Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Life origination beyond planets

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

Life origination beyond planets

The result was no consensus. (non-admin closure)‎ 21 Andromedae (talk) 19:31, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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This is WP:FRINGE of the highest magnitude. I mean, come on, extraterrestrial life in stars? I may finish the deletion proposal right here... but, just in case, let's go on.

Life in the sun? A 1774 rant may have a place elsewhere, such as in History of the extraterrestrial life debate, but only if placed in context (meaning, detailing the notions held at the time that allowed it, and the way they were eventually refuted), or contrasted with the actual knowledge we have of the sun that forbids such nonsense.

Life within other stars? According to Science alert, yes, it may be possible... if a proposed arrangement of particles can actually exist, and if we change the definition of life. Neat. But what if we don't? What if we stick to our current definition of life (which is flexible enough already) and the chemistry that we know for sure exists? Then this is just bullshit, a sensationalist clickbait article... and according to their article, Science Alert is already known for sensationalism.

Life elsewhere. I can't check the source (I already passed the quota of free articles per month), but the way it is written, it seems as just an Argument from authority. Has Drake provided an idea of how or why life on neutron stars may be possible? Or was it just a hasty generalization or a wishful-thinking argument?

Not even the "In fiction" section is salvageable. Just "some works of science fiction", with no specific examples. And we follow the link, just 2 obscure novels (life on neutron star systems does not count, and neither does "Star-Trekking" around neutron stars). Even for TV Tropes that would not be enough. The idea of life on stars is so absurd that not even the suspension of disbelief required for works of fiction can cope with it. Cambalachero (talk) 14:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

- A 1774 rant may have a place elsewhere - this 1774 rant was noted by a notable modern astronomer. --Altenmann >talk 16:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Life within other stars? According to Science alert, yes, it may be possible. This article was seriously discussed in several reliable sources. I cited only one because I am a lazy writer and I didnt want just to refbomb, but I can readily do it. --Altenmann >talk 16:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Just "some works of science fiction", with no specific examples, do you want me to copy the text from the wikilinked articles? Sure I can easily do this, but I didnt wasnt to bloat this section. (Added some refs just now.) --Altenmann >talk 16:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- WTH is "Argument from authority" doing here? If you question Drake, read it first. Not to say that Drake's hypothesis was discussed by serious sources. Againg, I didn want to refbomb, but I added one more, from the Astronomy magazine --Altenmann >talk 16:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

