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David A. Aguilar (CfA)
About 17 percent of the stars surveyed by NASA's Kepler space telescope have Earth-sized worlds in orbit, underlining the preponderance of small exoplanets in our galaxy.
By Miriam Kramer
Space.com
When it comes to life across the cosmos, the universe might just be an "awful waste of space" after all.
A new theory presented at a conference this week would confirm the worry of Ellie Arroway, Jodie Foster's character in the film "Contact," that life might not exist on other worlds.
Some scientists think that just because exoplanets could have habitable environments, that does not mean that life evolved there.
"The pervasive nature of life on Earth is leading us to make this assumption," Charles Cockell, the director of the U.K. Center for Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement."On our planet, carbon leaches into most habitat space and provides energy for microorganisms to live. There are only a few vacant habitats that may persist for any length of time on Earth, but we cannot assume that this is the case on other planets."
Cockell's hypothesis states that, although habitable alien planets might abound in solar systems around the universe, it does not mean these locales harbor extraterrestrial life.
"It is dangerous to assume life is common across the universe. It encourages people to think that not finding signs of life is a 'failure,' when in fact it would tell us a lot about the origins of life," added Cockell.
There's new evidence that suggests that a comet or meteor brought the building blocks of life to Earth. Derrick Pitts of the Franklin Institute joins Ed Schultz to explain the details.
It is also possible that scientists will not be able to detect alien signs of life, even if it exists, Cockell said. Life might be markedly dissimilar from planet to planet, making it unlikely that astronomers on Earth will see recognizable signatures of life. But not all hope is lost.
"Professor Cockell explains that in coming decades, increasingly powerful telescopes and developments in spectroscopy may allow us to look for the signals of life on planets beyond our solar system," officials from the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's national academy of science, said in a statement."However, regardless of this, our view is still going to be heavily influenced by our knowledge of life on Earth."
Cockell presented his theory at a conference sponsored by the Royal Society.
Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer or Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Original article on Space.com.
- Strangest Places Where Life is Found on Earth
- Planets Large and Small Populate Our Galaxy (Infographic)
- 9 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life
Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This story was originally published on Mon Mar 11, 2013 7:01 PM EDT
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There really isn't any way to know without more information. We are confirming that planets are common around stars. We know that conditions on Earth may be hard to duplicate, but there are over a hundred billion stars in a hundred billion galaxies, so there has to be a good chance. But the biggest problem is that we don't know how life began on Earth, so we don't know how inevitable it is. The fact that it seems to have begun very early in Earth's history bodes well, but we still only have one replicate.
Actually, we do have a good idea of how life likely began on earth- it was created.
The fundamental relationship between nucleic acids and the amino acids that build proteins is conceptual, and arbitrary (it could have been different). In fact, it is now known that DNA has the capacity to store any digital information we can imagine.
The physical relationship between the vastly different chemical environments of nucleic acids and proteins is not controlled or directed by necessity (physical-chemical law), but rather by arbitrary rules (choice-contingency). Natural law simply acts to constrain evolutionary potential.
The codons of nucleic acids represent the amino acids that they prescribe, they do not become them. IOW, nucleic acid's physical identity is maintained, and therefore do not chemically react with other molecules to produce the proteins they specify.
Unless researchers demonstrate a natural physical force that establishes and necessitates the biosemiotic relationship between nucleic acids and the protein products they prescribe, intelligent design remains the best explanation of life's origins.
There are BILLIONS of galaxies each with more than a HUNDRED BILLION STARS. If just one percent of those stars had planets and just one percent of those planets were in the "Goldilocks's zone", and just one percent of those planets had life, and just one percent of those planets had intelligent life.......there would be MILLIONS of civilization's out there! (to borrow a line from the movie Contact).
The issue is, imo, that the architecture of the universe makes two civilization's meeting one another next to impossible. The VAST distances and the time variables ( two stars in the same vicinity may have civilization's rise but at drastically different times) are to blame.
I believe there are millions if not billions of civilization's out there.....and we will never meet or interact with any of them!
