Do you still think we are alone in the universe...

Originally posted by Arrakis
Well, you have some interesting ideas, but they are mostly based on what we know about life on our planet. The older I get the more I realize how little i know about anything. 😕

BTW, when I was a kid I saw a SF movie where we landed on Mars. Now we all know the atmosphere is thinner on Mars than on the Earth, right? So the writer designed this monster wi ...[text shortened]... and then adapting it to a new invironment.
Perhaps a new way of thinking about life is better.

That was one of the points I intended to make about our hypothetical planet, it would have to evolved tremendous genetic repair ability way beyond ours, assuming these beings use some kind of genetic code like all earth life does. One thing for sure, UV can sterilize any kind of life form because it breaks down carbon bonds. Of course you could speculate they use silicon, just down the list from carbon which has been speculated to death but no life forms on earth have ever been found to be based on silicon even though there is 20 percent silicon in the earths crust. You would think with that much silicon around it would have beaten carbon to the punch but it was not to be. Carbon is hundreds of times more versitile in the kind of atomic bonds it can make with itself and other molecules. One hint coming out of the probes and telscopes of today is Titan and Mars both have methane in the atmosphere, mars at about 10 PPB and Titan has an atmosphere about 1.5 times earths pressure and about 5 percent methane, there are studies going on now trying to figure out if it is possible for that methane to be the result of bacterial forms on those two planets. Methane can and does come from volcanoes on earth but the volcanoes on mars are thought to be long extinct yet three separate groups have found a decent amount of methane that has a good chance of being the result of biology. And maybe even on frozen Titan. It is known that Titan has LAKES and rivers of methane because it is the active erosional force there. If life is found on both those planets it will for sure narrow down our ideas of what life would be like elsewhere in our vacinity of the galaxy. My bet would be on Alpha Centauri as an extremeley interesting place to look for life, if you go there, it is only a bit over 4 LY away and you get to look at THREE stars not one, the main star is a sister to the sun so it might have planets like here. Thats where I would place my bets on the nearest interstellar life. And showing life to exist on mars and maybe even having similar kind of structures, like our genes and chromosomes and so forth would prove beyond doubt that parallel development can follow similar paths. It may also be shown the two planets, Mars and Earth, seeded one another due to their proximity and the increased likelyhood of meteroids carrying bacteria that survives the trip and one seeding the other so generating similar life that way. If life is found on Titan, and it had genes similar to earth life, it would be way way less likely to have been cross seeded from earth because of the distance involved making it almost statistically impossible for meteors to go from Titan to Earth or vs versa. So we may not have to go interstellar to find extraterrestrial life, it may be alive and well right in our own solar system for starters.

Originally posted by sonhouse
If life is found on Titan, and it had genes similar to earth life, it would be way way less likely to have been cross seeded from earth because of the distance involved making it almost statistically impossible for meteors to go from Titan to Earth or vs versa.

I agree. Which brings us to the question of where did life come from?

I'm sure you are aware about the comet theory - that the comets spread the seed of life to all places in our solar system (universe?) and that life evolved wherever the environment permitted it to.

There's one thing that I have a problem with in that theory. They speculate that the comets deposited the water on the earth. Well, 75% of the surface of earth is water; far too much water for the amount that comets may have left. So where did all the water come from?

Originally posted by Arrakis
I agree. Which brings us to the question of where did life come from?

I'm sure you are aware about the comet theory - that the comets spread the seed of life to all places in our solar system (universe?) and that life evolved wherever the environment permitted it to.

There's one thing that I have a problem with in that theory. They speculate that the c ...[text shortened]... oo much water for the amount that comets may have left. So where did all the water come from?

Comets early in the history of the solar system may have had more water than today. Earth got most of its water a long long time ago so that may be the answer. But the answer about where life came from may be more complicated than anything we find in the solar system. The precursers of life may have come through our solar system from interstellar clouds which pass through the solar system from time to time, we are presently in a bit of a hole although a big cloud is on its way as we speak but won't get here for thousands of years. The idea is the precurser molecules are formed in space and end up being trapped in the atmosphere of earth and thense to the oceans and in ice and clays where they undergo further development way before life begins, with the formation of membrane like molecules that can trap other molecules inside and thus be a nesting point for further reactions that over time increase the complexity of these molecules till one day, they start reproducing and boing, you have life. A tad bit simplified I know but it's one possiblity.
There is an interesting article in New Scientist about what at least the color of plants may be like on alien planets with suns that have a differant color mix than our sun:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11578

BTW, I was close on my estimate of the distance of the new planet, it seems to be 14 times closer, I guessed ten times, so it's under 7 million miles from its sun. The star also would look about 20 times bigger than Sol. So 14 times closer can be a real bummer if Gilese581 is as active as some dwarf's are. I don't know about that specific star however. Close though, 20 LY away. There will be a frantic effort to dig into that star deeper and deeper in the coming decades I predict.

