Are We Alone In the Universe? Not Likely, According To Math (cnet.com) 267
An anonymous reader writes: An equation, which calculates the probability of the evolution of other technological civilizations, has found that it's wildly unlikely we're the only time advanced society in the universe. Adam Frank from the University of Rochester and Woodruff Sullivan from the University of Washington base their new equation on the Drake equation, used for calculating the probability of extraterrestrial civilisation, written by astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake in 1961. The scientists also take into account Kepler, which suggests that one in five stars have planets in the habitable zone. Frank and Sullivan calculated that human civilisation is only unique if the odds of a civilisation developing on a habitable planet are less than one in 10 billion trillion. "One in 10 billion trillion is incredibly small. To me, this implies that other intelligent, technology producing species very likely have evolved before us," Frank said. Frank said: "Of course, we have no idea how likely it is that an intelligent technological species will evolve on a given habitable planet. But using our method we can tell exactly how low that probability would have to be for us to be the ONLY civilization the Universe has produced. We call that the pessimism line. If the actual probability is greater than the pessimism line, then a technological species and civilization has likely happened before."
It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:3, Insightful)
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it's almost as if someone intelligent designed us....
incoming shitstorm
Seriously, we're not that complex. A few billion years is an incredible amount of time.
Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:5, Interesting)
“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”
Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:5, Insightful)
One may argue that we are outside the norm for life on Earth; although i'd argue that there are enough other species that show some degree of sentience; members of genus Corvus, the other great apes, cetaceans, and even elephants, that I'd argue that we are more the most extreme example of a phenomenon found in several lineages, in particular in mammals (though genus Corvus are birds). The differences are more degree. Obviously that matters, because there are no chimps building skyscrapers or writing posts on Slashdot, but it also means that our cognitive abilities are firmly entrenched in evolutionary processes.
There's no reason to imagine that if Earth alone can produce two or three lineages of animals capable of some degree of sentience that there aren't millions of worlds in the vastness of the Universe that haven't produced similar organisms.
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One may argue that we are outside the norm for life on Earth
Not trolling - merely a friendly discussion:
Of course there are different TYPES of intelligence too. I like to think that every single being that is alive on this world today is a survivor - it and its ancestors have survived in an unbroken chain all the way back to that first cell. Just that fact alone is a phenomenal accomplishment. And when you look at any creature, even say a colony of ants - well they didn't invent calculus nor do they write poetry, but they are intelligent enough for their niche - t
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Intelligence is one solution to the problem; a solution that has been used by a lot of species since the first nerve fibers joined together to form a primitive ganglion. But it's hardly the only solution. In sheer biomass, E. coli has all the multicellular animals with brains beat, because its solution to the problem of survival is to reproduce very frequently. In reality, that works really well, which is why most of the life on Earth is in fact prokaryotes. All the eukaryotes are just sort of an icing on t
Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:5, Funny)
there are no chimps building skyscrapers or writing posts on Slashdot
You must be new around here.
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Let me amend that. There are not a lot of chimps posting on /.
Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:5, Funny)
Let me amend that. There are not a lot of chimps posting on /.
No, mostly they moderate.
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Um... I'm not sure whether you're arguing that this is a sign of intelligence or not
Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:5, Insightful)
There's one significant flaw in that reasoning. If we assume there are infinite planets, and only a tiny subset of them are inhabited, that subset does not need to be finite... it can still be infinite.
Consider integers. There are an infinite number of integers. One subset of that is odd numbers. If we subtract an infinite set (odds) from an infinite set (integers), the remainder can still be an infinitely large set (even numbers).
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Therefo
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>Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds.
This logic is actually flawed. You can have two infinite groups where one is a subset of the other.
It's the equivalent of this faulty argument:
There are an infinite number of integers. However, not every one of them is a natural number. Therefore, there must be a finite number of natural numbers.
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Infinity is a difficult to understand concept for many people.
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“It is known that there are an infinite number of Numbers... However, not every one of them is Prime. Therefore, there must be a finite number of Prime Numbers... From this it follows that the population of Prime Numbers is also zero, and that any Prime Number you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."
