Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Science and scientific thought Life On Other Planets

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I have reached a reasonable scientific conclusion. First of all, I am ignoring all religious arguments, and humanity's claim to exceptionalism. All I can claim for us is that we have a real talent for screwing, which is fine for entertainment, but not important to the topic. It all comes down to The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Natural Selection. We have many many proofs that both of these are universal, in the sense that they apply anywhere in the universe.

So how do they interact? Every "decision" made by evolution is a case of the most efficient route of the Second Law "winning". Animal varieties that get out-competed for food die out. A species being successful depends on it's utilization of energy sources. In the big picture, life is just the most efficient means of entropy moving concentrated energy to more disbursed energy. And that "energy" may not be in the form of physical energy, but organization versus disorganization. For example, a pool of concentrated sugar water getting invaded by yeast that can use the sugar. The end result is less concentrated sugar water. High organization, high energy inevitably moving to a less concentrated state. Basic Second Law physics. And all powered by nuclear fusion in the stars.

There are no "lucky accidents" in evolution. It is instead inevitable, just because The Second Law drives it. So my conclusion: There is life everywhere in the universe where it is possible. It may be primitive in some places by our standards. It may not be primitive at all in others. But it will happen, because it has to happen given enough time. And Earth is relatively young by the universe's standards.

I’ve watched several documentaries on the Science, Discovery and History channels on this. Using the Hubble telescope, Seti has determine there may be as many as 300 million habitual planets in our galaxy. Those in the Goldilocks zone, not too hot and not too cold to have liquid water. Chances are that some of those support life. Perhaps the life isn’t the type we would know. Intelligence life, that is a guess. We’re looking for life, trying to pickup radio signals from space. There is in my opinion, probably life out there that hasn’t advanced to radio and life that has advanced far beyond radio. What we’re looking for is approximately a 200-year period in the evolution of life or a species that would use radio. Life out there is probably completely different than ours. We’re carbon based life, life out there may be based on another form. A form of life we wouldn’t recognize as life.

I believe there is life out there, intelligence life. Some may be very primitive, caveman type. Others may be a million years more technological advanced than us. That they may look on us as we would look on ants. I do think it crazy to look on us as unique, alone in the billions of galaxies in our universe and who knows how many universes exist. I do think that other intelligence life out there will find us first before we find them. A form of life capable of star travel, of being able to fold space and time. Maybe they have already found us, but thought us so primitive we’re not worth the bother and they moved on. Just my opinion.

Maybe, in most places where life evolves, there is not a freakish ape who becomes a global dominant predator and destroyer of worlds.

Perhaps on other worlds life exists in harmony as it did before we evolved into the ultimate destructive force.

Hmm, I’m sure life takes hold and evolves differently on each planet where life can take hold and evolve. Perhaps we’re, humankind is a freak of nature. Without the asteroid impact in the Yucatan 65 million years ago, there probably would be no humans or apes for that matter. I think it’s a mistake to think that life evolves the way it did here on earth on other planets.

Maybe life doesn’t need to be on a planet in the Goldilocks zone with liquid water? Hear of extremophiles? Then there has been life found, survived on the outside of the ISS. Bacteria for sure, but life non-the-less. We keep thinking that life out there will be like us, like life on earth, perhaps different in minor ways, but basically like life as we know it. Life on distant planets and moons may be nothing like us or life on Earth. Life could be so different out there; we wouldn’t even realize we discovered life after we discovered it.

Speaking of destructiveness of humankind, I think we’ll blow ourselves up before we even get a chance to go seek life out there. Ever hear of the Fermi Paradox, now that is interesting.

https://www.livescience.com/fermi-paradox

Then how about panspermia?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/panspermia

Intelligence may be an evolutionary dead end.

Interstellar travel will probably never be feasible. To us or any other intelligent species out there in the far reaches of space.

It's in the same realm as pocket-sized fusion units.

I think interstellar travel is very feasible. But not for humanoids as such without modifications. If we start traveling to distant planets, it will be by robots, robotics and AI. Not in human form or human beings as we know them. Perhaps we become genetically improved to survive in space, then again, maybe not. My bet is with AI and robots. Perhaps even a human brain transplant into a robotic body. Who knows? We do have the technology today to plug a human brain into a robots body, but not the transplant yet.

I do firmly believe that if humankind is to survive as a species, it must leave this world and begin colonializing other planets. We’re a sitting duck for another asteroid or comet hit like the one 65 million years ago or the eruption of a super volcano, nuclear holocaust, draught, ice age and more. Maybe some cockroach who survived one or more of the above, which evolved into an intelligent being will be studying the fossilized remains of us like we study dinosaurs.

There is a particular progression of element creation that stars go through, that seems to be pretty well understood. Carbon is abundant, as well as oxygen and hydrogen. If conditions are in the Goldilocks range, and there is lots of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen around, there will be water. H2 +O2 --> water is thermodynamically favored. The Second Law drives it. If there was such a process for silicon, then there could be silicon-based life, but the main reaction for silicon seems to be Si +O2 --> silicon dioxide, AKA rocks. Silicon-based life never happens here, and we do have environments spanning the entire Goldilocks range of liquid water. Now in some much colder or much hotter environment, other processes might be dominant. There could even be intelligence operating inside stars!

I suspect we won't have interstellar travel by humans until we figure out how to upload human minds into other, much more robust hardware. That travel is going to take a very long time, include some very intense physical strains, and be incredibly boring if we can't shut our selves off for the boring bits. And if you can upload minds, you could duplicate them, and send out hundreds or thousands of probes in all directions while staying (relatively) safe at home. If any make it back, their experiences could be shared by something like the upload process.

I suspect intelligence has Natural Selection favoring it. Humans are excellent at fulfilling The Second Law by doing things like burning fuel in the forms of wood, peat, coal, oil, and now radioactives. Why wouldn't that apply to other organisms on other planets? Of course, their philosophies, religions, social organizations, etc. will be completely different from ours.

All makes good sense to me pondering. Perhaps continuing what we’re doing, sending robots, rovers, satellites to other words is the best. We are experimenting with AI, having an AI capable of repairing itself and perhaps even regeneration or pro-creation of other robot AI’s is the way to travel the Universe. Without humans having to leave home. Now man wants to travel, to explore himself, it is built into our genes. Our bodies aren’t designed for the riggers of space, the G forces, the time it would take to get from point A to point B among many other things. Hence robots don’t have that problem.

Then there’s genetic engineering. Making modifications to man’s physical body so maybe he could live in the Martian Atmosphere or on other planets. Alpha Centauri is Earth’s closest star, approximately 4.3 lightyears away. Traveling at 30,000 MPH it would take almost 80,000 earth years. So we must develop a faster mode of travel than our rockets of today. Solar Sails, anti-gravity drives, are some suggestions to achieve faster speeds. Being able to create worm holes to pass through and folding of space are some other ideas. None within reach today.

Sending robots seems to be our only alternative today until we achieve a great breakthrough.

This is not quite dealing with life on other planets, but close. I wonder if there are others who had the same thoughts as I when we first landed on the moon back in 1969. With that landing I was sure we would have a base on the moon within 10 years. Have man set foot on Mars within 20. None of that happened. I suppose I was a dreamer watching too much sci-fi on TV and in the movies. But back in 1969, I would have sworn that moon base would become a reality along with man setting foot on Mars. Perhaps even colonizing Mars in my lifetime as in the Martian Chronicles.