This crap really winds me up. Why posit a situation where life was seeded from another planet? It's perfectly plausible, and in fact more likely, that Earthly life began here! All you are doing is removing the origin of life to another place, which is an unnecessary and untestable hypothesis! How do you suggest that life, even extremophilic bacterial life, might travel millions of light years through the most hostile environment that can be conceived of - i.e. the sub-zero vacuum of space?

 

If we are talking about the possibilities of other life forms similar to ours out there I wonder how possible it is within the confines of the age and size of the universe and given how precise conditions need to be to cater for our type of life how many times within the age of the universe will there be opportunities for an environment to exist to play host to life.

If we use us as an example. We get 99%of our energy from the sun, 4m tons of energy per second. Over every 11years this varies less than 0.1% at 93m miles away. A fraction of a degree out or 94/92m miles-no life as we know it.

We are a unique planet as we tilt at 23.5%, tidally locked. It has to be at this precise angle otherwise-no life as we know it.

The air has 21%oxygen, 23% / 19% - no life as we know it.

Oceans contain 3.4%salt (incidentally the same as our blood), 0.6% +/- -no life as we know it.

Hydrogen must convert 0.007 of its mass to helium +/- 0.001-no life as we know it.

The scary thing is that if just one of these factors that governs whether we exist or not goes out of sink by the smallest of margins its game over. I dont even want to try and begin working out the probability of combining the odds of all these things that have to be so perfect against the vast size and age of the universe. Trying to throw in the word evolution doesnt help too much either as if we dont see evidence of life closer to home evolving, where conditions are more favorable for living organisms how can we so readily assume it can evolve further afield where the chances are conditions are far more extreme and less favorable.

I just dont understand how people can say with such certainty we are not alone. Im not saying we are, Im not saying we arent I just think we cant possibly tell, if I had to lay my cards on the table and guess one way or another I would be tempted to say we are alone.

 

A few slight problems. One: the Earth is not tidally locked, but the moon is. Only to always show (approximately) the same face. The axial tilt is nothing to do with tidal locking. And the tilt only supplies us with seasons, which are almost certainly not a requirement for life. Second, the first life on earth arose before there was any free oxygen: it was that life which produced all the oxygen. An atmosphere with free oxygen is probably impossible without life evolving first. And even with complex life as we think of it, the amount of oxygen can (and has in the past) varied a little more than that. Third, the relationship between the level of salt in cells and the level in the sea is at best a relic, at worst a coincidence. I believe the usual theory is that complex life evolved like that in the sea to stop osmosis killing the cells, and has never had any evolutionary pressure to change.

There's a real danger of people thinking that because we only know of life on Earth, it must be like us. But a competing theory says that as long as life is physically possible then it will happen. Even if we assumed that life has to be based around carbon, the number of possibilities for even the basics is huge.


M

 

Scientists used to believe that to have life you needed sunlight.

Until they discovered black smokers with their huge and diverse ecologies.

One thing the Earth has that is useful to life is the Van Allen belt that protects us from radiation.

But other than that we only see our conditions and yet life could have evolved very differently elsewhere.

 

Not only that, be we humans have been making 'noise' for say 100-120 years so other life in the Universre won't know we're here if they live over 120 light years away, which isn't very far at all.

 

I'm not saying that this is a definite fact, just open to the possibilites. We have seen that life is pretty resilient, more than you think. Nasa has already carried out experiments by exposing microbes in space for up to 6 years and the results have shown that the bacteria became more varied and grew much faster in space and also become more resilient to anti-bacterial treatments. Even on Earth life can survive in the most harshest environment, Rutgers bacteria reanimated after being frozen 8 million years in the Antarctica ice, 3 miles under the surface of the sea around volcanic vents, complex life exist where there is no sunlight, in pressures 500 times greater than at the surface and in super heated water of up to 400 degrees centigrade, hot enough to melt lead. Stromatolites lived 3.5 billion years ago in conditions that would not support life as we know it today and it is this primitive life form that formed the building blocks of life that had allowed complex organisms to thrive.

