Humans likely alone in universe, study reports

Discussion in 'Science' started by Durandal, Jun 26, 2018.

  1. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Maybe you're thinking of "dark energy".

    I don't know how dark matter could cause acceleration of expansion.
     
  2. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    True...poor choice of words on my part.
     
  3. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    I saw a spider pass that test as defined. It was quite amazing. The spider was put on a complex structure made of tubes and joints, much like metal Tinker Toys. IIRC, it was allowed to build a web and then relocated to another part of the structure. An insect was put in its web. As the insect struggled to escape, the spider could feel the vibrations through the structure. But this was the interesting part. The path back to the insect was not obvious. It was intentionally made difficult with many false paths that would not lead to the web.

    The spider analyzed the structure and deduced the correct path to take, the first time. Once it started to move it moved quickly and decisively. It didn't seem to be figuring it out as it moved along. It simply ran along the correct path to the prey.

    On a similar note, way back when we had a place in the woods, we had a very large spider that got into the house. I was sitting on the couch one night when I saw it come out from under the couch and head toward my foot. When I looked down, it ran back under the couch. If I sat and looked out of the corner of my eye, it would come out again. If I looked right at the place where it came out, it wouldn't come out. It knew if I was looking or not. I didn't have to move. It knew if I had my eyes on it. That was sort of freaky!
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2018
  4. Junkieturtle

    Junkieturtle Well-Known Member Donor

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    I don't think that the Drake equation was ever accurate. Or rather, it didn't have a chance of approaching accuracy because quite a bit of it is guesswork.

    There is simply not enough information to even begin to answer the question of whether there is other life out there. Perhaps if we wanted to reduce the scope down to our solar system, we might start approaching a more substantive position. But the universe? Total human arrogance.
     
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  5. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    The Drake Equation estimates only apply to this galaxy. Some time ago a book came out called Probability 1. It considers that even given the most conservative estimates of the Drake Equation, there are another hundred-billion galaxies. So even if intelligent life is only likely to occur once or less per galaxy, that would imply that there are still billions of other civilizations.

    The point of the book was that using his logic, the odds of life anywhere else in the universe is 0.99999999999999... with so many 9s that it is essentially a value of 100%.
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2018
  6. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    I'm bored with this thread. Sorry. Believe what you like.
     
  7. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    OK.

    What I believe is that the "research" in question shows no more than the biases of the folks who wrote it.

    Right off the top, they have NO idea what the odds are for abiogenesis. We don't even know how that happened. And, there is no new information on how likely it is that some life form would fill the ecological niche of intelligence.

    For them to now say that it happened once, but could not have happened twice is just plain ridiculous.
     
  8. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    I agree with that. Science is a long, complex search for truth. There is plenty more to go.
     
  9. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I have a thought..what if all of this is simply a matter of time. Much of this involves attempted explanation of an accelerating universe (Dark Energy) but does not consider the possibility this universe is accelerating because it just blew up and has yet to start slowing down. If this will go on for 100 Billion years (Arbitrary number) then we are watching the beginning of the Bang. Dark Matter could also be the effects of a new force (gravity) being born and unstable.
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2018
  10. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    Scinetists have considered and do consider this. The evidence so far points to this not being the case.
     
  11. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Just because intelligent life might exist throughout the Universe does not mean they have the capability of interstellar travel.

    Who knows what happened on Earth millions of years ago?

    Science has not moved on from anything...it's theoretical.

    No one knows how much life, or what type of life, or if intelligent life, exists across the Universe...
     
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  12. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    A small module could be propelled at near-light speed using lasers and assuming it has communications capability even to our nearest star will take over 9 years for a response. The idea of traveling thousands or millions of light years in distance at the SOL is 99.99% impractical. So, IMO, this whole discussion about interstellar travel is a moot point because of the (t) or time factor. Certainly the idea of humans or any biological unit traveling these speeds and distances is not possible...considering our current knowledge. But this also does not mean that forms of life, including intelligent life, cannot exist throughout the Universe...
     
  13. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A space based civilization does not require FTL travel and in my opinion this is the logical choice as it will alleviate many of the issues that come with interstellar travel. A population living in largescale ship colony is free to go where they please at slower speed and whatever gravity they wish to make. A micro pbobe would not require much time for transport or communication and the ship would easily be invisible to Earth.
     
  14. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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  15. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Micro probes make sense for quicker exploration and data gathering. If these probes have the capability to communicate back to Earth then I suspect they are not invisible to others. Even with these it still requires decades or centuries or millennia to reach such vast distances. We might place a few people on the Moon, or someday Mars, and many decades from now other places in our Solar system, but I continue to believe the idea of humans traveling light-year distances and speeds is not in the cards...
     
