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Re: Does Life Exist
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Converting C02 to O2 is no problem - plants have been doing it for many million years http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif A little genetical engeneering and we will have algae capable to live on Mars providing there is enough water underground. |
Re: Does Life Exist
Hey Arkcon... yeah 11 days in the mediteranian sun relaxes you more then u can imagine:) Iīm glad PBW knew when to stop working:)
I understand your point Ruatha... I know that in the 30-ies old Adolf couldnīt exactly tune to Alpha Centauri between his looong screaming monolouges:) It just that I read somewhere that the voyager probe (if put far away from Earth) would be able to record (again) the first Elvis song broadcasted on radio... I just concluded that with a big enough radio antenna one could pick up the first transmissions from our system... and vice versa. P.S.: and of course my argument only included intelligent species that have the same tech level and are similarily developed as we are... use teh same tech (radio freq. that we use are such because they are most appropriate and they would prolly use the same ones) ther of course could be a hugely developed culture living on alpha centaury that has ships that reach warp 9.86 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif but communicates by telephaty and has no need for radio and such primitive junk:) [ August 08, 2003, 12:44: Message edited by: JurijD ] |
Re: Does Life Exist
Why would aliens attack us, what would they want? Information is one thing that would be valuable.
If the whole population on earth could be killed off without destroying the structires, computers, libraries etc, it would be a wealth of information. New ideas and viewpoints, different ways to do the same thing, could be profitable but would require a huge investment, propably to big to be worthwhile, but what do I know of alien psychlogy? Perhaps we would be considered devils, an abomination against their god and that we must be destroyed. Or a potential future threat if left alone? Still, I for one belive that any possible alines would not be hostile, but I'll most likely ever know as there isn't even a slim chance that such a contact will be established in my lifetime, if there is intelligent life out there. So what about the future? I belive that one day there will be many different species out there, widely different in abilities and look, but all derived from human stock, geneticly altered by either man or nature to fit into different conditions, perhaps small alterations at first, better oxygnetaing blood platelets? But eventually accelerating, good or bad? For me it seems like a bad idea but then I'm not living in that time am I? |
Re: Does Life Exist
Yeah of course, they could be after info... one could prolly even think of better reasons. I just wanted to say that we are (now) prolly insignificant to anyone out there. Take this example: what could we learn by watching how a cat chases a mouse or by killing all the snails in the world and examining their shells to see what they have hiding in there http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Or killing all the monkeys on Earth for fear of the evolving into something higher... Think of the developments we made in the Last 100 years... (try!) to extrapolate to the next 1.000.000 years of development... thats how developed they will be when (and if) we meet them. I donīt think theyīll even bother to stop here...
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yes millions of years
and thats how long it took to put O2 in the air millions of years... yes 25 years from now we will see planets a few light years out, but as i said there isnt going to be that many good planets to see. |
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May be there is a shiny blue planet orbiting Alpha Centauri ! |
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1. human flaws (the reason you put up instead of my other two...) 2. enemies abroad (the western world who was afraid that their greedy capitalist ways would end..) 3. enemies within (stupid leaders who also got greedy) You could put that up on a sign in the middle of Red square in Moscow and people would shake your hand... |
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yeah, with fungi lifeforms on it...