This heading on this articlis is backwards Alien life is more common in the universe then you people will ever know. For once, I wish the govt. would tell the whole true and nothing but the truth so help you God sounds famliar, "The Great rule of law"! Why did you guys build a space station in orbit instead of a moon base? you invested all that money into Project Horizon back in the 50s-60s...You dumb monkeys will never grow up on your own, Thanks to the US Govt. life is all over the place,wake up!!!
From the article:
"It is dangerous to assume life is common across the universe. It encourages people to think that not finding signs of life is a 'failure,' when in fact it would tell us a lot about the origins of life," added Cockell.
It's also, if not "dangerous", hasty to assume that life ISN'T common.
The only fact we have, as well stated by Jock above, is - "we don't know".
"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it." - Mr. Spock.
Fictional reference aside, it seems a bit presumptuous of us tailless monkeys to presume we understand all possible forms of life that may exist, let alone how to search for them.
Oh, and also: "It's worse than that, he's dead, Jim!" - Dr. Leonard McCoy.
It's really nice that this character is collecting a paycheck for coming up with such an utterly pointless and useless theory. Either there's life elsewhere or there isn't. As some above have pointed out, the probabilities are clearly in favor of something at some time at many other places. If we eventually spot something, great. And unlikely. But this "theory" doesn't make one single damn bit of difference.
There was a time when people said that the earth was flat. All those people could just looked at the moon, at night, the shadow of the earth on the moon is clearly displayed as mostly round. Here we go again, is there life in outer space, the same as here? The answer is yes. We are not unique. Base on the technology that we are developing, it will not be out of the ordinary that we are descendant of a highly sophisticated intelligent race that has been around space for a very long time. That intelligent race probably coded in DNA they own image, and here we are; we are now waking up. It is kind of the same earth moon analogy, the answer is right in from of our nose.
John-939868,
You may want to do some further research on this issue. The aminoacylation (sometimes called "loading" or "charging") of tRNA is done by aminoacyl tRNA synthetases (aaRS). They carry amino acids and have an anticodon specificity domain that recognizes the anticodon region on the tRNA. Once it is recognized, the catalytic domain of the aaRS transfers the specific amino acid to the tRNA.
Furthermore, some aaRS also have proofreading domains that "check" the tRNA once it has been aminoacylated to ensure the correct amino acid has been loaded. If not, the whole tRNA is hydrolyzed (destroyed).
Connecting the article and our discussion, some biologists believe that RNA came before DNA. Their hypothesis is partially based on the observation of catalytically active RNA which have enzymatic function and are termed ribozymes. So, we may want to check for evidence of nucleic acid structures on other planets and moons as a sign of early life.
There could be life elsewhere right here in our own solar system! How much in depth exploration have we really done?? ...very little.
The possibility of microbial life of Mars remains, and there could even be complex or biotic life in the oceans of moons Europa, Titan, Enceladus, etc. for all we know!
I work in a science field. Usually, in instances like this, the author/professor is looking to stand out from the crowd, to get his name out there.
I find it curious that Mr. Cockell would present this theory on the heels of 1) The fact that a team in Antarctica has just discovered exotic live bacteria 1,000s of feet below the ice surface in an underground reservoir. And 2) The recent announcement that not only is there carbon in comets, but amino acids, the very building blocks of DNA.
I propose the polar opposite theory of Mr. Cockell. I believe we will find life almost everywhere once we have the ways and means to adequately search for it. Life, particularly microorganisms are so hardy we can't even sterilize our rovers we send to Mars without double and triple checking them following a radiation bath. There are live bacteria present in the boiling springs of Yellowstone. There are fish, crabs, and entire ecosystems in underwater caves miles below the surface.
To hell with Mr. Cockell
For all we know, elves created robots who created aliens who created God who created life only on earth. Intelligent design, people.
Strato
I think you hypothesis has potential, but it was the Dwarves who created the robots who created aliens or created a supreme being who created life on earth. Sheesh, it's so obvious, why didn't I think of it before?
