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Home , Cosmic pluralism, William Herschel

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This “plurality of worlds” and cosmic-abundance-of- Since the 17th century, we have known that the rota- life concept was popular in the 17th, 18th and 19th cen- tional period of Mars is approximately the same as the turies. It was promoted by such luminaries as Adams, Earth’s. Over time, improvements in the measurements Herschel, Huygens, Locke, and Newton. Camille Flam- grew along with the ideas of “cosmic plurality”. Hence, marion’s 1862 book specifically devoted to the topic, “La as it became clearer that a Mars day is very similar to an Pluralit´edes mondes habit´es” [14], went through 33 edi- Earth day, there was growing obsession with the question: tions in 21 years and includes statements such as “we who is there ?[24] This quest was also encouraged inhabit this world are only a few out of all the worlds”. by apparent evidence for water on the planet, including In 1837, popular astronomy author Reverend Thomas the famous canals [25] seen by Percival Lowell.[26] Thus Dick [15] went through a series of five arguments for life followed decades of appearing in books, motion on other worlds in the Solar System, leading to an esti- pictures and radio broadcasts.[27] mate that there were 21,894,974,404,480 inhabitants in More recently, many missions to Mars have focused on total [16]; he did not include the in his calculation, the search for evidence of biological activity. Although although he acknowledged that its surface area would al- there are continuing claims that such evidence has been low for a larger number of inhabitants than all of the found, the general consensus is that Mars might be bar- planetary bodies. However, had al- ren today. But since Mars is so similar to Earth, and ready stated that “we need not hesitate to admit that the logic is so unassailable, then if Mars has no life now, the sun is richly stored with inhabitants”.[17] Moreover, it must be that it had life at some other time. Hence Johann Bode [18], describing the inhabitants attention has focused on looking for evidence of water on of the Sun, stated: “Who would doubt their existence? ancient Mars. The most wise author of the world assigns an insect lodg- ing on a grain of sand and will certainly not permit . . . the great ball of the sun to be empty of creatures and still IV. WATER less of rational inhabitants who are ready gratefully to praise the author of life”. Our home planet is about 70% covered with water Herschel also talked about the Moon, stating in 1780 and swarming with living organisms (if not necessarily that there was a “great probability, not to say almost intelligent living organisms [28]). By the now-familiar absolute certainty, of her being inhabited”[19] and in logic, it is obvious that liquid water is necessary for the 1795 he added that “the analogies that have been men- development and sustainment of life. In other words: tioned are fully sufficient to establish the high probabil- • A ity of the moon’s being inhabited like the Earth”.[20] It The Earth has water. • B had already been known since the time of Galileo, that The Earth has life. • C the Moon possessed seas and volcanic craters. However, Therefore, where there is water there must be life. further evidence of life appeared in a series of articles “Habitability” then equates to the presence of H2O, published in The Sun newspaper in New York in 1835 not as ice or steam, but in its liquid form.[29] A planet [21], based on new observations by William Herschel’s in a habitable region is also referred to as being in the son John. These articles discuss how forests, fields and “Goldilocks Zone”.[30] beaches could be seen on the lunar surface, and with a But how do we know we are looking in the right places little more scrutiny, bisons and sheep, as well as bipedal for life? We simply defer to the so-called “streetlight ef- beavers, blue goats, unicorns and man-bats.[22] fect”, which states that usually the light has been placed Hence we see that, during the 19th century, the Solar in just the right place for you to be able to see the thing System was understood to be teeming with a great va- you are looking for. This follows the same exacting rules riety of living creatures, and presumably the rest of the of deduction that we have described above. Universe also. Following the usual logic, William Her- schel’s final conclusion was that “if are , and suns are inhabitable, we see at once what an extensive V. THE NEW LOGIC field for animation opens itself to our view”.[23] To further extend this line of reasoning, might we not III. MARS expect that bodies sharing further attributes with the Earth will have a higher chance of harbouring life? Our planet has several characteristics that make it spe- Proponents of the study of the biota of Mars are in cial. For example, Earth’s orbital inclination is very close good company, since they are following the same lines of to zero [31] – hence we should look for life on planets with reasoning as the champions of “cosmic plurality”, namely almost no orbital inclination. Perhaps we should always focus our attention on the third planet from the in • A Earth has life. any exoplanet system, or on the fifth largest planet? • B Mars is similar to Earth. Earth is also the greenest place in the Solar System, • C Therefore Mars has (or did have) life. suggesting that we should search for life on planets with 3 the same colour as the Earth.