Our Solar System Appears To Be Uniquely Capable Of Supporting Life

     Over 60 years ago the Drake Equation was created not to actually calculate the number of intelligent ET races in the Milky Way, but to "stimulate conversation" at the first meeting of SETI the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence in 1961. One of the claimed factors that would have resulted in intelligent life forming everywhere was that there would be other planetary systems like ours that had formed over the past 13 billion years of our Universe, and because people took the Drake Equation as something serious, countless science fiction franchises were formed and spun off, all based around the concept that life must have been created in many places just in our galaxy alone.

     The Drake Equation calculates the percent of stars in the Milky Way galaxy that are assumed to be class G stars, similar to our Sun, and then starts making wild assumptions. One key assumption is that our solar system must be typical, and that we would eventually find planetary systems like ours in the Milky Way. The problem is, when we launched the orbital Kepler Observatory in 2008 that was specifically designed to look for planets around distant stars and started looking at what turned out to be over 42,000 stars the size of our Sun, out of 2,000 planetary systems identified because they happened to be edge on and showed the planets in their orbital planes crossing in front of their stars, in total 10 Earth-sized planets were in what is commonly known as the, "Habitable Zone," or the, "Goldilocks Zone," in which water would be a liquid like it is on the Earth, if it existed. By calculating the number of Sun-like stars that were not edge-on, an estimate was made that 22% of all Sun-like stars would have Earth-like planets in the habitable zones. Sounds promising right? 

     The problem is that when surveying the number, size and distribution of the planets in the 2,000 edge on stars we couldn't find any match to our solar system, and in fact the most common form of planetary systems making up 80% of all identified planetary systems has only one planet, or if there is more than 1 planet they are typically small, rocky planets that are inside of the orbit of our Mercury, or in the case of a single planet, it is often just one gas giant like our Jupiter, again inside of the orbit of Mercury, which is called a, "Hot Jupiter," or, "hot gas giant."

     In fact, the thing that makes our solar system unique is that we have no planets inside of the orbit of Mercury, that we have both large gas and small rocky planets, and that we have a total of 8 planets. Only recently did we discover another planetary system with 8 planets, and in typical form they are all small rocky planets that are all inside of the orbit of Mercury, so again, no match to our solar system. Scientists ran computer simulations about the formation of our solar system. Why is it so different from every other known planetary system, and why do we have not 1 but 2 small rocky planets in the Goldilocks Zone, but no rocky planets inside of the orbit of Mercury? It turns out that one computer model explained the formation of our Solar System perfectly.

     Once they knew about the Hot Jupiters orbiting close to their stars, they plugged that into the equation and watched our solar system spin up and then Jupiter and Saturn flew into the inner solar system bringing other material with them. Before they arrived there were rocky worlds in our inner solar system like are typically found in the systems that have more than one planet. Like in other systems our Jupiter cleared the inner planets, driving them into the Sun, but instead of being captured near our Sun like in the one Hot Jupiter planetary system, Saturn had come along with Jupiter and drew Jupiter back out into the outer solar system where they had started. Over half of the resulting debris field they dragged with them out of the inner solar system got left in the Goldilocks Zone, and later the debris became our 4 rocky planets and the asteroid belt, with Mars and the Earth in the habitable zone where water can be a liquid, if it is present.

     Without Saturn this wouldn't have happened, and we can see that in the known galaxy, out of 2,000 Sun-like stars with planets, not a single one is a replica of our Solar System with 4 large gas giants in the outer solar system, 4 small rocky planets in the middle of the system, and no planets whatsoever in the inner solar system. And when they claim that 10 planets were found orbiting M class stars in the habitable zone by Kepler, they have no idea if water even exists in those planetary systems.

     Use of the term habitable zone is very misleading, using a new NASA satellite called TESS, NASA recently identified two additional Earth-sized planets that are orbiting their stars in what they still call the habitable zone. The problem with this is that one of them is a red dwarf and the other is a white dwarf, and the planets orbit so close that they are tidally locked to their stars like the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, with one side always facing the Earth. It is highly unlikely that life evolved on these planets at all, so it is extremely disingenuous to refer to them as being in the, "habitable zone," which inherently assumes that water exists there.

