Are We Alone?

[Fort Fun Indiana]

You don't think - you believe (without any plausibility in this case)

Without plausibility? It seems very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

With the genetic code, which comes from the sisters and brothers of the life of the planet Earth?

Oh, well that's new information. I see.

 

[sealybobo]

You don't think - you believe (without any plausibility in this case)

Without plausibility? It seems very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

plau·si·bil·i·ty

1. the quality of seeming reasonable or probable.
   "he offers no support for the plausibility of his theory"

When I first began teaching big history, almost 30 years ago, most scientists seemed pretty sure that life was extraordinarily rare. And it might be that it existed only on planet earth. But science moves on, and today I suspect most astrobiologists, the scientists who study the possibility of life in the universe, would guess that the Universe is crawling with life, at least with bacteria-like life. We don’t know for sure because we have not yet identified life anywhere else. But there are really three reasons for this shift.

First, in the 1990s, astronomers learned how to detect planets around other stars and now we know that most stars have solar systems, so there may be billions of planets quite like planet Earth just in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, so there seem to be lots of places where life could possibly live.

Second, on our own planet, Earth, life appeared quite soon after the planet formed. And that seems to suggest that where there exist the right “Goldilocks” conditions for life it can pop up quite easily.

Finally, we have now found bacteria existing in very harsh environments, inside scalding hot springs, or inside rocks, and we know they can even survive short journeys in space. So they are tougher than we thought.

But that’s bacteria. Big creatures like ourselves are probably much rarer. After all, on planet Earth it took just a few hundred million years to create the first bacteria, but it took almost 3 billion years to create the first large creatures, like worms or trilobites. So the chances of meeting creatures like us still seem very remote.

And now the religious folks won't care if we find bacteria. It will have to be complex. Then when we find creatures like dinosaurs our mice they won't care because they'll move the goal post. Then the creatures will have to be smart like us.

So until we find creatures as smart as us religious people will always insist we are alone.

 

[sealybobo]

You don't think - you believe (without any plausibility in this case)

Without plausibility? It seems very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Microbes and fungi with the genetic code, which comes from the sisters and brothers of the life of our own planet Earth? How plausible is this? Not plausible at all, isn't it?

The Odds That We’re the Only Advanced Species in the Galaxy Are One in 60 Billion
Read more at The Odds That We’re the Only Advanced Species in the Galaxy Are One in 60 Billion | Daily Planet | Air & Space Magazine



Instead of estimating how many civilizations are out there to communicate with today, they estimate how many civilizations have been out there since the beginning of the Universe.

At first glance this seems to be only a slight semantic difference, but it is not. A big unknown in the original Drake Equation is the average lifetime of a civilization during which they might be available to communicate with us.

Reframing the question makes longevity a moot point. Frank and Sullivan ask: What is the chance that we are the only technological species and always have been? If we put the question this way, the Drake Equation boils down to A = Nast * fbt, where A is the number of technological species that have ever formed over the history of the observable universe, Nast are all the astronomical unknowns (which we now have a much better handle on than we did in 1961), and fbt are the biological unknowns, which are still many—including the fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears, the fraction of those planets on which intelligent life emerges, and the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

Based on recent exoplanet discoveries, Frank and Sullivan assume that one-fifth of all stars have habitable planets in orbit around them. This leads them to conclude that there should be other advanced technological civilization out there, unless the chance for developing such a civilization on a habitable planet in the observable universe is less than 1 in 1024 (a 1 with 24 zeros!). For our own Milky Way galaxy, the odds of being the only technologically advanced civilization are 1 in 60 billion. Thus, it’s very likely that other intelligent, technologically advanced species evolved before us. Even if only one in every million stars hosts a technologically advanced species today, that would still yield a total of about 300,000 such civilizations in the whole galaxy.

And that's just this galaxy. You religious people really are stupid AF.

 

[sealybobo]

You don't think - you believe (without any plausibility in this case)

Without plausibility? It seems very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Microbes and fungi with the genetic code, which comes from the sisters and brothers of the life of our own planet Earth? How plausible is this? Not plausible at all, isn't it?

Finding signs of alien life might be harder than we thought. Here’s why

To a distant observer peering through a telescope, even Earth would not have shown signs of life through most of its past. Despite the fact that our planet was teeming with mostly microscopic life for three billion years, levels of oxygen and methane — gases often produced by metabolizing organisms — would have been too low to be noticed from afar. This means that today's scientists on Earth might not be able to detect commonly assumed signs of extraterrestrial life, and they might give up on planets that are actually inhabited, according to a new study in the journal Astrobiology.

