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Well, if there's life in that ocean, they're probably not tool builders (otherwise we'd have detected something). But microbes and maybe multicellular life isn'

by Udo 13y ago

Well, if there's life in that ocean, they're probably not tool builders (otherwise we'd have detected something). But microbes and maybe multicellular life isn't out of the question. It's also interesting to think about if we should count, say, a global population of whale-equivalents as a civilization or not.

yk 13y ago
I would not rule out that they have a way to build tools, assuming for a moment they exist. So earth technology is closely related to fire as a energy source. ( During the early development for smelting.) But this role could be filled by black smokers, or volcanic activity. But further development would of course be completely different, so I think it is entirely conceivable that we did not detect anything.
- Udo 13y ago
  True, it's a matter of definitions. Octopuses also use tools, but do they qualify as an intelligent civilization? Probably not (yet). We assume, because we have little reference of what an intelligent human-equivalent entity might be like, that they'd probably build very complex tools over time as we have. This judgement of what constitutes an advanced life form sadly carries a cultural component. If we encountered our own species at the very beginning of its intellectual journey, would we have labeled them a civilization? Would we have described them as having human-equivalent intelligence? It's tricky. But then we move hundreds of thousands of years ahead and suddenly there are monumental buildings and clever machines, suddenly you can meet individuals with astonishing capabilities, and now it's very easy to categorize them. So if our hypothetical space Euroctopus species is in its early intellectual development, we might not be able to correctly attribute their intelligence. There's always the possibility of that development being stagnant too, and again we'd have a difficult time recognizing that. Therefore, the only real chances at discerning an intelligent civilization would be by either directly observing its behavior or by looking at the capabilities of their tools.
  - bennyg 13y ago
    The funny thing is, we can only categorize intelligence to the peak and adjacent possibilities of where we're at now. Go back over 100,000 years or more and it would be very hard to categorize us as extremely intelligent beings.
    - yk 13y ago
      Not sure if this is what you meant, but assume you are showing a picture of a programmer to someone from the past. One hundred years ago, the person would probably recognize a computer as some kind of type writer, and from his background then assume that the person is a typist. 200 years ago, there were no jobs which could be described as 'sitting in front of a box,' so the person would have no frame of reference to understand the picture. ( And it seems likely to conclude the same into the future.)
      - pavlov 13y ago
        Medieval monks copying manuscripts had jobs that were essentially "sitting in front of a box all day": http://www.studenthandouts.com/photo_gallery/Pics1/MiddleAges-4.jpg http://www.studenthandouts.com/photo_gallery/Pics1/MiddleAge...
- billforsternz 13y ago
  My criteria for whether a tool building species is really intelligent; Have they successfully avoided creating and extensively using a close relative to C++. (This reflects an afternoon battling boost, smart pointers, dynamic casts etc. etc. etc.)
  - charlieflowers 13y ago
    The Dolphins come out ahead on that one...
gus_massa 13y ago
For some equivalent of a big animal (where big is something like than a bug) I think that it's necessary to have oxygen molecules. I'm almost sure it would be possible to detect them escaping from cracks in the ice. So probably the biggest thing there is a bacteria equivalent. There are alternative weird metabolisms that don't use molecular oxygen, but they are used by bacteria. Also the eukaryotes can do some metabolic steps without oxygen, but these steps don't produce too much energy and they are mostly used as an emergency energy sources.
- nnq 13y ago
  You're actually expecting too many similarities from life that would've evolved independently from Earth. If a certain metabolic pathway is only present in bacteria in Earth's ecosystem, it doesn't mean that you could not find a very optimized version of it in bigger organisms in an independently evolved ecosystem. If you were from a world where photosynthesis is rare and not very efficient, or maybe not present at all in nature (like Europa's dark oceans?), you would probably assume that no large organisms could use such a weird and inefficient process as an energy source, whereas in an open sunlit ecosystem like Earth there are lots and lots of photosynthesizing organism. (I give the example of photosynthesis because it's actually a very complicated process: in order to achieve the kinds of efficiency that they do, the systems in plants and algae use very complicated mechanism that exploit even obscure quantum effects that are probably not used by any other biomolecular systems - there are studies using quantum tunneling to explain some properties of the molecules involved and others that talk about states similar to the ones in superconductors to explain some of the couplings and efficient energy conversions!)
  - gus_massa 13y ago
    It's about universal chemistry rules. For example, it's very difficult to make a family of many complex stable molecules without carbon, so the "organic" chemistry of other words is probably based in carbon as our organic chemistry. Moreover, organic chemistry actually means "carbon based" rather than "life based". Many of these carbon bases molecules are built also by inorganic means in other words and in deep space. It's possible to make some complex molecules with boron and nitrogen, but most of them are not stable enough to bet your life on them. Other main detail is that you need some very energetic reactions, like combining the hydrogen in a molecule with oxygen to produce water. (The smaller example is CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O, but methane is not easy to store, so most of the time earths life depend on the combustion of more complex molecules like sugars of fatty acids.) It's a matter using oxidations and reductions to obtain energy in a weight efficient way. Oxygen is easy to distribute, big organic molecules are easy to store and use in chemical reactions in controlled setting. So if you want to find whales, look for oxygen. In Earth's atmosphere is easy to find some strange non equilibrium mixing of oxygen from plants and methane from cows. (In any case, most of the oxygen and methane on Earth is probably produced by bacteria.) If you are really pessimistic, look for any anomalies in the spectrum. I checked Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Potential_for_extraterrestrial_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Potential_for_ext... . The article says that there are oxygen molecules in Europa! Mostly produced by the decomposition of water by the Sun's radiation. Someone estimated that the concentration of oxygen in water is enough to support fish equivalents, but it's an estimation not a measurement, and estimation are usually optimistic.
stcredzero 13y ago
a global population of whale-equivalents as a civilization or not I think Star Trek IV actually made a good point. When deciding how to deal with alien sentients, observe how they deal with alien sentients. Human beings do pretty poorly in this regard. Imagine our finding sentient cetacean analogues under Europa's ice. What are the chances that whaling industry lobbyists would try to have them classified as animals to avoid awkward political implications for their industry.

