4 ms·
When I hear numbers like this, my gut tells me that there must be life out there somewhere.
by andyp-kw 4y ago
When I hear numbers like this, my gut tells me that there must be life out there somewhere.
- grugagag 4y agoMe too but it also tells me we’ll never get anywhere close to any of it
- greatpostman 4y agoYeah I think it’s irrational to think we’re the only ones
- mr_mitm 4y agoWhat if the probability of life emerging on a random planet is less than 10^-40? All we can say for certain is that this probability is strictly between 0 and 1. The number of galaxies is mind boggingly large (around 100 billion in the observable universe), and the number of planets even larger, but there is no reason that the probability of life couldn't be even more mind boggingly small.
- superposeur 4y agoIndeed it doesn’t even need to be that small — even a 10^-28 chance makes it unlikely to have arisen anywhere else in the observable universe.
- mcbutterbunz 4y agoNewer observations suggest 200 billion with an average of 100 million stars per galaxy and 3-10 planets per star. 60,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets on the low end? Yeesh.
- mr_mitm 4y agoSo what? 40 zeros after the decimal point should make you go "Yeesh" even harder.
- mcbutterbunz 4y agoIt honestly did after I thought about it more.
- ako 4y agoFor some perspective 70b sandgrains in one cubic meter sand… so they found 100x3x6 cubes of sandgrains…
- superposeur 4y agoYes these are huge numbers, but quantities associated with physical space (# of objects) are nothing compared with quantities in combinatorial spaces (# of possible 256 bit passwords or # of possible games of chess). It seems plausible that getting the sustained chain reaction of life going in a soup of organic molecules and not immediately interrupting it may be at least as unlikely as randomly guessing a 256 bit password, in which case it will certainly never have happened a second time in the volume of space time we call the “observable universe”.
- BurningFrog 4y agoThe time aspect is important. Life on Earth took 10 billion years from the Big Bang to emerge. No evidence indicates any other planet did it before us. I think most galaxies we see are younger than that.
- Existenceblinks 4y agoMaybe. But at this point, earth is pretty much a fluke already. Game changing if we are the only one .. (yep not changing anything but still completely stunning)
- Waterluvian 4y agoArbitrary large-sounding numbers have this deceptive power over people’s perceptions.
- Ekaros 4y agoLife existing outside Earth doesn't seem unlikely to me. Even sapient life. It all breaks down at some point for it to be interstellar or maybe even properly interplanetary.
- colordrops 4y agoOur single example of life has already shown that getting objects to other planets is possible. There shouldn't be any fundamental barriers beyond what we've already accomplished. It's a matter of engineering and resources at this point. Unless you mean something very different by "properly", it's pretty clear that there will be multiplanetary life out there if it exists at all.
- Ekaros 4y agoI would put the scale far beyond simply getting objects around. Let's say consistent regular traffic and colonies capable of multi-decade or century life support. The engineering and resources really start to look lot harder if you push it to meaningful population numbers. Let's say couple hundred or thousand on regular basis.
- q-base 4y agoThere probably was or will be. Whether it will coincide with life on our planet is probably a little less likely, although not ruled out in any way.