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Milky Way Inhospitable?
tdfunk writes "Space.com reports that life in the universe may be more rare than previously thought.
In an article published today, Space.com quotes Guillermo Gonzalez, an Iowa State University researcher, who has studied the structure of our galaxy and has concluded that life may not be as common as we may have believed. Apparently, conditions around the Milky Way Galaxy are generally less hospitable than once thought.
No wonder all the UFOs and Aliens come to Earth, their looking for a place to live and no where else will do.
We thought the same thing about the british... snarf, FP
And I must say although it's not perfect, I find it quite suitable to living most of the time (or atleast in my two and a half decades of life so far). For anyone considering moving here, I'd say give it a try, especially if you're a carbon based lifeform.
99.9999% or more of it is empty space, a near vacuum. What do we pay these scientists for again? :)
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
In that darn formula
P=A*B*C*D...*X where P is probability of contact
I said that "D" that is probability of life on planet is nearly ZERO. I was moderated off...
Now people say that I am right.
Aliens do not exist!
Do not waste resources and add to global warming by running your CPU with that useless CETI!
Space.com reports that life in the universe may be more rare than previously thought..
so there is NO life in this universe? strange..
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
I love how science is always finding ways to disprove it self. One year something is good for you the next its bad. Its kind of like software.. Never go with theory 1.0 ;)
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
a few months ago. Also, a book called "Rare Earth" based on this subject is out there. Have it, but haven't read it yet.
Still, remember how many galaxies there were in some of the Hubble Photos? Even if the number of inhabitable planets/galaxy is low, there are still a lot of galaxies out there.
A vaccum inhospitable?! NEVER!
What if there were life forms on the sun? Or in the milky way. Maybe we, or anything else on earth could not exist in those regions but who's to say something else can't?
Scientists were suprised when they found life in the hot vents on the sea floor because they thought it was too hot for anything to survive there, yet there was something there. Humans couldn't survive there, but we were never designed to live there. If an organism was native there they would be formed in such a way to be able to withstand what it takes to live there. If they tried to come here maybe they'd die immediatly from something that makes the earth inhospitable to them.
Also organisms can adapt, and they might be able to adapt way beyond what we have witnessed thus far.
Probably because of universal warming.
---- http://www.opedog.com/
I think this is going to make the agnostics on slashdot pretty mad...
oh wait, I think I'm the only one who isn't.
(I mean that in good fun kids, don't get upset.)
Get your Unix fortune now!
Until reading this article, I really believed that at least 25% of the planets in the universe were prime candidates for human life.. This sucks.
We may, it turns out, be very lucky to be here.
Luck had nothing to do with it, in fact, if you are an intelligent life form, there is a 100% chance you were born on a planet that is capable of supporting intelligent life!
And besides, suppose there is one planet capable of supporting life per galaxy, taking this researchers findings to the extreme. It is believed there are billions of galaxies. Billions of planets full of life doesn't sound too "alone" to me.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Guillermo is well known for the "Rare Earth" hypothesis, which boils down to the thesis that planets identical to Earth are extremely uncommon. This has even been covered on Slashdot before.
;-) is that time is so much longer than we humans can perceive. Humans have been around in our present form for only a few thousand years, with only a couple of decades when we could be detected by extra terrestrial civilisations. In terms of the age of the Earth that is nothing, and compared to the age of the galaxy it is smaller than nothing. Our window in time is so narrow that it seems unlikely that it actually overlaps with other civilizations.
I don't entirely disagree with Guillermo, but he does make one major blunder, IMHO: He assumes that complex life can only develop on planets with all of the same characteristics as Earth. That sub-hypothesis is not proven.
Regardless, lets say that a exact Earth analogs occur around one out of a billion stars. That still leaves 100 Earth analogs in the Milky Way alone.
The real issue for finding ET, IMHO (that sure gets tossed out a lot when discussing life in the Universe
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
The rationale for there being life elsewhere in the universe often goes like this:
1. There's life here
2. Well, we seem pretty normal and possible to me!
3. The universe is a many-splendored thing. There must be other neat planets like this out there.
4. Since we seen pretty easy to please, there must be life on those other planets!
People don't realize that it actually works the other way around. If there was going to be intelligent life just one place, well, wherever it was would have the intelligent life! To rephrase: just because we're intelligent and here doesn't mean that there are other intelligent beings elsewhere. That we're intelligent and here means that we've got good conditions for that, here. We (the intelligent life) are here and not on another planet because this planet is uniquely suited to us. About the other potential places that could harbor life-- well, who knows? The universe may be inhospitable. It may be hospitable. The fact of the matter is that we've just managed to find out whether one of our nearest neighbors has water on it. What do we know of the rest of the galaxy, really?
Do something about world hunger. Click here
Do not waste resources and add to global warming by running your CPU with that useless CETI!
Here is the new proverb: Keep the whale off your cpu!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Sure, for a civilization that is used to ~70 degree weather with nice ocean breezes, it's hard to imagine other life forms residing in these planets. But if we just open up our minds and realize there are living organisms thousands of feet beneath the ocean waves, a place where most scientists would call "less than hospitable", the chances of other life forms existing increase.
Of course, if my girlfriend showed up to any of these places first, there is no chance any intelligent life forms are left.
---
When you have nothing nice to say, post on slashdot...
I just got back from there. Between the Federation, Empire and the Rebels, christ all you hear is 'Hey look out' Boom!! I couldn't relax at all, that place just sucks
... until we went there. The quality of your presumptions weigh heavily in the strength of your hypotheses...
At least they're trying to find a correct answer-- would you prefer they just picked a theory and stuck with it, contrary evidence be damned?
When science is wrong, it publicly says "oops," publishes a paper highlighting its mistakes and their corrections, and then goes back to trying to figure out how the new theory can be improved.
