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Is Extraterrestrial Life More Whimsical Than Plausible?
coondoggie writes "Princeton University researchers are throwing some cold water on the hot notion that astrobiologists and other scientists expect to one day find life on other planets. Recent discoveries of planets similar to Earth in size and proximity to the planets' respective suns have sparked scientific and public excitement about the possibility of also finding Earth-like life on those worlds, but the expectation that life — from bacteria to sentient beings — has or will develop on other planets as on Earth might be based more on optimism than scientific evidence."
is keeping us from discovering extraterrestrial life.
Looks like the article is behind a paywall.
It's statistical probability, you Philistine!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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You are not authorized to access this page..."
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
In all seriousness, we haven't even got a foot on the next planet over. I think we can afford to not bicker and argue over the prospects for life elsewhere for a bit. Give science a chance to discover what it will.
...since the one in the story appears dead.
Expectation of extraterrestrial life built more on optimism than evidence
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2012/04/General-Science-Expectation-Of-Extraterrestrial-Life-Built-More-On-Optimism-Than-Evidence/
Is the search for ET pie-in-the-sky fantasy?
http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/is-the-search-for-et-pie-in-the-sky-fantasy/
We Really Hope ET is Out There, But There’s Not Enough Scientific Evidence, Researchers Say
http://www.universetoday.com/94838/we-really-hope-et-is-out-there-but-theres-not-enough-scientific-evidence-researchers-say/
is not absence of evidence
Life is Like a cockroach, where there's one, there's a billion. The whimsical part is the notion that we will ever interact with one another. The distances and natural laws just won't allow it.
This assumes all life must look like us. Why can't their be "life" on planets that would cook us alive? Pretty narrow view if you ask me.
Whoever wrote the tagline for this piece should get a beer and day off. Well played.
This is a case where the statement "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Yes, we have no evidence as of yet, but at the same time we have a sample size of exactly one, so trying to making any claim on the frequency or infrequency of life elsewhere in the Universe is utterly ludicrous.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Personally, I just think about how many stars there are--especially in light of how many planets we are finding--and I can't help thinking life is common.
That being said, there still might not be any "near" us.
expandfairuse.org
I think we are at a point where most adults have grown up their entire lives with the assumption that certain great discoveries and advancements will be made in their lifetime. Moon bases. Mars missions. Evidence (at least) of extra-terrestrial life. As these folks (I am one of them) hit the downward slope of their life expectancy (which itself hasn't seen the expected advancements), I expect much more wild speculation, straw-grasping and fallacious conclusions about what "must" exist.
If the universe is so immense that it is unlikely that extra-terrestrial life doesn't exist, then it is immense enough that we will probably never find it. Then there is the whole issue of whether that life evolved and died a billion years in the past.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of real problems to be solved and discoveries to be made here on Earth, if anyone is still interested.
Not saying don't look. Just saying be realistic.
We really don't know what the odds are for life evolving, nor the factors that make it more or less likely except on the grossest scale. But as another post, not yet modded up still at 0 points out, the current lack of evidence for life is not evidence of lack of life.
We do research so we might find evidence that might support either side of the argument. Who the fuck cares if we don't currently have evidence to support realistic ET expectations.
I'm sorry but it seems like this article is nothing more than a "Don't get your hopes up". Which is useful because...?
Princeton University researchers are [speculating] on the [speculation] that astrobiologists and other scientists [speculate] to one day find life on other planets. Recent discoveries [...] have sparked [speculation] about the possibility of also finding Earth-like life on those worlds, but the [speculation] that life - from bacteria to sentient beings - has or will develop on other planets as on Earth might be based more on [speculation].
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
The science is severly limited by the fact our observable data set of worlds with life consists of a single sample.
It is vary hard to do science with a single sample.
the guy who thinks voyager soil samples show signs of bacterial life will know whether he's right or wrong by then.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Nothing new here. Just the same old complaint of cognitive bias due to our desire to find someone else. Which does not change the fact that life, and even intelligent life are verifiable possibilities in the universe: we do exist, so the process can be repeated somewhere else. Unless you give up on the mediocrity principle and accept that Earth is special. Which from a scientific point of view increasingly seems not to be the case (with all the other confirmed extrasolar planets, some in the Goldilocks zone, for example).
