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Heroes Community > Other Side of the Monitor > Thread: Why we are alone in the galaxy
Thread: Why we are alone in the galaxy This thread is 3 pages long: 1 2 3 · NEXT»
Blizzardboy
Blizzardboy


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Nerf Herder
posted December 06, 2017 03:53 AM
Edited by Blizzardboy at 03:58, 06 Dec 2017.

Why we are alone in the galaxy

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_nCOhrYV7eg

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m64Wz_RBp2s

The first video was very interesting even if the implications aren't palatable for sci do fans. There's still of course a lot of unknowns but over the past 30 years the factors have been mounting more and more against life, or at the very least complex life.

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friendofgunnar
friendofgunnar


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able to speed up time
posted December 06, 2017 04:53 AM

Wrong wrong wRONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG


1. That right proportion of metallicity is a characteristic of our location in the galaxy as a factor of distance from the galactic core.  There's a huge belt in the middle of the Milky Way that shares our same elemental makeup.  Also, I've heard the argument made that higher metallicity (such as can be found closer to the galactic core) is not conducive to life and I WANT TO FIGHT IT!

2.  The current consensus on the K/T was that the asteroid was only the final nail in the coffin.  The thing that really caused the extinction, as well as almost all of the previous mass extinctions, were huge millenial long eruptions of lava from the mantle.  And those are a regular occurrence here on Earth, not a statistical anomoly.

Also, you don't need hands to become supersmart.  Check with the dolphins on that one.

Also, the whole reason primates got into the trees was because the angiosperms got the great idea of making fruit around the same time. Which means that if monkeys hadn't been around to grab the fruit some type of dino would've jumped into that niche and we'd be all be dino-people right making threads right now about our cute mammal cats.

3.  The rift thing...
There were a many ape species back in the day, not just the 4 main groups we see nowadays.  Any one of them could have found the right environmental pressure to become a long ranging predator - which is the main factor that led to us.  There's also plenty of other critters who were on the march towards sentience as well - baboons, dolphins & killer whales, bears, elephants, etc..

What I'm saying is he picked a strange set of events to make his case.  There's life out there. Trust me I'VE SEEN THEM.

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JollyJoker
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posted December 06, 2017 08:39 AM

Yes, you DO need organisms with tool-like "extremities to become intelligent; that follows from evolutionary laws: species don't develop useless stuff, and without any outlet for "brains" you won't develop any.

Dolphins are NOT very intelligent - as opposed to octopusses which have NINE brains - one for each arm plus a coordinating brain.

Brain is a function of how much there is to steer and control.

Which means, if we indeed meet intelligent life there is a high probability that it will have high manual dexterity.

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Maurice
Maurice

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posted December 06, 2017 09:22 AM

JollyJoker said:
Which means, if we indeed meet intelligent life there is a high probability that it will have high manual dexterity.


Given how all life here on earth is based on and formed by the principle of limited resources, any intelligent extraterrestrial life we encounter will also be familiar with the concept of "survival of the fittest". They will understand the concepts of war, as a result.

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JollyJoker
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posted December 06, 2017 10:30 AM

Just to make my position clear - I find those conclusions of "statistical improbabilities" pretty wildly assuming. I mean, you could ask, how probable is the existence of what we call universe?

And the answer is - we don't have ANY idea, the one thing we know is it exists, and you have to ask how much sense the question makes.

In any case it's difficult to make assumptions about probabilities when  we don't know all determining factors and their impact. I tend to think that evolution has a "memory" - you won't see a re-evolvement of a failed/extinct life form, for example; evolution goes for survival, and evolution might have "learned" a lesson from global desasters destroying many life forms, as safe as they may have looked.

Yes, it's difficult to get to the species we are - but from a viewpoint of ensuring survival it makes absolute sense.

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artu
artu


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posted December 06, 2017 11:10 AM
Edited by artu at 11:15, 06 Dec 2017.

JJ said:
I tend to think that evolution has a "memory" - you won't see a re-evolvement of a failed/extinct life form, for example; evolution goes for survival, and evolution might have "learned" a lesson from global desasters destroying many life forms, as safe as they may have looked.

