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Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost
- _rpd 9y agoReferenced paper ... Powering prolonged hydrothermal activity inside Enceladus https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0289-8.epdf?referrer_access_token=K_BkPYrBbon6dJyfs_jGxNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PnT-YwADrnlJWwzTHOzYnTbdXadW1wQ8NGgNwzlTvVlCJMeiwq0tAEDj68JLuBYSpVVqPnGDKTQUU8-qQJIG0wkQmiMOgQJZxV-O0lC9zO9w5E2dfTQV2WBGqS26n4bCJHOrhoJTPyffAYW-ujEcpGherVvbvt88bz9IhWkzTB7AYDiQL35Y3ThRLtwWNLDvc3ACxDOsxW2nHxMywL-Y4C&tracking_referrer=www.newsweek.com https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0289-8.epdf?refer...
- dogma1138 9y agoHopefully we won’t bring back Kelvin.
- mirimir 9y agoI'm reminded of the argument[0] that conscious beings that evolved on worlds like this will be very freaked by the discovery of stuff above the ice. Seeing planets and stars, we humans have always had some sense that there's more to the Universe than Earth. 0) The Killing Star by George Zebrowski and Charles Pellegrino
- zitterbewegung 9y agoI don’t think that’s true since we have only recently figured out what stars really are (last 2 thousand years) .
- aalleavitch 9y agoIt blows my mind that we didn't confirm the existence of other galaxies until the 1920s. It was less than a century ago that we learned that the universe was a hundred billion times more complex than we thought it was. Imagine what we don't know now.
- Brockenstein 9y agoYeah, I doubt upon discovering a wider universe most beings are going to follow the path of the Krikket in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Otherwise every discovery would have the potential to discombobulate them under the right circumstances.
- manachar 9y agoHumanity often has periods of instability following major discoveries that unseat orthodox ideals. An argument can be made that much of the cultural instability in the modern US and its animosity to science can be rooted in an "allergic" reaction to the ideas of evolution and a greater understanding of just how old and vast our universe actually is. Personally, such an argument would be a bit simplistic, but you'd be a fool to ignore how discombobulating evolution has been to much of Evangelical America. People who believe they are the center of universe tend to find it difficult to accept evidence to the contrary. To use another literary reference, there are a lot of warty bliggens in the world.
- Brockenstein 9y agoWell going even beyond that. There's entire populations of people barely living above the stone age, not to mention uncontacted tribes still out there in the world. It provides a fascinating spectrum of experiences. I guess my point is any large enough group of beings will have a variety of responses ranging from embracing new ideas and information wholeheartedly or rejecting them out of fear and ignorance and every possible combination of response in between. And it can be tricky to figure out which sub-group should represent the whole in these sort of blanket statements about how "they" would "feel" about an arbitrary bit of knowledge that they couldn't have foreseen discovering.
- mirimir 9y agoWell, that is rather the idea in The Killing Star. Also The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin.
- Asparagirl 9y ago
- chocolatebunny 9y agoWhether it be the sun, the moon, or the stars and regardless of what we thought we were seeing, when we looked up in the sky we saw things we could not reach that fueled our imagination and our desire for exploration. A subsurface dweller would always see and feel physical bounds and would probably assume that's all there was to it.
- Brockenstein 9y agohttp://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Krikkit http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Krikkit Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982) Who knows the mind of an alien. I mean maybe some individuals get freaked out, or there's some initial shock. But you'd kind of expect any intelligent or sufficiently advanced species to be able to handle the new and unexpected, it's kind of a pre-requisite. Those that can't tend to go extinct eventually.
- Brockenstein 9y agoAlthough I'm going to have to read this book it seems like.
- mirimir 9y agoYes, I do recommend it highly. And then the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy by Liu Cixin.
- rdruxn 9y agoI always loved this portion of The Ellimist Chronicles, one of the companion books to the Animorph Series. If I remember correctly, these god-like beings play simulated games where they develop species over eons and during one game, the catalyst the main character needed to advance his civilization was parting the perpetual clouds so his species could witness the stars and for the first time, look up.
- cavanasm 9y agoI remember that one. The game is that you can make one single change to species/environment, and he parts the clouds. His opponent ups aggression, and his opponent's species wipes his out. They send their game out into space, and another species gets the game, thinks the game is altering real species causing drama.
- dTal 9y agoIt is in fact the opening chapter, and the vignette sets the tone of idealism versus pragmatism for the rest of the book, a theme that surely resonates for any beleaguered programmer with a deadline... ----- I sighed. "What was your move?" "Oh, a very small one," Inidar said. "I increased their rate of reproduction by a very small percentage. This heightened their natural aggression. And guessed that your move would be to open the Pangaban skies. Population growth pressures, a limited food supply, and the ability to see the Pangaban surface very clearly ... my Gunja Wave wanted to eat your species." "Yes, and they did," I said. "I call the game." "You have to learn to avoid naïveté, Ellimist. It's not the good and worthy who prosper. It's just the motivated."