The Truth is there is an Infinite Number of Prime Numbers in spite of there being space between them. The question really is whether or not the odds of intelligent life is comparable to Prime Number, or to the occurrence of a single solitary number. Also the 1 divided by Infinite is infinitesimal not nothing as Adams asserts assuming you're not a blaspheming finitist. And if you are a blasphemer
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Anywho, it'
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Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:5, Insightful)
We only think it's outside the norm because our ancestors either assimilated or killed of other species of intelligent life long before anything close to what we consider human civilization ever occurred.
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“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds.
That was a joke, the logic doesn't really work. For instance, there are an infinite number of integers, not every one of them is even, but there are still an infinite number of even integers. Not to mention that there are not in fact an "infinite" number of worlds. There may be a large number of them, but that number isn't inifinite.
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(quoting Douglas Adams)
“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds.
There's your problem right there! (Yeah, I'm sure Adams was perfectly aware of this, he was, after all, writing a comedy novel.)
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Don't confuse the Universe with the Observable Universe. The Observable Universe is not infinite. The Universe may well be.
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Even if we limit ourselves to the Observable Universe, there are billions of galaxies each with billions of stars. If even one hundredth of one percent of those stars had planets, one hundredth of one percent of those planets harbored life, and one hundredth of one percent of those planets with life had intelligent life, we'd be talking about millions of civilizations. We might be so far away from one another that the chances of finding each other approach zero, but there's a very good chance (probability
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Well the fact that the universe seems to have limited matter vs infinite void. Means that there is 0% chance that matter exists in the universe. However there is...
While I am not going to say that there was an intelligence behind it. However if the universe is limited in size, there seems to be a contradiction in the nature of the universe.
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I think the only contradictions here derive from your assumptions about the nature of the universe. In other words, you have created the issue yourself.
Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:5, Insightful)
But the UNIVERSE is huge. With billions of galaxies. And each galaxy has billions of star systems.
The question isn't whether we are the only planet where life evolved.
The question is whether any other life will ever be able to contact us.
The universe could have a million planets with intelligent life. And not one of them within a million light years of another.
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But the UNIVERSE is huge. With billions of galaxies.
Sure, but it is unlikely we will ever make contact with life outside our own galaxy. So the real question isn't whether there is other life in the Universe, but whether there is other life in the Milky Way, where civilizations can spread from star to star until they eventually meet.
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It is also unlikely that we'll ever make contact with another intelligence in our own galaxy. It is 100,000 light years across.
Then comes the issues of whether:
1. They'd have died out before they could reach us.
2. We die out before they've gotten past the "bang the rocks together" stage.
So many things have to happen in just the right order at just the right time. Look at our evolution for an example (the only one we have).
Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:4, Insightful)
It is also unlikely that we'll ever make contact with another intelligence in our own galaxy.
It is unlikely that we will make contact with a specific civilization, but there are 100 billion stars in the galaxy, so there may be millions of civilizations out there.
It is 100,000 light years across.
You don't have to go 100,000 ly in one jump. Even in our neighborhood, the stars are only a few ly apart. In much of the galaxy, they are much closer than that. If a civilization propagates through the galaxy at even 0.01c, that is just a blink on the time scale of geology or biological evolution.
