111–120 of 365 posts
Firstly that is completely badass science. The idea that you can use observations to detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet millions of kilometres away is an absolute triumph of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Really amazing and deeply humbling to me. Secondly, my prior was always that life existed outside of earth. It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special. If life d…
> Astronomers have found the 'most promising signs yet' of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System
Firstly that is completely badass science. The idea that you can use observations to detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet millions of kilometres away is an absolute triumph of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Really amazing and deeply humbling to me. Secondly, my prior was always that life existed outside of earth. It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special. If life d…
If life is very common in the universe, then that is probably bad news for us. It means that civilizations should exist that are millions of years more technologically advanced than us; and should be leaving telltale signatures across the sky that we'd likely have detected by now. And the absence of those signs would be relatively strong evidence that life, while common, isn't long-lived. Suggesting that our demise t…
Our own technological signature is coming to form a very thin shell. Once we switch fully to fiber optics, lasers, and beamformers, there won't be any aliens learning English from listening in on our TV transmissions anymore. Radio broadcasting was cool, but also horribly wasteful.
It's probably incorrect to assume that more technologically advanced civilizations would be louder.
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Most of the sky is left unexplored. I think it’s premature to suggest we don’t see things. There are too many things to see in a single lifetime.
But if there was a Kardashev type III civilization in the Milky Way, they would have had full control of our entire galaxy in a mere 200 million years or so. And we can be pretty sure that such a civilization doesn't actually exist. Which suggests that either advanced life is rare, or dies off long before it ever reaches such technological breadth.
Unless faster than light travel or communication becomes avaliable, it might not even make sense to travel through the galaxy.
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>It means that civilizations should exist that are millions of years more technologically advanced than us; and should be leaving telltale signatures across the sky that we'd likely have detected by now. Or they've reached their technological plateau millions of years ago. Like we did 50 years ago. >And the absence of those signs would be relatively strong evidence that life, while common, isn't long-lived. We know f…
> Or they've reached their technological plateau millions of years ago. Like we did 50 years ago. What a bizarre thing to say, considering this very discovery leans on decades of science and engineering over the past 50 years!
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It is quite plausible that life is abundant, but sentience is not. If we take Earth, it formed 4.5 billions years ago, conditions became suitable to support life like 4B years ago and first known signs of life are dated 3.7B years ago. Now, in just .5B years Earth would likely become uninhabitable due to Sun becoming a red giant. In other words, on Earth life spent 90% of its total available time before sentience eme…
The sun has about 5B years more to go before it turns into a red giant, not 0.5B years...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If life is very common in the universe, then that is probably bad news for us. It means that civilizations should exist that are millions of years more technologically advanced than us; and should be leaving telltale signatures across the sky that we'd likely have detected by now. And the absence of those signs would be relatively strong evidence that life, while common, isn't long-lived. Suggesting that our demise t…
Dark forest hypothesis explains this in a “dark” way. They exist but are smart enough to hide from hostile hunter/predator life forms. Meanwhile our dumbasses are blasting radio signals into space like a little kid trying to talk to every stranger they see.
Firstly that is completely badass science. The idea that you can use observations to detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet millions of kilometres away is an absolute triumph of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Really amazing and deeply humbling to me. Secondly, my prior was always that life existed outside of earth. It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special. If life d…
If life is very common in the universe, then that is probably bad news for us. It means that civilizations should exist that are millions of years more technologically advanced than us; and should be leaving telltale signatures across the sky that we'd likely have detected by now. And the absence of those signs would be relatively strong evidence that life, while common, isn't long-lived. Suggesting that our demise t…
But in the grand scheme of things, even its "bad news" just ONE datapoint of life elsewhere is at least something to start working with.
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While it has more time to become a red giant, it'll become more luminous over time and life on Earth will be impossible much earlier. I've seen estimates of 0.5B to 1.5B years.
lol 0.5B to 1.5B is a pretty big difference. Sounds like we really don’t know what we are talking about.
But it's certainly the mark of "the beginning of the end" for life on this planet - it's a major milestone that we (the species) do need to leave eventually if we want to continue.
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We'll put a giant sunshade in the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point.
We might need to do that by the end of this century. If we are able to harvest the solar system resources it would take by then. Trial run for the bigger “solar warming” event.