131–140 of 268 posts
If life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, it would be dramatic. That would mean that our solar system, has life on at least two, out of nine planets. That would seem to indicate that life is a fairly common things on planets. It would allow to adjust the drake equation, to easily predict millions of planets with life. And that would mean a high probability of many advanced, intelligent civilizations…
If life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, it would be dramatic. That would mean that our solar system, has life on at least two, out of nine planets. That would seem to indicate that life is a fairly common things on planets. It would allow to adjust the drake equation, to easily predict millions of planets with life. And that would mean a high probability of many advanced, intelligent civilizations…
Based on the developments in exo-planet research along with discoveries like this over the past couple of years, I would conjecture that life is ridiculously common. But by life, I mean microbial life. I would imagine that multi-cellular life is much rarer, and life capable of reaching human-level intelligence and beyond is probably absurdly rare, on the level of something like one species per galaxy. It's all worthl…
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Well, birds are dinosaurs. Avian theropods to be precise. So maybe dinosaurs are still working towards their limit. We know that their brains produce more pound per pound intelligence than mammalian brains. It's like they're more efficient. But maybe something about that efficiency is Good Enough so they don't progress further. Although watching my parrot at home is quite something. He's definitely on par with a youn…
Spiders also produce more pound per pound intelligence. They are solitary. What if they became social? Brain-body ratio is provocative, but not the whole story. Seeing galahs (Australian corvid https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Galah ) socialize in trees in monkey troop-like fashion, dextrous in tooth and claw, makes me believe they are on the way. Though maybe raccons are next. > efficiency is Good Enough I was thinking th…
It's a lot more direct than "mammals are a type of reptile".
Particularly because late stage dinosaurs, the theropods, had feathers and generally looked like birds with teeth that can't fly. Some later models could in fact fly.
If you look at this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur
You'll see that there is a single step from Velociraptor to Birds.
> The scientific consensus is that birds are a group of theropod dinosaurs that evolved during the Mesozoic Era. A close relationship between birds and dinosaurs was first proposed in the nineteenth century after the discovery of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx in Germany.
It took a lot of steps to go from reptiles to mammals.
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A good way to distinguish those who have read 2010-the-book from those who have seen 2010-the-movie...
Could you ellaborate? That's in the movie, what is in the book?
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I'm kinda curious if there's any evidence that would support or rule out intelligent life having existed on earth before. I mean, if humanity goes extinct and it's another 65 million years before another intelligent species evolves, what evidence would they have of our existence? All our buildings would've long since crumbled into dust or been crushed by plate tectonics. Metal will corrode and rust away after a few t…
I've thought about this and my conclusion is that we will likely leave behind a very strange pattern of certain natural resources. "Oh, look, here's a vein of copper! It's getting better, and better, and, that's weird, it's gone now and there's a complete break in the strata for some reason." Over time new mountains may form some new deposits, but it may be noticeable in the older mountains (that are today the younge…
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I absolutely believe that any intelligent species that has enough intelligence to become interstellar will heavily invest in camouflage and become a lurker. Only reacting when something threatens its survival. The universe is like a jungle full of scary things, the only wise move is to watch out, be invisible and not make a lot of noise.
Aren't Twitter, FB and selfies a sign of the opposite happening at the micro level?
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I'm kinda curious if there's any evidence that would support or rule out intelligent life having existed on earth before. I mean, if humanity goes extinct and it's another 65 million years before another intelligent species evolves, what evidence would they have of our existence? All our buildings would've long since crumbled into dust or been crushed by plate tectonics. Metal will corrode and rust away after a few t…
I've read an interesting theory about this before but I can't remember the source. If there was intelligent life on Antarctica, it would be impossible for us to detect it today. Antarctica was warmer once and could have supported much more life. It's plausible any life that evolved there would be restricted to that continent. Humans evolved in warm climates and could adapt to cold climates by building shelters and we…
If life is there, completely disconnected from earth life, it would be dramatic. That would mean that our solar system, has life on at least two, out of nine planets. That would seem to indicate that life is a fairly common things on planets. It would allow to adjust the drake equation, to easily predict millions of planets with life. And that would mean a high probability of many advanced, intelligent civilizations…
Based on the developments in exo-planet research along with discoveries like this over the past couple of years, I would conjecture that life is ridiculously common. But by life, I mean microbial life. I would imagine that multi-cellular life is much rarer, and life capable of reaching human-level intelligence and beyond is probably absurdly rare, on the level of something like one species per galaxy. It's all worthl…
A couple days ago I submitted a link to the Great Filter article on Wikipedia https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095912
It basically proposes a theory where life, being very common in the universe, eventually reaches a point (filter) that prevents it from stepping up in the Kardashov scale: http://28oa9i1t08037ue3m1l0i861.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...
You are simply putting ourselves beyond the Great Filter, although finding life in Enceladus could drastically affect that: http://28oa9i1t08037ue3m1l0i861.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...
More info on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14113461