- nerfhammer 9y agoIs there any light down there? Would they have eyes? Stars etc. might be more like totally abstract theoretical concepts like quantum physics is to us, or at least X-rays. They might not be able to literally look up and see things, having mostly only sonar, hearing, and touch senses; handfuls of surface-explorers wearing special environment suits report the utterly strange sensation that space seems almost totally two-dimensional on the surface and there seems to be total emptiness above. Except that heat sometimes seems to be coming from above in strange repeating patterns. OTOH they might wonder how a species like us could possibly survive, being unable to see through our own bodies using sonar it must be extremely difficult to develop internal medicine. We would probably just get wiped out by some disease early on.
- mojomark 9y agoThe sun isn't the only source of radiant energy (visible light, IR, UV, etc) in a planetary system. Chemoluminescence and indeed heat itself (infrared (IR) emission) are other sources. I would think that living in a thermal environment closed off from the sun, creatures would be likely to evolve bioluminescent emitters/receptors or even fully developed IR Eyes in order to gain survival advantage. 1.) https://voices.nationalgeographic.org/2014/03/14/from-night-vision-to-heaters-3-of-the-oceans-most-remarkable-eyes/ https://voices.nationalgeographic.org/2014/03/14/from-night-...
- mirimir 9y agoIndeed, deep ocean life is very strange.
- diggernet 9y agoOr perhaps below the ice, from their perspective. http://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/downandout.html http://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/downandout.html
- Asooka 9y agoIt should be "above" due to the gravity imparted by the planet. Unless the species doesn't develop something analogous to our vestibular apparatus and can't actually tell up from down.
- drewrv 9y agoIf alien life were discovered within our solar system, I wonder what the implications for the Drake Equation would be. Assuming panspermia is ruled out, the fact that abiogenesis occured twice within a seemingly ordinary system would imply life is incredibly common.
- delecti 9y agoWell one factor would go up (planets with life 1>2) and another would go down (planets with life developing intelligence 1>0.5), resulting in a wash. It does move towards giving additional degrees of freedom on those terms though, making the equation as a whole slightly less pseudo-science.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoDepends on their intelligence if we find them, right? They might be intelligent and tool-using, but hampered by their aquatic origins.
- delecti 9y agoThe relevant terms (paraphrased) are: number that can have life, percent of those which do have life, percent of those which have intelligent life, percent of those that release signals into space. So that would just move the same math down one more step. Twice the number of planets which have life (whether you adjust "can have life" or just the percent of the above which do), but that cancels out with half as many either being intelligent or releasing signals.
- Density 9y agoIntelligent and releasing within our immediate galactic vicinity. I don't understand why the aliens would waste power beaming directed and powerful signals into space. Do you think the BBC bothers broadcasting enough signal for the Martians to listen to their radio? I don't think that's a very profitable business model.
- 9y ago
- crusso 9y agoIs there a protocol for looking for life in an environment like Enceladus that would sufficiently guarantee sterility of the probe? It seems that guaranteeing sterility would be sufficiently impossible to render Enceladus permanently unapproachable.
- saagarjha 9y agoThere's a job at NASA for that. It's called the Planetary Protection Office: https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov (relevant xkcd what-if: https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/)
- alex_duf 9y agoI don't think you can guarantee the sterility of an object. You can make it likely though.
- foreigner 9y agoWhy do these articles always assume that if we find anything it will just be microbial? There could be anything at all down there.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y agoMost of life's time on earth was single celled (life started ~4.1 Billion years ago, multi-cellular ~1.7 Billion years ago). If the world wasn't filled with O2 or sexual reproduction didn't start life on earth could still be single celled.
- FlyingSideKick 9y agoPlanetary science programs need a significant boost in funding so that they can perform at least two flagship missions per decade. Missions to Europa, Enceladus and Titan to look for life should be a top priority for NASA.
- foolfoolz 9y agoit blows my mind we have landed on Titan and sent back photos
- EthereumDublin 9y agoApparently the ocean on Enceladus is kept warm due to geothermal heat. And that hear is accessible to the water because the ocean’s crust is very porous. Which naturally leads us to ideas like geothermal vents that may have been the source of life on Earth.
- p1mrx 9y agoImagine that there's an intelligent civilization living down there. One day, they develop the technology to drill through the ice, and emerge to discover... an entire universe on the other side.
- dmix 9y agoI'm curious what limitations being an underwater species, especially a subterranean one, would have on the development of intelligence or even an advanced society.