I don't necessarily agree that this particular galactic zone itself is fully habitable or hazard free -- a case in point would have been the area around my place during my last marriage!!!
It doesn't really matter in the human experience whether life is general in the universe, or even in our galaxy. What matters is what we can find, and that restricts our neighborhood rather severely. Okay, so life we can understand can only exist in narrow bands of hospitality. Great--we're in one! What better place to look for other life?
demi
And who is too determine whether we classify as intelligent? What if in the grand scheme of things we are close to pond scum. It is hard to tell because we have no idea what is really out there. Our basis of intelligent is based only upon what we see on out planet. Relative to the others on out planet, we are pretty damn smart. But relative to other stuf in the galaxy or in the universe we may be... stupid.
"I said that "D" that is probability of life on planet is nearly ZERO"
Question: Do you mean intelligent life like human beings, or are you including microbes, bacteria, and so on?
In the case of Human-esque 'intelligent' life, I agree that the scale of time indicates low probabilities of life existing within our own life time. (I mean human kind, not me and you...)
In the case of bacteria and so on, I find it unlikely that the Sol system is one of very few occupied planets. There's evidence that life can exist anywhere it is inclined to.
But you know, if you think about it, what good is probability? What are the odds of me arriving home safely tonight between 6:15 pm and 6:20 pm? Well, first there are a number of intersections I have to cross. Then there's the factor of me leaving the office at the right time. Somebody might want a last minute change. There's the factor of my speed, which is a little inconsistent since it is raining today.
If you sum up all of the various factors, the odds of me arriving home between 6:15 and 6:20 today are heavily against my favor. Yet, if I work at it, I'll manage it.
I'm not saying you're wrong about the possibility of life, I'm simply stating that probability doesn't affect outcome. If life exists, it's already out there. In this case, it's just a matter of finding it, not proving it does or doesn't exist.
I do agree with you, though, that we have needs ahead of looking for ET life. But I don't agree that SETI should be shut down. The benefits of SETI have already been worthwhile, like the massive supercomputer they created with the internet to process their data.
"Derp de derp."
Chemosynthetic life on the ocean floor, microbes in clouds, suggestive spectra from nebulae pointing to possible DNA.
Certainly, it might take far longer for complex life to develop in extreme environments, but if it's a stable extreme environment, I certainly wouldn't rule it out.
Also, we're finding large Jupiter classed planets in and around other suns now. If ours is any indication, might there not be moons bathed in enough heat / rf to fuel a form of life orbiting around them?
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
Yer a hardcore atheist my wrinkled foreskin....
Did ANYONE think that living inside of creamy caramel and chewy nougat, coated in chocolate would be hospitable? Tasty maybe, but not very easy.
If you think about it, this should come as no real surprise. In the span of a mere 10,000 years, humans have gone from being completely without any technology to being nearly spacefaring, with the rate of technological advancement increasing exponentially.
It won't be long before we're in space, and from there the rate of advancement will only continue to grow. I doubt it will take more than 10,000 more years for us to populate most of the easily habitable or terraformable worlds in the galaxy. Think about it mathematically--10,000 years ago, the world human population was at most a few million. We're now at 6 billion. Every single mind added to that tally makes us that much smarter as a race--and soon we'll have the capability to technologically improve our own intelligence.
On the galactic timescale, 10,000 years is an increment barely worth discussing. And our sun isn't particularly old--the bleak truth is that if there were ANY life in any state of advancement anywhere else in the galaxy (this is charitable--really, the universe), it would not only have evolved far beyond us, but would have colonized us long ago.
It's a lonely frontier out there; though I wish it weren't so, life is a beautiful singularity, an aberration of staggering magnitude. It's almost enough to make you believe in God.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
All the arguments depend on our knowing how a planetary disk condenses. Yet we keep being surprised by extrasolar planets in sizes and orbits that nobody ever anticipated.
There's a more subtle argument for the rarity of intelligent life. If it were common, then by now it would have rearranged the galaxy to make it more hospitable. Unless of course they're still trying to finish their environmental impact statement.
Why does everybody always assume that life can only form in conditions that are hospitable to humans?
Who's to say that there aren't other strange forms of life that have evolved to survive in conditions that would be downright hostile to humans?
Economist #1: "The economy is going to collapse this quarter!"
Economist #2: "No! It's on an upswing, you idiot!"
Dietician #1: "Balanced intake of carbs, protein, and fats is best."
Dietician #2: "Uh, yeah, sure.. if you want to look like Rosanne. Max protein, don't worry about the fat, and cut down on the carbs."
Space Scientist #1: "Thousands of life-giving planets are out there. We have the calculations right here. Really."
Space Scientist #2: "Look, dude, the odds of there being other life-bearing planets are almost nil. We have the calculations right here. Really."
I mean it in good humor, but as a layman it sure is difficult to tell which of the astronomers and other guessers are on the right track.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"Bally's limits would still allow for plenty of planets out there, but it could also mean there are far fewer than some researchers have expected. 'Either planetary systems form very fast,' Bally said, 'or we will find planet development to be rare. Something like 5 percent of stars will have planets.'"
Well, the number of planets in our galaxy is 200-400 million by current estimates.
5 percent of 200 million gives us 10 million planetary systems as a floor figure. For our galaxy. And there are billions of galaxies. So don't get your panties in a bunch quite yet, folks.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
A Milky Way is quite hospitable. Leave one on your back porch. It'll be teeming with ant life pretty darn quick.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
If this article interests you, I highly suggest that you get (and read) a copy of "Rare Earth" by Ward and Brownlee, Copernicus press.
