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So many solar systems out there, life evolved in many planets for sure. No proof but no doubt.
by bikamonki 2y ago
So many solar systems out there, life evolved in many planets for sure. No proof but no doubt.
- tomrod 2y agoWe have proof. Us.
- wyldfire 2y agoThe posit was "life evolved in many planets for sure" but your evidence is "us"?
- tomrod 2y agoWe are a necessary but insufficient part of the proof of life. One cannot say "no proof" when necessary proof has been achieved. All that remains is a second example -- the first took several billion years to achieve self awareness. Like they say, the first million is the hardest.
- nashashmi 2y agoBut that is a belief that says it can happen again. It is not a proven belief. And the whole reason we are looking out in space is to prove it. But I don't think we will find it. Life is special. The earth is special. And all the planets and all the stars and all the solar systems and all the galaxies cannot make something special again. So alas, we are earth. and we are all that is out there. And the rest of the universe is just there for our awe. That is how special we are.
- tomrod 2y agoI don't think life is special. I'm interested to understand the range of its generation. Multicellular life is certainly less common, and sapience is also less common (and may not be only an emergent property of multicellular life) than just replicating chemical structures. Certain pushes in Earth's history likely shaped and sculpted current state, but the general factors aren't terribly uncommon (water, Goldilocks zone, somewhat stable solar systems, etc.). Moons at our size are less common, and whether that is crucial is unknown. Snowball earth and hell-phase may be common. Plate tectonics may be a limiting factor. I look forward to humanity discovering this, then finally agreeing that perpetuation of sapience generally or humanity specifically beyond the heat death of the universe is a good goal, much better than the common banal drivel that drives our wars or religions today.
- nashashmi 2y ago> finally agreeing that perpetuation of sapience ... beyond the heat death of the universe is a good goal, much better than the common banal drivel that drives our wars or religions today. If you are looking for a goal, then you are looking for a fight or a war. Instead, a good goal is what comes from the good lessons of religions: the idea that humanity is nothing, that you are nothing, that your plans are nothing, and all that matters is the creator and the rewards he set abound around the problems that you struggle against. Lessons like good vs evil are derived from this paradigm. And the paradigm also inspires studying the universe from obsession with the creator's enigma. OTOH all ideas that lead to war and conflict grow from obsession with the self. If not the self, then with your people, and if not the people then with your hatred for anyone other than your self and your people.
- ekianjo 2y agoLife? Probably. Something that has thinking capabilities? Much more doubtful.
- m3kw9 2y agoOne proof is that we are thinking, and so are dogs, cats and monkeys to a lesser extent.
- ekianjo 2y agoThat's Earth. There is no model to say that life always goes on that way. We just have no clue.
- virtue3 2y ago"Astronomer Frank Drake created a formula to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way. Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan modified the equation to calculate the odds that Earth was the first intelligent life in the universe. They concluded that the odds of Earth being the first are less than one in 10 billion trillion, which suggests that other intelligent species have likely evolved." 1 in 10 billion trillion is some pretty serious odds. It does get more complicated if we factor in life happening quickly enough without an extinction event. But after looking at images like this there is just NO WAY we are the only ones.
- JohnBooty 2y agoI don't really doubt that life with human-level (or greater) intelligence has evolved at least a few times. What I'm more pessimistic about is how long such intelligence might live. How many civilizations reached a point of harnessing nuclear power and then wiped themselves out with nuclear war?
- bigiain 2y agoI think even that's perhaps a warped anthropocentric view of intelligence? Think about other earth-centric scenarios, and try and imagine if dolphins or octopuses or fungus or maybe even insect colonies or plant ecosystems had "won" and become the apex lifeforms on earth instead of humans. I wonder just how different concerns like "civilisations" and "war" and "nuclear power" would have played out in those cases? I wonder if assumptions like "industrial revolutions" and the inevitability of scientific discovery being used in detrimental ways like we have done with nuclear science actually correlate with "intelligence"?
- ants_everywhere 2y ago"But where is everybody?" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
- SoftTalker 2y agoThey are all wondering the same thing. Distances are so vast that the overwhelming probablity is that we'll just never notice each other.
