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Papers by Charley Lineweaver

Complexity and the Arrow of Time

In the mid-60’s NASA was developing instruments for the Viking spacecraft to detect life on Mars.... more In the mid-60’s NASA was developing instruments for the Viking spacecraft to detect life on Mars. To assist in this effort, NASA consulted James Lovelock, an iconoclastic British atmospheric chemist. Lovelock wondered: Can the existence of life be recognized from knowledge of the chemical composition of a planet’s atmosphere? What would the Earth be like now, if life had never evolved on it? Would there be oxygen in the air? Would the surface temperature be hot like Venus, or cold like Mars? He came to the conclusion that a spacecraft didn’t need to be sent to Mars. All one needed was a determination of the composition of the Martian atmosphere to see if it were in chemical equilibrium. This was done, and to the accuracy of the measurements, unlike the Earth’s atmosphere, the martian atmosphere was in chemical equilibrium. He concluded that Mars was dead (see Krasnopolsky et. al. 2004 and Formisano et. al. 2004 for a possibly low-level methane exception to this conclusion). However,...

Here we sit on a ball of silicate with beating hearts, opposable thumbs and curious minds. How di... more Here we sit on a ball of silicate with beating hearts, opposable thumbs and curious minds. How did we get here? How did the evolution of non-living things, such as galaxies, stars and planets, create the ingredients and the conditions for the emergence of life? Which aspects of this evolution are unique to the Earth and which are common in the universe? Are we alone? These cosmobiological questions are sharpened and partially answered by the overview presented here. How in the universe did we get here? In the fictional story “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, the Improbability Drive called into existence a sperm whale several miles above the surface of an alien planet (Adams, 1999). As it falls through the atmosphere: “this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale anymore … Ah….! Figure 1: How did we get here? This deep image of a tiny fraction of the sky ( ~ 10-7) shows ~ 10 ...

Summary of Palaeomagnetic Geological Data

Abstract—We review the results of Robles et al. [1] in which a simultaneous multi-parameter compa... more Abstract—We review the results of Robles et al. [1] in which a simultaneous multi-parameter comparison of solar and stellar properties and environments is presented. This 11-parameter analysis quantifies the (a)typicality of the Sun: we obtain a reduced solar χ 2 ⊙/11 = 0.76 ± 0.09 and a probability of 29 % ± 11 % that a star selected at random has a lower χ 2 value than solar. These two values are consistent with the idea that the Sun is a star selected at random rather than a special star. We also discuss the dependence of the results on different parameter and dataset selection criteria. I.

Proceedings of the 213th Symposium of the International Astronomical Union held at Hamilton Islan... more Proceedings of the 213th Symposium of the International Astronomical Union held at Hamilton Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia, 8-12 July 2002. This volume includes papers in the following sections: Extrasolar Planets, Astrochemistry, Planetary Science, Origins and Evolution of Life, Archea, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), Post SETI, and Education and Outreach.

Pan Stanford eBooks, Oct 29, 2014

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Jun 7, 2017

Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales

Science Matters on The Sydney Morning Herald, 2012

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2018

Inference: International Review of Science

Does the fact that advanced life has appeared on Earth imply analogous chances for other planets?... more Does the fact that advanced life has appeared on Earth imply analogous chances for other planets? Robin Hanson shows two different relations between such chances. With reply by Charles Lineweaver.

Journal of Big History, 2019

Inference: International Review of Science, 2022

When considering whether intelligent life in the universe is rare, researchers often turn to the ... more When considering whether intelligent life in the universe is rare, researchers often turn to the existence of Homo sapiens to demonstrate their point. But this example of biological evolution is contingent and self-referential. It is a moot point when discussing the chances of its occurrence anywhere outside earth.

Protosolar elemental abundances: A machine-readable spreadsheet corresponding to Table 1 (Wang, L... more Protosolar elemental abundances: A machine-readable spreadsheet corresponding to Table 1 (Wang, Lineweaver, & Ireland, submitted to Icarus on 29 August 2018)