“Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System • Hacker News Board

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#161

Post by belter » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:04 AM UTC

This is a terrible title. The original title was: "Astronomers have found the 'most promising signs yet' of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System"

"Astronomers have found signs of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System" means something completely different. Please @dang update or this looks like the Daily Mail.

It's an example of scientists acting irresponsibly. They might have found dimethyl sulfide but it can be produced abiotically.

Dimethyl sulfide (CH3SCH3, DMS) signatures were found in comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and that is for sure not Times Square on Saturday night...: https://astrobiology.com/2025/02/on-the-abiotic-origin-of-di...

The planet looks more like a Neptune or Uranus than Earth type. They need to find multiple examples of different types of biomarkers, before contacting the press as they obviously did.

"Evidence for Abiotic Dimethyl Sulfide in Cometary Matter" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08724

"On the abiotic origin of dimethyl sulfide: discovery of DMS in the Interstellar Medium" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.08892

Edit: I see title is now updated.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#162

Post by mr_toad » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:04 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #131

davedx wrote: post #92

Some speculation On DMS: - DMS is a very specific configuration that’s rarely the endpoint of non-living chemical cycles. - The simplicity of DMS doesn’t make it less indicative of life—it actually makes it a very selective molecule, which only shows up in large quantities when life is involved (at least in Earth-like chemistry). - Until we find a compelling abiotic pathway, high DMS remains a strong biosignature, es…

> Of course there have been lots of ocean planets in sci-fi literature, but I'm most reminded of the "Pattern Juggler" Planet Ararat from Alastair Reynolds' "Revelation Space" series. Erk. Couldn't you pick something from a less... apocalyptic universe? :)

The idea of floating mats of life reminded me more of Wang’s Carpets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang's_Carpets

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#163

Post by cmsj » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:05 AM UTC

nbadg wrote: post #148

ta8645 wrote: post #18

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…

I often wonder if the answer to the Fermi paradox isn't just as extremely banal as "turns out that interstellar exploration just isn't economically viable". I think it's entirely plausible that advanced economies are circular, and that within a circular economy, it's just extremely difficult to justify the massive expenditure of resources that it would take to become interstellar. I mean, think about how many stars h…

The thinking generally would be that while it might take political pressure to initially begin leaving the home planet, once politics has unlocked that capability, commerce will take over.

If we were to begin mining the solar system, it unlocks vast pools of resources that would really change things.

That said, interstellar travel is still a pipe dream because of the time involved. Without finding a cheat code for physics, it may well be that intelligent life is always trapped in its home system and has to live and die within the limitations of stellar evolution.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#164

Post by thenewem » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:07 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #40

ta8645 wrote: post #18

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…

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…

[dead]

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#165

Post by vidarh » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:08 AM UTC

Intralexical wrote: post #117

goognighz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's also largely bunk. More a story than a hypothesis, really. Game theory shows cooperation beats aggression on a long enough timescale. Politics shows alliances and MAD deters first strike. Even actual "dark forests" are full of animals that have bright colors and make loud noises.

Cooperation depends on you and your potential allies surviving long enough to be able to contact each other, and being strong enough to counter the threat. We don't know whether we will develop capabilities fast enough to counter an enemy that e.g. at the first sign of radio started accelerating a bunch of super-dense (hence small, hard to detect and stop) kinetic kill devices our way.

MAD is utter bunk. It depends on rational actors that also believes the other actors are rational. Even Reagan realised the folly of MAD after Able Archer in 1983, and realising the Soviet leadership genuinely seemed to believe the US might be prepared to strike first. If either side thinks the other side is irrational and preparing a first strike, MAD falls apart. If either side is actually irrational, it also falls apart.

But MAD also depends on a sufficient ability for both sides to do serious harm. If one side sees a first strike as an opportunity to prevent the other side from gaining that ability, MAD also falls apart, and the thinking behind it can again then push a rational but callous actor to strike first to prevent being pushed into a MAD scenario.

Cooperation might eventually win out, but that won't help you if your civilization has long since been wiped out.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#166

Post by belter » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:09 AM UTC

davedx wrote: post #92

Some speculation On DMS: - DMS is a very specific configuration that’s rarely the endpoint of non-living chemical cycles. - The simplicity of DMS doesn’t make it less indicative of life—it actually makes it a very selective molecule, which only shows up in large quantities when life is involved (at least in Earth-like chemistry). - Until we find a compelling abiotic pathway, high DMS remains a strong biosignature, es…

Not that exciting until they find other different biomarkers.

Dead Comets have DMS: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08724

And the interstellar medium.... "On the abiotic origin of dimethyl sulfide: discovery of DMS in the Interstellar Medium" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.08892

"...Although the chemistry of DMS beyond Earth is yet to be fully disclosed, this discovery provides conclusive observational evidence on its efficient abiotic production in the interstellar medium, casting doubts about using DMS as a reliable biomarker in exoplanet science..."

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#167

Post by FrustratedMonky » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:09 AM UTC

goognighz wrote: post #89

IsTom wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every field of study, subject, or problem, or even business cases, -- all have different ranges.

Why does this one in-particular sound like they don't know what they are talking about? It would be just as accurate for me to say in the range of responses, yours kind of sounds like an anti-science bot. Typical of that type of thinking.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#168

Post by cmsj » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:09 AM UTC

goognighz wrote: post #86

ta8645 wrote: post #18

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.

Dark Forest depends on the presumption that interstellar travel is worth engaging in (ie it's possible to do faster than light), and that spectacularly devastating weapons are possible. So far we have no reason to believe that either of those assumptions is smart.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#169

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:09 AM UTC

martopix wrote: post #47

aardvark179 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be conflating life, multicellular life, and intelligent life. Life appears to have developed on Earth pretty quickly, multicellular life took a long time to appear, and we are only aware of one species that developed civilisation building capabilities. Life might be very common, but intelligent life still be incrediblY rare.

It depends what you mean by "civilization building". I think we gloss over that a bit too much. We're not the largest population, not the largest total mass, not the only one that builds large structures. We're the only one that sent stuff outside of Earth, yes, and a few other things. But discussing the definition is itself interesting

Human civilisation means intelligence and memory are collective, externalised, persistent, communicable. There's also a layer of symbolic abstraction (science and math) which makes it possible to predict useful consequences with some precision.

Individuals die but their inventions and insights remain. Individuals can also specialise, which is a kind of civilisational divide and conquer strategy.

Most animals don't have that. Some do train their young to a limited extent, but without writing the knowledge doesn't persist. And without abstraction it only evolves extremely slowly, if at all.

They have to reinvent the wheel over and over, which means they never invent the wheel at all.

We actually have this problem with politics and relationships. We keep making the same mistakes because the humanities provide some limited memory, but there's no symbolic abstraction and prediction - just story telling, which is far less effective.

Bonus points: I often wonder if there's a level of complexity beyond our kind of intelligence, and what it might look like. Abstraction of abstraction would be meta-learning - symbolic systems that manipulate the creation and distribution of civilisational learning.

AI seems to be heading in that direction.

There may be further levels, but we can't imagine them. We could be embedded in them and we wouldn't see them for what they are.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#170

Post by mkl » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:09 AM UTC

uwagar wrote: post #139

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

why isnt a crocodile sentient?

Technically, it is: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sentient (the first two definitions). You mean the science fiction definition though (the third), and it's because it's not self-aware and not very intelligent, because it doesn't need to be to survive and procreate successfully. A slightly smarter crocodile must not have enough of an advantage over its peers to matter for evolutionary purposes.