7 ms·

The tantalizing, lonely search for alien life

49 points by Petiver 3y ago

submeta 3y ago
(Haven’t read the article.) Our perception of alien life may be profoundly constrained by the human lens through which we examine the cosmos. We must acknowledge that all our scientific knowledge, including our conception of life, is a product of human cognition. This cognition has evolved under Earth's specific conditions, thereby deeply influencing our understanding of what life is. We've come to associate life with cells, DNA, and carbon-based compounds, simply because these are the frameworks we're most familiar with. Yet, life elsewhere in the universe may defy these constructs. It could hinge on principles entirely alien to our comprehension, making it "life" in the truest sense of the word. Consequently, our current definitions might fail to recognize or comprehend such forms of existence. This brings us to the philosophical and cognitive underpinnings of this idea. It echoes solipsistic notions, where only one's mind is certain to exist, and the brain-in-a-vat theory, which asserts our inability to differentiate between real experiences and those simulated by our brains. These philosophies question the authenticity of our perceived reality and force us to reconsider our mental models. Such introspection is crucial when we think about potential alien life. For instance, we associate green vegetation with life because of Earth-based chlorophyll. But should we find green plants on another planet, can we instinctively conclude that they indicate life as we know it? Probably not, as such assumptions hinge on our Earth-centric model of life. To overcome this limitation, we might need to redefine life in a more universal context. We may have to accept that some entities might exist beyond our grasp of understanding and should develop novel tools that seek not only life as we know it, but any form of organized complexity that could denote a radically different kind of life. Such a perspective fundamentally changes the narrative of our search for alien life. It indicates a need to drastically reshape our understanding to truly appreciate the universe's potential diversity and complexity. It's a humbling reminder of how much we don't know, as well as a hopeful prompt of the extraordinary discoveries that could await us.
- pyinstallwoes 3y ago
  Radical idea: anything that emits a signal is a life sign.
  - zokier 3y ago
    That's what SETI has been looking for, but it also sets very high bar; microbes are not exactly known for sending signals to space.
    - eesmith 3y ago
      Though to be fair, SETI is specifically looking for "intelligent" life. It may be possible to identify biosignatures on other planets, like looking for evidence of atmospheric gasses far from ordinary chemical equilibrium (like how microbes emit methane here on Earth), or unusual spectra, like spotting the signature of chlorophyll absorption.
    - sandworm101 3y ago
      Other than bioluminessence. One possible means of detecting life on water/ice worlds could be glowing oceans on the night/dark sides of exoplanets.
    - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
      I mean, I am emphasizing anything with any measurable signal is life.
- zokier 3y ago
  "weird life" is pretty basic idea in astrobiology. The scientists in the field are very much aware of the concept. From the article > plenty of other experts suggest that life elsewhere might be so different, so fundamentally alien, as to be unrecognizable to us as life. Surprisingly, a pretty big question amongst scientists searching for life on other planets is what life even means. Would we know it when we saw it? --- > We may have to accept that some entities might exist beyond our grasp of understanding and should develop novel tools that seek not only life as we know it, but any form of organized complexity that could denote a radically different kind of life. Maybe at some point, but right now we haven't even scrathed the surface in the search, and with limited resources it makes sense to start first by looking for earth-like life, and eventually expand the search for weirder things. > Such a perspective fundamentally changes the narrative of our search for alien life. I don't really find that to be the case. If anything, the weird life narrative might be overemphasized in the popsci/scifi communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_chauvinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_chauvinism
gfodor 3y ago
Weird to have these kinds of articles coming out at the same time the US government appears to be lining up an entire set of institutional infrastructure and laws to disclose to the public that we have evidence of non-human intelligence. Also I really hope to god we are alone, if we are not then it seems far more likely we are in some kind of zoo or are going to be boxed out from advancement.
- flarg 3y ago
  I doubt the US govt is doing any such thing. There is no advantage for them in doing so even if extraterrestrial intelligence does exist. Space is too vast to allow for visitation or effective communication between planets never mind solar systems.
  - qawwads 3y ago
    I'd expect that information to come first from arXiv or Nature. Or even maybe The Daily Mirror. Why would a governments be involved?
    - yreg 3y ago
      The research could be done using military equipment with strings attached. Alternatively, in US the researchers could be under some national security gag order by one of the agencies, no?
  - gfodor 3y ago
    They are. Google the UAP act. Things are apparently about to get very weird.
    - austinjp 3y ago
      UAP = unidentified anomalous phenomena https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senators-move-require-release-us-government-ufo-records-2023-07-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senators-move-require-relea...
    - 3y ago
pmarreck 3y ago
Articles like this won't age well if it turns out they've been here for decades already, which we may imminently find out. Instead of a reasonable position given a lack of physical evidence, it will look like a gross mistrust of a mass quantity of qualified eyewitness testimony
- leon_theremin 3y ago
  [flagged]
- netsharc 3y ago
  An announcement of the existence of alien life (even alien life on this planet) doesn't equal confirmation that UFO sightings (objects in the sky that couldn't be identified) are actually sightings of extra-terrestrial crafts...
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    Strictly correct, but also improbably correct, given the claimed performance envelopes and behavior of these craft (I'm talking the ones pinging on radar, not just the visual reports)
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Why would they be here? I'm just physically incapable of the superhuman levels of narcissism that are required to think that if intelligent aliens were aware of us that they'd spend the effort to bother to come here. Either that effort is itself measured at godlike superhuman levels, or it's effortless for them (or any point along that spectrum). As if becomes less effort for them, we become less interesting. As it becomes more effort. There isn't even any happy medium for this. If there is some middle ground that would have them visit other civilizations... then why ours? Someone's closer to them. Someone looks like they might be worth meeting. We're the ugly guy on Galactic Tindr, and by virtue of their ability to do interstellar travel, they're the hot 9.8s. They're not going to swipe right on us, they'll pick someone else. Maybe some flying saucer stopped by because it was along the way and they like doing quick surveys... but we've been more or less the same level of interesting for the last 4 billion years. That it just happened during the 20th century instead of 400 million years ago seems improbable. Superhumanly narcissistic.