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Re: Does Life Exist
THE SPINNING SHIP PROBLEM:
The 3 problems I saw mentioned here about using rotational inertia to replace gravity were: 1. movements of astronauts *inside* would "distabilize" the ship and cause it to stop rotating properly 2. as humans arenīt a point object as high school physics would like us to believe http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif a thing called the Corelious force develops when you rotate them on the inside of a wheel like structure of a radious not big enough compared to the size of the person inside. 3. even though inertia gives us 1 g and minimum corelious force we still experience muscle atrophy and "back stress" My thoughts on these: 1. If we look closely at Newtons laws of motion we see that every action as a reaction... so what could be the "worst" disturbance an astronaut could cause to a rotating wheel? The absolute worst would be for him to run in the same direction the wheel is spinning... that way his legs would push the wheel in the opposite direction on the spinning motion and tend to slow it down... but the funny thing is that the moment this astronaut stopped running the wheel would start spinning at the same speed as it did in the beginning because there is a little thing called rotational inertia conservation which states that in any inclosed system (a spaceship and its occupats) the rotational inertia of the whole system cannot be changed by internal forces of the system... you can bounce all you want inside but you wonīt change anything. 2. The obvious solution to this issue is to build a wheel that has a radious more than 100x the normal height of a person (heeh... big, yes... very big) althugh this might be impractical and almost impossible to do now it might be in the future... but sadly its the only solution physics offers us for now... 3. Iīm pretty sure this is the result of insufficient inertia and persisting differential (Corelious) forces in a wheel not big enough or not spinning fast enough. Because if we had a big wheel with almost no differential forces and a g inertial acceleration at the ouer rim... we wouldīt be able to set it apart from normal gravity. (itīs not only simulated... itīs exactly the same as normal gravity in all itīs affects... you just have to have a wheel big enough to eliminate the differential forces) |
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theologically, i've heard that their are microbes in volcanos. so if god put life there, he probably put it on other planets.
250,000,000,000 planets in our galaxy and something like 300,000 galaxies seems like a great waste of space to me otherwise. i mean 75,000,000,000,000,000 stars, since ours is a medium galaxy...it's not if, it's where. [ August 09, 2003, 09:32: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ] |
Re: Does Life Exist
Warning: Potentially controversial and offensive material, especially to people with strong religious / spiritual beliefs.
It should be obvious that as a fan of SEIV, MOO, Star Trek, Star Wars etc., I enjoy the idea and fantasy of huge starships moving across interstellar distances. But I have to say that I don't believe that it'll ever be anything more than a fantasy. The immense physical / energy problems is one thing. The economic cost / benefit rationale of such an endeavor is another. But perhaps the most overlooked obstacle to such a vision is that humanity may not stay in its current form for every long. At the very least, one would expect severe genetic / bionic modifications to function optimally in a spaceship, because the energy costs of genetically / bionically modifying a human being is so much less than the costs of moving a ship at respectable velocities. A good example would be the type of modifications described in the short story "Spirey and the Queen" by ALastair Reynolds. This surely puts paid to the Star Trek vision of future space travel. But why be so conservative? It's likely that within the near future, we could have fully conscious, fully sentient artificial intelligences. Rather than being wholly alien and hostile, as in "Matrix" or "Terminator", I think that the likeliest scenario would be something similar to Walter Jon Williams' story "Daddy's World" , i.e. they'll just be like us, being our offspring. Once conscious software has fully legal rights, I expect that people will start designing, rearing and interacting with software children instead of biological children. A spaceship carrying conscious software has very notable advantages over one that must carry biological lifeforms. In Greg Egan's "Diaspora" for example, "polises" that are physically only about the size of a shoebox, but containing untold billions of independent software persons in VR environments, multiply backed up and constantly updated with similar units with old-fashioned EM communications, creep across the galaxy. Instead of sending huge colony ships across the galaxy, how about sending non-intelligent software controlled robots to build the necessary sensory, power, construction and communications infrastructure on distant worlds, and then sending future humans to inhabit them in the form of encoded EM radiation. After all, if materialism is true, then person-hood is nothing but data. |