In it, they lay out their case for why advanced life is rare in the universe, but simple life may be relatively common. The article that's linked to seems to be a condensed form of the argument set out in Rare Earth.
Rare Earth goes over planetary habitable zones, galactic habitable zones, and also goes much further on about the necessity of a "benevolent" jupiter-like planet, planetary extinction events, and plate tectonics.
I think this book was reviewed on slashdot, but I don't feel like looking it up. It's still one of my favourite books.
BTW: it's not some crackpot theory, either. Ward and Brownlee are both professors at the University of Washington in Seattle and they site 26 pages of scientific references at the back of the book.
--RC
I know this is WAY premature. After all, we have no idea if there is not a lot of life out there. But if humans really are the only intelligent life form, then it seems to make naturalistic evolution (that is, without the interference of some "higher power") really improbable. (For what its worth, I'm not a creationist. I just think the jury is still out -- both scripturally and scientifically.)
I'll take my flames now :)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Go to the Access Research Network (a creationist website) and search on "Gonzalez", and you'll see he has his own page there.
Not only is it inhospitable, it is often damned rude!
n/m
the fact is that we are NOT out there exploring other planets, and that we do not know for a fact that ONLY earth types can support life. We also do NOT know for a fact that earth types are rare, we only suspect as we have no proof through observasion.
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
Multicellular life is a whole different story. It's a lot more delicate, and in our planet's geological history, it appears as an afterthought. Germs are and always have been the dominant form of life here.
Sorry if you're in love with the Star Trek/Star Wars picture, but most likely if our species ever manages to send probes to the nearest 10,000 solar systems, all we'll find is unicellular life. I'll bet your great-great-great-great-great grandkids a six-pack on it!
Find free books.
Right. You can waste your CPU time and elecricity proving that encryption works :) at www.distributed.net. I say they would be able to finish a RC5-80 contest long before life on any other planet is found with SETI.
What really needs to be done is some true science and exploration. Stop all the speculation if you're not going to back it up...scientists my ass. Politicians(Congress) need(s) to quit holding NASA back(get their grubby paws out of the honey pot) and let them (NASA) go at it.
This theory of habitable galactic zones is much like the concept of habitable zones in a solar system. Just as the Earth happens to be within the proper zonal distance from the Sun, not too hot and not too cold, which allows for liquid water and also many important chemical reactions, being just the right distance from a galactic core also allows the right environmental conditions to develop life (at least in the form as we know it). For example, being too close to a galactic core would increase the amount of energetic X-ray, gamma ray, and cosmic ray flux on any nearby solar system, thus irradiating any possible life forms. Also, living in a region of space with the stellar densities that exist near a galactic core would increase your chances of being within the blast radius of a nearby stellar neighbor who happens to go supernova. Also, the closer a solar system is to another solar system, the greater the gravitational interactions between them, thus causing random orbital disturbances that can cause asteroid/comet belts to migrate around their star and maybe run you over in the process. For more information you can try this interesting arcticle.
In every galaxy... how would we find them? Humans would have to survive long enough to still be around when their signals reached us... which could be millions of years from now, assuming that faster that light travel/communications are impossible. On the other hand, if warp drives are possible, we could just take a spin and go look. In which case we wouldn't need SETI.
Milky Way Inhospitable?
...
Space.com reports that life in the universe may be more rare than previously thought.
...
that life may not be as common as we may have believed.
...
Apparently, conditions around the Milky Way Galaxy are generally less hospitable than once thought.
Why do I care??? I DONT.
Why not? Well, all this is just speculative "I thinks" by wannabe astrnomers. If they want us to think what they say is true, then prove it. Oh wait, they cant. They cant prove a negative.
The main point is that these idiots are trying to get "popularity" by spreading crap. Next week we'll hear about 50% chance life is in next solar system...
Here we go...
Think of the milky way as our "neighborhood". (or, "my network places" for you windows people). I may be slightly innacurate, but I'm nearly sure there are a few billion galaxies in the universe. Just because our neighborhood is a little trashy, doesn't mean the rest of the universe is. In our earth society terms, just as one town may be a slum the town next to it may be very hospitable.
I base my belief in the existence of alien life on one fact: probability. The universe is far larger than our minds can comprehend... chances are pretty good that there is some life out there, and if you believe in god, than chances are pretty good that alien life can be a lot like us.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I was recently reading up some more on gamma ray bursters, which are a recently discovered thing with explosions (so far only seen a very long way away) that appear to have an amount of energy equivalent to about the rest of the Universe put together.
There was a paper published in 1999 that theoriesed that every gamma ray burst was a galactic scale mass extinction event, and then attempted to extrapolate a rate that they occur locally in the Milky Way, then going on to suggest that because the rate is slowing down, we might be in a transition period for intelligent life appearing. It's all entirely theoretical, but it's an interesting read.
The good news is "at last we're here". The unfortunate bad news if the theory is correct is that because the last burst is somewhat overdue, we might not be here for much longer.
For what it's worth, there's a hugely massive star (eta carinae) about 7,000 to 10,000 light years away that's arguably ready to blow some time in the next million years. (If you're in the southern hemisphere it's a really nice thing to look at with binocs or better.) It's on the fringes of the theoretical limits of how massive a star can be, it's gone past the theoretical limits of the maximum amount of light that a star can possibly emit, and it's been suggested as a possible source of a future gamma ray burst in the Milky Way. Really though, nobody's quite sure what's about to happen. On the other hand we should probably be hoping that we're not nearby when it decides to go.
It's just another theory.
this has been discussed numerous times before.... its no biggy...
anti-galactic-awareness propaganda mission on terra proceeding swimmingly stop we recommend moving up invasion plans stop all possible intelligent resistance trapped in recursive slashdot thread posting stop sincerely urk!thwoopt-9328 stop ps sorry all your base meme definitely dead stop love to the child-pods fullstop
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Ha, we can sustain life, how's that for a tiny insignificant planet in the unfashionable part of the galaxy, huh? Take that, Vogons!