by Udo 13y ago

yk 13y ago

I would not rule out that they have a way to build tools, assuming for a moment they exist. So earth technology is closely related to fire as a energy source. ( During the early development for smelting.) But this role could be filled by black smokers, or volcanic activity. But further development would of course be completely different, so I think it is entirely conceivable that we did not detect anything.

Udo 13y ago
True, it's a matter of definitions. Octopuses also use tools, but do they qualify as an intelligent civilization? Probably not (yet). We assume, because we have little reference of what an intelligent human-equivalent entity might be like, that they'd probably build very complex tools over time as we have. This judgement of what constitutes an advanced life form sadly carries a cultural component. If we encountered our own species at the very beginning of its intellectual journey, would we have labeled them a civilization? Would we have described them as having human-equivalent intelligence? It's tricky. But then we move hundreds of thousands of years ahead and suddenly there are monumental buildings and clever machines, suddenly you can meet individuals with astonishing capabilities, and now it's very easy to categorize them. So if our hypothetical space Euroctopus species is in its early intellectual development, we might not be able to correctly attribute their intelligence. There's always the possibility of that development being stagnant too, and again we'd have a difficult time recognizing that. Therefore, the only real chances at discerning an intelligent civilization would be by either directly observing its behavior or by looking at the capabilities of their tools.
- bennyg 13y ago
  The funny thing is, we can only categorize intelligence to the peak and adjacent possibilities of where we're at now. Go back over 100,000 years or more and it would be very hard to categorize us as extremely intelligent beings.
  - yk 13y ago
    Not sure if this is what you meant, but assume you are showing a picture of a programmer to someone from the past. One hundred years ago, the person would probably recognize a computer as some kind of type writer, and from his background then assume that the person is a typist. 200 years ago, there were no jobs which could be described as 'sitting in front of a box,' so the person would have no frame of reference to understand the picture. ( And it seems likely to conclude the same into the future.)
    - pavlov 13y ago
      Medieval monks copying manuscripts had jobs that were essentially "sitting in front of a box all day": http://www.studenthandouts.com/photo_gallery/Pics1/MiddleAges-4.jpg http://www.studenthandouts.com/photo_gallery/Pics1/MiddleAge...
billforsternz 13y ago
My criteria for whether a tool building species is really intelligent; Have they successfully avoided creating and extensively using a close relative to C++. (This reflects an afternoon battling boost, smart pointers, dynamic casts etc. etc. etc.)
- charlieflowers 13y ago
  The Dolphins come out ahead on that one...

