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Extra-terrestrial life

Pixel42

Schrödinger's cat
Pixel42
Joined
May 25, 2004
Messages
17,931
Location
Malmesbury, UK
Britain's Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, is currently presenting a series on Channel 4 called "What We Still Don't Know".

The first one, shown on Sunday, addressed the question "Are We Alone?". For those who didn't see it, there's a good summary of the main arguments on the channel 4 web site:

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/W/what_we_still_dont_know/index.html

The gist seems to be that, thanks to the size of the universe and convergent evolution, life - even intelligent life very similar to our own - is likely to be widespread in the universe.

This seems to be to be a conclusion with profound philosophical and theological implications.

Anyone want to discuss it?
 
Mere common sense would seem to indicate that this is correct, but unfortunately there's no evidence in particular at the moment.

I read an interesting discussion of this in Paradigms Lost, a book which examined a number of propositions from the standpoint of a judicial trial, presenting the best points on either side.

I think the fellow has a second volume out.

As I recall, his conclusion on extraterrestrial life was positive.
 
I think the likelihood of something we would recognize as life is reasonably high. I think the likelihood of something engaging in a general way of living (speaking very broadly, in terms of general catagorical statements about humans) similar enough to our own that we could recognise it as intelligent life is far less likely, barring some substantial revisions on how we think about things like intelligence.
 
Pixel42 said:
This seems to be to be a conclusion with profound philosophical and theological implications.
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I have a feeling that if we encountered aliens tomorrow, by Friday there would be a missionary expedition sent to their homeworld.

"Jesus died for every quizblorg's sins!"

"Every blagsplaz should roll up to the altar and receive a holy communion wafer in his consumption tubule!"

"God is against marriages between more than five glargles, and there can be no more than one of each of the five sexes in the marriage!"

Contact with aliens should prove enormously entertaining, at least until the exterminations and genocides start. Then it's every glargle for itself.
 
Even as a kid in high school, I speculated (being a big sci-fi fan) about "other" worlds where the seminal beings (adam and eve blugflatz, as it were) didn't sucumb to temptation, and where they and their offspring might still be living in whatever version of Eden they might have.

Of course, that could be a lake of ammonia....
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
You must have to screw up bad to get kicked out of the lake of ammonia.
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It happens if you're a glargle and you put your smipplepotz into a yanglep's orbboppula. That's depraved!
 
TragicMonkey said:
It happens if you're a glargle and you put your smipplepotz into a yanglep's orbboppula. That's depraved!
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It's also a little tingly.
naughty.gif
 
Bikewer said:
Mere common sense would seem to indicate that this is correct, but unfortunately there's no evidence in particular at the moment.
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Agreed. No evidence.

But I would be bold and unorthodox and say that it is highly unlikely that there is not abundant life in the universe. We know that the universe is big enough and we know that the portion of it we can observe behaves in a manner to support life.

Even though we are forced to approach the subject with an Earth-bias -- meaning, we only know what kind of life lives here, and we have to assume that life elswhere in the universe will thrive in conditions similar to those found on and related to Earth (i.e. carbon-based, moderate climated planet with water, astronomically situated near a larger mass planet or star to protect it from being slammed by renegade space stuff) -- the probability for a lot of that type of life in the universe is high.
 
TragicMonkey said:
It happens if you're a glargle and you put your smipplepotz into a yanglep's orbboppula. That's depraved!
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I must admit, that is pretty depraved. But is it any worse than a glargle using his fifflebee to rotung a clalilonarn? That is, after all, a prescribed tenet of the same faith that opposes smipplepotzing orbboppulas. Is hypocrisy ubiquitous in the Universe?
 
Eleatic Stranger said:
I think the likelihood of something we would recognize as life is reasonably high. I think the likelihood of something engaging in a general way of living (speaking very broadly, in terms of general catagorical statements about humans) similar enough to our own that we could recognise it as intelligent life is far less likely, barring some substantial revisions on how we think about things like intelligence.
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Interesting opinion, that. Why do you think that is so? Why is life so unlikely to fill the 'intellectual niche' that you think we are the only ones that have? Maybe I'm misreading you.
 
