Let's not talk about the Big Bang

[QuestioningMind]

why not? Why wouldn't other evolved life on other planets want to do exactly was we have? Evolution claims that we evolve...i don't see why that fundamental should be such that other evolutionary processes that would clearly be on other planets not follow the same pathway as ours!
Are we now saying that statistical probabilities don't allow for repeated outcomes? If that be true, our lottery system needs an overhaul because only one person should ever win it!

It's possible, just not very likely. In order for 'humans' to evolve on another planet all of the evolutionary factors would have to have been almost exactly the same on both planets. The main reason mammals became so common on Earth is largely due to an asteroid strike. On a world where such an asteroid strike didn't take place, evolution would develop differently.

 

[Subduction Zone]

why not? Why wouldn't other evolved life on other planets want to do exactly was we have? Evolution claims that we evolve...i don't see why that fundamental should be such that other evolutionary processes that would clearly be on other planets not follow the same pathway as ours!
Are we now saying that statistical probabilities don't allow for repeated outcomes? If that be true, our lottery system needs an overhaul because only one person should ever win it!

Because evolution does not "want". Life does not " want" in that sense either.

Statistical probabilities guarantee different outcomes. But similar environments can lead to similarities. There is no end goal in evolution. You are not "more evolved" than a cat or a dog.

 

[YoursTrue]

why not? Why wouldn't other evolved life on other planets want to do exactly was we have? Evolution claims that we evolve...i don't see why that fundamental should be such that other evolutionary processes that would clearly be on other planets not follow the same pathway as ours!
Are we now saying that statistical probabilities don't allow for repeated outcomes? If that be true, our lottery system needs an overhaul because only one person should ever win it!

And so you think it's possible that life could have evolved like life on the earth but somewhere else in the universe? lolol...chances are -- not so good.

 

[YoursTrue]

It's possible, just not very likely. In order for 'humans' to evolve on another planet all of the evolutionary factors would have to have been almost exactly the same on both planets. The main reason mammals became so common on Earth is largely due to an asteroid strike. On a world where such an asteroid strike didn't take place, evolution would develop differently.

Oh, and the sun's distance from the planet would have to be the same as ours. Plus water supply, etc.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Oh, and the sun's distance from the planet would have to be the same as ours. Plus water supply, etc.

Why do you think that would have to be the case?

No matter what we will not be able to interbreed with aliens even if they look like us. Evolution is a one way street. A shark and a dolphin have roughly the same body shape but they could never interbreed. It would be a million times worse with life from other planets.

 

[Subduction Zone]

And so you think it's possible that life could have evolved like life on the earth but somewhere else in the universe? lolol...chances are -- not so good.

Why? Since when did you become an expert? The ones that I have followed think that it is just a matter of simple thermodynamics. Thermodynamics favors the formation of life.

 

[Polymath257]

why not? Why wouldn't other evolved life on other planets want to do exactly was we have?

Whatever life exists would evolve to fit the environment it is in. So, no, it would NOT evolve exactly the same way. And there is a chance aspect: which individuals life or die before reproduction will determine the henetics of the next generation. That is how evolution works.

Evolution claims that we evolve...i don't see why that fundamental should be such that other evolutionary processes that would clearly be on other planets not follow the same pathway as ours!

And that would even be part of how we recognize life elsewhere: that it evolves. But that does not mean that it would follow the exact same path as here on Earth. Even small changes such as using sulfur instead of oxygen could have dramatic effects on the structures that evolve.

Are we now saying that statistical probabilities don't allow for repeated outcomes? If that be true, our lottery system needs an overhaul because only one person should ever win it!

And in this lottery analogy, the actual winning numbers are very unlikely to repeat. Certain aspects, like a streamlined form for water dwellers (maybe ammonia?) can be expected. Detailed likeness is very unlikely.

 

[Polymath257]

Likely, very likely, they don't exist. Very, very likely. Very very very likely. Very very very likely. But yet these esteemed, educated scientists keep looking, keep wondering, while of course, the rivers and drinking water are being polluted, etc.

