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Re:New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced li... by onion2k on Tuesday June 11, 2019 @11:06PM (#20161402)
The study doesn't dispute that. Any planet with any conditions could host complex life that's beyond our understanding. That's not helpful in a search. If we're going to go looking for extraterrestrials then we need to narrow the search to parameters we can recognise, and looking for "life as we know it" seems a reasonable starting point.

Essentially the point is to be self-limiting. No one is saying "Planets outside of these parameters can't have complex life." but instead "Planets outside of these parameters could not give rise to what we know as complex life."

Re:New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced li... by marcosdumay on Tuesday June 11, 2019 @11:20PM (#20161483)
It's really pushing the envelope to assume that "life as we know it" consists on animals with a circulatory system that uses hemoglobin and blood with neutral PH.

Why would life depend on the low concentration that is not even toxic to all of the life here on Earth?

Re:New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced li... by onion2k on Tuesday June 11, 2019 @11:33PM (#20161560)
Why would life depend on the low concentration that is not even toxic to all of the life here on Earth?

It wouldn't, and the study isn't saying that it would.

The point is about narrowing the search space. An analogy would be guessing passwords. If I want to guess the passwords of the people I work with I can start with the assumption that it could be anything, which doesn't narrow the space and makes the task impossible, or I can start with the assumption that it'll be based on a dictionary word with some numbers because all my passwords are like that. I'll definitely miss some passwords that don't fit my assumption but I'm far more likely to get some positive results (assuming my way of generating a password is common in the universe.)

Re:New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced li... by mannykannot on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @10:11AM (#20164801)
Fair enough, but it would be counter-productive to have too restrictive a filter.

Take the CO criterion, for example. While it is reasonable to point out that CO may be present in high concentrations in many planetary atmospheres, at levels that would be toxic to life evolved on earth, one must consider that life might evolve in a way that tolerates or even exploits it. Oddly, the authors acknowledge this, yet, apparently without any counter-argument, still include CO as a probable show-stopper.

As the way to search for life beyond the solar system is to look at atmospheric composition, an alternative way to look at the 'CO problem' is to say that an abnormally low CO level on these planets might be a hint of life.

Re:New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced li... by kartickv on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @12:24AM (#20161765)
What about intelligent life? How much more does that narrow the parameters, and how many planets are estimated to exist that could support intelligent life as we know it?
Re:New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced li... by jonathankoren on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @12:46AM (#20161839)
Re:New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced li... by luc4sdreyer on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @04:06AM (#20162656)
Very interesting, I'm happy someone finally did a more statistically rigorous analysis of the Drake equation. Now I know where the aliens are hiding: in the long tail of an extremely skewed probability distribution!
Re:New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced li... by whatshisface on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @08:03AM (#20163653)
There are hundreds of those analyses and they all give a different answer.