Originally posted by onejayhawk
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10 unsettling answers to the fermi paradox
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The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record? https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event.
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early life on earth created it's own growth conditions. it's didn't adjust to the existing environment. it terraformed it and created the necessary conditions itself. it increased the oxygen and displaced the dominant methane. think about that for a minute. we're not talking about an accident.
it's much more efficient to specialize. it costs less energy to be really good at something while having partnerships with other cells that can supply other needs you cannot produce. i believe it's classic darwinism but at the cellular level.
you are not you. you are a collection of specialized cells that created the necessary conditions themselves which paved the way to your consciousness. you are a super-organism. you have 10 to the 13 power cells that are 'human' and 10 to the 14 bacteria and even 10 to 100 times more viruses. so if you were to judge things based on the number and types of cells you that are made of, you could not call yourself genuinely human.
in this sense the question isn't what can life do, but what can't it do?
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Originally posted by Steve 2.0 View PostThey recycled?
Originally posted by Steve 2.0 View PostWhich is exactly where according to you?
Originally posted by Sour Masher View PostThere is no ergo here. You have all sort of assumptions here, and seem to need to look up the word sentience.
However, I make zero assumptions. The Fermi hypothesis covers everything. The numbers either diverge or converge, ie expand to fill all available resources or they approach zero. There are no other options.
JAd Astra per Aspera
Oh. In that case, never mind. - Wonderboy
GITH fails logic 101. - bryanbutler
Bah...OJH caught me. - Pogues
I don't know if you guys are being willfully ignorant, but... - Judge Jude
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Originally posted by onejayhawk View PostCute.
“There’s no normal life, Wyatt, it’s just life. Get on with it.” – Doc Holliday
"It doesn't matter what you think" - The Rock
"I borked the entry." - Some dude on the Internet
Have I told you about otters being the only marine animal that can lift rocks?
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Originally posted by onejayhawk View PostHowever, I make zero assumptions. The Fermi hypothesis covers everything. The numbers either diverge or converge, ie expand to fill all available resources or they approach zero. There are no other options.
J"Jesus said to them, 'Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.'"
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Originally posted by Kevin Seitzer View PostThe numbers could be many different values. Why do you say they have to diverge or converge?
We live in a middle-aged galaxy, hence multiple billions of years old. We are talking extreme amounts of biological time, for practical purposes, a near infinite amount. Everything our region of space has undergone occurred millions or billions of years earlier in other parts of the galaxy. Thus we have the limiting cases. If there is biological success, it will saturate the medium, meaning the whole galaxy including our corner. If not, then not.
What we observe is that we are alone, not hip deep in other life forms. The math compels the conclusion that spacefaring life is not expected, even once, in a galaxy-sized sample. That would make us an extreme outlier in the probabilities, granted, but the math allows that. It also allows the possibility that we are an outlier in the entire universe, or in a multitude of universes.
JAd Astra per Aspera
Oh. In that case, never mind. - Wonderboy
GITH fails logic 101. - bryanbutler
Bah...OJH caught me. - Pogues
I don't know if you guys are being willfully ignorant, but... - Judge Jude
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Originally posted by billbuckner View PostCute.“There’s no normal life, Wyatt, it’s just life. Get on with it.” – Doc Holliday
"It doesn't matter what you think" - The Rock
"I borked the entry." - Some dude on the Internet
Have I told you about otters being the only marine animal that can lift rocks?
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Originally posted by billbuckner View PostCute.
If we were early in stellar evolution it would be different. Then you could explain the lack of observed intelligent life by making the controlling parameters stable functions instead of constants. Thus requiring a synchronicity of conditions that had not yet occurred. However, if you stretch the time frame significantly that changes.
In the famous illustration, we may not be the collected works of Shakespeare typed by monkeys, but we are at least Hamlet's soliloquy.
