have they found anything?

[JoeTheJuggler]

You point been that until a theory is peer reviewed and proven beyond any doubt, we are all whisteling in the dark. or better still, winking at a pretty woman in the dark. You know what you're doing, but no one else does.

You did miss my point, then.

You said

The greatest discovery in my humble opinion will be the discovery of how exactly did life originate.

My response was basically to say that we already know that to some degree of confidence and with some level of detail, and that short of time-travel we probably won't get much more certain than we are now.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

- We ARE constantly surprised by how life DOES thrive in areas we would have ruled out life just a few dacades ago (boiling vents, radioactive mines, toxic pools, etc.).

Speaking of this, there was a story in the CNN headlines just today:

Indian scientists have discovered three new species of bacteria in Earth's upper stratosphere that are resistant to ultraviolet radiation, researchers said.

Gee, who would have thought life could evolve to be resistant to UV radiation? Oh wait, I speculated that that might be possible on this very thread some pages ago in answer to the Rare Earth argument that there's too much UV for life to exist nearer the galactic center.

Kepler may help us with finding out more about the likelyhood of planets that match our ONE datapoint, but we are rather hamstrung by our lack of data at this point, so if nothing else, it behooves us to search for as much data as we can in all the nooks and crannies.

Amen.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

Amen.

Ramen!

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

We still have no idea how or where the first cell managed to assemble itself. Better still, where did all the molecules that make up a cell start to replicate themselves? Yes I know biologists have a very good idea, but not a certain theory.

The mystery of life's origin remains.

Here's a very accessible explanation of why you're wrong in these assertions:

​

 

[amb]

You did miss my point, then.

You said


My response was basically to say that we already know that to some degree of confidence and with some level of detail, and that short of time-travel we probably won't get much more certain than we are now.

I believe that in the not to distant future scientists will explain exactly how it happened. How exactly all the elements started to replicate.

Here's a very accessible explanation of why you're wrong in these assertions:

​

The video for some reason would not play on my screen.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I believe that in the not to distant future scientists will explain exactly how it happened. How exactly all the elements started to replicate.

Or in the recent past. (BTW, I don't think you meant "the elements".)

The video for some reason would not play on my screen.

Sorry--I must've messed up the link. I thought I tested it. Too late to edit it now.

Here it is:

 

[amb]

Great video. But as you know, I'm not argueing about the origins of life. I'm arguing about intelligent human life. That video explains the enormous amount of time it takes for life to evolve into Earthlike life. The fact still remains that 95% of stars are less massive than our sun. The reminder are to massive and will burn themselves out billions of years before any planet orbiting them can produce any advanced life. In fact, Earth life could only ever live on the tiniest fraction of the planets in the universe. Not only are Earthlike planets likely to be very rare; so are sunlike stars.
I will repeat that the cosmos is more than likely teeming with very primitive life, but intelligent life is very rare.
Also, not all galaxies have properties that are conductive to Earthlike life. Globular clusters, small galaxies, and elliptical galaxies are metal poor. Not every galaxy in the universe may have planets and other conditions necessary for life.[ as we know it]
The large moon hypothesis has as yet not been disproved as a requisite to stabilise the Eaths orbit and tilt to give us the seasons.
If all this was created by a god, which I completely reject, then perhaps people like physicist Paul Davies who collected a Templeton Prize may be correct in that the cosmos is designed for life, and knew we were coming.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Great video. But as you know, I'm not argueing about the origins of life.

Except that you said the following:

The mystery of life's origin remains. I understand that if the conditions are right, life will somehow find a way to start evolving. But we still have no idea how the first molecules or elements came together to produce the first DNA, or the first RNA.

It would answer the greatest of questions. Has life spread from a single source or arisen in several places independently? An improbable accident or an inevitable result of the laws of biology and physics?

I believe that in the not to distant future scientists will explain exactly how it happened. How exactly all the elements started to replicate.

I'm arguing about intelligent human life.

You get from the simplest cells to human life by evolution. Also no mystery. Evolution tells us that life will end up adapted to the environment, not the other way around.

That video explains the enormous amount of time it takes for life to evolve into Earthlike life.

I suggest you watch it again. It said time is one of the things that there is plenty of. So when you've got chemistry happening, and lots of time for it to happen in, you can easily get one of these self-copying molecules. (ETA: See below--enormous amount of time as compared to the length of time, for example, the Urey-Miller experiment ran.)

The fact still remains that 95% of stars are less massive than our sun. The reminder are to massive and will burn themselves out billions of years before any planet orbiting them can produce any advanced life. In fact, Earth life could only ever live on the tiniest fraction of the planets in the universe. Not only are Earthlike planets likely to be very rare; so are sunlike stars.

