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Author | Topic: New life, and new life forms | |||||||||||||||||||||||
subbie Member (Idle past 1276 days) Posts: 3509 Joined: |
Ah, so you're talking temporally, not spatially.
True, as far as that goes. But it at least suggests the possibility of long term continued existence, potentially even beyond the life span of the sun. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate ...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist
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jar Member (Idle past 415 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
But it at least suggests the possibility of long term continued existence, potentially even beyond the life span of the sun. Huh? Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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subbie Member (Idle past 1276 days) Posts: 3509 Joined: |
Technology has existed for only the tiniest fraction of the time that life has been here. But technology might allow us to spread life from this planet to others, where it might have a continued existence for longer than the planet does.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate ...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist
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Blue Jay Member (Idle past 2719 days) Posts: 2843 From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts Joined: |
Hi, Crash.
crashfrog writes: I think Bluejay is right that other life in the universe is likely to be carbon-based, since (as my organic chemistry textbook reminds me) silicon-based life that tried to respirate would exhale silicon dioxide, which is a solid under Earthlike temperatures and pressures! I've dabbled in silicon-based life before too. I invented one that had a respiratory system with multiple pores along the underside that would periodically open to allow grains of silica to trickle out. Static forces generated in specialized organs would ensure that the grains clustered near the pores. -Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus) Darwin loves you.
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jar Member (Idle past 415 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Not sure I see any indications of that, but it still has little to do with what alien life forms might be like.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3985 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 7.2 |
subbie writes: Perhaps some intelligent life could be produced only, each individual arising from the same process but never itself reproducing. We might then see neither reproduction nor evolution: some crystalline process where impurity distributions create complex circuits, with intelligence an emergent property of that complexity.
Can you fill that in a bit more? How might something like that work? I'm having a hard time grasping the concept. I'm tempted to say my intelligence has not adequately emerged for that task. Imagine a world were thin layers of silicon or other crystalline material are laid down in a confined space--the equivalent of tidal pools, porous rock or clays where organic life may have evolved here. Maybe on our alien planet, the night winds blow dust into micro-craters, and then bake it during the day. The crystalline substrate generates electricity via some stress: heat, microwave radiation, gravity. The strata are not pure silicon; some of the impurities conduct electricity: where they conduct through and across layers, they sometimes form circuits. Eventually, enough complexity develops so that feedback processes arise; memory and awareness follow (sure, that's the fuzzy part, just like here). So individuals are produced but they never reproduce--differences between individuals would be the result of random initial conditions rather than evolution. They might live as long as their planet or star. In summary, the basic idea is simple. Since we can lay down silicon to create machine logic and memory, we may someday create true machine intelligence and awareness. Perhaps what we will invent happens naturally under dramatically different conditions on other planets. QED: Intelligence without evolution or reproduction and with nothing to do. Sounds dull. Edited by Omnivorous, : -what Have you ever been to an American wedding? Where's the vodka? Where's the marinated herring?! -Gogol Bordello Real things always push back.-William James
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3985 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 7.2 |
I follow you on the sequence implications of heavier elements in our solar system, but I don't see how the timing could make us the first possible intelligent species in the universe.
If the sun is about 4.7 billion years old, and the most distant observed galaxy is at 12.8 billion light years, it seems there would be plenty of time for many intelligent species to evolve before us.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1488 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
If the sun is about 4.7 billion years old, and the most distant observed galaxy is at 12.8 billion light years, it seems there would be plenty of time for many intelligent species to evolve before us. Well, they have to orbit the second star in their neighborhood too, or else how could they have planets? I guess what I'm saying is, the full life and death of a star seems to be a prerequisite to forming a life-capable star system, so I don't see how there's much time for any other system to have gotten much of a jump on us. The indication (as I recall) is that the last star, the progenitor of the Sun, formed fairly soon after the formation of the universe, but maybe I'm wrong about that. Given the rate of technological advancement in intelligent species, any intelligence with as much as a million years head-start should be engaging in engineering on a galactic scale by now. We should be able to see their public works projects from here.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Like others have said, looking at features that have independently evolved numerous times on Earth should give us a clue.
I would say that sight is very important. Even in the darkest environments on Earth, such as the deep sea, there are highly adapted eyes. Heck, many of the deep sea organisms produce their own light through chemical bioluminescence. This sight should focus on wavelengths that other organisms would either absorb or emit, so we are talking about infrared through UV more than likely. Wavelengths below infrared can pass through organisms while wavelengths above UV tend to destroy biomolecules that we consider important for survival so they shouldn't be in abundance to begin with. We also know that two eyes is better than one if depth perception is important, and it is also handy to have at least one eye on each side of the body to look out for predators. So much like paired appendages was mentioned above, paired eyes also seem important. Once you have sensory adaptations you also need a concentration of neural cells to hand that input. Now we are talking about speed, being that impulses will more than likely be chemical in nature and not electrical. Even in the most advanced species on Earth (us, for example) nerve impulses still travel at about 30 m/s, which is pretty slow compared to 3E8 m/s for electrical currents. The closer the neural cells are to the input the faster the reaction to those inputs. Nature here on Earth has shown us how important this is. All but the simplest Earth animals have ganglia of neural cells located near their eyes, noses, ears, etc. Therefore, I would predict that the "advanced" species would have a head of some kind that housed most of the important senses as well as a collection of neural cells to handle those inputs. There is always a niche for a predator that can react quicker to the presence of prey, and there is always selection pressures on prey to outmaneuver the predators. So I would tend to agree with some sort of symmetry for locomotion, specialized tissues, and a head of some kind to house the most important senses (especially sight) and the brain to run it. Of course, this is for what we would consider to be advanced species. As we all know, millions of species get along just fine without any of these adaptations.