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
>> Pop culture is certainly full of films and novels and TV series that gleefully break this rule, but some of the best aliens are the ones we only catch glimpses of, who exist only partially, only in darkness, only in fleeting, frightening peeks. And then there's the Alien xenomorph, whom we do get to see. Oh yes, sir-ee.
citizenpaul 3y ago
I'm a firm believer that we will never meet alien life beyond a microbe. Also I'm on the side that we are likely the only life active in the universe. As it is said by many scholars life should be common. If life is common. If indeed it is possible for life to spread across space it should overrun the galaxies by now. Even at sub-light speeds. However it clearly has not. The in the face obvious conclusion is that these speculative theories are wrong and life is not actually common and life does not spread easily. I'm not sure why so many other people are dedicated to believing the opposite of this with no actual evidence beyond theory. Yeah dark forest theory. Yeah forerunner theory. I've heard them. Maybe...
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  Also possible that life requires a certain amount of universal "cook" time, and that while it's extremely common, and extremely local, we will never see if because we are stuck in our temporal frame, and the only thing that will observe the out-radiation out lightforms are black holes or the heat death of the universe. The universe is extremely empty, but it may also be extremely cluttered / noisy for the ability to observe other life. I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that life naturally comes to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense to try to extend beyond its gravity well, or have a quiet death by trying "too hard," expending the resources available trying to propagate beyond.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    What about Kurzewei's take that it's our duty to "colonize the universe with intelligence"? Take that universe.
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      Yeah ... even if the majority do not choose to do so, the minority will suffice to fill the universe with e.g. Von Neumann probes.
      - IggleSniggle 3y ago
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
the great filter theory makes most sense to me. humans have been on earth for a short time. having technology for even shorter time. life is like a flash. it comes and goes. part of the cycle.
local_crmdgeon 3y ago
I agree with CitizenPaul - I think we're alone in sapience/technology, and that possibility is so terrifying that it's never discussed. It's a much smaller burden if there's tens of millions of other civilizations flying around, but we have 0 evidence after 2 centuries of searching. I think there's some step that's very rare - either bones, or more likely evolving on a planet with wood. It's an easy building material that is also a fuel, and abundant. If we had to make due with rocks when we were just kind of smart apes, we wouldn't have gotten very far.
nonameiguess 3y ago
Putting aside the more exotic possible configurations of matter that might be capable of self-replicating, computing, and having qualitative experience, but that we likely would not recognize as life, limiting the possibilities just to recognizable organic matter that depends upon carbon and water, I still expect life to be all over the place. If it's possible at all, which we clearly demonstrate by our existence, then it's inevitable, given enough space and enough time and enough chances. I don't see any paradox in the Fermi paradox, though. The universe is just a very big place. Estimates currently seem to place the number of galaxies in the observable universe roughly within the same order of magnitude as stars in the Milky Way. Most of these are far enough away that we only see them as they were billions of years ago. Organic life can only develop in second-generation stars, because carbon and oxygen won't exist until then, not to mention all of the elements making up rock necessary to form terrestrial planets. So the chances of seeing organic life that far away is close to nil. So that leaves other galaxies in the local supercluster, but life detectable from a distance would still have needed to develop tens to hundreds of millions of years earlier than us to be detectable now. Certainly not impossible, but constrained, and even if they colonized their own galaxy, if that's a different galaxy, that doesn't mean we'd see it. So what about the Milky Way itself? Well, what if organic life that develops intelligence, civilization, and technology is simply rare enough that you maybe get one or two per galaxy. That would still be incredibly common across the entire universe, but low enough density to be entirely reasonable that you'd be very likely to never see it. Why would it be that rare? I think we underestimate a bit how lucky we got. Many systems similar to ours have a hot Jupiter, which makes it impossible for the inner planets because they effectively experience a permanent late heavy bombardment. On the other hand, the fact we had a late heavy bombardment at all may be a reason we have as much water as we have, but we needed Saturn to be in the position it is in to stop and reverse the inflow of Jupiter's orbit to eventually calm things down. Then we got life, but for a very long time, it only progressed in the direction of the red queen race of the dinosaurs becoming ever bigger and stronger and more heavily armored. In some cases, also more intelligent, but it's unlikely the competitive constraints they faced would ever have allowed for a dinosaur civilization to emerge. Some paleontologists have speculated Troodon may have had a chance, but it's hard to say. I think we can say with some confidence that live birth and maternal nursing played a large role in the development of strong social behaviors and persistent communities seen in mammals but largely not seen in other animals. How likely was this specific adaptation to occur? Is it inevitable that it occurs first in smaller, nocturnal, underground creatures that raise their young in dens with minimal resource requirements? If so, then you also need something like a K-Pg extinction event that eliminates the brutes but leaves behind the little guys living underground to come out and take over. All in all, maybe this is the case, maybe this isn't, but all it takes is a few tiny adjustments to parameters to the Drake equation and you get a very low density of life, but as long as that density isn't zero, the universe overall would still have lots of life, but nonetheless lots of life we're very unlikely to ever see. We don't even know the actual bounds of the universe. Outside of past light cone, it may be twice what we can see, it may be hundreds of billions of times what we can see, it may be infinite. Space and worlds we will never see no matter how long we exist and what technology we develop, but even if it's only one civilization per 14 billion year light cone, that may still be a very large or even infinite number.

