Prevalence of life and intelligent life in the Universe…

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

As @Werthead pointed out in the previous thread there are a lot of very special things about Earth that we probably took for granted that we're just learning about - which again is an answer to the Fermi paradox idea. It may be that this specific combination of things means that it was exceedingly unlikely, even with the massive amount of overall chances. It may be that life is not a particularly easy thing to have happen either. One of the things I talked about with my wife recently is that in order for intelligent life to evolve you need to have the right kinds of evolutionary pressures. You need to have catastrophes but none that are permanent erasers of life - so the Jupiter sweepers and no weird 3-body problem orbits. You need to have mutagens but not too many, so that you get variants. Your climate needs to change and vary, but not so much that you get runaway greenhouses (like Venus) or a dead, cold planet. And you need to have that happen for close to a billion years potentially.

That's a whole lot of ifs!

Yup. The conditions to bring about life in the Solar system were pretty insane to happen:

• Enough comets to bring water to the inner planets without annihilating them through too-frequent bombardments.
• The presence of two large gas giants of the right size to hold them in the outer Solar system: we know now that most systems have only one large gas giant, which will automatically migrate into the inner system, destroying or ejecting smaller planets closer to the star, so you need a second to hold the first in its outer orbit. So in our system we needed both Jupiter to act as a sweeper and Saturn to hold Jupiter in place. Without that Jupiter would have swept into the inner system and Earth would be in a different and likely uninhabitable orbit, if not destroyed or eject from the system altogether.
• Being slap bang right in the middle of the habitable zone.
• Having a working magnetosphere.
• Having a Moon of the right size to tidally stabilise the planet (and moons of the ratio of the size of Earth to ours seem to be incredibly rare).
• Having a sun that's going to last long enough to allow for life to develop.
• Not being too close to the galactic core and getting fried by radiation.
• Not being too close to a deadly supernova for possibly tens of millions of years in a row.

The Fermi paradox has never been updated to account for some of these things, like the hot Jupiter problem, and if it was it would drop the number of civilisations you'd expect to develop in any average-sized galaxy to a tiny fraction of the current number (20,000 IIRC).

[A True Kaniggit]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Yup. The conditions to bring about life in the Solar system were pretty insane to happen:

• Enough comets to bring water to the inner planets without annihilating them through too-frequent bombardments.
• The presence of two large gas giants of the right size to hold them in the outer Solar system: we know now that most systems have only one large gas giant, which will automatically migrate into the inner system, destroying or ejecting smaller planets closer to the star, so you need a second to hold the first in its outer orbit. So in our system we needed both Jupiter to act as a sweeper and Saturn to hold Jupiter in place. Without that Jupiter would have swept into the inner system and Earth would be in a different and likely uninhabitable orbit, if not destroyed or eject from the system altogether.
• Being slap bang right in the middle of the habitable zone.
• Having a working magnetosphere.
• Having a Moon of the right size to tidally stabilise the planet (and moons of the ratio of the size of Earth to ours seem to be incredibly rare).
• Having a sun that's going to last long enough to allow for life to develop.
• Not being too close to the galactic core and getting fried by radiation.
• Not being too close to a deadly supernova for possibly tens of millions of years in a row.

The Fermi paradox has never been updated to account for some of these things, like the hot Jupiter problem, and if it was it would drop the number of civilisations you'd expect to develop in any average-sized galaxy to a tiny fraction of the current number (20,000 IIRC).

But of course we are using our only example of one. 

Edited April 7 by A True Kaniggit

[A True Kaniggit]

I would not be surprised at all if  scientists were able to create life from molecules in a laboratory. 
 

They would just need to get the conditions correct. 

[LongRider]

9 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

What do you call a resident of the Milky Way?

Earthling.     

[A True Kaniggit]

16 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Earthling.     

The arrogance…… 

[A True Kaniggit]

17 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Earthling.     

I’m going full sci-fi mode. 

Terran.

And our sun is Sol. 
 

And our moon is Luna.  
 

And any future people who’s home is the moon are Lunarians. 
 

 

[LongRider]

8 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

The arrogance…… 

I love it when you talk dirty.      

[A True Kaniggit]

1 hour ago, LongRider said:

I love it when you talk dirty.      

Edit:  Failed joke in response on my part. 

Edited April 7 by A True Kaniggit

[House Balstroko]

35 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

The arrogance…… 

The Miss Universe contest would like to have a word with you. 

[DaveSumm]

14 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Fermi paradox has never been updated to account for some of these things, like the hot Jupiter problem, and if it was it would drop the number of civilisations you'd expect to develop in any average-sized galaxy to a tiny fraction of the current number (20,000 IIRC).

Intelligent civilisations? And is the 20,000 the current number or the tiny fraction of the current number?

Either way, at a number that small I don’t find it remotely difficult to imagine that none of them end up covering the galaxy in probes. There’s so many hurdles to clear; would other species want to do that, would they have that same curiosity and drive to do something they’d never witness the fruits of? Would they know how? Is it even possible? Would they be sure enough to know it’s a good idea? I mean what if it’s successful, and every solar system has their very own probe parked up waiting for a civilisation to evolve to the point they could examine it? Is that a good thing? What does it do to their culture? 

[JGP]

19 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

As for the Wilky Way, just walk on it.

 

 

Say thee neigh

 

'! The uploader had not made this video available in your country'

 

 

Edited April 7 by JGP

[Werthead]

6 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Intelligent civilisations? And is the 20,000 the current number or the tiny fraction of the current number?

Either way, at a number that small I don’t find it remotely difficult to imagine that none of them end up covering the galaxy in probes. There’s so many hurdles to clear; would other species want to do that, would they have that same curiosity and drive to do something they’d never witness the fruits of? Would they know how? Is it even possible? Would they be sure enough to know it’s a good idea? I mean what if it’s successful, and every solar system has their very own probe parked up waiting for a civilisation to evolve to the point they could examine it? Is that a good thing? What does it do to their culture? 

20,000 I believe was the conclusion from the Drake Equation, which has to my knowledge never been updated with all of the issues we know now should be part of it.

[JGP]

51 minutes ago, Werthead said:

20,000 I believe was the conclusion from the Drake Equation, which has to my knowledge never been updated with all of the issues we know now should be part of it.

Even if it were only one per, there’s trillions of galaxies out there.

 

[Tears of Lys]

Intelligent life in the universe?  If I find any, I'll let you know.

 

(I'm sure that's a quote from somebody.)

 

 

ETA:  What the hell?  Did I actually kill the thread?  I know the above is old and dusty, but I thought it was harmless enough.     

Edited April 15 by Tears of Lys