Expectation of extraterrestrial life built more on optimism than evidence http://www.rdmag.com/News/2012/04/General-Science-Expectation-Of-Extraterrestrial-Life-Built-More-On-Optimism-Than-Evidence/
And yet there's a Slashdot user named mbone that repeatedly claims otherwise ... either he's an extremely well researched troll or he's on to something.
It would seem that at least microbes or maybe plant life would be inevitable. As far as intelligent life... well, we haven't located any on Earth yet so I have my doubts.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
The uncertainties are so large around life that currently noone can call "we will find life for sure" whimsical or optimistic compared to "we won't find life elsewhere for sure". It's just as uncertain.
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Be yourself no matter what they say
This. We can't even confirm or deny the existence of life on Venus or Mars.
This is once again more moronic bullcrap that says other planets are not like earth, so life can't evolve on them.
Most of the universe is composed of dark matter. We know nothing about dark matter, so saying you won't find life there is like saying you don't think there is any thing in a closed box before you even shake it.
Doing so just makes a fool out of the arrogant doctorate that thinks his Phd in one field of science makes him an expert in all.
The basic fact is the astrophysicists always make the SAME mistake - assuming life has to be earthlike. The definition of life is very broad and does not require DNA, water, or any of the rest of the stuff the astrophysicists look at.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The idea of finding life on other planets is actually based on statistics. There are literally billions of Earth-like planets in the universe. The chances are that conditions on at least some of those planets has given rise to life.
There is also a very good statistical chance that there are non-carbon life-forms on other planets.
So unless you've got a "God created the Earth" mentality, there being life on other planets is a foregone conclusion.
Does that mean we'll encounter life from other planets? Perhaps not. That depends on whether any forms of FTL ever prove feasible, beyond which there's the roll of the dice of the rarity of planets with life. The odds are you'd have visit and explore a fair number of dead worlds before you'd encounter one with life.
Only those who think we are "created in God's image" would stick their heads in the sand and claim otherwise. God has no image, and it's form is the universe itself. To think we look anything like the universe is ludicrous!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Sure, why not? Let's see, if an alien civilization discovered how to travel at the speed of light, and they lived in the nearest solar system with earth-like planets, then it's only 44 trillion kilometers or 4.4 light years away. I can see traveling for 4.4 years in a small spacecraft in order to pick up farmers and mechanics on earth and probe them.
--
No chance, English bed-wetting types. I burst my pimples at you and call your door-opening request a silly thing, you tiny-brained wipers of other people's bottoms!
I thought science was about forming a theory or hypothesis and then either proving or disproving it. You can't see gravity but it's there, Isaac Newton didn't discover it, but he started pondering the mechanism. Does not mean that the billions of years prior to that everything floated.
I think if anything it will make us redefine what is life, not to mention that it's going to be hard to prove or disprove life on other planets without evidence to support or lack or evidence to refute it, just because we don't find life on the first 100,000 planets doesn't mean 100,001 won't be teaming with life. Once earth was at the center of our solar system, we know that to be untrue now, we thought mental illness was caused by demons we know different now. To make the claim that we are the only sentient lifeforms in the entire universe is well beyond conceited.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
How is that different from eating any other animal?
the problem that NASA etc. isn't really considering is that some of the planets they're looking at could well have had life borne out of the primordal soup, evolved to sentience, discovered genetic engineering, created plants and food crops that went out-of-control and destroyed the entire ecology and turned the entire planet into a barren wasteland... all hundreds of millions of years before NASA or anyone else took a peek at the barren rock that is left from a distance of billions of miles away.
so in other words, the article appears to have entirely missed the point that we're looking for *ecologically responsible* intelligent life on other planets that is sufficiently stable that they haven't blown themselves to shit or fucked their planet into oblivion.
my main worry right now is whether the present occupants of planet earth will be around long enough to be contacted *by* intelligent life on other planets.
Because even if there's some non zero probability of existing, people of earth will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever find it. Never. Not ever. Mankind will never find any direct evidence of life anywhere else.
Has anyone ever thought about the reason why we haven't found nor been contacted by intelligent extra-terrestrial life is due to the fact that our world is so mucked up? I wholeheartedly believe that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe; so put yourself in their shoes. If you're an alien with the intelligence and skill to achieve interstellar travel, would you stop and visit a world as hostile as ours, or simply avoid it and classify said planet as "The Ghetto"?
1) on a planet with water, life can rise up.
2) There is a lot more water out the in the universe then we every imagined.
