ScienceDaily:

Prevailing theoretical models attempting to explain the formation of the solar system have assumed it to be average in every way. Now a new study by Northwestern University astronomers, using recent data from the 300 exoplanets discovered orbiting other stars, turns that view on its head.

The solar system, it turns out, is pretty special indeed. The study illustrates that if early conditions had been just slightly different, very unpleasant things could have happened -- like planets being thrown into the sun or jettisoned into deep space.

For a view which keeps being "turned on its head", the insistence there is "nothing special" seems to have a pretty good half-life.

Before the discovery in the early 1990s of the first planets outside the solar system, our system's nine (now eight) planets were the only ones known to us. This limited the planetary formation models, and astronomers had no reason to think the solar system unusual.

"But we now know that these other planetary systems don't look like the solar system at all," said Frederic A. Rasio, a theoretical astrophysicist and professor of physics and astronomy in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He is senior author of the Science paper.

"The shapes of the exoplanets' orbits are elongated, not nice and circular. Planets are not where we expect them to be. Many giant planets similar to Jupiter, known as 'hot Jupiters,' are so close to the star they have orbits of mere days. Clearly we needed to start fresh in explaining planetary formation and this greater variety of planets we now see."

So initially, the underlying assumption was that unexplored and unexamined regions of space (solar systems, in this case) must be just like this one in terms of their configuration or character. But is this truly the default "scientific" assumption?

Not in the slightest: when talking about "the Multiverse", the unspoken assumption is that all those other explored regions must not tend to resemble this one, are not configured like this one, and did not form in a similar manner. (Indeed, if it could be argued that other universes would tend to look like this one, the philosophical attractiveness of multiverse theory (which is, frankly, its only reason for existing) would disappear entirely.)

When we thought about other solar systems, the "default assumption" was that they would be consistent, being formed and configured just like ours. And yet the default assumption for other universes was that they would be completely different from each other, and ours.

If that sounds contradictory, there's a unifying rule: All other things being equal (or unknown) astronomers choose the theory that best match their religious beliefs, and oppose views that challenge them. And the "religious dogma" in play here is that there is nothing special about our position in the universe.

So if our solar system is just like the others, there's "nothing special." Or, played backwards, starting with the assumption there is "nothing special", we then 'know' that other solar systems will tend to be disc-like and stable. Likewise, given that the universe appears odder and odder, "nothing special" tells us we must assume a bezillion other different universe-configurations to drown out the apparent improbability we've been observing.

The consistent part is the theology, not the assumption of consistency.

"The solar system had to be born under just the right conditions to become this quiet place we see. The vast majority of other planetary systems didn't have these special properties at birth and became something very different."

This, obviously, does not bode well for the "Star Trek" view of alien life -- where many or most solar systems would contain life -- intelligent beings, even. (Who, incidentally, spoke perfect American English and looked almost exactly like humans except for the lumpy structures protruding from their foreheads.)

The universe is still a massive place, of course, and even low-probability events could happen. But just as there was initially resistance to the idea we weren't the spacial center of the known universe (the solar system -- because man in important to God, geography must also reflect that) today, there seems to be an equal inertia to shun evidence that there truly *is* something interesting and "special"-seeming about the universe itself, and our place within it.

The "principle of medocrity" is just bad science. It's the exact same error that was manifested in geocentrism: that the universe must flatter our theological preferences. Only this time, our theological preference is atheism.