/sci/ - Science & Math

Isn't this common knowledge?

OP here, consider for a second, Primates are the only small narrow branch of the Animal kingdom in 3 billion years of evolution, that created language level species.

Only us, Homo Erectus and Neanderthals.

>implying life can only exist on Earth-like conditions

Derp.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Drake Equation motherfucker, have you heard of it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlikCebQSlY

100 million you say?

Well have you considered that there are up to 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone...

and have you considered that CONSERVATIVE estimates put the number of galaxies is just the visible universe at around 200 BILLION? The universe is very likely larger than that even..

Have you also considered that your guesswork is total rubbish and that some things you listed are actually more likely to occur than you may think, or may not even actually be requirements at all.

Ugggggh that's stupid as fuck I don't even know where to start.

>>2046133

The statistical probability being so infinitely low, that we're here talking about it now.

>_>

hey drake equation fags

look into the fermi paradox

Fuck the chances being low, you have to think about the Earth in terms of how old our star is.

If the universe is 14 billions years, and the sun is roughly 6 billion years old, we just may be one of the very first sentient species.

Galactic ancients if you will. Eons in the future newfag species will be fining our technological artifacts floating in spaces, completely bewildered.

We are the progenitors.

>>2046165
Could very well be. Though I suspect we'll still be around.

It's all irrelevant. There may even be a 100 intelligent species out there: it's just that nobody will ever find each other due to the speed of light being slow and the universe being huge.

>>2046182
Ah, we'll get around it eventually.

>implying life has to be carbon based
>implying life has to originate in conditions like ours
>implying the Galactic Republic gets involved with Class 0 civilizations.

>>2046193
Silicon is a great sub for carbon as far as supporting life goes, and NH3 works great as water for colder planets/moons. Theoretically of course.

>>2046193
>implying we're not intergalactically being ridiculed for our slow progression
>implying they're not laughing behind our backs for our widespread focus on religion

>All this bullshit just to eliminate the possibility of human-esque life on other planets.

Did you ever once stop to think what's toxic to us wouldn't be toxic to lifeforms who evolved with those conditions?

That's right, you didn't

The probability that you are intelligent is severely diminished by the appearance of this post OP - if they anal probe you we are fucked!

>>2046218
Mathematically, what else could subsitute for DNA as an encoding life form? And DNA requires that there isn't too much radiation, too hot or too cold to work.


The only other thing is computer based robots capable of self assembly, but I don't know how something like that can possibly arise by itself.

>>2046218

oh, but I so clearly did

I tend to agree with you OP more than those spouting the Drake Equation. Drake Equation was simply wishful thinking based on no facts. Unfortunately we have no way of proving or disproving his theory because we know of only 1 advanced civilization ... our own. So we can't determine how likely it would be that there could be more.

Life can develop on other worlds I'm sure but for sentient life you need a lot more going for you than just warmth and water.

OP, I have a question for you...

Did it happen?

Also, if you want a mind fuck ask yourself how probable it is that something actually exists instead of doesn't.

>>2046160
Shut the fuck up about fermi's paradox it's a dumb fucking concept.

what if aliens created our planet and us?

The drake equation is pretty much bullshit. It's an interesting idea but I am surprised that it ever gained any ground in the scientific world whatsoever. It pretty much makes a guess by multiplying a bunch of other guesses together and is mathematically flawed.

>>2046216
"Hahaha, they just nuked themselves."
"Holy derpage!"

>>2046237
>>2046237
There is no reaction picture angry enough for this post

The probability of a civilisation that looks pretty much exactly like ours is ridiculously low. Considering we have a sample size of one so far, it's a bit early to make such predictions.

