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Agreed. I think an unknown route to phosphine generation seems simpler and more likely than a biological explanation. YMMV. Occam's razor would therefore impl
by Jetroid 6y ago
Agreed.
I think an unknown route to phosphine generation seems simpler and more likely than a biological explanation. YMMV.
Occam's razor would therefore imply that this is not life.
- pdabbadabba 6y agoI think it's debatable, at best, whether Occam's razor would favor "an unknown process" over a known biological process. Especially when some research apparently has already been done, without success, to discover alternate processes. (And, by the way, the unknown process could also be biological!)
- TheDesolate0 6y agoyeah, but it's never aliens until it's aliens.
- appleiigs 6y agoWell... a biological process would be “rare” outside of earth, so if I was a betting man...
- Koshkin 6y agoMilky Way contains on the order of half a trillion star systems. Would having, say, a million planets carrying some form of life in our galaxy alone qualify as “rare”?
- JauntTrooper 6y agoWe also know that our solar system has exactly the right conditions needed for life.
- brianberns 6y agoNo, we know that our planet has the right conditions for life. The conditions on Venus are very different.
- addicted 6y agoThat would be rare. I also suspect 1 million is a massive underestimation.
- saberdancer 6y agoTo be fair, I wouldn't consider that rare. When we talk about life, we usually think in terms of are we alone. If there are a million planets with life, life isn't rare, regardless of what percentage of planets have life.
- DennisP 6y agoWould it? Seems to me we have no idea how rare it is. For all we know it might be quite common.
- appleiigs 6y agoYou're implying we don't have any information at all. We do. Even if you argue is it's limited, to our knowledge bio processes outside of earth has been zero. Whereas, non-bio chemical processes is greater than zero. So now people want to bet on that it's bio??
- rsynnott 6y agoI don’t think we can say that with any confidence.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Voloskaya 6y agoYou don't know if an unknown route to phosphine generation would be simpler and more likely, you would just find such an announcement more mundane, which you mistake for it being more plausible. Invoking Occam's razor to compare two unknowns makes about 0 sense.
- yreg 6y agoThere is research saying that such unknown phosphine generation is not a simple explanation at all. e.g. http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas-07957.html http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas... >The scientists found that phosphine has no significant false positives, meaning any detection of phosphine is a sure sign of life.