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Other Advanced Formes of Live in the Universe and will we ever meet them

Paleocon said:
Good points, but the best argument against extraterrestialism (IMO) is philosophical. It's not possible for life to come from non-life. So there's no reason to believe it exists anywhere else.
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Why is life not possible to come from non life and if that is the case where did any life come from?
BTW that includes your false version fo God.
 
eohrnberger said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment

Given this particular experiment, which shows the creation of the more complex from the more simple, and the complex being in the direction of the building blocks of life, not sure that I'd subscribe to the position of "It's not possible for life to come from non-life". Who knows if it had run even longer if even more complex building blocks, and potentially life, would have formed or not. Yes, it's a theory, but one that has some empirical experimentation on which it's based.
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If it's never been observed, then no, it isn't empirically based. And the fact that certain chemicals tend to create other chemicals doesn't really demonstrate anything, at all.

Even if that's not taken into consideration, then that still begs the question of how life got started here on planet Earth.
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It would seem someone must have created it.
Dittohead not! said:
If you believe that god created life on this planet, why not on other planets as well?
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What reason is there to believe that he did?

That's my main point on this, once you get past probabilistic metaphysics there's no reason to believe in extraterrestrial life.
Quag said:
Why is life not possible to come from non life and if that is the case where did any life come from?
BTW that includes your false version fo God.
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A lesser cannot create produce a greater unless it possesses by nature the power to do so.

It must have been miraculous.
 
Quag said:
So absolutely no reason other than your personal belief.
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'Snowball often won over the majority by his brilliant speeches, but Napoleon was better at canvassing support for himself in between times. He was especially successful with the sheep. Of late the sheep had taken to bleating "Four legs good, two legs bad" both in and out of season, and they often interrupted the Meeting with this. It was noticed that they were especially liable to break into "Four legs good, two legs bad" at crucial moments in Snowball's speeches.'
-George Orwell, Animal Farm
 
Paleocon said:
'Snowball often won over the majority by his brilliant speeches, but Napoleon was better at canvassing support for himself in between times. He was especially successful with the sheep. Of late the sheep had taken to bleating "Four legs good, two legs bad" both in and out of season, and they often interrupted the Meeting with this. It was noticed that they were especially liable to break into "Four legs good, two legs bad" at crucial moments in Snowball's speeches.'
-George Orwell, Animal Farm
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Still got nothing to support your position, as usual.
 
Paleocon said:
Good points, but the best argument against extraterrestialism (IMO) is philosophical. It's not possible for life to come from non-life. So there's no reason to believe it exists anywhere else.
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Pure religious ideation on your part.

In fact, we may be staring extraterrestrial life in the face already, and not know it. We presume to have an understanding of the universe, but we also know that the most basic concepts can be- and have been- overthrown at various times. It could be that, for example, the natural phenomenon we see, such as quasars or pulsar stars, are actually works of engineering, obscure to our understanding, but not perhaps to others. It could be that life that has evolved millions, or even billions of years beyond us may have nothing to say to us, and nothing they want to hear in return.
 
Paleocon said:
If it's never been observed, then no, it isn't empirically based.
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The empirical part is that the amino acids did in fact form themselves from less complex components. While the experiment and the theory are not stating this is what happened, it is proposing the idea of one way it could have happened.
Paleocon said:
And the fact that certain chemicals tend to create other chemicals doesn't really demonstrate anything, at all.



It would seem someone must have created it.


What reason is there to believe that he did?

That's my main point on this, once you get past probabilistic metaphysics there's no reason to believe in extraterrestrial life.


A lesser cannot create produce a greater unless it possesses by nature the power to do so.

It must have been miraculous.
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eohrnberger said:
I'm starting to doubt it.
Consider all the requirements for a planet to provide the needed stable environment for advanced life to evolve:

  • it must be orbiting in the Goldilocks zone around its sun
    Not too hot (orbit too close to it's sun) and not too cold (orbit too far from its' sun), an orbit that is far more circular than it is elliptical to make the seasonal changes of the climate more moderate than extreme.
  • it must have liquid water
    The universal solvent in which bio-chemical reactions, i.e. life, can occur and evolve
    This means that during the course of the planet's history a fair number of comets and water ice bearing asteroids need to collide with the planet to supply it with water
  • it must have at least one large planet in an orbit further out from the sun than itself to act as a shield against continued asteroid collisions
    Strikes of large asteroids causes significant and rapid climate change, such as the one that extincted the dinosaurs, which is a setback to evolutionary progress and the development of advanced life. The Earth was lucky.
    In the accretion process that forms the sun and the planets, there is always left over's, asteroids, which are orbiting about.

    edit

    All of these things are required for a stable planetary environment conducive to advanced life evolving. Seems that the odds of all the right things happening at all the right times in the right order are rather low. Granted, with the billions and billions of stars that are in the Milky way alone doesn't reduce those odds to zero, as the number stars and planets is so vast.