  16. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thus the "Space Based Civilization" part. Communications between a ship and the probe will be virtually instant and easily masked if needed.
     
  17. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    A communications signal, assuming technology we know, is a power source and surely detectible? Yes it is instantaneous bursts of power, and yes they can be decoded, but how do you hide the power generated within the signal?
     
  18. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    As I am unaware of the future, I do not know. Would we have decoded laser communication in WWII? What about satellite communications being intercepted by a Pirate Ship?
     
  19. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    These are statements that simply cannot be made as absolutes. Neither can the opposing view.

    Point is, no, you do not KNOW there are no floaty things in Jupiter. Based on the evidence of what we consider "life" we can reasonably make that conclusion, however once again, we don't know what "life" is we know what "life on Earth" is.

    Planet hunters obviously look for candidates similar to the only place humans know of that has life on it, Earth. So we tend to look for "Goldilocks Zone" planets similar to our own because when you have a data sample of exactly 1 it only makes sense to look for things close to the only sample you have.

    However therein lies the problem, we only have ONE sample. Nowhere in science nor pure reason can we make any sort of absolute conclusions based on a sample of 1.

    Humans have been a spare faring civilization for less than 60 years and were only able to even build telescopes to take a decent look at the cosmos less than a century ago. Humans are still to this day incapable of sending spacecraft to our nearest star neighbor and can't even properly examine our own backyard in our Solar System. At best all we have is spectroscopy to study the cosmos and that limited technology alone is simply not able to conclude with any sort of certainty that nothing else lives around here.

    We as humans aren't even able to absolutely confirm nor deny if life has ever existed on Mars yet and we've had rovers riding around there studying our neighbor for over 2 decades. Yet we as humans are able to absolutely conclude that we are the only intelligent life in this area?

    I wrote a short blog a few years ago about us humans and our wanting to remain "special". We wanted our planet to be special, our Solar System, our species, etc. Problem is that every time we think we are special evidence pops up proving that we are not. The more we discover about the cosmos the more we realize just has non special we actually are. Our Sun isn't special at all it's an average common star. Our galaxy isn't special it's just a large spiral galaxy just like billions of other ones. Our place in the galaxy isn't special we're just sitting out here in one of the random arms. Our planet isn't really special we've found rocky worlds in Goldilocks Zones. We are, in all reality, just a normal planet around a normal star in the arm of a normal galaxy. What makes us "special" is our ability as humans to believe ourselves special and our arrogance in believing that we are the only thing here even though we can't even walk across the cosmic street to visit our neighbors house because we don't know how yet.

    And even if intelligent life is common in our own galaxy what makes us believe that they even know we are here? Or if they would even care? Once again that's the "special" thing we humans love to paint ourselves as. If intelligent life exists they surely would have found US or at least contacted US. Why? What makes humans worthy of being contacted? Our planet is tiny we're pretty easy to miss unless you know exactly where to look. "Aliens" could have known we've been here the whole time and just don't care. We obviously aren't bothering them we're just sitting over here stuck in our own house unable to leave.

    But we would be interesting to at least study wouldn't we? Why? Because that's what HUMANS do. There are island tribes here on Earth stuck in the stone age that civilization doesn't bother but we fly over there every once and awhile to snap pictures of them because we humans are curious people. Who says Aliens are curious people? Why would they necessarily care if some random stone age carbon lifeforms are over there stuck on their little rock planet? Curiosity is a trait that we have found on Earth in multiple species of animal. That doesn't mean if other organisms are in the cosmos they too are innately curious. Humans have to let go of the notion that the way WE are and the WAY we evolved and what WE need to live is universal throughout the cosmos.

    We could be the most bizarre freak of nature accident in the Milky Way for all we know. As we can sit here and try to conclude that "the radiation from Jupiter's magnetic field" would kill anything living there, Aliens too could be looking at Earth saying "Yeah there's a lot of Nitrogen in that atmosphere but they have that Oxygen stuff mixed in, that's stuff is toxic it would kill anything living there. Plus they have a screwed up magnetic field that keeps the radiation from the Sun away". All while they are sitting on a planet like the moon Titan where they "breathe" near pure Nitrogen and drink liquid Methane.
     
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  20. reallybigjohnson

    reallybigjohnson Banned

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    Actually it is the exact opposite of what you claim. It used to be assumed that all you needed for life was water, carbon and time. It is now established science that you need much much more than just that for life to form. If different forms of life other than our carbon or theoretical silicon based ones then we would still be awash in them. Either those other forms of life are not intelligent or they don't exist at all. Life can only form from carbon and possible silicon. Its basic physics and to claim that life can form from other elements is just pure nonsense and wishful thinking. There isn't ever going to be any life based on strontium or magnesium....period. Once again if intelligent life was so common we would have been occupied long long ago and would have examples on this planet of other organisms. Even the organisms that can survive in hot springs and other hostile locations need certain things like protection from radiation.