I see it as pretty likely that life exists elsewhere. I find it relatively unlikely that other *intelligent* life exists in our galaxy right now. I find it to be very unlikely that we have been visited by another intelligent species.

 

[Polymath257]

Oh, and the sun's distance from the planet would have to be the same as ours. Plus water supply, etc.

Water is actually quite common in the universe. And, no, the distance of a planet to its star would *not* have to be the same as ours. That would depend on the type of star with most stars of the type of our sun having a pretty substantial habitable zone.

The distance of the Earth to the sun changes by about 3 million miles over the course of an orbit and the average distance changes over time.

 

[AdamjEdgar]

If the building blocks of life, as those which are currently being searched for on Mars, are realatively universal, I disagree that life on other similar planets in the universe may not evolve intelligent beings also capable of searching just like we do.
Therefore, I am doubtful evolution can make the claim "we evolved" based on the very obvious fact...other planets that are scientifically shown to be far older than ours, have no beings attempting to make contact.

Again this tells me, either we are alone in the universe or, God created us just as the Bible's says and we are the only planet with life that has fallen into sin.

 

[Subduction Zone]

If the building blocks of life, as those which are currently being searched for on Mars, are realatively universal, I disagree that life on other similar planets in the universe may not evolve intelligent beings also capable of searching just like we do.
Therefore, I am doubtful evolution can make the claim "we evolved" based on the very obvious fact...other planets that are scientifically shown to be far older than ours, have no beings attempting to make contact.

Again this tells me, either we are alone in the universe or, God created us just as the Bible's says and we are the only planet with life that has fallen into sin.

Several errors here. First just having the building blocks of life is not good enough . The building blocks of life have been found in meteorites. They are just chemicals that form naturally. There is no way that life is going to arise on a meteorite. One needs the proper environment for abiogenesis to occur. Liquid water is a must. And so is an energy source of some sort.

When it comes to life at one point Mars may have had the proper environment for life to form ,but it would be alone in that way aside from Earth.

Next, just because life forms does not guarantee intelligent life. For over99% of the Earth's history there was no intelligent life here. Intelligence may not be a survival trait. It could be very rare throughout the universe.

Lastly how and why would an intelligent life communicate with us? Not seeing any evidence for intelligent life is not evidence against it. People that try to claim that it is simply do not know how vast the universe is.

 

[Polymath257]

If the building blocks of life, as those which are currently being searched for on Mars, are realatively universal, I disagree that life on other similar planets in the universe may not evolve intelligent beings also capable of searching just like we do.
Therefore, I am doubtful evolution can make the claim "we evolved" based on the very obvious fact...other planets that are scientifically shown to be far older than ours, have no beings attempting to make contact.

Again this tells me, either we are alone in the universe or, God created us just as the Bible's says and we are the only planet with life that has fallen into sin.

The difficulty with this argument is that there appears to be a couple of significant barriers in evolution.

The first is the jump from single celled organisms to multicellular organisms. On Earth, this took a *long* time. Life has been detected from 3.8 billion years ago and multicellular life (depending on definitions) only from about 1 billion years ago.

Second, the step to technology seems to be tricky. There are many ways organisms can survive and abstract intelligence doesn't seem to be a strong determiner of survival.

So far, most of the planets we have found are not in the habitable zones of their stars. That is, in part, due to the way we go about detecting such planets (it is biased towards large planets close to their stars or ones whose orbits are aligned with our direction of sight). At this point, we simply don't have the technology to detect life like ours anywhere out our neighborhood (say, a couple hundred light years).

Even once life gets started (single celled life), it seems to be non-trivial to get past that to multicellularity or even the development of tissues. And, even after that, technological life (say, use of radio or advanced chemistry) has only existed *here* for a hundred years in the billion years of multicellular organisms.

This gets to another question: how long is a technological society likely to last? Again, it seems that humans like to create ecological disasters which destroy civilizations. This has happened multiple times in our history. I don't see it as unlikely any other intelligent life will have similar issues. Just how much longer do you really expect humans to survive? another 10,000 years? I would be skeptical of such a bet.