Re:It's wildly unlikely we should exist (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also wildly unlikely that I got these numbers out of /dev/random (base64 encoded):
a2yIbR 06VMDu f3WkRu mCTMwT S/1sTr 5MC+JF VIAYQo El1/dj WPL+JL HNUZSZ 0yTnsd UDstFc SwIQcZRCTZ MXVO1o cqvrbG vn1TF4 qKhdL4 mBsdiI BxZ4Sx 9P+Pcj zto/bY w9+afI +JNUfu XpETQK 2k7dWFBSqC phnTUe y9cRsQ LfPeAX +sUA+n IB5xD7 fnJlF8 SwfMyE K3wuJb PfCKSc yjDkBk 8zXqnr AbDcwdVvMf GofKC4 fnbv6x j81Wyp ip3Zym Dva50x kRAFHB Z2PD+r e6PewB Jwg2NW rrSRf8 vKyRRe 1d4nTKRIYe NhFD2x mcudTw ybhJX/ BenFJD m+Z4JK xk86DT v71laB wywDf7 xhGVBh dLeILX pPDpoH OJV9jsziLY r6FpU1 5U0/0Q xRlv72 XYCbeY cUKvrS pkTgvp NqOhQi KBRxEc +tpS6D 31XcM/ skM9s1 t+gkTTQYpw FT6Q37 r5pdhq P/bENf Nfq4wA p17TnV +Iqz1Q FlmocM YQtp3l N7aopC t//jtL OkbO9r OdUMwq/Yak aySm9L U5IwSJ Lca1gs kUAgyh GNk099 eu9GgC d10kWL EMoX6D lA6bdY 7AYESp nA7hT6 ChZOraHk3+ a7sZDT GElTZI 4sSflA 1ccbmi B9V4HR BieFj4 G0F8qg Gy7ugw BP4DQ0 G8IyJ8 OZprIx 029GlmXibT rWQMgk 3D/EsS 9Jqu4m kcNDdB jij85G HXU/dr uG9eXD 73FtnX MoXBsq cjccXR oDhZxN DnubE+7vhS xR/Gxg L/FmN7 Q/hilg SBiZNw UeMz5M 1CLLag Mp+Lae TNRsbk YryRuv IFck/+ KO2yH8 y9GqQyK90c WoCTQF Yb04UQ OmPHCt ZELs2C HZaE/x 8uaUoO 7tBA0I Um57tZ RZ1gVK pSD4zN hRIPyJ I6efcIC1an JkQnuV 1vdtXr QDzXv3 8gLeK1 yGiBga KOJOBr aIjeBF S39M4L G3sZ2L wGutBe fVyWF2 Z7UOzh2yny IUQ/bS gt0fMM V1+GWE r1f+zh f5QKnL rDMIPi ENg10n SsRQ+E gl5ims 0gEvxc ZuNTgi vN9v6s1EgL wEAMJW IN4dJO fjanbL lro2fS CI4dwG UWqGV2 SOXH6o 8Gs0rM KaiNkb ny4GXQ ZzcBq2 QaJYgrnHM3 I4EhgD VEpPoU djY9hb kGuSDt Pth+9R xqqxxy 6NUlDk sHUiXh 8lq+B0 QLPVNt SaF6Wc BICSPupiCP n8QoEY ZKKK1X qN5qoB qkOtTt 77bbiH xqUC80 eOPdS0 RBsMNL e/AlKL NUmspv KjDzba bnPZtF9BH0 I9yTXr YjMn5K hSRjKD qy+SoL E8xT8Z ZgY1rA ==
The chance was in face 1 in 2^8000, or if you prefer 1 in 1.7E+2048. We could run this universe over many bilions of times and no one would get those numbers again, so treasure them!
So, as you can tell that event above is very unlikely. However, the chance of me getting 1000 numbers out of /dev/random is very close to 1. I'd expect it to fail very much under 1 in a billion times.
In other words, just because a specific event is unlikely (me getting those digits/this type of life evolving) doesn't mean that getting AN event from the class (e.g. some digits from /dev/random or some type of life evolving) is nearly so unlikely.
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Your random generation loop has run once, insofar as there is scientific evidence.
Since the odds of a sequentially dependent set of events cannot be greater than the step with the -least- probability, it is the fact out of all possible physical laws and initial conditions, we have sentient life rather than "space-time goo" that is the more relevant constraint at hand.
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Thanks for reminding me to go buy a Powerball ticket.
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given how complex we are...
Complexity != Quality, or every bloatware and spaghetti coder out there would have created true AI by now.
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Lying headline (Score:3)
The headline is a lie. You can't project probabilities from a single known example. The math doesn't work that way.
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Very.
Provide a counter-demonstration and whip up a sentient AI.
As this discussion rapidly devolves into the standard "you can't define rigorously the term 'complex', therefore even though both of us are perfectly clear what it is, you have no point I'll acknowledge until then" intellectual dishonesty, I'll pass on further followup--for now.
"Habitable Zone" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:"Habitable Zone" (Score:5, Interesting)
as the relationship between the information processing rate (bit/s) of each individual processing unit (neuron), the weight/size of a single unit and the total number of processing units (expressed as mass).
At present, human scientists are attempting to communicate outside our species to primates and cetaceans, and in a limited way to a few other vertebrates. This is inordinately difficult, and yet it represents a gap of at most a few SQ points. The farthest we can reach in our "communication" with vegetation is when we plant, water, or fertilize it, but it is evident that messages transmitted across an SQ gap of 10 points or more cannot be very meaningful. What, then, could an SQ +50 Superbeing possibly have to say to us?