3) There are billions of planet that can have liquid water.
So the existence that life is in the universe is a fact.
The idea that it can only happen once is a guess.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Here is a link to the article on arXiv
http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.3835
... but you can't always believe what they say.
Dude, we just flew here in that saucer thing!
Dude, we totally can't walk up stairs!
It's a [tokes] Cookbook, man!
Extoiminate! Extoiminate! Nyuk nyuk!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Their article is at PNAS (with an accessible preprint on Arxiv.org and has the following abstract:
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Science starts with a single example.
It's hard to come to a conclusion with one sample. Other then life can exist.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wow, this sounds like just what scientists were saying about the likelihood of discovering extrasolar planets themselves... before a bunch were discovered. And then I remember a flurry of stories full of similar nay-saying, but just about the idea of discovering Earth-sized planets. Until they discovered some of those, too.
Liberty in your lifetime
The title is completely wrong. Nothing about this work suggests extraterrestrial life isn't plausible, nor that there's anything whimsical about it. Here is what they actually said.
We know that life appeared on earth very soon after the surface became cool enough to be habitable. People therefore assume the same would be true on other planets. But having only one data point doesn't give us enough evidence to actually conclude that with any confidence. In particular:
1. It took a few billion years after that for life to evolve to the point where it could wonder about the possibility of life on other planets.
2. If it had taken a few billion years for life to appear in the first place, we might never have reached this point.
3. Therefore this might just be an anthropic effect. Intelligent life forms will always find themselves on planets where life appeared quickly, but that doesn't tell you how often life actually does appear quickly.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
I am assuming you intend to further embellish that it was all beef and halal. In other news, Romney will just attach one to his roof.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
What we know about the likelihood of life elsewhere in the Universe amounts to precisely fuck-all, since our current sample size is exactly one. That's not exactly rocket surgery. So, while technically correct, this "analysis" has probably more to do with riling the nerds for LOLs than any serious or enlightening purpose.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
SETI only gets a couple of million dollars. There are far more wasteful things getting a far larger share of the pie than SETI. For example, the US has six times as many aircraft carriers as any other country on the planet, more than the combined navies of every other country combined; yet they are building twice as many as currently exist in the British Royal Navy. At $13+billion a pop, that's quite a lot of money. Cut one of the aircraft carriers and give the money to NASA, or NOAA.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Reminds me of all that bullshit religious bigots serve me at any argument about aliens.. "If you believe in aliens why don't you believe in god?".
Because am not a fucking egocentric cunt who believes he is the center of the world, the universe, and the rest! This is why.
Mostly, I think the "life" they are looking for is in NASA projects that otherwise would be dead. If you breathlessly announce lots of planets that have the possibility of life, you're more likely to get funding for your project.
That's not to say that the Kepler project isn't useful, it is profoundly important, but when you spend a lot of money to build and deploy a space telescope, well, a lot of people expect results. Those results better be forthcoming if you want to continue the project and/or build more and better space telescopes.
All the Princeton researchers are saying is, that the number of life-bearing planets we know about is approximately 1. Therefore, we don't really know much about life-bearing planets, how life forms on them, how fast it develops, etc.
Proverbs 21:19
This is why I get irked every time someone says something like, "It's a statistical certainty that life exists elsewhere in the Universe." People just don't fucking get it.
Thousands of Exo-planets discovered. Viking’s life detection experiments are being reconsidered. Life has been found to have started very early in Earth’s evolution. Various Extremophiles discovered. For the last twenty years the evidence keeps tipping in favor of extraterrestrial life being more and more likely. That we haven’t yet discovered said life says more about our commitment to doing so than its likely-hood.
Sadly this article will be linked to a thousand times by the ID crowd shouting we need to stop wasting all this money looking for ET and realize how special and God chosen we are.
I’d also add Bayesian analysis sucks when it comes to these all or nothing analysis with such a small sample size. Bayesian analysis can be used to say we have approximately 50-100 years of civilization left. HOWEVER the same analysis 200 years ago would have given roughly the same result. These kinds of statistics mean nothing until you have a large data set that is properly categorized. We don’t even know for certainty our next nearest planetary neighbor is lifeless. Finding life on Mars would sudden explode Bayesian stats to near certainty that life is everywhere.