And if the technological stage only lasts a few tens of thousands of years, the likelihood of *overlap in time* between two different civilizations in the same galaxy is probably pretty low. That may well be an explanation of the Fermi paradox.

Think of it like this. Suppose an alien race came to Earth a mere 1 million years ago. They would find no technological species. If they came a mere 200 years ago, they would have found a species without radio and barely able to do basic chemistry. Remember that a million years is an instant in cosmology.

 

[AdamjEdgar]

The difficulty with this argument is that there appears to be a couple of significant barriers in evolution.

The first is the jump from single celled organisms to multicellular organisms. On Earth, this took a *long* time. Life has been detected from 3.8 billion years ago and multicellular life (depending on definitions) only from about 1 billion years ago.

Second, the step to technology seems to be tricky. There are many ways organisms can survive and abstract intelligence doesn't seem to be a strong determiner of survival.

So far, most of the planets we have found are not in the habitable zones of their stars. That is, in part, due to the way we go about detecting such planets (it is biased towards large planets close to their stars or ones whose orbits are aligned with our direction of sight). At this point, we simply don't have the technology to detect life like ours anywhere out our neighborhood (say, a couple hundred light years).

Even once life gets started (single celled life), it seems to be non-trivial to get past that to multicellularity or even the development of tissues. And, even after that, technological life (say, use of radio or advanced chemistry) has only existed *here* for a hundred years in the billion years of multicellular organisms.

This gets to another question: how long is a technological society likely to last? Again, it seems that humans like to create ecological disasters which destroy civilizations. This has happened multiple times in our history. I don't see it as unlikely any other intelligent life will have similar issues. Just how much longer do you really expect humans to survive? another 10,000 years? I would be skeptical of such a bet.

And if the technological stage only lasts a few tens of thousands of years, the likelihood of *overlap in time* between two different civilizations in the same galaxy is probably pretty low. That may well be an explanation of the Fermi paradox.

Think of it like this. Suppose an alien race came to Earth a mere 1 million years ago. They would find no technological species. If they came a mere 200 years ago, they would have found a species without radio and barely able to do basic chemistry. Remember that a million years is an instant in cosmology.

I think you have missed my point...this is not life on this planet I'm talking about...it's life on others. Clearly the fact that NASA are searching for life in the universe comes from a scientific and evolutionary concensus that statistically, there must be life elsewhere.
Again, even if that life predates our own by billions of years, given that the universe started at a singularity and we are relatively young in its expansion, we should detect signals left by earlier evolutionary beings in our region when they were at this point in the process.
Clearly we have found no such signals similar to that which we have currently evolved enough to make given our technology.
That tells me categorically, there are two options:
1. We are alone
2. We are the only sinful world and there is a God who created us and the universe just as the Bible describes.

I am quite sure no one accepts that we are alone. The universe is to vast and too old for that to be probable..so there must be a God who created us.

 

[Polymath257]

I think you have missed my point...this is not life on this planet I'm talking about...it's life on others. Clearly the fact that NASA are searching for life in the universe comes from a scientific and evolutionary concensus that statistically, there must be life elsewhere.
Again, even if that life predates our own by billions of years, given that the universe started at a singularity and we are relatively young in its expansion, we should detect signals left by earlier evolutionary beings in our region when they were at this point in the process.
Clearly we have found no such signals similar to that which we have currently evolved enough to make given our technology.
That tells me categorically, there are two options:
1. We are alone
2. We are the only sinful world and there is a God who created us and the universe just as the Bible describes.

I am quite sure no one accepts that we are alone. The universe is to vast and too old for that to be probable..so there must be a God who created us.

That was what I was trying to address.

First, life would not have formed until at least the first generation of stars had produced the necessary elements. So there simply could not have been any life as we know it until several billion years after the singularity.

Second, even if life is common, it appears that multicellular life is difficult. It may well be the case that most life in the universe is single celled.

Third, even once organisms with tissues developed, it seems that the type of intelligence that produces technology is not directly selected for, so technological life might well be much more rare than multicellular life.

Fourth, it may well be the case that technological life doesn't last very long. Even if it lasts 1 million years, the chances of detection by another technology would be very low.

