Help? Strange earth source material?

[A Reasonable Rat]

I remember reading somewhere that the Earth is abnormal for its age, that it has traits of a much older planet, and as such, life may have started here quite a bit earlier than it should have. For this reason the article said that it was unlikely other planets would have any life forms that weren't many millions of years behind our development level.

I can't find any references to that now, I don't remember the details or where I read or saw this. Does anyone know anything about this?

[Oriet]

I've never heard anything like that. Also, how would we know if the Earth is abnormal for any of its traits (with the possible exception of developed life)? It's not exactly like we have many planets to study and compare with, especially with the incredibly vast amount of variables that have to be taken into account (like size, composition, magnetic fields, rotational period, number and sizes of moons, orbital eccentricity, distance from and type of star or stars, etc).

[A Reasonable Rat]

I THINK it had something to do with the minerals in the crust, the amount of iron or other elemental metals? Radioactivity maybe?

[Oriet]

We only have 4 terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) to compare for elements, radioactivity, and other factors (previously mentioned). 5 if you're being generous and count Ceres, which is a dwarf planet. That really tells us nothing for what's "normal" for a terrestrial type planet, as figuring out any kind of normality that accounts for different factors would require thousands of terrestrial planets to compare. And this is ignoring gas giants, moons, and other celestial bodies, all of which could also contain life of some kind, advanced or otherwise, which means we'd need to account for an even greater number of factors than from just focusing on terrestrial planets.

To throw in a little personal opinion on this, I also find it quite audacious to assume that Earth is somehow uniquely special in the cosmos. This does not mean I'm not receptive to the idea of such being the case, just that there would need to be some good evidence demonstrating such. Any paper that makes an assumption on this, one way or the other, before we have even the tiniest of a fraction of evidence one way or the other, immediately makes me suspicious of their methodology, as we simply lack said evidence.

[A Reasonable Rat]

I have no investments either way in this. I just remember reading it. It was part of an article talking about aliens. That somehow they had a method of predicting the state of other terrestrial planets in our galaxy (nowhere else), and had determined that Earth was somehow 'older' than typical for the age of the galaxy.

I don't know if any of it's true, but I want to find the article or wherever it took its information from.

[Vene]

Jun 10, 2011 15:30:21 GMT -5 A Reasonable Rat said:

For this reason the article said that it was unlikely other planets would have any life forms that weren't many millions of years behind our development level.

This makes no sense and it confuses and frightens me.

[tempus]

Jun 10, 2011 21:02:29 GMT -5 A Reasonable Rat said:

I have no investments either way in this. I just remember reading it. It was part of an article talking about aliens. That somehow they had a method of predicting the state of other terrestrial planets in our galaxy (nowhere else), and had determined that Earth was somehow 'older' than typical for the age of the galaxy.

I don't know if any of it's true, but I want to find the article or wherever it took its information from.

I don't think we have any documents written by aliens that predict the state of terrestrial planets in our galaxy. I don't think we have any documents written by aliens, period. In fact, I'm fairly close to 100% certain that we don't have any evidence that aliens either (a)DO or (b)DON'T exist, one way or another.

I'm pretty sure you're misremembering a science fiction story you read somewhere.

[Tiberius]

Jun 13, 2011 6:05:29 GMT -5 tempus said:

Jun 10, 2011 21:02:29 GMT -5 A Reasonable Rat said:

I have no investments either way in this. I just remember reading it. It was part of an article talking about aliens. That somehow they had a method of predicting the state of other terrestrial planets in our galaxy (nowhere else), and had determined that Earth was somehow 'older' than typical for the age of the galaxy.

I don't know if any of it's true, but I want to find the article or wherever it took its information from.

I don't think we have any documents written by aliens that predict the state of terrestrial planets in our galaxy. I don't think we have any documents written by aliens, period. In fact, I'm fairly close to 100% certain that we don't have any evidence that aliens either (a)DO or (b)DON'T exist, one way or another.

I'm pretty sure you're misremembering a science fiction story you read somewhere.

Nonono. You see, the Psychlos planted minerals in the crust to make the planet seem older to fool the reptilians into thinking humanity was just another sapient species that evolved on it's own rather than a tool to mine gold due to the fact that Psychlos cannot survive even trace amounts of radioactivity.

[A Reasonable Rat]

OKay okay, yes, I fail grammar.

The people who wrote the article invoked scientists who somehow had a method of predicting the state of other terrestrial planets in our galaxy. AND the article was about the probability of alien life.

Thanks for the sarcasm, may I have another?

[Oriet]

The problem about predicting the probability of alien life is figure out what constitutes that. We really have next to no clue what conditions self replicating molecules can form under, such as which elements, temperatures, amount and type of light, electromagnetic conditions, atmospheric composition, etc. Then of course is if you're looking for cellular, or multi cellular, life, or other types of composition complex life might be able to have that we haven't yet discovered or figured could even be a possibility. All of this is part of what makes searching for possible life on Mars so challenging, and Mars might as well be a conjoined twin as far as galactic scale is concerned.

Now, this doesn't mean we can't try searching for extrasolar terrestrial planets or for conditions on them similar to Earth (and how it was in the past) which we know did support the formation and continuance of life. I can actually find several papers dealing with such, all of which make a point about their suppositions to narrow such a search. What I cannot find, however, is anything suggesting, or even hinting, that Earth is "abnormal for its age, that it has traits of a much older planet, and as such, life may have started here quite a bit earlier than it should have."

I suppose I might not be able to find what you're looking for since I'm searching scholarly papers and not journal (or similar) articles about it, but I'll only trust the former as a reliable source on it.

[A Reasonable Rat]

Yeah, I'm not actually interested in the aliens, I was trying to find it because I wanted to know if there was any solid science behind the bit about Earth having the traits of an unusually old planet for this galaxy. damnmit, I wish I could remember more details, it was several years ago. :/ Oh well.

[Oriet]

Yeah, the problem with that is we only have three terrestrial planets to compare Earth with, and four data points aren't enough to make any kind of worthwhile prediction (other than "there's likely a lot more of them").