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alien life possibility is pathetic

Belz... said:
It's worth noting that they are only "slower" because they have to take longer paths to get to where they're going. Otherwise their speed is constant at c.
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Hm. I keep forgetting how weird light is...
 
Ice ages (actually glacial minima and maxima) are not the sole factor one must take in to account when it comes to development of our civilization(s)
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I don't think I made any indication that I thought they were the sole factor, did I?
 
makaya325 said:
Yeah, the universe is large alright, but most of it is empty between galaxies.
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Most of the volume of a galaxy is empty space too.

For that matter most of our solar system is empty space. And even among the places of the solar system that isn't empty space 99.99% of that is inhospitable to life as we know it.

Using your way of thinking, that means (somehow) complex life can't exist here. Therefore that chances of humans or Bigfoot existing are pathetic.
 
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I think we're forgetting one fundimental thing or several things. We don't know how life started...so how do we know the critera for life??? The other thing is if we assume life started as a small organism (which not everybody may agree on though i think the majority of people here do) life addapted to it's surrounding. So why do living things need water, oxygen, sunlight etc. Just because we, that's every living thing, need it doen't mean some living thing on a planet somewhere els will need it. The only reason we assume this is because we need these things and therefo assume other creatures, somewhere else will need it.
 
c4, I too get dismayed when scientists say things like "there's no water there, so there couldn't be life." I've heard it said so many times on The Discovery Channel that it makes me want to throw things. Not that I'm hugely optimistic about the existence of alien life, though I bet it exists in some form somewhere, but yeah, I'm confused as to why people think that way too.

Now, as for being carbon-based, that I can understand more clearly. Still, I don't think it should be seen as a 100% necessity.
 
Me too, c4 and dirtygreek.
For all we know, there might be lifeforms out there who see water as poison.
I suppose the reason why they look for those specific things is because it would mean that their lifeform would be similar to humans. I don't have a clue, really.

It's always bothered me, I can't help but think that if they dropped those criterias and just went wild with it - maybe they'd actually discover extra terrestrial life. But at the same time, if they have those criterias - they can narrow and thus focus their search better.

But as an example of this; there's a species of shrimps (iirc) which live in some remote place that I can't remember right now; they live in complete and utter darkness 24/7 (in ponds and lakes in cave-like environments below the ground) - no sunlight at all. As a result, they're completely transparent and blind. But hey look at that, they're alive, and thriving! Ergo, sunlight isn't a criteria for life.
Sunlight, oxygen and water are criterias for most life as we know it, I find it quite arrogant to presume that all life is based on the same principles.

If there is a reasonable explanation for why those criterias are so important in the SETI - please share it. I'm not a scientist, and I assume that the scientists know what they're doing and have been through this issue before. I'm just uninformed I suppose.
 
The problem is, where do you look? We have limited resources for searching. To investigate another world would require a HUGE amount of investment. Even sending a signal for any lengthy period of time takes money and resources (if just energy, and the device used to send the signal required...)

It's bad science to say, "There's no water, ergo, there's no life". It's NOT bad science, however, to say, "There's no water; there's a much lower probability, with present knowledge, of there being life". Why? Because present knowledge is limited to one form of life: life on Earth. If you want to go poking into other worlds, well, we KNOW one kind of life, we KNOW the conditions it's grown in, and we KNOW what conditions to look for if we want to find this life (although there is debate on this, it's mostly at the margins, not the extremes!)

If we had far more resources, and searching for life was a cakewalk, we might not be so picky. As it is, with what we have, we can spend only so much time and effort peeking into specific areas.

(This was a question posed in the Colloquium I attended on the subject of Giant Earths, and as far as I can recall, that was pretty much the answer given; we have to go off of what we know, as we don't know what other conditions to look for, in specific)
 
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JoeTheJuggler said:
Most of the volume of a galaxy is empty space too.

For that matter most of our solar system is empty space. And even among the places of the solar system that isn't empty space 99.99% of that is inhospitable to life as we know it.