I think the existence of other intelligent life is only spiritually troubling if you think that our species is the only one that should be or needs to be 'saved'. I wonder if raging xenophobia would not be the result of locating such life.


Tangentially, there is a sci-fi story where folks find the remains of a highly developed culture, who knew their sun was going to supernova and did not have the space flight abilities to escape. The monk on the ship realizes that the star that nova-ed was the star that guided the three wise men. Talk about a crisis of faith!
 
bluess said:
I think the existence of other intelligent life is only spiritually troubling if you think that our species is the only one that should be or needs to be 'saved'. I wonder if raging xenophobia would not be the result of locating such life.


Tangentially, there is a sci-fi story where folks find the remains of a highly developed culture, who knew their sun was going to supernova and did not have the space flight abilities to escape. The monk on the ship realizes that the star that nova-ed was the star that guided the three wise men. Talk about a crisis of faith!
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Just read that again recently, but the name escapes me. Is it Arthur Clarke?
 
Phil said:
Just read that again recently, but the name escapes me. Is it Arthur Clarke?
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Hmmm - I don't think so. My library is currently in a state of upheaval, so I won't be able to find the anthology easily...I was thinking Clifford Simak... Or maybe its in an anthology edited by Simak.

Too many stories in my head!
 
Phil said:
Too many voices in mine.
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Well, maybe my reading list and your multiple personalities can get together as a book club. I'm sure the commentary would be fascinating!
 
Rob Lister said:
Interesting opinion, that. Why do you think that is so? Why is life so unlikely to fill the 'intellectual niche' that you think we are the only ones that have? Maybe I'm misreading you.
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Well, historically, "intelligence" is extremely rare. (This is part of the Drake equation; you should be familiar with it.) Depending upon how you define "intelligence," there are perhaps a half-dozen species that would qualify under an extremely broad reading of the term, and only one that would qualify under a narrow reading.

I'll use a simple but relatively narrow definition here : a group is "intelligent" if it manufactures tools for non-immediate use. An otter using a rock to smash open an abalone is technically using a tool, but it's not a manufactured one. A chimp that breaks off a branch and strips the leaves to probe a nest for termites is manufacturing a tool, but for immediate use. A hypothetical chimp that made such a termite probe and then carried it around for when it found a termite nest would qualify. But no such chimp has been observed. Only humans have been observed to behave "intelligently" under this definition. A recent (2003) find puts a created-tool at 2.6 mya, the earliest known. This is approximately 1/2000 the length of time that life has existed on on the planet.

Simple extrapolation suggests, then, that we should find 2000 different inhabited planets before we find a single one with "intelligent" life. And think about how hard it would be to find an average "person on the street" who would recognize the 2.6mya ape-man as "intelligent."
 
new drkitten said:
Well, historically, "intelligence" is extremely rare. (This is part of the Drake equation; you should be familiar with it.) Depending upon how you define "intelligence," there are perhaps a half-dozen species that would qualify under an extremely broad reading of the term, and only one that would qualify under a narrow reading.

I'll use a simple but relatively narrow definition here : a group is "intelligent" if it manufactures tools for non-immediate use. An otter using a rock to smash open an abalone is technically using a tool, but it's not a manufactured one. A chimp that breaks off a branch and strips the leaves to probe a nest for termites is manufacturing a tool, but for immediate use. A hypothetical chimp that made such a termite probe and then carried it around for when it found a termite nest would qualify. But no such chimp has been observed. Only humans have been observed to behave "intelligently" under this definition. A recent (2003) find puts a created-tool at 2.6 mya, the earliest known. This is approximately 1/2000 the length of time that life has existed on on the planet.

Simple extrapolation suggests, then, that we should find 2000 different inhabited planets before we find a single one with "intelligent" life. And think about how hard it would be to find an average "person on the street" who would recognize the 2.6mya ape-man as "intelligent."
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Thanks. That was a good write-up. Do you really not think that we would consider humans from 2.6mya intelligent? What do you think they'd be like? Would they have language? Could you learn that language? What concepts might be expressed by it?

Edit to add: Maybe the reason we're the only intelligent ones around is because we were intelligent enough to kill off the competition a couple of million years ago.
 
Hmmm.... New Dr.Kitten, by that definition most of us humans wouldn't qualify as intelligent.
 
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