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Beryllos
Guest
That is only one possible explanation.
I can dig it.
And you may ask yourself
"Well, How did I get here?"
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And you may ask yourself
"Well, How did I get here?"
Agreed.
But I fail to see how that applies.
Thus far, the sample size is all known planets.
And the Earth is unique.
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niceatheist
Guest
So far. But that’s like finding a crashed plane in a desert, and declaring there’s only such object in the world.niceatheist:
Agreed.
But I fail to see how that applies.
Thus far, the sample size is all known planets.
And the Earth is unique.
The universe is a big place. As well, our definition of life is based solely on life on Earth. So it’s a much harder question to answer, particularly as we haven’t even fully explored our own solar system. Claims of being unique have a long ways to go before they can be justified.
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1Lord1Faith
Guest
Who’s “we”? If you mean Catholics, the Church already has a position on creation. You can read about it.
I don’t know what famous atheist you’re talking about, but why do you care that someone who doesn’t believe in God has articulated their reasons why they don’t believe in God. If you’re anxious about it then just realize that atheists can have opinions too.
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lelinator
Guest
True, but experience would seem to give it a great deal of merit. The problem is that it only takes one flag happy person to have a detrimental effect on the makeup of this forum. And the thing is that most users probably haven’t even noticed. But do you want a few people to be able to rob the opposition of their voice, just because they happen to disagree with them? Is that what these forums are really all about?lelinator:
That is only one possible explanation.
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Dan_Defender
Guest
This is not a fact. By natural forces alone, only tens of species are needed for ecosystem balance, not millions. And no scientist can explain why something as simple as the wheel does not exist in animal species, while something as complex as electricity does. The natural world appears designed, not shaped by random forces.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
The problem is this: There are two kinds of life we might find – a high tech civilization communicating in the electro-magnetic spectrum, and something else (from bacteria to mammals.)
There are two places we can look: Within our solar system and outside it.
Now we know there is no high tech civilization in our solar system. There might be bacteria or similar forms of life.
And we have good reason to believe there are no high tech civilizations outside our solar systems.
And if there is some lesser form of life out there – how would we ever find it? How could we detect a fungus or mold on a planet hundreds of light years away.
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niceatheist
Guest
When most scientists speak of extraterrestrial life, I think they’re referring to anything that fits within the definition of “life as we know it”; capable of reproduction (with some means of heredity) and metabolism. Those are pretty broad, but even defining the life as we know it can be tricky. Are viruses alive? By some definitions, no, because they have no means of metabolism and strictly speaking cannot even reproduce on their own, but require the metabolic and reproductive functions of host cells to do the job.
As to intelligent life, well, that, I suppose is the BIG QUESTION, but frankly that’s one we might be a long way from answering. Projects like SETI are, to my mind, largely wastes of time. The “light cone” effect means any incidental signal (ie. some alien civilization’s version of I Love Lucy) isn’t going to be able to propagate more than a few hundred light years before it basically gets wiped out by the messy signals of much stronger RF broadcasters like stars and the galactic “winds” themselves. To broadcast a signal, say, thousands of light years, is going to take some alien civilization knowing we’re here, we’re listening, and then generating an extraordinarily strong signal (in other words, something like a high energy laser, and a I mean high energy laser). And really, go much further back than a few hundred years, even humans weren’t producing anything that could be recognized as a side-effect of technology (ie. heavy pollution that might demonstrate an industrial civilization).
The best we can hope to do over the next century is refine our optical technology enough that we can start detecting with some accuracy the atmospheres of Earth-like planets. If we see strong signals, like an oxygen-rich atmosphere with plentiful amounts of water vapor, then we probably can reasonably surmise that there are photosynthesizing organisms.
I had read that at some point in the future, huge “mass interferometer”, arrays of telescopes probably in independent orbit around the sun but millions of miles apart, probably could give us the ability to directly image landmasses and other features of extrasolar worlds. Maybe then, I suppose, we might be able to get direct observational evidence of alien civilizations, but I don’t think there are any such projects in the works, and probably won’t be for decades. We’re talking a bunch of large Hubble-like telescopes in solar orbits, so not only will we have to have the ability to position them, but also to maintain them, so my off-the-cuff estimate is probably the kind of tech we’ll have in a century or more.