Originally posted by azalin76
I've never thought we were alone in the universe, it's a big world out there.


I LOVE this kind of 'stuff'.

Well it's a long way from finding out there is a planet that MAYBE has liquid water to one that has oceans and little fishies in the deep blue sea. All they know right now is the heat from its sun should keep a planet with an atmosphere in a range that COULD ALLOW liquid water. They are in no way saying they have found a water world. They won't figure that out for decades till telescopes two generations later than the present ones are put either in orbit in deep space. To get real data you have to get past the orbit of Neptune or pluto to avoid what is called Gegenshine, probably spelled it wrong, to tired to google it in. Its a stupid cloud of dust and ice particles that makes a bit of a fog when telescopes look through it. No big deal for most observations but it can get in the way of really detailed looks at alien planets so you either figure out how to X it out of your data or you put a telescope around the vacinity of Pluto or beyond. Good luck on that one!

Originally posted by sonhouse
Well it's a long way from finding out there is a planet that MAYBE has liquid water to one that has oceans and little fishies in the deep blue sea. All they know right now is the heat from its sun should keep a planet with an atmosphere in a range that COULD ALLOW liquid water. They are in no way saying they have found a water world. They won't figure that ...[text shortened]... our data or you put a telescope around the vacinity of Pluto or beyond. Good luck on that one!

Maybe their fish don't have mercury in them. 😵

Originally posted by Arrakis
Maybe their fish don't have mercury in them. 😵

On a slightly differant note, I just came across this article by Florida State University and a Professor Wang there who is now a vice principle in charge of research. You may remember the quest for the space elevator, we need very strong and lightweight materials, 10 times lighter than steel but 50 times stronger. Well there is this stuff they are working with at FSU, called 'Buckypaper', based on Buckminsterfullerenes, the C-60 molecule discovered in 1985 by Sir Harold Kroto, who is also BTW starting a new science inititive in the way science is taught to grade school kids by combining art and science, he won the nobel prize in '96 for his work on buckyballs.
Well now they have made a form of paper out of buckyballs that is 10 times lighter than steel and not 50 times but 250 times stronger!
The article doesn't even mention the link to space elevators but it was the first thing that popped up in my mind! This stuff has other amazing properties also, like the most thermally and electronically conductive stuff around, more thermally conductive than diamond, the previous champ and better conductor than silver, the also previous electron champ. It sounds like a revolution happening before our very eyes. Can't wait to see what they come up with. They also talk about making aircraft immune to EMP's (electromagnetic pulses) and hiding electronic signatures from enemy radar, all kinds of military applications but the main thing I gleaned is a material to make the cable of the space elevator.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051021020720.htm

Originally posted by Arrakis
If there is life on this 'other earth' it's only reasonable that it could be advanced, maybe a million years beyond ourselves. And here we are looking for other 'earth-like planets' so don't you think that a more advanced race might do the same thing?

Explains those UFO's poking around here. 🙂

Perhaps they killed themselves off a million years ago.. if they're anything like us.

P-

Originally posted by Arrakis
If there is life on this 'other earth' it's only reasonable that it could be advanced, maybe a million years beyond ourselves. And here we are looking for other 'earth-like planets' so don't you think that a more advanced race might do the same thing?

Explains those UFO's poking around here. 🙂

Well actually, at 20 LY away, OUR equipment could pick up our own TV broadcasts and our radio telescopes find no signals of any kind from that planet. Now due to the proximity to earth it could be the postulated aliens could have gone through a phase we are going through right now on earth: the transition from RF broadcasts to other bands like Terawaves or IR, both of which are totally contained inside our atmosphere. There is a Ghz wavelength that is transparent, I think about 386 GHZ, a very high frequency indeed, that can penetrate the atmosphere which will make that band useful for satellite signanls but they are by definition very narrow band transmissions so the effect of our increasing sophistication of technology is we will effectively be going radio silent, so that leaves basically a century of indiscriminate RF broadcasting as if we were the only ones in the universe. Now the thing is, that represents a one century slice of RF, a 100 light year slice of energy slushing its way through the galaxy. So suppose we all go to IR bands which means RF goes silent. So some civilization X, say its 5000 LY away and has the means to detect artificial broadcasts from that distance. The problem here is they only have a 100 year window in which our signals are present. So suppose their ability to detect us at 5000 LY away happened 50,000 years ago and they subsequently died off or lost interest in radio astronomy over that time frame. Then our signals would pass right by them never to be heard. Or suppose a race that is BEHIND us in development, say 10,000 years behind us so in our year 12,000 they will have the capability to hear us at 5000 LY away. No help, our 100 year long pulse will be long gone and 12,000 LY into the galaxy and they would never hear of us. You see the problem here? We on earth have no way whatsoever of knowing if there are aliens in the first place, we would have strong evidence their COULD be aliens but going from COULD to CERTAIN is a big step. So there could be civilizations out there in all levels of development from cavemen style with little or no technology to ultra sophisticates who have long ago lost the need for such toys, maybe by now communicating by telepathy or some quantum trick that makes instant communications a billion LY apart a reality, who knows. But the gist of that is every civilization that may go through our level of sophistication will have a fairly narrow window of opportunity for anyone else in our galaxy to pick up such signals. One thing we know for as a fact, on earth civilizations come and go. It was only a whim of fate that the ancient babylonians did not run with their batteries we found fossil evidence for, 5000 year old electric batteries used mainly for electroplating gold onto statues and some say to make enough voltage, maybe 50 such batteries in series to shock the crap out of temple goers who touched two terminals on some diety statue, there is that theory going around they could have used electricity for such purposes. But whatever the case, they did not go on to find the full use of electricity, did not invent calculus, etc., they had a good chance for such back then if they did come up with batteries but for whatever reason, blew it (from our 5000 year later viewpoint).
So even if the inhabitants of planet X undergoes a technical phase, it will not be long lived for a lot of reasons and therefore you have a lot poorer chance of pointing radio telescopes at the sky and hope for a return of the 'WOW' signal. It might happen now, it might have already happened as in the WOW event or it might not be destined to happen for 50,000 years. So thats the bad news. The good news is, if such a signal is present when a radio telescope points at it and its most anywhere in our whole galaxy, our technical ability is over the top to detect such a signal, we can tease out signals totally buried in the noise, in fact do it all the time for space probes and we continue to get better at is as computers get up to PETA flop areas and we can analyze the crap out of those buried signals which allows us to communicate with probes 10 billion miles away by now and having a peanut whistle RF transmitter.

