/sci/ - Science & Math

Sentient life ( Neo-Cortex ) evolved on this planet because we had a shit load of very rare cosmological events ( creation of a moon that locks our axis type stuff ), quite a few rare evolutionary events that worked out in our favor ( Genetic mutations that allowed the birth of upright apes type shit ) and a couple of damn near physical reality breaking events ( hominids surviving a cataclysm that left ~1000 mating pairs on the entire planet ).

We got lucky as fuck, and the way it seems, every other species got unlucky because humans like to destroy them.

>>3891515

If by sentience you mean response to stimuli then sentience does dictate whether an organism is alive because all organisms respond to stimuli. If by sentience you mean having a subjective perspective of feeling then...wut? Consciousness can't exist without neurons to produce it (and a whole buttload of neurons at that) and an organism producing such tissue either gains or pays a fitness cost. Since sponges and some cnidarians are the only animals without neurons, I'm gonna go ahead and count that as a success.

>>3891550
By sentience I mean having a neo-cortex. The ability to think about your thinking. No other animal on this planet, besides maybe whales or dolphins ( possibly chimps ) has meta-cognitive abilities. That is what I mean by sentience.

>>3891528

The moon doesn't lock our axis, we would do just fine without the moon, or just adding the mass of the moon to our planet. Planets placed right for water to be liquid are not rare. And they do not require extraordinary conditions. I agree with the other stuff you say.

>>3891568
>Moon doesn't lock our axis

Yes it does.

>>3891569

but you just said "everything from single cell bacteria (...)" single cell bacteria doesn't think about it's thinking, neither does it think in the first place.

>>3891528
all true, i remember being told (in high school) that single cell organisms were theorised to have been created by a reaction caused directly by a lightning strike...
but what i'm concerned about is why trees and shit grow and photosynthesise and require nutrients and exude waste products, just like sentient organisms, yet that sort of life seems to have developed directly in contrast to us. as photosynthesis (non-sentient cell respiration) takes our waste products (CO2, nitrogen etc.) and converts it into energy, then releasing it as O2 which is what sentient life uses for cell respiration.
thinking like this makes me wonder if i'm descended from trees

>>3891577
I am not OP. I had no clue what he was talking about with that part of his post:

>does this mean that sentient life (everything from single cell bacteria to modern day humans) evolved as a competitor to non-sentient life (plants etc)

I don't know what he means by this.

>>3891574

What the moon does to our planet is not essential for life on earth.

when i said sentience i meant like say, internal organs, the presence of a nervous system, there are clear differences between a tree and a human and that's what i'm trying to highlight with my non-university educated language.
crazy fucking 4chan, too busy getting hung up on semantics to answer the question.

>>3891515
Mutualism bro.

Why can't we be friends?

>>3891588
No but it is probably essential for complex life considering complex live requires a stable evolutionary environment for longer periods of time for it to happen.

If the moon hadn't locked our axis in such a way that gives rise to long-period, stable habitats then it would be very difficult for complex life to evolve.

If the Earth had more wobble in its axis that lack of a moon such as ours would cause, habitats would be too unstable for complex life. One month the Sahara would be a desert and the next it would be an Arctic wasteland. Complex life can't evolve in that instability.

Shit even humans had to be extremely lucky in ecosystem changes on Earth to evolve with this somewhat stable axis.

>>3891585
that's my question, sorry for the shitty wording. cast your minds back to when life was first developing, when the first sapling mutated itself from whatever the fuck it mutated itself from, and considering generally all life competes with one another for survival, and considering bacteria and its subsequent evolutionary paths to every different type of animal and shit on the earth, does this mean that animals evolved in competition to plants?

>>3891600
>semantics

semantics are necessary in this case because you keep using the word 'sentient' and have no clue what it means.

>>3891574

Errr...you mean the moon is locked with our axis. Accretion causes planets to have axises in the same plane as the star they orbit.

