Why we're the only intelligent life in our galaxy

[Frank]

No, the amount of reactions won't be much larger, because the molecules will be much more diluted.

But they will! We're talking about a volume the size of 1321.3 Earths. The atmosphere has a volume larger than 1000 Earths. And the combined volume of the seas and atmosphere on Earth is about 0.025% of the whole. That means, that the total volume is about four million times as large.

So, reactions would have to happen four million times less frequent to be able to come up with the same amount.

No single life form lasts forever. It has to be capable of living long enough to reproduce.

But that can happen in any amount of different ways, nothing limits that to only how it happens here on Earth.

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.

But then again, there are so many differences in the conditions between the Earth and Jupiter, that there is really no way to say for sure without going there and trying it.

The environment over there might favor completely different molecules and reactions, for all we know. It's not as if we can see anything but a slim upper layer in any case. You could throw the whole Earth in there, and you would be unable to say it even happened after a while, let alone show where it is.

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.

That vastness only makes it much more probable that it will happen, sooner or later.

 

[KimB]

But they will! We're talking about a volume the size of 1321.3 Earths. The atmosphere has a volume larger than 1000 Earths. And the combined volume of the seas and atmosphere on Earth is about 0.025% of the whole. That means, that the total volume is about four million times as large.

So, reactions would have to happen four million times less frequent to be able to come up with the same amount.

No, you're using the wrong parameter for this argument. What you should be using is mass of the required nutrients. The thing is, the small volume of the oceans of the Earth is a boon for the generation of life, because it acts to concentrate the required materials into a small region, dramatically increasing the chance of the required reactions.

But then again, there are so many differences in the conditions between the Earth and Jupiter, that there is really no way to say for sure without going there and trying it.

Perhaps. Biochemistry really isn't my field, but I suspect that there are those who know enough to say with quite a lot of certainty whether or not life could exist in Jupiter. My simple arguments seem to indicate that it's highly unlikely, but that doesn't mean I can be certain. However, this doesn't mean that there is nobody who can be. I don't think we would have to go there and test.

 

[Frank]

No, you're using the wrong parameter for this argument. What you should be using is mass of the required nutrients. The thing is, the small volume of the oceans of the Earth is a boon for the generation of life, because it acts to concentrate the required materials into a small region, dramatically increasing the chance of the required reactions.

No, because those carbon molecules aren't really that much more abundant around here. They're trace elements as well.

Perhaps. Biochemistry really isn't my field, but I suspect that there are those who know enough to say with quite a lot of certainty whether or not life could exist in Jupiter. My simple arguments seem to indicate that it's highly unlikely, but that doesn't mean I can be certain.

You know numbers and probabilities, right? Do the math.

However, this doesn't mean that there is nobody who can be. I don't think we would have to go there and test.

Agreed. And I hope soon!




Edit: did you mean that we should go there and look? I agree to that!

 

[NANOTEC]

I have a really hard time believing "humans" developed from cells in the ocean or even dinosaurs. It may have been possible, but I think it's highly unlikely. I think how humans developed is beyond our understanding. We're missing a huge piece of the evolutionary puzzle. I think it is highly strange that humans evolved from "cavemen" or apes. Where did these apes evolve? Cells from the ocean? How come we haven't yet found "pre ape" fossils?

 

[SugarCoat]

I have a really hard time believing "humans" developed from cells in the ocean or even dinosaurs. It may have been possible, but I think it's highly unlikely. I think how humans developed is beyond our understanding.

obviously not since we can make humans and just about any other creature in a petri dish. now imagine a large petri dish containing a primordial soup with all kinds of little undeveloped creatures. Get the picture? It is absolutly no more far fetched to consider then some all creating all seeing being(s) placing all the earths creatures here. And then one can ask the question where do those creatures (God(s)) stay, and who created them or it? Theres problems with both scientific theory and the faith theory. Its up to you to decide what you think is more plausible.

Just one of the many conclusions one can come to is that we're a freak production of nature, which is within odds considering how many other worlds there are out there. And that one out of a million of those worlds may spring these freak intelligent evolving life forms (human or most likely not) as well.

 

[Frank]

obviously not since we can make humans in a petri dish.

LOL! Best response I've seen in a while.

 

[NANOTEC]

obviously not since we can make humans in a petri dish.

Unlfortunately that doesn't hold much water. So how do you grow a human in the ocean? Find random sperm and eggs then put them into a tide pool and have apes be the recipient of the fertilized egg?

Where is the intermedtiate species?

 

[Neeyik]

How come we haven't yet found "pre ape" fossils?

Firstly you must appreciate that out of all the possible lifeforms that have existed on the Earth, only a very small percentage of them will have been fossilised and on top of that, only a certain percentage of those will be accessible (ie. not hundreds of metres below the sea floor) and on top of that, only a certain percentage of those will be complete enough remains to identify them as a unique species.

Besides, what exactly are you referring to by "pre-ape"? Lemurs?

 

[NANOTEC]

Firstly you must appreciate that out of all the possible lifeforms that have existed on the Earth, only a very small percentage of them will have been fossilised and on top of that, only a certain percentage of those will be accessible (ie. not hundreds of metres below the sea floor) and on top of that, only a certain percentage of those will be complete enough remains to identify them as a unique species.

Besides, what exactly are you referring to by "pre-ape"? Lemurs?

Well what I'm saying is that we've found many fossils of Neanderthals etc. and monkeys but after monkeys it's a dead end.

 

[SugarCoat]

Unlfortunately that doesn't hold much water. So how do you grow a human in the ocean? Find random sperm and eggs then put them into a tide pool and have apes be the recipient of the fertilized egg?