Scientists envision using oxygen, ozone and methane in a planet's atmosphere as key indicators of life. But there are problems with this approach. The gases are tough to detect with current technology, and their presence is suggestive, but not conclusive, evidence of living organisms. Even for an Earth-like planet, the search for life beyond our solar system turns out to be even tougher than previously thought.

at best you will just get a statistical estimate of whether there’s life

Because oxygen and methane levels were so low for so long on Earth according to Reinhard’s models, until a few hundred million years ago a distant alien astronomer would’ve had few hints that life exists here. Earthling astronomers face the same problem when searching for life-friendly planets beyond the solar system. It’s not just that our favorite worlds in the “habitable zone” around their stars might be uninhabited; we could be prematurely ruling out many other worlds that actually do host life.

Then we have Mars:

This raises a problem on Mars. The planet today is dry and barren, with most of its water locked up in the polar ice caps. The planet's thin atmosphere allows radiation from the sun to irradiate the surface of the planet, adding to the environment's challenges. Evidence for water first showed up in 2000, when images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor found gullies that appeared to have formed from flowing water.

But Mars wasn't always a desolate wasteland. Scientists think that, in the past, water may have flowed across the surface in rivers and streams, and that vast oceans covered the planet. Over time, the water was lost into space, but early conditions on the wetter planet could have been right for life to evolve. One estimate suggests that an ancient ocean could have covered as much as 19 percent of the planet's surface, compared to the 17 percent covered by Earth's Atlantic Ocean.

Exploration of Mars was put on hold for more than two decades. When examination of the planet resumed, scientists focused more on the search for habitable environments than for life, and specifically on the search for water. The slew of rovers, orbiters, and landers revealed evidence of water beneath the crust, hot springs — considered an excellent potential environment for life to evolve — and occasional rare precipitation. Although the Curiosity rover isn't a life-finding mission, there are hopes that it could pinpoint locations that later visitors might explore and analyze.

"Mars 2020 will gather samples for potential return to Earth in the future.

But the hunt for Martian life may be stymied by concerns over how to prevent infecting the Red Planet with Earth life. Current international policies impose heavy financial burdens that make exploring potentially habitable regions of Mars an extra challenge.


"Bottom line is that a thorough cleaning of a spacecraft aimed to in situ search for life on a special region of Mars today would easily cost around $500 million," Dirk Schulze-Makuch told SPACE.com via email. Schulze-Makuch, a researcher at Washington State University, and his colleague Alberto Fairen of Cornell University authored a commentary article published in the journal Nature Geoscience arguing for less-strict protection measures for Mars.

"With that amount of money, you can entirely finance a 'Discovery-type' mission to Mars, similar to Pathfinder or InSight," he added. "Therefore, if we'd relax planetary protection concerns in a Viking-like mission today, we could add another low-budget mission to the space program."

 

[zaangalewa]

You don't think - you believe (without any plausibility in this case)

Without plausibility? It seems very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Microbes and fungi with the genetic code, which comes from the sisters and brothers of the life of our own planet Earth? How plausible is this? Not plausible at all, isn't it?

The Odds That We’re the Only Advanced Species in the Galaxy Are One in 60 Billion
Read more at The Odds That We’re the Only Advanced Species in the Galaxy Are One in 60 Billion | Daily Planet | Air & Space Magazine

Instead of estimating how many civilizations are out there to communicate with today, they estimate how many civilizations have been out there since the beginning of the Universe.

At first glance this seems to be only a slight semantic difference, but it is not. A big unknown in the original Drake Equation is the average lifetime of a civilization during which they might be available to communicate with us.

Reframing the question makes longevity a moot point. Frank and Sullivan ask: What is the chance that we are the only technological species and always have been? If we put the question this way, the Drake Equation boils down to A = Nast * fbt, where A is the number of technological species that have ever formed over the history of the observable universe, Nast are all the astronomical unknowns (which we now have a much better handle on than we did in 1961), and fbt are the biological unknowns, which are still many—including the fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears, the fraction of those planets on which intelligent life emerges, and the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

Based on recent exoplanet discoveries, Frank and Sullivan assume that one-fifth of all stars have habitable planets in orbit around them. This leads them to conclude that there should be other advanced technological civilization out there, unless the chance for developing such a civilization on a habitable planet in the observable universe is less than 1 in 1024 (a 1 with 24 zeros!). For our own Milky Way galaxy, the odds of being the only technologically advanced civilization are 1 in 60 billion. Thus, it’s very likely that other intelligent, technologically advanced species evolved before us. Even if only one in every million stars hosts a technologically advanced species today, that would still yield a total of about 300,000 such civilizations in the whole galaxy.

