Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

skyatnightmagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 365 posts

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

#321

Post by jayGlow »

BirAdam wrote: post #199
mkl wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, I do not think high-intelligence is useful for life. The most successful life forms aren’t the most intelligent, and humans seem to be fixed to self-annihilate.

what do you consider the most successful life forms to be? humans currently inhabit every continent and are unquestionably at the top of the food chain.

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

#322

Post by afroboy »

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.

Maybe let's just try to stop genocide happening here first and try not send innocents people to prisons in el Salvador.

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

#323

Post by rossant »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #318

It would be somewhat worrisome to actually find signs of primitive extraterrestrial life because of the Fermi Paradox. Given the age of the universe, and how long it took both complex life to develop on earth and for a creature such as us to emerge from that, finding life elsewhere would beg a return to Fermi's question of "Where is everyone?" implying that something comes along and causes evolving civilizations to b…

Maybe sufficiently advanced civilizations just stay under the radar to avoid being exterminated by others.

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

#324

Post by lupusreal »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #319
lupusreal wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt there is one single grand answer for the Fermi Paradox. Probably it's lots of smaller blockers which all stack up with each other. The chance of life forming, the chance that it becomes multicellular, the chance that it develops complex nervous systems, intelligence, the physiological hardware for tool use and creation, not stagnating or getting wiped out, having the inclination to look out and broadcast thei…

The paradox would remain valid in my view. Even with all those stacked difficulties and plausibility levels, the galaxy alone is immense and if life of any kind were to be found, i'd argue that we should be able to see signs of sophisticated life somewhere at least, so where is it? It's still a cause for some speculation and maybe even existential worry.

The galaxy isn't really that huge. 10e11 stars. If you stack only a dozen obstacles at 10% odds of overcoming them each, you come up with advanced radio-broadcasting life being an unusual outcome for a galaxy our size. Add a few more and you can bet against another advanced civilization coinciding with us in the entire observable universe.

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

#325

Post by antisthenes »

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…

> in just .5B years Earth would likely become uninhabitable due to Sun becoming a red giant

The Sun will not become a red giant in 500 million years.

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

#326

Post by encrypted_bird »

tomelders wrote: post #25

My understanding is that the great filter theory means this is bad news for us humans here on earth. And considering the state of the world right now, it's especially ominous. Fate loves irony.

With due respect, the Great Filter is a hypothesis, not a theory.

That being said, I agree. I read in a similar thread yesterday someone confused how this would be bad news rather than good news—that there are many other intelligent species indicates that such a filter either doesn't exist or is very easy to pass. But, like your point does, I think it's important to recognize that such a "good news" position is predicated on the notion that we as a species are already past the Great Filter, rather than that we're still behind it and the others are ahead.

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

#327

Post by Loughla »

andrewflnr wrote: post #273
Loughla wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, though. I think that unless there are limiting factors (no ores or some other necessary component) life would tend toward technology. Curiosity as an evolutionary trait is quite an advantage, and I would think is necessary for intelligent omnivores. It's what helped us figure out what we could and couldn't eat, and taught us better techniques for living. Curiosity naturally leads to technological de…

> life would tend toward technology Based on what evidence? We only know if it happening once, after a very long delay.

I think it's a natural product of curiosity. And I think that intelligent life would only be so because of curiosity.

You want to figure things out or you're interested in seeing what happens when you fuck around with things.

So I think a technological progression is a natural progression for intelligent life.

Does that make sense? I feel like I'm not explaining myself well.

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

#328

Post by saaaaaam »

sgt wrote: post #306
saaaaaam wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there’s a big difference between journalists and headline writers! Headline writing is the art of taking something that a journalist has thought about in detail and carefully crafted and making it into something that someone with low to zero interest in the topic might want to read. Having done both, I got annoyed when headlines misrepresented what I’d written, and journalists got annoyed when I took thei…

Fair enough! Also, to the credit of headline writers, I have sometimes clicked on a clickbait article and learned something. If it hadn't been clickbait, I might have missed it.

You've made all headline writers a little happier by saying that!

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

#329

Post by [deleted] »

netsharc wrote: post #282
teamonkey wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of science papers are like “we found a hint of this thing, we need to do more research” and it’s reported as “ALIENS??!?” I understand why this is the case but I think it can lead to a loss in trust in science when the reporting jumps to conclusions that aren’t supported by the research itself. In this case the abstract is far more grounded. In particular, > The observations also provided a tentative hint of di…

Ugh, "alien life" is a reasonable title, IMO. I think the sensationalism is happening in your head, that you're imagining the Borg or little green men.

[deleted]

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

#330

Post by rkagerer »

netsharc wrote: post #282
teamonkey wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of science papers are like “we found a hint of this thing, we need to do more research” and it’s reported as “ALIENS??!?” I understand why this is the case but I think it can lead to a loss in trust in science when the reporting jumps to conclusions that aren’t supported by the research itself. In this case the abstract is far more grounded. In particular, > The observations also provided a tentative hint of di…

Ugh, "alien life" is a reasonable title, IMO. I think the sensationalism is happening in your head, that you're imagining the Borg or little green men.

More like big green algae?
Post reply on HN