Chanloth you realize we already have ion drives right?
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/deepspace_propulsion_000816.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/deepspace_propulsion_000816.html
Why we're the only intelligent life in our galaxy
- Thread starter KimB
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There are any number of reasons why some of Chalnoths assertions are more likely wrong although reasonable.
1. There is nothing to say that humans will get off of Earth in one piece either as a species or a civilization. Reasons? War, famine, disease, pollution, science, religion, politics, human nature.
2. Intra and inter planetary war may have prevented or prevents other beings from coming out to earth.
3. Intra and inter species war may prevent other beings from coming to earth.
4. There may have been a great famine that reduced that societys complexity after a major war or disease spread.
5. There may be limited resources for space travel that did not allow for significant interplanetary travel. There may be some key element to space travel which is not abundant and within their control. The nearest resources may be so far as to make the effort pointless.
6. There may be a political reason for only going a certain distance from the home planet.
7. There may be a competing species which restricts their growth.
8. They may have encountered a disease or organism which rapidly decimated their colonized worlds.
9. There may not be enough of an economic impetus for them to colonize this portion of the galaxy so they went
instead of coming towards us first.
10. Maybe they have found us but they had no reason to stop. Either humans werent evolved enough or the resources which they thought were out here weren't.
11. Maybe they did stop by and were the genesis of earths fairly uniform set of myths even amongst culturally, and geographically dis-connected peoples.
12. Maybe they think earthlings are full of shit and decided that when they got chance they'd come back to see if we were doing any better!
It could be anything really but my money is on their being a substantial alien population within the Milky Way...
1. There is nothing to say that humans will get off of Earth in one piece either as a species or a civilization. Reasons? War, famine, disease, pollution, science, religion, politics, human nature.
2. Intra and inter planetary war may have prevented or prevents other beings from coming out to earth.
3. Intra and inter species war may prevent other beings from coming to earth.
4. There may have been a great famine that reduced that societys complexity after a major war or disease spread.
5. There may be limited resources for space travel that did not allow for significant interplanetary travel. There may be some key element to space travel which is not abundant and within their control. The nearest resources may be so far as to make the effort pointless.
6. There may be a political reason for only going a certain distance from the home planet.
7. There may be a competing species which restricts their growth.
8. They may have encountered a disease or organism which rapidly decimated their colonized worlds.
9. There may not be enough of an economic impetus for them to colonize this portion of the galaxy so they went
instead of coming towards us first.10. Maybe they have found us but they had no reason to stop. Either humans werent evolved enough or the resources which they thought were out here weren't.
11. Maybe they did stop by and were the genesis of earths fairly uniform set of myths even amongst culturally, and geographically dis-connected peoples.
12. Maybe they think earthlings are full of shit and decided that when they got chance they'd come back to see if we were doing any better!
It could be anything really but my money is on their being a substantial alien population within the Milky Way...
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Or how about:
14. High inteligence has no survival value whatsoever, by pure coincidence our first forefather/mother had a genetic defect / contracted a disease, that increased the amount of brain tissue of all his/her children very much and made every descendant extremely horny all the time. They survived by reproducing faster than the environment was able to kill them, and after many aeons it turned out to have other positive side-effects as well.
14. High inteligence has no survival value whatsoever, by pure coincidence our first forefather/mother had a genetic defect / contracted a disease, that increased the amount of brain tissue of all his/her children very much and made every descendant extremely horny all the time. They survived by reproducing faster than the environment was able to kill them, and after many aeons it turned out to have other positive side-effects as well.
Who says that natural selection and evolution have ceased? That's total nonsense. The only thing that changed is the selection criteria. "Strongest" and "fittest" are just not related to the same object of evaluation now, instead of physical strength it's rather the intellectual, social etc. capabilities nowadays.
As for evolution ceasing, just look at us. We're just in the process of losing body hair, just an example among many other things. We're still very much changing, rapidly I'd say.
I don't see the lack of atmosphere or the greenhouse effect being the problem on Mars and Venus, but rather that the enviromental extremes are so far from each other. Life can adopt to very harsh environment, but only on one end of the scale. No life can do both extrames (very hot days/very cold nights there) It's the fluctuations. The environment needs to be somewhat _constant_ in order for life to develop/adapt since that is as you know a slow process.
About those proteins, what was the message? Why do all life forms use one more than the others?
