(Off Topic) Could there be life on new earth like planet?

[MacShreach]

Great thread.

Well, we have already discovered that life is incredibly opportunistic and lives in the most apparently hostile places here on earth. In fact it is looking increasingly as if life will exist wherever it possibly can, not just where the conditions are ideal.

That being the case there is almost certainly life on other planets.

Are there planets with advanced, multicellular, possibly sentient life forms?

Again, given the scale of the universe, this is likely to be the case. If there is life there will be evolution and if there is an evolutionary ladder, there are probably developed organisms. Some of them are possibly not that dissimilar to ourselves.

Deep-space planetary observation is just beginning and I can certainly remember a time when leading astronomers doubted if there even were other planets outside our solar system; it now looks as if we will discover more and more. So yes, possibly, somewhere in the universe, there are other beings out there who look up at the sky and wonder if they are alone.

Are we ever going to meet them? That is very unlikely. The sheer scale of space makes this impossible with any technology we know of. Even Gliese 581c, which is a mere 20 light years away--nothing in atromical terms-- is unthinkably far in terms of physical travel.


Think about this: we have been listening for organised radio waves for about 50 years. We have not heard any. Since any culture advanced enough to have developed deep space exploration technologies pretty much certainly has already developed radio, we can be sure that there is no such industrialised culture on a planet within 50 light years.

Now it is absolutely true that a planet say 1 million light years away (not very far in astronomical terms) might well have a super-advanced technology capable of deep-space exploration. But we would not know that because we are looking at that planet as it was 1 million years ago, probably long before it developed that technology. At the same time anyone there would be looking at an earth full of dinosaurs who do not emit radio waves so we're just another potentially life-supporting planet to them. It would be approximately 999,900 years before our first radio waves got to them and even if they sent a message immediately it would be ANOTHER 1,000,000 years before we got that.

That is a long wait.

[ausbeachstyle]

Well wormholes should do the trick, and they're not science fiction any more.

[MacShreach]

Well wormholes should do the trick, and they're not science fiction any more.

Hi--not trying to start anything, but where did you get that?

According to NASA

"Are wormholes real?

That is still completely unknown. Wormholes are just theoretical constructs, and we are still not sure if the theories are correct. Astronomical searchers are underway to look for evidence of wormholes, but nothing has been found."

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/re...arpfaq.html#wh

and from "Foundations of Modern Cosmology"


"Are wormholes real? They are a real solution, but that doesn't mean that they exist in the universe. They do not result from the collapse of a star. They just have to be built in ab initio. There are several known weird solutions to Einstein's equations that probably don't have much to do with the real world. They are worth studying though because they provide fascinating insights into properties of the theory general relativity."

http://astsun.astro.virginia.edu/~jh8h/Foundations/

Not looking for a fight, just genuinely interested if you have more recent data.

[gummi baer]

Well wormholes should do the trick, and they're not science fiction any more.

An interesting theory...sorta like the one on spreading democracy in the middle-east. However, if you think that what is comng out of the other end of the wormhole has more than a cursory relationship to what went in this end--you go first, please.

[Coroner]

One cannot be serious if he/she doesn´t believe that there´s life somewhere else in our galaxy and out of our galaxy. The question is, what do these life-forms look like? Are they intelligent? It can be anything, it can be a living planet, living water, something looking like a sky but alive...... it doesn´t have to look like we do what you mostly see in diverse Sci-Fi movies (2 hands, 2 legs, ears, eyes, nose etc..... but a little bit different just to be different). I´m pretty sure there are billions of chemical elements that are totally strange to us...... do they breath? Do they think or is this something else they do, something like their kind of thinking?..... I´m sure we´ll meet something in 50 years and we´ll not know that it´s a life-form (probably an intellegent one) because we´d think that it´s an object. The universe is full of surprises and some people think they know everything......

[ezed]

We are seriously retarded but loveable waterheads, if we think we are the most intelligent or only beings in the universe!

[trish]

Earth is somewhere around 4.5 gigayears old. It may have "housed" life as early as 3 gigayears ago...life which is directly ancestral to us. rather than thinking of life as a collection of individual plants and animals, i like to think of life as a biochemical process analogous to fire. once it takes hold, it grows; and through the processes of mutation and selection become inevitably more complex and interesting. it seems to me that if a planet has already evolved forms similar to bacteria (which are extremely sophisticated) it's only a matter of time til mutlicellular forms follow...only a matter of time til truely remarkable survival strategies evolve...and among those strategies: conscious thought.

[MacShreach]

i like to think of life as a biochemical process analogous to fire. once it takes hold, it grows; and through the processes of mutation and selection become inevitably more complex and interesting. it seems to me that if a planet has already evolved forms similar to bacteria (which are extremely sophisticated) it's only a matter of time til mutlicellular forms follow...only a matter of time til truely remarkable survival strategies evolve...and among those strategies: conscious thought.

I love the way you put that, Trish and your analogy to fire is a cracker. I'm sure you're right.

[TJ347]

I have no doubt there is intelligent life out there, simply due to the infinite size of the universe. I've imagined that the first extraterrestrial beings we come across will be radically different from us... it's a sign of our limited concept of what a "being" is that makes most of us think intelligent lifeforms must be humanoid in shape and/or appearance. I mean, we've established that dolphins and whales are highly intelligent creatures, and they are certainly not humanoid in shape or appearance... It is thus easy to imagine that as that is the case for beings coming from the same planet, beings coming from other worlds will likely be significantly different in appearance to what we view as "normal". Accordingly, there is no reason why such a lifeform could not be as complex as we are, or even more so. Few of us can imagine the existence of a non-carbon based lifeform, but were everything but carbon available, would life necessarily be impossible? We can't really say, as we don't know as much about the origins of life as we like to think we do. While few want to admit it, humanity is still in its infancy, with so much we still don't know about our own physiology, let alone that of other creatures here on Earth, to say nothing of extraterrestrials. We've got a long way to go...

[spooker609]

Wait!!! They found a substance that chemicaly is identical to Kryptonite, now they find an earth like planet orbiting a red sun.....