Actually that one's bogus due to contamination. The Russians really jumped the gun on their announcement and should have waited for at least minimal peer review of their results.
Very true.
This is the first I'm hearing of this, what happened to the part about the bacteria having a 30% "alien makeup" to any known form of bacteria, if this was a case of simple surface contamination?
Dman, the contamination was announced yesterday by the Russians:
They have more samples to be analyzed so the story isn't over yet, but it's clear that their earlier announcement was erroneous and premature.
They have probably contaminated the whole damn lake, crazy Russkies.
I too agree this man's assumption is flawed and can be held at nothing more than a theory/opinion and carries no more or less weight than other theories out there, less if you ask me. To me the question is not is there life but where is it, what does it look like, how advanced is it, and for that matter has any outside life visited our planet?
The universe as we know it or theorize would by shear numbers alone suggest that there could be untold numbers of lifeforms, though like already mentioned, it could be that even with that truth, the size of the universe may very well prevent us from having any other contact, at least with the tech we have now and our understanding of physics. That or it may just be in our own backyard as we speak and are potentially finding out.
Remember we are nothing but
childreninfants when it comes to our understanding of the universe and how it works. Thinking we know all or are any type of so called master in relation to the universe is a major mistake and ignorant. We need to make sure we continue to keep an open mind and don't let our own thoughts of superiority and grandeur limit us.Again his theory is interesting but I know I won't put any faith into it. I fully believe there is other life out there in some form or fashion. Foolish IMO to think otherwise but to each his own.
It is time
What are you talking about? Man created God in his own image, complete with an ego as big as the Universe, THEN God created woman from a rib so man could have someone to cook his dinner, then he created the dinosaurs and killed them off so we would have oil to use to run our cars, because there are SUV's in heaven and God wants us to know how to drive when we get there. The stars and all that shiny stuff in the night sky were just created for us to have something to look at until we were smart enough to invent TV's so we could watch the 700 club, thats why you can hardly see the stars at night anymore, because they are only useful for people who have no TV's yet, thats why we have to spread capitalism so every country has a walmart where people can buy made in China flat screens so they can watch the 700 club too, then the stars will stop twinkling completely because they outlived their usefulness. Don't you people know anything? Stars are just sky decorations.
Why was John's post collapsed? The only reason I can surmise is that it suggests intelligent design as to how we are here. I think it's a wrongheaded notion too, but leave his post as is. I voted it up for that reason alone.
How life began on earth is not completely unknown. It was established by experiment in 1953 how easily organic amino acids (the building-blocks for proteins) are literally created out of thin air:
The Miller-Urey experiments demonstrated the concept, but they got the initial conditions wrong and they were a long way from "life." So we still have no idea if it happened that way, and I think it is more likely to have happened at deep-sea vents.
Nothing they could do though would promote the amino acids to form more complex molecules.
chrisg-1341177:
Before some creationist leaps on you for making this statement, please allow a biologist the first go. ; )
Miller et al's infamous experiment relied on conditions that, later, proved less than accurate for early earth's atmospherical conditions. There are other technical issues with the study as well. Otherwise, we would have the holy grail (pardon the pun) -- knowing how abiogenesis occurs.
What we DO know from this experiment is that amino acids can form from elemental stuff with minor interaction. What we've yet to discover is how it works within a more realistic prebiotic earth, and how more complex chemicals needed for life form. RNA has been generated, which is cool (at least half of it.) It's a work in progress.
Actually the Miller-Urey experiments did better than even Miller thought, based on an analysis of some of the original vials which were recently discovered:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081016141411.htm
So far, laboratory attempts to create life have been a failure even with intelligent input (design). It's going to take more intelligence, more time and chance, or both. My money is on intelligence. I don't think there is, or has been, enough time for chance to do the job. It's just too unlikely that the complex systems for life and reproduction could come together by chance. My opinion.
Jon: Was intelligence involved in generating the RNA? Does the "work in progress" you mentioned involve intelligence? If life is created in the lab, will it be due to chance or intelligence? Just asking...
