Are we 100% "alone" in the Universe?

[Portre]

22 hours ago, joc said:

I don't really know much about the different elements except that elements react differently to different circumstance.  So, more or less...a carbon based life form can not exist on Mercury...but what about a mercury based life form...that sort of thing you know...

I would not rule out the possibility of life on Mercury.  Observations strongly suggest ice in permanently shadowed craters at the poles.  I would rule out mercury-based life.  

[Portre]

22 hours ago, joc said:

Cosmology is heresy and heresy is enough to burn you at the stake.

True, but Bruno believed in universal salvation and reincarnation but did not believe in the trilogy, virginity of Mary, transubstantiation, divinity of Jesus, etc.

[+joc]

9 hours ago, Portre said:

but did not believe in the trilogy, virginity of Mary, transubstantiation, divinity of Jesus

There is no universal salvation and there is no reincarnation.  There is Christ Crucified...you are with us or against us and if you are against us we burn you at the stake.  That's it!

However...not really all that and a bag of chips in reality...they burned the leaders of the Knights Templar at the stake as well and it had nothing to do with heresy...although that was their reason for burning them at the stake.  but the real reason was because they feared the Knights Templar and the King of France owed them  (Knights Templar) too much money...so they (The King of France and The Church) conspired together and destroyed them  (knights Templar) sighting all kinds of heresy.

Edited August 2, 2022 by joc

[+joc]

9 hours ago, Portre said:

I would not rule out the possibility of life on Mercury.  Observations strongly suggest ice in permanently shadowed craters at the poles.  I would rule out mercury-based life.  

Why is it that life has to be Carbon based?  

[zep73]

Not stressing how impossible life is, may be one of science's biggest mistakes.

It has made everybody think that life must be out there, when in fact it should not exist at all.

[zep73]

33 minutes ago, joc said:

Why is it that life has to be Carbon based?  

It's a matter of chemistry, and which atoms and molecules work best together to make metabolism. Carbon, oxygen CO2 and H2O work like a charm.

Edited August 2, 2022 by zep73

[+joc]

2 minutes ago, zep73 said:

It's a matter of chemistry, and which atoms and molecules work best together to make metabolism. Carbon, oxygen and H2O work like a charm.

What does metabolism have to do with?  Didn't you ever see Alien?  I want a life form that drinks gasoline and spits acid wads!  A life form that can't melt but if it does it just regroups.  Didn't you ever see Terminator?  

Come on!  Where are the life forms made of uranaium that **** bricks of plutonium?

[zep73]

2 minutes ago, joc said:

Didn't you ever see Terminator? 

Did I ever see Terminator?! Are you kidding me? I'm a male born before 1980! Of course I saw it! And Alien and Predator. All 68 movies! Those movies were like flies in a stable. Everywhere!

 

7 minutes ago, joc said:

Come on!  Where are the life forms made of uranaium that **** bricks of plutonium?

If I tell you, do you swear not to tell Putin? 

[+and-then]

I don't think our minds can fully grasp the concept of infinity or a beginning or "ending" of time.  I think we are probably just one of many, many examples of a planned creation.  That said, I don't believe I'd trust the idea that someday aliens from lightyears away would pop in for a chat.  One of the few concepts that Hawking believed was that contact with aliens wouldn't likely turn out well for us.  He seemed to feel the same about the rush to embrace A I.

[psyche101]

On 7/30/2022 at 12:09 PM, pallidin said:

A very old topic, I'm sure, but any more thoughts???

Billions and billions of galaxies, yet some say that the human race is entirely alone in this incredibly vast universe.

Your thoughts?

Who says that?

[Myles]

Yes and No.   We are alone in the sense that there is no one nearby.  It is like camping all by yourself on this planet of billions of people.  You may feel as though you are alone because you are out of touch with anyone else.  

I think there are other life forms out there but they are nowhere close and we will probably never communicate with each other.  

[Portre]

9 hours ago, and then said:

I don't think our minds can fully grasp the concept of infinity or a beginning or "ending" of time.  I think we are probably just one of many, many examples of a planned creation. 

Planned by whom?  It all seems rather ad hoc to me.

[+joc]

23 hours ago, zep73 said:

Not stressing how impossible life is, may be one of science's biggest mistakes.

It has made everybody think that life must be out there, when in fact it should not exist at all.

yes...but isn't it also true that matter shouldn't exist at all?

[psyche101]

23 hours ago, zep73 said:

Not stressing how impossible life is, may be one of science's biggest mistakes.

It has made everybody think that life must be out there, when in fact it should not exist at all.

Why should it not exist? 

[+joc]

19 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

Why should it not exist? 

Life should not exist because matter should not exist.

How is it that anything exists...   It is the only real unexplained mystery.  Which gives rise to all kinds of belief.  And, it isn't really even conclusive that it does exist.  But here we are nonetheless.

[+joc]

10 hours ago, Portre said:

Planned by whom?  It all seems rather ad hoc to me.

Again...ahem...it is the unanswerable question.  

How did the Universe get here.  Big Bang doesn't answer it.  God doesn't answer it.  That it has always been doesn't answer it.  It is the unanswerable enigma.  And the other side of it is...how do we know it exists?

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, joc said:

Life should not exist because matter should not exist.

How is it that anything exists...   It is the only real unexplained mystery.  Which gives rise to all kinds of belief.  And, it isn't really even conclusive that it does exist.  But here we are nonetheless.

In pretty good with the hypotheses provided by physics as to why matter exists 

Regardless of how, it does.

What I can't understand is with literally billions of opportunities why this specific situation should be confined to here alone.

That just doesn't make sense. 

