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Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

According to the following article, we may very well be one of few intelligent forms of life in our galaxy. In fact, we may be alone.
http://www.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED20000325/news/20000325NEW01d_CI-ALONE.html

Interesting thing, the article mentions that "Trekkies" would find this notion too "depressing to contemplate"

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[This message has been edited by Tahna Los (edited March 27, 2000).]

Posted by Jeff Raven (Member # 20) on :

Yeah well, other people have offered convincing arguments about their ideas and have been wrong too. Take Martin Bernal's "Black Athena" for example... He was determined to prove that Ancient Greek culture came from Egypt... He's been proven wrong time and again, but it was convincing, for a while.

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Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :

Oh, Black Athena...now that brings back some memories. It represents one of the poorer aspects of advocacy as history. Or as one review put it "An ideologically motivated atrocity of fake scholarship."

Regardless, it certainly added something to the historiography, even if it was only to be refuted by other books like Not Out Of Africa or Black Athena Revisited.

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Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

It doesn't really take into account the apparent size of the universe, which is either really, really big, or infinite. So unlikely stuff could still happen somewhere, but far enough away that I'm still not going to run SETI@home.

A few things, though:

"Our solar system is the perfect distance, 25,000 light-years, from the centre of the Milky Way. Any closer, and we would have been clobbered by exploding stars or zapped by radiation from a black hole by now. Too far out, and there wouldn't be enough metal-creating stars to have formed the planet in the first place."

The part about the metal sounds right, but you'd have to get closer to the center of the galaxy for frequent problems with radiation and black holes.

"We're extremely fortunate in having Jupiter in the neighbourhood. Its gravity acts as a shield, sweeping up 99 per cent of the cosmic debris that could otherwise collide with Earth and destroy life (the asteroid it did let through 65 million years ago extinguished the dinosaurs)."

It's probably let quite a bit through, actually, since it's big, but not that big...it's orbit will still leave plenty of room for lots of stuff to get close to the earth. Besides, since gas giants form commonly, the likelihood of getting a planet similar to Jupiter isn't that low.

"And as the third planet in, we're perfectly positioned: Earth neither boils like Venus nor freezes like Mars."

Isn't Mercury really cold, though? The orbit and rotation of planets has a lot to do with the surface temperature too.

"Our moon is relatively large for a planet this size...there is now evidence that it was formed by an impact on the young Earth - yet another happy ``accident'' in the planet's history."

Of course, moon-sized planets that come near earth-sized planets have a chance of being caught in each others' gravity anyway, although that's also not especially likely. More likely is two smaller moons of an earth-sized planet crashing into each other to create a larger one.

We can also hope that some of those way-distant intelligent life forms had the courtesy to travel the universe and terraform/build some planets, but that's hoping for a bit much.

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[This message has been edited by The Shadow (edited March 26, 2000).]

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

That link won't work now that it's tomorrow, by the way.

Anyway, this is an argument that has been around for a long, long time. The problem is that we still don't know what constitutes average for a planetary system. If we judged it on simple statistics, the average planet would be huge, hot, and very, very close to its star. (Forgetting for a moment that current detection methods only allow us to see the really odd planets.)

At any rate, Frank, the points the article brings up are sound. For life similar to our own, at least, you need to be at the right distance from the sun, and you need a big moon. Why? Tides. Without them, the oceans would be one big stagnant pool. Yucky. Though, of course, we can't say that such a planet couldn't have life, as there's plenty of life in big stagnant pools right here on Earth. Also, of the five planets that we can call terrestrial, two of them have large moons. (Earth and Pluto, to be precise.) Again, we need more data! So, uh, everybody grab a telescope.

Also, Mercury can only be considered cold if daily highs of 800 degrees celsius require a coat and mittens. Of course, with no atmosphere, it gets down to several hundred below at night. So it depends on when you go.

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Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

Is a big stagnant pool really that bad? But, as I said, a large moon isn't that hard to come by.