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But since I get the distinct feeling that you really wanted to say that humans didnīt evolve from lower hominids in the way generally accepted by modern science: Australopithecus Afarensis --> Australopithecus Africanus --> Homo Habilis --> Homo Ergaster --> (Homo Erectus) --> Homo Heidelbergensis --> Homo Sapiens but rather came about by some other way... (not by a pooof as you say)... I have to urge you to reconsider http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif because human origins are a most accurately researched field of peleoantrophology and a more recent proof of its correctness is that evolutionary trees drawn up by examining bone reamins and anatomical similarities are in complete agreement with the trees drawn by mDNA analysis and genome compression analysis. It is very very rare that two totally different methods give so very similar results; in affect confirming one another. So the human evolution tree is here to stay. We donīt need any aliens or gods to complete the picture, in reality there is no such thing as a "missing link" so often popularized by the media... we have all the important "links" already, now we just add a few "nodes" to the tree every now and then. but the general structure will only get more detailed and wonīt change in any radical way. P.S.: And for those who think humans are the pinnacle of evolution I have to add that about 1 million years ago there were about 3 different fully developoed humanoid races living on this planet. For the evolutionary line is not a linear thing as I drawn it up there but has many other branches and "tree tops" other than our own. More importantly not one of these other hominid species was better developed than the other, we just got lucky that our ancestors were able to drive the other two off their teritories and push them into extiction. My Conclusion: So if you consider our ancestors intelligent (some 1M year ago) than the other two races were also intelligent. So we donīt really have to look out there for signs of alien intelligence, we have a perfect example than it can (and did) happen more than once here on Earth and so Iīm pretty sure it also happened somewhere else. [ August 09, 2003, 13:46: Message edited by: JurijD ] |
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Because if we did come from somewhere else how did life get started there? (evolution?) And if it somehow managed to overcome the vast distance of space and landed on our planet it most surely landed somewhere else too... because the odds of life being created and then migrating to only one other planet in the universe are next to nothing... it would be against the laws of mathematics and nature fur such a thing to happen... so if you think about it, if you propose that life came from somewhere out of this earth then you also propose that the universe is full of life becasue the odds of it only comming here are not to be considered... so your argument contradicts what you said earlier about you believing the universe is empty of life (or thar life is very rare). [ August 09, 2003, 13:55: Message edited by: JurijD ] |
Re: Does Life Exist
Technology for manned mission to mars?
Urlorama (whoa, am I even beating Thermo on amount quoted???): Soviet plans for manned mission to Mars http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/876112.stm http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary...mars_crew.html http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplor...CS/EIC036.HTML <a href="http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4212/ch1.html" target="_blank"> [7]....of the late 1940s when he and his fellow specialists from the German rocket program worked for the U.S. Army at Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Providing Ground, New Mexico, testing improved Versions of the V-2 missile, von Braun wrote a lengthy essay outlinings a manned Mars exploration program. Published first in 1952 as "Das Marsprojekt; Studie einer interplanetarischen Expedition" in a special issue of the journal Weltraumfahrt, von Braun's ideas were made available in America the following year. 4 Believing that nearly anything was technologically possible given adequate resources and enthusiasm, von Braun noted in The Mars Project that the mission he proposed would be large and expensive, "but neither the scale nor the expense would seem out of proportion to the capabilities of the expedition or to the results anticipated.'' Von Braun thought it was feasible to consider reaching Mars using conventional chemical propellants, nitric acid and hydrazine. One of his major fears was that spaceflight would be delayed until more advanced fuels became available, and he was reluctant to wait for cryogenic propellants or nuclear propulsion systems to be developed. He believed that existing technology was sufficient to build the launch vehicles and spacecraft needed for a voyage to Mars in his lifetime. </a> <a href="http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch3.htm" target="_blank"> [105] A key component of early Space Shuttle plans was its linkage to a possible mission to Mars as the next major NASA undertaking. During 1967 and 1968, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) reached key milestones in propulsion on the road to Mars. In tests in Nevada, the AEC conducted successful demonstrations of nuclear reactors built for use in rocket propulsion and showed that its contractors were ready to develop a flight-rated engine suitable for piloted missions to that planet.