[Al_U_Card]

helene_t, on Jan 6 2008, 01:28 PM, said:

FWIW, I would expect Gliese581 to have bacteria but nothing more complex than that. Would be interesting if there is advanced life. What I would find shocking would be if life on Gliese581 was either
- almost identical to life here, to the point that a Gliese581ian could pass for an Earthling
- completely different, for example based on silicon instead of carbon.

I would imagine that if bacteria exist then other life forms (depending on the time-scale since inception) would be concurrent with and likely similar to life on earth (also somewhat dependent on the ambient conditions and their similarity with that on earth).

[Al_U_Card]

helene_t, on Jan 7 2008, 08:39 AM, said:

My guess is, though, that there is no other planet in the galaxy with life even remotely close to our level, and even if there is, we will never find it. And even if we do find it, we will not be able to communicate with them, nor to travel to their planet. Of course this is pure speculation.

Can you imagine the carnage? We can't even peacefully co-exist on this planet!

[helene_t]

Right, if we ever come to interact with them, the first (and last) thing we will do is a preemptive strike.

Btw Winston, I miss some options, for example:
- Depends how you define "life".
- No, this particular planet is not suitable for life.
- Probably not, it may be suitable but life will always be a rare incident.

[ArcLight]

I doubt there will be life. That Rde Dwarf wasn't always a Red Dwarf. When it was younger it would have scorched the planet and probably boiled away the atmosphere and water. Its probably a rock.

[jtfanclub]

I dunno about this planet in the other solar system, but I expect that we'll find life outside of earth in at least one place in our solar system.

Looks like there's liquid water on Mars (underground) and on one of Saturn's moons (due to volcanic activity). It would be surprising to me if neither one of them had microscopic life.

[luke warm]

helene_t, on Jan 7 2008, 10:22 AM, said:

Right, if we ever come to interact with them, the first (and last) thing we will do is a preemptive strike.

Btw Winston, I miss some options, for example:
- Depends how you define "life".
- No, this particular planet is not suitable for life.
- Probably not, it may be suitable but life will always be a rare incident.

and
- yes, if God created life there also

[Winstonm]

I also could have added:

Who cares. Winston is an absolute moron.

But I didn't want a unanimous poll.

[Fluffy]

Not a moron, but IMO you talk too much about politics. I try to ignore everything about politics (makes me happier), and you insist on talking about US politics wich I couldn't care less .

you and luke have left the bridge discussions

[matmat]

I voted for creator. i have played enough simlife to know that this the only possible answer

[Winstonm]

Fluffy, on Jan 7 2008, 07:33 PM, said:

Not a moron, but IMO you talk too much about politics. I try to ignore everything about politics (makes me happier), and you insist on talking about US politics wich I couldn't care less .

you and luke have left the bridge discussions

Pretty much my bridge history - play for awhile then take a few years off.

[zasanya]

Fluffy, on Jan 7 2008, 07:33 PM, said:

I try to ignore everything about politics (makes me happier), and you insist on talking about US politics wich I couldn't care less .

Isn't ignoring politics the same as passively supporting whoever is in power?

[mike777]

zasanya, on Jan 8 2008, 01:16 AM, said:

Fluffy, on Jan 7 2008, 07:33 PM, said:

I try to ignore everything about politics (makes me happier), and you insist on talking about US politics wich I couldn't care less .

Isn't ignoring politics the same as passively supporting whoever is in power?

No

actively.....supporting....

If I do not try and kill Franco..how bad can he be....I will just ignore....

Better my family survives rather than my family dies trying to kill him.
Franco is not that evil that we should die.


edit....

[helene_t]

I'm with Fluffy. This has nothing to do with religion or politics (perhaps a discussion of the funding of the Darwin project would be vaguely on-topic).

[mike777]

Sounds like a good excuse to raise billions and send a mission rocket ...

This has alot to do with non..hard science.

Sure it is 99.99% no life but what the heck....may advance "hard science".

Just because we raise and spend..billions..trillions for silly bad reason does not mean..some kind of hard science may not be advanced.

