Talk:Rare Earth hypothesis

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Rare Earth hypothesis was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 23, 2007	Good article nominee	Not listed

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Fact check.

Someone needs to fact check this as the "99% of stars are red dwarves" statistic conflicts with at least two other Wikipedia pages. 'fraid I don't have time or expertise tho.

There appear to be a lot of other facts in here that need checking too, or at least proper qualification of how certain they are. Despite recent advances we still know very little about what it takes for a planet to become Earthlike, stating that there must be this or that condition is probably inappropriate. Bryan 04:55, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

But surely the assumption that a whole series of improbable events are required to create an Earth-like planet is a premise of the Rare Earth hypothesis. Once you qualify this by saying these events are not necessarily so improbable, and may not all be required anyway, then you have created a different hypothesis - something like the Not Quite So Rare Earth hypothesis, perhaps. Having said that, the point that the Rare Earth hypothesis is based on assumptions rather than known facts should probably be stated more clearly in the intro. Gandalf61 20:25, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

I think it must be mentioned that the planet itself must have oceans in which life will be created. Because life can emerge only in liquids but not in gas (because molecules interact with each other pritty rearly) or hard state (because molecules do not interact at all). Also the planet must have a magnetic field to repel the radiation. See Mars for a good example - it has no magnetic field and the atmosphere and (eventualy) any water is blown off by the solar wind making it a desert planet.

Stellar Flares In Red Dwarfs

The page in the section discussing the problems with red dwarfs, fails to mention the fact that many if not most of them periodically undergo stellar flares, where they emit out hundreds of thousands of times more x-rays than they normally do. Such flares would bake any planet close enough to the star to support life. I don't know if this was mentioned in the book, but it's an additional factor.

Elephant in the room?

Just a driveby comment, but it seems that the Rare Earth equation doesn't take in the most obvious reasons, lifetime of space-faring/radio-emitting planets; that is, suicide. IMO our species is not going to last much longer (I could be wrong, but c'mon look around). And we are the only case we know of. No reason why most every other intelligent species doesn't evolve to the same quite-cranky-and-with-powerful-extermination-technology state. I get that this is not part of the equation as stated but I mean it's at least arguable that this's the most likely single factor. Surely there are good sources making this point and including it in the hypothesis, including it would seem a service to the reader.) Herostratus (talk) 23:14, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why can't we find evidence of alien civilizations? That's the Fermi paradox, and this is only one of the possible explanations. That article lists them all, including the one you said. Cambalachero (talk) 00:10, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it does it's pretty well hidden. The rare earth equation doesn't seem to address it. There's one factor that is "total lifespan of a planet" but that is the planet. The last factor is "low number of extinction events" but they appear to be talking about how many severe species dieoffs there are -- "the low number of such events the Earth has experienced since the Cambrian explosion may be unusual" doesn't seem to be talking about suicide. (The Drake Equation, in contrast, does factor in lifespan of the technological civilization.)

But OK, the people interested in this hypothesis apparently don't take suicide into consideration. I don't know if they specifically say "that is beyond our ability to factor in so we won't touch that" or if they just don't address it. Seems the latter since it's not mentioned in the article including the various criticisms.

Anyway, that is what struck me when I read the article, I figured that either the article was wrong or maybe the hypothesis was. Looks like its the latter. If nobody's pointed out this gaping hole in the hypothesis and its equation that would be singularly odd I would think, and if someone has it leaves the article incomplete if we don't include it. But maybe nobody has. Herostratus (talk) 05:27, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hidden? There's a whole section for the concept you proposed, Fermi paradox#It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself. It's even illustrated with the photo of an atomic explosion. Cambalachero (talk) 18:08, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the likelihood of existence of planets capable of supporting complex life. The question of whether and for how long advanced technological civilizations exist in the universe is covered elsewhere, such as Search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Donald Albury 16:01, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]