[Black Red Devil]

The number of worlds out there are staggering and the possibility that life exists in some form or another is almost a certainty.  The fact that we haven't any proof is just an indication of our limited technology.  We've barely been outside our solar system and we pretend to know what is happening in the trillions of galaxies around the universe! 

Actually we don't even occupy prime real estate in our own galaxy.

 

[fred_mc]

The universe is infinite, or so big so that it can be approximated as infinite. The same laws of physics apply everywhere. We know that life exists here on earth. No matter how small the probability for this is, it will happen somewhere else as well, as long as the universe is infinite. Hence, there is life at other places in the universe. QED

[Grim Reaper 6]

On 8/2/2022 at 11:24 AM, zep73 said:

Not stressing how impossible life is, may be one of science's biggest mistakes.

It has made everybody think that life must be out there, when in fact it should not exist at all.

Well that’s your theory and honesty we both know you are unable to support as anything other than theory scientifically! The most widely accepted theory currently in both the Astrophysics and the Biophysics communities is the Drake Equation! It’s the only theory that currently exists that has never proven wrong concerning this issue.

It has only proven to be incompetent. In the same fashion that General Relativity has also been proven to be incomplete. Now realistically that certainly not a  negative judgment on either of those men, because they carried the Ball as  far as possible in their life times! Now it’s time for the next generation that’s currently out there to pick up the ball android  take it home! 

[Essan]

Planets like Earth: orbiting a stable sun, with a similar atmosphere, similar gravity, mostly covered by water - but with tectnioci activity to also produce land masses and varying climatic zones - with an active core to produce a strong magnetic field, protected by a gas giant and stabilised by an over-sized moon, are probably not that common.  But if one in every 10 billion planets is like Earth then there are billions are Earths out there.   Just don't expect to find many in our insignificant little galaxy.

Planets on which more basic life can form and survive are probably much more common though.

[zep73]

14 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Why should it not exist? 

2 hours ago, Grim Reaper 6 said:

Well that’s your theory and honesty we both know you are unable to support as anything other than theory scientifically! The most widely accepted theory currently in both the Astrophysics and the Biophysics communities is the Drake Equation! It’s the only theory that currently exists that has never proven wrong concerning this issue.

It has only proven to be incompetent. In the same fashion that General Relativity has also been proven to be incomplete. Now realistically that certainly not a  negative judgment on either of those men, because they carried the Ball as  far as possible in their life times! Now it’s time for the next generation that’s currently out there to pick up the ball android  take it home! 

Put your loyalty to science aside for a moment, and look at this with true skepticism and logic. Can you do that?

Abiogenesis is a hypothesis, not a theory. It's dead molecules coming alive through chemistry. We have many ideas how it happened, but no solid theory. The hypothesis is not testable/reproducible. Reproducibility is a cornerstone in scientific rigor. It's not there in abiogenesis.

And somehow this (so far) untestable hypothesis has become truth. That's not science.

The first living cell was not just a miracle, it was several miracles put together to make an even bigger miracle. A self replicating miracle with genes and a mitochondria. The cell membrane itself is a very intricate construction. For all those intricate parts to emerge and come together as one is mindblowing. It should not have happened. The odds against it were staggering.

I'm not looking for a discussion about this, just a recognition that those incredible chemical miracles were extremely unlikely to happen. (Yet they did.)

So when people talk about (any form of) life on other planets as obvious, the untested hypothesis has gone too far IMO. We simply can't make that call before we know how it happened here.

 

[zep73]

14 hours ago, joc said:

yes...but isn't it also true that matter shouldn't exist at all?

I'm not sure it does. According to this study matter is merely vacuum fluctuations. Virtual.

[Grim Reaper 6]

3 minutes ago, zep73 said:

Put your loyalty to science aside for a moment, and look at this with true skepticism and logic. Can you do that?

Abiogenesis is a hypothesis, not a theory. It's dead molecules coming alive through chemistry. We have many ideas how it happened, but no solid theory. The hypothesis is not testable/reproducible. Reproducibility is a cornerstone in scientific rigor. It's not there in abiogenesis.

And somehow this (so far) untestable hypothesis has become truth. That's not science.

The first living cell was not just a miracle, it was several miracles put together to make an even bigger miracle. A self replicating miracle with genes and a mitochondria. The cell membrane itself is a very intricate construction. For all those intricate parts to emerge and come together as one is mindblowing. It should not have happened. The odds against it were staggering.

I'm not looking for a discussion about this, just a recognition that those incredible chemical miracles were extremely unlikely to happen. (Yet they did.)

So when people talk about (any form of) life on other planets as obvious, the untested hypothesis has gone too far IMO. We simply can't make that call before we know how it happened here.

 

Zep it’s double edged sword, I have my views and you have yours neither can be proven conclusively that why they are theories. But I choose disregard the notion that life is so Unique for many reasons fossilized bacteria are now know to have exist on Mars.  If not far the catastrophe even that occur back million of year ago we would most likely have neighbors now. In addition a new theory concerning had been proposed concerning the Tardigrade based upon  a new theory ther e is a possibility it’s actually our first alien visited.

I will never discard my beliefs which are based upon Science in favor of skepticism and as far as logic gos it’s my belief that it’s illogical to assume that the Universe isn’t full of!

 Take care Zep sooner of later one of us  wi ll be  prove right  just remember if the aliens have a  book that says To Serve Man like hell!

n M 

[zep73]

35 minutes ago, Grim Reaper 6 said:

fossilized bacteria are now know to have exist on Mars.

Do you mean this: https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/fossil-microbes-mars ?

It was dismissed as evidence long ago.

Take care