keep Nomination without merit. Several reliable sources are cited. Yes, it is a speculation, but it is a notable speculation, and there have always been many bold scientific speculations. That's how science evolves. --Altenmann >talk 16:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- delete changed an opinion during discussion which convinced me I am an overconfident ignoramus in the subject. --Altenmann >talk 03:58, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  To be clear, I think that there is likely something here. I just don't think as it is presently constructed the article is quite up to the standards that we would want for a search-engine-facing article. I think of the general philosophy at Wikipedia these days to be, fundamentally, a non-innovative reference work. I think there may be ways to look at how the literature discusses these "out there" ideas you have identified, but doing so requires a bit more care in framing. jps (talk) 14:48, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. XOR'easter (talk) 18:02, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Much better than many of the articles I read on Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't call this article "fringe of the highest magnitude", but I would call it "fairly unbothered speculation". I mean, Frank (RIP) was fairly notorious for this kind of extrapolative excitement over the possibilities of life out there in the Universe, but unlike the actual fringe-y characteristics of certain present-day actors, he wasn't claiming empirical basis that was not actually there. This is akin to the rest of the speculation included in this piece. If it is a problem, it may be because it is WP:SYNTH rather than it being WP:FRINGE. jps (talk) 18:46, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- WP:SYNTH means "to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources". If you see any of them, I am happy to rework the text. --Altenmann >talk 19:46, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  If there is any indication that these examples were identified by third-parties as being relevant to each other, I'd like to see it. Preferably more than one source on identifying the compendium. jps (talk) 19:57, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there is a certain WP:SYNTH concern here. Has anyone pulled together these particular bits and pieces before? Are fictional speculations about sentient black holes really the same topic as ruminations from the 1700s about sunspots? XOR'easter (talk) 19:50, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In "Stellar Graveyards, Nucleosynthesis, and Why We Exist" Clifford A. Pickover does discuss the topic of various weird aplanetary lives in the universe. Other authors question the conventional wisdom that any plausible extraterrestrial form of life must resemble the life on Earth. I dont think that to cover a topic in general by "pullin together these particular bits and pieces" without drawing extra conclusions is SYNTH. And assigning "a bit" to the topic is just a common sense, I believe commonly used in Wikipedia. --Altenmann >talk 20:30, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is the chapter in The Stars of Heaven? Unfortunately, I don't have access to it. Which of the examples does Pickover include in that chapter or is it just a recounting of the general critique that, really, the question of "life beyond Earth" is perhaps malformed? jps (talk) 21:08, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I got access to it due to a weird Google Books bug: it showed the content of Stars of Heaven instead of Shades of Freedom. The author had a multipage speculation on non-planetary life forms I mentioned in the article. He also discusses Dragon's Egg, ventures into metaphysical/religious musing on why God created life, about one in 10¹⁰⁰ chance of life, and Cosmological Darwinism, and other cabbages and kings. --Altenmann >talk 21:51, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that what you describe is speaking to the topic of this article. It's a collection of novel, obscure, and even wacky astrobiological proposals, but it isn't "life origination beyond planets". jps (talk) 18:51, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Astronomy-related deletion discussions. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 19:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tentative keep: the concept of Panspermia is also considered fringe science by some, but it still gets studies in astrobiology. I don't think we can completely rule this out, so it seems like a valid topic for an article given suitable sources. I'll also note that there is also a paper on the topic of life in a cool brown dwarf atmosphere, so technically not a planet either.[1] Praemonitus (talk) 00:19, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thx for the dwarves; it turns out there was a wider discussion of this. I added a bit (three bits :-). --Altenmann >talk
Keep. I see enough independent coverage of the concept to meet WP:GNG. New York Times, Scientific American, Astronomy. I'm unfamiliar with many of the others to evaluate how reliable the others are, but it's possible that more of them add to GNG, and I haven't bothered to independently search for sources, feeling that there are already enough to meet GNG. The "in a nutshell" summary of WP:FRINGE says, "To maintain a neutral point of view, an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea. More extensive treatment should be reserved for an article about the idea, which must meet the test of notability." (plus one more sentence which I don't think applies here). This isn't an article about a mainstream idea, so the second sentence applies, which I think is met, so I really don't see FRINGE as a reason to delete. From what I can see, the rest of the nominator's statement appears to be complaints about how the article is presented as well as a complaint about the validity of the concept itself. Yeah, I get that, and they are all valid points, but it's still not a reason to delete an article about what others have written on the subject. RecycledPixels (talk) 05:27, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
~~Keep~~ Draftify per jps. Though covering a heavily speculative topic—as do pretty much all articles covering extraterrestrial life as well—this is still notable speculation with appreciable academic coverage, and FRINGE alone is usually not grounds for deletion. Of course, this article has multiple issues (possible SYNTH, organizational and prose issues, and scope issues), but these are also not grounds for deletion. ArkHyena (talk) 09:57, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I think at the very least we need a new title for this article and a better identified scope. This might serve as a place to include the most speculative proposals about life in unusual contexts. Might I suggest something like "Life outside the habitable zone? which is perhaps a better framing? jps (talk) 14:49, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- The point of the text about brown dwarfs is the extension of the traditional "habitable zone", not to say the title will be an oxymoron. In any case, article scope and title must be discussed in the article talk page, not here. --Altenmann >talk 16:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Non-planetary biogenesis. Praemonitus (talk) 17:27, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  Whether the life is on planets or something that is not a planet is largely a semantic game. The more interesting question is whether life can arise in environments that diverge substantially from Earth with its solid surface, liquid water, primarily stellar energy source, and protective atmosphere. A brown dwarf is just a wacky as life in the atmosphere of Jupiter from that perspective, and that's the real categorical. jps (talk) 18:48, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  I would certainly agree with Praemonitus's suggested title. Regarding the scope of this article, we can pretty solidly go by the geophysical definition of a planet, as the dynamical definition of a planet has little bearing on if an object is habitable beyond controlling elements like instellation or tidal heating.
  