There is no evidence of a connection between this experiment and how life actually was created on earth.
This experiement has been debated, ad nausem, over the years as to how it does or doesn't relate to how actual events transpired. All the experiement conclusively shows is that organic molecules can be created in one of many possible conditions.
Ummmmm........precisely what mechanisms are involved for "intelligence" to cause abiogenesis? Magic?
Or is chemistry involved? Do you think some of that chemistry might have happened during the 3 billion years before the current version of multicellular life evolved on the planet?
And how does meaningless speculation about some ephemeral "intelligence" inform you about that underlying chemistry? What does this hypothetical "intelligence" add to your theory of abiogenesis?
No Joe. Sky daddys are imaginary.
You already know the answer: it will be due to intelligence plus a great deal of trial and error - a far cry from an omniscient entity creating life, the universe and everything in a few fell swoops.
A better way to phrase that might be that it will be intelligence setting up the conditions which already occur naturally, so that the processes of abiogenesis can occur in a controlled and repeatable manner.
In fact abiogenesis is probably occurring on a basic level all the time on earth, but with most environmental niches already occupied by life there's very little chance for something novel to develop beyond being simple food for something else.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ribonucleotides/
Yes, I'm sure it takes a long time for ribonucleotides to evolve wits.
Alien life may be rare across universe, if it even exists....
Or it might not, in which case it does exist...
Well, that about sums up this article ;)
Detroit.
For somebody with his esteemed background, this surprisingly and profoundly illogical.
Life is an emergent property of the fundamental laws of physics - and unless we suspect the laws of physics to be suspended on planets with conditions that mimic those seen on Earth, it is also illogical to conclude that life should be any less probable in those locales.
I don't think he can make this claim either.
The fact that vacant habitats/niches exist on Earth is certainly one factor driving evolutionary change - but you can have selective pressures absent any habitat vacancy for the expansion of a species. Furthermore, the relative length of these vacancies doesn't have anything to do with the likelihood of evolution taking place; it merely impacts the pace of evolutionary change one might expect.
I am a believer in the idea that there is life out there somewhere, the numbers involved are just too big. However, I have always thought that several assumptions concerning the frequency of life were......well.....assumptions.
N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L
Recognize that? I've always thought that the Drake equation probably left out several variables (all of which would necessarily make N smaller). Now while I realize that this equation is about a somewhat different topic, R* fp ne fl, pretty much fits the bill and makes my same point about missing variables. I believe that life is probably exceedingly rare.
This theory is unfortunate in that this scientist has decided to make a name for himself by contradicting the conclusions of other scientists in just saying that one should not assume yet not providing a statistical argument to back it up.
The problem with that is that assumptions have to be made without direct evidence but the assumptions are well thought out, never definite, and exist as a probability. So, rather than just saying that life does not exist elsewhere, why doesn't this scientist give us a probability of it not existing like the scientists that say life does exists do?
The point is, that with the Drake Equation and the number of planets, the probability of life elsewhere is 1 (meaning 100 %) given the vastness of the universe, even if life is scarce. Otherwise, I would ask that a scientist proposing that life is scarce and Earth is special provide the mechanism for why in the entire universe, given the billions of stars and planets, that only Earth had an origin of life event yet all these other planets are somehow prohibited from having the same origin of life happen even if they have the same chemical make up of whatever primordial soup we think might have first originated life here.
Furthermore, those that say that life on Earth may have been seeded by amino acids from an asteroid have not explained where these amino acids on the asteroid came from (yet) nor is there any reason to believe that other asteroids also with amino acids might also exist elsewhere in the universe to seed other planets with amino acids if the amino acids are from stellar origins.
Disagreement is not science of itself but must be accompanied by logical argument, perhaps with some mathematics to back up the argument, and to provide a mechanism for why the Earth is distinct yet the same physical and chemical processes that were in place on Earth to yield biological organisms cannot exist on other planets. If such mechanism exists preventing life from forming elsewhere, then that is it's own question as to the origin of that mechanism. Otherwise, all this is is speculation and while it is good for scientists to be skeptical, speculation does not add to a scientific argument, just muddies the waters.
