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Dec 6th, 2017
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Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180 |
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. I dunno...How many species on earth are burning fuel? One. And if they keep burning sh*t earth will become uninhabitable. That isn't intelligence.
Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 17,177 Likes: 254
It's the Despair Quotient! Carpal Tunnel
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It's the Despair Quotient! Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 17,177 Likes: 254 |
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. The real disappointment is the realization that absent some miracle quirk of physics beyond our ken, the likelihood we could ever travel to and reach another civilization is near zero. I suspect that most if not all civilizations everywhere in the Universe die out before they ever get a chance at interstellar travel. There very well may have been millions of civilizations more advanced than ours in existence millions of years ago, and they may very well have winked out for a million possible reasons. I bet all of them harbor or harbored dreams of arriving elsewhere in the Universe and meeting another race of beings on another planet. I remain more than a bit skeptical of visitors from another planet, but I doubt we're alone or even remotely unique, or even special. We are lake trout and we may never ever interact with a single starfish in millions of generations, but the evidence for the possible existence of starfish is provable.
"The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals" DVD
deepfreezefilms.com
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1 member likes this:
Greger |
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Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257
Pooh-Bah
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OP
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257 |
There may well be universal laws that make interstellar travel rare. But the upper speed limit of light speed is not one of them. Our nearest neighbor is less than 5 light years away. If we can approach that speed, it would be possible to visit other stars within a human life time. There may be a LOT of more intelligent races, but they may have figured out some good reasons why interstellar travel is not useful. Moving information might be very useful, and we may just not be on the "interstellar network" yet.
We've only sent a tiny number of objects beyond our solar system yet. So we may need to be patient. Imagine somebody sending us instructions on how to connect using a radio we have not invented yet.
Educating anyone benefits everyone.
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Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180 |
So we may need to be patient We need to concern ourselves more with our own survival as a species before we concern ourselves overmuch about life on other planets. The likeliest scenario I can imagine is an interstellar traveler stopping in someday and finding that civilization had once existed here, proving to them that there is life on other planets.
Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...
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1 member likes this:
Jeffery J. Haas |
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Joined: Sep 2019
Posts: 2,994 Likes: 63
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Sep 2019
Posts: 2,994 Likes: 63 |
I think for the human species to survive, it must move off this planet. Besides man made destruction of the species due to a nuclear holocaust, you have natural ones. Asteroids or comets hitting the Earth like they did 65 million years ago doing away with the dinosaurs making room for mammals and mankind to take over. You have super volcanoes which also could easy destroy us. If not total destruction of us humans, then send man back into the caves with no technology whatsoever. Hunter/gathers for those who survive. Massive solar flares, loss of our magnetic field, many other ways to destroy the human race.
I do believe there is life out there. But perhaps we shouldn’t be searching so hard to find it. We may be bringing unwanted attention to ourselves. When ET does find us, he may not be friendly. Any ET capable of interstellar travel could swat us away like a fly.
It's high past time that we start electing Americans to congress and the presidency who put America first instead of their political party. For way too long we have been electing Republicans and Democrats who happen to be Americans instead of Americans who happen to be Republicans and Democrats.
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Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 17,177 Likes: 254
It's the Despair Quotient! Carpal Tunnel
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It's the Despair Quotient! Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 17,177 Likes: 254 |
So we may need to be patient We need to concern ourselves more with our own survival as a species before we concern ourselves overmuch about life on other planets. The likeliest scenario I can imagine is an interstellar traveler stopping in someday and finding that civilization had once existed here, proving to them that there is life on other planets. Like an interstellar overton window rule that postulates the maximum time range between the dawn of a civilization and its final dying gasps, the window of time between crude implements and spoken language and interstellar mastery is a long period, but it's not even the blink of an eye to interstellar distances, even when approaching the speed of light. Hence my theory that it is possible that numerous extraterrestrial civilizations got to the brink of achieving star travel but their people died out before they could contact anybody with enough brains to understand the event in scientific terms...or vice versa. Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch. ![[Linked Image from upload.wikimedia.org]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/64/Frank_Zappa_-_Ship_Arriving_Too_Late_to_Save_a_Drowning_Witch.png/220px-Frank_Zappa_-_Ship_Arriving_Too_Late_to_Save_a_Drowning_Witch.png)
"The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals" DVD
deepfreezefilms.com
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
I think for the human species to survive, it must move off this planet. I’ve heard that one of the triggers for laughter is an unexpected sudden juxtaposition of concepts that just don’t mesh rationally. I’m speechless and laughing now!
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180 |
Moving off this planet would require a planet B and a means to get there. Neither of which is liable to become available in the next 100-1000 years. I'm absolutely in favor of space telescopes and exploration within our limited means, but Mars is not our new home in the sky.
Despite all our many advances, rockets are still all we got. Chinese had those 1000 years ago.
Whatever science might be used or money spent to send a few colonizers off into space would be better allocated towards keeping this planet livable.
Yes, an asteroid might strike us dead in an instant! But so what? We are nothing special.
Spreading our wonderful race throughout the galaxy is a horrible idea! They'd all just poison their worlds and go seeking new ones...
Like the Europeans poisoned life for so many and forced them to immigrate for political and religious freedom...where they in turn poisoned life for the Native Americans as they swept westward to the next ocean. Now they've run out of continents to exploit and poison and they need entire new worlds to satisfy their greed!
I'm sure there is plenty of life in the universe, but it doesn't need to spread here to survive nor do we need to destroy life(such as it might be) on other planets to preserve our own nest fouling species.
Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...
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Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257
Pooh-Bah
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OP
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 12,129 Likes: 257 |
Planets are death traps. Sometimes nice places to visit, but dangerous places to build civilizations. The vast majority of space in this solar system is between planets, and away from the orbits of asteroids. If we build colonies there, we would be a lot safer. Just as an example, we could leave lots of pathogenic bacteria and most viruses behind on earth.
Educating anyone benefits everyone.
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