Evidently, people are saying that the tidal periods led to animal migration onto land from water but really that's just a guess.

>>3891569
A lot of what we use our brains for is mediating social interaction. Our ability to observe ourselves is the understanding that there are other people besides you and this is how they understand what you're doing. Try pointing to something to get your dog to look, they don't get it. It's also pretty evident that social behavior in organisms arise from a resource restricted environment, particularly if that resource is space. Eusocial organisms are not limited to just ants and termites, there are moles that exhibit the same hierarchical social structure. It's hard to imagine a more space restricted environment than underground since you have to exert energy to move around. Likewise, our species' anthropological history occurred on the boarder between forest and savanna in Africa. By virtue of being a boarder, the amount of space is limited, hence become social.

Social behavior is only one solution to a single environment's selective pressures. We don't compete with whales until we already have a developed pre-frontal cortex etc etc.

>>3891622
Evolution happens in isolated environments. Competition happens from within those environments only in the beginning. By the time we had animals that actually traveled from habitat to habitat, competition didn't really matter as much as luck.

>>3891613
cos nature gave lions claws, scorpions stingers and sharks rows of razor sharp teeth
its just strange why, given nature's capacity for developing weapons over cuddle-tentacles, that a trees equivalent of shitting is what provides us with the chemical all the cells in our body need to respire

>>3891625
>non-university educated language
>sorry for the shitty wording

its as if you ignore these details in an attempt to be a anally retentive fuckwit. i'm aware i might not be using scientifically precise language but its the best way i can get my point across.
simply because i used the word sentient imprecisely my whole argument is invalid right?

>>3891654

We didn't learn to use O2 as an electron acceptor until photosynthetic organisms ruined the atmosphere by over producing it to the point of becoming toxic.

Fuck yeah ecological disasters!

>>3891639
No I mean that the moon locks our axis so that our planet doesn't wobble. That is what I meant. I think I was very clear in what I meant.

>Recent computer simulations suggest that, without the Moon, the Earth's axis tilt may have been very different than what it is today. This would have caused very different seasons on the Earth, and the impact that this could have had on the developing biosphere ranges from moderate to catastrophic. The Moon actually seems to stabilize the tilt of the Earth's rotation axis over the course of billions of years.

Complex species evolve over the coarse of many changing habitats. If those habitats aren't changing in a periodic and somewhat predictable manner? No complex life.

>>3891625
also, read the OP again and try to tell me that i havent used enough appropriate descriptors for you to be able to determine what my argument is, then quietly justify to yourself between sobs why you're not an elitist.

>>3891680
thats a most reasonable proposition, thankyou. basically we evolved to breathe plant poo because plants were pooing too much

>>3891686

Venus has no moons. Venus is approximately earth sized.

Venus Inclination
3.394 71° to Ecliptic
3.86° to Sun’s equator
2.19° to Invariable plane
177.3° axial tilt

Earth inclination
7.155° to Sun's equator
1.57869° to invariable plane
23°26'21".4119 axial tilt

Reeerrrrrrreeeyyyy?

>>3891745
It is also closer to the sun and recieves more gravitational influence from it. Also please show me these values as they exist over the course of 1 billion years.

>>3891654
Life evolved to make use of the product of photosynthesis after the Oxygen Catastrophe.

And we can all still be friends.

>>3891654
i had no idea about this oxygen catastrophe up until now, is this proven or theory?

>>3891783
>is the Oxygen Catastrophe well established?
I'm fairly sure it is. It lead to a Snowball Earth.

>>3891791
nice wording, gave me a semi. i'm googling this shit now, thanx! we can all still be friends now

>>3891762
Rereading my post makes me view Earth's history as I would a particularly dense collection of fluff for a fictional world.

>The Great Oxygen Catastrophe of the Second Age left the world in ruins and plunged all of creation into the harshest of winters. Eventually, the fires deep within the Earth overcame the ice and from the aftermath came The Anaerobics.

