A Solar System That May Be Teeming With Life Is Discovered

[Oftencold]

For me personally, the possibility you raise is nearly as exciting as finding the universe to be teeming with intelligent life. Think about what a magnificent responsibility that would bestow upon our little species. We would in effect be the universal groundskeeper, the guardian of life and consciousness. Were we to find out that we are the only example of "higher life" (not sure I like that term btw) in the universe, I would like to think that that would help motivate a collective altruism in humanity. Perhaps a greater will to survive.

But I am a bit of an optimist

The term "higher life: is completely appropriate for us.

What makes the term unpalatable is our execrable talent for avoiding the responsibilities that come with the station.

 

[ZapFinch42]

The term "higher life: is completely appropriate for us.

What makes the term unpalatable is our execrable talent for avoiding the responsibilities that come with the station.

It isn't that I disagree with the responsibility, I just said I would be excited for humanity to be the care taker of the universe. It just strikes me as too... egocentric... too final.

I am having a bit of trouble articulating it I suppose

 

[Oftencold]

Mind you I am no expert in Theoretical Physics. However, I am fairly certain that you are making a highly unsubstantiated leap in logic with that statement. The only person I have ever heard claim something like that is Deepak Chopra and you do not seem the type.

Type?

I'm an Archetype.

Better that you consider how Deepak Chopra varies form the example I provide, and which of his flaws so burden him.

Seriously though, it's not such a leap. There is now some evidence that our neurons rely upon quantum effects to function. This suggests again, that awareness in some remotely simple form is present in matter itself. Our brains may then be instruments for concentrating and refining that property. Cool, huh? I have read other accounts in which it is beginning to appear that quantum effects are used to cause matter to behave in a quasi-intelligent fashion in minute biological processes. (It's be a while, and I don't have time to look up sources right now.)

 

[Oftencold]

It isn't that I disagree with the responsibility, I just said I would be excited for humanity to be the care taker of the universe. It just strikes me as too... egocentric... too final.

I am having a bit of trouble articulating it I suppose

We should remember that we're all using basic text. Without inflection, it's hard to transmit fine meaning sometimes.

I'll give you another thing to consider, something I find disturbing.

Lower orders of life cannot comprehend the higher in many ways.

An earthworm doesn't know that there are giraffes, but an idle giraffe can certainly discover earthworms.

My cats know me, but no more about me than will fit in the mind of a cat. They don't know that I read, that I have a far longer lifespan than they, that the sounds I make convey complex meaning, that I can hold untruths in my mind for pleasure in the form of fiction, that I have and use money to feed them.

My point is, that were there vastly more advance life right in front of us, we might not recognize it, especially if it wished to be aloof from us.

 

[ZapFinch42]

Type?

I'm an Archetype.

Better that you consider how Deepak Chopra varies form the example I provide, and which of his flaws so burden him.

Seriously though, it's not such a leap. There is now some evidence that our neurons rely upon quantum effects to function. This suggests again, that awareness in some remotely simple form is present in matter itself. Our brains may then be instruments for concentrating and refining that property. Cool, huh? I have read other accounts in which it is beginning to appear that quantum effects are used to cause matter to behave in a quasi-intelligent fashion in minute biological processes. (It's be a while, and I don't have time to look up sources right now.)

As I said, I am a Biosystems engineer so my knowledge of the quantum world is sorely lacking. I will look into it though and come back to the point. IIRC it seems you might be referring to some sort of locality phenomenon but I gotta look it up.

 

[Oftencold]

As I said, I am a Biosystems engineer so my knowledge of the quantum world is sorely lacking. I will look into it though and come back to the point. IIRC it seems you might be referring to some sort of locality phenomenon but I gotta look it up.

Please understand that I don't even have your level of scientific training. I wouldn't presume to say that I did. But i do think a lot can be perceived with sweet reason by a determined and honest intelligent layman, (with dashing good looks and dynamite fashion sense.)

 

[ZapFinch42]

Please understand that I don't even have our level of scientific training. I wouldn't presume to say that I did. But i do think a lot can be perceived with sweet reason by a determined and honest intelligent layman, (with dashing good looks and dynamite fashion sense.)

Absolutely, that is why I will have to check it out myself. Trust me, I've gotten my comeuppance from plenty of people without my degrees.

 

[specklebang]

The only thing we can assume for now is that either FTL isn't possible or it is possible but our sentient friends are just too many light years away to cruise over here or that they haven't spotted us yet.