</a> <a href="http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch4.htm" target="_blank"> One morning in early September 1969 I had to leave the senior staff meeting early to go see the Vice President. Peter Flanigan had alerted me that Agnew's Space Advisory Committee [sic] was about to make some recommendations to the President that Flanigan knew Nixon could not live with. Peter had been unsuccessful in dissuading the President's science advisor, Lee DuBridge, from agreeing with the staff of Agnew's Advisory Committee that there should be a very costly manned mission to the planet Mars in 1981. So Flanigan had asked for a meeting with Agnew, the ex-officio chairman of the committee, in the hope that we could persuade him to kill it. </a> Sketches of Von Brauns Mras expedition proposal. <a href="http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/HAS/Cirr/EM/l11/designs2.htm" target="_blank">In the 1960's, as NASA was designing spaceships to go to the moon, more Mars mission designs continued to be studied including a "Concept for a Manned Mars Expedition with Electrically Propelled Vehicles" devised in 1962, by scientists at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. This mission, planned for the 1980s, included five ships and a crew of fifteen. The scientists and engineers planning this mission considered the possible loss of some of the ships during the voyage, believing the mission could continue even if two of the five ships were lost. This way of thinking about risk is reminiscent of early long sea voyages and the fleets sent to make them. One of the Mars ships could even be used as an emergency return vehicle with the entire crew onboard (albeit "under crowded conditions"). This ship design utilized nuclear electric propulsion and the radiation shelter was made of graphite and metal. For more shielding the scientists placed water and oxygen tanks around the crew module as well as the fuel tanks, an idea still under consideration today! </a> <a href="http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/HAS/Cirr/EM/l11/designs3.htm" target="_blank"> In 1986, another Mars mission scenario was designed for NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This plan was called 'The Case for Mars: Concept Development for a Mars Research Station'. This mission had as its overall goal a permanently manned scientific base using Martian resources to supply consumables, including propellant. This mission used a heavy lifting launch vehicle and three modules that would create artificial gravity. The spacecraft is constructed in Earth orbit and is a "cycler" continually going between the two planets. The Mars trip takes an average of six months with each crew living on the surface for about 25 months at a time. Each crew is relieved by another crew ensuring a permanent habitation of the planet</a> <a href="http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/HAS/Cirr/EM/l11/designs4.htm" target="_blank">In 1993, The NASA Exploration Program Office launched the Mars Exploration Study Project and produced a Mars Design Reference Mission, that owes much to the Mars Direct mission plan. The spacecraft are not built in Earth orbit and there is no prior lunar base built for testing. This mission employs a heavy-lift launch vehicle to send the crew and cargo to Mars. The transit times are short and there are long Mars surface stays. In-situ resources are used to make fuel for the return journey and the habitat used to travel to Mars is the same as the one the crew lives in on the surface. In 1997, a second reference mission, The Human Exploration of Mars, was prepared by the Mars Exploration study team at the NASA Johnson Space Center after the possible discovery of microbial life on the Martian meteorite was announced. Based on the previous reference mission, it called for the establishment of a Mars Program Office; the development of human quarantine and sample handling protocols (to protect Earth from contamination by possible Martian microorganisms); and making the program international from its inception. In 2001, human Mars exploration plans were put on hold and NASA refocused on the space shuttle, the construction of the International space station and research on lunar exploration. </a> <a href="http://history.nasa.gov/augustine/racfup5.htm" target="_blank">A number of studies have outlined vigorous space programs, many quite similar to the President's recent initiative. While these programs differ somewhat in content and schedule, they are surprisingly consistent regarding the near-term level of funding required. Based on our own review, we