     So that is a total of 12 Earth-sized planets found in the so-called Goldilocks Zones of their stars, but there is nothing to indicate that water would even be present on any of them. So even if 22% of Sun-like stars have Earth-sized planets in their so-called habitable zones, they are almost certainly redundant with the 2,000 other planetary systems that we are aware of, and any claims that this should indicate life exists on any of these planets is nothing more than wishful thinking left over from the Drake Equation.

     The Universe is 13 billion years old, and our solar system was spun up out of the debris field left over from a much larger star that existed in this space that went supernova, and it was spun up out of the debris field of another star that preceded it that also went supernova. A supernova is required just to create elements like carbon and oxygen, and to have all of the heavier elements in the periodic table requires 2 supernovas, one after another. Because only 1% of stars are large enough to go supernova, only 1% of stars make the carbon for carbon-based lifeforms, and make the oxygen necessary for H20 or water to exist in the next planetary system that forms, meaning 99% of planetary systems don't have oxygen and so can't have water, but the use of the term habitable zone assumes that liquid water is everywhere. Then it is a subsection of that 1% that has enough mass to go supernova a second time, and apparently we are the only planetary system that ever formed a class G yellow star with enough mass left over for 4 gas giants and 4 small rocky planets, plus the original rocky planets that we had in the inner solar system 5 billion years ago. 

     The Drake Equation also assumed that intelligent life would have evolved long ago, and possibly could have outlived their stars. But in our case from what we can see it took 2 supernovas and about 8 billion years just to build the periodic table of the elements, and then the last 5 billion years were spent forming our Solar System, making the Earth, and evolving from primordial slime to the life we see on Earth today, and we only achieved high technology recently, meaning it took all 13 billion years of the Universe just to develop Spaceflight here in the last century. While stars capable of going supernova make up only 1% of all stars, it is a very, very special sized star that is capable of going supernova, forming back up into another star that is also capable of going supernova, and then forming up a third time into a star like our Sun with enough leftover gas to form multiple gas giants planets, two of which clear the inner system, leave debris in the Goldilocks Zone, and then return as a pair to the outer system. So special that it appears to have only happened once, here in our solar system. 

     In general, the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach that life exists only on Earth, and since the Drake Equation was created and people took it seriously, science has opposed religion and most people assumed that the Bible was wrong, that life was not created only here on Earth, and that science would eventually prove this to be true. But now 60 years later with the planets around 2,000 Sun-like stars having been studied we can say that as far as we know our Solar System is utterly unique, and that it appears to be the only place that life could have ever formed, due to 2 supernovas and some quirk about Saturn pulling Jupiter away from the Sun, which created a second generation of rocky planets in our third generation planetary system, leaving us with no inner planets but with 2 rocky planets in the Goldilocks Zone, and with the full periodic table of the elements.

     There are no planetary systems that match our own, water exists in only 1% of planetary systems, and it took 13 billion years just for us to develop Spaceflight, so in many ways the Drake Equation is so wrong that it should be retired completely, and we should all just acknowledge that religion was right and that science was wrong. There now appears to be little chance that life could have ever evolved anywhere else outside of our solar system, and so we can score this one Religion 1, Science 0.

     I grew up on science fiction, reading it, watching it, and I have always assumed that there would be aliens using something like wormholes to move around the Universe. Well the Universe just got a whole lot smaller, and a whole lot emptier for me all at once. I am very pragmatic and empirical, and I love the scientific method. So when the scientific method says that science is wrong, and when we can't find a single duplicate or even similar planetary system to ours out of 2,000 Sun-like stars surveyed that did have planets, It turns out that the Drake Equation was nothing more than science fiction in the first place, and that in the entire Universe life may only ever have evolved here in our unique solar system in the Goldilocks Zone on Earth, and possibly in the past on Mars.

     Does this eliminate the possibility of reptilian aliens, gray aliens, or the Anunnaki? No, because the deepest levels of conspiracy theory say that the reptilian aliens actually evolved here on Earth a long time ago and went underground, and that they genetically engineered the gray aliens using bits of plants and people. And the Anunnaki are said to reside on the planet Nibiru which supposedly has a very long elliptical orbit, but is still supposed to be a part of our solar system. So while life may have evolved only here in our solar system there still could be aliens, just not from other stars. And at this point flying saucers and flying triangles may all just be cutting edge military technology owned and run by the US Government, or possibly by hypothetical reptilian or gray aliens, or by the Anunnaki.