Well, that's... It's extremely unlikely (practically impossible) that a specie will evolve twice identically in two isolated timelines but that's not because evolution has a memory but rather because there are so many factors involved. Random mutations, climate, ecosystem and rival species, natural disasters, meteors, volcanos, continents moving... It is practically impossbile for all of these to combine the exact same way twice. But species dont fail by some universal standard, they fail if they cant adapt to new circumstances. So something quite similar to any "failed species" can re-occur if such conditions come up again. For instance a new ice age may bring back furry elephants once again but they wont be identical to mammoths, an earth with volcanic swamps can up the hand of reptiles and they can grow bigger once again etc..
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Salamandre
Salamandre


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posted December 06, 2017 11:16 AM

artu said:

Well, that's... It's extremely unlikely (practically impossible) that a specie will evolve twice identically in two isolated lines but that's not because evolution has a memory but rather because there are so many factors involved.


Except IF there is indeed some omnipotent conscience knowing what exact parameters allow life. Also we can have some not-so-crazy hypothesis that a very advanced race could "inseminate" the galaxies, using same patterns to optimize things.

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artu
artu


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My BS sensor is tingling again
posted December 06, 2017 11:18 AM

As far as now, there is absolutely no evidence or indication of such intrestellar farming.
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Salamandre
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posted December 06, 2017 11:28 AM

Well, we know almost nothing about the universe next door, so there is no evidence neither for claiming "its practically impossible".  

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artu
artu


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posted December 06, 2017 11:50 AM

But we know pretty much about our own planet's evolution and nothing indicates such design always going for the optimum. All living things have flaws and weaknesses, that's why they go extinct if the conditions change. And to repeat myself, this is about how life varies spontaneously  (we do observe that), not how "it is allowed" and the variation process doesnt involve a stable optimum. Think of your typical time travel scenario where the smallest act of the protagonist causes huge impact on the future, apply that to billions of years of mutations in an ever-changing world (or worlds) with constant shift in evolutionary pressure. Seas vaporize, lands collide, oxygen levels in the atmosphere go up and down... More oxygen in the atmosphere was optimal for giant insects and when you have such insects, other species will evolve accordingly as prey or predator. That is good for them but bad for us. Cats did pretty well with humans while tigers are almost extinct, what is the optimum for who?
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OhforfSake
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posted December 06, 2017 11:53 AM

What do you mean exactly by "evolve twice identically"? All the tidbits that leads up to the final result or the final result only?

In regard to the final result only, iIRC it's not atypical for different paths of evolution to end up with the same solutions. Since it is the environment that limits what solutions works, two different species surviving under the same conditions can look very similar.

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Salamandre
Salamandre


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posted December 06, 2017 11:56 AM

For "life" as timeless concept. Life is still there, despite dinosaurs (the dominant species) going down because some meteorite crash, the earth will survive despite us going down, maybe someone is just playing with the insignificant details, while preserving the necessary conditions for life survival.    

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artu
artu


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My BS sensor is tingling again
posted December 06, 2017 12:04 PM
Edited by artu at 12:21, 06 Dec 2017.

@Forfy

Well, if they have a common ancestor, yes. Both tigers and lions look alike but imagine the chances of finding felines in another planet, even this world doesnt have two lines of isolated cat families which evolved seperately. So as the common ancestor gets further away (like us and sponges), the differences become more. For instance, "the eye" evolved independently in various groups of early animals because sensitivity to light is a pretty basic and enormous advantage. And all early, primitive eyes are simply cells more sensitive to light, but as they kept evolving more sophisticated, the differences became huge. Eyes that evolved differently, work and see very differently. All tetrapods have a common ancestor, all tetrapods with five fingers have a closer common ancestor, than all tetrapods with five fingers including a thumb have a closer common ancestor and so on...
Salamandre said:
For "life" as timeless concept. Life is still there, despite dinosaurs (the dominant species) going down because some meteorite crash, the earth will survive despite us going down, maybe someone is just playing with the insignificant details, while preserving the necessary conditions for life survival.

What I called practically impossible was same species evolving identically in two separate timelines. (In JJ's words, re-evolving). Imagine, in 1700's, we discover a new continent with completely isolated culture. It's probable they'll have music, it's much less probable they'll have something similar to Western Classical music, then, it is practically impossible for them to have their own Beethoven with exact same concertos and sonatas. Finding a zebra or a turtle in another planet is the equivalent of that. You can find animals with shells or stripes, maybe, with very general similarities but that wasnt the subject at hand.
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JollyJoker
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posted December 06, 2017 12:32 PM

There is a genetic memory, even an evolutioray genetic memory, and I don't find any innate flaw in assuming an evolutionary memory, which would be more or less the same thing but on a different level.
Considering how teeming the world is with life, the development of organic structures that can combine and organize to "independent organisms" seem to suggest that the development of life (here on Earth) is not an unlikely, but a highly likely event - I'd even go so far and say "unavoidable". More complex organmisms with a maximum of adaptability would seem to be something the evolutionary memory might steer to after (in evolutionary terms) fast and radical ecological changes. with lots of species going extinct.