    The odds of the human race actually finding that needle in this huge haystack, I figure that those odds are pretty much zero given ever increasing the distances involved in the ever expanding universe.

    Do you have other requirements for advanced forms of life to evolve?

    Do you have any counter arguments that would eliminate any of these requirements?

    Any additional thoughts?
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  • That plant would also have to have the exact angle as our sun.

    Even considering that we don't have a word for the number of planets "We know" about, the chances are simply impossible.

    But we always see 'aliens' as humanoid......that's an even bigger stretch
 
Goshin said:
Ah, the Fermi Paradox. :)


You're familiar then with the concept of the Great Filter... something that makes advanced technological life forms very rare if not effectively extinct on the galactic level. Theories abound, but mostly boil down to:

1. We're alone.
2. We're the first, or among the first.
3. We're not alone, but interstellar space travel is so hard that virtually no species manages it before their extinction.

And the Big Question is whether the Great Filter is behind us, or ahead of us, of course. :)


I prefer to believe #2, of the first question, but clearly I cannot prove it. Proponents of #2 suggest that until very recently (on a stellar scale) X-ray bursts from various stellar phenomena made it improbable that advanced life would arise and survive long enough to reach our level. Also in question is whether an intelligent and technological species manages to survive long enough to achieve interstellar travel and colonize other worlds (speculation says this may be rare).


The question of a technological civilization self-destructing is an interesting one and I am skeptical. Certainly humanity is now capable of destroying civilization as we know it, but even if we used every nuke on the planet it is improbable we'd wipe out all of humanity. Some would survive, radiation would decline over time, and civilization would eventually re-build, re-discover... and maybe start the cycle all over again.

Those familiar with Niven/Pournelle and the Mote will recognize the theme of the Cycles of rising and falling civilizations trapped in a single star system.


But even given the assumption that we wouldn't be able to wipe ourselves out utterly, the question of whether we (or another alien species) could MAINTAIN a technological civilization long enough to become a star-faring species without bombing ourselves back to the stone age is a question.


The Fermi assumptions about how a sub-light civ could populate the galaxy in a relatively short timespan also relies on a number of assumptions... namely that the species in question WANTS to do this. It's something humanity MIGHT do, but other species of sophonts might have other priorities or philosophies. Hard to say.
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Certainly some intelligent species would lack the expansionist drive humanity displays, but in the end, it only takes one, right?

Complex life arose on this planet many, many millions of years ago. Imagine a planet that didn't have an apocalypse 65 million years ago like we did. Something as intelligent as us could easily have evolved in that timeframe. And you only need one species with that kind of head start and that kind of drive to populate a galaxy.

The tyranny of the rocket equation is a tough one, but there are already glimmers that we might eventually find a way to escape that equation. There's this odd EM drive that is being tested now, as well as the revisions to Alcubierre's Warp Drive hypothesis, hinting that solutions to Relativity and rockets could be found.
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Unfortunately the Fermi Paradox is what makes me conclude such things aren't truly viable. Obviously I could be wrong, but even NASA is skeptical of the EM drive and they're the ones who built it. The thrust produced is so miniscule that any number of tiny errors could account for the apparent thrust. If it does turn out to be true, that certainly improves the picture a great deal. It would change the face of interplanetary space travel. Interstellar, on the other hand, still brings up some issues. An EM drive would still obviously be sublight, and traveling at any substantial fraction of the speed of light brings about all manner of additional hazards. Pieces of random dust have the energy equivalent of a small bomb. (or a really, really big one as you get closer to c!) Gonna need deflector shields to go with your ship!