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1045 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
I guess what I'm saying is, the full life and death of a star seems to be a prerequisite to forming a life-capable star system, so I don't see how there's much time for any other system to have gotten much of a jump on us. The indication (as I recall) is that the last star, the progenitor of the Sun, formed fairly soon after the formation of the universe, but maybe I'm wrong about that. Given the rate of technological advancement in intelligent species, any intelligence with as much as a million years head-start should be engaging in engineering on a galactic scale by now. We should be able to see their public works projects from here. Isn't our Sun a third-generation star? Either way, it seem the oldest supernova we've found predates our sun by more time than it's life span, so there might still be plenty of time. I don't think there's any reason to assume a particular rate of technological development. Remember that you're extrapolating from a sample size of one, and the history of technological development on earth does not conform to any sort of steady pattern.
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Artemis Entreri  Suspended Member (Idle past 4250 days) Posts: 1194 From: Northern Virginia Joined: |
God could have another planet where he created everything on it too, where his intelligent design is very evident in the forms of the alien creatures he created to live on this planet.
maybe there is no planet and he created aliens to live and travel through space. I mean we are talking about fiction now, right?
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1488 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I don't think there's any reason to assume a particular rate of technological development. I guess the only assumption I feel I'm making is that, regardless of how fast technology develops it develops instantaneously over geologic time. And if we're talking about a geologic-scale time different between another life-bearing world and ourselves that's going to represent an inconceivably vast gulf between our technology and theirs.
Remember that you're extrapolating from a sample size of one Well, we're pretty much all going to do that.
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onifre Member (Idle past 2972 days) Posts: 4854 From: Dark Side of the Moon Joined: |
If the sun is about 4.7 billion years old, and the most distant observed galaxy is at 12.8 billion light years, it seems there would be plenty of time for many intelligent species to evolve before us. You would have to factor in the core tempurature of the universe, too, as it expands and cools off. Early galaxies may have experienced too high of an ambient temp to sustain life. Just as, in the future, it will be too cold to sustain life. We may find ourselves in just the right conditions for life in the universe, and any intelligent species would have had to emerge almost at the same time, more or less, as us. - Oni Edited by onifre, : No reason given. Edited by onifre, : No reason given.
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CosmicChimp Member Posts: 311 From: Muenchen Bayern Deutschland Joined: |
This is actually exactly the kind of topic I love. To start with answering the question of life diversity we should consider what sources of energy are available? I can think of a few in these few minutes before I have to go. Electromagnetic, gravitational, kinetic, dark and whatever else I've forgotten. Not sure anyone even knows what dark energy is much less what sort of complexity could be living off of it...
I'll be back for more later, great topic.
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3985 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 7.2 |
onifre writes: Omni writes: If the sun is about 4.7 billion years old, and the most distant observed galaxy is at 12.8 billion light years, it seems there would be plenty of time for many intelligent species to evolve before us. You would have to factor in the core tempurature of the universe, too, as it expands and cools off. Early galaxies may have experienced too high of an ambient temp to sustain life. Just as, in the future, it will be too cold to sustain life. We may find ourselves in just the right conditions for life in the universe, and any intelligent species would have had to emerge almost at the same time, more or less, as us. I don't think there is anything special about our galaxy, sun, or us. Of course, we can't know one way or the other, at least not just yet. My problem was with thinking of us as serious candidates for the first intelligent species ever due to the sun's age and the heavier element contributions of its predecessor. I don't see any reason to believe we had a head-start over any other post-first generation star system, and surely there must be billions of them. We can see small bright galaxies about 12.8 billion light years away; I suppose we look much the same from there. Surely those galaxies, like ours, have had time to "mature" and host stars with planets. My totally worthless intuitive hunch is that intelligence is more likely to have appeared everywhere at about the same time than preferentially in some sectors of our universe: given our own intelligent behavior, it may be tragically fortunate that intelligences arise so far apart and are accelerating away ever faster. The question of heat would seem more determined by the particular star in question than the universe or galaxy overall, though I can see that stars near galactic centers or in crowded clusters might be too "hot" in the sense of radiation. But if we were sailing through "empty" intergalactic space along with our sun, wouldn't our planetary conditions remain the same, as they are now while we circle the galaxy in our spiral arm? I'm not disagreeing with crash (or anyone) with any confidence at all; I'm just trying to clarify his argument in my own mind, and so far I can't make it click in a persuasive way. I envy his present academic exposure: it's been years since I did more than skim articles, so I may simply be lacking some basic data that would illuminate the issue for me. Still, we are discovering planetary systems at an accelerating rate, and life may be as common as dirt. Have you ever been to an American wedding? Where's the vodka? Where's the marinated herring?! -Gogol Bordello Real things always push back.-William James
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