Posted on 12/29/2014 7:55:13 AM PST by Salvation
So true. There are so many unknowns at present and so many possibilities. Perhaps life is common but not intelligent life. As you point out previously there could be different bases for life than our own. Indeed we have found this to be the case on our own planet. We may have overlooked something fundamental that allows the rest of the folks to communicate faster than light so we are simply unaware of the thriving galactic civilizations around us. On the other hand we may be the first, in fact we may be the only civilization in this galaxy or indeed the universe. We simply don’t have enough data at present to make informed judgements about other civilizations. As to the perfect adaption of life to its environment what else would one expect, regardless of initiating source?
+1 Fermi Paradox on your observation that alien civilizations probably don’t exist.
The extreme rarity of conditions necessary to sustain life on earth is hardly an argument for the necessity of a Creator. That is a matter of faith. One either believes in a Creator, or one believes that universe sprang forth from nothing and evolved into complex systems. Then one adduces evidence to support his faith.
Unfortunately for creationists, their Creator remains silent and hidden, and the only evidence they have for His existence consists of some very old, unscientific texts and their own sincere faith. Well, that and the fact that nobody can point to specific, reproducible examples of evolution following abiogenesis. One the other hand, those who wish exclude the Creator can point to a geological record that supports a theory of evolution. Abiogenesis remains a problem.
In any case, the argument in this article does not support the existence of a Creator: in an infinitely large universe, any non-zero probability is possible no matter how small the probability.
“Kinda like broadcasting signals for the sole intent of bringing attention to ourselves.”
Many scientific supporters of SETI quit their various boards when no one listened to them about actually having a debate before SETI instituted it’s active beaming programs. Supposedly they just did it with very little debate, and even smaller fanfare to the general public.
Freegards
Some of the criteria you propose are not essential for life. For example, Seasons and tides are not essential - bacteria live miles underground.
A while back, I read “The Life of Super-Earths” by Dimitar Sasselov (2012), an astrophysicist involved in the study of exo-planets, associated with the study of potential alien life. He reports that with the Kepler space telescope and a few other modern instruments, they are now able to observe planets transiting in front of their stars. The results of their sampling indicate that about half of stars have planets in the ballpark for potentially supporting life (one half to ten times the size of Earth, in the habitable zone around their star where temperatures could allow for liquid water).
They can’t tell which planets would be good habitats for us, but other life forms can live where we could not, like the bacteria D. Radiodurans, which can clog the drains of nuclear reactors. In many places where we could not live unsupported, like Antarctica or our moon, we can survive inside shelters with supporting equipment. One of the results of the study of life, is that once it has developed, it can be quite difficult to completely erradicate, just as life on Earth survived huge asteroid impacts and climactic changes.
The bottom line is that the estimate of one out of a thousand stars supporting life remains supportable as a conservative estimate.
Who said anything about a creator? Agenda much?
Specious argument, and wrong. Life exists at the bottom of the ocean, miles in the air, deep inside of caves, the antarctic, arctic... Your point is I suppose that it doesn’t exist inside of rocks.
There is no reason to believe that the Scriptures were ever intended—by either their human authors or the Holy Spirit—to teach scientific facts. It is unreasonable to believe that the Sun, the Moon, the stars, and the earth came into existence in a six-day period. There is ample evidence that it did not happen in that way.
What revelation does tell us is that the universe was created so that human nature could be created, so that God could become man.
“We may have overlooked something fundamental that allows the rest of the folks to communicate faster than light so we are simply unaware of the thriving galactic civilizations around us.”
I read a sci-fi story once where even though super advanced civilizations never were able to achieve FTL travel, they could plan on a scale of millions of years. When contact was finally made, they were shocked that humans had thought they were unique and had attributed bizarre theories of natural physics origins to things like pulsars and quasars. They were really artificial beacons letting everyone know they weren’t alone.
FReegards
My point was very specific, a ratio of biomass to mass. I consider less than one part in a billion to be rare.
You immediately tried to turn my point into something it wasn’t based on your feelings.
