Posts: 17,078
Threads: 10,685
Joined: Oct 2014
C C
Jun 5, 2017 03:42 AM
(This post was last modified: Jun 5, 2017 03:45 AM by C C.)
12 Possible Reasons We Haven't Found Aliens
http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/201...liens.html
EXCERPT: In 1950, a learned lunchtime conversation set the stage for decades of astronomical exploration. Physicist Enrico Fermi submitted to his colleagues around the table a couple contentions, summarized as 1) The galaxy is very old and very large, with hundreds of billions of stars and likely even more habitable planets. 2) That means there should be more than enough time for advanced civilizations to develop and flourish across the galaxy. So where the heck are they? This simple, yet powerful argument became known as the Fermi Paradox, and it still boggles many sage minds today. Aliens should be common, yet there is no convincing evidence that they exist. Here are twelve possible reasons why this is so...
Four organisms living in extreme conditions
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/four-...conditions
EXCERPT: It doesn’t seem to matter how inhospitable an environment, there is an organism adapted to live there. Scientists have found life in every extreme environment you can imagine, from volcanic cauldrons to highly alkaline seas. These extremophiles are not just curiosities; they could show us how life might exist on other planets with more hostile conditions than Earth. Some have led to innovations in materials science, pharmacology and energy generation. Here we look at four organisms that live in conditions that would kill most other forms of life and learn what they could teach us....
- - -
Posts: 4,516
Threads: 242
Joined: Sep 2016
Zinjanthropos
Jun 5, 2017 04:17 AM
What if the development of surface creatures, outside the environs of water, is not very commonplace? Intelligent underwater life may be popular throughout the galaxies but not to the extent of large numbers of planets supporting surface organisms. Submariners have been on the Earth much longer than surface creatures and yet I don't believe anything has evolved in Earth's waters that compares with us. Would mean that on any world where there's water, unless there is land, a breathable atmosphere, a good temperature and mostly time to develop, then highly unlikely we'll find intelligences like ours. It could be the biggest reason we have trouble finding signals, underwater life will never progress to a highly technological state to send signals.
Not discounting that intelligent technological life could develop underwater but just by looking at our history, you'd think it would have happened by now. What prevented it? My two cents.
Posts: 17,078
Threads: 10,685
Joined: Oct 2014
C C
Jun 5, 2017 05:41 PM
(Jun 5, 2017 04:17 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: What if the development of surface creatures, outside the environs of water, is not very commonplace? Intelligent underwater life may be popular throughout the galaxies but not to the extent of large numbers of planets supporting surface organisms. Submariners have been on the Earth much longer than surface creatures and yet I don't believe anything has evolved in Earth's waters that compares with us. Would mean that on any world where there's water, unless there is land, a breathable atmosphere, a good temperature and mostly time to develop, then highly unlikely we'll find intelligences like ours. It could be the biggest reason we have trouble finding signals, underwater life will never progress to a highly technological state to send signals.
Not discounting that intelligent technological life could develop underwater but just by looking at our history, you'd think it would have happened by now. What prevented it? My two cents.
Cetaceans and cephalopods are the smartest aquatic animals.
The former lacks appendages for complex manipulation of objects, and their watery-origin credentials are compromised by mammalian ancestors who were accordingly land dwellers.
While the latter invertebrates have tentacles for potential tool-making, they're compromised by short life spans and a fast growth rate. Not only missing a lengthy learning period prior to maturation, but except for octopuses no parental care to pass on acquired knowledge (non-genetic inclinations and behaviors).
In well over more than a half billion years of multicellular life, there's only been one land animal lineage that produced intelligence of a progressive kind. That development arguably arose from several convergences of chance factors which were not a preordained destination of biological / environmental processes and thereby could just as much not intersected / occurred. Not to mention the array of haphazard contributions that pumped civilization and eventual open-ended technological advancement into making an appearance.
It's really quite remarkable how scientists wax on and on about the world's tendencies being non-teleological (not headed toward inevitable goals / ends), and yet contradict that by expecting not just simple life but complex and intelligent life to be a burgeoning industry in the Milky Way.
There is a universal self-organizing of matter into stars and planets (and assorted predictive cosmological claims) which actually fly in the face of there being no unavoidable circumstances emerging from nature's initial axioms. But it's demand enough that other celestial bodies likewise produce self-replicating molecules or structures of any kind, much less that they repeat Earth's example with an extrasolar parallel evolution that yields very contingent oddities like intricate biological organizations and the yet more super-accidental and hyper-rare offshoot of intelligence.
- - -
Posts: 2,363
Threads: 96
Joined: Nov 2016
RainbowUnicorn
Jun 5, 2017 05:52 PM
(Jun 5, 2017 05:41 PM)C C Wrote: (Jun 5, 2017 04:17 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: What if the development of surface creatures, outside the environs of water, is not very commonplace? Intelligent underwater life may be popular throughout the galaxies but not to the extent of large numbers of planets supporting surface organisms. Submariners have been on the Earth much longer than surface creatures and yet I don't believe anything has evolved in Earth's waters that compares with us. Would mean that on any world where there's water, unless there is land, a breathable atmosphere, a good temperature and mostly time to develop, then highly unlikely we'll find intelligences like ours. It could be the biggest reason we have trouble finding signals, underwater life will never progress to a highly technological state to send signals.
Not discounting that intelligent technological life could develop underwater but just by looking at our history, you'd think it would have happened by now. What prevented it? My two cents.
Cetaceans and cephalopods are the smartest aquatic animals.
The former lacks appendages for complex manipulation of objects, and their watery-origin credentials are compromised by mammalian ancestors who were accordingly land dwellers.
While the latter invertebrates have tentacles for potential tool-making, they're compromised by short life spans and a fast growth rate. Not only missing a lengthy learning period prior to maturation, but except for octopuses no parental care to pass on acquired knowledge (non-genetic inclinations and behaviors).
In well over more than a half billion years of multicellular life, there's only been one land animal lineage that produced intelligence of a progressive kind. That development arguably arose from several convergences of chance factors which were not a preordained destination of biological / environmental processes and thereby could just as much not intersected / occurred. Not to mention the array of haphazard contributions that pumped civilization and eventual open-ended technological advancement into making an appearance.
It's really quite remarkable how scientists wax on and on about the world's tendencies being non-teleological (not headed toward inevitable goals / ends), and yet contradict that by expecting not just simple life but complex and intelligent life to be a burgeoning industry in the Milky Way.
There is a universal self-organizing of matter into stars and planets (and assorted predictive cosmological claims) which actually fly in the face of there being no unavoidable circumstances emerging from nature's initial axioms. But it's demand enough that other celestial bodies likewise produce self-replicating molecules or structures of any kind, much less that they repeat Earth's example with an extrasolar parallel evolution that yields very contingent oddities like intricate biological organizations and the yet more super-accidental and hyper-rare offshoot of intelligence.
- - -
if it were random the probability would be somewhat of a constant variable unless the variant range of probability is infinite.
ironically the human species has a tendency to be somewhat arrogantnin its projection of implied intelligence which directly contaminates the data set for "infinite".
|