MARS, BITCH.

  On 8/12/2012 at 11:09 PM, Godwin Austen said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 7:22 PM, sergeantk said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 7:18 PM, kaini said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 7:13 PM, sergeantk said:

Can someone explain to me how Venus is supposed to be the Earth, but in the past?

 

it's not. like i said, part of the reason venus is the way it is, is due to a runaway greenhouse effect. so it's more like us in the future, but it's not even really like that.

 

Oh I see. But Venus, to my knowledge, is way too close to the sun to be inhabitable. What I'm really interested is the evidence of life on Mars. I believe it exists (or existed), most likely not intelligent. But it's so selfish for us to assume that humans are the only intelligent lifeforms in the universe.

The universe is so big and there is so many star systems that just by plain statistics there should be extraterrestrial life. But the next iteration, intelligent life, or even more advanced life than our own, is highly unprobable in the range of this galaxy cluster (or even further). If you think of Venus and Mars, they are the closest approximations of Earth's capability of creating life, but they are still very far from it. What happened on Earth is a very very very very rare and fragile condition where carbon molecules began to exist and had just right parameters to assemble into more complex compounds, which then had even more of those just right parameters to evolve into life. Not to mention how improbable according to all this is intelligent life. Even on Earth.

do you mean solar system? in our local galaxy cluster, there are over 50 galaxies... that's a hell of a lot of stars... somewhere in the ballpark of ~5,000,000,000,000.

  On 8/13/2012 at 3:02 AM, luke viia said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 11:09 PM, Godwin Austen said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 7:22 PM, sergeantk said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 7:18 PM, kaini said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 7:13 PM, sergeantk said:

Can someone explain to me how Venus is supposed to be the Earth, but in the past?

 

it's not. like i said, part of the reason venus is the way it is, is due to a runaway greenhouse effect. so it's more like us in the future, but it's not even really like that.

 

Oh I see. But Venus, to my knowledge, is way too close to the sun to be inhabitable. What I'm really interested is the evidence of life on Mars. I believe it exists (or existed), most likely not intelligent. But it's so selfish for us to assume that humans are the only intelligent lifeforms in the universe.

The universe is so big and there is so many star systems that just by plain statistics there should be extraterrestrial life. But the next iteration, intelligent life, or even more advanced life than our own, is highly unprobable in the range of this galaxy cluster (or even further). If you think of Venus and Mars, they are the closest approximations of Earth's capability of creating life, but they are still very far from it. What happened on Earth is a very very very very rare and fragile condition where carbon molecules began to exist and had just right parameters to assemble into more complex compounds, which then had even more of those just right parameters to evolve into life. Not to mention how improbable according to all this is intelligent life. Even on Earth.

 

do you mean solar system? in our local galaxy cluster, there are over 50 galaxies... that's a hell of a lot of stars... somewhere in the ballpark of ~5,000,000,000,000.

well i guess the point was the majority of it is completely uninhabitable, and even inhabitable ones are unlikely to host intelligent life

hm yeah I see where you might draw that conclusion, and definitely agree that "intelligent" life is highly unlilkely. am certainly not trying to contest your position there. but just to add to the discussion, there are more planets than stars in our own galaxy...

  Quote

“It’s not unreasonable at this point to say there are literally billions of habitable worlds in our galaxy, probably as a lower limit,” he [seth Shostak] said. “Maybe they’re all sterile as an autoclave, but it doesn’t seem very likely, does it? That would make us very odd.”

-- from the article at popsci on the matter

really wish I knew how to use the Drake equation... =P

Indeed, our existence is pretty much an impossibility.

  On 8/13/2012 at 3:41 AM, sergeantk said:

Indeed, our existence is pretty much an impossibility.

we're so incredible you guys. hi five!

  On 8/13/2012 at 3:41 AM, sergeantk said:

Indeed, our existence is pretty much an impossibility.

Yet here I am, writing the next dolan comic.

  On 8/13/2012 at 3:55 AM, Mcdergbit said:

  On 8/13/2012 at 3:41 AM, sergeantk said:

Indeed, our existence is pretty much an impossibility.

 

we're so incredible you guys. hi five!

we did it, i'm so proud!

the only other molecule with a molecular structure that allows long chain-like molecules like carbon is silicon. a silicon-based lifeform is highly unlikely though, because silicon can't bond with a huge and diverse amount of elements like carbon can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon-based_life#Silicon_biochemistry

I don't think it's THAT unlikely for intelligent life to emerge. It did once already and as mentioned there are billions of habitable planets in our galaxy alone. There could even be more advanced lifeforms. The largest issue is the massive distances of interstellar space which will probably mean that we or them will never meet, no matter how far our technology advances. If two small ships left from each side of the Atlantic, think how small the odds would be for them to cross paths somewhere in the middle by chance, now put that in the context of interstellar space.

if we can see their planet, they can see ours. Your boats in the middle of the ocean analogy is good, but if they happen to be looking straight at us, then they have a much more specific target.

One of the trippiest things is just the time it takes light to arrive. Would be funny if we developed some amazing optics that allowed us to see cities on another planet, but by the time we got there, their civilization was extinct.

With the current technology that can find earthlike planets in other systems, I wonder if it could find artificial structures such as Dyson spheres.

