“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

#361

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Sun, Apr 20, 2025, 10:23 PM UTC

ianburrell wrote: post #332

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You confused two things. There is the Sun turning into red giant in 5 billion years consuming the Earth, and the Sun getting too bright for Earth to be habitable in 500 million years.

What gives you an impression that I am confusing these two things? Becoming a red giant is a long process and increased luminosity and radius are parts of this process.

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

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Post by martopix » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 1:50 PM UTC

andreygrehov wrote: post #308

martopix wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the practical benefit of Beethoven?

Beethoven’s music directly impacts human lives. It evokes emotion and inspires creativity. Its value lies in its immediate effect. In contrast, knowing that life exists millions of light-years away offers no such tangible impact. It’s a data point. An interesting one, sure, but it doesn’t feed the hungry, cure disease, change policy, or even affect your commute. So yea, Beethoven is a lived experience, whereas aliens…

No, for me knowing certain mind-blowing scientific facts is, personally, as cool as listening to Beethoven.

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

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Post by okamiueru » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 6:44 AM UTC

exe34 wrote: post #39

okamiueru wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how bad it could be given the hypothetical "millions of years more technologically advanced". They'd need to have a pretty good reason to care about us. Otherwise, we'd be so insignificant that it seems much more likely that whatever natural resources they'd want, would also be likely nearer and easier to obtain. War-mongering, and otherwise zero-sum mentality shouldn't make all sense if they have the techno…

Did you read the parent in haste or did they edit their post? They said: > [1] It means that civilizations should exist that are millions of years more technologically advanced than us; > [2] and should be leaving telltale signatures across the sky that we'd likely have detected by now. > [3] And the absence of those signs would be relatively strong evidence that life, while common, isn't long-lived. > [4]Suggesting…

You are exactly right. I think I was tired and simply misread. Thanks for clarifying.

Between [3] and [4] I added an assumption, without basis, of implied agency by [1].

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

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Post by foxglacier » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 10:35 PM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #242

foxglacier wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, w…

That's better putting some numbers on it. Just to be clear, are you saying climate change is expected to cause a 1500's level of industrialisation globally? I might have misread you but if that's really your claim, you should provide a source because it's an extreme claim that's wildly different to any scientific predictions I've read about.

Why wouldn't there be any hope of progress? What is the force that would make this regression permanent? As I understand it, the whole problem with climate change is not the outcome of the climate but the speed of change being too high for plants and animals to adapt, either by migration or evolution.

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

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Post by n4r9 » Thu, May 01, 2025, 11:15 AM UTC

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…

One problem with the Fermi paradox is that the Drake equation simply multiplies expected values together without regard to the underlying distributions. You can think about it this way: what if the actual mechanisms of the evolution of life result in there being a very high probability of 1 or 2 space-faring civilisations evolving, and a tiny probability of trillions of space-faring civilisations? The expected value coming out of the Drake equation would be large but useless.

A few years ago some researchers at the Future of Humanity institute explored what happens if you take distributions into account. It turns out that this makes a surprising difference and results in a substantial probability of no other intelligent life. No need for speculation about great filters, predatory civilisations, etc... . The paper is freely available on ArXiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404