Astrobiology as a Drug

More extreme doses are required
to keep the public addicted
to their false hopes

 

Astrobiology, the “science” invented in 1996 by splicing two unlike words together (biology and astronomy), after NASA imagineers thought they saw worms in a dead meteorite, is better called bio-astrology since it is a pseudoscience with zero evidence. Bio-astrologers are just as clueless as origin-of-lifers. The only difference is location: they think life magically emerges out of dead things on planets or moons beyond the Earth. But if chemical evolution on our ideal planet is impossible (source 1, source 2, source 3), it is even more unthinkable where conditions are far worse.

NASA scientists and other pushers must give out higher doses of their drug to keep the public addicted with their empty promises. Earlier this week, we showed one reporter making an absurd suggestion that life might have evolved in Saturn’s rings. It was not the only absurdity in a field known for its reckless extrapolations. Like drug pushers, bio-astrologers tease and titillate the unwary into addictive thoughts that life is easy to evolve.

To find life in the universe, look to deadly Venus (UC Riverside, 22 April 2024). If you like your life well done and crispy, yes, look to deadly Venus, where the surface temperature is hot enough to melt lead.

Though it also features a pressure cooker-like atmosphere that would instantly flatten a human, Earth and Venus share some similarities. They have roughly the same mass and radius. Given the proximity to that planet, it’s natural to wonder why Earth turned out so differently.

To her credit, reporter Julie Bernstein admits that Venus is “incapable of hosting life” (well, duh), but writes with the undertone of assuming that except for a few problems at Venus, other planets like it could be inhabited.

“If we think another planet has life on the surface, we might not ever know we’re wrong, and we’d be dreaming about a planet with life that doesn’t have it. We are only going to get that right by properly understanding the Earth-size planets we can visit, and Venus gives us that chance.”

This is a half-truth. Ruling out very-dead worlds does not mean that life exists on less-dead worlds. CEH stated 9 Jan 2020 that astrobiology could become scientific by dropping its imaginary scenarios and focusing on the factors that make Earth unique. It should change its name to “habitability science” or habitabiology, we suggested.

That’s not what UCR’s article is about. Bernstein, and the authors of a paper in Nature Astronomy she links to, assume that astrobiologists (who are all chemical evolutionists working within a paradigm of materialism), are the only ones to determine the limits to habitability. Once they know the limits, they think, they will have plenty of lively Venuses around other stars with which to keep the public addicted with empty promises like ‘there could be life there!’

How Pluto got its heart (University of Bern, 15 April 2024). From too hot to too cold, we move from Venus to Pluto. This press release appears disappointed that Pluto probably has no subsurface ocean, ruining the possibility of titillating the public with life scenarios. It’s a real heartbreak.

The previous theorized explanation was that Pluto, like several other planetary bodies in the outer Solar System, has a subsurface liquid water ocean. According to this previous explanation, Pluto’s icy crust would be thinner in the Sputnik Planitia region, causing the ocean to bulge there, and since liquid water is denser than ice, you would end up with a mass surplus that induces migration toward the equator.

However, the new study offers an alternative perspective. “In our simulations, all of Pluto’s primordial mantle is excavated by the impact, and as the impactor’s core material splats onto Pluto’s core, it creates a local mass excess that can explain the migration toward the equator without a subsurface ocean, or at most a very thin one,” explains Martin Jutzi.

The scientists, to their credit, do not speculate about life at Pluto, nor does the paper in Nature Astronomy. Pluto and Venus appear too extreme even for bio-astrology pushers.

Why there may be oceans inside dwarf planets beyond Pluto – and what this means for the likely abundance of life  (The Conversation, 4 April 2024). David Rothery takes his bio-astrology beyond Pluto into the region of trans-Neptunian objects. But alas, two he investigated (Eris and Makemake) don’t seem to qualify. “It is possible that other underground oceans could be similarly inhospitable. But so far, there’s still hope,” he ends. Hope for what? Hope for Darwin to be vindicated? Too late for that.

Saturn’s ‘Death Star’ moon Mimas may have gotten huge buried ocean from ringed planet’s powerful pull (Space.com, 15 April 2024). Astrobiologists generally love planets and moons with underground oceans, because it fits their “follow the water” assumption that where water is, life probably evolved (hydrobioscopy). The titillation about Mimas and life started in February (see 8 Feb 2024). Robert Lea gives readers another hit with a revelation from the spirit of Darwin hovering over a cold little pond:

The tiny moon has already redefined what ocean worlds can be because moons this small weren’t expected to host subsurface oceans. This prior discovery and the new revelation of how this ocean may have come to be could ultimately impact our search for life elsewhere in the solar system.

Orbital Eccentricity Led to Young Underground Ocean on Saturn Moon Mimas (Planetary Science Institute, 15 April 2024). Robert Lea at Space.com apparently got his fix at PSI, where the revelation emerged that an ocean at Mimas “could” mean life evolved there. PSI is proud of its astrobiology-as-a-drug propaganda campaign.