49 points by Petiver 3y ago

(Haven’t read the article.) Our perception of alien life may be profoundly constrained by the human lens through which we examine the cosmos. We must acknowledge that all our scientific knowledge, including our conception of life, is a product of human cognition. This cognition has evolved under Earth's specific conditions, thereby deeply influencing our understanding of what life is. We've come to associate life with cells, DNA, and carbon-based compounds, simply because these are the frameworks we're most familiar with. Yet, life elsewhere in the universe may defy these constructs. It could hinge on principles entirely alien to our comprehension, making it "life" in the truest sense of the word. Consequently, our current definitions might fail to recognize or comprehend such forms of existence. This brings us to the philosophical and cognitive underpinnings of this idea. It echoes solipsistic notions, where only one's mind is certain to exist, and the brain-in-a-vat theory, which asserts our inability to differentiate between real experiences and those simulated by our brains. These philosophies question the authenticity of our perceived reality and force us to reconsider our mental models. Such introspection is crucial when we think about potential alien life. For instance, we associate green vegetation with life because of Earth-based chlorophyll. But should we find green plants on another planet, can we instinctively conclude that they indicate life as we know it? Probably not, as such assumptions hinge on our Earth-centric model of life. To overcome this limitation, we might need to redefine life in a more universal context. We may have to accept that some entities might exist beyond our grasp of understanding and should develop novel tools that seek not only life as we know it, but any form of organized complexity that could denote a radically different kind of life. Such a perspective fundamentally changes the narrative of our search for alien life. It indicates a need to drastically reshape our understanding to truly appreciate the universe's potential diversity and complexity. It's a humbling reminder of how much we don't know, as well as a hopeful prompt of the extraordinary discoveries that could await us.

