Life on Other Planets

[Cyclone]

millions of dollars have been spent on viewing other planets , all have been formless and waste just as the planet earth was before a creator set to work on it

 

We only have direct images of the planets within our solar system, all of which are as we expect them to be.

We have trouble just detecting extrasolar planets, never mind directly imaging.

[REPO MAN]

I've met an alien, he was here to try and warn us to prepare for the coming onslaught.

Thing is we're one of hundreds of planets "seeded" for alien sustenance, and they will return to farm us one day, it's just a matter of time.

 

lets clamp their spaceships:hihi:

[Obelix]

Hi bedrock did every thing, the complex water cycles, the correct mixture so that humans and animals can breathe all got here by mere chance,

 

Or perhaps those complex cycles were already here and we can use them because we evolved to fit those cycles.....

[Oneill9293]

 

 

Why? What part of it do you think is wrong and what's your argument for thinking so?

 

The Drake equation is basically useless - we know half of its factors, and even those are estimates.

 

What it's really useful for it thinking about all of the variables - fraction of planets which can support life, then developing intelligent life, the timescales that they're actually technologically intelligent for.

 

A good question is, if you could communicate with extra-terrestrial intelligent life, would any of you?

 

Assuming we've found a planet which shows complexity and non-equilibrium conditions (known from its spectra)? Forget the fact that any signal will take years to reach it - would you want a potentially superior species, with technological capabilities potentially beyond our imaginations, to find us?

 

Another interesting idea is the von Neumann probes - self replicating spaceships with an AI on board, which travels to its nearest star, self replicates, and each one continues out into the Milky Way, finding new stars and self replicating. Like a virus, within a fairly short time frame (100,000 years?), the entire galaxy is full of these things, looking for life. Why don't we see them?

 

 

I love this topic, and I change my mind all the time on whether I think intelligent, technological species exist outside of Earth. Great discussion!

[Cyclone]

What makes you think that we have any choice about being found if we are imaginging "technological capabilities beyond our imaginations"...

 

That last bit sounds rather like hyperbole to be honest, we can imagine a whole host of technology that is basically magic. The specifics or details might be a surprise to us, but the general concepts, I doubt.

[Oneill9293]

What makes you think that we have any choice about being found if we are imaginging "technological capabilities beyond our imaginations"...

 

That last bit sounds rather like hyperbole to be honest, we can imagine a whole host of technology that is basically magic. The specifics or details might be a surprise to us, but the general concepts, I doubt.

 

I didn't say we had a choice? I said would you want to be found? Would you want an alien - potentially hostile - civilsation finding us?

 

5000 years ago if you showed an Egyptian a computer (or something not out yet, like Google Glass), I doubt they would've thought about the "general concepts". Or at the extreme, some neanderthal wouldn't know about the general concepts...taking a PC back 200 years into the past, we would seem like magic, yeah.

[Cyclone]

Given the distances involved, hostile or not, it's probably largely irrelevant. We might be able to slowly exchange information, but the chance of exchanging more than strong words appears to be very slight.

 

Sufficiently advanced technology appears to be magic.

 

Once you realise that and you have an understanding of the scientific method it's not hard to realise that a) it's not magic and that b) you don't yet understand how it works.

[MrSmith]

Given the distances involved, hostile or not, it's probably largely irrelevant. We might be able to slowly exchange information, but the chance of exchanging more than strong words appears to be very slight.

 

Sufficiently advanced technology appears to be magic.

 

Once you realise that and you have an understanding of the scientific method it's not hard to realise that a) it's not magic and that b) you don't yet understand how it works.

 

Star Trek' fusion impulse engine in the works

It's not quite warp drive, but researchers are hot on the trail of building nuclear fusion impulse engines, complete with real-life dilithium crystals.

 

The University of Alabama in Huntsville's Aerophysics Research Center, NASA, Boeing, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are collaborating on a project to produce nuclear fusion impulse rocket engines. It's no warp drive, but it would get us around the galaxy a lot quicker than current technologies.

 

According to Txchnologist, the scientists are hoping to make impulse drive a reality by 2030. It would be capable of taking a spacecraft from Earth to Mars in as little as six weeks.

[Total Chaos]

Or perhaps those complex cycles were already here and we can use them because we evolved to fit those cycles.....

 

If you mean Darwin's theories really just don't make sense.According to him everything just happened,as if by magic from the Primordial soup.Any planet in the Goldilocks zone should be able to sustain life.But it did'nt just happen by gods hand or just by magic.

[Eccentric]

I have actually read On the Origin of Species. Of course, much of it is obsolete to a present-day reader, but that need not surprise anyone. In spite of his daring freethinking, Darwin was still very much a product of alchemy and the dilettante science which characterised most Victorian efforts in the field — much in the same vein as reading a Patrick Moore book on Mars from the sixties is now largely outdated.

 

Originally, the book was apparently to be called On the Transformation of Species, somewhat like the Philosopher’s Stone, if you like. (I forget where I read this; might have been Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens.) If you take into account the average knowledge of the biological world at that era, he may just as well have gone for ‘transmogrification’.