Even I agree that if FTL is possible, we might have had contact by now from an older civilization and even then we have to assume that they give a damn about space travel and have developed the kind of machine society that we have.

We just like to feel sooooo important.

Mhm. Though I'm a natural optimist when it comes to this sort of thing. I tend to think that if we can theorize hypothetical mechanisms for circumventing the speed of light in 2013 it bodes well for where we might be in 2513 or 3013. I'm actually 'confident' that if we endure as a civilization we will be able to spread across the cosmos. I'm a cryonicist because I hope to one day see it!

Unless we live in the only solar system in the only galaxy with life. Then we'd not only be the most important, we'd be in the only ones where anyone could assign importance to anything else.

 

[Sherman123]

In school they taught me that no matter how fancy, no matter how elegant, no matter how desirable the hypothesis, eventually, if there is not evidence produced in its support, one has to consider the very strong possibility that it is wrong.

Again, there is not an atom of evidence for extraterrestrial life. This is an exercise, and a good one. No matter whether I think that there is life out there, no matter if I want there to be, I am taking a stand on the evidence. And no one can refute me with anything other than an argument that essentially sates that something must be true because there are a great number of chances for it to be true.

The thing is though, that probability is not an entirely real thing, it's a mental tool we use, often with great success, to simplify our perceptions of complex, often disorganized systems.

Look at it this way. I offer you a closed box and inform you that there is a 99.99999% chance that there is a penny inside. You might be quite safe in predicting that when you open the box, Abe Lincoln, that nasty war criminal and despot, will be staring back at you. But in fact, those odds don't affect whether the penny is there or not in the slightest.

However, if you know the weight of the box, and the weight of a penny, and if you know that no other object can be in the box (a whole other issue,) you can use empirical evidence to make the determination, and the odds become irrelevant. In fact, the "odds" never had any reality at all, they were an abstract, the penny, or non-penny is real.

Also, and this is harder to explain to people, at least for me, we have poor definitions for what life is. I think that there should be separate terms for what we mean when we say that a fungus is alive, and when we say that a cat is alive, instead of an interchangeable term. Conscious life, much less intelligent life is a vastly different thing than insensate life. And we haven't yet considered the bane of definitions of life, the virus. If we discover something that might be alive on Planet Zongo, unless it either waves to us of demands that we surrender to the Zongan Empire, we might not be able to agree on whether what we found is alive, or a complex chemical process.

I also suspect that in coming decades a deeper understanding of quantum physics is going to further complicate our understanding of life. We are treated to an increasing number of very surprising instances in which minute particles behave radically different when observed, and when not observed. This at least hints at a conception of the Universe in which rudimentary awareness is not an emergent property, but a fundamental one. It may be that in some way we can't begin to grasp yet, everything is alive.

But to return to my position, I will stand firmly in my position that I am safe in acting, thinking, planning and living in a firm working assertion that there are no LGM out there, and I'll be safe in that position, as again, there in no evidence at all to the contrary.

I'll zero in on your analogy. The problem with it is that we haven't opened the box yet because the box is a quadrillion times larger than our lab, however there is enormous, enormous, enormous, probabilistic likelihood that pennies are abundant in this vast space. If we are incorrect than it would require a reassessment of almost everything that we know. As for your definition of life you I've never heard of a biologist who would agree with you. Life is usually defined as any continuously self-sustaining object which we usually call an organism. This includes fungi and your eukaryotic cells. Once we discover those then the prospect that intelligent life also exists becomes virtually undeniable unless you believe something specifically prevented the Universe from having intelligent organisms other than ourselves.

Being firm in your belief that there is no life or intelligent life in the universe is not a safe assumption because there is enormous evidence to the contrary. Just because the evidence is mathematical or concerns hypothetical biochemistry doesn't make the probability more or less real.

To return to your analogy if we have the box with the penny and there is (as you say) a 99.9999% possibility of a penny being in the box and we begin the complex process of exploring this gargantuan multi-billion lightyear sized box and you say from the beginning that you are "confident" no penny exists you are not exercising scientific restraint you are falling prey to an unsupported belief.

If you want to say that 'as yet there is no direct evidence from life in the Universe' then you can say that. But to be firm in that assumption? Nonsense and arrogant.

 

[Paschendale]

It seems bizarre to me that anyone would get upset at the prospect of discovering evidence of other life out in the universe. That's an astoundingly exciting prospect. A universe teeming with life would be awesome. Being alone in the universe... what a sad thought.