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Wasn't it Carl Sagan that said that humanity will most likely never contact other intelligent life in the universe for the simple reason that 99.9999% of intelligent civilizations will destroy themselves before they reach the capability of efficient interplantary travel? (Our own planet sadly not excluded from that probability).
I think it's worth noting that people are merely arguing over how you compute the probability. It's not like it's gone down to zero.
In fact, we can (almost) safely say that there is likely other intelligent life, since we know the probability is not zero, then the probability that exactly one planet produced intelligent life is really, really, small. Much lower than the probability that there are N such planets.
Of course, the odds of every discovering (much less communicating) with such life given the distances and the time scales involved makes SETI seem highly quixotic.
First of all, nobody here's assuming that life can only form in conditions that are hospitable to humans.
That was your doing.
Second of all, the mainstream people are mainly interested in life forms. Personally, although I know it would be a great boon to science, I could care less if microscopic life forms are discovered on Mars.
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
That's why the really interesting stuff always happens in A Galaxy Far, Far Away.
I think we should just stop studying these things until we get that warp engine up and running. :-)
Well at least there is some good beer nearby
Eureka!!
It has been said before, by my freshman physics prof. for one, 1971, The interior is to hot an the far rim a bit to barren... Life (carbon based)exists in a fairly narrow belt ... said he The details will be cool to know and the exact parameters of life sustaining systems are certainly a curiosity but the concept is simply common sense given the nature of stars... Ask your self "Why do galacitic structures appear to be large acretion disks" ? well because (very basicly) they are they are... now walk back the cat....
oh come ON now, surely I don't have to put anything in the message body... ahhh CRAP
don't you know he's a christian and creationist? It's safe to disregard anything he says.
Beat me with a clue-stick and mod me down, but here's an idea which probably is decades old and has a nifty name:
...) or good old mother earth (geothermal, the fact that the earth isn't an ice planet, nuclear etc.). This interface is where "Things Happen" - where there is a source of energy on the one side, and a sink on the other. Within such a thin "biosphere", things at least have the possibility of becoming complex - as they have done on earth.
... Just a counterpoint to the idea "life = water, carbon , median temperature ~ 20 deg. C, ozone layer against radiation, bla bla".
Space is rather inhomogeneous in this age. Matter and energy (well, yeah, essentially the same thing) is concentrated in points - stars and surrounding planets - and merrily radiating itself into the great heat sink which is the sky, and into oblivion. Life, as we understand it, but also how we may come to understand it in the future, thrives on the "interface", physically speaking simply slowing down flow of energy toward the heat sink by a very minute bit. For instance - all energy the human race uses is "old energy": either from the sun (food, oil,
Now my point is that there are plenty of other places even within the solar system where things have the potential for complexity, moreover steadily so over the millennia necessary for systems as complex as life to develop: the surface of the sun, the surfaces of the inner planets (the outer ones might be too cold), the moons of the gas giants, or the atmospheres of the gas giants themselves.
So, especially if we include the surface of stars, there are at least as many places in the galaxy where life might occur as there are stars - even more, life we might be capable of recognising as such. Just don't expect SETI to pick up radio signals off the "surface" of stars - I think interference might prove to be a bit of a hindrance there. We might not have very much in common with the majority of conceivable forms of life out there, and thus little to communicate about, but we might at least discover it some day, and recognise it as life.
Why this post?
I posit that "life (*may*) = some kind of building blocks, plus an energy differential of some kind."
yes, we have no bananas
So in the short term (the term we are all worried about) what does this mean for us?
It means that the probability has increased that all those yokels in pick-ups who claim to have been anally probed by aliens were lying. They will most like change their story to 'farm accident' if you question them too much, but thanks to science we are one step closer to the truth on this matter.
and has concluded that life may not be as common as we may have believed.
Unless tdfunk is more than one person, I'd have to assume that tdfunk was using "we" as a reference to all of us. Instead, the word "I" would have been more appropriate. Or maybe "some of us". I find it quite amazing that the poster assumes that we all believe the same thing.
Have you read my journal today?
It's not raining today.
We used to believe that nothing could survive in the boiling temperatures of mini-fissures at the bottom of the ocean, spewing a black like 'smoke' and completely shrouding everything below in a perfect dark. It was thought nothing could survive. However, after we were able to approch these fissures we saw even these areas of the ocean were teaming with life, and in most cases more abundant than what we would call 'hospitable'! The fact is we cannot assume something cannot survive in an enviroment simply because we cannot, this theory has been proven wrong time and time again.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Doesn't that assume that the life forms will be something like us? Terry Bisson has a great perspective on this from his short story/play "They're Made Out of Meat":
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat!"
"So... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
Read the rest here (it's very short).
I can't remember where I came across this idea.
But it's basically that most civilizations would
blow themselves up before running into anyone
else.
I find it way to believable, sadly.
"Weasling out of work is important to learn; it is what separates humans from animals. Except for weasels."
Probably some mid-western bible thumper looking to prove god and the vanity of the church.
What are the odds of it raining wherever you are in the world at the same time it is raining on my side of the planet?
"Derp de derp."
If we're even going to pretend to go about this scientifically, there is no "because" unless you count tautologies (which isn't exactly useful). We seem to be here. That's about all we know. This is exactly the same as the concept of evolution: lots of things interacted and stuff came out. Some stuff lasts longer than other stuff. Some stuff seems to exert more influence over time than other stuff. Some of the stuff might notice this.
It may look like a chicken-and-egg problem, but it isn't any more of a chicken-and-egg problem than the actual problem of chickens and eggs and which came first.
