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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

#81

Post by Scarblac »

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…

I see it differently -- if we are all alone, then our disappearance will be an unfathomable catastrophe. If it's abundant, well, so it goes.

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

#82

Post by goognighz »

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…

Interestingly we can’t actually know that we are correct in our calculations of what a planet lightyears away has as its atmosphere because we will never be able to go there and make sure we are correct. It’s a calculation and nothing more. For all we know that planet may not even exist. That’s what’s mind blowing about astronomy. We really don’t have any way of proving anything about what we are observing. All we can say is we are observing. That’s the only thing science can offer us.

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

#83

Post by ivan_gammel »

milesrout wrote: post #61
ivan_gammel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are capable of rapidly changing chemical composition of atmosphere, which may be noticeable even at our technological level.

Plenty of lifeforms have changed the composition of the atmosphere. At faster rates than we are changing it now.

Faster? Do you have an example? What species can add 10^12 tons of any chemical in just few hundred years?

There were geological events and asteroid impacts that may result in more dramatic changes, but their signatures will be different.

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

#84

Post by tiborsaas »

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…

We don't have to look to the stars to tell that humans have a horrible tendency to make the majority's life a struggle and constantly balancing on the verge of demise.

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

#85

Post by varjag »

xrisk wrote: post #76
poulpy123 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actually a living organism is needed to produce it this way

Wikipedia says "In industry dimethyl sulfide is produced by treating hydrogen sulfide with excess methanol over an aluminium oxide catalyst”. Which part requires a living organism?

Virtually all of them involve non-trivial design by sentient beings.

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

#86

Post by goognighz »

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…

Dark forest hypothesis explains this in a “dark” way. They exist but are smart enough to hide from hostile hunter/predator life forms. Meanwhile our dumbasses are blasting radio signals into space like a little kid trying to talk to every stranger they see.

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

#88

Post by IsTom »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #58
IsTom wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it has more time to become a red giant, it'll become more luminous over time and life on Earth will be impossible much earlier. I've seen estimates of 0.5B to 1.5B years.

In 500 million years, hopefully humans (or whatever humans have become at that point) will be able to modify the Earth's atmosphere to deal with the increased luminosity of the Sun.

We might be lucky enough to do that, but it could have easily taken intelligence another 500M years to evolve on another planet. First animal fossils are something like 700M years old, so it took 2-3G years to just any animals.

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

#89

Post by goognighz »

IsTom wrote: post #54
dtech wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

While it has more time to become a red giant, it'll become more luminous over time and life on Earth will be impossible much earlier. I've seen estimates of 0.5B to 1.5B years.

lol 0.5B to 1.5B is a pretty big difference. Sounds like we really don’t know what we are talking about.

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

#90

Post by consumer451 »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #77
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.

The great filter is only one of the possible explanations of the Fermi paradox however. There are other far less bleack including that there is actually no paradox at all: life is indeed frequent and but we are just bad at detecting it/have not been looking for it long enough.

I used to think that rare earth/rare life was the bleak option. As I get older, I think the bleak thing would be a galaxy full of technologically advanced species with morals potentially equal to, or worse than ours.
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