A Universe Of Life: Maybe Not

spacedaily ^ | 7 Jan 02 | Karl Hill

[RightWhale]

I have the Bob's plastic model. Double dish design. Classic.

[Joe Brower]

There is also the theory that life advances to the point where it gains the technological means of eradicating itself, and, lacking the moral compunction not to do so, makes itself extinct.

Humankind is currently balanced at that point in it's history. Stay tuned.

[RightWhale]

Which is more frighteening? A universe teeming with life or one where we are the ONLY life forms?

Achieving satori doesn't actually change the world.

To sort of quote a favorite story character:
If the world stopped every time one of us had a bad day, we would all be floating in space.

[RJL]

Why are they amazed that we are adapted to live on the Earth and not adapted to live somewhere else?

Life developing on a planet with different characteristics will adapt to that planets conditions.

[texson66]

What's happened to the bookmark function? I wanted to bookmark this article. Not enough server disk space? Might be! I miss that function already. Maybe if we could be limited to say 50 bookmarks or so that would help.

[cliff630]

RE#24

Mr. Whale, Does satori lead to nirvana?

Next Q. Is nirvana just nothingness rather than eternity?

[VadeRetro]

I think there's more life than the Rare Earthers have it but not so much that the aliens are zipping around on Earth participating in political conspiracies and abducting idiots. So call me a Medium-Rare Earther.

[Cloud William]

Which is more frighteening? A universe teeming with life or one where we are the ONLY life forms?

That sounds like something that Rod Serling might've said at the end of a Twilight Zone episode. Good question, too.

[Aquinasfan]

Jupiter has protected Earth from too many cataclysmic asteroid collisions, he explained -- but on the other hand, a neighbor much larger that Jupiter would not allow formation of an Earth-like planet in the first place. Similarly, our moon is just the right size to help stabilize Earth's spin axis and, as a consequence, the Earth's climate. With a bigger moon or no moon at all, a planet similar to Earth in other respects might not sustain life.

Looks like more evidence for the "anthropic principle."

[Brett66]

but what about bob lazaar and the spaceships he saw while working at areaa 51

The spaceships are in great condition and ready to go, we just don't have the Americium to fuel them. ;)

[Brett66]

So if the odds are only one-in-a-billion, that gives us about 400 civilizations in our galaxy. Most likely these 400 civilizations would be farther than 1000 light years away so we won't find them by SETI efforts. The only way is to build huge interferometers and scan millions of star systems. it will be dumb luck if we stumbled on another Earth. I think we need to focus our efforts to establishing bases and colonies on the moon, this is like trying to win the pick-six.

[jimt]

With some like 10^20 stars in the observable universe, it just seems awfully strange to think we're the only one in the entire creation supporting intelligent life.

Ten to the twentieth is a mighty big number.

[jimt]

some like = something like

[RightWhale]

Consider also the lifetime of civilizations. The odds that there is another civilization living right now in our Milky Way is close to zero. Maybe some are living right now in other galaxies, but not every galaxy. We could never come across another civilization even if there are or have been or will be billions in the visible universe.

[MosesKnows]

is remote in the extreem.

I would agree. The question for me has never been "does life exist elsewhere". The question for me has always been "what is the probability that we would cross paths with life that existed elsewhere in the universe”.

The universe is basically empty. The entire universe is virtually devoid of any matter. Look to any point in the sky and then extend that line to the end of the universe. The odds are enormous that you will never encounter an object in that path even though there are billions of stars. This is because the universe is spread over time and space.

The odds are staggering against ever encountering another life that is within one or two billion years of our own? We may not even be able to recognize life if it were too many billions of years ahead or behind us.

In my mind the universe may be teeming with life but the odds that we would ever cross paths is indeed remote in the extreme.

[RightWhale]

"Rare Earth" mainly discusses the conditions for successful animal and bacterial life. Not just humans, but any higher animals. Other forms of life besides bacteria are left to the imagination. There could be replicating machines out there; they could be considered living by some definitions of life. There is probably teeming life everywhere, but it is all bacteria.

[js1138]

In my mind the universe may be teeming with life but the odds that we would ever cross paths is indeed remote in the extreme.

I'm amazed at all the rare-earthers that have sprung up. The last time I argued this on FR I was shouted down.

My guess is that the radio civilization will last a couple hundred years, being replaced by who knows what -- entangled quantum particles, perhaps? So the window for crossing paths via SETI is brief indeed. I suspect that live, biological humans will never travel to the stars, although our descendents might.

[RightWhale]

we're the only one in the entire creation supporting intelligent life.

On the other hand, several civilization fronts could have passed through our solar system already. Come and gone. How would we know?

[Scully]

I've read all the arguments against numerous earth-like conditions, but even if only 0.5% of planets were formed under the "right" conditions, that's still a lot of planets where life may exist.

All it will take is one more...