As for evolution ceasing, just look at us. We're just in the process of losing body hair, just an example among many other things. We're still very much changing, rapidly I'd say.
I don't see the lack of atmosphere or the greenhouse effect being the problem on Mars and Venus, but rather that the enviromental extremes are so far from each other. Life can adopt to very harsh environment, but only on one end of the scale. No life can do both extrames (very hot days/very cold nights there) It's the fluctuations. The environment needs to be somewhat _constant_ in order for life to develop/adapt since that is as you know a slow process.
About those proteins, what was the message? Why do all life forms use one more than the others?
Well, most of these things won't keep humans from eventually exploring space. The only thing that might possibly is a nuclear holocaust, and the probability of that happening seems to be diminishing. A large asteroid impact before we have a chance to leave is, of course, possible, but very unlikely.blakjedi said:
These can only delay, not stop colonization. It doesn't significantly change the timescales of the argument.
Well, if nuclear fusion is obtained, all you would need is hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe (the physical craft could be built of a number of different materials).
Since even the closest of stars will put a colony effectively out of direct contact with the home planet, this is unlikely to be of any effect.
Once again, only temporary. If the species is not intelligent, the intelligent species will eventually win over. If the other species is, then one or the other would arrive here in time.
Only slow, not stop. They'd learn from their experience and move on. That's what life does.
Slowing, again, not stopping.9. There may not be enough of an economic impetus for them to colonize this portion of the galaxy so they went
But if they existed at all, they'd likely have millions of years to re-examine the planet before humans ever came around, and thus they'd be here and we wouldn't.
UFO myths? Almost certainly false. These are a direct response to culture. If you're talking about more ancient myths, those are even more unreliable. But the real issue is that any such interstellar trip is likely to be one-way only.
Anyway, I'd like to append a little something to my basic argument, the anthropic principle.
Usually I wouldn't bow to it, as for most things I'd much rather find a reason why rather than what can often be considered giving up with the anthropic principle, but I think it may well apply here due to the lack of knowledge we have or can obtain in any reasonable amount of time.
The anthropic principle is one that says that we observe things not because they are common things to observe, but because they are things that must exist for intelligent life to observe them. As a quick example, take the Earth. A habitable planet like the Earth is probably rare. It's got good temperatures, copious amounts of liquid water, an abundance of natural resources, and is, all in all, just a superb environment for harboring life. But should we be surprised that this is true? No: if it weren't so, we wouldn't be here to observe it.
So this is what I'm suggesting is the case with our galaxy as a whole: if there were other intelligent life in our own galaxy, I claim that our galaxy is too small for it to have taken more than a million or so years to colonize. Since that time scale is so small compared to the age of the Earth (~5 billion years), or to the amount of time any life has existed on the planet (~3 billion years), or even to the amount of time that complex life has existed (~1 billion years), it is exceedingly unlikely that such a society would have advanced before us.
So the reason that we're having this argument at all is simply because no other intelligent civilization has yet evolved. This actually doesn't necessarily state that intelligent life is rare, it might be exceedingly common. But if we weren't the first, we wouldn't be here.
Usually I wouldn't bow to it, as for most things I'd much rather find a reason why rather than what can often be considered giving up with the anthropic principle, but I think it may well apply here due to the lack of knowledge we have or can obtain in any reasonable amount of time.
The anthropic principle is one that says that we observe things not because they are common things to observe, but because they are things that must exist for intelligent life to observe them. As a quick example, take the Earth. A habitable planet like the Earth is probably rare. It's got good temperatures, copious amounts of liquid water, an abundance of natural resources, and is, all in all, just a superb environment for harboring life. But should we be surprised that this is true? No: if it weren't so, we wouldn't be here to observe it.
So this is what I'm suggesting is the case with our galaxy as a whole: if there were other intelligent life in our own galaxy, I claim that our galaxy is too small for it to have taken more than a million or so years to colonize. Since that time scale is so small compared to the age of the Earth (~5 billion years), or to the amount of time any life has existed on the planet (~3 billion years), or even to the amount of time that complex life has existed (~1 billion years), it is exceedingly unlikely that such a society would have advanced before us.
So the reason that we're having this argument at all is simply because no other intelligent civilization has yet evolved. This actually doesn't necessarily state that intelligent life is rare, it might be exceedingly common. But if we weren't the first, we wouldn't be here.