But NASA now has approval for a Europa mission whose job will be to go to Europa and try to taste the water plumes coming from under Europa’s icy crust. There’s an ocean there larger than all the oceans on Earth, and a lot of energy from the massive tidal forces that keep churning Europa’s interior. I read an article on what kind of life might be in the vast ocean, and it’s guessed that it won’t be terribly complex, because there’s a lack of free oxygen, which is what fuels the metabolisms of most multicellular life on Earth.
As to intelligent life, well, that, I suppose is the BIG QUESTION, but frankly that’s one we might be a long way from answering. Projects like SETI are, to my mind, largely wastes of time. The “light cone” effect means any incidental signal (ie. some alien civilization’s version of I Love Lucy) isn’t going to be able to propagate more than a few hundred light years before it basically gets wiped out by the messy signals of much stronger RF broadcasters like stars and the galactic “winds” themselves. To broadcast a signal, say, thousands of light years, is going to take some alien civilization knowing we’re here, we’re listening, and then generating an extraordinarily strong signal (in other words, something like a high energy laser, and a I mean high energy laser). And really, go much further back than a few hundred years, even humans weren’t producing anything that could be recognized as a side-effect of technology (ie. heavy pollution that might demonstrate an industrial civilization).
The best we can hope to do over the next century is refine our optical technology enough that we can start detecting with some accuracy the atmospheres of Earth-like planets. If we see strong signals, like an oxygen-rich atmosphere with plentiful amounts of water vapor, then we probably can reasonably surmise that there are photosynthesizing organisms.
I had read that at some point in the future, huge “mass interferometer”, arrays of telescopes probably in independent orbit around the sun but millions of miles apart, probably could give us the ability to directly image landmasses and other features of extrasolar worlds. Maybe then, I suppose, we might be able to get direct observational evidence of alien civilizations, but I don’t think there are any such projects in the works, and probably won’t be for decades. We’re talking a bunch of large Hubble-like telescopes in solar orbits, so not only will we have to have the ability to position them, but also to maintain them, so my off-the-cuff estimate is probably the kind of tech we’ll have in a century or more.
But NASA now has approval for a Europa mission whose job will be to go to Europa and try to taste the water plumes coming from under Europa’s icy crust. There’s an ocean there larger than all the oceans on Earth, and a lot of energy from the massive tidal forces that keep churning Europa’s interior. I read an article on what kind of life might be in the vast ocean, and it’s guessed that it won’t be terribly complex, because there’s a lack of free oxygen, which is what fuels the metabolisms of most multicellular life on Earth.
No, it is simply basing a fact on what is known.
We can’t go assuming facts based on things that are not known.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
The point is, if life outside our solar system is NOT using the electro-magnetic spectrum, how could we detect them?
And we have good reason to believe there is no high tech civilization.
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niceatheist
Guest
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We have no way of testing the premise either way. There are billions of galaxies, and each galaxy has billions of planets. We’ve only been able to detect extrasolar planets for a couple of decades, and only in the last few years have we had the ability to detect planets, and most of those either because they orbit very close to their parent stars, or because they’re “super-Earths”, which are still a great deal larger than Earth. In other words, our techniques self-select for planets still decidedly very un-Earthlike in size or in orbital positions around their parent stars.niceatheist:
No, it is simply basing a fact on what is known.
We can’t go assuming facts based on things that are not known.
That is an opinion.
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niceatheist
Guest
Are you saying there aren’t billions of galaxies, each of which has billions of stars, of which a healthy percentage host planets?niceatheist:
That is an opinion.
We’re finding that even red dwarfs, the most populous group of stars in our galaxy, frequently have at least one planet orbiting them. We don’t really expect to find hospitable worlds around such stars, at least by our definition, but again, our definition is limited by and large to the kind of life we see on Earth. Again, our understanding is self-limiting, and exobiologists do spend some time coming up with other nucleotide and metabolic systems
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No, I am saying that until we find that many planets in that many galaxies, we can only speculate.
And what I am really getting at is that we have not found any planets that are similar enough to earth to harbor life.
So what exactly is considered ‘similar’?
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niceatheist
Guest
Our ability to even detect such worlds is low at best. We have a few candidates in our solar system, and we’ll find out more within a decade or so about at least one of them.
Fair enough.
But it is not grounds to claim anything further than what is actually known.
You are correct, we cannot test either way.
But that means that we can only know what we know, not what we speculate.
Candidates for what?
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niceatheist
Guest
Life. I mentioned Europa.
All evidence and experience says that all the life that is exists only on Earth.
Our home is unique.
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