxy alone, and some may be habitable (have conditions favorable to life). Whether our definitions of planet can be applied to these newly found objects remains to be seen."

Nasa confirmed exoplanets may not meet the IAU multi-part definition for planets in the solar system. When space scientists count local planets by one standard and count exoplanets by some other standard they are comparing apples and oranges.

Conclusion

In the same way Pluto was recategorized as a dwarf planet, astronomers should use a known standard and categorize exoplanets in the spirit of the deflated Pluto. Truth is the 5,000 confirmed exoplanets probably are not meeting the IAU requirements for planets.

Does it matter Nasa and other scientists are fudging the exaggerated numbers on the count of confirmed exoplanets? Maybe there are only a few dozen exoplanets that meet the IAU standard. Certainly the number 5,000 purportedly confirmed by the IAU definition is false.

"NASA Study: To Find an Extraterrestrial Civilization, Pollution Could Be the Solution", NASA, February 10, 2021

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/goddard/2021/technosignature

"If there’s an advanced extraterrestrial civilization inhabiting a nearby star system, we might be able to detect it using its own atmospheric pollution, according to new NASA research. The study looked at the presence of nitrogen dioxide gas (NO2), which on Earth is produced by burning fossil fuels but can also come from non-industrial sources such as biology, lightning, and volcanoes."

“On Earth, most of the nitrogen dioxide is emitted from human activity -- combustion processes such as vehicle emissions and fossil-fueled power plants,” said Ravi Kopparapu of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “In the lower atmosphere (about 10 to 15 kilometers or around 6.2 to 9.3 miles), NO2 from human activities dominate compared to non-human sources. Therefore, observing NO2 on a habitable planet could potentially indicate the presence of an industrialized civilization.” Kopparapu is lead author of a paper on this research accepted by the Astrophysical Journal and published online Tuesday, February 9 in arXiv.

"A possible indication of life, or biosignature, could be a combination of gases like oxygen and methane in the atmosphere. Similarly, a sign of technology on an exoplanet, called a technosignature, could be what’s considered pollution here on Earth -- the presence of a gas that’s released as a byproduct of a widespread industrial process, such as NO2."

My Comments

A biosignature can indicate a planet with lakes, forests, and perhaps no animal life, or jungles with a population of ET dinosaurs. Technosignatures are caused as side effects of industrial processes. For example, pollution released in the atmosphere when a car burns gasoline in an internal combustion engine.

NASA's project, to search for nitrogen dioxide gas (NO2) in the atmosphere of exoplanets appears to rely on an invalid assumption an alien planet will experience a long duration of industrial pollution.

Taking Earth as an example, humans might stop atmospheric pollution soon, or within decades. The time between the start of the human laissez faire Industrial Revolution (circa 1760) to now is approximately 260 years. If ET inhabitants on exoplanets cease polluting their environment after a short period of time, measured in an astronomical context, searching for indications of ETs' industrial wastes will become ineffective to gradually impossible as the ET pollution dissipates.

ETs may also be motivated to curtail their exposure to distant researchers who may want to use their exoplanet's industrial pollution as a technique for gathering SETI data.

See: Active SETI

Conclusion

Searching for technosignatures relies on an assumption that inadvertent effects of industrial processes will exist in an exoplanet for a much longer period of time than probably occurs.

Added October 31, 2021

Are We Alone in the Universe? NASA Calls for New Framework, NASA, October 27, 2021

"NASA scientists are encouraging the scientific community to establish a new framework that provides context for findings related to the search for life."

"ll of science is a process of asking questions, coming up with hypotheses, developing new methods to look for clues, and ruling out all alternative explanations. Any individual detection may not be completely explained by a biological process, and must be confirmed through follow-up measurements and independent investigations. Sometimes, there are problems with the instruments themselves."

"At the first step of the scale, “level 1,” scientists would report hints of a signature of life, such as a biologically relevant molecule. An example would be a future measurement of some molecule on Mars potentially related to life. Moving up to “level 2,” scientists would ensure that the detection was not influenced by the instruments having been contaminated on Earth. At “level 3” they would show how this biological signal is found in an analog environment, such as an ancient lakebed on Earth similar to the Perseverance rover’s landing site, Jezero Crater.

"To add evidence to the middle of the scale, scientists would supplement those initial detections with information about whether the environment could support life, and rule out non-biological sources."

Call for a framework for reporting evidence for life beyond Earth, Nature, October 27, 2021

"The question of whether we are alone in the Universe has been a source of wonder for humanity for millennia or more. Advances in planetary sciences, astronomy, biology and other fields now leave us poised, as never before, to address this question with scientific rigor. Numerous challenges confront this endeavor, including challenges of perception and communication."

"Evidence of life may be subtle or unfamiliar, and reveal itself only in stages, as one observing campaign informs the next. However, the search for such evidence is often framed as an all-or-nothing proposition: either a mission returns definitive evidence of life or it has fallen short of its objective. The binary nature of this framing poses a substantial risk to the overall endeavor by levying unrealistically high expectations on its initial stages."

My Comments

The new NASA framework is termed a search for life, not a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The framework is for exobiologists to report evidence of biological life outside of Earth. Intelligent abiotic robots presumably would be ignored by NASA. Ditto the UAPs buzzing US aircraft and military installations.

Here is NASA's definition of the 1st of 7 stages of discovery: "At the first step of the scale, “level 1,” scientists would report hints of a signature of life, such as a biologically relevant molecule. An example would be a future measurement of some molecule on Mars potentially related to life."

The level 2 "hints of a signature of life," is a large change from Dr. Carl Sagan's binary, extraordinary proof requirement. In my opinion, encouraging scientific scrutiny of lesser amounts of scientific evidence is a good idea.

Note: I added the section below because I saw in the Nature article an example of my SETI code.

A sample of my SETI code, described in many web pages of this SETI Nuggets website, is evidenced below.

I am totally aware my SETI code may incorrectly be interpreted as produced by an ordinary expression of end-of-word cryptographic letter frequencies. Similarly, I know poker probabilities are not cleanly applicable from the perspective of combinatorics.

However, based on the a priori rules I have applied in my data from my early SETI research to now, I have good reasons for being sure I discovered a SETI signal.

Perhaps a primary purpose, or a side effect, of my SETI code is to introduce a global mathematics test.

See: English Letter Frequency Counts.

My original intent was to prove the existence of a SETI signals in Time and Newsweek hardcopy magazines. Then after this HNS paper book was published, It Doesn't Take a Hero: The Autobiography of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf Paperback September 1, 1993, my goal was to show a SETI signal in that book. I can easily see in the HNS paperback book that it is chock full of SETI signals.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Take-Hero-Autobiography-Schwarzkopf/dp/0553563386

Conclusion

If the day comes that an exobiologist claims discovery of an organic molecule, say on Mars, the new 7-level scale will require at level 2 the elimination of many confounding variables. A discovery of some methane molecules on an exoplanet may have hundreds of confounding causes.

The image below is from page 2 of the Nature article. I added the highlighting of my SETI code.