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What, then, could an SQ +50 Superbeing possibly have to say to us?
Who's a good girl? Whoooo's a good girl? [threepanelsoul.com]
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A superbeing wouldn't find us very interesting or capable of having a good conversation with, but they would not be incapable of communicating with us, if they learned our language and obtained the means.
The real barrier to communication with lower SQ animals is both our lack of knowledge of the "language" they use, and the inability to produce communication in that language. I can see that a dog is happy if he's wagging his tail. What I can't do is wag my tail to show I am happy, and what is more, the do
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Earth would not be in the habitable zone without plate tectonics. Venus would be in the habitable zone if it had about a zillion times less CO2 in its atmosphere. Mars would probably be in the habitable zone too, if it were bigger and had a magnetoshpere.
It's all relative.
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Why assume life out there would be carbon based, breath, and require water?
Plenty of life doesn't "breathe", so nobody is assuming that. Early life on earth was almost certainly anaerobic. But carbon and water have some very useful properties, and they are both extremely common in the universe. So assuming that life is carbon based in a liquid water medium is reasonable.
Also, we are searching in extreme environments outside the habitable zone. For instance, we are planning missions to Europa [nasa.gov] which has far more liquid water than earth.
Re:"Habitable Zone" (Score:5, Interesting)
Who are WE to determine that life has to be like US.
Well, obviously that's silly, however...
Why assume life out there would be carbon based, breath, and require water?
Because we don't know any better. It's likely that carbon is important. There are several reasons for this. First, it forms stable, complex molecules over a wide range of temperatures. Silicon does to some extent, though the upper limit on the temperature is much lower. Boron also formes long complex molecules readily. There might be options with some metals too.
However abundance is also key. Boron is not formed in stellar nucleosynthesis un significant quantities unlike silicon and carbon, so it is very rare. This is a downside for life, since some non living process would have to concentrate it first.
The next problem is solvents. Likely solvents are hydrocarbons, ammonia, water, sulphuric acid and possibly liquid or supercritical gasses like nitrogen or hydrogen. We know those do exist out there in space. More exotic solvents may well depend on a large quantities of large molecules being formed (unlikely) or concentration of rare elements (also unlikely).
Those solvents will affect what chemistries are possible and what the base molecules are.
Now, the thing with carbon is that it comes in a variety of forms ready made. There's plenty of methane around the solar system, and the interaction with UV makes various other molecules too. However, silicon just doesn't seem to do that which puts it at a disadvantage. Likewise, CO2 is a nice gas which can spread itself around, unlike SiO2 which is rather more rooted to the ground.
So, while there might be non carbon forms of life, the other elements are at a severe disadvantage.
As for solvents, yeah I can see other ones could work. There's a few choices.
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I think you're grossly over-estimating our ability to look. Trying to spot life across interstellar distances makes looking for a needle in a field of haystacks look like a walk in the park. The sky is just too frigging big when you're looking closely enough to maybe see life. Plus, we don't currently have the equipment to even really try - seeing the relevant details from many light years away is *expensive*, and hard to justify building based entirely on "what if".
So, we're looking for evidence of enou
Re:"Habitable Zone" (Score:4, Insightful)
What I find funny about this discussion is that our whole mathematical proof that extra-terrestrial life exists basically boils down to: "There's lots of places to look." Which is fine until we get to Fermi's Paradox, which reels that back in. There is no math that can determine if we're alone in the universe until we actually meet any. At best all math can say is: "Here's how long it'll take to give up the search."
The best we can do is try to narrow down where we'd search. That's the point of the 'Habitable Zone', it should really be called the "Familiar-to-us Zone'.
Re:"Habitable Zone" (Score:4, Insightful)
What I find funny about this discussion is that our whole mathematical proof that extra-terrestrial life exists basically boils down to: "There's lots of places to look." Which is fine until we get to Fermi's Paradox, which reels that back in.
Actually, I'd say the argument really boils down to the Principle of Mediocrity [wikipedia.org].
