Saturn moon 'able to support life' • Hacker News Board

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#181

Post by Symmetry » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:24 PM UTC

dave_ant wrote: post #142

Is there tectonics on that moon ? Isn't it too small for that ? The same goes for Europa... Is there real tectonics there ? If there is no tectonics in place and you have a "closed" big bucket of water constantly filled up with chemicals from hydrothermal vents during billions of years, wouldn't the water become completely soaked and kind of slimy ? Not the best place for life, even for extremophiles... I also found…

The lack of techtonics on the Moon is a consequence of the Moon having cooled down throughout so it doesn't have a molten core anymore. With Europa we can actually observe plate techtonics in the continent sized ice sheets covering its surface and due to the evidence of activity we can infer that there must still be enough heat generated inside to keep things moving. Either the decay of radioisotopes inside or tidal flexing causing heat.

Regarding acidity, life has to have some source of energy to get going and that's probably going to have to be a source of reactive chemicals.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#182

Post by danmaz74 » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:25 PM UTC

milquetoastaf wrote: post #38

ars wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to say which species was first to become intelligent, but I'm pretty sure humans weren't the first. And yet, somehow Humans are in a completely different category than all other life. It's not just a matter a degree ("more" intelligent), it's a completely different category. So that means your definition of intelligent is flawed because it is unable to capture that distinction. Perhaps you need a new word…

>And yet, somehow Humans are in a completely different category than all other life. Lol no we are not. We share 98 percent of our DNA with various simians. We share 97 percent of our DNA with mice. Are we the only species to communicate? No. Are we the only species to communicate symbolically ? No. Great Apes use hand gestures. Are we the only species to recognize themselves? No. Plenty of animals do. In fact, even…

See sorites paradox.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#183

Post by reubenswartz » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:33 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #167

nzonbi wrote: post #4

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…

It wouldn't really be surprising. Prokaryotic life appeared on Earth very quickly after the Earth cooled down. But it took a very long time after that for Eukaryotic cells to develop. Just going from Earth history I'd expect lots of planets with bacterial mats but very few with complex or multi-cellular life.

It seems like it happened "very quickly" compared to the evolution of eukaryotic cells and multicellular life, but it still took hundreds of millions of years, and it probably happened once or a handful of times, not all over the planet.

I share your expectations, but it's hard to know if it's common even for bacterial-level life to arise.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#184

Post by inetknght » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:37 PM UTC

tcfunk wrote: post #180

smdz wrote: post #178

I always had this question - Can life exist outside our perception of biological life? Intelligent life might be an anomaly, and rare in the universe - but is it possible that life exists outside our perception of biology? Afterall everything is just rules and actions that lead to predictable reactions (unless quantum physics says something else) I look at artificial life - that exists in virtual environments. It loo…

Somewhat related - I posed this question to my 4th grade science teacher. She was quick to shoot me down, and I'll never forget it.

There are a lot of people who shoot down science questions. In my experience, my questions have frequently (!) yielded results different from the normal. Now, as an adult entering middle agedness, I think less of such people and actively disassociate myself from them.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#185

Post by hammock » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

smdz wrote: post #178

I always had this question - Can life exist outside our perception of biological life? Intelligent life might be an anomaly, and rare in the universe - but is it possible that life exists outside our perception of biology? Afterall everything is just rules and actions that lead to predictable reactions (unless quantum physics says something else) I look at artificial life - that exists in virtual environments. It loo…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemi...

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#186

Post by hackuser » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #104

hackuser wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europa is an extremely tiny target to hit randomly from Earth, probably made smaller by the fact that, in order to hit Europa, the object has to pass near Jupiter without getting pulled into it. On the other hand, there are billions of years of random attempts, as you said.

But there is a big lump of mass near Europa that tends to attract projectiles.

Yeah, that's why I said "probably". I wonder if it's a net gain or loss in the game of 'drop a rock on Europa'. At this point, I'm leaning toward 'gain'.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#187

Post by zebrafish » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:44 PM UTC

cmdrfred wrote: post #155

Ralfp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else could they cope with growing needs for goods or, say, entertaiment as their civilization develops? Or would you then argue that intelligent life could develop sort of moratorium on further development in line with their value system?

Or they fail to thrive like humans have. Early humans were few in number and might have nearly died out a few times. We just got lucky. I've also wondered how a race without something like a hand ever gets around to making complex tools with multiple moving parts. If Dolphins had twice the brain power that they do now, would they be able to build anything? The intelligence of other races may simply fail to be express…

I don't think you're allowed to pose the dolphin question. If we assume that dolphins and humans have a common ancestor and that the dolphin branch ever had a need for using tools to sustain their species, over time enough random permutations of specific genes would have selected those dolphins which had appendages capable of aiding in the use of tools. As it turns out, they did not need to have hand like appendages to survive and thus apes have hands and ocean mammals do not.

Given the constraints (earth located in our universe) of the probability space of physical interactions which produce life, I believe that our current state is the only possible state.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#188

Post by colkassad » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:44 PM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #103

ageofwant wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there were any high-intelligence species before they must have exited in a time predating current coal and oil formation, or were not technologically capable, or found some other way of harvesting energy. The fact that we found massive amounts of planet-killing coal and immediately started exploiting it with abandon means that that did not happen before, ergo no technologically capable species on this planet for a…

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.

This is an interesting theory. Perhaps you could expand on it and form a new social science called "Cosmic Sociology".

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#189

Post by kortex » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:46 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #17

charles-salvia wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

There are a lot of things which would likely not break down oven millions of years, provided they were largely protected from the element. A lot of glasses, ceramics. Tungsten carbide (pretty much any super hard machine tool, as long as it wasn't subducted). The isotopic distribution of nuclear waste would be a big clue.

And anything we've stuck on the moon.

Not to mention, all of the LACK of things. Giant holes from mining operations. All the straight cuts we've made through mountains. The Panama Canal.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#190

Post by knightofmars » Fri, Apr 14, 2017, 2:50 PM UTC

tcfunk wrote: post #180

smdz wrote: post #178

I always had this question - Can life exist outside our perception of biological life? Intelligent life might be an anomaly, and rare in the universe - but is it possible that life exists outside our perception of biology? Afterall everything is just rules and actions that lead to predictable reactions (unless quantum physics says something else) I look at artificial life - that exists in virtual environments. It loo…

Somewhat related - I posed this question to my 4th grade science teacher. She was quick to shoot me down, and I'll never forget it.

I'm not saying the following is what happened in your situation. As an anecdotal insight, I have friends who are K thru 8 school teachers teachers and they have to be extremely careful with this type of question. The reason is religion, specifically Christian religion. If they misstep and posit a view that contradicts a child's parent's religious views then they are, best case scenario, going to hear about it or, worst case scenario, going to have parents form a group whose sole purpose is ousting the teacher from the school.

From my soap box, the religious self-policing, to me, is one of the more disconcerting aspects of the education system in the United States. As a personal observation, if a parent is worried that a single teacher providing an intentionally unbiased perspective on a philosophical topic is going to challenge a child's beliefs to the point where it overcomes a family's and church's indoctrination then it isn't the new perspective that's the problem. To this day I believe that "core curriculum" should include logic and philosophy with an emphasis greater than all other topics.