For example, you say

>1) Rocky planet in a certain size range, at the right distance from the sun with an iron core that creates a protective magnetic field.
This is only required if you want a planet just like Earth. The Jovian aliens say the same thing about gas giants.
>2) Proper amount of water delivered from meteorites, no toxic materials, radiation or gases that might disrupt DNA bonds.
This is only required if you think water is not toxic and toxic materials are toxic. And that is only if you think DNA is essential.
>3) Nucleotides joining together randomly to create a self-replicating strand of RNA enclosed by a libid bi-layer membrane is enormous.
This only applies if you think cells and RNA are essential precursors. We have no way of knowing that.
>4) Mitochondria bacteria evolving and being absorbed by a Eukaryotic cell.
Now this is ludicrously parochial. Say what you like about efficient replicators and useful solvents, but why on earth would civilisation require this exact accident of history to occur?
>5) Social species evolving capable of language and civilization.
This actually seems reasonable to me. If you exclude the 'civilisation' part since that makes it circular. But having this does not require any of the precursor steps, it just happened to on earth.


Rather its more odd that we haven't seen any evidence of other civilisations yet. No Dyson Spheres, no Stellar Engines, none of this cool stuff we have been theorizing about that we'd love to try when we have the tools.

>>2046273

Why?

>>2046313
We could be one of the first 'intelligences' or alternatively we could simply be incapable of detecting such structures at this point in time. I mean, hell, we identify planets by monitoring the local stars wobble.

with shit colliding, this was bound to happen eventually after x years, hey presto we have a bilipid layer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supramolecular_chemistry#Molecular_self-assembly

>>2046325

If Dyson Spheres work anything like we think they do, we should be able to tell if there are any in our galaxy, at least.

I'm not discounting the possibility that they massively don't work as we imagine them to. I mean, it turns out the Oort cloud probably scatters signals enough that if you tried to pick up ours, you might be able to tell it was based on intelligence from Alpha Centauri, but any further out and it looks like background. I'll try to find links.

>>2046336
It'd be epic. But I doubt we're going to encounter a dead species megalithic structures in our backyard.

As a side note. It works both ways. We're a technologically advanced species, why haven't 'we' gone out and visited other species, or constructed such buildings yet?

It helps to contrast things I think.

CHO CHANG IS SO HAWT WUT

>>2046342

That's just it, isn't it? We've been around for maybe a hundred thousand years in current form, maybe ten thousand years as a civilisation, and around a hundred years as an emitting civilisation. And these emissions may not even count.


If we ever find a way to reliably reach even a single digit fraction of c, it ought not take us more than a million years to put a man (or whatever passes for a man) around every star in the galaxy. So why hasn't every civilisation done this?


So maybe, just maybe, there's something utterly unforeseen going on out there. Nasty grey goo left behind by one of the first that hates anything travelling between solar systems, perhaps. Or an extra-terrestrial civilisation that has a prime directive that it takes very seriously, and it won't talk to us until we make an AI or something. There's no way to know.

>Rocky planet in a certain size range, at the right distance from the sun with an iron core that creates a protective magnetic field.
Recent findings from astronomers have now pegged the number of these planets at some extremely high number; something like 10% of all stars have an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone.
>Proper amount of water delivered from meteorites, no toxic materials, radiation or gases that might disrupt DNA bonds.
Water isn't terribly difficult to come by in the universe. It's actually very common. "Toxic materials" are different for different organisms and evolution is pretty good at getting around toxicity (for example, oxygen is actually one of the most toxic elements to life). Radiation isn't an issue as long as the planet has a magnetic field and protective atmospheric layer.
>Nucleotides joining together randomly to create a self-replicating strand of RNA enclosed by a libid bi-layer membrane is enormous.
It's not too out-there. As long as you have the necessary reagents present on the planet you will get everything you need to start building organisms with. Also, a phosopholipid bilayer is pretty easy to create naturally and it will always form a bubble, so getting a piece of self-replicating RNA into a PLB membrane isn't unlikely at all.
>Mitochondria bacteria evolving and being absorbed by a Eukaryotic cell
That's what happened on Earth. It isn't a requirement. There are other ways to get around the energy issue.
>Social species evolving capable of language and civilization
Social animals are common on Earth. Communication usually evolves within social species too. The trick is getting an organism intelligent enough to make tools and use abstract language.

