This Image from Hubble Telescope Is Absolutely Mind Blowing

Started by Unbeliever, May 13, 2019, 07:53:47 PM

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Unbeliever

God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: Baruch on July 17, 2019, 04:24:41 PM
Downtown Denver 109 years ago, due to coal burning, was a lot dirtier than today.  But now Denver covers a much larger area.  The initial objection to coal burning (which came about because of a shortage of wood to burn) was all the soot it produced.
SFW
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Blackleaf

I don't care if there is intelligent life out there. ANY life whatsoever would be super interesting to find. Back before the game Spore died, I used to make and collect animals for an alien zoo.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

trdsf

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on July 17, 2019, 03:56:36 PM
The 19th C. "industrial pollutants" were wood and coal smoke. Nothing technological about that, both had been around for a good long while.
Yes, but not in as high a quantity in the atmosphere.  A major forest fire or volcanic eruption would have provided a momentary blip; the Industrial Revolution was an ongoing process, not a random natural event.  The steady growth over time would have been the key.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

trdsf

Quote from: Sal1981 on July 16, 2019, 07:45:53 PM



The variables in the Drake equation isn't based on anything tangible, as we have no data points to any of them other than just our own.
The only real use in the Drake Equation is for helping frame one's thoughts about the prevalence of intelligent life in the galaxy, and in the universe.  Drake himself proposed it in that way, not as a solid mathematical theory of extraterrestrial intelligence.  Until we have a galaxy-wide survey of life, intelligence, and the circumstances under which civilizations live and die, that's all it can be.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

Unbeliever

Quote from: Blackleaf on July 18, 2019, 09:36:12 PM
I don't care if there is intelligent life out there. ANY life whatsoever would be super interesting to find. Back before the game Spore died, I used to make and collect animals for an alien zoo.
Spore died!? I didn't know that. Too bad, I never got to play it. Looked really cool, though.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Unbeliever

Quote from: trdsf on July 19, 2019, 04:57:09 AM
The only real use in the Drake Equation is for helping frame one's thoughts about the prevalence of intelligent life in the galaxy, and in the universe.  Drake himself proposed it in that way, not as a solid mathematical theory of extraterrestrial intelligence.  Until we have a galaxy-wide survey of life, intelligence, and the circumstances under which civilizations live and die, that's all it can be.
Yeah, might as well call it the Dreck equation.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Unbeliever

This is interesting:

QuoteWhat is Fermi's Paradox?
Do aliens exist?

Can it be solved. Dr. Duncan Forgan explores that in his new book "Solving Fermi's Paradox", asking if aliens and alien civilizations exist. Where are they? Why aren't they here yet? And what factors can keep a civilization from advancing. What if they are long since dead, how do we look for ancient alien civilizations.

John Michael Godier also spoke to Dr. Forgan on Event Horizon about the protocols for what we should do if we find intelligent life. Especially life that is far more advanced, what do we do if we see a Dyson sphere? How will the world react, and how should that information be shared.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEmCYv8QII0



My working hypothesis, until further data comes in, is that we are completely alone in the observable universe. I could be wrong, and I'm looking forward to being proven to be.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

trdsf

With regard to the so-called Fermi paradox:

It must be remembered that at the time Fermi asked "Where is everyone?", the Steady State theory of the universe was still an active and reasonable theory.  In a temporally infinite universe, yes, we should have been visited by now since in an infinite universe, there's no reason an alien species couldn't have visited every potentially life-bearing star in the galaxy (even universe), even if there's no shortcut around the speed of light as an absolute limit.

In a temporally finite universe, that situation is very different.  There are reasons life cannot have existed from the beginning, mainly that the heavier elements required for life need not only enough time to be created, but also time to be concentrated -- and that's just for basic life.  The needs for complex life are more stringent still.  Personally, I think a certain concentration of slowly radioactive elements like 238U and 40K are necessary to gently elevate mutation rates.

