There Have Probably Been Aliens

Post by qrendel » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

andbberger wrote: post #104

apsec112 wrote: post #9

"In other words, given what we now know about the number and orbital positions of the galaxy’s planets, the degree of pessimism required to doubt the existence, at some point in time, of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization borders on the irrational." This is terribly silly. It reminds me of the Onion talks: "Step 1: Devise an idea to create a car that runs on compost. Step 2: Create the car. We’ve already compl…

Your assumption that the odds of abiogenesis is given by `~1/2^n, where n is the complexity in bits' is utterly, completely false. Statistical mechanical entropy and information theoretical entropy ('complexity in bits') are not the same quantities! But even if they were, your expression would still be incorrect because living system are definitionally not at equilibrium - so equilibrium statistical mechanics (whose…

Post by andrewstuart2 » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

gh-lfneu28 wrote: post #98

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we've certainly drilled more than 12 meters. :-P (Note the decimal point: 12.262km; I just converted to km to keep it consistent with the other measurements I cited) Could be confusing if you're used to the inverse comma/period from what we use in the US (comma=thousands, period=decimal).

Would be far less confusing if you'd just written "~12km" and "~11km". The meters add little to the point you're trying to make.

Post by SFJulie » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #45

SFJulie wrote: post #13

No they have not been any aliens until proven so... Science requires a theory and experimental validation. The existence of aliens has been postulated by a crazy monk that also invented the concept of monads. It is much more metaphysics (religious thinking) than physics. It strikes me as odd that most of flawed science is coming with the same flaws as religious thinking.

> Science requires a theory and experimental validation. You'd be surprised. That's 19th century thinking about science, and not really how science works in practice most of the time.

Post by Lost_BiomedE » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #110

I can't recommend "The Vital Question" by Nick Lane enough for people who are really interested in the question of life elsewhere. It does such a wonderful job of show how mechanically "life" can be started as a way of simply reacting chemicals to a lower energy state. It neatly ties together biochemistry and geochemistry in a very plausible (and testable) way. Given the analysis, I would expect that bacteria and arc…

Post by apenwarr » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #76

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what will really help us to get at a better estimate is to answer the question whether there exists life in our solar system that evolved independently of that on Earth. That's definitely the big question. But you left out the elephant in the room: is there life right here on Earth that's evolved independently? Abiogenesis doesn't simply halt after it's achieved its "goal". Perhaps we take the common-origin h…

Fascinating, thanks for pointing this out! Discovering a new kind of life on Earth that has coexisted with us without being noticed would be a huge event of course, and it would probably challenge what we regard as life in a general way. This would be good stuff for a science fiction story as well.