Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Well, that's better than religion, where the preferred method is killing those that disagree with your "truth".
It's more of a synergy thing; new theories lead to new technologies that lead to new tools that let us see new things that let us create new theories, and so on. Einstein couldn't have come up with Relativity without the Michelson-Morley experiments (which required good interferometers) and very accurate methods for measuring Mercury's orbit.
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...
... until we went there. The quality of your presumptions weigh heavily in the strength of your hypotheses...
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."
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
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
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.
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.
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.
But we are standing on a threshold, we are in the midst of a huge leap forward. If we don't slip into another dark age, then it's very exciting what could be accomplished.
Doesn't it amaze you that you can build a computer, in your living room, using off the shelf parts, that could hold the entire library of congress? And do it for less than the price of a single automobile?
It's only when you think in terms like that, one realizes the great importance of things like copyright, and their effect on the human race. I ask, which serves the public interest better, every town having a complete copy of the LOC available instantly to all people, for a tiny fraction of what a library costs, or the benefit derived from copyright laws.
I know this sort of rambled a little offtopic, and it isn't aimed at you as much as all Slashdot readers, but I think this is profoundly important, especially when considering things about the human condition, and our possible exploration of space.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
That's why the really interesting stuff always happens in A Galaxy Far, Far Away.
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
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).
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."
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.
"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
Would you care to clarify those statements in any way or just let us assume that you are spouting nonsense? I for one cannot see how you got 'Religion' == 'Peace and good will towards greater numbers of men and women' from the statistics on that page. But by all means, do explain.
While religion has occasionally been used as an excuse for horrible acts
Not religion per se. Just blind faith. Important guy says we need to kill all of these people, so we go and do it and don't dare ask any questions. And by 'occasionally', you really mean 'most of human history', right?
it is much more often provides hope, stability and ethical values to work from
Hope, perhaps. IMO it's the same kind of hope one gets by playing the lottery, but hey... Stability is partly the problem. Religions must be very stable indeed and cannot survive major changes nor doubt of any kind. The very thing that science thrives and advances on. Ethics? Hogwash. I am really sick and tired of being told that I cannot be ethical, moral, or even just a nice guy without accepting the baggage of some crazy cult like Christianity. I happily accept the concept of being kind to my fellow man without needing the imaginary carrot and stick of heaven and hell.
Dyolf Knip
I've been complaining about how hard life is here for AGES!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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?
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.
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
The Drake Equation would make a great title for a science fiction book, though.
Amazing magic tricks
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.
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.)
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
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
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.
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.
Huh? I'm intolerant of people who insult me, demean me, are condescending and rude to me, knowingly ignore logic and reason and evidence, and threaten me with imaginary punishments by imaginary third parties, all in the name of trying to convince me to blindly believe in a cult more bizarre than anything you'll find in a National Enquirer. Gee, I can't imagine why.
Intolerance is human based not religion based
I'm well aware of that. But while the use of reason strives for less intolerance, religions constantly seem to strive for more. The very first commandment demands that you not even consider a 'heretical' idea. The Koran has whole sections devoted to the treatment of nonbelievers. Some of it is quite idealistic, but an awful lot is just inhuman cruelty. The list goes on and on.
I know why because they are judging American Christianity not real Christianity
Do tell. And what exactly is this gaping theological difference between the True Christianity you evidently practice and the evil heretic Christianity practiced in my homeland? The false faiths I find around here obviously need to be stamped out of existence, right? Though I seem to have forgotten why. Perhaps you can refresh my memory?
it is typical of Americans to never think outside the box
Oh bullshit. Show me one shred of proof that everyone on this side of the pond is a totally unimaginative drone compared to the ubiquitous creative geniuses you live with. Enough with the ad hominem attacks.
Dyolf Knip
Don't think of it as a lie so much as an overly elaborate practical joke.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.