Very well said.
Until there is evidence one way or the other, it is all speculation, anyways. We have seen that the basic molecules that are needed for our forms of life are easily made in the stars, but that does not mean that ours is the only form life can take, or even that those basic molecules will lead to life as we know it. In truth, what this guy is proposing is not theory. Neither is there any good theory out there, simply because there is virtually no evidence. What we have here is a bunch of people speculating that it is either common or rare, with no evidence to support either one.
It's not a theory as Brisaber stated.
I think he's also misinterpreting the type of bias that we have. The reason we most likely expect life to be rare is not because it is in fact rare, but because our own technology is exceedingly bad at detecting it. This is the bias we have on Earth.
Probability alone dictates that we should have a near-earth clone somewhere in the universe, with a nearly identical atomic composition and nearly identical energy flux. Our bias is certainly not one of assuming too much, but rather of assuming too little.
Oy, this article is incredibly frustrating to read. I understand Dr. Cockell's angle here, but it seems political and not scientific. A fear of looking like one has failed is a bad reason for pushing a hypothesis that is contradictory to what data tells us. Seems like somebody is stirring the pot.
The DRAKE Equation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlikCebQSlY
I miss Carl; thanks for the link!
A trillion galaxies, with 800 quadrillion stars and we are alone. Athiests cannot come to grips on what this says about our creation.
Come again?
Care to provide some evidence of this "creation" being anything other than a probabilistic, determined, and stochastic event?
Thank you Natural. You beat me to it.
@freddie t,
so you say. surveyed any atheists lately? engage in long absorbing stimulating conversations with them? include any in dinner parties for the pleasure of their company? any driveway chats with your neighborhood atheist? buy an atheist a beer lately?
do you really have a clue what atheists are coming to grips with these days?
Freddie t:
again, the creationists have no clue as to how vast the universe is.
if some race of beings halfway across our own galaxy tried signaling directly at us (randomly, since they wouldn't have any idea we were actually here our own signals only go out 100 light-years) using something even as powerful as nuke bomb-powered lasers, we STILL probably wouldn't be able to find the signal through the noise of the other stars. (not to mention the fact that any civilization would likely long be gone by the time we even got said signal)
Actually, it is not just atheists that do not agree with this. The Vatican Observatory would also disagree, which is funded and run by the Catholic Church, since they have written and done a lot of research about the possibility of life elsewhere in the Universe. So, my point is just to say that not all theists think that life is only on earth as well since the official position of the Catholic Church is that life can and most likely does, probabilistically speaking, exist elsewhere in the universe.
And, as a scientist, I am thankful that the Catholic church embraces much of science and is starting to stand up for science...because they also agree 100% with evolution as well and even the Pope has made statements saying there is no disagreement between evolution and the Catholic church. It doesn't do any good to just lump all religions together so do not lump all scientists together, because you worldview might not necessarily be the worldview of others or even the majority.
Science is not science of consensus, science is the search for truth based on fact that is knowable, through either experimentation or through mathematics. With this scientist making a claim that Earth is special without providing the mechanism preventing life elsewhere except Earth even though the same chemistry and physics as on Earth also exists on these other planets he is talking about is just speculation. The article does not even provide a mathematical foundation like the Drake equation showing where the error in the assumptions are.
Creation = magic. End of discussion.
While no one can be certain one way or another, one thing is certain: if you add up every GRAIN of sand on every beach in the world, there are still more stars in the cosmos. Think about that for a second and consider the odds of there NOT being other life out there...somewhere! What is a more plausible explanation for not yet encountering alien life are the vast distances and the time it takes for conventional radio signals to travel those distances. We've only been looking and listening for a few decades. That's barely a blink of an eye in the billions of years of history of the universe.
I think it is just as likely that the standard given for life on this planet cannot apply to any potential life forms on another planet. We maintain a narrow minded view of what consists of life, and the conditions with which life forms or is possible. I think that being able to think outside of that box is the only real method we will have of finding other life forms in our universe.