Letter To Iran
We got where we are thanks to the dead animals time has gifted to us and buried beneath our feet. Going by the inevitable and grim prospect of running out of the good stuff, if our own fate is the likely outcome of sentience blessed with 150 millions years worth of sunlight compressed into goo, then intelligence life is going to be a whole lot harder than even the skeptics want to appreciate.
I think life is very likely. I think us seeing it won't happen. I certain us meeting other, intelligent life in the universe during the tiny window we'll get to survive as a species is simply impossible.
We don't deserve intergalactic travel. Maybe, though, we'll be lucky enough to be a part of the next fossil fuels that kickstarts the next dominant species' intellectual revolution. It would almost be the responsible thing to just decimate the human species now before we waste what fossil fuels are already there so that the next contender has a better chance of unraveling the mysteries of the universe.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
The science is severly limited by the fact our observable data set of worlds with life consists of a single sample.
It is vary hard to do science with a single sample.
Well, it proves beyond doubt that life is *possible*. It still may be a freak accident that only happened exactly once on all planets in the universe, but it *can* happen. That's more than knowing nothing.
Personally I think there is lots of life, but complex, even intelligent life, even with with technology and industry may be very rare. It also may tend to be very short-lived and every two species may easily be divided by not only space but also time.
"The Universe is big and old and rare things happen all the time, including life."
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson gives a good talk on this, as usual with things related to astrophysics. He points out that the elements we find in our bodies are the same elements you find in the universe, and in the same order (hydrogen is the most common in the universe, and is the most common in us) and that you can trace the atoms in us to the crucible that formed stars. We are, literally, stardust. Well that is almost certainly not a coincidence. We are made of what we are made because the universe is made of what it is made. Same shit with carbon being our building block: Carbon is THE building block, you can make more molecules with it than with all other elements combined.
So looking at all that, we look pretty damn typical, pretty damn common. Thus when you have galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars, and 100-200 billion (observed) galaxies in the universe it becomes a near statistical certainty that such a thing would happen elsewhere. We aren't some special collection of elements that you are highly unlikely to see, we are precisely what you'd expect based on cosmic observation.
Wait, you're telling me that anecdotal evidence isn't the best kind of evidence?
Maybe life can induce itself thanks to QM nature of physics. As TFA noted, intelligent life is billions years away from its origins. Therefore, it is impossible to find out how it emerged in something like VERY improbable process. Fact that we are observing universe induce (back in time) this event happened, without even needing to define EXACT way it happened. It is only needed to be defined in "resolution" that we can observe today: earliest fossils. Before that, answer can be easily be "unedfined", just like previous path of observed photon. All what we can have is set of probabilities linked with individual theories, all "true" and "false" in the same time.
839*929
Same with "moon", right?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. - Johm 14:2
The usual interpretation of this has to do with Heaven, but who knows? It could mean that we are meant to 'go forth and multiply' and populate the universe. It's just possible that we are the first, the only, and have the potential to propagate Life from its only original source. Maybe that is our calling - to seed Life everywhere. Truly, if/when we do move into space, we will be bringing many other forms of life with us - a significant part of our entire ecosystem.
I predict that someone will use this quotation and others to inspire a space-based neo-Christian (plus possibly also neo-some other beliefs) religion. And if that is what it takes to get us moving off this planet, I'm for it.
(See also James Bliss, "A Case of Conscience". An interesting question is raised.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
There is only one Sun, it's a proper noun, and it's our star.
Please, whomever submitted this story, please get your basic astronomy right.
That ship sailed long ago. It's like complaining that we talk about the moons of Jupiter instead of calling them Jupiter's satellites.
For the longest time, the satellite of a planet is a moon of that planet and stars a planet orbits is its sun. When we want to differentiate them, we call our moon by its latin name Luna and our sun by its latin name Sol.
The only way with our limited knowledge of the universe is by looking at our solar system and comparing it to others. Our star is normal, after discovering gas giants are often further out from stars (leaving for rocky inner planets), our general layout is normal. About the only things we can say are remarkable (to our current knowledge) is our earth-moon ratio and how the earth's make-up was affected by a massive impact eons ago. IANAA, but from my layman's guess, there's nothing remarkable enough about us to start closing any doors.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Real extraterrestrials will look nothing like human. They might be super-intelligent shades of the color blue. If we're lucky.
Differentiating them extraterrestrials and the landscape may be problematic.