[32] Additionally we only does not start with an “E”, it has the same number of let- have a single, large moon, which may be beneficial for ters as “Earth”, making it another obvious target. More- life, [33] and hence we can ignore planets with too few or over, it starts with the same letter as “Terra”, the Latin too many . name for Earth.[34] A particularly fruitful search may be in any planetary Maybe we should concentrate on places with lots of systems we find that initially look like they have nine Na Cl [35], while avoiding those with almost none? [36] planets but turn out to have only eight. As a last suggestion, perhaps planets whose names mean However, we have only been considering the obvious “dirt” in one of their native languages are likely to host reasons that the Earth is special. Following the thinking life? [37] described earlier in this paper, it is clear that any char- acteristic similar to Earth’s should make life compulsory, We hope that some of these ideas [38] will be pur- according to pure logic. Hence other bodies whose names sued by future targeted exoplanet observations, as well also start with the letter “E” should be good bets. In as SETI searches. Following the same rigorous logic that fact this has already been confirmed in the Solar System, has been applied by centuries of researchers of extrater- where Europa and have been highlighted for restrial life, we hope that readers of this paper will come future searches for life. up with visionary ideas of their own.[39] Another popular place to look is Titan, and, while it

[1] mars.nasa.gov life appeared in “The Sun”. [2] www.esa.int/ [22] See Goodman M., 2008, “The Remarkable True Ac- [3] .jhuapl.edu count of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lu- [4] www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/ nar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York”, Basic [5] asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/firs/ Books, New York. [6] www.jpl.nasa.gov/habex/mission/ [23] Herschel W., 1795, Ibid., p. 68. [7] Or financial. [24] Bowie D., 1971. [8] We shouldn’t be distracted by the fact that neither ele- [25] The linear features were first spotted by the astronomer phants nor mice are actually always grey. Notwithstand- Giovanni Schiaparelli and the fever was stoked by a mis- ing, the logic is irrefutable. translation of his use of the Italian word “cannelloni”. [9] A common way to start explaining physics: “It’s a warm [26] It doesn’t take much imagination to consider the possi- summer evening in . . . ”, Cooper S., in bility that the canals of Lowell’s day had simply dried up “Big Bang Theory”, Ser. 3, Ep. 10. by the time of the first Mariner flights of the 1960s. [10] Often called the Father of . If he existed, that [27] For something involving all three media, see “Who’s Out is. There?”, 1973, NASA documentary. [11] “Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds”. [28] Python M., 1983, “And pray that there’s intelligent life [12] Normally we try to avoid discussing religion in our pa- somewhere out in space . . . ”. pers, but, Lord knows, it’s sometimes hard to avoid. [29] Which we call “water”. [13] He invented the kaleidoscope. Just saying. [30] Perhaps the name is because the porridge in some ver- [14] “The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds”. sions of the story is very watery. [15] Dick T., 1838, “Celestial scenery; or, The wonders of the [31] Some people claim that it’s exactly zero. planetary system displayed; illustrating the perfections [32] Seager S., et al., 2005, Astrobiol., 5, 372, “Vegetation’s of deity and a plurality of worlds”, Harper & brothers, Red Edge: A Possible Spectroscopic of Ex- New York, p. 305 and chapter IX. traterrestrial Plants”. [16] This number, nearly 22 trillion, has as its prime factors [33] Asimov I., 1973, “The Tragedy of the Moon”, Doubleday, 2, 5, 19, 10067 and 178859. Dr. Frolop is studying the New York. significance of this. [34] Five letters are still good. [17] See “The Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel”, 2013, [35] The salt of the Earth. Cambridge University Press; Herschel was one of the pre- [36] Since they’re like nothing on Earth. eminent astronomers of his day, being Court Astronomer [37] Sanchez, R. & Smith M., 2015, Ser. 2, Ep. 10. and Fellow of the Royal Society. [38] See some earlier papers with related ideas: Scott D., [18] The guy who fit the distances of the six known planets Frolop A., 2006, astro-ph/0604011, 2007, astro-ph/- using a function with five degrees of freedom. 0703783, 2008, arXiv:0803.4378, 2014, arXiv:1403.8145; [19] Herschel W., 1780, Phil. Trans. R. Soc., Vol. 70, “Astro- Ali Frolop, Ali and Frolov, arXiv:1504.00108; Frolop A., nomical Observations Relating to the Mountains of the Scott D., 2016, arXiv:1603.09703; Scott D., Frolop A., Moon”, p. 508. 2019, arXiv:1903.12412 [20] Herschel W., 1795, Phil. Trans. R. Soc., Vol. 85, “On the [39] Any extraterrestrial lifeforms reading this paper who Nature and Construction of the Sun and Fixed Stars”, want to point out that their planet is nothing like Earth, p. 66. should email the second author, Dr. Frolop. [21] Reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. It may be significant that these discussions of the abundance of