Finally, our technology for detection is not all that great. it may well be that we simply don't have the technology to detect other races, especially if they use other technology to communicate. We have been listening in radio waves for a few decades. Would we expect another race to still be using radio or to use it for more than a short time period?

So, in a sense, we may be alone, but not the first or last technological species.

We can tell by looking that the universe is NOT what the Bible describes (no firmament, no pillars of the Earth, the universe is far larger than anyone expected when the Bible was written, etc).

 

[PureX]

To me, the question is not so much "is there life out there?", it's "is there intelligence out there?".

I really would like to understand the emergence of consciousness and self/other awareness within the universe. It showed up so quickly and easily here on Earth that it's hard to imagine that it's not commonplace out in the universe. And yet it seems that we should have found some evidence of it by now if it were that common.

It's puzzling.

 

[gnostic]

To me, the question is not so much "is there life out there?", it's "is there intelligence out there?".

I really would like to understand the emergence of consciousness and self/other awareness within the universe. It showed up so quickly and easily here on Earth that it's hard to imagine that it's not commonplace out in the universe. And yet it seems that we should have found some evidence of it by now if it were that common.

It's puzzling.

It’s not puzzling at all.

To be able to find life in other planets, then you would need to go there, and actually look for them.

We have no crafts that can travel to another outside of Solar System.

Voyager 1 and 2 took off in 1977, but they are unmanned.

Although it flyby Saturn in 1980, it took 35 years (2012) to reach “interstellar space”, the boundary being the heliopause.

As of today, Voyager 1 has traveled just over 156 AU. That’s only 0.00248 light-year. In 2 or 3 year max, it will no longer generate powers to operate any of instruments.

Voyager 1 is not heading to any star system, but even if it did, it would have no power to explore for any life on any plant, since there would no power to investigate.

And while we have wonderful terrestrial telescopes and space telescopes, they have serious limitations, and cannot view the surface of even Pluto, let alone planets orbiting around the Proxima Centauri the closest star to our sun.

I am not saying there are no life elsewhere, outside of the solar system. We simply don’t have the technology to find them...at least for now.

 

[Subduction Zone]

To me, the question is not so much "is there life out there?", it's "is there intelligence out there?".

I really would like to understand the emergence of consciousness and self/other awareness within the universe. It showed up so quickly and easily here on Earth that it's hard to imagine that it's not commonplace out in the universe. And yet it seems that we should have found some evidence of it by now if it were that common.

It's puzzling.

But intelligence did not show up on Earth quickly and easily. It is a very very very . . . very very recent phenomenon. The Earth has been here for 4.5 billion years. Modern man 300,000 years tops. Just to make it easier let's say 450,000 years. That is ((4.5*10^5)/(4.5*10^9))*100% of the Earth's history. or (10^-4)*100% of the Earth's history or .01% . For 99.99% of Earth's history there was no intelligent life. Perhaps it could have existed another 5 billion years without it developing at all.

But just for fun let's say that intelligent life is more common than our single case would imply. One still needs a planet within the zone where water can exist as a liquid for life to arise. That lowers the candidates. But even if there was life only a hundred light years away how would we detect it? Stars emit light at all frequencies so radio waves would likely be overwhelmed by those of the star associated with it. Unless an intelligent life was trying to communicate we would probably not be able to pick up anything from any local sources. And for distant ones the chances of discovery fall to about zero. It would be interesting if we found some evidence for intelligent life elsewhere, but that may be a physical impossibility.

Don't get me wrong. I am fairly sure that intelligent life does exist elsewhere in the universe, but sadly the Star Trek version of even the galaxy appears to be a no go.

 

[PureX]

It’s not puzzling at all.

To be able to find life in other planets, then you would need to go there, and actually look for them.

We have no crafts that can travel to another outside of Solar System.

Voyager 1 and 2 took off in 1977, but they are unmanned.

Although it flyby Saturn in 1980, it took 35 years (2012) to reach “interstellar space”, the boundary being the heliopause.

As of today, Voyager 1 has traveled just over 156 AU. That’s only 0.00248 light-year. In 2 or 3 year max, it will no longer generate powers to operate any of instruments.