>>2046154
i get sick of so many shitty posts like the ones on these threads, except ones like this or ones that end in derp.

the amount of faggotry in these threads is astounding.

>>2046358

Or...

We could be a first intelligence.
We could be in the same situation as other intelligences, i.e. why are we sitting here?
We could be hanging out in what amounts to a protected zone.

Fun to speculate now; but we'll find out eventually.

Personally, my votes on being a first intelligence, and or, distance complications combined with visibility issues.

>>2046358
Or maybe every civilization destroys itself before it reaches the interstellar phase. To see how depressingly likely this is, consider how many times humanity came close to wiping itself out in thermonuclear war within the last 65 years. There wasn't even a lull between the time at which we discovered how to split atoms to the time at which we began using nuclear weapons.

>>2046376
I forgot to add, there's also this.

It's entirely possible that sentient races like our own exhaust all usable resources before they reach the interstellar phase and thus their civilizations fizzle out fairly quickly.

OP here.

"A universal common ancestor is at least 10^2860 times more probable than having multiple ancestors…"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_ancestor

What does that mean? That means that the chance of RNA self assembling into replicating life in the 1 billion years between Earth's creation and life's emergence is 10^2860.

How many stars in the universe? Upper estimate is 10^24. Lets assume 1/100 of those stars have an earth like planet at a decent distance (generous odds).

That's 10^22 Earth Planets in the Universe.

What's the odds in 1 billion years that non of those planets create even a first bacterium?

1 in 10^2860 Earth like planets will generate life in one billion years.

10^2860 / 10^22
Or
1 in 10^2838 chance this UNIVERSE will have a single life form per billion years.

Stars in the Universe will shine for roughly roughly 10^5 billion years (100 trillion years).

10^2838 / 10^5 = 10^2832

Meaning 1/(10^2832) is the odds that any life will appear in the Universe in the entire span of the Universe's life.

What does that mean? Either God exists, but I don't really believe in God, so there are at least 10^2832 Universes out there.

>>2046382
Don't feed the troll people

>>2046378
That chart doesn't look right.

>>2046382
I don't see the point behind this.

>>2046394
Looks, for all the world, like an attempt at trolling.

TROLL PPLE NEED NOT APPLIE

>>2046388
Haha!Carl Sage'n made me lol more then I should..

how can you talk about statistics when you only have a single system for such information available, it's like checking only a single person to make up a statistic over the whole population

>>2046142
This guy.


Octopus be the next intelligensia

What I find interesting is that astronomers are now hypothisizing that rocky habitable planets like earth are likely rather large. Earth being on the minimally small to hold an atmosphere. With large planets rocket technology may be thought by aliens to be nearly impossible due to increased gravity. Super advanced civilizations that have never really considered leaving their gravity well.

>>2046231
Extremeophiles

Haven't we like already fucking found an Earth like planet not too far away? The name escapes me right now but scientists say it's perfect for life as far as we can tell.

Maybe we are the first of a species that will spread throughout the galaxy in some form or other in a few million years and we'll leave a message to our successors about us existing like in Season 6, Episode 20: The Chase of Star Trek TNG?

>>2046447

Fucking Christ I know that episode.

>>2046444

>>The name escapes me right now but scientists say it's perfect for life as far as we can tell.

It may be survivable without a space suit at a thin longitudinal band around the planet where the temperature is comfortable. One side of the planet always faces the sun, y'see.

It's unknown whether we can breathe the air, but it seems unlikely. In that case we could simply wear oxygen masks, but the rest of our bodies could remain exposed.

>>2046471
>>2046444

Our current way of detecting planets remotely the size on compositions tells us virtually nothing about atmosphere or surface conditions.

>>2046476

size and composition of earth*

[really bad typo]

If the chances are 1/<span class="math">10^20[/spoiler] and there are <span class="math">10^40[/spoiler] planets in the Universe, then not that unlikely amirite?

>>2046450
>>2046447

>>2046530

>>2046530

The chances that anything is coming from Mars are a million to one they said.