- gwd 2y agoHow long did it take modern humans to completely colonize Earth, such that there are few places you can go on Earth and not meet any humans? Less than 10k years for sure. If we become a space-faring civilization, how long will it take us to colonize the galaxy, such that there are few places you can go and not find evidence of humans around? Not more than a million years or so. So if intelligent life -- capable of becoming a space-faring civilization -- is common, why is the galaxy not colonized already? Kursgesagt has a good video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjtOGPJ0URM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjtOGPJ0URM
- noisy_boy 2y ago> So if intelligent life -- capable of becoming a space-faring civilization -- is common Maybe it doesn't have to be common; incredibly rare is totally fine when your multiplier is the entire universe.
- darkwater 2y agoThese ideas (just like the "dark forest" concept by Liu Cixin) are based on the fact that every intelligent specie out there is driven exactly by the same instincts as ours. It can be, but you cannot be certain until you meet them. Also, meeting other species might take millions of years, so at every effect we would be safe for a loooong time anyway.
- SoftTalker 2y ago> how long will it take us to colonize the galaxy The Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across. So at least that long assuming we can ever attain near-light-speed travel (unlikely). And due to cosmic inflation, many other galaxies are receeding at faster than light speed, so we could never get there. There could be a lot of intelligent life (as intelligent as us, maybe more so) that can never realistically travel beyond their local star systems, and we'd never notice them.
- shiroiushi 2y agoNo, there's only one solar system in the entire universe. There's countless star systems though, but only one of those stars is named Sol. /pedant
- thfuran 2y agoYou can't know that there's only one named sol by the locals.
- Yeul 2y agoOne day we'll be sued by aliens for trademark infringement.
- WhitneyLand 2y agoIf that’s where we’re going I’ll try to pedant-raise you. Assuming the cosmological principle is true and the universe is infinite, wouldn’t we be guaranteed an infinite number of Sols? ;)
- patrickmcnamara 2y agoDo people actually call the Sun "Sol"? I thought that was more of a video game thing.
- shiroiushi 2y agoThe Romance languages use that name (or something very closely related). English uses "Sun", but just as it borrows a ton of stuff from Latin/French/etc., it also borrows "Sol" for its word "solar". Also, Captain Archer in Enterprise used the name Sol when making contact with aliens.
- wongarsu 2y agoAnd in Germanic mythology the personification of the sun is Sól. In PIE it's sunnōn. In some languages that evolved to some variation of sun or son, in some to became sol (notably Latin). And many use both variations in some capacity
- dev1ycan 2y agoI mean there is a very non 0 chance that Europa (moon) itself has life in it, it might not be more than very basic life, but there is a non zero chance that it does have it.
- beAbU 2y ago"No proof but no doubt" is such a great way to put it.
- pbhjpbhj 2y ago"It" being pure anti-scientific belief?
- alok-g 2y ago>> No proof but no doubt. There's still doubt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#Range_of_results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#Range_of_result...
- slekker 2y agoWhat we know about mathematics can't prove or disprove things we simply don't have any idea of. Think as if other beings would live in a different frequency plane (outside of our 3 spacial + 1 time), our instruments and theorems can't detect that.
- alok-g 2y agoThat's right. But it does create doubt. To prove, we would need to find such life. To not have doubt, we need to have a reasonably high confidence that such life is there. However, the estimates are so wild and range from very unlikely to no-doubt. Thus, there is doubt (to the best we understand).
- dwayne_dibley 2y agoISn't the doubt simply the 'when' rather than the 'if'?
- alok-g 2y agoIf you read through the link, the estimation for.probability of finding life elsewhere ranges from practically none to very high. When the former is also a.part of that range, could it not be that we actually do not have life anywhere else? I think it's not a question of when or a 'no doubt' case. We simply do not know enough. If the calculations were to say there's very high chances of the universe teeming with life at many places, but life is not 'found' yet, then I would say it like 'no proof but no doubt'.
- pbhjpbhj 2y agoWhat religion do you consider that to be? It's a widely expressed belief, but I don't think I know the name of it.