Nieve to think only one planet ever had life. Billions of galaxies, with billions of stars, over billions of years. Our minds can barely understand these numbers. Life has, with no doubt, began and ended many times over throughout time on many different planets. Our own planet has been around for such a short time, and life on our planet has been to short, but as they say, "Life will find a way". Not just on earth.
The rules of physics and chemistry are the same all over the Universe, so life most likely works the same everywhere. But lifeforms adapt and evolve to fit their environment and niches within it. Intelligence is more problematic, requiring highly specialised environmental and developmental pressures to select for communication skills, intelligence, creativity, tool-handling skills, etc.
My money is on life - carbon and protein-based life, like Earth's - being common anywhere with a long-term consistent environment in the right temperature range for water, but that our level of intelligence is very rare. The really interesting scenario is the even rarer case in which a higher level of intelligence evolves. Now, that, I'ld pay good money to see.
yeah, but they would probably pay not to see us..except maybe in a zoo.
LOL
Good comments Siegfried.
Assuming that conditions for life are not all that rare in the Universe...stable star, planet being in habitable zone, liquid water...it is reasonable to also assume that some sort of microbial life could form and reproduce. Stromatolites appeared almost three and a half billion years ago, and are still with us today.
http://stromatolites.blogspot.com/
Life on Earth has been resilient, bouncing back after several extinction events and very severe conditions at times.
The only portion of the Doctor's statements I agree with is in his acknowledgement that "We may not be able to communicate". We have only been broadcasting radio and television signals for about 100 years. This means our signals are spread out through an area 100 light years years across. In our galactic neighbor hood, our "shout" is now occupying a minuscule number of nearby stars. If another civilization used radio and television, and their signals reached us, they would have to be fairly nearby. These pair of unlikelyhoods place us in the "slums" of our wn galaxy, and being one galaxy of billions....voices carry, but only if someone can listen.
It's rather presumptuous of our species to think other life forms would use exactly the same means of communicating as we do. Creatures with different or additional senses might find us rather amusing, needing to use all sorts of contraptions to badly perceive what they can sense directly. We might indeed be galactic curiosities, managing to survive without the critical 7th or 8th sense that makes the universe aware of itself. H G Well's story, "The Country of the Blind," may illustrate what we'd be up against. Edwin Abbott's "Flatland" may even be a better illustration if alien creatures can perceive and use other dimensions.
We are the aliens.
i was abducted by aliens a few years ago . man do these guys know how to party ! their mission was to harvest medical grade weed from colorado . they had bongs made out of gold . they are really into chuck berry .
i was abducted by aliens a few years ago . man did these guys love to party ! their mission here on earth was to harvest some high grade columbian weed . they had bongs made out of solid gold . the aliens were great to hang out with . they were purple -- not green . they are all really into chuck berry . apparently berry was abducted in the sixties and taught them how to play electric guitar .
Be excellent to each other.
A very long time ago nature selected four bases (ATCG), and sometime five (ATCGU) bases from set of twenty naturally occurring.
These bases are paired in DNA; A-T, and C-G across a spiral frame called the double helix, forming simple unique features such as spiral groves, a sense of direction, held in structural place by sugars and phosphates all together remarkable in their role in life everywhere.
Where is a huge set of strong supporting RNA etc. outside, the DNA preserves what might be called memory, a stable place to preserve meaning full sequences. Just for the fun of it I borrowed the DNA sequence analyzed from popular set of 7 million or so, a very long sequence of AATCGGTTAACC. Since there are just four representing an edge, it is possible to perform 'counts of repeats' with just four numbers. The obvious theoretical decrease by exact factor of four for each count of 2, 3, 4, 5 …, then comparing with a random string coming in slightly more than 4, and finally a set found on line, that decreased by 3.4 or whatever. This is the tiniest confirmation that Mother Nature prefers strings longer than just random, visible yes after simple preparation but laborious calculation. This is the entirety of my DNA career now over by the starvation of tools.
