Is there life in outer space?

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Rete

**So… yeah… if there is life anywhere near our little corner of this galaxy, it will become possible to reach them. I suspect we already have the propulsion technology. The problem is maintaining a closed ecosystem which can support human life. It’s not like on television where people live in metal ships. It would be more like hurtling through space in a giant garden forest, with farms and everything. Otherwise you risk losing biomass and that’s the end. **

All of which is still science fiction. And what if there is no life to be found anywhere in our galaxy? How do they get to the next galaxy and beyond still looking? When do they give up and admit the whole venture is pure 1g science fiction? I suppose to some it would be worth the effort.

I’d rather be in purgatory waiting for the Final Judgment.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Rete

**So… yeah… if there is life anywhere near our little corner of this galaxy, it will become possible to reach them. I suspect we already have the propulsion technology. The problem is maintaining a closed ecosystem which can support human life. It’s not like on television where people live in metal ships. It would be more like hurtling through space in a giant garden forest, with farms and everything. Otherwise you risk losing biomass and that’s the end. **

All of which is still science fiction. And what if there is no life to be found anywhere in our galaxy? How do they get to the next galaxy and beyond still looking? When do they give up and admit the whole venture is pure 1g science fiction? I suppose to some it would be worth the effort.

I’d rather be in purgatory waiting for the Final Judgment.
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No, that’s what I tried to relate to you. It’s not all science fiction. First, relativity itself has been confirmed in numerous ways. Second, Project Orion really did have the potential to send spacecraft to nearby systems. It was shutdown in the 1960s by the Test Ban Treaty combined with the Outer Space Treaty. The first banned us from testing nuclear explosions, which means you can’t really continue testing of the Orion drive on Earth. The latter banned the weaponization of space, which banned the ability to get the warheads up to a test vehicle to test it from orbit.

But the science and engineering behind the Orion drive is pretty straightforward and tested. It’s just a pulse propulsion. The difference is that the pulses are nuclear explosions. I am not just making this up. If we were to gather all the inactive nuclear warheads from Russia and the United States, we could conceivably build a ship which would make the round trip to a nearby system. That would get those warheads off the Earth as well…

Project Orion was a serious program operated by men like Freeman Dyson. They were serious about building one of these ships until the anti-proliferation crowd shut down the project.

books.google.com/books/about/Project_Orion.html?id=r_Gu4f0QxrkC
 
I don’t think the Church has a position on it. I like to think there is some sort of life out there, though I doubt it is similar to what we see on earth. It might not meet our current definition life (for instance, it might not have genetic code made of DNA or RNA).

I doubt that there is intelligent life on other planets, but I don’t think it’s impossible. I hope there is, just because I want to see how different or similar they would be from us.

That’s just my inner spec fic writer, though. I don’t think we’ll find any in our lifetimes, even if it is out there. :o
 
brian614 said:
Interesting article: bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22146456

They are looking for people to go on a one way trip to Mars…
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Wow that is very interesting! I bet the people who do it might survive because their body would evolve to that planet and especially if they have children their children would evolve too, especially from the way they describe how the body would be affected in just 8 months. The human body is very adaptable to survival. So if they do decide to go ahead with something like that, which I think would be cool, it does make you think about things in a different perspective! 100 years In the future, those humans like us sent to mars would look like aliens if they visited us on earth even though they **are **us. 🙂
 
I suspect the children would be very tall and lanky. At the same time, they could be a little fatter due to lack of exercise. Mars is only a third the mass of Earth. So the children’s growth won’t be held back by nearly as much. Also, since it is so much lighter, their bodies will not have to work as much to move or to perform work. So their appetites will match their actual caloric needs even less than they do for modern humans in general.
 
Rete said:
I suspect the children would be very tall and lanky. At the same time, they could be a little fatter due to lack of exercise. Mars is only a third the mass of Earth. So the children’s growth won’t be held back by nearly as much. Also, since it is so much lighter, their bodies will not have to work as much to move or to perform work. So their appetites will match their actual caloric needs even less than they do for modern humans in general.
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You are forgetting the intense energy needs in repeated, everyday spacesuit work. The suit would largely compensate for the loss of body weight (while adding even more to body’s unchanged inertia) Just bending your limbs against the pressure gradient is hard work, and they’d spend most of every day in those suits.

So the metabolic needs may not change that much.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
You are forgetting the intense energy needs in repeated, everyday spacesuit work. The suit would largely compensate for the loss of body weight (while adding even more to body’s unchanged inertia) Just bending your limbs against the pressure gradient is hard work, and they’d spend most of every day in those suits.

So the metabolic needs may not change that much.

ICXC NIKA
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People can’t live inside spacesuits. They have to build a habitat. I described what I think human children will look like having grown up in a Earth biome habitat on Mars. It’s low gravity, so they definitely will grow taller. But also because of low gravity, they will not need as many calories as their bodies demand through hunger. Their livable environment will also be limited, so they won’t have as much access to exercise outside of a equipment.
 
Our universe contains 10 to the 21, stars or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. and if most star systems have just a few planets, there are that many more planets.