Not exactly ridiculous. The mathematics demonstrate that 11-demensional M-Theory becomes general relativity at lower energies.
Something is in there.
>>Why is it when a gem or metal is rare, it’s precious, but not so with humans?
To say the life is tenuous is not a comment on whether it is precious.
To a believer, each human being is a miracle, having the image of God within him. Believing that God has provided abundantly, there is little concern for the ability of the universe to sustain a large population. Each person is or should be not only a consumer of resources, but productive. I suppose there is some limit to the carrying-capacity of the earth under present technology. But, with freedom, technology advances and there is no telling what is the ultimate carrying-capacity of the earth.
To a non-believer, while life is tenuous, what is precious isn’t the individual but is the phenomenon of life itself. Hence, individuals may be sacrificed for he good of the whole (meaning, those not sacrificed). Viewing the earth as a limited resource, more people means less for each person. Therefore, population control, eugenics and removal of the undesirable to labor camps, these have always been part of the agenda of the progressive socialists. Progressive socialists are all potentially Nazis.
There are of course a lot of factors that are unique to earth, and the chance of one let alone all of them occurring simultaneously is certainly remote. A large moon, a fractured crust, a magnetic field, etc. We don’t even know for sure what factors are requirements and which are not. But the thing is that there are a lot of stars with planets in the universe. More than the grains of sand on all the earth’s beaches. I’ve no doubt God is powerful enough to create all that just so this one planet could support life, but it just doesn’t make sense to me.
Imagine some life existing in the universe for ‘billions’ of years, mastering all aspects of the natural universe, including travel by means about which we can only imagine.
Some might think they were god(s).
Just sayin’...
SETI would be incapable of detecting our own radio footprint (with just a very few exceptions) even from the closest of stars. For stars much further, it takes so much time that the sender and likely his civilization is long dead before the signal even arrives. We have only recently begun to develop techniques using specialized telescopes that will allow use to detect signs of metabolic life on other planets. No primitive radio beacons are needed for such detections, so why expect them to be used?
We have only been able to use radio technology for a little over 100 years. Who can say that we won't discover some other much better long distance communication technology within the next 100 or 1000 years? What arrogance to think that other intelligent life forms, should they exist, would be limited to using our current ways to communicate. It also is quite a leap of faith, if not unwarranted self regard, to assume that any such beings would even want to communicate with us.
Yes, some would. They end up in hell.
We can only go up from here...
No it’s not. Number one: Assuming that we are on a path to increased technology and discovery, eventually our disposable income will become gargantuan. This will be used to reach out, and even a small percentage will be enormous 10k years from now.
Number two: AI. Artificial intelligence will propel our interstellar discovery, and it will be self-sustaining. In other words, we won’t design craft, AI will design itself. And when AI craft arrive at a new system, it will begin replicating with available materials new starships. ALL OF WHICH will multiply upon reaching the next system. These new craft will be better than the last because AI in the future will be learning as it expands. It’s easy to imagine our own AI created craft returning in a million years and finally proving that there is intelligent life “out there,” us.
The Fermi Paradox - if life is common in the Universe, wouldn’t some be way ahead of us, and have contacted us by now?
A few possibilities:
- We are too dim-witted to be worth talking to. We are not much interested in negotiating with most other species less intelligent than us.
- the speed of light may be a fundamental physical barrier. The vast distances may fundamentally isolate us.
- We may be on the leading edge of the development of intelligence - perhaps the first to awaken. The book that I referenced in an earlier post, “the Life of Super-Earths”, laid out an interesting analysis of the timeline since the Big Bang. The great bulk of the time is required for matter to coalesce into stars, and for the heavier elements to form, allowing complex chemistry that could form complex organisms.
The estimates of the times required, indicates that we are indeed on the theoretical leading edge of the development of life, on a Universal scale. It doesn’t rule out another civilization being ten million years ahead of us, but it does indicate that we could well be on the leading edge.
Look how far we've come in a mere hundred years.....
Don’t doubt me on this: down is an option.
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