We assume that there's nothing too "special" about our place in the universe. And that seems to work well so far when we look at galactic structure or stars or solar systems -- as we gaze out into the universe, we find a lot of stuff that looks superficially like what we see around our "neck of the woods."
The problem is that most of those big structures are dependent on very basic physical principles -- how gravity works, how nuclear fusion works in stars, how much of various elements are present and relatively evenly distributed.
But life is pretty complicated. It could be if you make a "stew" of approximately the right mixture of stuff in the approximately right temperature and gravity conditions, life just self-organizes most of the time. Or, it could be that the "stew" and conditions were much more specific and the requirements are much more narrowly determined (enough so that life is pretty rare in the universe).
We simply can't know until we (1) observe life in other places, which will allow extrapolation and estimation of probabilities, or (2) manage to run our own "creation experiment" to evolve life ourselves in a lab, probably over millions of years -- in which case we can look at the conditions that seem to be required.
So, the ONLY reason for believing it's even worthwhile to look other places is the Principle of Mediocrity. But there's little reason to believe that the Principle of Mediocrity applies equally to patterns caused by really basic fundamental things like gravity and atomic structure vs. patterns caused by self-organizing complex life forms. Maybe it does. That'd be cool -- life everywhere in the universe. Maybe it doesn't, and we're pretty rare.
There's no "mathematical" argument to be made here at all, until we have more than one data point.
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The chemistry in question is important. We not only believe that in a habitable zone, with the right raw materials, the chemistry for life isn't only possible, it is almost inevitable unless something stops it. Outside the habitable zone, that chemistry may be possible, but is not inevitable.
So, it makes sense to look for life in the places where the chemistry and environment is most likely to bring about a sustainable lifeform in an interval that is less than the age of the known universe. It isn't a ma
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Why assume life out there would be carbon based, breath, and require water? We're looking for life outside of this little snowglobe, but we've placed a mirror infront of the telescope
Every single scientist looking for life elsewhere understands this. Yup, all of them. So, you have to ask yourself, if you want to look for "it's life, Jim, but not as we know it", what exactly do you look for?
With very limited data indeed, just a barely-resolvable modification to the light of a distant star as that light passes by its planet, we have a chance to detect certainly things about it's atmosphere. With that tiny amount of data, a scientist can look for evidence of life as we know it, by looki
Mathturbation (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is just silly. The Drake equation has always been a joke. It's an extrapolated tautology that the chances for life on other planets are based on the chances for life on other planets.
The worst part about the coverage of this is that the math is claimed to be EVIDENCE that technological civilizations exist on other planets.
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The Drake equation is perfectly sensible. The key is choosing a reasonable parameters, and the only humour to be found is how ridiculous some people's choices are.
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I played with it once and for the Milky Way I got a value of 0.8.
I think that life may prevail in many unexpected places, but intelligent life and even more intelligent life with technology is a lot rarer. Even on earth we have other intelligent species - like dolphins and even raccoons. But they don't use technology.
Re:Mathturbation (Score:4, Insightful)
And two months ago, a completely different outcome (Score:3)
What happened to the scientist that modeled the universe and concluded that not only are we alone in the universe, according to his model, even we shouldn't exist?
I remember commenting on that story, claiming it it was a near-mathematical impossibility for us to be alone in the universe, and his model was wrong. Of course, the usual naysayers came out of the woodwork, but now lo' and behold, here's another story that supports my assertion.
Of course, next week, we'll be back to being alone in the universe.....
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People, even scientists, say lots of rather silly things. Sometimes scientists say silly things to get some attention. Sometimes some idiot science "journalist" greatly overblows a point that a scientist was trying to make. You notice how every time some new hominid fossil is found, the press reports "This could revolutionize evolution!" when, almost always, as interesting as the find may be, it's hardly revolutionary in that it doesn't overthrow any major theoretical work, but usually just refines it.
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I think the quote from Contact's Ted Arroway sums it up the best:
I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space.
Missing parameters (Score:2)
Size of the Universe answers this question (Score:3)
When you look up in a sky full of stars - all of which belong to the Milky Way Galaxy.... (at least 9,000), and about 4 other galaxies.
And know that with a common telescope we can detect both far more stars within our galaxy (over 100 billion) , AND a whole bunch of other galaxies...
And know that the galaxies form clusters - and cluster contains about 100+ galaxies (often 1000+)....