And that's just this galaxy. You religious people really are stupid AF.

a=propability for life; it's nearly impossible that [multicellular] life exists
b=possibility for life; there are many places where [multicellular] life could exist

a->0
b->oo

Take two random numbers: a in the near of 0 and b in the near of oo. You will get a result between 0 and oo. The results are without any system.

a*b->?

=> We don't know, whether extraterrestrian life exists.

 

[Votto]

What's your thought on life on other planets? Intelligent life?

I sure as hell hope so.

I can't imagine another power hungry "f'er" wanting to impose their universal health care on me.

 

[sealybobo]

You don't think - you believe (without any plausibility in this case)

Without plausibility? It seems very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Microbes and fungi with the genetic code, which comes from the sisters and brothers of the life of our own planet Earth? How plausible is this? Not plausible at all, isn't it?

The Odds That We’re the Only Advanced Species in the Galaxy Are One in 60 Billion
Read more at The Odds That We’re the Only Advanced Species in the Galaxy Are One in 60 Billion | Daily Planet | Air & Space Magazine

Instead of estimating how many civilizations are out there to communicate with today, they estimate how many civilizations have been out there since the beginning of the Universe.

At first glance this seems to be only a slight semantic difference, but it is not. A big unknown in the original Drake Equation is the average lifetime of a civilization during which they might be available to communicate with us.

Reframing the question makes longevity a moot point. Frank and Sullivan ask: What is the chance that we are the only technological species and always have been? If we put the question this way, the Drake Equation boils down to A = Nast * fbt, where A is the number of technological species that have ever formed over the history of the observable universe, Nast are all the astronomical unknowns (which we now have a much better handle on than we did in 1961), and fbt are the biological unknowns, which are still many—including the fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears, the fraction of those planets on which intelligent life emerges, and the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

Based on recent exoplanet discoveries, Frank and Sullivan assume that one-fifth of all stars have habitable planets in orbit around them. This leads them to conclude that there should be other advanced technological civilization out there, unless the chance for developing such a civilization on a habitable planet in the observable universe is less than 1 in 1024 (a 1 with 24 zeros!). For our own Milky Way galaxy, the odds of being the only technologically advanced civilization are 1 in 60 billion. Thus, it’s very likely that other intelligent, technologically advanced species evolved before us. Even if only one in every million stars hosts a technologically advanced species today, that would still yield a total of about 300,000 such civilizations in the whole galaxy.

And that's just this galaxy. You religious people really are stupid AF.

a=propability for life; it's nearly impossible that life exists
b=possibility for life; there are many places where life could exist

a->0
b->oo

Take two random numbers: a in the near of 0 and b in the near of oo. You will get a result between 0 and oo. The results are without any system.

a*b->?

=> We don't know, whether extraterrestrian life exists.

Right but with our technology and the distance that's like you sticking your head in the ocean and not seeing any life and determining that in your best guestimation, you see no signs of life in that ocean.

Of course if you get in a submarine and went in you'd see all kinds of life.

Well our pathetic telescopes can't tell us shit. It's like you are a monkey with a magnifying glass and you can't see life on other planets. Sorry but you don't have the technology to determine that.

 

[sealybobo]

What's your thought on life on other planets? Intelligent life?

I sure as hell hope so.

I can't imagine another power hungry "f'er" wanting to impose their universal health care on me.

You don't think they have socialized medicine? Why do you assume they'd be like the USA and not every other civilized country on our planet? I would imagine they have healthcare and poverty figured out.

 

[Votto]

What's your thought on life on other planets? Intelligent life?

I sure as hell hope so.

I can't imagine another power hungry "f'er" wanting to impose their universal health care on me.

You don't think they have socialized medicine? Why do you assume they'd be like the USA and not every other civilized country on our planet? I would imagine they have healthcare and poverty figured out.

Is that why Mick Jagger came all the way to the US for heart surgery?

