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Some user posted here about how thinking of Earth as the origin of life is the last remaining piece of geocentrism and I can't stop thinking about it.
by kyleyeats 3y ago
Some user posted here about how thinking of Earth as the origin of life is the last remaining piece of geocentrism and I can't stop thinking about it.
- sockaddr 3y agoNow I won't be able to stop thinking about that too. It is an interesting way to frame that idea.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoThe naive hypothesis is that life originates in many places in the cosmos. This article isn't postulating comets as spreading life, per se, but as spreading molecular pre-requisites for our sort of life.
- 7373737373 3y agoSomeone commented "what if life existed before the big bang", but deleted their comment. I want to comment on that that Roger Penrose is considering the existence and possible detection of a universe before the big bang, something he also touched on in his Nobel lecture. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37621098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37621098
- whatshisface 3y agoNot much could survive the conditions, unless you're thinking of aliens with technological means and some kind of ability to translate themselves into quark gluon physics and back.
- 7373737373 3y agoIn our timeline, we still have billions if not trillions of years of potential technological life and -evolution ahead of us, until the last (dwarf) stars cease existing, if not longer through other means, so I wouldn't rule anything out. Also, even if life did not causally begin in this universe through "external" influence like this, transmitted signals may potentially influence the future of life greatly nonetheless.
- iosystem 3y agoThanks for sharing! I'm personally a fan of the idea that life has always existed, meaning we have always existed as well. It's very cool to listen to someone like Roger Penrose expressing his thoughts on what possibly happened before the big bang. In my opinion, everything in Nature repeats, and nothing is so special that it cannot happen again when we understand the concept of infinity. People who favor the idea of believing in God might be against such a notion, but I think it's worth exploring along with all the philosophy that can emerge from it.
- Beijinger 3y ago„Ewiges Leben - ein Verleugnen der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen.“ ―Friedrich Nietzsche
- zoogeny 3y agoI've been thinking recently (in part inspired by Penrose and other recursive universe theories): what if we can effect the trajectory of this current universe such that the next universe that is created has definable properties. As a highly improbable example I use only to spur imagination, what if we could control the next big bang so precisely that a solar system exactly like ours would exist containing humans just like us. That would lead me to speculate that if we were looking for messages from the previous universe (in the style of the movie/book Contact) then we should look to the signature of the background radiation (CMB). Imagine a previous universe left us instructions there to help us achieve this, and perhaps therefore to achieve some objective that spans multiple universes (i.e. some objective too large to complete within the lifespan of a single universe). If that isn't a sci-fi book then it should be. Also maybe an interesting area for legit academic study (e.g. how to imprint instructions in the CMB to pass along to future universes).
- civilitty 3y ago> That would lead me to speculate that if we were looking for messages from the previous universe (in the style of the movie/book Contact) then we should look to the signature of the background radiation (CMB). That was the premise behind the Stargate Universe TV series. <spoilers> The Ancients detect a pattern in the cosmic background radiation that hints at an intelligence that existed before the beginning of time and send a fleet of automated ships with FTL to research it. Millions of years later, the US Air Force manages to send a team on a one way trip to the flagship and hijinks ensue.</spoilers>
- zoogeny 3y agoMore proof that there are no new ideas under the sun! It is interesting to me that they chose the CMB as well. Although, looking at the Wikipedia synopsis it seems to speculate: "This discovery suggested the possibility of life before or immediately after the Big Bang, and Destiny was launched millions of years ago to study and gather data regarding this possibility." I wonder if they were going towards a purposeful communication plot as well, or even a plot suggesting a recurrence theme. I think of it sometimes like the ouroboros/eternal-return mystical philosophy. Like, the advanced life that we end up creating in this universe knows that the only way it can recreate itself is to recreate us, like we are just some kind of bootstrap for the universe's final form.
- paulrouget 3y agoHis potential clues of CCC (the cyclic universe) in the CMB turned out to be incorrect. So as of now, this theory is not supported by anything.
- svachalek 3y agoNot before the Big Bang, but this is interesting -- what if life developed when the entire universe was in the habitable zone? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOiGEI9pQBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOiGEI9pQBs
- api 3y agoWasn’t that environment saturated by gamma rays? I’m thinking of the pre-redshift cosmic microwave background.
- delecti 3y agoI'm not sure it's necessarily geocentrism, so much as the most Occam's razor-y assumption to run with until we have evidence to the contrary. Assuming life originated here means we don't also have to think about how it got here if it happened somewhere else.
- leblancfg 3y agoIMO one doesn't preclude the other. Our forebears would have used the same logic to assume that the Sun orbited around the Earth.
- dotnet00 3y agoI know it's a very common meme about geocentrism, but heliocentric models which would be pretty familiar to us existed all the way back ~300 BC [1] and potentially were on par with Copernicus' work ~150BC [2]. The geocentric interpretation was largely forced due to religious dogma and not due to a belief that it was simpler. It's honestly crazy how close people 2000 years ago were to a more contemporary understanding of the universe and how all that became lost and suppressed for ~1500 years. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos?&useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos?&useskin=... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucus_of_Seleucia?&useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucus_of_Seleucia?&useskin=...
- BurningFrog 3y agoThat's a better idea than moderns give it credit for. If Earth orbits around the sun, you'd expect we'd see the stars move, as Earth moves relative to them. You have to assume the stars are absurdly far away to make that model fit with observations. Of course, now we know that stars are that far away, but I can't fault the Geocentrics of old for picking the more reasonable model.