Where is the intermedtiate species?

No one knows what the contents of the oceans or any land masses of the earth were that long ago to come to a conclusion of its possability or not. You have to remember you're talking in terms of hundreds of millions if not billions of years here.


The ultimate problem is size. We cannot grasp size. You can magnify any object, and you will never hit nothing. For example the point of a needle, magnify it. Far beyond atoms and even tachyons, there is always something more there but we just dont know what. You wont hit a wall saying "Dead End, Turn Back". If you can shrink to infinity, one can reasonably conclude that you can expand to infinity. The odds of other intelligent life are inevitable under this theory. Billions, trillions of other intelligent life forms. And if thats true, then what makes us so special to a higher being or power? Wouldnt we be viewed as ants? Its utterly mind boggling to consider and i problably just gave a couple people headaches thinking about it, but just consider that when you wonder about "life".


As far as the only intelligent life in this galaxy...well that would mean we've thorougly looked which is utterly infeasible to the level i just described, so i would disagree and say its almost a certainty there is other intelligent life someplace. You have to understand that for all we know this entire universe is a single particle making up a single grain of sand on some alien beach.

 

[Neeyik]

Well what I'm saying is that we've found many fossils of Neanderthals etc. and monkeys but after monkeys it's a dead end.

Not true - fossilised remains of other members of the Euarchonta supergroup have been found.

 

[NANOTEC]

What I find very strange is that we've found fossils of many different species of dinosours from millions of years ago. We've also fund fossils of Neanderthals and ape-like humanoids also from millions of years ago. How old are apes as a species? Where are the fossils that precede the apes with respect to the evolutionary time window?

Just a hypothetical example here:

20 million years ago monkeys came to be.

30 thousand years ago Neanderthals came to be

10 thousand years ago humans came to be.

What species lived before the monkeys during the 50million to 100 million years ago? Where are those fossils? What organisms lived during that pre-ape period? Are those organisms similar to man? Again where are those fossils?

Not true - fossilised remains of other members of the Euarchonta supergroup have been found.

But were members of that group evolved befoer apes in the evolutionary timeline or was it a parallel species?

 

[Frank]

Well what I'm saying is that we've found many fossils of Neanderthals etc. and monkeys but after monkeys it's a dead end.

We might just not have stubled upon them yet, as Neeyik said, it might be that some visitors from outer space did some meddling, it might have been a disease or genetic mutation, or something else entirely.

We simply don't know. But most of the evidence points to a sudden increase in brain tissue and the development of a lot of primates, of which we are the descendants.

 

[Frank]

What I find very strange is that we've found fossils of many different species of dinosours from millions of years ago.

Dinosaurs have roamed the Earth for hundreds of millions of years. Primates are recent, they haven't been around that long. And they evolved fast, geologically speaking.

 

[KimB]

No, because those carbon molecules aren't really that much more abundant around here. They're trace elements as well.

Right. But there are ways that these things can appear on Earth in large concentrations. For example, imagine a relatively large body of water (say, a lake) where most of the water evaporates. What were once trace elements in the water become very common.

You don't get processes like that in a gas giant.

 

[NANOTEC]

Dinosaurs have roamed the Earth for hundreds of millions of years. Primates are recent, they haven't been around that long. And they evolved fast, geologically speaking.

Understood but when going back, to before primates there is nothing...primates must have evolved from another kind of organism like we evolved from apes. What is this organism?

 

[Neeyik]

Well Australopithecus fossil samples apparently range from 2 to 4 million years old. IIRC (it's been years since I did any zoology), mammals appeared somewhere around 200My ago and the first primates something like 70My. Multicellular evolution only kick started around 500My so it's not just primates that evolved pretty quickly on the geological scale.

primates must have evolved from another kind of organism like we evolved from apes. What is this organism?

Hack your way through this: http://www.paleocene-mammals.de/

 

[Frank]

Right. But there are ways that these things can appear on Earth in large concentrations. For example, imagine a relatively large body of water (say, a lake) where most of the water evaporates. What were once trace elements in the water become very common.

You don't get processes like that in a gas giant.

Well, we don't know. But probability and scale being what they are, I think it's quite possible you can find larger concentrations of the "right" stuff on gas giants. Although it might be different from what it would be here, as the preferred chemistry might be different.

Gas giants are just as randomized as our own ecosphere. Probably more so. They're not uniform by far, which is easy to see when you look at a picture of Jupiter.

 

[KimB]

For there to be any reasonable probability of the existence of such a concentration, you would need to have processes to produce one. One won't randomly occur in the bulk atmosphere of a gas giant.

The only place that any such concentration could possibly occur would be on the "ground," but if there is any ground on Jupiter (or any other gas giant), we haven't been able to detect it. I find it extremely unlikely that if one exists, that it would have liquid water on it, or that there would be enough entropy for life forms to evolve (specifically, no light from the sun).

 

[Frank]

For there to be any reasonable probability of the existence of such a concentration, you would need to have processes to produce one. One won't randomly occur in the bulk atmosphere of a gas giant.

The only place that any such concentration could possibly occur would be on the "ground," but if there is any ground on Jupiter (or any other gas giant), we haven't been able to detect it. I find it extremely unlikely that if one exists, that it would have liquid water on it, or that there would be enough entropy for life forms to evolve (specifically, no light from the sun).

How about the Great Red Spot, for example? The largest hurricane in the Solar system? Who knows what resides in it's center. And as you could fit three Earths inside, I'm willing to bet any anount of money it's not uniform over the whole volume.

False color image of the Great Red Spot.