believe that a reinvigorated space program will require real growth in the NASA budget of approximately 10 percent per year (through the year 2000) reaching a peak spending level of about $30 billion per year (in constant 1990 dollars) by about the year 2000. Such a program will: * provide for the basic infrastructure to operate NASA, the recommended Science program, the recommended and expanded Technology program, a Mission to Planet Earth, a new start on a phased and evolutionary heavy lift launch vehicle and a reconfigured Space Station; and * provide sufficient funds to begin laying the foundation for lunar and Mars missions on a schedule that will permit real progress and significant periodic technical achievements leading to a manned Mars mission in approximately 30 years, i.e., Mission from Planet Earth. </a> China denies plans on manned misison to Mars (Why did I include this link? I don't know) [ August 09, 2003, 14:38: Message edited by: Ruatha ] |
Re: Does Life Exist
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I could see the "ship" would actually be two ships that are firmly clamped together during launch, complex manuvers and whatnot. But during the bulk of the trip which would be either straight coasting or straight ahead acceleration they could be detached and a cable reeled out of both of them which would allow them to get the neccesary radius for normal gravity within each ship. There could be one of more counterwieghts crawling back and forth along this cable by means of computer control to balance out any fluctuations if there are any. You could either ahve all the crew on one half and equipment in the other, or the crew could move from one half toe the other when neccesary along the cable. Geoschmo |
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I do not believe we were created instantly by some all knowing being. Nor do I believe that mankind is ruled by this being as religion would have you believe. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU ANGER EASILY I think schizophrenics who heard voices and thought it was the voice of god wrote the bible. The bible was created so that a few could control many. Nothing more nothing less. If you look at the number of innocent people that have been put to death, or have died because of religion then one totally looses faith in it. Look at all the bad things that have been done to people in the name of the lord. I choose to believe that god did not create man, nor does god govern him, but we are ultimately judged by him. Our deeds, good or bad are regulated by our own guilt and not out of fear of punishment after death. Trust me when your dead, your dead. There is no divine after life, no hell, and no heaven. Do you remember the time before your birth? Death is the same thing really, nothingness. It is a depressing truth, but I do not expect people to Subscribe to my point of view and I do support the choices people make when it comes to what beliefs system they choose to Subscribe to. I hope they find what it is they are looking for, but I know they won't. So God will play no part in man ability to explore the stars or meet new life. We are on our own in that endeavor and if God chooses to help out in his or her own way, then great, but for the most part, its going to be a long and lonely road to the final frontier. [ August 09, 2003, 15:38: Message edited by: Atrocities ] |
Re: Does Life Exist
Oh no, you missunderstood my post entirely http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
You said that you donīte believe us to be the product of evolution from lower hominids (you called them apes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif and that you also donīt believe we were created by a "pooof" .... I explained then (in great detail) that we are actually (with the highest degree of probability science can offer us now) the product of evolution starting from "apes" as you called them or hominids as they are correctly termed. ... the quote you put up has nothing to do with what I said... perhaps I didnīt make that sentance clear enough. I wanted you to reconsider your disbeliefes in the evolution of man... and I tried to name a few arguments to get you satrted on that way. This god bussiness you developed below has nothing to do with my argument and nothing to do with what I said... Quote:
[ August 09, 2003, 17:38: Message edited by: JurijD ] |
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And although it is true that religion has generated lots of bad (sectarian violence, intolerance, holy wars, etc.), religion has also generated lots of good (charities, faith healing, hamnitarian aid, etc.). Everything has a good side and a bad side. Religion is no different. I'll stop replying to this off topic discussion. Edit: One more point to make: You say that religion was created in order for the few to control the many. While that was true in the olden days, it is an out of date statement; The pope does not control the world's vast Catholic population. [ August 09, 2003, 17:51: Message edited by: TerranC ] |
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I would like to point out a few things.
