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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

#41

Post by red75prime »

seanhunter wrote: post #6

Firstly that is completely badass science. The idea that you can use observations to detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet millions of kilometres away is an absolute triumph of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Really amazing and deeply humbling to me. Secondly, my prior was always that life existed outside of earth. It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special. If life d…

> It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special.

Our ability to think about those matters is conditional on emergence of intelligent life. That is our observation of ourselves is compatible with any probability of emergence of intelligent life (including almost never that is p=0).

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

#43

Post by Guthur »

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.

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

#44

Post by dtech »

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…

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

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

#45

Post by ta8645 »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #34
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…

Say another human-like civilisation existed and was more technologically advanced, what sort of tell-tale signs do you expect to see?

Scientists use the term "technosignatures", which you can google for more info. But broadly: radio signals, infrared from megastructures, optical signals like laser pulses. We haven't put a huge amount of effort in searching for such signatures, but there has been some.

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

#46

Post by pif »

ta8645 wrote: post #18
seanhunter wrote: post #6

Firstly that is completely badass science. The idea that you can use observations to detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet millions of kilometres away is an absolute triumph of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Really amazing and deeply humbling to me. Secondly, my prior was always that life existed outside of earth. It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special. If life d…

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…

> that is probably bad news for us.

Apart from the Sun, the nearest star to us is four light-years away. I'm not loosing my sleep on the thought of being "discovered" by anyone over there.

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

#47

Post by martopix »

aardvark179 wrote: post #27
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…

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

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

#48

Post by HelloNurse »

metalman wrote: post #19
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.

only know to be produced.....is a whoa bessy phrase,?¿ as in 70 years ago an undergraduate figured out that dimethyl sulfide was produced by living organisms and he asked his professor what else made it, and got shrug and "nothing else I know of" and everybody has been cutting and pasting since, OR, an international team spent years and millions working on the chemistry behind dimethyl sufide in an epic known to all…

And the question is even more complex: not whether producing dimethyl sulfide "from scratch" without involving living organisms of the familiar sort is possible (of course it is), but what the hypothesis that each of the numerous possible ways to produce dimethyl sulfide happens naturally (or that alien lifeforms want a lot of it) implies about the environment of the exoplanet.

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

#49

Post by ivan_gammel »

ta8645 wrote: post #18
seanhunter wrote: post #6

Firstly that is completely badass science. The idea that you can use observations to detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet millions of kilometres away is an absolute triumph of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Really amazing and deeply humbling to me. Secondly, my prior was always that life existed outside of earth. It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special. If life d…

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…

> And the absence of those signs would be relatively strong evidence that life, while common, isn't long-lived.

If dark forest theory is right, alien civilizations may stay undetectable by hiding biological signatures of their worlds.

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

#50

Post by whatever1 »

nurettin wrote: post #30
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…

Not to take away from you personally, but civilization as we understand it is our own cliche. Organisms developed on different planets could absolutely have a different view on life and society in general. Even on earth we have highly intelligent and physically capable organisms that care naught for your conceptions of how groups should function together. There are even organisms that seem to have no intersection wit…

I mean game theory and equilibria are universal. I don’t see why the basic rules of civilization would not apply to any level of organism sophistication.
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