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Saturn moon 'able to support life'

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Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#261

Post by detritus »

vidarh wrote: post #152
aleksei wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your point, but I posit that this is a very human point of view. Once you've cracked the energy needs for interstellar travel, what's the point of raising a war campaign light years away (especially if you need generation ships to attack)? Furthermore, it doesn't seem very intelligent to me that all capable species just hunker down in their own gravity well to die off unnoticed and without having explored the u…

They wouldn't need generation ships. You "just" need sufficient tech to put engines on a suitable astroid and accelerate it to a decent fraction of c; it only needs enough logic to fine tune the path. An invasion force is horribly inefficient vs. just slamming a lot of mass at someone at high enough speed. And it only takes one massively paranoid, xenophobic species lobbing big rocks at people to ruin the entire neig…

An interesting view on this perspective can be found in the sci find novel 'the killing Star'

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Star

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#262

Post by SophosQ »

simonh wrote: post #239
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…

There are many very good reasons to expect a lot of the life in the universe to resemble ours at least in its chemistry. That's because, perhaps aside from dark matter, we know what elements the observable universe is made of and we know the chemistry and physics of those elements pretty well. Of these elements, we know that carbon chemistry is the richest and most complex of any of them by several orders of magnitud…

Silicon is a close contender to Carbon as evidenced by the creation of a bacterial enzyme that efficiently incorporates silicon into simple hydrocarbons[1].

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/researchers-take-smal...

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#263

Post by BurningFrog »

Flow wrote: post #126
Houshalter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you seen the subbreddit for "Antarctic Anomalies"? https://www.reddit.com/r/AntarcticAnomalies/ I find stories and myths around Antarctica fascinating. It's one of the last places on Earth humans haven't turned every rock.

That, and the bottom of the ocean!

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#264

Post by [deleted] »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #259
wfn wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about cellular automata simulating ( spoiler ) complex life forms in many dimensions, implemented in large polysaccharide constructions? :) (Greg Egan's "Wang's Carpets", later incorporated as a chapter into his "Diaspora".) http://bookre.org/reader?file=222997&pg=1 ( http://archive.is/ocAgN )

I always found that to be a little sad. iirc, the Carpets in the story are completely deterministic - while there is life there, it will always unambiguously lack free will. (Though I suppose they'll never know it.)

[deleted]

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#265

Post by logfromblammo »

eric_h wrote: post #243
logfromblammo wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human activity weathers stone monuments faster than desert winds. If I recall correctly, the original sheathing stones and capstones of the pyramids were gradually stolen. The Sphinx was used for target practice. Water, on the other hand, will tear through your stones much more quickly. In a wet, temperate climate, the weak acid falling from the sky will wear limestone. The moisture invading cracks and freezing will…

> The Sphinx was used for target practice. This was the first I've heard that assertion, so it sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Turns out it's a common story that Napoleon used the Sphinx for target practice, hence the lost nose. It also turns out that that is most certainly not true. Napoleon, being wholeheartedly in favor of the enlightenment, would never have destroyed antiquities (only plundered them for his…

The way I heard it, the target practice was responsible for the loss of a piece of an ear. Not having been there to see it myself, I suppose I am not a reliable source for this. Thanks for the fact-checking, as I didn't think to do it myself.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#266

Post by nojvek »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #174
vidarh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn't need generation ships. You "just" need sufficient tech to put engines on a suitable astroid and accelerate it to a decent fraction of c; it only needs enough logic to fine tune the path. An invasion force is horribly inefficient vs. just slamming a lot of mass at someone at high enough speed. And it only takes one massively paranoid, xenophobic species lobbing big rocks at people to ruin the entire neig…

Isn't that only a problem if you're completely planet-bound? If you want to play it safe, you shouldn't put all of your eggs into a single basket anyway.

Correct, but while exploring the universe, doing it undetected is actually a great strategy. Imagine self replicating nano bots that embed themselves into asteroids. Everything thinks its just big rocks flying in space that sometimes smash into planets. But its a strategy to slowly colonize the galaxy and put a mark everywhere. Kind of how plants spread their pollen into the wind or have bees and butterflies do their dirty work.

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#267

Post by nojvek »

pchristensen wrote: post #249
nojvek wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If this is interesting to you, read The Dark Forest: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168817-the-dark-forest...

Thanks for the recommendation

Re: Saturn moon 'able to support life'

#268

Post by knightofmars »

smdz wrote: post #210
nkrisc wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking is the greatest threat to religious indoctrination as it relies on the acceptance of teachings as fact from authorities at face-value without question. If a child learns to be skeptical and questioning, they'll never learn to believe something that can't be supported given the currently available evidence, or may very well be contradicted by it.

Critical thinking is good - but kids can ask questions that are very difficult to answer (but we think of those as common knowledge) For example: This question > Why is 1+0 = 1 and not 10 Attempt to find an answer will generate more questions and it is a journey down the rabbit hole. Sometimes you don't want to do that. And upto high-school I learnt things that were based on assumptions that I kept questioning. Inter…

Let me dust off my soap box. In my opinion "a journey down the rabbit hole" is exactly what kids need. It shows passion and interest in a topic. Something sorely lacking in today's education system. And, no, it doesn't mean that a child will "fall behind" academically in all other pursuits (common core is part of the problem here and not a solution). In the end every discipline of learning is inexorably entwined. As you approach each new, higher, level of learning about a topic you need to expand your ability to digest larger and more diverse sets of information. Which in turn requires deeper knowledge of language and mathematical disciplines. Snuffing out the inquisitive nature of children is, to me, one of the most heinous aspects of our education system.
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