Related papers: Better Than Earth
Leibniz considered the notion of the 'empty physical space' to be a meaningless abstraction, and he held firmly to the view that the only significant thing was the set of relationships between 'objects', whatever these 'objects' might be.…
Habitability varies dramatically with location and time in the universe. This was recognized centuries ago, but it was only in the last few decades that astronomers began to systematize the study of habitability. The introduction of the…
Recently, many Earth-sized planets have been discovered around stars other than the Sun that might possess appropriate conditions for life. The development of theoretical methods for assessing the putative habitability of these worlds is of…
The astrobiology is an interdisciplinary science, combining the methods and the means of physics, biology, chemistry and astronomy. Its main purpose is to find out if the exoplanets are habitable and if so, to confirm life on them. The…
Exoplanets, or planets outside our own solar system, have long been of interest to astronomers; however, only in the past two decades have scientists had the technology to characterize and study planets so far away from us. With advanced…
This paper presents the first structured evaluation of Solar System bodies hypothetically relocated to Earth orbit (1 AU) to assess their potential as alternative habitats. Using comparative criteria, planetary size and gravity, atmospheric…
Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by…
The information-theoretic point of view proposed by Leibniz in 1686 and developed by algorithmic information theory (AIT) suggests that mathematics and physics are not that different. This will be a first-person account of some doubts and…
This article explores the following methodological principle for theory construction in physics: if an ontological theory predicts two scenarios that are ontologically distinct but empirically indiscernible, then this theory should be…
Numerous telescopes and techniques have been used to find and study extrasolar planets, but none has been more successful than NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler has discovered the majority of known exoplanets, the smallest planets to…
In the seminal essay, "On the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences," physicist Eugene Wigner poses a fundamental philosophical question concerning the relationship between a physical system and our capacity to…
We present a comprehensive multivariate statistical analysis of 517 exoplanets from the NASA Exoplanet Archive to identify potentially habitable worlds and quantify detection bias in current surveys. Using eight key parameters (planetary…
The German-born astronomer Jacob K. E. Halm (1866-1944) wrote in 1935 two papers on quite different subjects, one an astrophysically based argument for the expanding Earth and the other a no less original attempt to explain the galactic…
The discovery of a truly habitable exoplanet would be one of the most important events in the history of science. However, the nature and distribution of habitable environments on exoplanets is currently unconstrained. The exoplanet…
Discovering other worlds the size of our own has been a long-held dream of astronomers. The transiting planets Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, which belong to a multi-planet system, hold a very special place among the many groundbreaking…
Eugene Wigner famously argued for the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" for describing physics and other natural sciences in his 1960 essay. That essay has now led to some 55 years of (sometimes anguished) soul searching ---…
Terrestrial planets in temperate orbits around very low mass stars are likely to have evolved in a very different way than solar system planets, and in particular Earth. However, because these are the first planets that are and will be…
Albert Einstein postulated the equivalence of energy and mass, developed the theory of special relativity, explained the photoelectric effect, and described Brownian motion in five papers, all published in 1905, 100 years ago. With these…
With his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein produced a revolution in our conception of reality and of the knowledge we can obtain from it. This revolution can be viewed from philosophy as leading to one of the great paradigms in…
If the origin of life is rare and sensitive to the local conditions at the site of its emergence, then, using the principle of mediocrity within a multiverse framework, we may expect to find ourselves in a universe that is better than usual…