In any case, all the exoplanet talk is entirely speculative. During my lifetime, scientists expected to find life on both Mars and Venus -- and those planets are infinitely closer to Earth than any exoplanet. It was only after sending probes to Venus, for example, that we discovered it was a hell-hole incapable of anything resembling terrestrial life.
Anyone who tells you they've found an Earth-like exoplanet is flat-out ignorant. We've found exoplanets in roughly the right orbits to possibly sustain human life -- but the same could be said of Venus and Mars, and look how that turned out.
Microsoft leads to Bluescreen; Bluescreen leads to downtime; downtime leads to suffering.
There is no support either for or against the existence of life on other planets. Bayesian analysis doesn't transform that lack of knowledge into evidence against life. After Bayesian analysis, people still don't have any facts.
However, I'd say things certainly look better now than they did a few decades ago, given that we have discovered both vast amounts of organic molecules in space, as well as lots of planets in the Goldilocks zone.
or really big numbers, for that matter. So expecting them to understand a fraction like infinity/infinity is really stretching things.
No, moon is a bit more generic than the Sun.
It is NOW. The Moon is the proper name for our moon. Which is my point, language evolves. The moment we discovered the Sun was a star, it made sense to call the star a planet orbits its sun.
Also, "satellite" could refer to a non-natural entity, of course.
Once again, that's the case now. When Sputnik went up, people felt the need to qualify it as an "artificial satellite," and the term was used for the longest time. Eventually we dropped the "artificial" from it.
So capitalize Sun and Moon, and if that's not enough for you, use Sol and Luna.
welcome to inspiration, the gloriful wealth of optimism. that would be the first third of the scientific method from elementary school. Have a question, think about it, take a guess, and start exploring to gather evidence. From there your form a hypothesis and test it. We're currently stuck on that whole evidence thing. And it'll take a while.
So why is this a surprise to anyone? That we haven't found evidence of earth-like life yet? They do realize that things speed up quite quickly if we ever do.
Well, apparently "moon" has become generic, but not "sun".
What's your logical basis for allowing one and not the other?
Some people are using "sun" as a non-proper reference to other stars
By "some people," you mean the media, works of literature, and scientific papers.
but that is being corrected by other people
A futile attempt to keep language static instead of embracing new meanings. Like all other such attempts, you've already lost.
Did life come about because of a confluence of circumstances unique to Earth or can it develop and thrive with a fairly broad set of conditions?
That's the fundamental question, because there are a variety of conditions on Earth that are relatively unique. But did live develop here specifically because of those conditions or was it only shaped because of them? I mean, if you examine life everything fits just right but what we have is a chicken and egg scenario.
Keep in mind that if life were as resilient and adaptable that we should be finding evidence of it surviving elsewhere within our own solar system. So far we haven't found anything which would imply that specific conditions are required. But how specific are the requirements. Earth isn't tidal locked, we've got a large satellite and a fairly stable star, plate tectonics, amongst countless other things. So who knows what the real odds are. I will concede, however, that it's far from being too late to find something on a neighboring planet.
I do like being optimistic about this, however, so I want to believe that life should be common. However, given the vastness of the universe "common" is an extremely relative term. What are the odds of finding complex multi-cellular life within a distance we can realistically travel? And what are the odds of finding life that is thriving within our time frame. Chances are that most life gets snuffed out long before it's able to evolve into anything noteworthy.
"I can't help thinking that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man. Has to be."
We have a sample size of one. We cannot generalize from this. We have never created actual "life" in the lab...only the precursors.
Basically we have no idea how likely it is that life arises given the right conditions.
Besides, you will have all the proof you need that man is not alone around 2030. End of discussion.
Haha, the joke's on you -- the world ends on December 21st of this year. Your proof will arrive too late, the Mayans said so!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Yes, I realize that, and even thought about correcting myself but did not, so now instead I apologize to an AC, but heck, we're rationally discussing God on /. so I suppose he exists, as here before me I see a miracle :P
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Leave your absentee landlord out of it.
How you know *HE* is an absentee landlord?
You have seen *HIM* before ???? :/
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If life can arise, evolve and thrive in this solar system, then it can do the same elsewhere. There is no "special physics" occurring in this solar system that makes life here any more possible.
I see nothing whimsical about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, Its pretty much a given due to the numbers involved.
I would just like to point out that you actually have no idea how big the universe is.
While I believe that life is probably ubiquitous throughout the Universe...