  This would exclude "classical" planets, dwarf planets, planetary-mass moons, and sub-brown dwarfs. It would probably include brown dwarfs, however, alongside stars, stellar remnants, small minor planets, or other objects. ArkHyena (talk) 21:43, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  The question for me is, why would we want to distinguish between life appearing on geophysically defined planets and as opposed to other contexts? What is the organizational principle or logic behind dividing into these two categories? Why would we include brown dwarfs but not giant moons? Getting hung up on whether the life is on planets or not is increasingly WP:OR argumentation as we try to isolate the topic. jps (talk) 00:55, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  Good point. It should also probably be pointed out that sourcing on hypothetical life on stars and stellar remnants is probably not broad or thorough enough for there to be an entirely separate article dedicated to it. There is appreciable coverage over the potential habitability of non-planetary asteroids (so excluding Ceres), and the possible role asteroids and comets may play in abiogenesis—as far as I can tell, there's no dedicated article for that form of non-planetary biology. However, this would be such a massive scope change it might as well be an entirely different article. ArkHyena (talk) 23:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Draftify as WP:SYNTH. This article is not yet ready for prime-time, and I'm not convinced that it is framed correctly. jps (talk) 18:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Please cite the lines of WP:SYNTH policy that are violated; I believe there are none. --Altenmann >talk 23:19, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  You have not demonstrated that there is anyone who has written about "life origination beyond planets" as a topic. jps (talk) 00:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  You must be kidding: just google "life beyond planets" or "life beyond Earth". --Altenmann >talk 01:48, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  
  Repeating: Please cite the lines of WP:SYNTH policy that are violated --Altenmann >talk 01:41, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  Do not combine material from multiple sources to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. The conclusion this article makes is that all these ideas are related by being part of some overarching category of "life origination beyond planets". The sources do not make this synthetic claim. jps (talk) 01:49, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  Well, the article makes no such "synthetic conclusion", it merely reports on the subject stated by a descriptive title. --Altenmann >talk 01:57, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  If I write an article Novels where villains eat beets, there is an implied synthetic conclusion that such a topic has been the interest of some other source, and it isn't good enough that I can quote directly from the novels illustrating that everything is impeccably soured. Remember WP:TERTIARY and that Wikipedia is not for indiscriminate collections. We collect things that people have said are worthy of being collected. In this case, no one has declared these disparate ideas as worthy of being in a single article except for you... at least not that I have been able to find. jps (talk) 02:01, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- I dont think moving it into draft space is a good idea. Nobody will see it there, and the article surely can benefit from extra eyeballs. --Altenmann >talk 23:19, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  The idea is for you to improve it and resubmit it to WP:AFC after you address the criticisms. jps (talk) 00:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  This is a bad idea. Wikipedia is a collaborative effort. There was no catastrophic criticisms which make the article critically bad. Draft space is for novices who do not know how to write articles. --Altenmann >talk 01:41, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  You and I have been around these parts to know that it has changed. Sure, there was a time back when you were writing articles fast and furiously when it was just get it all up on the site and let the collaboration take over. We have a responsibility as a top-10 website to not mislead our readers too badly. We cannot be perfect, but in this case I worry that we are presenting a novel interpretation that has not been validated.
  
  Anyway, I am happy to help you with the framing and trying to address the concerns over the topic being "invented".
  