    I am much more accurate in saying that intelligent life is rare than someone claiming that intelligent life is everwhere or is common. The argument about absolutes is a complete cop out. Very little is absolute but we can guess and estimate based on what we know and right now we KNOW that intelligent life is extremely rare.

    And no there are ZERO floaty lifeforms flying around in Jupiter.
     
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  21. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    Not necessarily true at all. There are limited resources on this planet.
     
  22. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Yes you are because based on the samples that WE HAVE, we can reasonably conclude such things.

    We don't KNOW that life can only form from carbon. We ASSUME that but we don't know. Scientists can only hypothesize based on evidence and we only have one real form of evidence which is our own sample.

    I'm not one of those people who sits here and tosses real physics out of the window for the sake of imagination. I too roll my eyes at those who claim that "at one point humans thought breaking the sound barrier was impossible but we did it so breaking the light barrier is probably possible". Those are totally different ballgames and only those with no knowledge of actual physics make such claims.

    However, when it comes to "life" we really don't know. We can make educated guesses but we can't say with absolute certainty that life can only be carbon based because unlike the "light barrier" we have no real evidence to confirm or deny that. What we can confirm is that carbon is required for life HERE, but we can't really "see" any other evidence to absolutely conclude that the way we can see evidence of there being a light barrier.

    Do I personally believe that there is a Star Trek esque galaxy in our own with millions of intelligent lifeforms zipping around here? No. But do I believe that life is more common than many think? Yes. Do I have any evidence to support that? No.

    Even if we find ONE, and I mean ONE organism on another world that would mean that life is extremely common throughout the Universe unless we are just that lucky to stumble across another "rare" life form which in itself is so statistically unlikely that it is virtually impossible. If we find another one, it's common everywhere. If we find another intelligent life form that follows the same conclusion as the aforementioned.

    Our ability to study the cosmos is just so limited that there is no way we can make any forgone conclusions at this stage of our evolution. Human's can only observe and study what basically amounts to a spec of dust on the cosmic scale even with our most powerful optics. We believe the Universe is "the same" everywhere but we just don't have enough samples to make any real conclusions.

    I believe we will have to just agree to disagree. If humans were able to successfully study even our own spiral arm of the Milky Way and find NOTHING then I would support your position that there is probably nothing there. That's a pretty huge sample at that point. But right now our knowledge of even our own cosmic neighbors is in its infancy and I don't believe we can make any conclusions based on such a small sample.

    Even if carbon is the life giving force we believe it to be, we have found planets that are very similar to our own. A planet like Gliese 667 could have humanoid species on it with a similar evolutionary path as we have and the same limited technology as us. Staring at us with what amounts to rudimentary telescopes and saying MAYBE there is life there because that planet looks a lot like ours. But they don't KNOW because, like us, all they can do is stare at it.

    Point is, we humans simply do not have the technology to confirm nor deny life anywhere yet. We can't "see" that well.

    Astrophysics and Astrobiology are two different ballgames. We have the technology to confirm Astrophysics, we do not have the technology to confirm or deny Astrobiology yet. Not even close.
     
  23. reallybigjohnson

    reallybigjohnson Banned

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    We know for a fact that life can't form from anything except carbon and maybe silicon. There are basic laws of chemistry here that cannot be ignored. Carbon works because of how its electrons are dispersed in the outer shell allowing it to combine with other carbon atoms as well as oxygen, hydrogen etc. Its the same reason that synthetic plastics and fibers are made from carbon and not some other material. You cannot ignore chemistry so it is 100% scientifically accurate to say that life anywhere is going to be carbon based or silicon based and that is ALL it will be based on.

    I didn't say we wouldn't any intelligent life but there aren't going to be millions or even thousands of intelligent species in our galaxy and I would not be suprised if its less than 100 out of the however many billions of stars we have. Of the billions of species that have lived on this earth less than a handful developed to the point of being considered intelligent and of those only one remains today...us. 99.99999999% of all life on earth is not intelligent. Also, even in our case that may have been good fortune as well as we had the trifecta of developing sweat glands, opposable digits for eating insects, and a rapidly changing environment in Africa over a short timespan that pushed us to evolving larger brains to survive. Remove any one of those things and we wouldn't be here sending magical messages through tiny wires on the interwebz.
     
  24. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    No we don't. Where do you get this nonsense?
     
  25. reallybigjohnson

    reallybigjohnson Banned

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    Chemistry classes. Have you taken any?
     

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