None of this means it's not absolutely mind-blowingly neat that we're here. None of this even means that there isn't a g0d. What it *does* mean is that while we may have the ability to sit here and postulate answers to the question "why?", we're asking because we don't know the answer.
[|]
If all this stuff known as animals and plants is just a bubble in the evolution of micro-organisms that digest everything.
God spoke to me
Probability definitely does affect the outcome. I think what you mean to say is it doesn't affect something that's already happened. But since we don't know whether or not there is life out there, probability is extremely relevant. If we thought the probability was, say, 75%, we'd probably spend a lot more time looking for it than if it was
As to the human/microbe thing, you should check out Rare Earth, which basically argues that simple life may be more prevalent than we think, and complex life less so.
In the October 2001 Scientific American:
Refugees for Life in a Hostile Universeby Guillermo Gonzalez, Donald Brownlee and Peter D. Ward;8Page(s)
Only part of our galaxy is fit for advanced life
...is that we have to stop treating the Earth like it's disposable.
Odds are that we will never, ever find another planet anywhere in the universe so ideally suited to human life.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
I said that "D" that is probability of life on planet is nearly ZERO
If you said that, then you were in fact wrong. Read the article, it is talking about the probability of a Earth-like planet (C?) being formed as nearly zero. The probability of an Earth-like planet producing life has recently been estimated at 1 in 3 by some other researchers.
As an aside, the Manifold books by Stephen Baxter have good ideas of what the existence or non-existence of other life could mean. Manifold: Space deals with what happens assuming life is abundant. It is NOT pretty...
Something like a sponge is a multi-cell colony that has division of labour, sort of like a city. NS has stories about slugs that in their life fall into intependant cells.
Ants and bees are multipart animals. Others hold things like trees are colonies of separate plants, with different branches being genetically different. So what is life?
Life has a nasty habit of starting up anywhere, and given that it's rumoured that some bacteria come from space, where exactly in space *is* that...
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
The question that arises from all of this is the famouse philosophical question:
What really is intelligent life?
I know many people who would argue that while there may not be any life as intelligent as us. There may be life more intelligent, or less intelligent then us in the galaxy.
Remember, intelligence is a human defined concept about humans. Therefore, it's not hard to believe we are the only "intelligent" beings in the galaxy.
(Just IMHO)
~ kjrose
"I think what you mean to say is it doesn't affect something that's already happened..."
Hmm that's what I said, but I may have mixed up what I was saying and what I was thinking. I really need to spend more time clarifying ideas in my own mind before I post. I apologize.
I think it's a binary problem: Either life is out there, or it isn't. Probability gives us an idea of how hard it'll be to find it, or how likely it is that we'll be invaded by hostile aliens, but it won't tell us if life is out there or not. We can't prove that it is impossible for alien life to exist, therefore we have to assume that there is somewhere.
I agree with you that the higher the probability, the harder we should look. In a clearer sense, the probability of ET life directly affects the priority of searching for it above say building nuclear weapons.
I'm just concerned that if somebody cooks up some rationalization that life isn't out there, we'll restrict our search without realizing what we lose in the process. In an earlier example, I pointed out how SETI proved that the internet could becoming a big supercomputer. Other interesting questions and answers will arrive if we continue to ask things like "If life existed on this planet, how would it survive?" We may discover a way to naturally protect our bodies in the event of total Ozone Layer failure.
I'm also reminded of how diverse an ecology Earth is, yet life manages to survive in every crevice of it. We may not find monkeys on other planets, but we may find stuff that totally defies our idea of what life should be.
At this point, I'm not looking for probability or rationale, I'm looking for actual experiments done to prove/disprove ET life. Even if probability states that life has 0 chance of surviving anywhere but in our solar system, I won't be happy until we've sent a man to a machine to Alpha Centauri to find out why.
"Derp de derp."
...because this has to be a joke:
In other words, "here is a number, and it sounds big to me, so that's a high frequency."
There are about 400 billion stars and planets in our galaxy alone. Say the average is about 300 billion per galaxy, and 2 billion galaxies, so 600 billion billion stars and planets in the universe (probably a conservative estimate). At 2 billion earth-like planets, that's pretty alone. It's a big universe out there.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Maybe it has something to do with that beige color in the background (universe).
The conditions of the Milky Way and the rest of the universe may be inhospitable to us but may not for other lifeforms. Aliens do not necessarily have to be like us which means that they could live in differen't condititions to the ones we live in. Our observations of the galaxy are based on pictures sent back by satelites that dont even leave our solar system. we haven't seen any of these planets at a close enough range to even determine if ther inhospitable.
I've been complaining about how hard life is here for AGES!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
[insert RIAA/MPAA conspiracy thoughts here]
This article go's on asuming that all life is carbon based. How can they tell if somthing/someone can/is living on another planet. they have the experience/knowledge of only 1 planet to go by, our planet. small minded and extremely hypothetical.
How do you define life? What are its possible physical manifestations? Is life limited to an atmosphere similar to ours? A gravity similar to ours? Is water really indispensable?
I think it's about time scientists become less earth-centric and start to see Life with a broader meaning.
There are bacteria that live in volcanically-hot jets of water on the ocean floor, would burn a human to death in mere seconds. They thrive.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
For a good story built around the narrow-window-of-time idea, read Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem (ISBN 0156306301). This was probably my favorite Lem story, although probably also the most pessimistic (basically the title says it all). A lot of cute sci-fi ideas, none provably wrong so far IMO. This one was translated by Michael Kandel, who made all the other Lem translators pale in comparison.