Nasa scientists believe that they may have uncovered evidence for the existence of life on one of Saturn's moon, Titan and also discovered a vast ocean of water a 100 miles deep on one of Jupiter's moon, Titan. Granted it is doubtful we would find little green men there since conditions out there means that life would evolve at a glacial pace. No one is saying that life has been discovered yet, but Nasa would not throw billions into a project unless their scientists thought that there might be a distinct possibility that life might exist there.

 

This is a particularly interesting thread. It is full of all sorts of diverse suggestions and I find it enjoyable to read them all.

I would be interested to see how people think that life itself actually started up. I know that experiments have been done in an effort to find out how it started up or to create it, but no one has yet been able to achieve it, despite the fact that it is possible to make the proteins etc. using organic chemistry no one yet has been able to make a living organism from scratch.

It is yet another conundrum.

Les

 

It's hard for humans to think on the timescales, or simply numbers of connotations that can happen with regards to process like the ones that would have happened on the early Earth.

There will have been countless trillions of organic molecules linking up in different ways over nearly a billion years, maybe more. The combinations are mind boggling, it's no surprise that eventually a combination happened that would self replicate.

Given the time and conditions, I would say it's more of a surprise if life didn't arise.

Geezer

 

Agreed.

The current global zeitgeist is one of atheism versus theism and I support the former in the debate as the position challenges commonly held beliefs borne of ficticious, dogmatic, priestcraft riddled, organised religions who flog a doctrine which is an afront to reason.

I've reviewed this thread several times whilst it's been running and posit that the differences that have occured aren't simply in opinion and belief but rather in consciousness, which separates perception and thinking. These two faculties give us two complementary views of the same world; neither has primacy and the two together are necessary and sufficient to arrive at a complete understanding of the world and our universe. I think and feel that it is possible to discover unity between the two poles of our experience. Spirit and the material can co-exist via a skillful application of logic and reason.

 

Still reckon the Egyptians knew all the answers...Stargate and all that

On a serious note...I think they were pretty up there with the clever thinkers

 

Many of the ideas revealed in the New Testament were an amalgam of Greek and Jewish traditions that had inturn been inherited from the Egyptians. It would seem that the Egyptians were significantly influenced by Sumarian mysticism.

 

Sorry you are right. I missed out 'not' tidal locking. Not really a problem though. The tilt is set at the exact angle +/- a degree (but optimum of the three) to enable the correct amount of spin to allow the earths surface to receive the exact amount of even coverage from the sun to sustain life.

Why is this a problem?


Again, not a problem, just fun that was all as I said before I find science very interesting. There are interesting things to be found everywhere that will mess with your with your mind.

When you look into the extreme opposites and venture into the sub atomic realm and start playing with quarks and their simultaneous dualities, you find 1 quark being in two places at the same time. They can also appear in one place, disappear and reappear somewhere different without traveling. Bells theory finds if you split a quark and place one half in London and the other in New York you can spin the electrons in one half and the other halves electrons will spin at exactly the same time and at the same rate.

1997 in New York state they discovered an exotic meson that appeared for a trillionth of a trillionth of a second and then it was gone, leaving scientists to scratch the their heads and asking what just happened.

Scientists agree that Leptons do exist as separate sub atomic particles but can only be found in communities of of 2s and 3s held together by what scientists call 'relational energy'.

This is just science, but I love the fact that the building blocks of our universe are held together by 'something', some sort of uncontrollable, unpredictable 'energy' in strong relationships of 2s and 3s.