There are still billions of stars like our own. Even so, you're confusing probably tens of billions of years with millions or hundreds of millions of years. When the video talked about a long time for chemistry to come up with a self-replicating molecule, that "long time" means compared to the time we run lab experiments.

I will repeat that the cosmos is more than likely teeming with very primitive life, but intelligent life is very rare.

Yes, I know your position. Too bad you have nothing to support it.

Also, not all galaxies have properties that are conductive to Earthlike life. Globular clusters, small galaxies, and elliptical galaxies are metal poor. Not every galaxy in the universe may have planets and other conditions necessary for life.[ as we know it]

All of these have been asked and answered. There is sufficient heavier elements pretty much everywhere in our galaxy.

The large moon hypothesis has as yet not been disproved as a requisite to stabilise the Eaths orbit and tilt to give us the seasons.

But you're the one making the claim. It's not up to me to "disprove" your speculation, though I've shown already that I can speculate the opposite case. Seasons, for example, are certainly not necessary for complex life. (I once read a sci-fi story where interstellar explorers had landed on a lush planet and were testing, measuring and sampling life, when a month or so later, everything withered and died. They assumed that they'd introduced a horrible pathogen despite their precautions. Turns out, the planet was the Earth, and all that happened was winter.)

As for "stablizing" the orbit--I asked you earlier if you think it's impossible to have a stable orbit without a large moon. Do Venus and Mars have unstable orbits?

If all this was created by a god, which I completely reject, then perhaps people like physicist Paul Davies who collected a Templeton Prize may be correct in that the cosmos is designed for life, and knew we were coming.

Yes, I've already noted that the approach you're taking (the Fine-Tuning argument, the backward approach that conditions must be fitted to life, rather than the other way around) is consistent with Creationism more than it is with science.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

I'm arguing about intelligent human life.

(Emphasis mine) Well, THERE'S the problem!
I would argue that human's aren't that intelligent to start with, so we have a bit of a paradox to deal with!

Okay, my lame attempts at humour aside, let's address this line though. Why is a humanlike intelligence the only measure of intelligence? Sure, it's the only datapoint we are aware of, which I contend has limited us in our ability to conceive of any other types. We are arguing out of ignorance.

I can agree that the rare earth/large moon hypotheses does apply for ONE instance. OURS. That's it! You cannot reliably argue that it applies to any other potential intelligent life since we just don't have any data either way. The rare earth/large moon is true for us because we're here though, not the other way around as far as we can reliably determine.

 

[amb]

L L Q is right. We only have one example at present and all our discussions are based on this premise. And life on this one example has been proven to exist in the most inhospitable places on Earth, like deep sea vents where the temperatures is thousands of degrees fahrenheit and a complete lack of sunlight or oxygen.
And under the ice of Antarctica. So primitive life is more than likely teeming in the universe.
That Earth life has developed to homo sapiens stage only where conditions are suitable and the migrated to more extreme locations like the Arctic Circle and Sahara regions only once it became well established. These are the conditions necessary for Earth like life. In our solar system, Earth is the only place where this became possible.
Other solar systems would need the same, or as close as possible conditions to develop intelligence.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

L L Q is right. We only have one example at present and all our discussions are based on this premise. And life on this one example has been proven to exist in the most inhospitable places on Earth, like deep sea vents where the temperatures is thousands of degrees fahrenheit and a complete lack of sunlight or oxygen.
And under the ice of Antarctica. So primitive life is more than likely teeming in the universe.

You are making conclusions far beyond the dataset. You have no idea what life is like elsewhere in the universe.

That Earth life has developed to homo sapiens stage only where conditions are suitable and the migrated to more extreme locations like the Arctic Circle and Sahara regions only once it became well established. These are the conditions necessary for Earth like life. In our solar system, Earth is the only place where this became possible.
Other solar systems would need the same, or as close as possible conditions to develop intelligence.

That's fine, if you're talking about homo sapiens evolving elsewhere in the galaxy. But SETI is the search for ANY extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Again, you're still thinking of the relationship between complex life and conditions in a backward way (the same way Creationist do when they make the Fine-Tuning argument). Life adapts to conditions, not vice-versa.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

Other solar systems would need the same, or as close as possible conditions to develop intelligence.

Because of how varied and surprising life is HERE, I fundamentally disagree with that statement. To go from simple life steps to some sort of intelligence is an unknown process except for what we have here. We as human beings are even MORE hampred by our one data point. I have no idea what other solar systems would need to come up wth an alien intelligence. That is the point I am trying to make (and I think Joe is too). We just don't have the data, what so ever. I think that the universe wil surprise us, like it has on our humble rock.