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

Moons that big are pretty hard to come by actually , except when you name is Pluto

Most of the times, something that big turns into a ring or a few tiny moons.

Don't ask why, I just saw it on Discovery

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Well, in regards to Pluto, it isn't so much the size of the moon, but its size relative to the planet.

Yes, stagnant pools are very bad for advanced forms of sea-going life as we know them on this planet. Without tides, the water wouldn't circulate and a great many things would die.

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"What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity."
--
Camper Van Beethoven

Posted by Jeff Raven (Member # 20) on :

Well, stagnant pools would kill higher forms of life on Earth, maybe, but life adapts to its environment, and probably get around that.

As long as life has water, its very possible to exist anywhere.

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

But I was specifically talking about life as we know it. Though it should be noted that lots of things do live in stagnant pools, but nothing we would call particularly "advanced".

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"What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity."
--
Camper Van Beethoven

Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :

Consider the underwater volcanic vents. One can find a great deal of life by these suckers. And I wonder to what extent such vents might add some kind of currents to water devoid of moon induced tides thereby decreasing stagnation.

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Let's see... Mesmerists, Dowsers, Luddites, Alienists, Zoroastrians, Alphabetizers... A-ha! Assassins...
~C. Montgomery Burns

And be sure to visit The Field Marshal project http://fieldmarshal.virtualave.net/

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Well, they certainly stir the water up a bit, and the existance of such life on Earth argues strongly that life can exist just about anywhere. But tides are a specific phenomenon that takes a bit more to produce than a few spa jets.

Again, I'm not saying that life in any form can only exist under certain narrow conditions. The past decade or so has shown that there is life here on Earth living under conditions we might find on Mars or Europa. Certainly not an exceedingly narrow condition. I'm just saying that there is some weight to the argument that to evolve advanced lifeforms, you need tides to stir things up as it were. Of course, all it takes to disprove this is one example. I imagine that extraterrestrial life will prove charmingly destructive to our various theories about what it should be doing.

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"What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity."
--
Camper Van Beethoven

Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

I've fixed the link.

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"My Name is Elmer Fudd, Millionaire. I own a Mansion and a Yacht."
Psychiatrist: "Again."

Posted by Saiyanman Benjita (Member # 122) on :

If the pool was stagnant, then life would not have the need to evolve. It would be accustomed to its own environment, wouldn't it? The movement through the tides and geological phoenomena is what forces the life to evolve. How would land life create itself, if it wasn't forced to? Tell me if I'm wrong, I have no real study in this field.

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Posted by Jeff Raven (Member # 20) on :

Well, it depends on what you believe in... Does evolution occur when there's a force involved to cause change, or does life constantly evolve and change, making it more efficient to its environment? Personally, I believe the latter, and therefore think that Tides aren't necessary for life.

True, water movement is necessary, for current Earth-life anyways, for oxygen. But, if life does bring about itself, it will evolve to its environment, stagnant or not, and find ways around natural obstacles. Does anyone else understand this?

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Er...at the risk of giving this thread a one way ticket to the flameboard, what any of us "believe" is irrelevant. Evolution operates on a certain set of rules.

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"What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity."
--
Camper Van Beethoven

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Well, yes, but do you know for certain what those rules are? I mean, physics works on a set of rules, too, but we still haven't figured out most of them, so there are still different schools of "belief" out there...

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

What generally happens when there is no "need" to evolve, that is, no environmental changes forcing adaptation, is "specialization," when the same life form diverges into similar, yet slightly different forms, each creating its own niche. The problem with specialization is that it makes it that much harder to adapt IF the situation changes and instability is introduced.

The main flaw of the argument is that thus far, the actual statistical sample is vanishingly small, and thusly no concrete solutions may be derived from it. It's like picking one person at random off the Earth, and then deciding that all humans are redheaded blind sex maniacs with a blue Ford car who like football, eat at Taco Bell, and write books about war.