  jps (talk) 01:48, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  Red herring, strawman, barking at wrong fence, whats not. How in Universe my article is "to mislead our readers too badly"~ --Altenmann >talk 01:51, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  You have no source which distinguishes between "life origination on planets" and "life origination beyond planets". Thus, you are misleading readers into believing that such organization schema exist outside of Wikipedia. I take WP:NOR very seriously. I think the idea you have is fine for a blog or external publication. But until this idea takes root in the relevant sources as an entire topic, it strikes me as being completely arbitrary. jps (talk) 01:54, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  You must be kidding: just google "life beyond planets" or "life beyond Earth". --Altenmann >talk 01:58, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  The article is not about Life beyond Earth. "Life beyond planets" does not return any sources similar to what you have presented. You are it, as far as I can tell! jps (talk) 02:03, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Even if the ideas themselves have merit or some modest acceptance, they must be still contrasted with the mainstream ideas (that's what FRINGE is about). And the mainstream idea is that life on stars (the Sun or others) is not possible, at all. The article does not mention that, at all. For starters, there's NASA: "The Sun could not harbor life as we know it because of its extreme temperatures and radiation. Yet life on Earth is only possible because of the Sun’s light and energy." Cambalachero (talk) 02:07, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is kinda why the true topic of the article is life as we don't know it (lol at that redirect). I agree that addressing these points of how unlikely life as we know it to be able to survive in hostile environments is an organizing principle with a lot of usable sources! jps (talk) 02:13, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
you are implicitly assuming "life as we know it", while the article is about not it. --Altenmann >talk 02:24, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
??? I explicitly wrote "life as we don't know it"? jps (talk) 12:51, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The redirect you used is an "easter egg" linking to Hypothetical types of biochemistry, which is still "life as we know it" only slightly different. --Altenmann >talk 16:31, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that page does already have a section on Nonplanetary life, which includes speculation about neutron stars. XOR'easter (talk) 19:29, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By your logic the section Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry#Nonplanetary_life must be deleted as WP:SYNTH because google say nothing about "nonplanetary life". --Altenmann >talk 19:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say anything about Google (and I would in fact advise everyone to treat them as untrustworthy). Maybe that section does need to be cut, or heavily revised, but we're not here to debate that. XOR'easter (talk) 22:19, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I... don't know what to say here exactly. I guess I shouldn't have put in the wikilink? My point is that the topic is something other than "Life origination beyond planets". It's more "life as we don't know it". Okay? jps (talk) 20:20, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Even if extraterrestrial life is speculative, any speculation must be based on things we do know, that's the way science works. Astrobiology usually considers "Life as we know it" because it is a known example of life that actually works. Ideas about "Life as we don't know it" are not usually taken very seriously outside of pop science pages in need of a clickbait, because it would not be enough to point that an aspect of life may be replicated in a context that wouldn't allow life, such as the surface of stars: they would need to explain how the proposed idea can meet all the requisites we would expect from a lifeform. Cambalachero (talk) 15:48, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right. This is the most straightforward criticism of these proposals and absolutely deserves to be frontloaded in any future article that deals with these subjects. An interesting aside is given by those like of David Kipping who points out the lamppost reasoning that necessarily is invoked when making this point. But it's also nearly impossible to decide what is or isn't plausible when fumbling around in the dark. Suffice to say, there are often a few lines here, a page or two there, about these kinds of speculations in secondary sources trying to summarize astrobiology as an emerging discipline. jps (talk) 16:26, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good point about frontloading. How about that some of the content may be merged into Hypothetical types of biochemistry, section "Nonplanatary life"? This article has plenty of frontloading and appears to be overlapping in subject with mine? --Altenmann >talk 19:19, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely help work on that other article, but I think you have made good points that this other article cannot contain the entirety of what is possible to write about this subject. It is, after all, limited to discussions of biochemistry and there are some hyperbolic speculations about processes (as on neutron stars) which are barely recognizable as "chemical". jps (talk) 15:55, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Draftify I remain unconvinced that there is a well-defined, recognized-in-this-form-by-prior-sources topic here. Assembling bits and pieces of speculation under a common heading advances the idea that all the pieces so assembled really are parts of the same thing. Whether that is legitimate here is unclear. The current text is overly dependent upon primary sources and pop-science media. All things told, it reads more like a blog post or a 2004-era Wikipedia article than what we need now. (The title is also awkward.) So, let's incubate it for a while. XOR'easter (talk) 19:27, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP: TNT. This is the second of two articles proposed for deletion on a single day that does not contain any information about what it purports to cover, which is speculation. The title doesn’t match the content, and what content is in there is poorly written and sourced. We have two other options: move to a “correct” title and cut it down to fit the actual content, or ask someone who is willing to work on it to userfy it. I can do the former, but the latter is exactly why we have TNT. Sorry. Bearian (talk) 04:20, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Hypothetical types of biochemistry: possibly with very selective merging. The article is clearly a mess, but the topic is notable, and already covered nicely by the proposed target. Owen× ☎ 21:38, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- (author here) Actually after being convinced by this thorough discussion, I posted the suggestion to remove the corresponding section there. --Altenmann >talk 21:56, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - in an attempt to rescue the article I googled the term "nonplanetary life", with little success: got two reliable refs only. While the texts were reasonable, not enough for WP:GNG. --Altenmann >talk 22:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, _signed,Rosguill ^talk 04:28, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: The article has lots of problems but the topic exists and has been discussed in sources. I agree WP:FRINGE does not apply here; I squint some possible WP:SYNTHESIS issues but they are not a reason to delete. --cyclopia ^speak! 08:23, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: nomination without merit; has been discussed in sources. Skyerise (talk) 09:35, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Draftify is the most WP:PAG-based reasoning I saw while reading all the comments here. This definitely is not a straight keep. There are clear synth issues, and XOR'easter caught what I found too with primary sources and pop-science being used to a degree they should not. Some is just speculation that's not appropriate for an encyclopedia, and others are either old or just primary journal articles on concepts that haven't gotten traction in the scientific community. Draftifying would at least give it a chance for cleanup so that it could be reassessed later if there are any decent secondary scientific sources out there or possible title changes that would help focus the scope. I do think thre is some weight to Bearian's TNT comment, but draftifying threads the needle much better for policy and guideline issues right now. KoA (talk) 21:05, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.