LIFE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM LIKELY EXISTS AND IS MORE COMMON THAN WE THINK - Newsweek

[Donald Sauter]

I realize I've been remiss in alerting my t.o fans of killer discussions taking place in google news science articles. I'm so sorry. Here's the most recent:

http://www.newsweek.com/life-solar-system-likely-exists-and-more-common-we-think-780229

[Donald Sauter]

On Wednesday, January 17, 2018 at 2:45:03 PM UTC-5, Donald Sauter wrote:
> I realize I've been remiss in alerting my t.o fans of killer discussions taking place in google news science articles. I'm so sorry. Here's the most recent:
>
> http://www.newsweek.com/life-solar-system-likely-exists-and-more-common-we-think-780229

Here is some of the discussion generated by the article.


Donald Sauter · Dover, Delaware
Jim O'Neill> The nearest galaxy to us is 70,000 light years from us. If intelligent life is there and they reached our level of technology 50,000 years ago and sent out message at the speed of light, the message is still 20,000 light years away. Not having contact proves nothing.

You're assuming that all intelligent life in the universe (I'd rather keep the discussion limited to our own galaxy) emerged in the same blink of an eye as us. Earth developed a technological species in about 4 billion years. Our galaxy is about 13 billion years old. If what happened on earth is more or less normal, there should be technological races out there going back 9 billion years or so. Where are they? What's this "20,000 years" nonsense?

See complete threads further down.
Like · 1w

Jack Trainor · Inspector General at 5th Avenue OTB
Shouldn't evenyone on here realize that an infinite universe would be teeming with life just like ours?

But, that only the most primitively juvenile-minded humans we have are the ones who end up gravitating to the nonsense of multi-generational space travel.

Human endeavor of that sort, is, at least symbolically, not unlike a cancer dissatisfied with the natural harmonic balance, space and position where it first appears. The stupid part about cancer, the dangerous part, is that it needs to spread. That is the mentality of space travel. You have no particular destination. You can find nothi...See More
1w · Edited

Kevin Thurston
This is all just wishful thinking. It also exhibits the bias created by living on earth. On earth; there is life everywhere you look so it creates a bias that assumes life is going to be everywhere else. The problem here is that it ignores the difficulties of abiogenensis. The vast improbablilty of abiogenesis is so large that the entire universe isn't big enough to expect it to happen.
Like · 1 · 2w

Shrestha Vijay · Works at Universitätsklinikum des Saarlandes
i wish u knew how vast the universe is
1 · 2w

Kevin Thurston
Shrestha Vijay I wish you knew how vastly improbable abiogenesis is. You're welcome to try to produce life from non-life in your laboratory but you will fail. Better people than you have been trying for nearly 100 years and have failed but you think that if the "conditions" are just right then life will form from non-life. That's the bias I'm talking about and you can't see it in yourself.
2w

Donald Sauter · Dover, Delaware
Follow the logical bouncing ball...

If intelligent life is out there, we would know it. (They’d be here; or we would at least be awash in their signals.)

We don’t.

They’re not. (modus tollendo tollens) - Conclusion 1.

Now, if we find life somewhere else in our own solar system, with no reason to believe we and it are related, we'd have to conclude that life is rampant throughout the galaxy, with its 200 billion stars and trillions of planets. Conclusion 2.

Taking Conclusion 1 and 2 together, we are forced to accept Conclusion 3: Our beloved evolution juggernaut doesn’t work worth beans anywhere except here on earth.

Any way you cut it, folks, We are Top Dog, either by virtue of sitting here on the only lump of rock in the galaxy with life, or having developed further than all the other low-life out there.
Like · 2 · 2w

David Steadson · Owner and Founder at VanaTech
"They’d be here; or we would at least be awash in their signals.)"

Not necessarily. We've only been noisy ourselves for a matter of decades, and now we're going quiet again (switching to optic fiber, for example). That's an extremely short window for someone to happen to look our way, and could possibly be the same in reverse.