 

[clownboy]

The whole Goldilocks Zone thing is a bit of a pipedream and the wrong way to go in my book. At least where human habitability is concerned. Everything that humans need for life can be terraformed in, gotten from space itself, but for one thing - the very thing the GZ folks ignore - gravity. We live in a very small gravity range, too much or too little and it's a no-go for us.

In terms of searching for intelligent life like ourselves, if we're supposing it really did develop like we did, then gravity is just as important.

None of the planets we've identified in so-called Goldilocks Zones thus far can support life as we do on Terra. Their gravity profiles are all way off.

 

[Goshin]

In school they taught me that no matter how fancy, no matter how elegant, no matter how desirable the hypothesis, eventually, if there is not evidence produced in its support, one has to consider the very strong possibility that it is wrong.

Again, there is not an atom of evidence for extraterrestrial life. This is an exercise, and a good one. No matter whether I think that there is life out there, no matter if I want there to be, I am taking a stand on the evidence. And no one can refute me with anything other than an argument that essentially sates that something must be true because there are a great number of chances for it to be true.

The thing is though, that probability is not an entirely real thing, it's a mental tool we use, often with great success, to simplify our perceptions of complex, often disorganized systems.

Look at it this way. I offer you a closed box and inform you that there is a 99.99999% chance that there is a penny inside. You might be quite safe in predicting that when you open the box, Abe Lincoln, that nasty war criminal and despot, will be staring back at you. But in fact, those odds don't affect whether the penny is there or not in the slightest.

However, if you know the weight of the box, and the weight of a penny, and if you know that no other object can be in the box (a whole other issue,) you can use empirical evidence to make the determination, and the odds become irrelevant. In fact, the "odds" never had any reality at all, they were an abstract, the penny, or non-penny is real.

Also, and this is harder to explain to people, at least for me, we have poor definitions for what life is. I think that there should be separate terms for what we mean when we say that a fungus is alive, and when we say that a cat is alive, instead of an interchangeable term. Conscious life, much less intelligent life is a vastly different thing than insensate life. And we haven't yet considered the bane of definitions of life, the virus. If we discover something that might be alive on Planet Zongo, unless it either waves to us of demands that we surrender to the Zongan Empire, we might not be able to agree on whether what we found is alive, or a complex chemical process.

I also suspect that in coming decades a deeper understanding of quantum physics is going to further complicate our understanding of life. We are treated to an increasing number of very surprising instances in which minute particles behave radically different when observed, and when not observed. This at least hints at a conception of the Universe in which rudimentary awareness is not an emergent property, but a fundamental one. It may be that in some way we can't begin to grasp yet, everything is alive.

But to return to my position, I will stand firmly in my position that I am safe in acting, thinking, planning and living in a firm working assertion that there are no LGM out there, and I'll be safe in that position, as again, there in no evidence at all to the contrary.

We've barely begun to look in any meaningful way. Asserting that there is no evidence would be like asserting "there is no evidence of a New World" before Columbus... unless you were Leif Ericsson of course.

 

[grip]

Any race advanced enough to reach us thru FTL travel probably wouldn't engage us yet because of our reaction. If they're that intelligent they probably know we aren't and that we'd panic and destabilize our whole civilization in fear of attack. We're a bit paranoid, war crazy and not inclined towards peace or trust.

And I doubt we'll reach another star system in our life times, so currently for me it's a moot point.

 

[clownboy]

I would imagine any advanced intelligent species would have given up planetary living long ago in their history. Where it comes to planetary living, no species gets out alive. Which, if we really cared about our own longterm species survival, we would be working towards now (building our own mobile planetoids).

 

[Oftencold]

I'll zero in on your analogy. The problem with it is that we haven't opened the box yet because the box is a quadrillion times larger than our lab, however there is enormous, enormous, enormous, probabilistic likelihood that pennies are abundant in this vast space. If we are incorrect than it would require a reassessment of almost everything that we know. As for your definition of life you I've never heard of a biologist who would agree with you. Life is usually defined as any continuously self-sustaining object which we usually call an organism. This includes fungi and your eukaryotic cells. Once we discover those then the prospect that intelligent life also exists becomes virtually undeniable unless you believe something specifically prevented the Universe from having intelligent organisms other than ourselves.