JAd Astra per Aspera
Oh. In that case, never mind. - Wonderboy
GITH fails logic 101. - bryanbutler
Bah...OJH caught me. - Pogues
I don't know if you guys are being willfully ignorant, but... - Judge Jude
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A few things:
1 - From the video that Nully referred to in the original post: "... the universe might be so vast that, while it might have hundreds of civilizations in it, the numbers are still in favor of that, but they are so far from each other that they may never be able to communicate, or, if they do, it wont happen for billions of years." That is a quote from Arthur C. Clarke, which starts at about 8:42 of the video.
2 - Maybe there have been many intelligent civilizations, even in our own galaxy, but these may have existed only for a short period of time, destroyed either by a natural event (gamma ray burst, nearby supernova, asteroid/planet impact, etc.) or by themselves (nuclear bombs, super-intelligent hostile robots, "grey goo", etc.). This also was mentioned in the video. They may tend to get wiped out before they have a chance to communicate with or travel to other intelligent civilizations.
3 - Species much more intelligent than us could evolve but w/o the ability to make sophisticated tools (like super intelligent sea creatures, like dolphins and whales). These creatures would effectively be stuck on their home planet and also prevented from being able to create the technology to explore the cosmos or find other civilizations.
4 - Another item that noone's mentioned yet: Among all the seemingly rare characteristics of the Earth, another may be our relatively small size. Scientists think now that habitable "super-earths", at least 2-3 times bigger than Earth, may be much more common than Earth-sized planets. This could impact a species' ability to travel away from their planet. It's hard enough for spacecraft to escape the Earth's gravity (must exceed 25,000 mph). It would be much harder to escape a much bigger planet w much more gravity. So, even if an intelligent species had the ability to make sophisticated tools, they could still be trapped on their home planet.Last edited by rhd; 01-18-2019, 07:30 PM.
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Originally posted by onejayhawk View PostIt's built into the math.
We live in a middle-aged galaxy, hence multiple billions of years old. We are talking extreme amounts of biological time, for practical purposes, a near infinite amount. Everything our region of space has undergone occurred millions or billions of years earlier in other parts of the galaxy. Thus we have the limiting cases. If there is biological success, it will saturate the medium, meaning the whole galaxy including our corner. If not, then not.
What we observe is that we are alone, not hip deep in other life forms. The math compels the conclusion that spacefaring life is not expected, even once, in a galaxy-sized sample. That would make us an extreme outlier in the probabilities, granted, but the math allows that. It also allows the possibility that we are an outlier in the entire universe, or in a multitude of universes.
J"You know what's wrong with America? If I lovingly tongue a woman's nipple in a movie, it gets an "NC-17" rating, if I chop it off with a machete, it's an "R". That's what's wrong with America, man...."--Dennis Hopper
"One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real." -- Klaus Kinski
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Originally posted by Fresno Bob View Postwhy does it have to be biological, it is tons more likely that machine probes would be the way an advanced entity would explore the galaxy. There could be a probe above the Earth right now and we'd have little to no chance to spot it or recognize it as such. Or it could have probed us a billion years ago, or 100,000 years, and we'd have no idea. We could be in a galactic backwater compared to the center of the galaxy“There’s no normal life, Wyatt, it’s just life. Get on with it.” – Doc Holliday
"It doesn't matter what you think" - The Rock
"I borked the entry." - Some dude on the Internet
Have I told you about otters being the only marine animal that can lift rocks?
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Originally posted by Steve 2.0 View PostGalactic Backwater would be a good name for something.....(I'm not doing the band shtick anymore)
Last edited by Kevin Seitzer; 01-18-2019, 02:59 PM."Jesus said to them, 'Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.'"
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Originally posted by Kevin Seitzer View PostFor a bottled water brand?
“There’s no normal life, Wyatt, it’s just life. Get on with it.” – Doc Holliday
"It doesn't matter what you think" - The Rock
"I borked the entry." - Some dude on the Internet
Have I told you about otters being the only marine animal that can lift rocks?
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