What if we found an earthlike planet with no life?

If we discovered a planet which was very similar to ours ie, plenty of surface water, a breathable atmosphere, similar surface temperatures, plantlife and around the same age, BUT there was no biological life other thatn plantlife, what conclusion could we come to about it? Would it give further evidence to us being unique and possibly the creation of a supreme being?

Could it even be possible? Would it be inevitable that life would evolve on that planet in those conditions?

Thoughts please..

Well. By having plants - you have life.

I do think we will find alot of planets like this once we have the 'ability' to search many solar systems in great detail, at very fast speeds.

Uhm... (scratches head...confused)....Uhm. Well I never given this any thought before. I honestly would be shocked to come across an entire ecosystem of plants and no life what so ever. I mean... to the best of my knowledge at least bacterias would be needed for an ecosystem. On the other hand... the only system like that I know is earth so I really don't know that much

I think I'd really scratch my head and than think.... whooheee let's go explore.

Juliet

Or, what if we found a planet with all the ingredients to support life but there wasnt any, no plants or anything.

That would boost the ET started life theory.

Yeh ok.. for the sake of the post.. lets remove the plantlife lol. Oooooh now what? Would be strange eh?

Introduce plant and animal life. Name it Earth 2.0. Introduce humans and thoroughly document destruction. Scrap planet with tests of high-energy weapons.

Start searching for Earth 2.1.

Or, what if we found a planet with all the ingredients to support life but there wasnt any, no plants or anything.

That would boost the ET started life theory.

Um...what theory.

You are saying that if there was no life found in the universe it supports the idea that another race created humans?

But...wouldnt this other race count as 'life in the universe' ?

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
Introduce plant and animal life. Name it Earth 2.0. Introduce humans and thoroughly document destruction. Scrap planet with tests of high-energy weapons.

Start searching for Earth 2.1.

Interesting, but who knows, maybe this Earth we are living on is already version 10268, co-existing next to the other 2402 not-yet-destroyed Earth versions, and observed by the original Earth

Well that would definitely be strange. A whole earth-like planet with flora but no living organisms sounds wrong. Don't plants kind of exploit from other living things? Or do they only need water and soil? And isn't soil created through crap?;p

[edit on 18-8-2007 by ZikhaN]

If we found a planet with all the ingredients for life but no life on it we'd put the life there, then we'd assume it was entirely possible that visitors put life here in the first place. So I don't think we'd assume it was a supreme being, maybe a superior one.

Well there are 3 things necessary for life:

1) Hydrogen - THE most abundant element in the universe

2) Carbon - Another VERY common element

3) LIQUID water - the tricky one

With these 3 things, there WILL be life, of course finding liquid water is the toughy. This is why the search for liquid water throughout our own Solar System is such a big topic (Mars, Europa).

our leaders would probably take it for themselves in secret and just completely rape this world of slave labor and resources.

There would probably be a scramble to colonize it, if we have the capability at that time. I could see different governments and/or corporations running to claim resources.

Basically, we'd either settle it or leech off of it.

By the time people decide who should spread their DNA on that planet man would have made world war 4 and killed it self off over this planet so we end up with Earth as an ash plane and a plant world of nothing. Just a theory because we are doing the same to reach heaven with the worlds religions which will lead to a world war.

[edit on 18-8-2007 by The time lord]

i dont think its possible to find such a planet. Alot of the Oxygen comes from living organisms processing carbon dioxide & water. No other source produces it in the same amount to have a breathable atmosphere.

if we did find a planet like that i would be gutted. As it would mean even give ideal conditions its difficult for life to start

[edit on 18-8-2007 by yeti101]

reply to post by yeti101


What? Now you're bringing up a whole chicken and egg debate. How are things born without oxygen, so that they can create oxygen? Of course it's possible to find another planet out there like us, in fact I think it's more of a stretch to NOT find one if we had the universe at our disposal. How can you think that we the ONLY life bearing planet in the universe?

bigbert lol i dont think we are the only planet with life in the galaxy. Far from it

i think its unlikely we would find a planet with a breathable atmosphere WHICH HAS NO LIFE ON IT like the OP is proposing.

To produce a biosphere like our requires alot of photosythesis over many millions of years. What elese would produce & sustain a biosphere for that length of time?

[edit on 18-8-2007 by yeti101]

reply to post by yeti101


Gotcha, sorry I misunderstood what you were saying. And like I said, LIQUID water is the key. But you are absolutely correct; however the OP does say that the planet has plant life on it.

well i think its more likely we will find planets with advanced life (plants/animals) but no intelligent/sentiant life. If so i think we should move in and colonize asap.

what if we found a planet like earth that had primitive cave men types. should we just colonize anway. We would be able to take them easy.

[edit on 18-8-2007 by yeti101]

Future astronauts may actually find that in order to 'move into' a new ecosystem it is necessary to sterilize it.

Alien bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms are likely to be quite deadly to humans. It's unlikely that would could develop immunity to them.

It might be like the movie 'The Arrival' in which we'd go there and carefully set up a generator to turn the atmosphere into one with high oxygen content, which might kill off the native organisms if they were more suited to a low oxygen or even predominantly carbon dioxide one.

This happened on Earth several million years ago before life came out of the seas onto land.

So, unless the species evolved together, alien plant and animal life is likely to be quite hostile to humans.