Being firm in your belief that there is no life or intelligent life in the universe is not a safe assumption because there is enormous evidence to the contrary. Just because the evidence is mathematical or concerns hypothetical biochemistry doesn't make the probability more or less real.

To return to your analogy if we have the box with the penny and there is (as you say) a 99.9999% possibility of a penny being in the box and we begin the complex process of exploring this gargantuan multi-billion lightyear sized box and you say from the beginning that you are "confident" no penny exists you are not exercising scientific restraint you are falling prey to an unsupported belief.

If you want to say that 'as yet there is no direct evidence from life in the Universe' then you can say that. But to be firm in that assumption? Nonsense and arrogant.

Relying upon an utter lack of concrete evidence to assert that something will not be found lends one a certain licenses to arrogance in the face of so much unfounded speculation.

 

[Oftencold]

The only thing we can assume for now is that either FTL isn't possible or it is possible but our sentient friends are just too many light years away to cruise over here or that they haven't spotted us yet.

Even I agree that if FTL is possible, we might have had contact by now from an older civilization and even then we have to assume that they give a damn about space travel and have developed the kind of machine society that we have.

We just like to feel sooooo important.

So far, we're the only thing we can demonstrate with the capacity to assign importance, that makes us important, I should think.

 

[specklebang]

So far, we're the only thing we can demonstrate with the capacity to assign importance, that makes us important, I should think.

To ourselves. Sure. Your cat feels important also.:kitty: It's all relative really.

 

[Ontologuy]

If we do not get the insane political wingers out of power soon, we'll never live to see the very distant day that we have the technology to even begin to send even nanobots to another solar system.

Take a good look at what's in pieces between Jupiter and Mars.

God forbid that happens again.

 

[ZapFinch42]

If we do not get the insane political wingers out of power soon, we'll never live to see the very distant day that we have the technology to even begin to send even nanobots to another solar system.

Take a good look at what's in pieces between Jupiter and Mars.

God forbid that happens again.

I was under the impression that that asteroid belt exists because a planet never formed as opposed to one forming and then getting destroyed.Am I wrong?

 

[Oftencold]

To ourselves. Sure. Your cat feels important also.:kitty: It's all relative really.

A cat has no sense of importance. Only we have a sense of importance.

Cats do not feel important. No.

Cats just assign no relevance at all to anything else.

 

[specklebang]

A cat has no sense of importance. Only we have a sense of importance.

Cats do not feel important. No.

Cats just assign no relevance at all to anything else.

Spoken like a non-cat owner. I assure you they feel very important. Don't let that natural human arrogance close your mind to this. Importance is a self-assigned emotion, not reality based.

 

[rhinefire]

Through technology we will no have to "travel" to encounter life elsewhere in the future. Second, being the odds of life forming here on earth are beyond comprehension therefore finding a repeat of this phenonmenon is difficult. Life is here and that makes the odds of it elsewhere less great. Chemicals are everwhere in the universe so sit back and wait. We'll have more at the top of the hour!!

 

[Sherman123]

I was under the impression that that asteroid belt exists because a planet never formed as opposed to one forming and then getting destroyed.Am I wrong?

Mhm. The prevailing opinion as I recall is that the Kuiper Belt comes from debris from the protoplanetary disc (the gases that envelop some types of stars in their embryonic stages) that failed to coalesce into planets or planetoids. But stellar system formation is still a very complex subject and we aren't completely sure of the exact mechanics at each stage of development. Like knowing where planets were formed in relation to the Sun for example.

 

[Sherman123]

Through technology we will no have to "travel" to encounter life elsewhere in the future. Second, being the odds of life forming here on earth are beyond comprehension therefore finding a repeat of this phenonmenon is difficult. Life is here and that makes the odds of it elsewhere less great. Chemicals are everwhere in the universe so sit back and wait. We'll have more at the top of the hour!!

It is actually exactly the opposite. The odds of life forming at one particular moment in one particular place are small, the odds of life forming across a timespan of billions of years once the materials are in place (such as on Earth) rises considerably. Set this against a universe with as many as 10^24 planets (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets) and the odds for life become ridiculous to the point of mathematical absurdity.

 

[Oftencold]

Spoken like a non-cat owner. I assure you they feel very important. Don't let that natural human arrogance close your mind to this. Importance is a self-assigned emotion, not reality based.

I am a servant and guardian to three cats. They do not consider themselves important. Importance is a relative concept. For the term "importance" to have meaning, some lesser value has to be assigned to other things.