12 ms·
This seems to offer an interesting (partial) candidate for the Great Filter. What if there are tons of advanced civilizations on tidally locked planets orbiting
by mistercow 3y ago
This seems to offer an interesting (partial) candidate for the Great Filter. What if there are tons of advanced civilizations on tidally locked planets orbiting red dwarfs, who have never reached for the stars, because they simply can’t see them?
Or rather, they can see them only once they’ve developed the technology to explore a side of the planet which they’re extremely poorly adapted for. Imagine if we had only been able to even begin to study astronomy through polar expeditions, for example.
- bombcar 3y agoIf we were tidally locked, and were about where we are now or a few centuries ago, there'd be tons of people trying to explore the "dark side of Earth" and they'd see the stars.
- rini17 3y agoThey likely don't have night vision, so they would need to use instruments. They can only discover stars (perhaps except few brightest ones) after invention of photography.
- CuriouslyC 3y agoI think it's more likely that the interesting life would evolve from organisms that exist on the fringe and can survive and migrate to either side.
- bluGill 3y agoDo they have fire? Clouds mean they already can adjust to different light levels - at least some. A fire lit torch is obvious if you have fire.
- andrewflnr 3y ago"Night vision" is not a special binary adaptation. It's not as if humans have exemplary might vision either, and we see LOTS of stars in a dark sky. Plus there are lots of diurnal reasons to not be helpless in low light, like tree cover and caves.
- XorNot 3y agoProbably more importantly, an obvious adaptation in such an environment for prey animals would be to hide in dark places like caves where predators can't see you...so predators would develop with low-light vision for hunting where other predators couldn't and in turn.... Basically evolution tends to do every weird thing it can - and we can't know which would be likely to end up as traits on the dominant intelligent species.
- rini17 3y agoWell, hiding under water is another obvious adaptation...but it does not automatically mean sea mammals evolved gills. They did evolve but in other ways. Some weird things just don't happen.
- bombcar 3y agoThey’d likely have discovered caves or roofs at some point - and have some ability to see in dimmer light.
- HPsquared 3y agoNot having celestial navigation would also make such exploration more difficult.
- mistercow 3y agoYeah, although given that ancient humans figured that out, maybe it wouldn’t take an advanced civilization very long. That’s probably the biggest flaw with the idea. Like, imagine a civilization at our stage, minus the stuff we learned by having a night sky (no universal gravitation; computers and radio, but no GPS; quantum physics but no general relativity, and so on). Now they manage to voyage into the cold, dark night. How quickly can they catch up? Decades maybe, but probably not centuries. I think the other question is cultural. How much do they _care_ about space, when even the basic concept is new and alien, and studying it is very expensive?
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI’d note that navigation was most important on oceans while terrestrial navigation relied on landmarks and maps. I wonder though how much exploration helped lead to an advanced civilization. The exchange of ideas with different cultures was crucial as was the necessity to develop the technologies for exploration beyond navigation alone. It wasn’t until we broadly navigated the planet that we advanced so rapidly after tens of thousands of years of relatively isolated stagnation.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoI have a theory that Western culture developed relatively quickly because the geography is basically easily-farmable land around an inland sea with plenty of islands which is easy to navigate and explore. The Egyptians and the Phoenicians lacked the easily farmable land. Greece was fertile but a little arid, Northern Europe was harsher and riskier, but Rome was in a perfect sweet spot. On the other side of the world China had the farmland but not the inland sea, so there was less motivation for sea-borne trade and exploration. So it all started with a tradition that required basic materials science, knowledge of the weather, currents, and seasons, navigation by the sky, and the politics of war and trade across large distances. And it didn't stop until we had explored the entire planet and taken the first steps into space. In between we had to learn about time, navigation, and planetary weather patterns, how to build and power better ships, and more complex politics. It seems like a very natural progression.
- Galaxeblaffer 3y agoVery interesting idea ! I do wonder though if sufficiently complex life would ever evolve in an almost completely stable climate.
- johngossman 3y agoThe tropics have more life and a more stable climate than the temperate regions. They also are warmer, so that’s not an argument that a stable climate is more amenable to life, but at least a hint it isn’t an overriding factor. I also realize that may not say much about the origin of complex life. Just trying to think of examples.
- Ekaros 3y agoNot to forget deep sea is also very stable in temperature. Being function of denseness of water.
- johngossman 3y agoAn even more extreme version of this is life in the seas under an ice world like Europa.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoHot take: the Great Filter is the fact that we're actually alone as an intelligent species in the universe. Occam's Razor and all that.
- mistercow 3y agoThat’s not an explanation. It’s a restatement of what the great filter is trying to explain.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoOccam's Razor says that we don't see any aliens because none actually ever exist. Anything else is, alas, wishful thinking.
- root_axis 3y agoOccam's Razor would suggest we just don't have the technology to detect them, you'd need extra reasoning to explain why earth is unique among thousands of trillions of planets.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago> ...you'd need extra reasoning to explain why earth is unique among thousands of trillions of planets It is unique by definition, because we happen to live on it. There is no need to reason or explain anything, because it is a simple fact.
- root_axis 3y agoThat meaning of unique doesn't have anything to do with the conversation at hand.
- mistercow 3y agoAgain, that’s not an explanation. An explanation would explain why aliens don’t exist despite apparently ample opportunities for them to.
- lynx23 3y agoThat sounds like a Greg Egan book yet to be written :-) I discovered that it is real fun to think about these things when I read Incandescence. BTW, I am taking recommendations for books similar to that one, it appears I love that subgenre.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoWe’ve had to go up to snowy, oxygen depleted mountaintops to study our own astronomy too. For a while even such study was deemed heretical by the church. There are many potential filters to science. Many still in place with our own species today, even.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- klyrs 3y agoLife is attracted to gradients; I would expect the most interesting behavior at the twilit ring.
- sfink 3y agoBut the article's main point is that the intermediates/gradients in heat and moisture are not necessarily where you expect them to be. If you have a point heat source on one side of an enclosed volume—a big box, say—then in a vacuum the most "interesting" area is halfway between that point and the far wall. But if there's a gas or liquid in the box, convection will produce a flow where the interesting regions are scattered around and that midway point is probably one of the less interesting spots. Life is also attracted to energy. Even if it started in the twilit ring, it would compete to fill the most insolated areas, and would be lushest there. I think it's more like life is attracted to the volume of flow. A gradient is what drives the flow, but the flow has velocity and so sums up the gradient over a history of motion.