A discussion on life (Scientific, not philosophical)
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Dalek Dave wrote:
the golden rule is if there is liquid water, there is life.
Rather, if there is life, there is liquid water.
Dalek Dave wrote:
Do you expect that life will be found elsewhere within our lives
I really don't know. The problem is that we have a sample size of one in a mind-bogglingly large universe, so extrapolation is risky.
Dalek Dave wrote:
do you agree that it will be The Greatest Discovery Ever?
Yes. It'll be even greater if it can be shown to have started independently from life on Earth. I hope life is discovered on another world within my lifetime, especially one outside the Solar System, because I want to see how the world's religions handle it.
Hi all.. All said and done.. are assumptions and we are in search of life elsewhere...! may be all the assumptions might not have come to this extent if atleast one of them might have been false. Subscribing to the latest theory that iff water existed, life would have existed because it started with amobea, a unicellular organism on the surface of the earth in water. or.. if I am not too far.. may be we donot have that technology which could detect that life which is existing on other planets other than earth. If we think UFO is right, then this is also right.. and also that they are far more superior in technology than ours... we too would have been in that state if all these wars were not fought, no plagues, no earthquakes, etc.. (destruction factors) have contributed to their own will. as of now, the current state of that technology is in its infant state: As Sir. Issac Newton said: I am just picking pebbles on the sea shore and yet there is vast sea of knowledge to be covered. We may terminate at certain conclusion in the near future. With regards Repath Athyala.
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Well, you don't believe in God, so you're obviously a Nazi. Does that do it ? ( Actually, Hitler thought he was doing God's work, but, that would kill the joke )
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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Ravel H. Joyce wrote:
I used the definition of evolution as used in biology, or at least a formulation of it. Your attempts to confound me with semantics are annoying.
I am holding you to what you say. I have no other way to understand your argument. Semantics are what matter in an argument. Precision in language is no less required in argument than the ability to throw in baseball or kick in football. Failure to use precision and you will fail.
Ravel H. Joyce wrote:
How life began is abiogenesis. How life changes is evolution. It's a common Creationist technique to criticise evolution by criticising abiogenesis.
You are wrong in your earlier strong implication that the two presented together is only done by creationists.
Opacity, the new Transparency.
This conversation is boring as hell. No more.
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During my current module (I am doing an Open University course on life sciences) I am learning about the beginnings of life. It is a contentious issue. Some think it was foam, others mud, some think it was an iron first development and so on... However, given all research and evidence, it becomes apparent that the golden rule is if there is liquid water, there is life. Posit. If life, or evidence of past life, is found on one other body in the solar system, be it Mars, Europa or wherever, it is a sign that life is universal. Do you expect that life will be found elsewhere within our lives, and do you agree that it will be The Greatest Discovery Ever?
------------------------------------ I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave
Trying to discuss "life" ( as in autonomous entities ) anywhere except on earth can't at this point of humanity's knowledge become scientific. With that said there are a couple of possibilities: 1) Life is abundant and exist everywhere you look for it. a) It's mostly carbonbased as on Earth. b) It's mostly based on something else. 2) Life is scarce and can probably not be found. a) There do however exist life somewhere else. b) Life has only ever developed on one planet. Combining these possibilities I have come up with an idea of my own ( as it seems, anyway ): Life has only developed once on one place in the whole universe in all it's lifetime. It happened early after BigBang (assuming that is true, of course) and from there it has spread all over universe, we are all decendants from that life. Everywhere life is about the same as on earth, and when we finally arrive at another planet we find humans more or less identical to us, we can even interbreed. (That's just SciFi ofc :cool: ) Nothing exists, everything is opinion...
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During my current module (I am doing an Open University course on life sciences) I am learning about the beginnings of life. It is a contentious issue. Some think it was foam, others mud, some think it was an iron first development and so on... However, given all research and evidence, it becomes apparent that the golden rule is if there is liquid water, there is life. Posit. If life, or evidence of past life, is found on one other body in the solar system, be it Mars, Europa or wherever, it is a sign that life is universal. Do you expect that life will be found elsewhere within our lives, and do you agree that it will be The Greatest Discovery Ever?
------------------------------------ I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave
Logically speaking, there should be a sort of life as ours in many parts of the universe; far from our dear tiny planet we called Earth. But when, in the name of science, some will say that life is discovered somewhere in the vast space, it will be looked like another religion to be believed in. To be honest... to me... believing in what a religious, philosophical or scientist group says is the same practically speaking, if not based on one's independent reasoning. Because actually and most of the time, it is based on faith as long the discovery cannot be checked and even lived by the person himself (assuming he believes in his own logic and feelings more than of others). In real life, most people feel the need to belong to a group/society (though I don't). This is possible if they are able to show they share some basic beliefs which the founders have decided to be based on. So thanks to all those who talk in the name of a religion or science, via regional and/or international media, the majority of masses can be driven anytime to where they are supposed to go in every part in the world. And these days, with the continuous progress of hi-tech, this is achieved easier and faster than ever. By the way, did anyone here really understand what I wrote... I guess not though we are supposed to live on the same planet. We can imagine now what would be the case if we don't :) Kerim
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This conversation is boring as hell. No more.
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RichardM1 wrote:
Where are the radio comms of other life? Is it that the chance life only gets intelligent enough to have radio is so small that the conjunction of radio, life and planets has none at a distance and age for the radio waves to be arriving now?
Intelligent life might be rare or at least to our kind of level. Could also be a distance/time thing.
Kevin
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I assume your questions are motivated by the Fermi Paradox[^]?
Kevin
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I assume your questions are motivated by the Fermi Paradox[^]?
Kevin
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viaducting wrote:
I want to see how the world's religions handle it.