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Now that's random.

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"What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity."
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Camper Van Beethoven

Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

Unless he's talking about himself.

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Well, the only thing true in that sample about ME is the 'blue Ford car,' which is actually a Mercury, but that's close enough. Oh, and there might be some argument in the 'sex maniac' category, but that's it.

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"Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi

[This message has been edited by First of Two (edited March 29, 2000).]

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

So, you don't eat Taco Bell? What kind of freak are you? *L*

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Posted by Baloo (Member # 5) on :

Are lunar tides actually necessary for the formation of complex life forms? Possibly, but has anyone calculated the amount of "agitation" of solar tides alone (they do exist, and are measurable)? Would it be possible that a slightly lesser amount of tides (solar only, or at least primarily in the presence of small moonlets) could provide the amount of motion required?

And what about the effects of solar heating and cooling of, not only the ocean, but the seas themselves? Are they saying that these are insignificant forces? I don't think so.

It sounds to me as though the people who felt most comfortable with the theory that "proved" our solar system of panets to be a relative rarity, and thus life elsewhere impossible, have decided that, in the face of so many new planets being discovered everywhere we look, that some other reason must be found to "prove" that life on earth is unique, and cannot exist elsewhere.

--Baloo

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Posted by Jeff Raven (Member # 20) on :

What Baloo said.

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

I'm not sure anyone is trying to prove that life doesn't exist elsewhere. (That is, aside from the good folks at TBN.) But there is a very valid debate about what sorts of environments life can live in, and how common those environments are.

As many have pointed out, there simply isn't enough data to draw an accurate conclusion.

Anyway, regarding tides: Life in our oceans absolutely requires them. Solar tides do exist, and are a measureable phenomenon, but they are completely overwhelmed by the tidal powers of the moon. They don't do much, in other words.

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"What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity."
--
Camper Van Beethoven

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Well, some Creationists are fond of saying how the universe "must" show design, because the Earth is at the "perfect distance" from the sun, and rotates at "just the right" speed, and a load of other folderol that unsurprisingly sounds a great deal like the aforementioned statement, and is equally unsupported by any hard data.

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Interesting hijack attempt, but in the immortal words of Bart Simpson, buh? You equate the statement that life as we know it can only survive under a very strict set of conditions to random musings from the the Institute of Creation Research? I think you need to take several very deep breaths and refocus your priorities.

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"What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity."
--
Camper Van Beethoven

Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

BTW, my astronomy teacher says that solar tides are about half as effective as lunar tides, which isn't that bad.

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Actually, Sol, those aren't "random musings," they're part of an oft-heard argument on various TV shows like (Oh, what was that show on Channel 40.. "Origins?").

And I was just making the observation that the assumptions "that we're 'unique' because conditions on this planet are 'just right'" are common to both schools of thought."

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

And yet we are unique. I'm willing to bet a whole dollar that you won't be able to find Earthlike life anywhere else. How that idea can be twisted by certain people into "that must mean we're the only folks in the universe" is beyond my desire to comprehend.

Having said that, there is an easy way to either prove or disprove this. If life can be found on, oh, say Europa, then the idea of life being rare gets blown out of the water. No pun intended. Once is chance, but twice is a pattern. Life developing seperately in two locations in a single solar system is a great argument for life being able to arise just about anywhere.

Beyond that, such a discovery could say for sure whether our "type" of life is unique or not. As it stands now, I see no reason why anything about Earth life needs to be universal. All we need to start are self-replicating molecules, and it is likely that there were a whole host of those even here. DNA happened to "win" on Earth, but why should that extend to other planets?

If, on the other hand, you could show that just one extraterrestrial ecosystem was based on structures similar to our own (cells, etc), then I will happily concede that life is far more limited in the developmental choices it can make then I am assuming.

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"What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity."
--
Camper Van Beethoven