These strings are themselves coded to have markers, codons, genes, chromosomes, starts, ends, folding strategies and to interact with RNA in ways being better described by thousands of brilliant scientist. I want to call them units having length, pattern, special roles, and control structures; after all they do produce life!
These are very basic units that combine at great length to create self-replicating prions, viruses, bacterial, and higher forms, and have done so for a very long time, over the vast oceans of Earth, and with the Earth itself being reformed again and again. This is quite an impressive record and humbling to humans still having an acknowledged connection to the Earth. The article references the great progress with tools for looking at the 'units' above, by taking massive collections and by breaking them down over and over to determine the similarity to species found across the world, and of the swift change from place to place, and rapid relocation due to current flows, as well as time, temperature, pressure, salinity, sunlight, freezing, drying and pollutions.
What is found, can be suspected, with proof following shorty is that species replicate, delete, and change 'units', in response to changes in this huge bowl of soup. It may not be surprising that species varieties change under stresses and recover under others. Not only is life made from this vast repertory, but it capable of changing in every possible direction. This technological wunderkind could establish that the largeness of the whole of the Earth is held in the life that lives within. Not really a surprise, after the fact (of everyman's speculation).
For larger life forms we reinforce the replicate and differentiate paradigm, corresponding to all units and to the more important larger genes. In certain species known to have lived in stable conditions for 10 million years, we find curious facet that they they have a huge number of extra genes, many identical but of unknown necessity, and other nearly identical but with small changes. It seems that the increase of the genome occurs naturally, again making perfect sense. When species those long stable conditions are changed by rising mountains chains, lower and flooding valleys, with in flowing seas and separating continents. Those accumulated genes are subject to stresses; they adapt by deletion and are more readily available for additional changes.
The technological progress has been stunning, being led by strong leadership by many who will stand tall in history. The many that are doing this hard work, will need good communication talent.
Since we can only get around our own Solar System who can say life is scarce? Just getting to a star system that is 50 light years away would take hundreds of thousands of years of travel even at 250,000 MPH. Never mind the ones that are from 50-10 billion light years away. None of our TV signals will ever reach even the closest Star System can be heard because of The Inverse Square Law.
Will Any Extraterrestrial Life Within That Radio Sphere Detect Us?
While it's interesting to imagine how far our radio signals have traveled into space, it's extremely unlikely that an alien will be able to catch the latest episode of 'I Love Lucy'. This is thanks to the inverse square law. In Layman's term, it's a form of signal degradation.
Inverse Square Law
As radio signals leave earth, they propagate out in a wave form. Just like dropping a stone in a lake, the waves diffuse or "spread out" over distance thanks to the exponentially larger area they must encompass. The area can be calculated by multiplying length times width which is why we measure it in square units – square centimeters, square miles, etc. This means that the further away from the source, the more square units of area a signal has to 'illuminate'.
Another way to think of it, is that the strength of a radio signal will be only 1/4 as great once you are twice the distance from the source. At ten times the distance, the strength of the signal would only be one hundredth as great.
Because of this 'inverse square law', all of our radio signals become indistinguishable from background noise at around a few light-years from earth. For a civilization only a couple hundred light-years away, trying to listen to our broadcasts would be like trying to detect the small ripple from a pebble dropped in the pacific ocean off the coast of California – from Japan.
You just don't know. Case closed.
How is it that we are able to create incredibly complex technology, such as the one we are using to communicate right now, but we seem more than incredibly stupid in our ability to solve social problems? They seem way out of balance with each other.
I think they are just hedging their bets...
;-)
You had your 15 minutes, now run along ...
"Rare earth" theory has been around for a while - and if you consider everything that had to align for earth to have life (not that it's the ONLY way, but for our world, it is), it's not hard to believe that our planet really is a 1 in a trillion - or even less.
In fact, when looking at everything that came in to place for our world to be here (you can wiki "rare earth"), it's rather chilling. It's almost easier to imagine life does exist elsewhere than to think, out of trillions and trillions of stars, we just might be alone.....that's just creepy....and even hard to fathom.