  On 8/13/2012 at 9:00 AM, lumpenprol said:

if we can see their planet, they can see ours.

yeah, but billions of years older than it is

  On 8/13/2012 at 2:19 PM, gmanyo said:

  On 8/13/2012 at 9:00 AM, lumpenprol said:

if we can see their planet, they can see ours.

yeah, but billions of years older than it is

yes, that was kind of my point. But not billions of years necessarily. Gliese 876 is only 15 light years from earth. Word.

  On 8/13/2012 at 2:37 PM, lumpenprol said:

  On 8/13/2012 at 2:19 PM, gmanyo said:

  On 8/13/2012 at 9:00 AM, lumpenprol said:

if we can see their planet, they can see ours.

yeah, but billions of years older than it is

yes, that was kind of my point. But not billions of years necessarily. Gliese 876 is only 15 light years from earth. Word.

That'd make us in the late 90s. They probably think we're awesome. Too bad that'll change soon.

Maybe some day humans will crack the big bang code and have powerful enough computers to run it in simulation and then they could have algorithms crawl through the model finding sentient activity. We are mapping the genome today maybe in 100 or 1,000 years humans will be mapping reality. Maybe because of quantum physics or something traveling worm holes or something similar could become possible. Maybe one day people will create some sort of transport beam that matches something some other civilization in another galaxy already made and they could link up who really knows, in 10 years toilet paper could be ancient history.

  On 8/13/2012 at 9:00 AM, lumpenprol said:

One of the trippiest things is just the time it takes light to arrive. Would be funny if we developed some amazing optics that allowed us to see cities on another planet, but by the time we got there, their civilization was extinct.

thats pretty much the premise behind the film 'Wild Blue Yonder" by Werner Herzog

"The film is about an extraterrestrial who came to Earth several decades ago from a water planet (The Wild Blue Yonder), after it experienced an ice age. His narration reveals that his race has tried through the years to form a community on our planet, without any success. "

Ironically as the extraterrestrials get to earth, humans are just leaving for what they think is a habitable planet due to the state of this one, the same planet that had been evacuated due to the ice age...

The film is alright, nothing amazing.... the same idea could have been done better if not made in a documentary style .

  On 8/13/2012 at 5:59 AM, usagi said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 11:09 PM, Godwin Austen said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 7:22 PM, sergeantk said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 7:18 PM, kaini said:

  On 8/12/2012 at 7:13 PM, sergeantk said:

Can someone explain to me how Venus is supposed to be the Earth, but in the past?

 

it's not. like i said, part of the reason venus is the way it is, is due to a runaway greenhouse effect. so it's more like us in the future, but it's not even really like that.

 

Oh I see. But Venus, to my knowledge, is way too close to the sun to be inhabitable. What I'm really interested is the evidence of life on Mars. I believe it exists (or existed), most likely not intelligent. But it's so selfish for us to assume that humans are the only intelligent lifeforms in the universe.

The universe is so big and there is so many star systems that just by plain statistics there should be extraterrestrial life. But the next iteration, intelligent life, or even more advanced life than our own, is highly unprobable in the range of this galaxy cluster (or even further). If you think of Venus and Mars, they are the closest approximations of Earth's capability of creating life, but they are still very far from it. What happened on Earth is a very very very very rare and fragile condition where carbon molecules began to exist and had just right parameters to assemble into more complex compounds, which then had even more of those just right parameters to evolve into life. Not to mention how improbable according to all this is intelligent life. Even on Earth.

 

does life have to be carbon-based though? I'm not up to speed with the science of this anymore but I was under the impression that other lifeforms could exist

i was going to say the exact same thing. why cant there be life on venus that could only exist on venus? or io? or any planet?

kind of like how nothing could live by those underwater lava/gas areas in the ocean, only to find out a very specific creature lives and thrives by that and can't exist without it.

  On 8/13/2012 at 2:19 PM, gmanyo said:

  On 8/13/2012 at 9:00 AM, lumpenprol said:

if we can see their planet, they can see ours.

yeah, but billions of years older than it is

  On 8/14/2012 at 6:58 AM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

  On 8/13/2012 at 2:19 PM, gmanyo said:

  On 8/13/2012 at 9:00 AM, lumpenprol said:

if we can see their planet, they can see ours.

yeah, but billions of years older than it is

actually, younger, right? they, or us, would see, the past, no?

 

if we are, say, 10 light years from a planet then we see them ten years in the past, and they see us ten years in the past.

that's the very definition of a light year

so theoretically we could see the evolution of man with a shapeship/camera that travels from some crazy distant at a rate equal to the pace of real time towards earth and have a singular google maps view until the present?

  On 8/14/2012 at 7:20 AM, compson said:

so theoretically we could see the evolution of man with a shapeship/camera that travels from some crazy distant at a rate equal to the pace of real time towards earth and have a singular google maps view until the present?

edit: maybe i didn't understood what you said, do you mean send a space camera so far away that it records our past? lol

ya lol

mind blows

It would have to move faster than the speed of light for us to see into the past. If it went the speed of light we would only see what happened after it launched.

That is an amazing concept to think about. If we just make a wormhole that will let us hitch a ride on a uber telescope spaceship 200 million light years away, we can watch some dinosaurs and witness their apocalypse.