First God is a God of law He obeys the RULES just like the rest of us. Case in point: The parting of the red sea by Moses. If you carefully read in the Bible how that was done you will see that that miriacal(sic)was accomplished by natural means. Second Blaming God for the terrible acts done in His name by PEOPLE is an error in doctrine. It comes right out in the Bible and says why we are here which is to choose between good and evil. Third How we got here via evloution or 'Poof' is not the most important issue.What is of importance is have we chose good over evil and have we obeyed God? And Forth The more knowledge we gain points out how little we know about everything. Theories are constantly changing as we gather new information about the universe around us. I just finished reading article that pointed out that we are not descended from apes but from a similar species. Also in this thread I noticed people making statements about other star systems as if they were facts when really we don't know for sure. We need to allways be aware that there is more to learn. Even in a construct such as SEIV there is more to learn every time I play. I am here. I am aware. There has to be others like me beyond the confines of this solar system. [ August 09, 2003, 23:07: Message edited by: Gozra ] |
Re: Does Life Exist
To get back to the original question, it is my estimation that life is pretty rare in the universe. Not as rare as Atrocities believes but still, mighty rare.
I would not be surprised if we are the only civilization in this galaxy. I would barely raise an eyebrow if we were the only one in our local group of 17 galaxies. But thoughout the whole universe, the absolute number of civilization is reasonably high-- say between 100 and 100,000. Unfortunately at our state of tech development we can never know for sure. That brings to mind 2 points that have received little attention: tech level and intelligence level. Tech Level All the below assumes approximately equal brain power. Right now, it is impossible for us to detect another culture as little as 100 years behind us-- a cosmic microsecond-- and it is impossible for them to detect us. This may not be true in as little as 200 years (2 cosmic microseconds). By then we may be able to see planets around another star as easily as we see the earth from the moon now. And this time span is just a tiny blip! A society only 10,000 years more technologically advanced than us may not be obvious to us at all. Who knows what tech they might have? Whatever you guess is probably wrong. At the same time, they could hide from us easily if they so choose. If not, their antics may not even be noticed by us. Take longer spans and the gulf becomes ludicrous. We are not just "not on the same page", but in entirely different libraries! Intelligence Level To define, let me argue that there are various intelligence levels here on planet earth. Microbes are at one level, then perhaps worms, then insects. When we get to vertibrates, intelligence increases by quantum leaps. No doubt we are a quantum leap beyond dogs and horses and even chimps. The questions that are fairly simple to us cannot even be imagined by these creatures. I will paraphrase James Allen Gardner from one of his books. Imagine a rock on the edge of a cliff. Its easy for us to see that eventually that rock will fall-- an errant gust of wind, an earthquake or simple erosion will push it over the edge. A few seconds observation and thought tells us this but is so unremarkable we hardly think about it. The chimp cannot even form the question let alone reach a conclusion! It is not hard to imagine a quantum leap beyond our own level. What we can't imagine is the form it will take. In a million years, we will evolve somewhat but a million years is merely a cosmic day. It may not be enough to make that quantum leap. 10 million years may be enough. But imagine a race one billion years more evolved than us! Well, I really can't anything factual about such beings. I can say they may be all around us but we just don't have what it takes to recognize them. The individuals of our species are very self centered. More than once (hah! many thousands of times) something has been "impossible" and we went ahead and did it anyway, yet we continue this self centered, "today" centered attitude. So, when someone says something is impossible, I just smile knowingly. |
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If you rule out evolution and the religious factors, what could be some other possibilities for how we came to be on this planet?
I am sorry, I do not believe that we evolved from apes and monkies nor do I believe that we were "POOOOF" created. I think there is truth in both however, but no substantial answers. If we did develop on this world, then yes it is likely, however remote, that life could develop on other worlds. I Subscribe the theory that we are a unique side effect of a lot of rare occurances that lead to our being. I do not believe that the universe is teaming with life and the evidence to date supports this depressing view. But if we did not evolve on this planet, and were not magically created by some super being calling itself GOD (Government of Domocracy or General Operations Director) then a whole new avenue of possiblities opens. It is this theory that we came from somewhere else that holds the most hope for imagination and coversation for me. |
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there would be little point to this life if i remembered the time before my birth. how could i be challenged if i knew absolute good?