- mwbajor 3y agoThey weren't wrong, in an infinite universe, everywhere is the center.
- mojosam 3y agoI don't see how that's an apt analogy. Geocentrism put the Earth at the center of the universe, around which the rest of the universe rotated. But saying life on Earth originated on Earth does not in any way put the Earth at the center of anything. Nor does it in any way mean that Earth is unique. The bottom line is that -- because we don't know how abiogenesis occurred, whether here or somewhere else -- we have no way to judge how common it is. It could be that, given enough time, life spontaneously forms on any planet or moon that offers a certain set of conditions, and Earth just happens to be one of those planets, meaning it is still not "the center" of anything. In fact, in the extreme case, panspermia is much more geocentric, saying that life formed in just one very special place -- maybe not the Earth, but somewhere, the "center of life in the universe" -- and then spread by diffusion to all the other locations in which life existed. But that seems like an unlikely and unnecessary model; if life can spontaneously begin somewhere, why should we assume it can't begin in many places, and if that's true, why not also on Earth?
- kyleyeats 3y agoThe idea is that it puts Earth at the center of the biological universe. Generally the idea is that abiogenesis is very rare. I don't think any panspermists are saying that it only happened in one spot. As you pointed out that's basically the same belief as thinking it happened just once on Earth. The two 'versions' (they're not mutually exclusive) I'm familiar with are spreading via waterbears on comets or whatever, and also seeding by intelligent life. I think we have evidence for both in our own solar system, although the life we've seeded probably didn't take hold for very long.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoScientifically the only life I can prove exists is on earth. We have found no evidence of life in any form anywhere. It’s totally reasonable to believe that may in fact be the case. The statement that it’s geocentrism makes the supposition that it’s ego that drives assumption of life only on earth. However if life only exists on earth, we would necessarily be the ones observing the empty universe. A distinct possibility is that it takes a long time and very unique situations for life to evolve. The first life in the universe would look out at a lifeless universe. Life may later develop, and we are the first. Maybe life develops here first, and ejecta from our atmosphere seeding the space we travel through spreads it through the galaxy and the universe. Maybe life existed everywhere during the Goldilocks period of the universe and has died out almost everywhere and we are the last ember. But the only evidence we have for any of these theories - literally the only evidence - is that we are alone. But I am glad we keep looking to prove that wrong.
- defrost 3y agoJust a few decades ago it was absolutely correct to state that: Scientifically the only planets I can prove exists are here in this solar system. We have found no evidence of planets anywhere else. I question whether it was then totally reasonable to claim that it was likely there were no other planets anywhere. Today, of course, we are over run with evidence for exo planets.
- dotnet00 3y agoThere is a pretty significant gap in the implications of the existence of exoplanets and in the implications of the existence of exobiology. Prior to the detection of exoplanets, there was likely still a general consensus that they probably exist, because that didn't really have any implications for our model of the universe. It was understandable that the technology of the time was just not capable of detecting things that small. The question of life becomes more complicated because what it means in terms of detectability is completely different depending on the conditions. Depending on how common it is, things range from it being weird we haven't detected any yet to it being so rare that our existence is indeed special.
- api 3y agoMight have been me. I’ve said that for years. I doubt I’m the first though. I thought of that after seeing this: https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html Doesn’t prove anything but fascinating. Maybe life began early in the universe and is everywhere, but only in some environments has it been able to achieve high levels of complexity. This is ultimately testable. If this is true we should find life in the subsurface oceans of moons, some comets, etc. and it should be at least somewhat biochemically similar or show other evidence of very ancient common descent. If it’s false then ET life should be very alien with no evidence of common descent and also probably very rare. Rarity is likely because this would suggest that abiogenesis must hop up a very high complexity cliff, which is a highly improbable event.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoLife on earth is so specifically bound to Earth's conditions, I don't understand how anybody could really say this. I've no doubt there's things like life in other places. I have no reason to assume they'll be that strictly similar what we call life here, and we may not even recognize them as such. To imagine they are similar to earth-life to me seems more anthropo/geocentric. Arguably our obsession with looking for stuff similar to us is perhaps blinding us to the true diversity in the cosmos.
- svachalek 3y agoMulti-cellular life, sure. But single cell life is hardier and could survive lots of places. And we're blind to the cosmos, period. All we can see is star-sized objects and bigger. No one is ruling out other possibilities, they're just thinking about where we can look first, when we start looking.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoMulticellular life in the oceans would be bound more to the conditions of an ocean than of the non-marine Earth. And while there's some diversity in oceans, much of this diversity would be captured in any given ocean. Multicellular life tried a whole bunch of shapes and niches early on. It would be interesting if some of the also-rans in Earth's oceans became the winners in other oceans.
- WalterBright 3y agoLive has persisted on Earth through several large changes in temperature and the gas composition of the atmosphere - many of those changes caused by life itself.
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoI'd expect life elsewhere to be much like ours in general, especially when you consider the full range of life both present and past on earth. The course of evolution is necessarily going to be similar anywhere - bound by the rules of chemistry, going from simple to complex forms, single cellular to multicellular, a full range of sensory modalities developing, predator/prey species evolving under similar high level dynamics, etc, etc. These types of generality have nothing to do specifically with life on earth. Of course the details will vary, but I'd expect alien animals to be recognizably animals, even if they include some novel aspects specific to their own environments.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]