 

i dont agree you , life evolved from an atmosphere with no oxygen remember and as evolved as the conditions have changed, its just we have a certain set of conditions that have allowed an abundance of different forms of life. i do believe a lower ammount of oxygen in the atmosphere would still have allowed intelligent life, we would have evolved more efficient lungs or other ways to counteract this.natural selection as probably thrown up a load of possibilities that werent viable in our current conditions but could have been in lower oxygen conditions.

i think life is more about electrical production rather than chemical production

 

The Earth's tilt alters every 41000 years or so and varies between 21 to 25 degrees. The tilt only alters how much sunlight reaches certain latitudes. The Earth is spherical and therefore the coverage is the same whatever those angles. How does the tilt of the earth govern whether life exists or not?

You said "The air has 21%oxygen, 23% / 19% - no life as we know it." Life existed without oxygen and where the gases in the atmosphere was completely different ratio to what it is now. Plus, the ocean doesn't contain 21% oxygen!!

 

I dont really understand why you dont agree. You are suggesting if we shift the parameters slightly we will have evolved to cope. I agree we probably would have and I would be quoting slightly different percentages, or maybe we would be slightly less intelligent and therefore I wouldn't, my apologies I don't really understand your point. This is a long way off suggesting life would be able to evolve in conditions already mentioned.

 

Life evolved due to unique earth conditions. If it was any different we'd not be around, simples. Take a look at the billions of "dead" planets as your evidence

TX.

 

It can only be on the cards due to sheer volume of numbers. The Universe is so big that there is probably something out there albeit with a very tiny probability ... the Human Race will never see it though as it's too far away. Edge of the Universe is 13 billion light years away isn't it get your head around that if you can

TX.

 

No, the Universe is around 13 billion years old, it is estimated to be in the order of 93 billion light years across. Still, yes, not easy to get your head round!

Geezer

 

Actually we've only discovered around 400 planets so far outside our solar system. The actual number of planets is difficult calculate, but based on the distribution of the discovered planets, its estimated that there could be billions in our milky way alone. Even if we take just the one recently discovered that could potentially support life out of the 400, the odds are potentially high for many planets out there that could support life. Scientists have only been able to detect planets in the past 20 years or so, as technology advances, I expect we will find many more and perhaps find one that actually has the conditions similar to Earth.

 

^^ I'll bet you £1 that we don't find any life

TX.

Edit - do we really want to find it anyway FFS ... remember the Borg!

 

Can't see much to argue about in what you say in this post JT.

Les

 

https://www.scoobynet.com/719966-the...r-life-17.html

For reference. I'm sure Leslie confesses to partial Deism in there somewhere and I've now become, in light of the developments in M-Theory, an ignostic and a neophyte-evolutionary-pandeistic-Rosicrucian. I think.

 

I'll still be annoyed if there is no Hell as I know a few people who deserve a bit of purgatory/eternal damnation..

Funnily enough,despite being some of the nastiest people I know they claim to be hyper religious! Have to say,they are the sort of people who do have my beliefs hanging in the balance

Sorry,bit personal (and closely related)but annoying if they get away with their behaviour on two fronts

 

I'll just pop away for a bit and look all that up!

Les

 

I'm happy to take questions.

 

Yes but I would have to know what I was asking about!

Les

 

I met Stephen Hawking in Cambridge HMV several years ago. The baastard refused to shake my hand!

 

Here's an e-copy of Karen Armstrong's excellent book - A History of God, for
any interested party.

http://docs.docstoc.com/pdf/974393/2...cc493c0578.pdf

 

Only had a quick scoot through and does look good.Thought this was interesting.....on the basis (just my own feeling) things had gone rapidly downhill on the belief front since the Internet really got going....say last 10-20 years...

"By the beginning of the nineteenth century, atheism was definitely on the agenda. The advances in science and technology
were creating a new spirit of autonomy and independence which led some to declare their independence of God. This was
the century in which Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud forged
philosophies and scientific interpretations of reality which had no place for God. Indeed, by the end of the century, a
significant number of people were beginning to feel that if God was not yet dead, "

 

Looks very interesting as you say. I will try to get it from the library. It will take time to read and and understand thoroughly.

Les