pyinstallwoes 3y ago
Radical idea: anything that emits a signal is a life sign.
- zokier 3y ago
  That's what SETI has been looking for, but it also sets very high bar; microbes are not exactly known for sending signals to space.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    Though to be fair, SETI is specifically looking for "intelligent" life. It may be possible to identify biosignatures on other planets, like looking for evidence of atmospheric gasses far from ordinary chemical equilibrium (like how microbes emit methane here on Earth), or unusual spectra, like spotting the signature of chlorophyll absorption.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    Other than bioluminessence. One possible means of detecting life on water/ice worlds could be glowing oceans on the night/dark sides of exoplanets.
  - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
    I mean, I am emphasizing anything with any measurable signal is life.
zokier 3y ago
"weird life" is pretty basic idea in astrobiology. The scientists in the field are very much aware of the concept. From the article > plenty of other experts suggest that life elsewhere might be so different, so fundamentally alien, as to be unrecognizable to us as life. Surprisingly, a pretty big question amongst scientists searching for life on other planets is what life even means. Would we know it when we saw it? --- > We may have to accept that some entities might exist beyond our grasp of understanding and should develop novel tools that seek not only life as we know it, but any form of organized complexity that could denote a radically different kind of life. Maybe at some point, but right now we haven't even scrathed the surface in the search, and with limited resources it makes sense to start first by looking for earth-like life, and eventually expand the search for weirder things. > Such a perspective fundamentally changes the narrative of our search for alien life. I don't really find that to be the case. If anything, the weird life narrative might be overemphasized in the popsci/scifi communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_chauvinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_chauvinism

gfodor 3y ago

Weird to have these kinds of articles coming out at the same time the US government appears to be lining up an entire set of institutional infrastructure and laws to disclose to the public that we have evidence of non-human intelligence. Also I really hope to god we are alone, if we are not then it seems far more likely we are in some kind of zoo or are going to be boxed out from advancement.

flarg 3y ago
I doubt the US govt is doing any such thing. There is no advantage for them in doing so even if extraterrestrial intelligence does exist. Space is too vast to allow for visitation or effective communication between planets never mind solar systems.
- qawwads 3y ago
  I'd expect that information to come first from arXiv or Nature. Or even maybe The Daily Mirror. Why would a governments be involved?
  - yreg 3y ago
    The research could be done using military equipment with strings attached. Alternatively, in US the researchers could be under some national security gag order by one of the agencies, no?
- gfodor 3y ago
  They are. Google the UAP act. Things are apparently about to get very weird.
  - austinjp 3y ago
    UAP = unidentified anomalous phenomena https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senators-move-require-release-us-government-ufo-records-2023-07-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senators-move-require-relea...
  - 3y ago

pmarreck 3y ago

Articles like this won't age well if it turns out they've been here for decades already, which we may imminently find out. Instead of a reasonable position given a lack of physical evidence, it will look like a gross mistrust of a mass quantity of qualified eyewitness testimony

leon_theremin 3y ago
[flagged]
netsharc 3y ago
An announcement of the existence of alien life (even alien life on this planet) doesn't equal confirmation that UFO sightings (objects in the sky that couldn't be identified) are actually sightings of extra-terrestrial crafts...
- pmarreck 3y ago
  Strictly correct, but also improbably correct, given the claimed performance envelopes and behavior of these craft (I'm talking the ones pinging on radar, not just the visual reports)
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Why would they be here? I'm just physically incapable of the superhuman levels of narcissism that are required to think that if intelligent aliens were aware of us that they'd spend the effort to bother to come here. Either that effort is itself measured at godlike superhuman levels, or it's effortless for them (or any point along that spectrum). As if becomes less effort for them, we become less interesting. As it becomes more effort. There isn't even any happy medium for this. If there is some middle ground that would have them visit other civilizations... then why ours? Someone's closer to them. Someone looks like they might be worth meeting. We're the ugly guy on Galactic Tindr, and by virtue of their ability to do interstellar travel, they're the hot 9.8s. They're not going to swipe right on us, they'll pick someone else. Maybe some flying saucer stopped by because it was along the way and they like doing quick surveys... but we've been more or less the same level of interesting for the last 4 billion years. That it just happened during the 20th century instead of 400 million years ago seems improbable. Superhumanly narcissistic.

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

>> Pop culture is certainly full of films and novels and TV series that gleefully break this rule, but some of the best aliens are the ones we only catch glimpses of, who exist only partially, only in darkness, only in fleeting, frightening peeks. And then there's the Alien xenomorph, whom we do get to see. Oh yes, sir-ee.

citizenpaul 3y ago

I'm a firm believer that we will never meet alien life beyond a microbe. Also I'm on the side that we are likely the only life active in the universe. As it is said by many scholars life should be common. If life is common. If indeed it is possible for life to spread across space it should overrun the galaxies by now. Even at sub-light speeds. However it clearly has not. The in the face obvious conclusion is that these speculative theories are wrong and life is not actually common and life does not spread easily. I'm not sure why so many other people are dedicated to believing the opposite of this with no actual evidence beyond theory. Yeah dark forest theory. Yeah forerunner theory. I've heard them. Maybe...