[DrTodd13]

So...back to Fermi's paradox. If you take a look at most of the original and modern suggestions for the values in Drake's equation, you'll see there should be many intelligent space-faring civilizations in our galaxy, some of which would have had enough time to colonize a significant part of the galaxy. Fermi's paradox asks where they all are because we've yet to detect their presence and we should detect the presence of a Type III civilization quite easily I would suspect. If you start tweaking the parameters to create a "rare earth" then I think you are just being intellectually dishonest to create the scenario you want rather than searching for truth. the evidence seems to point to a rare earth which begs the question why? Are we a true cosmic accident? Are we in part the result of a creative effort by transcendent intelligence? The very ability for the free parameters of physics to allow matter to coalesce in interesting forms necessary for any life is exceedingly unlikely. In science, you never assume an initial observation is an exception rather than a rule and so they try to explain how it is we exist when scientific belief says the whole galaxy should already be colonized. If science is about testability then the theories they have invented are not scientific. Some say every possible universe was created and we are lucky to inhabit one of the few where life is able to exist. Others say that the universe existed in a massive quantum superposition until consciousness evolved and collapsed the wave function.

But back to the main question...if life in varying complexity is found on other worlds then you can make an argument that maybe we are just probabilistically one of the lucky few. The religious do have a problem...did God create this other life just to confuse us and cast doubt on his own existence? I don't think He would allow his existence to be proven because then faith would be unneeded. Likewise, if we could ever conclusively say that there was not a hint of life anywhere else in our galaxy then those with a scientific bent have a problem.

[helene_t]

I don't think Drake's equation and the Fermi paradox qualify as science. It's just armchair "science". To say something scientific about the issue of life on other planets, we need lots of data.

If they find chlorophyll in the spectrum of an exoplanet, it would be quite fascinating, but what would it teach us? Even if chlorophyll was found on a million planets in the galaxy, intelligent life could still be rare. Even if intelligent life is common, inter-stelar travel could be impossible. Or maybe we are bound to be the first because the first civilization will colonize the entire Galaxy, preventing other civilizations from arising ... or ... or ... or ...

I'm not sure we will ever get enough data to solve the Fermi paradox, or rather, to find out if there is a paradox at all. In the meantime, the Fermi paradox is fun for SF authors, but scientists will have enough of a challenge to identify the conditions required for single-celled organisms to emerge. Intelligent ETs are not high on the agenda, I think.

[Gerben42]

I'm not all that surprised that no one is visiting / conquering us. The universe is a big place. The ultimate speed limit (300000 km / second) seems huge but that makes everything that is not inside the solar system VERY far away.

In the future it will be economical to have permanent bases all around the solar system. But the next star is 1 million times as far away as Mars. Yikes!

The lack of aliens conquering our planet for me is an indication that there is no large scale shortcut to the universal speed limit. No hyperdrive, no warp drive, no infinite improbability drive.

[mike777]

"......The lack of aliens conquering our planet for me is an indication that there is no large scale shortcut to the universal speed limit. No hyperdrive, no warp drive, no infinite improbability drive....."



You are not dead...assume no one will be dead?


Ok...and who is running for Chancellor of Germany on this?

[helene_t]

I wonder if jtf's assertion that the planet is just a rock, is correct. The Earth used to be a rock, didn't it? Even if the atmosphere and hydrosphere were blown off when the planet was hotter, a new atmos- and hydrosphere could have formed afterwards, couldn't they?

I suppose that life could have emerged in the boundary between the day- and nightsides. The narrowness of that belt would obviously have delayed the evolution of advanced life, but for single-cell organisms maybe it's not so critical.

On Earth we have multicellular life forms that do not depend on photosynthesis (even indirectly). However, it is possible that they decent from organisms that did depend on photosynthesis and that they could not have evolved without. OTOH it could also be that anaerobic life would evolve to advanced stages without the competition from aerobic life. For example, marsupials in Australia who did not have competition from placental mammals, evolved in all kind of directions, while South American marsupials, facing competition from placentals, were much more constrained.

[Al_U_Card]

I prefer the multiverse/alternate reality scenario myself.

We are in (and continue to stay in) the alternate that is always alone. This is what you can expect when you are imprisoned (exiled/cast out) for bad behavior.