Chalnoth, let's take this example to the other end of the scale: say that there are a humongous amount of gas-planet dwellers in the galaxy, and they did away with physical travel between the stars and planets long ago. How would we spot them?
And even if there was a gigantic spaceship stopping by at Jupiter about once each day, what would be our chances at spotting that?
I claim, that there are any amount of reasons for highly advanced beings that have colonized the whole Galaxy not to have the slightest bit of interest in us or Earth. While that's your central claim.
Edit: it might turn out, that life like ours (or even humans) is (are) actually very common in this Galaxy, and that the gas dwellers throw a large rock on top if they think we might make a nuisance of ourselves.
And even if there was a gigantic spaceship stopping by at Jupiter about once each day, what would be our chances at spotting that?
I claim, that there are any amount of reasons for highly advanced beings that have colonized the whole Galaxy not to have the slightest bit of interest in us or Earth. While that's your central claim.
Edit: it might turn out, that life like ours (or even humans) is (are) actually very common in this Galaxy, and that the gas dwellers throw a large rock on top if they think we might make a nuisance of ourselves.
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Atmospheric characteristics of Jupiter, according to Wikipedia:
At wat height/temperature/pressure would the water condense on the dust particles?
And if we look at the amount of water and carbon-based molecules: any one of those trace elements would mass many times the whole Earth.
Last edit: CHONSP, they're all there.
Code:
Atmospheric pressure 70 kPa
Hydrogen ~86%
Helium ~14%
Methane 0.1%
Water vapor 0.1%
Ammonia 0.02%
Ethane 0.0002%
Phosphine 0.0001%
Hydrogen sulfide <0.00010%At wat height/temperature/pressure would the water condense on the dust particles?
And if we look at the amount of water and carbon-based molecules: any one of those trace elements would mass many times the whole Earth.
Last edit: CHONSP, they're all there.
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Cartoon Corpse
Veteran
im pretty convinced i was misplaced in the wrong 'civilization'...there has to be more than 1.
You don't just need a little bit of water. You need an abundance of it, or else there will never be enough time for life to form. Jupiter is a big planet, and that water is spread quite thinly throughout it. Even if the elements are there, if they never come together, what's the point?DiGuru said:
Additionally, it is highly unlikely that the core of Jupiter, the only place where these things might possibly come together, would be habitable. Specifically, you don't get any sunlight at those depths, and so the only entropy increase that a prospective organism could make use of would be geological processes, and that is going to be a vastly less efficient system than the sun, so I claim it would take far too long for life to evolve on a gas giant for another intelligent species on a gas giant to exist.
After all, if it takes much longer on a gas giant (assuming it's possible at all), why wouldn't life on another Earth-like planet have evolved sooner anyway?
Think scales and probabilities. Even with a probability that is many orders of magnitude smaller, the area and amount of reactions (scale) is very many orders of magnitude larger.Chalnoth said:
And all those things don't have to happen by chance, all at the same time and place: as soon as the first primitive cells form, they would carry everything needed around in a handy package, and collect as much as needed until they have enough to reproduce.
And of course, there are many more exotic possibilities. We would have to go there, see and experiment to be able to say what is possible in that enormous atmosphere, with the totally different environment than here on Earth.
Agreed. If it happened, it happened in the atmosphere. Like, some particles get coated in water, stick together and produce some interesting molecules, who stick to it as well. Isn't that just like what happened on Earth?
And they might be foamy and sticky, and keep on floating around in that vast volume.
Because there are much, MUCH more gas giants with conditions alike Jupiter, and only very few Earth-like planets? And considering the volumes involved, you could make a very convincing case that life has to have happened on gas giants much more often than anywhere else. So, that there is life on Earth at all might make it mandatory for there being life on many gas giants.
No, the amount of reactions won't be much larger, because the molecules will be much more diluted.DiGuru said:
No single life form lasts forever. It has to be capable of living long enough to reproduce.
No, because on Earth, we believe, it happened in standing water (whether pools or oceans, I cannot say, but standing water nonetheless). There are also experiments to suggest that asteroid and comet impacts played a significant role in starting life off. Such impacts wouldn't have remotely similar effects on a gas giant.
Without doing any calculations, my instinct is that the volume is too vast, and the proportions too low for the molecules to ever converge in the required amounts to start life off.
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