So you can't have life that's arbitrarily old, with an arbitrarily long time to come to sentience and an arbitrarily long time to explore the galaxy, much less the universe.  It's possible that it takes on average around ten billion years for enough of the necessary heavy elements to be produced and collect in useful concentrations for planets to form that have all the bits they need, in a typical galaxy.  In a larger one, might take less time.  In a smaller one, might take more.

Even if you wait out the nine or ten billion years necessary for a suitable habitat to form, there's no guarantee that life will arise.  And even if life does arise, it's going to take another several billion years for it to evolve into anything capable of sentience, and it's not guaranteed that it will.

So let's say you've been lucky and your planet developed life and your life evolved into sentience and... hey, 13-some billion years have already passed since the creation of the universe.  So where is everyone?

That's a damned good question.

Our instruments cannot take arbitrarily detailed measurements.  I doubt much that we'll ever be able to do more than resolve Proxima b as more than a dot of light; if and when we can do that, we can at least do spectrographic analysis and determine the contents of its atmosphere (if any).  And that's our nearest possible exoplanet; the problems of detection and analysis only get worse the further out we look.  Right now, the only thing it has to recommend it as an exploration target is that it's the only exoplanet we can theoretically get a probe to within a human lifetime.

And then there's Einstein.  As far as we can tell, lightspeed as a speed limit is a law of nature, not an engineering challenge like the speed of sound.  The only way to (partially) circumvent it is with patience and a thundering LOT of fuel.

And lastly, there's the simple fact that half the galaxy is simply beyond observation because of obstructing clouds of matter, and the core.

Furthermore, only the nearest couple thousand starsâ€"out of hundreds of billionsâ€"can even have the chance of having detected our presence, and vice versa.  There could be a culture at the equivalent stage of our Renaissance only eight light years away, and we would have no way of knowing anyone was there because that's an insufficiently low technology level to be detected.  Likewise, there could be one advanced enough that they have effectively lossless communications, so we can't detect them because there's no leakage, and their shell of open-air radio emissions has long since passed.

These problems exist for any other intelligent species that might in our galaxy or any other galaxy.  So the other problem with Fermi's objection is that he assumed the existence of an intelligent species that has both infinite resources and infinite curiosity.

No.  There are perfectly sensible reasons that there aren't probes, staffed or robotic, visiting every one of the (average) 250 billion stars in this galaxy, in a universe that's constrained in time.

The answer to Pauli's "Where is everyone?" is "Patience, Wolfie, patience," with just a soupçon of "And why should they look here in the first place?"
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

Cavebear

Quote from: trdsf on July 19, 2019, 04:57:09 AM
The only real use in the Drake Equation is for helping frame one's thoughts about the prevalence of intelligent life in the galaxy, and in the universe.  Drake himself proposed it in that way, not as a solid mathematical theory of extraterrestrial intelligence.  Until we have a galaxy-wide survey of life, intelligence, and the circumstances under which civilizations live and die, that's all it can be.

It's not perfect and you could add a lot of variables.  Like a large moon, deep AND shallow water, deep smokers, extra large metallic core, etc.  But I'll honor the equation as the best first try that looked at it logically.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Unbeliever

If there hadn't been a hypernova about 80 million years before the solar system's formation we wouldn't have the heavy elements needed for life in the first place,



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaD32JrWPlI
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Cavebear

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 20, 2019, 02:28:21 PM
If there hadn't been a hypernova about 80 million years before the solar system's formation we wouldn't have the heavy elements needed for life in the first place,

Why 80 MYA?  Is there a particular one in mind?  I know about heavy elements and iron-death...
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Unbeliever

Yes a particular one, that was close enough to shower the nascent system with heavy elements, such as iodine, gold, platinum, etc.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Cavebear

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 20, 2019, 02:41:28 PM
Yes a particular one, that was close enough to shower the nascent system with heavy elements, such as iodine, gold, platinum, etc.

I meant was there a particular one we know about?   Just asking because 80 LY seems rather specific.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Unbeliever

Not 80 light years, but 80 million years pre-solar system.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman