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have they found anything?

The discovery of a duplicate planet to Earth with all the right ingredients for probable life.
A rocky planet with water has been discovered already, but it's almost Jupiter sized. Imagine the pressure of it's atmosphere, any life there would be like nothing we can even begin to imagine, or it's just microbial. I think questions like that will be answered in around 50-100 years if not a lot sooner.
 
amb said:
Paul Davies also does not think it's a waste of money, but thinks the odds of finding anything are astronomical.
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And how does that differ from my position? It differs from your position because you have said that it's impossible for another intelligent civilization to evolve.

The man who did more for SETI than almost anyone Carl Sagan if he was alive today would be surprised at the results so far, but I'm certain he would lobby the US government to increase the effort.
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Why do you think he would be surprised? I have shown you his position--we don't know.


In around fifty or so years I feel we will know one way or the other whether we are alone in the galaxy or not.
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So you do admit that the evidence points only to the conclusion, "We don't know"? You're finally putting aside all this Rare Earth stuff and your argument based on Fermi's Paradox that says we do know something based on the fact that evidence of ETIs isn't ubiquitous?
 
amb said:
The discovery of a duplicate planet to Earth with all the right ingredients for probable life.
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The problem is, with the Rare Earth approach, everything about the Earth is considered "the right ingredients". So you really are looking for an exact duplicate of the Earth, which isn't going to happen.

A rocky planet with water has been discovered already, but it's almost Jupiter sized.
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I don't think you have your facts right.

Imagine the pressure of it's [sic] atmosphere, any life there would be like nothing we can even begin to imagine, or it's just microbial. I think questions like that will be answered in around 50-100 years if not a lot sooner.
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You can't seem to make up your mind whether life that's nothing like we can even imagine is possible or whether we know that it must be microbial.

I think you're wrong on what we will know about extra-solar planets. We still don't know for sure whether microbial life currently exists or existed in the past on Mars, and it's quite a bit closer than any of these extrasolar planets!

At great distance, I think the best we can hope for in the near future is more information about planets that might have liquid water, and maybe a planet whose atmosphere is severely out of homeostasis (like an oxygen rich atmosphere). Darling explains that even this condition is possible through abiotic means (one stage of runaway green-house conditions might be an increase in oxygen, IIRC).

There was a time when the methane plumes we've found on Mars would have been considered slam-dunk evidence for the existence of at least ancient life there, but now we can conceive of abiotic origins. (The isotope ratio of the hydrogen in the water vapor associated with some of these plumes is now what we're considering that slam-dunk evidence.)
 
The existence of rocky planets in the Goldilocks zone and evidence of liquid water would be a start. We at this moment in time do not have the means to detect such conditions.
You should really read our Presidents excellent book, Death From The Skies for a better idea of what I'm talking about. The universe is a very hostile place for the start of life as we know it.
 
amb said:
The existence of rocky planets in the Goldilocks zone and evidence of liquid water would be a start. We at this moment in time do not have the means to detect such conditions.
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But that lack of evidence doesn't support the contention that ETIs are non-existent (or rare or common or anything).

We don't have evidence for such things because we haven't yet looked. (Or rather, with Kepler, we are just now looking.)

BTW, we do have evidence of a rocky planet (a "super-Earth") where liquid water is possible.
 
The rest of the article also says ''it's highly unlikely this planet can harbor life as we know it'' because it's likely to be too hot and too close to it's star, meaning a locked orbit similar to Mercury. Who knows, it may be teeming with microbes though.

Microbes will be here on Earth billions of years after most other life will become extinct because of an expanding sun will fry everything else.
 
amb said:
The rest of the article also says ''it's highly unlikely this planet can harbor life as we know it'' because it's likely to be too hot and too close to it's [sic] star, meaning a locked orbit similar to Mercury. Who knows, it may be teeming with microbes though.
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Um. . if it's "too hot and too close" to harbor life as we know it, it wouldn't be teeming with microbes. So again, the point is we don't know.

Also, as noted earlier in the thread, one of the places Drake says we ought consider are planets tidally locked around red dwarfs. There will be a twilight zone region on such planets where interesting things might happen. But we don't know.

And we're not likely to find out for a long long time. (Again, we're still not even sure if Mars harbors life or even once did.)
 
Um. . if it's "too hot and too close" to harbor life as we know it, it wouldn't be teeming with microbes.
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Wrong. Microbes have been found to live in live volcanoes, under the seabed where there is tremendous pressure and heat from volcanic vents and not a single ray of sunshine right here on Earth.
 
amb, Joe's point is that it's either life as we know it (everything on earth), or not life as we know it (the things we have no frikkin clue about).

You are stating that you are both for and against the position at the same time. Shroedinger would be proud. :p
 
Bill Thompson said:
If you read my links you would see that it is true. You haven't. So you don't.
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No. It's not true that "Experience shows that once something points one way it does not reverse itself." Experience tells us that anytime we think there is something unique or special about humans or the Earth, we were wrong.

At any rate, the claim that "it's unlikely" based on current evidence is not supported. We simply don't know. So there is nothing pointing any particular way to begin with.