Voyager 1 is not heading to any star system, but even if it did, it would have no power to explore for any life on any plant, since there would no power to investigate.

And while we have wonderful terrestrial telescopes and space telescopes, they have serious limitations, and cannot view the surface of even Pluto, let alone planets orbiting around the Proxima Centauri the closest star to our sun.

I am not saying there are no life elsewhere, outside of the solar system. We simply don’t have the technology to find them...at least for now.

Humans have been broadcasting our existence out into space for 100 years. And we're technological babies, so to speak. It's hard to imagine that there are NO intelligent agents out there that have been broadcasting their existence either intentionally or by happenstance for a thousand or a hundred thousand years. Long enough for us to have detected it. After all, all it needs to be is some apparently unnatural expression of energy. Just the kind of thing we are constantly looking for out there.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Humans have been broadcasting our existence out into space for 100 years. And we're technological babies, so to speak. It's hard to imagine that there are NO intelligent agents out there that have been broadcasting their existence either intentionally or by happenstance for a thousand or a hundred thousand years. Long enough for us to have detected it. After all, all it needs to be is some apparently unnatural expression of energy. Just the kind of thing we are constantly looking for out there.

And that signal will probably be lost against the Sun. Though a small part of the Sun's emissions its radio emissions do exist. Depending upon their frequency they will be a millionth to a billionth of its emissions in visible light. That does not sound like much, but compare the energy of its radio emissions to those of the Earth. That latter number will pale in comparison. How are you going to separate the two signals? Space craft, the Earth, and the Sun are almost never on the same line, so that is not a problem for transmission within our Solar System. But for all practical purposes any distant planet is going to be right in line with their sun. We will not be able to find I Love Lucy from Betelgeuse.

The radio Sun - Radio2Space

They could have been broadcasting their donkey's off. We just can't hear them.

 

[PureX]

But intelligence did not show up on Earth quickly and easily. It is a very very very . . . very very recent phenomenon. The Earth has been here for 4.5 billion years. Modern man 300,000 years tops. Just to make it easier let's say 450,000 years. That is ((4.5*10^5)/(4.5*10^9))*100% of the Earth's history. or (10^-4)*100% of the Earth's history or .01% . For 99.99% of Earth's history there was no intelligent life. Perhaps it could have existed another 5 billion years without it developing at all.

But just for fun let's say that intelligent life is more common than our single case would imply. One still needs a planet within the zone where water can exist as a liquid for life to arise. That lowers the candidates. But even if there was life only a hundred light years away how would we detect it? Stars emit light at all frequencies so radio waves would likely be overwhelmed by those of the star associated with it. Unless an intelligent life was trying to communicate we would probably not be able to pick up anything from any local sources. And for distant ones the chances of discovery fall to about zero. It would be interesting if we found some evidence for intelligent life elsewhere, but that may be a physical impossibility.

Don't get me wrong. I am fairly sure that intelligent life does exist elsewhere in the universe, but sadly the Star Trek version of even the galaxy appears to be a no go.

Actually, the intelligence has been here a long time. You're referring to technological intelligence. Not the same things, exactly. Unfortunately, we have no way of detecting intelligence out there. And we can only very minimally detect technical intelligence if it's out there. We are certainly "newbies". But the Earth is not an old planet. And the moment (in cosmic time) the Earth was physically able to support life, it happened. And the moment it happened, it became conscious. Now, by "moment" we're talking a very long time by our standards, but not long at all by cosmic standards. It gives the impression that both life and conscious self/other awareness occur quickly and easily.

Not only that, there is a viable theory that life was deposited here by objects and debris that came from somewhere else. Which if true, means it can spread through space. Also, the only life we know of is based on a set of chemical interactions that may not be the ONLY means of creating dynamic, self-motivating expressions of intelligence. Or perhaps life forms have occurred using the "left-handed" version of the "right-handed" molecules that make up life as we know it.

Which is why I'm more interested in the concept and possibilities of consciousness and self/other awareness than I am in looking for or asking if it's biochemically "alive" out there.