 

[amb]

Seti is the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. Whatever the imagined possibilities, the strong conclusion is that we can only live on this blue speck in a vast universe. perhaps many similar blue specks exist throughout the universe, but homo sapiens is unlikely to ever find them. In that regard I agree with physicist Paul Davies.
Our species is probably marooned in space, on spaceship Earth, and likely to become extinct long before the sun burns its last hydrogen atom. Or long before we ever can make contact with another intelligent species, whether Earth Like or not.
So far our most powerful instruments have only ever seen chaos in the universe. That there must be tiny specks of Oder and complexity out there is not deniable as we live in such a place and there has to be places in all this chaos where life has evolved even beyond our wildest dreams. But all this is not a given. My often repeated argument that out of the billion or so lifeforms that have ever lived on this planet, only one has built a technology that enables even this discussion.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Seti is the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. Whatever the imagined possibilities, the strong conclusion is that we can only live on this blue speck in a vast universe.

This doesn't make sense. The fact that most of the universe (including the near vacuum of space) is hostile to human inhabitation, is NOT a conclusion of the SETI program.

So far our most powerful instruments have only ever seen chaos in the universe.

That's also a false statement (even assuming "chaos" is being misused here to mean "nothing like an Earth-like planet"). We have detected hundreds of extrasolar planets, some of them in the "superEarth" mass range. However, the area where it's possible (so far) for us to detect those planets is a teeny tiny part of our galaxy.

Otherwise, we have detected various levels of organization of matter (as small as planets and as large as the frothy bubble structure at the largest scale--that is, above the level of super cluster of galaxies).

That there must be tiny specks of Oder and complexity out there is not deniable as we live in such a place and there has to be places in all this chaos where life has evolved even beyond our wildest dreams. But all this is not a given. My often repeated argument that out of the billion or so lifeforms that have ever lived on this planet, only one has built a technology that enables even this discussion.

Aside from the fact that you're misusing the terms "Order" (capitalized for no reason) "complexity" and "chaos". . .

so what? We know the mental capacities that allow this (or any other discussion) exists on a continuum among life forms on Earth. We know that those traits are all well explained by the theory of evolution.

Even so, you're making conclusions far beyond the dataset if you use that to make assertions about the rest of the universe.

And finally, even if you want to engage in speculation (by filling in values in the Drake Equation, for example), changing an approach to technological intelligence on Earth being 1:1 (that is 1 per planet) to 1: billions (1 per all the species on Earth), doesn't help your argument at all. I've already pointed this out.

 

[amb]

This answer was voted the best on a site called Ask. To the question; is there life in the cosmos.

well
lets see
lets say we have 100,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy (an aprox made by NASA)

and there are about 100,000,000,000 galaxies out there with as many stars as us. ( a low guess on my part )

so that gives us
10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
stars out there

since we have not found life on any other planet yet.
we don't have an accurate guess at the probability for life on a planet.

we seem to be 1 in 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
thats way less than 1 percent. its trilllions of times smaller than 1 % its 0.0 000 000 000 000 000 000 001

(I) think we have at least a .00001 chance of life out there.
that gives us 100 000 000 000 000 000 chances of life out there in those stars

@ 1% we have
100 000 000 000 000 000 000 chances of

yes. I don't know if I buy the drake equation either.
but I know mine is just as bad

 

[Lonewulf]

How many other planets do we know of, and how many have we deeply probed for life?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

since we have not found life on any other planet yet.
we don't have an accurate guess at the probability for life on a planet.

I agree completely with this.

Any other conclusion is just speculation. Not that there's anything wrong with speculation, but as Carl Sagan said in the quote I offered earlier, "Really, it's okay to reserve judgement until the evidence is in."

I reject anyone's assertion that they have a good idea of the incidence of ET intelligence in the universe (or galaxy).

ETA:
For example, this bit:

we seem to be 1 in 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
thats way less than 1 percent. its trilllions of times smaller than 1 % its 0.0 000 000 000 000 000 000 001

. . is just a number pulled out thin air and means nothing. (As Lonewulf points out, we haven't discovered and determined as lifeless anywhere near that many planets.)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

How many other planets do we know of, and how many have we deeply probed for life?

A couple hundred (and growing quickly) and zero, respectively.

That "couple hundred" comes from a tiny sphere in our immediate vicinity--a teensy part of our galaxy.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

This was from much earlier in the thread, but perhaps it's time to review this and see which, if any, of these points you're prepared to reject yet.

