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

skyatnightmagazine.com

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

#241

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

dtech wrote: post #44
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…

The sun has about 5B years more to go before it turns into a red giant, not 0.5B years...

According to this Timeline of the Far Future [0], we only have 500-600 million years.

(warning, this is one of the most depressive pages on Wikipedia)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

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

#242

Post by AlecSchueler »

foxglacier wrote: post #210
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth is on course to become uninhabitable for human civilisation its current form within a century, with an associated mass extinction. Even if all industrial activity stopped tomorrow there's now enough CO2 in the system to guarantee a succession of uncomfortable and expensive droughts, floods, storms, and wildfires for thousands of years. If it doesn't they will become more and more extreme very quickly. If ocean…

Did you notice that you aren't wrong because you're not really saying anything at all? "in its current form" - so maybe with slightly different distribution of land use but basically fine and not necessarily as different as today is from 50 years ago? "mass extinction" already been happening for ages for many species. "uncomfortable floods/etc?" Already been happening for all of history. "very quickly" is how quicky?…

> so maybe with slightly different distribution of land use but basically fine and not necessarily as different as today is from 50 years ago?

No, probably very much more different than that, more like rolling back on industrialisation and globalisation. Closer to 500 years than 50, without the same hope of "progress" that we had back then.

> "mass extinction" already been happening for ages for many species.

Yeah, we all learned about dinosaurs when we were little kids, but if humanity collapses there's no guarantee of anything similar developing after us.

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

#243

Post by AlecSchueler »

pfdietz wrote: post #231
bradleykingz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Maybe once day, aliens will drop by and discover what remains of humanity. And stories will be told of how, when the time came, our species decided to bury its head in the sand and hope the problem would go away. Or maybe that we attempted to create god to come rescue us. Life imitates art. We refused to listen to the scientists.

Why do you think aliens will drop by? If aliens were visiting every planet in the universe, don't you think we would have noticed that by now? I mean, why didn't they visit the solar system and colonize it (and everywhere else) aeons ago?

Someone has to be the first.

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

#244

Post by Phelinofist »

generic92034 wrote: post #213
mkl wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faster than light travel isn't needed (and IIRC doesn't occur in the series the dark forest name comes from). Spectacularly devastating weapons are definitely possible - redirect an asteroid into an inhabited planet and you're likely to kill most of its inhabitants; redirect enough and you can kill almost everything. That's not even getting into things like antimatter, gamma rays, etc. The dark forest hypothesis does…

> and IIRC doesn't occur in the series the dark forest name comes from The Trisolarians developed FTL travel while they were on the way to Earth, IIRC.

They had the sophons which allowed them to convey information via quantum entanglement, i.e. instantly.

They - and the humans - developed close to light speed traveling which IIRC has the same underlying mechanics as that blackout-galaxy-safe-space thing which is the message that your civilization is not harmful.

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

#245

Post by acdha »

Guthur wrote: post #43
MrPapz wrote: post #26

Maybe now we can stop this nonsense of competing among each other and start dedicating efforts to an international space program.

Why exactly? I'd prefer we'd just build some more houses so that owning one didn't require a life time of work to pay for.

Housing prices have almost nothing to do with space programs. In most places, they’re an artifact of laws and policies which create scarcity for the benefit of rich property owners, and cutting scientific research entirely won’t change that except in a few cases where you’d be able to bid on a house which some unemployed scientist or engineer is forced out of - but the private equity guys will probably outbid you.

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

#246

Post by pfdietz »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #243
pfdietz wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think aliens will drop by? If aliens were visiting every planet in the universe, don't you think we would have noticed that by now? I mean, why didn't they visit the solar system and colonize it (and everywhere else) aeons ago?

Someone has to be the first.

So, your theory is aliens are abundant, but by extreme coincidence we're first?

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

#247

Post by Phelinofist »

Aren't we looking into the past when looking at things this far away? So, just assuming here, that these are indeed signs of life, would that mean that "they" might have been primitive when these signatures were sent out into space and are now further developed?

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

#248

Post by andreygrehov »

foxglacier wrote: post #223
andreygrehov wrote: post #157

Let’s assume there is alien life on many planets beyond our solar system. Now what? What’s the practical benefit?

Let's assume I wake up tomorrow still alive. Then what? You're basically asking what's the meaning of life.

If you wake up tomorrow still alive, you can visit HN and downvote my comments. That will impact my karma value. Not a big deal, but still. If there is alien life, you can’t do anything about it. Zero impact.

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

#249

Post by stogot »

belter wrote: post #207
weberer wrote: post #5

Here's the primary source https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adc1c8 They possibly detected dimethyl sulfide, which is only known to be produced by living organisms.

> which is only known to be produced by living organisms. Comets with 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…

Thank you for posting this. Really balances out all the conjecture.

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

#250

Post by griffzhowl »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #237
ninjagoo wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may want to update your view that non-human animals lack sentience. [1] [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4494450/ If you're referring to technology/civilization-building capabilities, that is a different matter.

I owned quite a number of pets in my life, so I don't need explaining that they do have some kind of relatively high-order intelligence that allows them to do quite a lot of things. Yet, this is clear that no kind of animal on Earth but us exhibits potential to have capabilities to spread themeselves beyond home planet once it becomes uninhabitable. Moreover, signs show that once a type of species finds their niche,…

Yes, I think GP phrased it badly. This is just about the meaning of words: "sentience" just means sensory or experiential consciousness. It doesn't necessarily imply high intelligence or capacity for using technology
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