Too bad Chavez went to Cuba for health care. He's dead now.

In fact, could Mick Jagger be an alien? He certainly does not look human.

Maybe we are being visited by aliens to bypass socialized medicine.

 

[zaangalewa]

You don't think - you believe (without any plausibility in this case)

Without plausibility? It seems very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Microbes and fungi with the genetic code, which comes from the sisters and brothers of the life of our own planet Earth? How plausible is this? Not plausible at all, isn't it?

The Odds That We’re the Only Advanced Species in the Galaxy Are One in 60 Billion
Read more at The Odds That We’re the Only Advanced Species in the Galaxy Are One in 60 Billion | Daily Planet | Air & Space Magazine

Instead of estimating how many civilizations are out there to communicate with today, they estimate how many civilizations have been out there since the beginning of the Universe.

At first glance this seems to be only a slight semantic difference, but it is not. A big unknown in the original Drake Equation is the average lifetime of a civilization during which they might be available to communicate with us.

Reframing the question makes longevity a moot point. Frank and Sullivan ask: What is the chance that we are the only technological species and always have been? If we put the question this way, the Drake Equation boils down to A = Nast * fbt, where A is the number of technological species that have ever formed over the history of the observable universe, Nast are all the astronomical unknowns (which we now have a much better handle on than we did in 1961), and fbt are the biological unknowns, which are still many—including the fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears, the fraction of those planets on which intelligent life emerges, and the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

Based on recent exoplanet discoveries, Frank and Sullivan assume that one-fifth of all stars have habitable planets in orbit around them. This leads them to conclude that there should be other advanced technological civilization out there, unless the chance for developing such a civilization on a habitable planet in the observable universe is less than 1 in 1024 (a 1 with 24 zeros!). For our own Milky Way galaxy, the odds of being the only technologically advanced civilization are 1 in 60 billion. Thus, it’s very likely that other intelligent, technologically advanced species evolved before us. Even if only one in every million stars hosts a technologically advanced species today, that would still yield a total of about 300,000 such civilizations in the whole galaxy.

And that's just this galaxy. You religious people really are stupid AF.

a=propability for life; it's nearly impossible that life exists
b=possibility for life; there are many places where life could exist

a->0
b->oo

Take two random numbers: a in the near of 0 and b in the near of oo. You will get a result between 0 and oo. The results are without any system.

a*b->?

=> We don't know, whether extraterrestrian life exists.

Right but with our technology and the distance that's like you sticking your head in the ocean and not seeing any life and determining that in your best guestimation, you see no signs of life in that ocean.

Of course if you get in a submarine and went in you'd see all kinds of life.

Well our pathetic telescopes can't tell us shit.

"Our" "pathetic" telescopes don't tell shit, Don Quijote.

It's like you are a monkey with a magnifying glass and you can't see life on other planets. Sorry but you don't have the technology to determine that.

... to determine what?

Take the technology "piece of paper" and try to find the result.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

You don't think - you believe (without any plausibility in this case)

Without plausibility? It seems very likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

plau·si·bil·i·ty

1. the quality of seeming reasonable or probable.
   "he offers no support for the plausibility of his theory"

When I first began teaching big history, almost 30 years ago, most scientists seemed pretty sure that life was extraordinarily rare. And it might be that it existed only on planet earth. But science moves on, and today I suspect most astrobiologists, the scientists who study the possibility of life in the universe, would guess that the Universe is crawling with life, at least with bacteria-like life. We don’t know for sure because we have not yet identified life anywhere else. But there are really three reasons for this shift.

First, in the 1990s, astronomers learned how to detect planets around other stars and now we know that most stars have solar systems, so there may be billions of planets quite like planet Earth just in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, so there seem to be lots of places where life could possibly live.

Second, on our own planet, Earth, life appeared quite soon after the planet formed. And that seems to suggest that where there exist the right “Goldilocks” conditions for life it can pop up quite easily.

Finally, we have now found bacteria existing in very harsh environments, inside scalding hot springs, or inside rocks, and we know they can even survive short journeys in space. So they are tougher than we thought.

But that’s bacteria. Big creatures like ourselves are probably much rarer. After all, on planet Earth it took just a few hundred million years to create the first bacteria, but it took almost 3 billion years to create the first large creatures, like worms or trilobites. So the chances of meeting creatures like us still seem very remote.