Sometimes, I think the fact that scientists have not found proof of life elsewhere gives them the heebie-jeebies. They seem almost desparate to find it - and when theories like this come out, many scientists/astronomers seem to get defensive.
Spot on Joe. The materialist worldview all but "requires" that life arise elsewhere in the universe. The alternative is off the table...save the "catch-all"multiverse swag where pretty much anything and everything is possible. I could literally care less about religion, but it is my feeling that we have *way*-and I mean several orders of magnitude--underestimated the engineering underpinnings of even the simplest life forms--all for the sake of preserving the "scientific" dogma that only chance processes get to contribute. I'm all for going to Eurpoa and looking for life...where we won't find it. and then picking a candidate near-fieild star where...again... we won't find it.
Life didn't just build itself gang. Too much engineering in the cell for that. Who cares what the scientific consesnsus is if it wrong. Time to start considering the alternative.
You seem to be both jumping to conclusions and projecting your own psychological insecurities, for rather obvious reasons.
Of the many billions of likely planets where there might be water, carbon and other building blocks of life as we know it, we've only begun to investigate one.
Like the supernatural? No thanks. LOL
skrekk,
What a d1ck you are. I'm not sure what my "psychological insecurities" are, but I'm guessing you thought I was referring to a creator or something and you're one of these oh-so-smart enlightened atheists. Don't turn a passing comment into something it's not. I think the rare earth theory is very intriguing - and convincing - and creepy - and it's got nothing to do with religion.
Funny - you jumped at me equally as defensive as the scientists to which I was referring. You completely discounted everything I said and turned it into an attack on my belief set.....with that belief set being something you read into my comment that wasn't there.
Like I said....d1ck. I'll bet holding a conversation with you sucks. Maybe that's why you attack random people on a message board.
Clearly you do have some rather deep-seated psychological insecurities, because you made some rather bizarre and unwarranted conclusions both about scientists you've never met and about the search for extraterrestrial life. Very strange that you could even come to those bizarre conclusions given that we've only just started investigating the very first extraterrestrial planet we've ever landed a probe on.
In fact NASA just announced today that they found the type of water present on Mars billions of years ago was very conducive to life. Literally the first place we've been to and we've already found that one of the critical conditions was right at one time.
seriously? you buy this line that "conditions conducive to life" are in any way correleted with *actual* life? That's like--at the VERY best-- saying if I throw some butter flour, sugar and baking soda in over...turn the damn thing and come back in a couple of hours I'll have bunt cake. what a joke. and f-you for playing the "god-dit-it" card. total cop-out and ignores the argument.
No, that's not what I said at all. All I said is that literally the very first planet we've looked at once had water (and other critical factors) suitable for life. Read the article I linked to.
The thing most people are missing is the difference between "life" and "intelligent life".
Life is probably somewhat easy, based on one example of how quickly it started.
However, in reading these posts, "intelligent life" must be supremely rare in the universe.
BTW - The jury's still out on this planet, too.
Amen on no intelligent life here....but life in general, from microbes to small animals to dinos, might well exist on any planet where the temperature is right, and water exists. Intelligent life would be much harder, but even now we dont know how to judge that, can there be intelligent trees or plants? Intelligent insects on some world? To say there is little chance for life on other worlds goes against the masses of other scientists around the world. I hope this guy isn't staking his reputation on something that very few others believe, hoping to be right.
Kevin, not to be disagreeable but it seems that given time evolution exploits everything that is possible. Intelligence is a survival mechanism in certain lineages and likely inevitable. I suspect this "scientist" is getting ready to jump on the $$$ bandwagon by exploiting the wishful thinking of the lesser intelligent among us.
I believe life to be ubiquitous, a modified Panspermia model of some sort or other. Intelligence, on the other hand, may well be on a factor of 1 in 1 trillion, as has been stated, but even so that leaves room for how many intelligent species? Mind boggling numbers in the stars even when viewed with the naked and age-dimmed eyes. Let's give NASA more money, let them do their work.