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> "It is fun reminiscing about just how special our place in the universe is..." I think you have it slightly backwards there. Life on earth, and us specifical

by SCHiM 12y ago

> "It is fun reminiscing about just how special our place in the universe is..." I think you have it slightly backwards there. Life on earth, and us specifically, don't look the way we do because of chance. The reason we only operate in this specific environment is because we were shaped by our environments. Who knows in what environments life can exist. If you think of life as some sort of self-organizing system it's not unthinkable that 'life' could be possible in places that seem extremely inhospitable to us. Inside a star for example.

acqq 12y ago
In order to have "life" in the sense that can be interesting to us (that means, not the "life" in the sense of something that is organized inside of a some star which is unreachable by us) the properties of chemical elements can be studied and apparently the properties of carbon are such that it is the most probable element for organic chemistry. There are possible alternatives, like silicon, but every alternative is less probable and less efficient that carbon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemis... "Sagan used the term "carbon chauvinism" for such an assumption. Carl Sagan regarded silicon and germanium as conceivable alternatives to carbon; but, on the other hand, he noted that carbon does seem more chemically versatile and is more abundant in the cosmos."
waps 12y ago
This is the anthropic principle, and applies to some of the coincidences. But there are open questions ... If life can adapt, why isn't Mars green ? Why isn't Venus ? At the very least, why aren't the landers picking up cells constantly ? We're seeding those planets with fresh living cells on a daily basis according to a number of papers published 2 years ago. Second it is very unclear how it applies to other required coincidences, like the fine structure constant, or the speed of light. If they weren't in a very narrow range, and at a specific fraction of each other, there wouldn't be any real amount of complexity in the universe. No way in hell there'd be life. You should consider just how narrow the range is and the fact that there's over 20 constants that each have their narrow range. If you wanted to "try" them all, have you considered just how huge a project it would be to search a 20-dimensional space for the right values ? But yes, at the moment the Copernican principle stands in the "consensus" sense, I personally don't believe in it. I don't know where people get it from, in my data space does not look uniform at all. So, please, do realize what it is : it is an article of faith, nothing more. There is no data, nor theory, to justify it. I will say, of course, it is a useful principle. Any pattern you see should be assumed to be nothing special, as that will make you search for new science, which is good. That's just good practice, a way to avoid over fitting. But in popular science it is a dogma, and that's not at all what it's intended to be.

by SCHiM 12y ago

acqq 12y ago

In order to have "life" in the sense that can be interesting to us (that means, not the "life" in the sense of something that is organized inside of a some star which is unreachable by us) the properties of chemical elements can be studied and apparently the properties of carbon are such that it is the most probable element for organic chemistry. There are possible alternatives, like silicon, but every alternative is less probable and less efficient that carbon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemis... "Sagan used the term "carbon chauvinism" for such an assumption. Carl Sagan regarded silicon and germanium as conceivable alternatives to carbon; but, on the other hand, he noted that carbon does seem more chemically versatile and is more abundant in the cosmos."

waps 12y ago

This is the anthropic principle, and applies to some of the coincidences. But there are open questions ... If life can adapt, why isn't Mars green ? Why isn't Venus ? At the very least, why aren't the landers picking up cells constantly ? We're seeding those planets with fresh living cells on a daily basis according to a number of papers published 2 years ago. Second it is very unclear how it applies to other required coincidences, like the fine structure constant, or the speed of light. If they weren't in a very narrow range, and at a specific fraction of each other, there wouldn't be any real amount of complexity in the universe. No way in hell there'd be life. You should consider just how narrow the range is and the fact that there's over 20 constants that each have their narrow range. If you wanted to "try" them all, have you considered just how huge a project it would be to search a 20-dimensional space for the right values ? But yes, at the moment the Copernican principle stands in the "consensus" sense, I personally don't believe in it. I don't know where people get it from, in my data space does not look uniform at all. So, please, do realize what it is : it is an article of faith, nothing more. There is no data, nor theory, to justify it. I will say, of course, it is a useful principle. Any pattern you see should be assumed to be nothing special, as that will make you search for new science, which is good. That's just good practice, a way to avoid over fitting. But in popular science it is a dogma, and that's not at all what it's intended to be.