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artu
artu


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My BS sensor is tingling again
posted December 06, 2017 02:07 PM
Edited by artu at 14:08, 06 Dec 2017.

What you link is passed through chemical reproduction, what you talk about would require a collective memory though, that's completely different. I mean what would stop some traits reoccuring if the conditions that resulted in them reoccur? As I said, they wont reoccur on an identical level but not because they had already been ruled out. If similar life conditions to 80 million years ago reoccur, similar traits can reoccur.
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tSar-Ivor
tSar-Ivor


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posted December 06, 2017 07:30 PM
Edited by tSar-Ivor at 19:36, 06 Dec 2017.

Salamandre said:
artu said:

Well, that's... It's extremely unlikely (practically impossible) that a specie will evolve twice identically in two isolated lines but that's not because evolution has a memory but rather because there are so many factors involved.


Except IF there is indeed some omnipotent conscience knowing what exact parameters allow life. Also we can have some not-so-crazy hypothesis that a very advanced race could "inseminate" the galaxies, using same patterns to optimize things.


There are no parameters for life lol, it can exist from the surface of the sun to the cold and barren of say Pluto. The very nature of 'life' is well beyond modern science lol, how it's specifically created or how is it maintained (we just assume that the body's wellbeing/functional state runs in parallel with life, but they're far from synonymous, it's easy to assume beyond that, but we lack core data in this regard, just trials an errors, things that appear to work generally).

As things stand life our currend understanding of life is that it simply exists because it does (and generally synonymous with the health of our biological bodies, though this is sometimes not the case, body in perfect shape but completely lacks any cognitive capabilities), till we have a proper methodology for evaluating life and measurin its nature (creation/maintainance, is it even something that's created, we just assume since it's something just happens without a solid reason?!). Sperm fertilizing an egg, is the general process of mammal reproduction, but that simply creates the body, we have no idea how/where the quality that animates human beings comes from. Is a bacteria's animated feature the same concept as a more advanced creature's? We must know, we must assess the proper parameters for what 'life' is. It goes far beyond simple 'self-consciousness', that's absurd. Every motion/action/event is not an accident, there are no 'accidents', everything in this universe can be quantified with precision, now I appreciate that we currently lack the willpower/means (apparently), but we should not abandon this fact and give into ignorance. My theory is that a wholly material universe is wholly devoid of any motion, it has raw material, but there's zero interaction, the perfect material world is essentially the pre-"big-bang", a state of complete stillness (whether it is the size of a pin-head or larger than the known universe is irrelevant, it holds within it ALL the raw meterial. The rules, the science of action and reaction, the relationship between elements and living beings we take for granted, we categorize them as 'science'/rules rather than something that is life in itself, the very natural motions and interactions of the natural world is life as well.

Life (in the material world) is the capactiy for action and reaction, not the ability to perceive (i.e consciousness). By this the very natural world is 'alive'. Now this is merely the condition for life, not a determinant for the 'quality of life'.
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Salamandre
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posted December 06, 2017 07:37 PM

Life in the sun and pluto? Chupacabra surely!

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OhforfSake
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posted December 06, 2017 07:39 PM

Life does have a meaningful definition so we e.g. can say a rock isn't alive while a cell is. Sorry if I misunderstood your post.

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tSar-Ivor
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posted December 06, 2017 07:46 PM
Edited by tSar-Ivor at 19:48, 06 Dec 2017.

Salamandre said:
Life in the sun and pluto? Chupacabra surely!


Lol life's been found in pure acid, people just have their own assumptions on the parameters of life, then think everything else is bonkers until actual data steps in. According to my preliminary analysis yes, there is no barrier to life, first hurdle is ofc how we define the term, how wide, how deep, how precise?

Interesting to look at
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Salamandre
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posted December 06, 2017 08:05 PM

yes life has been found in acid, in deep waters, in ice, in lava, in all you like. On earth.

No track of life outside our earth, from what we know until now, and we had some good collect of minerals.

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