Let's say that one other planet exists in our solar system that supports human life. And we discover that intelligent humanoid life exists on it. How long do you think it'll take us to decide to go there? Or better yet how long will it take us to collectively reallize that we're not alone, once we have absolute proof? Over half the world's population still believes in one form of religion or another that treats human life as if it were devine. Personally I feel like we're no better than the dirt we walk on, when you consider our wasted potential. But how many people would even consider the possibility that there might not be a God or that human life was not created and is not necessary for the existence of the universe?
Life on the Sun is highly unlikely, unless you want to consider the Sun itself a living organism... but of course that's another argument entirely.
"The Yellow Face... it burnsss ussss!"
That link: The Moon And Plate Tectonics: Why We Are Alone
Its amazing to me that we've barely explored our own solar system, besides some pretty pictures from flybys and the occasional motorized Tonka truck, yet even with our limited knowledge, and intelligence, purport we know what the nature of the universe is.
A hundred years ago the vast majority of people either walked or used horses for conveyance and used a trench to expel bodily waste, if they were lucky to find a trench. But apparently because we have computers and Twinkies and the Clapper(r) we can make judgements from theory on the status of the BILLIONS of galaxies which harbor MILLIONS of stars of which, even if we had a machine that given to all humans, both present and future generations, could instantaneously transport us from star to star, would be largly unexplored before the eventual end of the universe.
Personally I find the human race a bit ego-centric in the rationale that the universe was made for them and the reasoning suspect to justify their beliefs.
Until I played lotto. It is really a heart breaker to be an unlikely intellegent life form in a unlikely planet and then blow it at the last moment to live in poverty :-(
I know commenting on your .sig isn't relevant, but...
:)
"Integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is watching you."
The philosopher who asked if trees make noise when noone's around to percieve it would probably think there's no such thing as integrity.
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
Guillermo Gonzalez is also well known as a proponent of "Intelligent Design "
From your later statements referencing "pseodo-science" and "the limited minds of ID'ers" I assume that you believe that Gonzalez's theories are somehow invalidated by this. Of course that is an ad hominem fallacy - his motivation is irrelevent to the validity of his argument. It is an interesting observation about Gonzalez's possible motivation in formulating the rare earth hypothesis but it says nothing at all about whether it's true or not. He may very well be quite wrong, but his reasoning (whatever his motivation to pursue it) seems sound and his argument is convincing. I'm sure there are very convincing counter-arguments but "he's a closet creationist" isn't one of them.
I agree with you that the vast majority of life will evolve as carbon based one. But, then you say
>> My opinion is all you really need for life is carbon and water.
That does not seem to be the case. Carbon and water are quite common throughout interstellar gas, and even within the solar system these compounds are present on several moons in non-negligible quantities. Just because carbon and water are necessary for organic life doesn't mean they are sufficient. Life is only likely in some range of environmental conditions. No doubt such conditions exist on other planets. But what several scientists have pointed out is that the environments on planets are generally not stable in this galaxy.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
For the life of me I can't find the story (I'm pretty sure it was on BBC) but I remember reading about the idea that there is not only solar inhabitable zones, (Places not too warm but not too cold, where earth is) but galactic inhabitable zones as well. The idea is that towards the center of the galaxy life can't arize because there's too much stellar activity and any potential planets are under a constant rain of radiation. Too far out and there's not enough heavy elements to support life.
Does anybody have a URL for this?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
The article was just that. Doh! But I saw it a while ago so it's nothing new.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
if we are in one of those "precious" zones, aliens might be closer than we thought, though less of them...if each galaxy has only certain zones that can have life, that doesn't matter quite so much, as there are billions of galaxies...
To think they don't exist is silly, spending money on finding them, even if rare, is about the most important thing I can think of to spend money on - that and anything else, anything at all, even a mission to Mars, that makes us smarter about leaving before the next big one hits...we need, as humans, to concentrate all of our energies on leaving this rock.
The Drake Equation would make a great title for a science fiction book, though.
Amazing magic tricks
Let's take a look into astronomical history:
We tought there was only one continent.
We found America, a continent very similar to Eurasia.
We tought we were the only planet with a moon and a sun.
We looked at Jupiter and found storms, moons.
We tought we were the only solar system with planets
We are finding new solar systems often now.
Now you think we are the only planet that has life forms on it?
Are you sure we won't find another one soon?
Everything we see in the universe, our own planet, our sun, other galaxies, is repeated at least a million times elsewhere in the universe. Do you really think anything in this universe is unique? I don't think so.
As I learn more and more, I realize I don't know much.
What makes you think lifeforms from different worlds are going to be anything like ourselves? We are a carbon-based lifeform, we need oxygen, gravity, water, etc. Why can't the next lifeform we discover survive in a vacuum. Maybe they are just that advanced they can travel this far and survive in this type of atmosphere. Or maybe, they created some kind of device that allows them to survive in our atmosphere (i.e. a space suit)? Yeah, life could never exist there. Just like Earth must be flat. I think one thing our generation has adapted since the previous is the feeling that anything is possible. Why shouldn't we at least entertain the thought?
http://www.askthevoid.com
I'm a metallurgist, a computer programmer, and I spend a good bit of time reading about quantum physics, fractal geometry and astronomy becuase I like to. I'm also a fundamentalist Christian, and read and study the Bible, something else I also enjoy.
I don't claim to understand the mind of God. I'm personally comfortable with the idea that the God I worship - the one that I believe to be an omnipotent, omnipowerful being that exists outside of time and space - had his own reasons for creating, in six days, a universe that looks and in all respects acts as if it were billions of years old. Why? Maybe to give us something to study for a few thousand years. Maybe just to give us something to look at and wonder about in the night sky. In any case, I'm happy to study science on one hand, and argue theology on the other, without feeling the overwhleming need to reconcile what I see as two fundamentally irreconcilable subjects (something both "creationists" and "evolutionists" seem to think is absolutely essential, for some reason.)