I would think that it is almost certain that there are other intelligent beings out there, and probably many of them will be far more advanced than we are.

It’s guesstimated that the atoms in our bodies are about 8 billion years old. But the universe is guesstimated to be about 13 billion years old. That would give other life forms up to 5 billions years head start.

With our technology, it would take several thousand years for us to develop anything close to being able to travel to the nearest star. We can travel at most 30 or 40 thousand miles per HOUR… the nearest star is about 7 light YEARS away meaning we would have to travel at 186,000 miles per SECOND for 7 years to get there.

So it is very unlikely we will achieve true interstellar space travel in our life time, or in our great, great grand children’s life time.

HOWEVER, a very far advanced alien civilization, might achieve interstellar travel and reach us instead.

Consider in terms of human technology, in just 200 years, we have gone from horse and buggy to automobiles and airplanes and putting a man on the moon. What could someone do in 2 million years or 2 billions years? Certainly interstellar space travel could be possible or even likely.

Folks consider UFO’s impossible because they think in terms of our own technology. BUT if you look at it from a technology that could be millions or billions of years older, it doesn’t look as far fetched.
 
This is the ultimate question of science in my view. I watched a facinating documentary on Netflix called “How the Universe Works”. One astronomer noted that we’re very lucky to be here. Hawking also stated his gratefulness to be on earth. Earth has a magnetic field that protects it from radiation, a moon to cause tides and Jupiter protects from asteroid impacts. With out one of these variables humanity may not exist in it’s current state or at all.

As for life on other planets I would say we first need to determine how life arises from basic elements. We do not yet know this question as scientists can’t create life out of combining elements on the periodic table yet. If you mix iron, gold and water you don’t get cells of original life for example.

On europa, a moon that orbits Jupiter I think, the moon is covered with ice, but it is believed that their are oceans beneath. The question of life’s ability to evolve on other planets will probably be answered when we send a probe to this moon to drill through the ice and view the oceans beneath. If the probe finds cells or microbes than we will have a better idea of where life exists.

I sincerely hope we find a community of fish and exotic organisms under Europa’s icy surface.
 
matt1985 said:
This is the ultimate question of science in my view. I watched a facinating documentary on Netflix called “How the Universe Works”. One astronomer noted that we’re very lucky to be here. Hawking also stated his gratefulness to be on earth. Earth has a magnetic field that protects it from radiation, a moon to cause tides and Jupiter protects from asteroid impacts. With out one of these variables humanity may not exist in it’s current state or at all.

As for life on other planets I would say we first need to determine how life arises from basic elements. We do not yet know this question as scientists can’t create life out of combining elements on the periodic table yet. If you mix iron, gold and water you don’t get cells of original life for example.

On europa, a moon that orbits Jupiter I think, the moon is covered with ice, but it is believed that their are oceans beneath. The question of life’s ability to evolve on other planets will probably be answered when we send a probe to this moon to drill through the ice and view the oceans beneath. If the probe finds cells or microbes than we will have a better idea of where life exists.

I sincerely hope we find a community of fish and exotic organisms under Europa’s icy surface.
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Dream on. This country’s space program is dead.

As curious as this may be, I would much rather see money spent to resume US manned spacecraft, than to send a robot to look for creepy crawlies under Europa’s ice.

Drilling through 100 miles of ice by remote control isn’t feasible with present technology, anyhow.

ICXC NIKA.
 
By Freeman Dyson’s own estimate it would take 1,000 years for a Project Orion spaceship to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to us. So what happens if we get there and there is no life? Go another thousand years to the next closest star system that will be even farther from Earth?

Does this not seem highly improbable to you and pure science fiction, even if the technical problems of space travel could be solved?
 
Rete said:
People can’t live inside spacesuits. They have to build a habitat. I described what I think human children will look like having grown up in a Earth biome habitat on Mars. It’s low gravity, so they definitely will grow taller. But also because of low gravity, they will not need as many calories as their bodies demand through hunger. Their livable environment will also be limited, so they won’t have as much access to exercise outside of a equipment.
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That’s true, they would definitely have to build domes that they could live in. Good point about how they would be taller and have less muscle mass than we do. 👍
wcknight said:
Our universe contains 10 to the 21, stars or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. and if most star systems have just a few planets, there are that many more planets.

I would think that it is almost certain that there are other intelligent beings out there, and probably many of them will be far more advanced than we are.

It’s guesstimated that the atoms in our bodies are about 8 billion years old. But the universe is guesstimated to be about 13 billion years old. That would give other life forms up to 5 billions years head start.

With our technology, it would take several thousand years for us to develop anything close to being able to travel to the nearest star. We can travel at most 30 or 40 thousand miles per HOUR… the nearest star is about 7 light YEARS away meaning we would have to travel at 186,000 miles per SECOND for 7 years to get there.

So it is very unlikely we will achieve true interstellar space travel in our life time, or in our great, great grand children’s life time.