gus_massa 13y ago

For some equivalent of a big animal (where big is something like than a bug) I think that it's necessary to have oxygen molecules. I'm almost sure it would be possible to detect them escaping from cracks in the ice. So probably the biggest thing there is a bacteria equivalent. There are alternative weird metabolisms that don't use molecular oxygen, but they are used by bacteria. Also the eukaryotes can do some metabolic steps without oxygen, but these steps don't produce too much energy and they are mostly used as an emergency energy sources.

nnq 13y ago
You're actually expecting too many similarities from life that would've evolved independently from Earth. If a certain metabolic pathway is only present in bacteria in Earth's ecosystem, it doesn't mean that you could not find a very optimized version of it in bigger organisms in an independently evolved ecosystem. If you were from a world where photosynthesis is rare and not very efficient, or maybe not present at all in nature (like Europa's dark oceans?), you would probably assume that no large organisms could use such a weird and inefficient process as an energy source, whereas in an open sunlit ecosystem like Earth there are lots and lots of photosynthesizing organism. (I give the example of photosynthesis because it's actually a very complicated process: in order to achieve the kinds of efficiency that they do, the systems in plants and algae use very complicated mechanism that exploit even obscure quantum effects that are probably not used by any other biomolecular systems - there are studies using quantum tunneling to explain some properties of the molecules involved and others that talk about states similar to the ones in superconductors to explain some of the couplings and efficient energy conversions!)
- gus_massa 13y ago
  It's about universal chemistry rules. For example, it's very difficult to make a family of many complex stable molecules without carbon, so the "organic" chemistry of other words is probably based in carbon as our organic chemistry. Moreover, organic chemistry actually means "carbon based" rather than "life based". Many of these carbon bases molecules are built also by inorganic means in other words and in deep space. It's possible to make some complex molecules with boron and nitrogen, but most of them are not stable enough to bet your life on them. Other main detail is that you need some very energetic reactions, like combining the hydrogen in a molecule with oxygen to produce water. (The smaller example is CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O, but methane is not easy to store, so most of the time earths life depend on the combustion of more complex molecules like sugars of fatty acids.) It's a matter using oxidations and reductions to obtain energy in a weight efficient way. Oxygen is easy to distribute, big organic molecules are easy to store and use in chemical reactions in controlled setting. So if you want to find whales, look for oxygen. In Earth's atmosphere is easy to find some strange non equilibrium mixing of oxygen from plants and methane from cows. (In any case, most of the oxygen and methane on Earth is probably produced by bacteria.) If you are really pessimistic, look for any anomalies in the spectrum. I checked Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Potential_for_extraterrestrial_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Potential_for_ext... . The article says that there are oxygen molecules in Europa! Mostly produced by the decomposition of water by the Sun's radiation. Someone estimated that the concentration of oxygen in water is enough to support fish equivalents, but it's an estimation not a measurement, and estimation are usually optimistic.

stcredzero 13y ago

a global population of whale-equivalents as a civilization or not I think Star Trek IV actually made a good point. When deciding how to deal with alien sentients, observe how they deal with alien sentients. Human beings do pretty poorly in this regard. Imagine our finding sentient cetacean analogues under Europa's ice. What are the chances that whaling industry lobbyists would try to have them classified as animals to avoid awkward political implications for their industry.