I don't believe your premise. It seems to suggest that there can only be one way the life started. It also suggests that the odds of life beginning naturally are so low that it could only happen once - which hits me as total nonsense. It's not particularly natural for something to happen once and absolutely only once. I do believe your your conclusion that the existence of extraterrestrial life being an open question. After all, we haven't detected extraterrestrial life!
I like to imagine the possibilities non terrestrial life might enjoy by starting with the "Alien" life right here...the Octopus is a wonderful starting point.
What if life started at a certain STAGE of star arrangement, or density or anything else, that is no longer like that? The assumption that there sure are a lot of places but here so life MUST exist, is naïve. Could be life all over the place, but the equation for it, is lame, until we at least understand the genesis of life here.
Yes, I think those who calculate the odds of extraterrestrial life are doing little more than trying to support their own biases.
True, we don't. But it is fair to assume that it happened by physical , deterministic processes which followed all of the same natural laws as any other physical process.
I do agree with that. It's hard to imagine a natural process that could only occur once per universe - other than the birth of the universe itself.
Well it was down to you to challenge me but I can understand why you didn't. Anyway I just did, and this is what I read . . . "A flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released - mostly in the active regions around sunspots. Their frequency varies from several a day, when the sun is particularly active, to less than one a week during quiet periods." It kinda proves my assertion that they're haphazard and therefore unpredictable, thus making this ridiculous NASA venture a highly expensive irrelevance?? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/9097587/Solar-flares-everything-you-need-to-know.html 'You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, etc'?? Actually that has reminded me of another aphorism which is universally quoted in the armed services here, and maybe there too . . . it's Bullshit baffles brains.
I doubt you understand, but I am happy to explain: I do not spoonfeed easily available information to people. If you were honestly interested in the information, you would look it up yourself. This willful ignorance and laziness on your part is a strong indication that any evidence presented to you would be dismissed anyway.
Yes they are somewhat unpredictable NOW which is basically the whole point of Parker to try and give us a better understanding of how such things work to better predict such events. You want to know what else used to be completely unpredictable? Rain. Guess what is now predictable due to human advances in technology? Rain. Same with hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, etc. You seem to be very against researching such things. However you as a human living in modern society certainly appreciate the fact that our ancestors didn't hold the same mentality as you do in regards to so called pointless endeavors. The same person who denounces such things as Parker surely uses the weather forecast to see whether you need to bring your umbrella to work or not. I'm sure plenty of humans years ago thought it was dumb to try to understand "unpredictable" hurricanes as well. Yet fast forward years later and humanity as a whole is sure as hell glad that scientists didn't listen to "you".
Forecasting the weather is kids' stuff compared to this 'Parker' crap. I'll repeat the truism, because it so exquisitely sums it up . . . Bullshit baffles brains.
Wait...first it's simple and obvious and dumb, now it's complicated? Cerberus, meet Cerberus. You two have a lot of differences to work out.
Its not likely true however meeting another technological species at the same period as we exist is pretty remote unless we develop galaxy hoping levels of space travel.
Seems to me Earthlings probably don't know 99.999% of what and where and why exists in the Universe so I can't agree that 'life' is dependent on how it started on Earth. But I will agree that how life got started on Earth can happen elsewhere in the Universe. Of course we don't yet know about life outside of Earth but I tend to believe that life on Earth is more normal in the grand scheme than Earth being a one-off event...
Even then the chances of us even recognizing intelligence different than our own, let alone communicating are virtually Nil. Hell we cannot even communicate with terrestrial species like Dolphins, apes or pretty much ANYTHING.
I agree we don't need to 'calculate' the odds of ET's but statistically if there are a billion-trillion opportunities in the Universe it would be something if Earth and humans were alone...
Well take ,oh, Ender's Game the Queen attacked assuming we weren't intelligent however if one can build cities, roads and spaceships and are shooting at you as your invading their land maybe they are intelligent. In Starship Troopers the novel Arachnids weren't considered smart until they see spaceships and it clicked if they have ships they can't be stupid. So I would say if we see an alien space presence we can assume intelligence even if only low tier like us right now or if they have cities and produce industrial gases. But communicating would be damned tricky other than we show up with an unarmed ship, land with no weapons and present our mission of diplomacy unarmed maybe they will assume we aren't there to fight.
If an alien came to earth, we would likely be the apes and need the training. Maybe you would need a couple of decades but I'm a fast learner.
that's another assumption, that an intelligent specie needs to build something...what if it the alien was aquatic and had no need or want of material things, material goods is us projecting our vales on them....they may not even have any interest in space travel or meeting other life forms...
Again, it depends on how we define 'intelligent' regarding ET's? Does it mean having technology to send/receive airborne radio signals or aquatic beings that never leave their liquified environments? Is a gorilla or whale an intelligent being? This is one of the issues with hunting for ET's...we're not sure what forms they might be...