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I see this time and again in scientists. They'll rate a planet by how much like earth it is, and the less like earth, the less likely it is to sustain life.
I don't buy that. These scientists are still too brainwashed by myths of creation, as if God made living things and searched for a planet that He could stash them on. It seems much more likely that we evolved to best survive on earth. That life is a product of a planet, not simply a consumer that ended up there at the right place at the right time.
I think it's very arrogant to believe all living things in the universe must be carbon based.
No, just in Iowa.
This makes me want to play an old SPI wargame
called Outreach (1979). Where the players start
out on the spiral arms. And yes, the galactic
center was "inhospitable".
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
http://www.electricstory.com/stories/meat.asp
I thought you all might like this. It answers the question of why we haven't been contacted by otherworlders. Some day robotic archealogists will examine evidence of pre-existing human species and try to understand how "meat" could produce something like Hoover dam.
Later,
Who Needs Login
...Because we're just throwing out road maps to Sol in the form of people radioing the stars, hoping for an answer and assuming everybody plays nice.
"Oh, hello there Earthings! We got your message and came as quickly as we could! Oh, no, we didn't have any problems following the directions you gave us... They were every well laid out! Oh, sorry to be such a bother, but we really must exterminate you now!"
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I haven't read any comments that point out one of the severe flaws in the implied logic of the article. Specifically, that Gonzales assumes these characteristics necessarily preclude the frequent formation of earth-like planets. The fact is, however, that such a leap of logic is unjustified. Such a claim requires more detailed explanation of how each of the identified conditions would interact with an actual solar system, down to the climate of the affected planets. We are frequently surprised both in Astronomy and on Earth by the huge impact of seemingly subtle details. The fact that this article offers few (zero) details and utterly lacks careful explorations of the interactions Gonzalez mentions, suggests that his conclusions cannot be taken as more than vague musings.
It also strikes me that Gonzales may have decided what he wants to believe, and then went looking for justification. The only problem is, he didn't actually find that justification; he just found hints that he selectively presented to bolster his assumption. He says something to the effect of "the galaxy is a scary place, therefore Earth-like planets hardly ever form." That makes for an interesting conversation, but by itself is very far from convincing.
Until we understand in great detail how planet forming processes & external factors interact, or can exlicitly look for extrasolar Earth-like planets, we can't disprove these assertions. That doesn't,however, mean we should assume, as Gonzales would like us to, that nice planets necessarily can't be common.
There are, however, hints to believe Earth-like planets could be common. Distant solar systems are, for example, discovered regularly. Unfortunately we don't have the equipment to determine if classicly habitable planets exist in those solar systems. But if we assume the presence of solar systems indicates any likelihood of habitable planets, then there's a hint that habitable planets could be common. It's far from convincing, but no less so than the assertions in this article.
(As an aside, Gonzalez also ignores the possibility that there may be certain areas of space that make Earth-like planets significantly more likely to form. For example, maybe in some parts of the outer edges of the galaxy one or two Earth like planet are the norm in one-star solar systems. The point is, we don't know and can't fairly assume either way.)
And last week we read that there might be more life then one would suspect. So the messages keep alternating eachother about how much life there can be found in the universe.
But I was just wondering what is it that we expect ?
I think the big conclusion is that we dont know much on either side of the subject (pro or con).
We dealing with quantities this big (size of galaxies) only a very small change in on of the factors changes the outcome a lot.
Gamma-Ray Burst Mystery Solved: Exploding Stars The Culprit
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
....until the Core Explosion hits us.
Have a nice life.
It is possible that we are alone in the universe. We don't know, but it's possible. Why is this possibility dismissed as heresy by so many?
It's pretty funny to read that life isn't that common although other scientists claimed the opposite a couple of weeks ago. Here is another bit with some comments (sorry, german, use the fish).
Alex.
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
Just like volcanic vents spewing water heated to hundreds of degrees in pitch black darkness is inhospitable.
extraterrestial life reports, that intelligence at space.com is quite lower than thought before...
Could be worse. Could be raining.
Yes you can argue that and it's very plausible that they might be a factor of a young Universe. I don't completely agree with the reasoning however, and there are other possibilities.
Most notably there are so many more far-away galaxies than nearby galaxies. More recent estimations based on the hubble deep field have placed it at possibly 80 billion galaxies, or at least something on that order. Nearly all of them are an incredibly long way away from us.
Even though there are lots of gamma ray bursters, it's no real surprise that any given event is likely to happen in a far away location from nearly every other point in the Universe. It's already been argued that gamma ray bursts have enough energy that it'll eventually be visible from everywhere no matter how far away it happens. The reason we're seeing so many of them is that we're (arguably) seeing about as far as it's possible to see.
Under this scenario, it's completely possible that gamma ray bursts happen in older galaxies, too. The only reason we haven't seen them yet is because there aren't enough older galaxies nearby to have justified the probability of it happening while we're here to watch. In an estimated 80 billion galaxies, we're only detecting about one burst per day, from an entirely random direction.
If we are seeing every one that happens within these 80 billion galaxies, and if you figure it out on a calculator, a typical galaxy would average a gamma ray burst about every 220 million years... if it was a uniform distribution throughout the life of the Universe.
Again, it's all theory.
Maybe unfit for Terran life? But we've never made contact with ANY sort of alien life-form. But I'm guessing for life to thrive in a condition far different from Earth, it will turn up to be far different from life as we know it.
-Evan
It never ceases to amaze me the stupidity of some people. Don't you guys realize that with billions and billions of planets having the same conditions as our planet out there, the probability the probability that life doesn't exist anywhere else is ALOT LESS than the probability that there is.