>>3891754

I don't know enough physics but that's easier than predicting what the orbit will be in the future. I assure you, our planet does not have the orbital characteristics it does because of the moon. It has those characteristics because it's a planet.

Also, I have no idea what you mean by gravitational influence and I'm not really willing to calculate out the negligible differences in gravitational potential because venus is closer. So instead...

Mars shits;
25.19° axial tilt
1.850° to ecliptic
5.65° to Sun's equator
1.67° to invariable plane

Mars has two satellites that are captured asteroids and are only a fraction of Mars' mass (10^16 vs 10^23) so whatever gravitational effects they cause should be negligible. I can do this for every planet if you'd like, it's still going to show that the presence of the moon has only made our orbit more unstable, not less.

>>3891797
>gave me a semi
Then my work here is done.

the Great Oxygen Catastrophe
lest we forget

>>3891829
>Mars has two satellites that are captured asteroids and are only a fraction of Mars' mass (10^16 vs 10^23) so whatever gravitational effects they cause should be negligible. I can do this for every planet if you'd like, it's still going to show that the presence of the moon has only made our orbit more unstable, not less.
LOL, what?

I'm not sure what you are talking about, but just to make sure you know, Mars' axial tilt varies GREATLY over the course of millions of years. Earth by comparison maintains relatively the same axial tilt.

>>3891831
oh my GOD

>>3891613
>dat kim

I love dresden codak

>>3891853
Too bad Dresden Codak only updates yearly. He draws more for his blog than his actual webcomic.

>>3891818

From a bacterium's perspective tree's and blades of grass are actually monstrous factories that spew forth toxic gas. A lawn isn't peaceful nature, it's dystopian hyper-urbanized industrial wasteland!

>>3891869

Yeah, seriously.

>>3891869
I hear that. He needs to cut that shit out and just write for the webcomic. I'd visit his site more than once every 4 months if he updated it more than once every 4 months. He might actually make ad money then.

>>3891871
I can't wait for humanity to catch up!

>>3891876
I made that png! I lost all my images awhile back. You wouldn't happen to have any more Kim reaction faces would you?

>>3891886

>>3891902

>>3891908

the only picture of Kimiko that matters

>>3891913
>>3891908
>>3891902
You've made me the happiest tripfag in the world. :D

>>3891922

>thisisforyoucolonel.png

>>3891844

Show me some numbers, brah. Actually, tbh it makes sense for mars because of it's proximity to Jupiter; hence it's eccentricity. Regardless, venus has an orbital eccentricity that is about the same as jupiter and saturn which don't perturb very easily. Earth's eccentricity is about the same as Neptune's; the most outward planet in the solar system. One of these is not like the other, probably because there is a moon orbiting it.

>>3891528
>implying electricity and large bodies of a liquid with enough atmosphere to contain the above on the surface of the planet is anywhere near unique.

>>3891940
>recent studies suggest that occasionally -- at intervals of a few tens of millions of years -- Mars' obliquity may swing from 0 degrees all the way up to 60 degrees.
www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-water-science-00d.html

Got it off wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_on_Mars

>>3891515

life =/= intellegence

>>3891955
Earth is a little more unique than that. It is unique in the way shit happened here. There is no universal law that requires Earth to evolve the way it did. A lot of it was just pure probability.

>>3891528
>every other species got unlucky because humans like to destroy them.
We are the only thing that can save those other lazy fuck biological lineages from inevitable eradication due to the expansion of the Sun.

>>3891987
That would make sense if humans actually decided to take up their role as stewards or protectors of the planet. Instead we let capitalism become self-aware back at the beginning of the 20th century and it, like all other life, is fighting for self preservation at the expensive of all other life on this planet.

>>3891975
all amino acids necessary for life and more are created with water with potassium, iron, calcium, and a few metals having a current being run through it occasionally (lightning).

life is not fucking unique.

>>3892080
Evidence seems to point to the contrary.

>>3892086
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment

Fuck off kiddie.