If you accept that the Universe is roughly 13 billion years old...
And life formed on this planet roughly 3.5 billion years ago...
And you accept that the nearest star is four light years away, and we have had radio communication technology for roughly 100 years...
And that we know of no way to communicate faster than the speed of light...
The odds of any intelligent life communicating with us in the .00000000769 th of the age of the Universe that we have been able to communicate are pretty much nil. Add to that the drop in transmission energy as the signal spreads through space, and the communication would be a faint whisper. Even assuming that other civilisations existed simultaneous with ours, with the ability to communicate, outgoing messages may not reach the intended audience before the collapse of either civilisation.
We are the first species on our planet that realises that the planet is ultimately doomed. It is going to take robots terraforming and gathering resources to help us leave this planet. Getting to Mars will be a huge undertaking. Leaving the inner planets will be monumental. Leaving the solar system will take every ounce of ingenuity of generations. If we don't complete these tasks, it is very unlikely that we will find life, intelligent or otherwise, before our collective demise.
The math is clear. The dire march of time is against us.
I'm still not certain that we've confirmed the existence of life on Earth.
One way to judge how frequent life arises would be to check how often it has independently occurred on Earth. Do we have any species that share no genetic material with any other species? I've heard stories that mushrooms are completely orthogonal forms of life, but those same sources typically label them as extraterrestrial. That's just a story I heard... no idea if it is true or not. If the conditions on Earth are right for life, then perhaps we should occasionally see life appear ex nihilo. To the best of my knowledge, we have never observed that.
Given this, it seems like we would judge the formation of life to be pretty unlikely.
It's INCREDIBLE how, in 2012, when we know there are + than trillion of "stars" out there, that we still think we are the only (intelligent?) for of life in the universe...
It's like still thinking that earth is flat... In 2012...
Simply ridiculous...
is not to compute its result, it is to show how much we do/don't know.
We're slowly, or quickly depending on your outlook, filling in the gaps. We now have enough data on extrasolar planets to do statistical extrapolations.
In the next decade or two, we will have telescopes nearly large enough to do spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere of nearby extrasolar planets. In particular we will be able to see if they have significant dioxygen, which can only happen as a result of life as far as we know. That will remove another unknown value.
Advances in neurology and evolutionary biology will begin to highlight how likely it is for intelligence to evolve.
Neither in the piece that I skimmed, nor in anyone's comments, has addressed the biochemicals observed in space, both in the solar system and out of it (lessee, it was a few years ago that astronomers noted a nebula with alcohol in it, leading /. readers to suggest that fratboys will be pushing to head that way asap). Further, I belive probes have found evidence of earth-bacteria out there.
It's all over the place....
mark
Besides, you will have all the proof you need that man is not alone around 2030. End of discussion.
Oh, great. So we'll all just be quiet until then, oh wise one and powerful one. *snort*
I for one consider living matter needing to fuel its existence by eating other living matter as its fuel to be a dead end in the evolutionary process. Is this the only way it can develop in what appears to be an eternally infinite Universe? I'd like to think they're other ways.
However, if so, Earth to an outsider (if their is such a thing capable of being in that position) surely would seem to be operating like a ball of acid--completely covered with a bunch of psychotics consuming each other--something to be avoided at all cost.
Beacon Warning: This Sector Off Limits
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
Well, modded troll for asking a simple question. Guess that proves my point. Way to go, Slashdot.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
I hold the view that this really is more along the lines of saying that there is not just one faith that involves god. If you allow that there are literally hundreds of christian sects, a couple of different Jewish and Islamic sects (each) there are at least three well recognized 'dwelling places' that are within 'My Father's house'.
If you look at what each faith teaches, you will find far more in common, than separate. Almost every faith recognizes both that killing is wrong, but sometimes necessary. Stealing from one another is almost always discouraged in one way or another, but very few discourage taking from those outside of the faith.
Who among us truly knows "My Father" well enough to say that those following what we think is a different path are not following the same god?
Personally I think that all religions are the first level of governance beyond the family. They give us a means of building a community. That community allows us to accomplish more than any of us as individuals can do. And those accomplishments build upon each other as our communities start working with each other.
But that's a personal view, and I'm well aware that it runs counter to the public statements of many religions. I don't claim not to be heretical to those religions. I don't claim to be closer to 'my God' or yours, or have a better fundamental understanding of how the world works in your mind than you do.
You never know...