The alcubierre drive is a purely mathematical construct. It relies on the existence of matter with a negative mass. If you plug negative numbers into certain equations you do end up with faster than light velocities. At this stage we have no reason to expect negative mass is a meaningful concept, though.

We have discovered Higg's Boson, and the Higg's field which gives all matter its mass... if we can find a way to manipulate that field, some kind of inertia-less drive might be feasible.

There are many possibilities, even if at this point in time they are more speculative than substantial, they do give me some hope.
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We discovered gravitational fields long before that and there aren't even any speculative means of manipulating that. Speculative is being generous. I don't expect any of this will pan out, though I certainly hope I'm wrong.
 
Ganesh said:
Pure religious ideation on your part.
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I've said nothing in this thread of religion, and I don't intend to follow your red herring.

In fact, we may be staring extraterrestrial life in the face already, and not know it. We presume to have an understanding of the universe, but we also know that the most basic concepts can be- and have been- overthrown at various times. It could be that, for example, the natural phenomenon we see, such as quasars or pulsar stars, are actually works of engineering, obscure to our understanding, but not perhaps to others. It could be that life that has evolved millions, or even billions of years beyond us may have nothing to say to us, and nothing they want to hear in return.
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What are these deities that you revere called?

eohrnberger said:
The empirical part is that the amino acids did in fact form themselves from less complex components. While the experiment and the theory are not stating this is what happened, it is proposing the idea of one way it could have happened.
Click to expand...

Because those chemicals naturally tend to combine to make amino acids, much as hydrogen and oxygen (under the right circumstances) make water.

Amino acids are not alive.
 
Paleocon said:
I've said nothing in this thread of religion, and I don't intend to follow your red herring.



What are these deities that you revere called?



Because those chemicals naturally tend to combine to make amino acids, much as hydrogen and oxygen (under the right circumstances) make water.

Amino acids are not alive.
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Correct. I never said that these amino acids were alive.

However, using a little bit of inductive reasoning one can at least acknowledge the possibility and probability of even simple amino acids further assembling themselves into more complex forms, one or more of which might even become qualified as alive, as is fundamental to the theory of abiogenesis.

Completely dismissing even the possibility, well, doesn't seem to be very open minded, when it is not known for certain, and indeed is not even being claimed as a certainty.

How would you explain how life came to be on planet Earth?
 
eohrnberger said:
Correct. I never said that these amino acids were alive.

However, using a little bit of inductive reasoning one can at least acknowledge the possibility and probability of even simple amino acids further assembling themselves into more complex forms, one or more of which might even become qualified as alive, as is fundamental to the theory of abiogenesis.

Completely dismissing even the possibility, well, doesn't seem to be very open minded, when it is not known for certain, and indeed is not even being claimed as a certainty.

How would you explain how life came to be on planet Earth?
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The Greyes are really pissed off about this thread
 
eohrnberger said:
Correct. I never said that these amino acids were alive.

However, using a little bit of inductive reasoning one can at least acknowledge the possibility and probability of even simple amino acids further assembling themselves into more complex forms, one or more of which might even become qualified as alive, as is fundamental to the theory of abiogenesis.
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I'm familiar with the idea, but it's absurd because it relies on reductionist metaphysics.

Completely dismissing even the possibility, well, doesn't seem to be very open minded
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If your mind is too open, your brain will fall out. (And then you'll vote for Hillary.)

How would you explain how life came to be on planet Earth?
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Since you ask, I would say it must have been created by God.
 
Paleocon said:
I'm familiar with the idea, but it's absurd because it relies on reductionist metaphysics.
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Funny, I thought it was chemistry.

Paleocon said:
If your mind is too open, your brain will fall out. (And then you'll vote for Hillary.)
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Not a chance.

Paleocon said:
Since you ask, I would say it must have been created by God.
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That's a real leap of faith that has less factual and verifiable aspects to that than the chemistry experiment and a little bit of interpolation.
 
Paleocon said:
I've said nothing in this thread of religion, and I don't intend to follow your red herring.



What are these deities that you revere called?



Because those chemicals naturally tend to combine to make amino acids, much as hydrogen and oxygen (under the right circumstances) make water.

Amino acids are not alive.
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Do amino acids naturally tend to combine to form proteins?
 
eohrnberger said:
Funny, I thought it was chemistry.
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That you didn't recognize the metaphysical premises you're using shows that you haven't sufficiently reflected on them.