**HOWEVER, a very far advanced alien civilization, might achieve interstellar travel and reach us instead.

Consider in terms of human technology, in just 200 years, we have gone from horse and buggy to automobiles and airplanes and putting a man on the moon. What could someone do in 2 million years or 2 billions years? Certainly interstellar space travel could be possible or even likely.

Folks consider UFO’s impossible because they think in terms of our own technology. BUT if you look at it from a technology that could be millions or billions of years older, it doesn’t look as far fetched**.
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Exactly!! 👍 That’s what I keep trying to tell people, they keep putting our limitations onto other beings on other planets when they don’t know how intelligent those beings are to begin with ( their species normal or average intellect could be on the level of what we consider genius or even their developmentally delayed people could be on a level of what we call genius LOL) let alone how old their species is and where they are in technological development compared to us. That’s like people in the biblical days being certain that flying is not and never will be possible because they are putting their limitations on people of the future. We really don’t know **what **any other species of beings would be capable of so they very well could find ways around things that to us and our understanding seem impossible at the moment.
 
Skye

** We really don’t know what any other species of beings would be capable of so they very well could find ways around things that to us and our understanding seem impossible at the moment. **

This is very true. We don’t even know if, granted there is life elsewhere in the universe, it is as highly evolved as our own. It is conceivable that we cannot reach others and they are not well enough advanced to reach us. We may be the highest achievement of evolution throughout the universe. Somebody has to be. 😉
 
Charlemagne_II said:
By Freeman Dyson’s own estimate it would take 1,000 years for a Project Orion spaceship to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to us. So what happens if we get there and there is no life? Go another thousand years to the next closest star system that will be even farther from Earth?

Does this not seem highly improbable to you and pure science fiction, even if the technical problems of space travel could be solved?
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You have to consider the context and what exactly he was calculating. You also have to consider who’s frame of reference he means. To people on Earth, a roundtrip could equal that much. To the people on the ship, it could be much less.

It also doesn’t account for acceleration. If this is a constant velocity (i.e. they use just enough fuel to reach a particular speed and remain at that speed for the entire journey), then the trip does take a very long time. But if they use a lot more fuel to maintain a constant acceleration for the entire trip, then time dilation reduces the trip time a great deal.

For example…

The Alpha Centauri system is located about 4.37 ly from Sol system.

If you maintained a constant 1g acceleration for the entire trip, then the trip time would take 4.85 years ship time, and 11.78 years Earth time.

Of course, that would require a huge amount of nuclear fuel… but we do have that means to build that kind of fuel. My larger point is that we do in fact have the technology right now to travel to other star systems, but it is not legal to do so because of treaties prohibiting the testing of nuclear devices both on Earth and in space.

Furthermore, some interesting research was done in the UK which expanded upon the idea with fusion reactions. It was called Project Daedalus. That’s more like what we could do now by taking all of the inactive nuclear arms and using them for propulsion of a very large spacecraft. The Project Daedalus folks calculated a modest trip time of about fifty years to Bernard’s Star. Though not as fast as what I described before, it’s certainly at least affordable in comparison.

But again… we can’t even begin to build and test these propulsion systems because of those two treaties. That is also the case for every other forum of nuclear propulsion. Those treaties are the only reason we have not gone anywhere. It’s basically illegal to build a spaceship because of them.
 
Daedulus is a dud. Mostly because we cannot get fusion to actually work they way we think it should (i.e., the fusion reactor takes in more energy than it gives out).

Aside from the ridiculous energy requirements, there are issues in space travel itself: mass loss, bone density loss, cosmic ray & other high energy particle bombardment, radiation fields, long-term absence from gravity field, psychoses from enclosure, and so on. We cannot even survive in Antarctica for long, and you expect us to survive in space for 50+ years now? I do hope you are joking…
 
Rete

**Furthermore, some interesting research was done in the UK which expanded upon the idea with fusion reactions. It was called Project Daedalus. That’s more like what we could do now by taking all of the inactive nuclear arms and using them for propulsion of a very large spacecraft. The Project Daedalus folks calculated a modest trip time of about fifty years to Bernard’s Star. Though not as fast as what I described before, it’s certainly at least affordable in comparison. **

But you haven’t answered the most important question. What do you do when you get Bernard’s Star and discover there is nothing habitable anywhere nearby? Go on to the next Star System, or return to Earth one hundred years after starting out? After all, you can’t just go star hopping indefinitely.
 
Yes, there could be life on other planets. There is no problem with plant life, insects, or animal life; since it doesn’t touch upon issues of redemption. There are theological issues with intelligent sentient beings; which hopefully the Church will work on.

Now there are some passages of the Bible that some people quote as supporting Alien life; I’m thinking of people like Erich Von Daniken and “Ancient Aliens” theorists. For example, Genesis 6: 4 refers to “sons of God” mating with “daughters of men” and producing the giants. Now I do not say this is the correction interpretation. But some people point at passages like this as referring to aliens and humans interbreeding. Any thoughts on the proper interpretation of this Genesis reference?:hmmm:
 
No, there’s no life in outer space. The universe has room for only one neurotic species. 😃
 
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