Same as always, denial and insurrection.
------------------------------------ I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave
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During my current module (I am doing an Open University course on life sciences) I am learning about the beginnings of life. It is a contentious issue. Some think it was foam, others mud, some think it was an iron first development and so on... However, given all research and evidence, it becomes apparent that the golden rule is if there is liquid water, there is life. Posit. If life, or evidence of past life, is found on one other body in the solar system, be it Mars, Europa or wherever, it is a sign that life is universal. Do you expect that life will be found elsewhere within our lives, and do you agree that it will be The Greatest Discovery Ever?
------------------------------------ I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave
What is "Life"? none of your questions have meaning until we can say with assurance - "This is life..." or "This is not life..." Whether foam, or mud/clay, or iron fist - I find the idea that life arose spontaneously from non-life to be a stretch of credulity beyond my capability. Even our scientific words describing the life sciences (bio*) require life to come first - a thing is not biotic unless it was derived from a biotic source. Every language has a word for the cessation of life - the moment when a living thing stops living - but words in any language for when a dead thing starts living are rare: the most we consistently find is a descriptive phrase used almost exclusively by scientists and philosophers. Given that observation stongly supports Pasteur's statement that "omni vivum ex vivo" (all life proceeds from life), where does the original life come from? It seems we have a case of life "all the way down" ...
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The odds are hugely in favor of life, and intelligent life, throughout this galaxy and the remainder of the multiverse. We are not unique AND by far not the most intelligent lifeform that is or has existed. I'm sure other forms of life that have been around for billions of years would find us and our petty feuds marginally comical! The odds that we meet an intelligent lifeform (if one even exists on earth) are not all that great considering the distances and physics involved. A lifeform capable of travelling faster than the speed of light via some advanced technology such as wormholes, space-time warping, etc. would probably not be all that interested in us... Although we might make a nice quick snack on their travels! And might be worth a stop to do some "probing", i.e.: research. bwa
bwallan wrote:
Although we might make a nice quick snack on their travels!
SO long, and thanks for all the fish!
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5!
Fabio Franco wrote:
5!
Oh, come on - everyone knows its 42! ;-)
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It all becomes much simpler if we just ditch the idea of a god and just look at the chemical ways in which life could be formed. Such as the Miller-Urey experiment[^]. God was not needed for that experiment. Verifying theories by experiments is the basis of science, believing what some old and poorly translated book is saying is not. Also, if we accept the claim that god must exist because there is life, then why isn't there life elsewhere? Accepting the idea of a god is problematic - where did he come from? How did he leave no direct evidence of his existence? So Occam's Razor cuts god out of the universe until we find something that can truly only be explained by accepting the existence of god. But beware, humans have thought that before, and they were always wrong (lightning does not come from god, nor do the seasons).
harold aptroot wrote:
It all becomes much simpler if we just ditch the idea of a god and just look at the chemical ways in which life could be formed.
So we should discard one possibility and focus exclusively on an alternative - then wonder why we find ourselves pounding our head on a wall? While I am for research into the origins of life, to do so to the total exclusion of a non-physical source of life as at least a possibility seems silly, to me ...
harold aptroot wrote:
Such as the Miller-Urey experiment[^].
Oops - the Miller-Urey experiment proved little except that it is possible to synthesize some of the simplest amino acids, lipids, and sugars. The problem is, Miller-Urey created an environment which is vastly different from the one which existed on earth at the time that the first life was noted (about 3.8 billion years ago), and did not leave the amino acids in the environment which created them. The environment which created these compounds is destructive to the compounds it creates, so the created compounds must be removed from the environment to prevent them from being broken back down into their constituent elements.
harold aptroot wrote:
Verifying theories by experiments is the basis of science, believing what some old and poorly translated book is saying is not.
Agreed - few would claim that any religion is primarily a scientific undertaking. However, the statement is thoroughly irrelevant.
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harold aptroot wrote:
It all becomes much simpler if we just ditch the idea of a god and just look at the chemical ways in which life could be formed.
So we should discard one possibility and focus exclusively on an alternative - then wonder why we find ourselves pounding our head on a wall? While I am for research into the origins of life, to do so to the total exclusion of a non-physical source of life as at least a possibility seems silly, to me ...
harold aptroot wrote:
Such as the Miller-Urey experiment[^].
Oops - the Miller-Urey experiment proved little except that it is possible to synthesize some of the simplest amino acids, lipids, and sugars. The problem is, Miller-Urey created an environment which is vastly different from the one which existed on earth at the time that the first life was noted (about 3.8 billion years ago), and did not leave the amino acids in the environment which created them. The environment which created these compounds is destructive to the compounds it creates, so the created compounds must be removed from the environment to prevent them from being broken back down into their constituent elements.
harold aptroot wrote:
Verifying theories by experiments is the basis of science, believing what some old and poorly translated book is saying is not.
Agreed - few would claim that any religion is primarily a scientific undertaking. However, the statement is thoroughly irrelevant.
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Christian Graus wrote:
I just think that God is needed for life to exist, therefore an infinite number of planets does not prove it is likely that there's life on any of them
If He did create it why would He have created it on only a single planet in the universe?
Kevin
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
did create it why would He have created it on only a single planet in the universe?
Nothing in the Bible eliminates the possibility of extraterrestrial life. However, given the treatment GOd has gotten from His creation - why would He put up with that more than once? We have used His name to justify mass murder and slavery, to justify almost every imaginable horrific treatment of His children, to claim inflated self-importance, to invent every imaginable insult to our creator: and in the end, large numbers of us just decide He doesn't exist. I wouldn't put up with that more than once ... ;-)
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bwallan wrote:
Although we might make a nice quick snack on their travels!
SO long, and thanks for all the fish!