Here is my list of why I believe we may be unique in this galaxy at least.
1. Right distance from our sun.
2. Right planetary mass.
3. Plate tectonics.
4. Right mass of our star.
5. Jupiter-like neighbor.
6. Oceans, [ not to much. Not to little.]
6. Stable planetary orbits. [ Giant planets do not create orbital chaos.]
7. A Mars. [Small neighbor as possible life source to seed an Earth like planet, if needed.]
8. And last but by no means least. A large Moon. [At a very right distance to stabilize the Earths tilt.]
9. Seasons not too severe.
10. Our atmosphere.
11. Right position in galaxy. [ not in center, edge or halo.]
12. The exact amount of carbon. [ Enough for life. Not enough for runaway greenhouse as Venus has]
13. Evolution of oxygen. [Invention of photosynthesis. Not too much or too little. Evolves at the right time.]
14. Wild cards. [Snowball Earth. Cambrian explosion. Inertial interchange event.]
Among many other reasons. We still don't know exactly where life began. Was the Earth seeded by asteroids or meteorites? Did it start here in a million coincidences with inorganic elements somehow becoming organic and then evolution taking over to produce what now exists on Earth?
When I was a kid, I always believed that if life [ especially intelligent life] was abundant in the universe, then there was a god. If not, we are an accident or a freak of the laws of physics.

1 and 2 are generally OK, though we don't know for sure that Earth-like planets are the only places complex life might arise. (As I mentioned, there are large satellites of gas giants; the twilight zones of planets around red dwarfs, or stuff we haven't thought of.)

3. How are plate tectonics a requirement? Also, do you have any idea of how common tectonic activity is on other planets? (From what we've seen in our own solar system, it seems to be relatively commonplace.)

4. As noted, that's a great big maybe, but I'm fine with focusing our search on stars like Sol. There are billions of these in our galaxy alone.

5. I've addressed this bit of speculation already. It could well be that lack of a Jupiter-like neighbor could result in MORE chances of evolving intelligence. Besides that, do you have any notion that gas giants are scarce? (In fact, the evidence points to the opposite conclusion.)

6. The presence of liquid water is pretty much included in assumptions 1 and 2.

Other 6. What? Gas giants don't have stable orbits? What does that even mean?

7. There's no evidence that terrestrial life started on Mars. It's an unparsimonious theory on abiogenesis.

8 (last but not least except for the others). Another bit of nonsense. You assert that a stable orbit isn't possible without a large moon. Why?

9. Why? A planet with no seasons (no axial tilt) might be more amenable to life, but a planet with a more severe axial tilt isn't necessarily anathema to life.

10. The atmosphere on the Earth has changed over time. Our present atmosphere is largely the result of life, not a prerequisite to life.

11. There's no evidence that life couldn't not exist nearer the galactic center (life can evolve in the presence of UV radiation) or nearer the galactic edge. Even so, there's an awful lot of territory in between.

12. Carbon is abundant in the galaxy. We know this for sure.

13. The element oxygen was forged in stars. I take it, you're talking about the presence of O₂ gas in the atmosphere. I already addressed this in number 10. At any rate, O₂ in the atmosphere was not an "invention". It was the result of the evolution of photosynthesis. With this gas in our atmosphere, some organisms evolved that make use of it (and more or less convert O₂ to CO₂ in the atmosphere). Again, life evolves to fit the conditions rather than vice-versa. On a planet without abundant atmospheric O₂, you wouldn't see organisms adapted to abundant O₂.

14. What do you mean by these things? The Cambrian Explosion is pretty well understood.

And what are the "many other reasons"? If these are the cream of the crop, I doubt these many others will be more persuasive.

The last bit sounds a lot like creationism or a supernatural explanation of some kind. You're basically saying, that you once thought the presence of life implies the existence of a god. Then you say, "If not, we are an accident or a freak of the laws of physics." I have no idea what you mean by this. Is there any event that is not an "accident" (if it's not the result of a deity)? In other words, if the option is "accident" or "by intention", then everything is "accidental", isn't it?

And what do you mean by "freak of the laws of phsyics"? You mean that if life were abundant, it would imply that natural law has somehow been violated? Why?

 

[Crowlogic]

In spite of being an avid follower of most things science I have over time developed the position that whether intelligent life exist elsewhere in the Galaxy...So what!

Why so what? There's no denying that it would be exciting, monumental and benificial to our species if there is technology sharing. However even if we were to meet 1000 or 10,000 civilizations of intelligent beings the ultimate answers to existence such as where did the universe come, where is it going and where do we go after death woud remain unanswered and un answerable. I sincerely believe that those answers are as elusive to any other mortal sentient beings as the are to us. So at the end of the day meeting other cosmos dwelling civilizatons will amount to some neat new parlour tricks to buzz on about but I've the feeling that them's out there are as cluless as we down here as to what the bottom line to existence isreally about, or even if its about anything at all.