Having said that, I suspect life may be relatively common, large life less so, and space-faring life even less so. Except for a certain asteroid strike it's more than likely than dinosaurs would still be ruling the earth, and they already had a lot more to time to develop spaceships than we have!

Experience on earth implies there just doesn't seem to be much evolutionary pressure to develop our type of intelligence. It may indeed be *extremely* rare.
1 · 2w

Michael Carroll · Retired Oncology Pharmacist at OSUCCC-James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute
The article discusses the possability of life,,,not just intelligent life.
2w

Jim O'Neill
Michael Carroll You are not responding to intelligent life. Donald Sauter can't comprehend the information in the article or the statistical odds that we are alone.
1 · 2w
Show 6 more replies in this thread

Tobin Drake · Pâtissier at Kensington Place
Is there life elsewhere in our solar system? That is unlikely. The median temperatures are far too low or too high to support life. It's most likely a complete waste of time and money to look for it there. Is there life in other solar systems with conditions similar to that found on Earth? Most likely. That is where we should spend our resources looking for life.
Like · 2w

Tobin Drake · Pâtissier at Kensington Place
Jim O'Neill There is no reason to suspect any of that is true in the long term. I think conditions might be right in the upper atmosphere of Venus too. The problem is, that is not enough. Conditions might be right periodically in a number of places in our solar system for a certain period, but unlikely to be right for long enough for life to actually evolve. There is a HUGE difference between that and Earth, where the conditions have been right for billions of years.
2w

Jim O'Neill
Tobin Drake Scientist have sent probes to Europa and the data they have indicates that Europa has had the right conditions for a prolonged period of time. I trust their judgment because they have the data. It does not mean that life is there but it does mean they believe it could be there. They are planning to put a submarine on the planet to explore beneath the ice surface. Time will tell.
2w

Tobin Drake · Pâtissier at Kensington Place
Jim O'Neill Yes it will. But I think it is likely the facts will bear out there is no life there or anywhere else in the solar system other than Earth. Which is something any reasonable scientist should have known all along. My suspicion is the real reasons behind this hunt for life in unlikely places is because unscrupulous people are doing this to fund their pet projects at the expense of funding valuable science based on reasonable likelihoods of success.
Like · 2w

Jim O'Neill
Tobin Drake We agree on one point, some are probably using this search to earn a living but I also believe the search is worth it. Life exists in some very extreme conditions on Earth. It may also exist in extreme conditions somewhere else in our Solar system and as for the Universe, there is no doubt in my mind there is life out there. The nearest galaxy to us is 70,000 light years from us. If intelligent life is there and they reached our level of technology 50,000 years ago and sent out message at the speed of light, the message is still 20,000 light years away. Not having contact proves nothing.
Like · 2w

Tobin Drake · Pâtissier at Kensington Place
Jim O'Neill Yes, there is life in extreme conditions here on Earth, but that isn't good evidence that life evolved elsewhere in the solar system since that life is here on Earth. And I think you and I can agree that life likely has evolved elsewhere in the universe under proper conditions. However, even if there is intelligent life elsewhere, I doubt we'll be able to communicate with it. As you've mentioned, it would take a long time for a signal to reach us and there is another problem you may not realize. We wouldn't be able to detect it even if we were receiving it because of the inverse square law unless it was relatively close to us. Otherwise, the signal would have to be very powerful (i.e. the equivalent of hooking up a radio transmitter to the output of a star) indeed.
Like · 2w · Edited

Donald Sauter · Dover, Delaware
Jim O'Neill You're assuming that all intelligent life in the universe (I'd rather keep the discussion limited to our own galaxy) emerged in the same blink of an eye as us. Earth developed a technological species in about 4 billion years. Our galaxy is about 13 billion years old. If what happened on earth is more or less normal, there should be technological races out there going back 9 billion years or so. Where are they? What's this "20,000 years" nonsense?
Like · 1w

Dan Marinescu
I find it impossible to be the only ones on this insignificant rock...
Like · 1 · 2w

Donald Sauter · Dover, Delaware
If they were out there, we would know it. We don't. They're not.