So what does this prove? We have two "facts" (we actually don't know, but Gonzales tries to prove something here), and Gonzales concludes that constantly a large number of comets and asteroids would rain down on planets, destroing all developing life. No, actually all earth like planets.
Somebody else might conclude that most of those minor bodies would be send into the system very early on, and actually become part of the still young planets, while later there would be just as little (or even less) impacts from asteroids and comets on the planets as in our system.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Do you have a proof of existance of ANY planets near other stars? The only things that we have is some periodical light changes from that stars...
It's not proven that a lot of planets exists...
Of course, if you believe Star Trek and Star Wars (the original trilogy, before rampant CGI took over), you'd think that all intelligent life in the universe is composed of bipeds of roughly human size with bits of rubbery stuff glued to their heads to make them seem slightly different.
This was, of course, explained in a Star Trek (movie? episode?) which showed that ancient bipeds spread their DNA all over the galaxy so that we'd all evolve to look somewhat alike. Nice way to explain away over 30 years of cheap makeup FX.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
What I mean by my Subject title is that the first generation of stars produced the heavier elements that we see today in their death throes. That is, the shock wave blasts created pockets of fusion that created lumps of Nickel, carbon, oxygen, and so on. But those stars were giants, and -- even if life had developed out of hydrogen -- the shockwave blasts would surely have killed off that round of life. Not only that, but that first generation of stars was relatively short-lived, so there was less time available to develop life, out of less complexity. [If it did develop, I would suspect that it would develop within the stars rather than within the H2 gas clouds, and would be massively energetic, but would have been bound to the stars... but that's neither here nor there.] Our own sun is relatively young in the 2nd generation of stars, as I understand. What that means is that -- relatively speaking -- we are probably among the first generation of life of our type to be produced. That means that alien cultures, though they may be more advanced than us, probably won't find us (or vice versa) for a while. That being said, if we ever do get instructions for building a machine a la Sagan's "Contact", then unless we completely understand the machine, DON'T DO IT. From what we've seen of computers, there exists a great potential for real-world virus machines (turing machines?) that could entirely coopt and/or destroy our culture, and then start beaming virus instructions elsewhere into space.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Okay, there is an infinite amount of space, and a finite amount of life in the universe. now, last time I checked a finite amount divided by an infinite amount was 0. Therefor, there is no life in the universe. (Obligatory HHGttG reference)
:)
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Water is liquid. H2O in solid form is called ice, and in gaseous form is called water vapor. I should've said "liquid water" rather than "water", but I thought it would be redundant.
The need for liquid - that is, aqueous solutions - should be obvious. Solids lack free motion of individual molecules (well, mostly free motion in solids - yes, they can vibrate, but they can't rearrange easily) and gasses have too large of a mean free path (gas laws suck, too: lower the mean free path, and temperature goes up) and so interactions don't happen that often, or they happen with far too much energy.
We haven't found liquid water anywhere else yet (found as in brought it back). When we go to Europa (IF we go...) and we find a liquid ocean of water there, I'd bet money we'll find life. Not MUCH money, because I could be wrong (hence 'my opinion') but I'd bet money.
If the probability of you getting home were small, you'd be dead. Even at a 51% chance of failure, the probability of you surviving a month's worth of trips home is 1 in 6 billion, essentially enough to consider you already dead.
Probability is funny like that.
Two questions for any aspiring astrophysicists:
1) Given that the Sun is expanding, and will do so more quickly over the next few billion years, will the goldilocks zone shift outward? This would mean that in a billion years, Mars will be the most hospitable planet, and a billion years after that, some of Jupiter's moons will be the best place for life.
2) Given that the Sun releases massive amounts of energy every day, and thus loses mass, is it's gravitational pull becoming slightly weaker every day? So, in a billion years or so, will Earth's orbit slip away as the Sun loses its grip on its satellites?
As a lifeform which does not understand the nature of time, reality, conciousness, itself, and drinks things like Coca Cola, we're in no position to assume anything much about the existance and nature of life beyond our own solarsystem and 3dimensional space.
Besides, why are we assuming life only exists in own own plane of reality? We don't understand the nature of existance even.
Freeman Dyson was here a couple of weeks ago to give some lectures, one of which was on where we might expect to find life in the universe. On the question of what are the chances life exists anywhere besides on Earth, he claimed that we have essentially no real knowledge relevant to answering that question, and any scientist claiming a specific number or probability was blowing smoke (paraphrasing here...) - the best one could guess at this point given our current knowledge was 50% likelihood for any particular question on the subject. Is Earth the only planet in the universe with life? 50/50. If there's life out there, would it necessarily be carbon-based or something else? 50/50. Etc. Until we actually find something living out there, we're so in the dark it's worthless to make these sorts of claims and predictions.
Energy: time to change the picture.
A little conundrum for you.
Time slows down as you approach the speed of light.
The difference between the amount of time that passes
on board a ship and here on earth is shall I say
astronomical.
-----
-----
Center of Milky Way-30,000 light years
shiptime: 21 years
Andromeda: 2,000,000 light years
shiptime:28 years.
--
Seems an impossible stretch of logic.
Damned bizarre. How is this possible? Does this
mean that the little photon of light has only been
on the road for 21 years? But for us on earth it
would feel like 30,000 years?
Wheres the formula??
Hmm so if theres less an less chance of finding intelligent life on a non earth planet... then *gasps* when are we gonna find the super hot anime cat women?!?!?!
Good luck in hell.
Don't think of it as a lie so much as an overly elaborate practical joke.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
sure hope our systems dont get overrun by the shivans when we start using subspace :/
Dont ask me...Im just the bass player.
Note to evolutionists: You still can't prove there isn't a God.
Note to agnostics: Get off the damn fence!