Not a chance.
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Twas a joke.

That's a real leap of faith that has less factual and verifiable aspects to that than the chemistry experiment and a little bit of interpolation.
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It's a metaphysical proposition (no faith required). And a much more reasonable one than abiogenesis.

Deuce said:
Do amino acids naturally tend to combine to form proteins?
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Do they?
 
Paleocon said:
Good points, but the best argument against extraterrestialism (IMO) is philosophical. It's not possible for life to come from non-life. So there's no reason to believe it exists anywhere else.
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Speaking of arrogance laced with ignorance...
 
Paleocon said:
I've said nothing in this thread of religion, and I don't intend to follow your red herring.



What are these deities that you revere called?



Because those chemicals naturally tend to combine to make amino acids, much as hydrogen and oxygen (under the right circumstances) make water.

Amino acids are not alive.
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Nothing about religion? You mean except the innuendo suggesting it, and frankly expressed a few lines later?

As for your "deities", they have no name, as they are speculation, but a form of speculation you are not familiar with. It's called science, meaning, trying to see the universe as it really is, as difficult as that may be, by plodding along with verifiable, or reasonably verifiable evidence, and then making projections from that. That's just a tiny bit different from saying it was in the good book, so it must be true, even if it flies in the face of logic and present day knowledge.

As for being alive, what does that mean, exactly? Is a virus alive? It has some attributes of living beings, but not all. Does it mean a substance can replicate in its own interest and development? Then DNA is tossed into the ring.

Like many conservatives, you want the world to be simple, one easily boiled down to a few comic book like truisms. Complexity and uncertainty are not your thing. Unfortunately, the universe tends to not bend to such desires.
 
Ganesh said:
Nothing about religion? You mean except the innuendo suggesting it, and frankly expressed a few lines later?
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I have not said anything about religion. If you see it in my posts that can only be because you're obsessed.

As for your "deities", they have no name, as they are speculation, but a form of speculation you are not familiar with. It's called science
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Science is based on empirical verification and falsification. Your belief in aliens is neither of those things. It's a pseudoscientific pseudoreligion that you believe in as a replacement for belief in real religion.
 
Paleocon said:
I have not said anything about religion. If you see it in my posts that can only be because you're obsessed.
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Since you ask, I would say it must have been created by God.

Not me that is obsessed old boy, nor is it me that is in some sort of pretzel- like squirming from logic.


Paleocon said:
Science is based on empirical verification and falsification. Your belief in aliens is neither of those things. It's a pseudoscientific pseudoreligion that you believe in as a replacement for belief in real religion.
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A quick review of your English comprehension will tell you that I said nothing about a belief in aliens, nor a replacement for religion. I was speculating, although speculations that I think may have some merit, based on what we reasonably know.......but that could be incorrect. That is why it is called speculation, and not belief.

And I will probably hate myself for asking, but why do you think such a theory would be a replacement for religion? If this is so, then it is so. It tells us nothing else than that. Perhaps God created those folks (or things) for some reason. Or maybe there is no God. Or maybe there is, sort of, but not anything we could visualize or understand.

This is where conservatives from the paleolithic era, and thinking people diverge. The latter will speculate, experiment, and wait, and see. The latter will insist on magic, if that is what it takes to bring comfort and easy answers to hard questions.
 
Paleocon said:
I have not said anything about religion. If you see it in my posts that can only be because you're obsessed.



Science is based on empirical verification and falsification. Your belief in aliens is neither of those things. It's a pseudoscientific pseudoreligion that you believe in as a replacement for belief in real religion.
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Except it's not because he didn't say they exist. He said it's possible they exist.
 
Paleocon said:
That you didn't recognize the metaphysical premises you're using shows that you haven't sufficiently reflected on them.



Twas a joke.



It's a metaphysical proposition (no faith required). And a much more reasonable one than abiogenesis.



Do they?
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I'm not going to criticize your beliefs as to how life began here on planet Earth. You are certainly free to believe what you wish, what you feel strongly. That's fine.

I have similarly strong beliefs in something different, and neither 'correct' and neither are 'wrong', just different.

I have to admit that I'm intrigued in this metaphysical aspect of which you speak, including the reductionist metaphysics. I'd be interested in reading a bit more on this, just to better understand from where you are coming from.
 
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