And know that there are thousands of clusters...
Basically, there are more stars than grains of sand on earth, than water molecules in a drop of water, than seconds in all of humanity's life span.
Yes there's other life out there. Now, whether it's intelligent, still alive, within a reasonable travel/speaking distance of us, that's another story.
Re:Size of the Universe answers this question (Score:5, Insightful)
When you look up in a sky full of stars - all of which belong to the Milky Way Galaxy.... (at least 9,000), and about 4 other galaxies.
And know that with a common telescope we can detect both far more stars within our galaxy (over 100 billion) , AND a whole bunch of other galaxies...
And know that the galaxies form clusters - and cluster contains about 100+ galaxies (often 1000+)....
And know that there are thousands of clusters...
Basically, there are more stars than grains of sand on earth, than water molecules in a drop of water, than seconds in all of humanity's life span.
Yes there's other life out there. Now, whether it's intelligent, still alive, within a reasonable travel/speaking distance of us, that's another story.
This is all great and stuff. But it isn't evidence of the existence of other life.
One cannot judge with a sample of one (Score:2)
Only for all practical purposes (Score:3)
Having company is meaningless if it's
Too far away to ever call
Too far away to ever visit
Living in a different time period
I'll wager a gamble (Score:2)
So we have this big bang which creates a huge amount of energy.
This energy converts to matter in the form of hydrogen.
The hydrogen sticks in big clumps which react to form different atoms.
The different atoms stick together to form planets.
The atoms stick together and organize themselves to form life.
Life organizes to form intelligence.
Intelligence sticks more atoms together to organize more intelligence.
It seems to me this is just the way things go with big bangs. Intelligence is probably just about inevita
This is Crap (Score:2)
We have nothing but pure guesswork to go on in estimating the probability that intelligent life will evolve from microscopic life over a given time frame and not much more to go on in estimating the probability of life arising in the first place.
Yes, I personally find the arguments that we aren't the only intelligent life in the universe compelling but suggesting that MATH tells us this is true is simply misleading. People whose prior probability that intelligent life evolves given a suitable planet is sup
And in the real world (Score:2)
They have absolutely nothing. Likely, unlikely, they cannot say without making invalid assumptions.
What are the odds? (Score:2)
How do the one in 10 billion trillion odds compare to the odds of us living inside a simulation?
Gripe: Math versus Science (Score:2)
Science is respected for its reputation for certainty, and Math is seen as the purest (and thus most certain) of the sciences.
This bugs me. Math, on its own, is so "pure" that it has no connection to the universe whatsoever. Aliens don't appear in pure math. Neither do electrons, polymers, or three-toed sloths. Math is purged of all real world things. Math can't predict anything about the real world. Even the simplest tautologies, like "two apples are equal to two apples", requires extra real-world semantic
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If you add enough time to any probability, it becomes certain. Therefore you cannot use time anymore than you can multiply or divide by zero and get anything useful.
To calculate the probability of life in the universe accurately (as accurately as guesses can be
Advanced? (Score:2)
Advanced? Can't cure the common cold, let alone cancer. Still burning fossil fuel for power. Can't get ourselves to the next planet, let alone next star. Still running Microsoft Windows. Primitive savages, I say.
Mental masturbation (Score:3)
The question of whether there is recognizable life outside our solar system is not a matter of statistics. Either there is life, or there isn't. The formula is entirely meaningless; either we (as a species) will encounter such life, or we won't. The likelihood is irrelevant.
WTF! (Score:2)
Depending on your religious or whatever other believe-system-ROM, if you can switch that off for a couple of ms and estimate the number of known Super-Clusters, maybe 10 millions, multiply by the number of galaxies there, maybe 100 or so, then multiply by the number of suns/galaxy, couple of billions then you get probably a register overflow or crash.
Anyway, the number is /void/, and chances that the conditions for organisms with DNA or some other mechanism can develop 100 %.
So, who cares except the strictl
Your math, maybe (Score:2)
If you assume things, like the value of Pi being some crazy irrational number, then perhaps you arrive at this conclusion. But if you stick to Pi = 3, like the Bible says, you will have the truth revealed!
Define Alone (Score:3)
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Build a wall?
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It doesn't matter how big it is! They'll pay for it!