Using your way of thinking, that means (somehow) complex life can't exist here. Therefore that chances of humans or Bigfoot existing are pathetic.
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Want to really mess with someone, you can point out that we ourselves are a lot of empty space. Most things in the universe are not tightly compressed. :D
 
It's bad science to say, "There's no water, ergo, there's no life". It's NOT bad science, however, to say, "There's no water; there's a much lower probability, with present knowledge, of there being life"
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Sure, I'd never dispute that. That's obvious. Hearing scientists say "there can't be life there because x, y, and z" is frustrating, though, and not the same thing.
 
Yeah, I'd say they were wrong, or at least, pretending to have knowledge that they don't. I'd be surprised, too.
 
fullflavormenthol said:
Want to really mess with someone, you can point out that we ourselves are a lot of empty space. Most things in the universe are not tightly compressed. :D
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:)

That reminds me of this (which I think may have already been cited on this thread somewhere):

Hitchhiker's Guide said:
The Universe - some information to help you live in it.
1. Area: Infinite.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word "Infinite".
Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.
2. Imports: None.
It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things in from.
3. Exports: None.
See imports.
4. Population: None.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

<snip>
7. Sex: None.
Well, in fact there is an awful lot of this, largely because of the total lack of money, trade, banks, art, or anything else that might keep all the non-existent people of the Universe occupied.
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JoetheJuggler said:
The Universe - some information to help you live in it.
1. Area: Infinite.
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That's actually wrong, according to modern cosmological theory. :P
 
Belz... said:
It's worth noting that they are only "slower" because they have to take longer paths to get to where they're going. Otherwise their speed is constant at c.
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I thought that the speed of light was 1/sqr(K#1 * K#2). I'm not saying your wrong, it's just what I remember, where K#1 was some electric constant pertaining to the medium and K#2 was some magnetic constant pertaining to the medium. So the velocity of light depended on the permittivity-permeability of the medium. Then again, I'm pulling this from memory.
 
fullflavormenthol said:
Want to really mess with someone, you can point out that we ourselves are a lot of empty space. Most things in the universe are not tightly compressed. :D
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And that reminds me of a little snippet I found many years ago in a book by Loren Eisely, called The Firmament of Time....
In the more obscure scientific circles which I frequent, there is a legend circulating about a late, distinguished physicist who, in his declining years, persisted in wearing enormous padded boots much too large for him. He had developed, it seems, what to his fellows was a wholly irrational fear of falling through the interstices of that largely empty molecular space which common men in their folly speak of as the world. A stroll across his living room floor had become, for him, something as dizzily horrendous as the activities of a window washer on the Empire State building. Indeed, with equal reason, he could have passed an insubstantial hand through his own body.

The pulsing rivers of his blood, the awe-inspiring movement of his thoughts had become a vague cloud of electrons interspersed with the light-year distances that obtain between us and the furthest galaxies. This was the natural world which he had helped to create, and in which, at last, he found himself a lonely and imprisoned occupant. All around him the ignorant rushed on their way over the illusion of substantial floors, leaping, though they did not see it, from particle to particle over a bottomless abyss. There was even a question as to the reality of the particles that more them up. It did not, however, keep insubstantial newspapers from being sold nor insubstantial love from being made.
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JoeTheJuggler said:
Most of the volume of a galaxy is empty space too.

For that matter most of our solar system is empty space. And even among the places of the solar system that isn't empty space 99.99% of that is inhospitable to life as we know it.

Using your way of thinking, that means (somehow) complex life can't exist here. Therefore that chances of humans or Bigfoot existing are pathetic.
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For that matter, the space between atoms is mostly empty, as well, and most of an atom's volume is empty, too. I don't think the "empty space" argument holds much of anything.
 
Mitchell314 said:
I thought that the speed of light was 1/sqr(K#1 * K#2). I'm not saying your wrong, it's just what I remember, where K#1 was some electric constant pertaining to the medium and K#2 was some magnetic constant pertaining to the medium. So the velocity of light depended on the permittivity-permeability of the medium. Then again, I'm pulling this from memory.
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Yeah, but that's the "total speed", if you will. The photon always travels at c, but because it gets absorbed by electrons along the way and re-emitted (as a different photon, I presume) it takes more time to get through the medium.
 
Belz... said:
Yeah, but that's the "total speed", if you will. The photon always travels at c, but because it gets absorbed by electrons along the way and re-emitted (as a different photon, I presume) it takes more time to get through the medium.
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I looked it up. You're right.
 
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