Originally posted by Eric Cartman
Our brains are incapable of comprehending the unknown, and vast knowledge that is out there. We assume in order for life to exist on another planet there must be water.

Whilst I agree it is arrogant to suggest that we 'know' that life must conform to certain rules, I spent four years studying for a masters in Biochemisty, and I can tell you that even the unknown probably has to follow scientific principles.
One can always say "but you don't know for sure" of course, but science doesn't work on the "you can't prove me wrong" principle, it works on the "what does the evidence say" principle, and the presence of water is believed to be pivotal to the existence of life for many reasons beyond the scope of this thread - not least that for metabolism to exist, you need a stable solute for everything to dissolve in for the chemical reactions necessary for life to take place.

Oh, and if there are a million stars in the visible universe for every grain of sand on earth, every mathematician will tell you that if (as we believe) life can and will occur spontenously again and again if the conditions are correct, then there is an almost infinately close to definate probability that life does exist elsewhere in the universe. Whether it is intelligent is another matter.

Originally posted by Policestate
Whilst I agree it is arrogant to suggest that we 'know' that life must conform to certain rules, I spent four years studying for a masters in Biochemisty, and I can tell you that even the unknown probably has to follow scientific principles.
One can always say "but you don't know for sure" of course, but science doesn't work on the "you can't prove me fe does exist elsewhere in the universe. Whether it is intelligent is another matter.

That's one I haven't heard before, 'Infinitely close to definite'.
Can you narrow that one down a bit🙂
Seriously, in light of the discovery of methane on mars, it points to the high probability we won't have to even look much beyond earth to find life. I think I would win a bet there is already life on mars. Bacteria maybe only but still life. After that discovery, the next big question would be, does that life form relate to earth life, that is to say, did earth life come originally from mars in the form of a meterorite? Or alternately, from Earth to Mars. Either way, such a discovery would point to a genetic structure related to our forms.
The bigger question is life on say Titan or on of the outer moons, if life was discovered there, is it related to earth life genetically or can be shown to have a common origin, like from a seeding interstellar cloud, whether through an actual bacteria like form of life itself or the precursors which would lead to all life in our solar system being shown to have common origins. If a future discovery of life in the outer system, on Titan or Ganymede, say, and it has no common features with earth, then the conclusion may be life of many kinds can happen in the galaxy, and of course our milky way is only one of also billions.
All in all it's a good bet to bet on life elsewhere. There is nothing particularly unique about our solar system, that has been proven already and we can see stars extremely close, like Alpha Centauri, 4 odd LY out that is a virtual twin sister to Sol. That's where I personally would place my bets on life in the interstellar world. Think about it. Where else so close can you find not one but THREE stars with probably an entourage of planets around each one and it has already been proven they are far enough apart each system can have stable planetary orbits so, such a deal, three for one. Looks like a no-brainer to me as to what interstellar destination we send the very first probe to. That has to be tempered with what we find about that planet just found around Gileise581, at 20 LY away, that is another very close destination possible. Still I would go with AC if I were in charge. Three for the price of one would be a nearly unassailable argument.

Originally posted by sonhouse
That's one I haven't heard before, 'Infinitely close to definite'.
Can you narrow that one down a bit🙂

Infinitely close to a probabilty of 1 - which makes it 'definate'.

But you are right, it did sound like boll*cks 🙂