ETA:
It has nothing to do with a flat earth or any of the other poo you want to throw in the pot.
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And why did you bring up "flat earth" as if it were an argument I made? I said no such thing. I guess you'd rather debate a strawman position than mine.
 
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amb said:
Wrong. Microbes have been found to live in live volcanoes, under the seabed where there is tremendous pressure and heat from volcanic vents and not a single ray of sunshine right here on Earth.
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What Larian said. Microbes are indeed "life as we know it".

You contradicted yourself by saying it's not likely to harbor life as we know it and that it is likely to be teeming with microbes.
 
Yes I realise that. But what type of microbes? If microbes are found on Mars and they are similar to Earth's, it will mean that there has been cross migration by meteors or such, for otherworldly microbes will be nothing like Earth's.
 
amb said:
Yes I realise that. But what type of microbes? If microbes are found on Mars and they are similar to Earth's, it will mean that there has been cross migration by meteors or such, for otherworldly microbes will be nothing like Earth's.
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That's actually one of the big questions. Will they be like earth's? If there is life that independently arose elsewhere, will it be carbon based? Will it use proteins? DNA?
We still don't know the answers to those questions, of course. But otherworldly microbes will likely have some things in common with Earth's - for example, they'll be capable of reproduction. In fact, its the likelihood that there are only so many ways to go about living that makes up most of your argument, really. Otherwise, life would arise everywhere.

Does life require liquid water? Does it require carbon? These are the questions we need to answer before we determine that only planets in the "goldilocks zone" are capable of harbouring life.
 
amb said:
Yes I realise that. But what type of microbes? If microbes are found on Mars and they are similar to Earth's, it will mean that there has been cross migration by meteors or such, for otherworldly microbes will be nothing like Earth's.
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But you were talking about an extrasolar planet, not Mars.

And when we pointed out your contradiction (that the planet cannot be both inhospitable to "life as we know it" and teeming with microbes), you said, "Wrong."
 
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Carbon and water are essential. Perhaps silicone can be substituted but water is essential, most astrobiologists agree on that point. If not so, then we would have found some kind of microbes on the moon. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are the prime elements of life. Why is that so? Why those elements and not others? Simple really: because they are four of the five most abundant elements on Earth. The fifth is helium, but it's an inert gas and takes absolutely no part in any known chemical reactions.
Water is the miracle substance that makes life and our world possible, but without carbon even that would not suffice to make life possible. So, what my point is that the first generation of stars, possibly the second as well was necessary to produce this carbon in the cores of exploding stars. Even planets would not have been possible without the elements spewed out of a supernova to create the dust to form them. All this took billions of years, hence some astronomers theories that we may be one of the first rational animals to evolve in this almost infinite universe. If the first and second generation of stars took say, 10 billion years from birth to death to create the third generation of stars which our sun seems to be if the age of the universe is correct, I see that perhaps they are correct in their estimations.
 
amb said:
Carbon and water are essential.
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Liquid water, that is. And that is very rare in the universe. Water "boils" at room temperature in a vaccume (I have seen this myself in high school physics class). It takes just the right touch of air pressure and temperature to contain liquid water. They are looking for ice on the moon, not liquid water. And the water on Mars goes from vapor to ice and is only liquid water for a brief time.
 
Of course. Accept my apology. I meant to state liquid water, not Ice.
 
amb said:
Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are the prime elements of life. Why is that so? Why those elements and not others? Simple really: because they are four of the five most abundant elements on Earth.
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Your logic here is severely flawed. You're making the same mistake as you have for some time now--that whatever happens on Earth is the absolute ideal for life. The fact is, you don't know that.

Also, you have your facts wrong (again). The 5 most most abundant elements in the Earth's crust are oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron and calcium. [Linky.] Carbon is the 15th most abundant.

If you're talking about the atmosphere, it's primarily nitrogen (nowadays, anyway--and I'm sure you know the oxygen wasn't there before biological processes put it there).

And if abundance on Earth is what makes these the "prime elements of life", then why aren't these other elements "prime elements of life"?

So, what my point is that the first generation of stars, possibly the second as well was necessary to produce this carbon in the cores of exploding stars. Even planets would not have been possible without the elements spewed out of a supernova to create the dust to form them. All this took billions of years, hence some astronomers theories that we may be one of the first rational animals to evolve in this almost infinite universe. If the first and second generation of stars took say, 10 billion years from birth to death to create the third generation of stars which our sun seems to be if the age of the universe is correct, I see that perhaps they are correct in their estimations.
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You might be interested in a Hubble story that hit the news today. The first generation of galaxies formed even earlier than previously thought. Hubble has seen the primordial population of galaxies that formed just 500-600 million years after the Big Bang.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/space/01/05/hubble.new.galaxies/index.html

Also, I've addressed your argument that there hasn't been enough time for intelligent civilizations to arise before. It's easy enough to refute. There has been enough time, because we're here. No more time has passed here since the Big Bang than anywhere else in the universe.
 
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Also, you have your facts wrong (again). The 5 most most abundant elements in the Earth's crust are oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron and calcium. [Linky.] Carbon is the 15th most abundant
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The elements I mentioned are essential for life, not the most abundant.
 
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