Leading generations astray with hype and hope

PSI scientists are involved in numerous NASA and international missions, the study of Mars and other planets, the Moon, asteroids, comets, interplanetary dust, impact physics, the origin of the Solar System, extra-solar planet formation, dynamics, the rise of life, and other areas of research. They conduct fieldwork on all continents around the world. They also are actively involved in science education and public outreach through school programs, children’s books, popular science books and art.

The rise of life: dead chemicals “give rise to” life (22 Aug 2023); that is the assumption. Do you get a rise out of that? Only if you take the drug.

The Current Drug of Choice: Enceladus

Astrobiologists love this little Saturnian moon because its underground ocean erupts its contents onto the surface, where (with funding), NASA and ESA could fly there to look. Trying keeps the addicts coming back for more. If they don’t find anything, there are plenty of other places to keep the dream alive for another fix.

Looking for Life on Enceladus: What Questions Should We Ask? (EoS, 8 May 2024). In the last two months, we found half a dozen articles about Enceladus as a habitat for life. This article is written by one of the most blatant pushers: “On icy ocean worlds, a research framework built around the theory of organic chemical evolution could surface deeper insights than a hunt limited to direct evidence of life,” begins Sarah Stanley in her upbeat commercial on possibility thinking.

Does life exist beyond Earth? One of the most compelling places to consider this possibility is Enceladus, a moon of Saturn with a liquid water ocean encased in a frozen shell. There, plumes of water spray from ice fractures into space, and spacecraft observations of these geysers suggest that Enceladus has all the chemical building blocks necessary for life.

Yes, it has a little bit of salt, some methane perhaps, and oh yes! Cyanide! (19 Dec 2023). What a lively place! Feel the euphoria.

Some of the other headlines rehash the propaganda:

‘Tiger stripes’ on Saturn’s moon Enceladus could reveal if its oceans are habitable (Robert Lea again at Space.com, 29 April 2024). Pusher Robert Lea begins, “We aim to continue to investigate ways we can use geophysical measurements to better understand the conditions which may enable life to form and evolve on Enceladus.”

Saturn’s ocean moon Enceladus is able to support life − my research team is working out how to detect extraterrestrial cells there (Fabian Klenner, U of Washington, The Conversation, 17 April 2024). He uses the word “life” 17 times simply because Enceladus has the following dead things: water, carbon, salt, and phosphorus. For a science experiment, we’ll give Klenner all these things in a can, sterilized. He can do whatever he wants with the can: shake it, heat it, cool it, kick it, take it to the space station, or whatever, as long as he doesn’t open it. We’ll even let him simulate the Enceladus geysers by letting him open the can into a larger sterile container. If something alive crawls out of it, then he may have some real science to talk about. Otherwise he is acting like a drug pusher to the public.

Enceladus Spills Its Guts through Strike–Slip Motion (Caltech, 29 April 2024). This is primarily an article about geology: how the Enceladus geysers opened up. But even Caltech had to insert some bio-astrology, and they did it four times:

• Samples of this plume material analyzed by NASA’s Cassini mission suggests that the chemical conditions believed to be necessary for life may exist in the ocean deep beneath Enceladus’s surface.
• …the plume contains elements like carbon and nitrogen, indicating that the subsurface ocean currently could harbor conditions favorable for life.
• “For life to evolve, the conditions for habitability have to be right for a long time, not just an instant,” Simons says.
• “Applying these methods at Enceladus should allow us to better understand the transport of material from the ocean to the surface, the thickness of the ice crust, and the long-term conditions which may enable life to form and evolve on Enceladus.”

That’s close to an overdose of the bio-astrology drug.

Life on Enceladus? Europe eyes astrobiology mission to Saturn ocean moon (Space.com, 31 March 2024). Keith Cooper tempts the reader with thoughts of how they will feel after a bio-astrology fix from thinking about Enceladus.

“The search for habitable conditions and for signatures of life in the solar system is challenging from a science and technology point of view, but very exciting,” said Martins in a press statement.

Cooper responded to a certain Cdr. Shepard, who thought it was a huge waste of money, with a big lie,

Neither Mars nor Enceladus is waste of “millions”, science costs billions and decades to go to outer system planets to usefully increase study astrobiology of our system. Both Mars and Enceladus are habitable, on Mars in the watery crust where early evolved life may still exist but its habitable history is interesting too!

No life has been found on Mars—not even a trace of “early life.”

Arrest the pushers. Make them do time, till those which remain hear, and fear, and henceforth commit no more any such pseudoscientific evil among you in the lab.

The guilty can get some reduction in sentence for turning their research into habitabiology, the study of the uniqueness of Earth for life. That’s clean (empirical, demonstrable, observable) science (9 Jan 2020).

Recommended Reading: The Miracle of Man by Michael Denton, 2022.