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I think this to be true as well. |
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I still think the most likely event is that we came about by slow mutation of our genes mostly... perhaps cross breading played a role too. but in any case it was all natural, aliens most likely didnīt play a role here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif and neither did some magical being that flipped a finger and the wolrd appeared... maybe thatīs how time-space got started but later on I think physics governs everything. [ August 10, 2003, 09:40: Message edited by: JurijD ] |
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Back to the original debate:
Simple life: I still think that life in one form or another will be very common in our galaxy. By this I mean some form of lower single-celled life. Bacteria, protozoa etc. etc. (if cells will even be the building blocks of life on other worlds... who know !) I base this on the discoveries we made in the Last few decades. Life has turned out to exist in the most unusual places... at the bottom of the sees, in vulcanos, 10km unde ground etc. etc. where the temperature, pressure and other conditional extremes challange our usual perception of a life friendly environment. I wouldnīt be at all surprised if we found bacteria living under ground on Mars and perhaps even Venus... the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and perhaps even further out. Complex life: The evolution of multicelular organisms requires a certain environmental stability that earth provided. But obviously the more complex life gets the more rare it will be because the more complexity an organism has the greater are its envirnomental requirements. So Iīm pretty sceptical that we will find complex multicelular organisms in our solar system... perhaps on Mars, Titan or Europa... but I doubt it. Intelliget life: Lets put the early hominids as a base line. Anything more evolved is intelligent anything less is not. By this cretaria if we found some form of aliend dolphin it would not be an intelligent life form.... Noone can really answer this question, as I pointed out erlier. I wouldnīt be surprised if our galaxy had 1.000.0000 intelligent species in it and neither if we were the only one. This is because I cannot make a realistic approximation of the number for myself... its just not possible, the Drake and the Rare Earth equations are a bunch of §%!%"§ ... they can give whatever results you want, depends how optimistic you are so they are virtually useless. Conclusion: I think theis question will only be answered when we have explored our entire galaxy... or have enocountered an alien race that will share its knowledge with us. since both events are very unlikely I think this post could hang around for a very long time... |
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I still think the most likely event is that we came about by slow mutation of our genes mostly... perhaps cross breading played a role too. but in any case it was all natural, aliens most likely didnīt play a role here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif and neither did some magical being that flipped a finger and the wolrd appeared... maybe thatīs how time-space got started but later on I think physics governs everything.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Earlier this year there was a paper published in Nature that proved (apparently) there was no crossbreeding between neanthertals and modern man. We simply wiped them out. |
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There are several recent and more or less rigourous scientific papers that assert we mayin fact be one of the First Ones - stars evolution indicates stars older then our Sun are too poor in heavy elements. At the same time, younger stars give up to 20% chance of planets observable by modern - and VERY rudimentary technics ! Basically, we still have some time handicape to evolve and go to the stars. If we fail, in a millenium or two, aliens will come and resolve our pitty squables http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif
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"wait wait a person of faith telling people theyre jumping to ideas to fast... There has been a great amount deduced by comparing stars to known nuclear reactions, giving us a good idea of what is out there."
Exactly what are you attempting to say here? There is life on other worlds other than our own. And the possiblity does exist that we are here for spiritual reasons. At any rate NASA has a money budgeted and a launch date for 2012 to send a satillite out specifically to look for planets like ours. I am looking forward to the results. [ August 11, 2003, 23:08: Message edited by: Gozra ] |
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Re: Does Life Exist
It has occured to me my previous remarks about the unlikelyhood of us ever getting out of our own system were a bit pessimistic. If one considers the potential of nano-technology it may be possible someday. If you can conceive of a ship that is maintained and repaired by billions of microscopic nano-bots scouring the ship and making repairs at the molecular level, it's conceivable that we could build a ship that could travel for hundreds, even thousands of years and arrive at it's destination in the same pristine condition that it left Earth.
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Re: Does Life Exist
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Re: Does Life Exist
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIM/sim_index.html
This project is due to launch in 2009. part of its mission is to search for planets about the size of ours. |
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