IggleSniggle 3y ago
Also possible that life requires a certain amount of universal "cook" time, and that while it's extremely common, and extremely local, we will never see if because we are stuck in our temporal frame, and the only thing that will observe the out-radiation out lightforms are black holes or the heat death of the universe. The universe is extremely empty, but it may also be extremely cluttered / noisy for the ability to observe other life. I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that life naturally comes to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense to try to extend beyond its gravity well, or have a quiet death by trying "too hard," expending the resources available trying to propagate beyond.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  What about Kurzewei's take that it's our duty to "colonize the universe with intelligence"? Take that universe.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    Yeah ... even if the majority do not choose to do so, the minority will suffice to fill the universe with e.g. Von Neumann probes.
    - IggleSniggle 3y ago

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

the great filter theory makes most sense to me. humans have been on earth for a short time. having technology for even shorter time. life is like a flash. it comes and goes. part of the cycle.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago

I agree with CitizenPaul - I think we're alone in sapience/technology, and that possibility is so terrifying that it's never discussed. It's a much smaller burden if there's tens of millions of other civilizations flying around, but we have 0 evidence after 2 centuries of searching. I think there's some step that's very rare - either bones, or more likely evolving on a planet with wood. It's an easy building material that is also a fuel, and abundant. If we had to make due with rocks when we were just kind of smart apes, we wouldn't have gotten very far.

nonameiguess 3y ago

Putting aside the more exotic possible configurations of matter that might be capable of self-replicating, computing, and having qualitative experience, but that we likely would not recognize as life, limiting the possibilities just to recognizable organic matter that depends upon carbon and water, I still expect life to be all over the place. If it's possible at all, which we clearly demonstrate by our existence, then it's inevitable, given enough space and enough time and enough chances. I don't see any paradox in the Fermi paradox, though. The universe is just a very big place. Estimates currently seem to place the number of galaxies in the observable universe roughly within the same order of magnitude as stars in the Milky Way. Most of these are far enough away that we only see them as they were billions of years ago. Organic life can only develop in second-generation stars, because carbon and oxygen won't exist until then, not to mention all of the elements making up rock necessary to form terrestrial planets. So the chances of seeing organic life that far away is close to nil. So that leaves other galaxies in the local supercluster, but life detectable from a distance would still have needed to develop tens to hundreds of millions of years earlier than us to be detectable now. Certainly not impossible, but constrained, and even if they colonized their own galaxy, if that's a different galaxy, that doesn't mean we'd see it. So what about the Milky Way itself? Well, what if organic life that develops intelligence, civilization, and technology is simply rare enough that you maybe get one or two per galaxy. That would still be incredibly common across the entire universe, but low enough density to be entirely reasonable that you'd be very likely to never see it. Why would it be that rare? I think we underestimate a bit how lucky we got. Many systems similar to ours have a hot Jupiter, which makes it impossible for the inner planets because they effectively experience a permanent late heavy bombardment. On the other hand, the fact we had a late heavy bombardment at all may be a reason we have as much water as we have, but we needed Saturn to be in the position it is in to stop and reverse the inflow of Jupiter's orbit to eventually calm things down. Then we got life, but for a very long time, it only progressed in the direction of the red queen race of the dinosaurs becoming ever bigger and stronger and more heavily armored. In some cases, also more intelligent, but it's unlikely the competitive constraints they faced would ever have allowed for a dinosaur civilization to emerge. Some paleontologists have speculated Troodon may have had a chance, but it's hard to say. I think we can say with some confidence that live birth and maternal nursing played a large role in the development of strong social behaviors and persistent communities seen in mammals but largely not seen in other animals. How likely was this specific adaptation to occur? Is it inevitable that it occurs first in smaller, nocturnal, underground creatures that raise their young in dens with minimal resource requirements? If so, then you also need something like a K-Pg extinction event that eliminates the brutes but leaves behind the little guys living underground to come out and take over. All in all, maybe this is the case, maybe this isn't, but all it takes is a few tiny adjustments to parameters to the Drake equation and you get a very low density of life, but as long as that density isn't zero, the universe overall would still have lots of life, but nonetheless lots of life we're very unlikely to ever see. We don't even know the actual bounds of the universe. Outside of past light cone, it may be twice what we can see, it may be hundreds of billions of times what we can see, it may be infinite. Space and worlds we will never see no matter how long we exist and what technology we develop, but even if it's only one civilization per 14 billion year light cone, that may still be a very large or even infinite number.