And now the religious folks won't care if we find bacteria. It will have to be complex. Then when we find creatures like dinosaurs our mice they won't care because they'll move the goal post. Then the creatures will have to be smart like us.

So until we find creatures as smart as us religious people will always insist we are alone.

Yes,but he2s underthe impression you are saying the universe is teeming with dna based microbes.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

I can't imagine another power hungry "f'er" wanting to impose their universal health care on me.

You dont have to imagine. You can study other countries where they actually do this and note the better health outcomes and lower per capita spending.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

=propability for life; it's nearly impossible that [multicellular] life exists

Oh bullshit,you are making stuff up.

 

[Votto]

I can't imagine another power hungry "f'er" wanting to impose their universal health care on me.

You dont have to imagine. You can study other countries where they actually do this and note the better health outcomes and lower per capita spending.

I can't believe I high jacked this thread over health care.

Hilarious!

Let's put this another way, IF there is alien life out there with any intelligence at all, they will steer clear of the earth, or go incognito.

We clamor about saving the planet, as if that were possible, and can't even take care of ourselves, all the while thinking how damn smart we all are.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

I can't imagine another power hungry "f'er" wanting to impose their universal health care on me.

You dont have to imagine. You can study other countries where they actually do this and note the better health outcomes and lower per capita spending.

I can't believe I high jacked this thread over health care.

Hilarious!

Let's put this another way, IF there is alien life out there with any intelligence at all, they will steer clear of the earth, or go incognito.

We clamor about saving the planet, as if that were possible, and can't even take care of ourselves, all the while thinking how damn smart we all are.

We are pretty damn smart. We're just not very wise.

 

[Votto]

I can't imagine another power hungry "f'er" wanting to impose their universal health care on me.

You dont have to imagine. You can study other countries where they actually do this and note the better health outcomes and lower per capita spending.

I can't believe I high jacked this thread over health care.

Hilarious!

Let's put this another way, IF there is alien life out there with any intelligence at all, they will steer clear of the earth, or go incognito.

We clamor about saving the planet, as if that were possible, and can't even take care of ourselves, all the while thinking how damn smart we all are.

We are pretty damn smart. We're just not very wise.

Smart compared to what exactly?

I do agree that our intelligence far out paces our wisdom.

This alone should keep them away. There is nothing more dangerous than a race of beings who are smart but without wisdom. That is a breeding ground for destruction.

Just look around.

But alas, all we care about is science/knowledge, right?

Religion be damned.

Speaking of which, why is God never considered to be an alien?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Smart compared to what exactly?

Smart enough to know how to take care of ourselves and our environment. Just not wise enough to get it done.

Getting rid of religion would help. I doubt an alien race smart enough to visit us will be pausing to worship a magical sky daddy 4 times a day.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Speaking of which, why is God never considered to be an alien?

I'm sure he is,by some. To some, likw to north Koreans, he's a dead president.

 

[zaangalewa]

=propability for life; it's nearly impossible that [multicellular] life exists

Oh bullshit,you are making stuff up.

I'm doing what? Do you know how many factors habe to come together so life is able to exist at the double planet system Earth-moon? The radiation of the sun would kill us without magnetic shield of the Earth - but the radiation of the sun is also a shield against the cosmic radiation, which would kill us too. And fortunatelly the solar system lives in a boring cosmic region nevertheless this alone is a nearly impossible situation for life. And this is only one factor. To much water - to less water - we would not exist and so on and so on and so on ... . Planet Earth needed a stable situation for some billion years. Jupiter for example had moved during the early solar system over the asteroid belt and back again. In this way he fished out lots asteroids. He shields us also against comets. How should life exist under a bombardement of asteriod and/or comets? ... and so on ...

By the way: Intentional ignorance is much more dangerous than natural stupidity - the stupidity of crocodiles for example. Crocodiles exist since more than 300 million years - but who likes to live like a crocodile, although life on planet Earth needs such creatures too? It seems to me the English speaking world is "post facto" only able to survive by dying out. Perhaps you should try to think about this paradox of the theory of evolution too.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Do you know how may factors habe tocome togaterh so life is able to exist at a iart if he double planet Earth-moone?

Who cares? We're not determining the likelihood of finding life exactly as we have it on earth. You need to look up Hoyle's fallacy. You can arbitrarily pile on probabilities all night and make the likelihood of any event approach zero. Your reasoning is specious and arbitrary.