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Sad. Once the internet was opened to the general public it began its rapid decline into heat death.
Netcraft has confirmed: The Internet is dying!
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Matter just does not materialize on its own. So someone either brought us here or they made us here. Either way we came from some place else. So the answer is YES.
OK I'll bite. Who created the someone that brought us here?
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In other words, you invoke an entity which you give the attribute of "uncaused" to. I will invoke Occam's Razor, remove the unnecessary entity and give the attribute of "uncaused" to the Universe.
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Fine, call it parsimony then. There is no evidence for a Prime Mover, and if "uncaused" is a requirement (and it may not be, it may simply be a side effect of how we view the world around us, there's no reason to think causality applies to the origins of the universe), then the most parsimonious explanation is that the Universe is uncaused.
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In your extremely constrained context of discussion, perhaps.
The primary reason to consider that causality applies here as well is that the overwhelming majority of phenomena we observe does, and if I ask if you'd naturally then question any other phenomenon we observe as having any cause at all, I don't really need to hear your answer, nor your psychological motivation for special pleading this in particular.
And yes, there is evidence, a great deal of it. How is it you know the sum totality of evidence ex
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I'm not equivocating, because most of what you refer to is either garbage or highly contested philosophical interpretations.
I'm sorry. You don't have a Prime mover to show me, and you cannot even demonstrate that one is necessary.
I don't need an alternative explanation. That isn't how it works. It's your job to come up with a testable verifiable and falsifiable test for your Prime Mover. That is your job, so produce the paper and the data that shows the Prime Mover exists. Don't give me speculative papers a
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Wanting to copulate with supermodels demonstrates how cognition and emotion can override biology. If we really wanted to guarantee successful reproduction, going for women who starve themselves is pretty idiotic. Better to go for a nice plump (but not too plump) pear-shaped woman in her late teens to late twenties, in the prime of life and good wide hips to minimize the chances of a medical crisis in labor that can kill both baby and mother. If it wasn't for the fashion industry, we'd still be idolizing Mar
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And none of those things have to do with evolution. You might want to spend some time figuring out what the hell you're arguing against in the first place.
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Go study quantum mechanics and come back.
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It happened at least once, which makes it happening other times more likely. When you factor in the sheer number of potentially habitable worlds in the Universe, it's hard to argue that somewhere in those vast stretches of time and space, other worlds haven't produced life, and that a few of those worlds have produced sentient life.
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You are a Climate Change Denier! You must be cleansed! Climate Change is Settled Science! The Consensus says so!
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Define "poor". Poor from today, look very much like upper middle class from 1960. We have TVs and Microwave Ovens, cars that last a long time, and housing that is more efficient.
Saying "help the poor" is always a noble cause, but the definition changes over time to the point where the term itself is meaningless. The Poor in America are living much much better than most of the middle class in places like India. American poor are in the 10% that Bernie Rails against. It all depends on what the demographics yo
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Define "poor". Poor from today, look very much like upper middle class from 1960. We have TVs and Microwave Ovens, cars that last a long time, and housing that is more efficient.
I have seen houses in the US and compared to houses in Sweden they aren't very efficient.
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Well, if we knew the red spot was a life form, we could at least study it to figure out what kind of metabolism it had, how it reproduced, etc. It might be very hard considering it's floating in the second largest gravity well in the solar system, but you could at least learn some things.
At the moment the best we can do is probably recognize life that is reasonably similar to life on Earth; i.e. is carbon-based, uses ATP or a similar molecule to produce energy, uses some sort of nucleotides to store genetic
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> The earth is ~4.5 billion years old. Human civilization as I know it is only ~6,000 years old.
FTFY
Stop assuming what other people know.
i.e. You're ignorant of the civilizations of Mu, Lemuria, and Atlantis for one.
--
First Contact will be allowed ~2024. Are you ready for a larger perspective?
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The Fermi Paradox would seem to contradict that. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )
OTOH, recent advances seem to indicate that while there are lots of systems with planets, our configuration is quite unusual. So perhaps, though not alone in the universe, we are alone in this section of the galaxy...and how big a section is questionable. Some estimates seem to indicate that the probability would be this 1/8th of the galaxy (figure wholly invented...but tells you my estimate). And that's for multicellul