/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.1603702]

How common does /sci/ think life is in the Universe? I believe the more common life is in the universe the more hostile intelligent life would be toward us because if life isn't common, then wouldn't intelligent Aliens think twice before destroying us?

[Anonymous No.1603719]

bump

[Anonymous No.1603718]

Each day I come closer to the conclusion that life might really be a rare occurrence in our universe.

[Anonymous No.1603731]

>>1603718

I believe life is very common, but not intelligent life. There might be 10 other civilizations in our galaxy maybe? and most of them wouldn't be extremely advanced.

[Anonymous No.1603736]

They definitely don't look like anything in OP's picture.

[Anonymous No.1603744]

I believe they are common, but obviously not common enough that we have to wake up in the universe alone.

[Anonymous No.1603746]

>>1603736

Why not? Evolution doesn't give a shit about what life looks like, only that they can have sex.

[Anonymous No.1603742]

>>1603736
It's art, thus utterly meaningless and irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.1603748]

I believe we are the only intelligent species in our galaxy.

[Anonymous No.1603749]

There is no such thing as aliens, humans are the only inteligent specie in the whole universe, cuz there is no proof aliens exist!

[Anonymous No.1603756]

>>1603749

[Anonymous No.1603757]

>>1603746
>Why not?
That would entirely depend on what evolutionary use each characteristic has.

[Anonymous No.1603765]

>>1603742

this is what /sci/fags actually think

[Anonymous No.1603762]

>>1603731

yeah, the possibility of 100 billion other planets and only ten of them came to fruition...

that surely is the most plausible answer.

[Anonymous No.1603760]

>>1603731

Intelligent life might be inevitable given the prerequisites for life to exist in the first place. Or maybe not. Or maybe we're all alone. Or maybe we're so fucking dumb that the many many many advanced civilizations out there that know we're are here just laugh and go on their way when they see us.

Or maybe all of your guessing is just worthless conjecture.

[Anonymous No.1603778]

>>1603746

It actually does care about appearance, but only in a totally disinterested sense.

So I guess this reply is totally erroneous.

[Anonymous No.1603779]

>>1603765
cuz its true.

[Anonymous No.1603788]

>Aliens, obviously far more intelligent and advanced than us, visit Earth
>WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? FUCK THIS SHIT, WE ARE OUTTA HERE!!
the end

[Anonymous No.1603798]

>>1603762

> yeah, the possibility of 100 billion other planets and only ten of them came to fruition...

You misunderstood him. He was saying that there may only be 10 other intelligent species in the galaxy. It is not unreasonable to think that evolving intelligent, sentient species is a pretty rare occurrence overall. Just look at how long it took on earth.

[Anonymous No.1603813]

>>1603798

It took 500 million years for us, if only other intelligent evolved on Earth then they either died out or left.

[Anonymous No.1603814]

>>1603746
that..is not quite how evolution selects for traits, lol.

[Anonymous No.1603816]

there is no proof of aliens, the same way you can also say that the flying spaghetti monster is real.
HURUDURU the universe is so vast that there MUST be a spaghetti monster somewhere there, herpaderpa

[Anonymous No.1603826]

>>1603817
cont'd
>Nine thousand years... was not enough. Artifacts from beyond the Singularity are so vast that doubters can easily deny them. And the pattern of progress followed by vanishment call be twisted to any explanation.

>In the end, there is only one way to know for a fact what the Singularity is. You have to be there when it happens.... It may take a couple of centuries, but if we can restart civilization we will make our own Singularity.

>And this time, I won't miss graduation night.

[Colonel Coffee Mug !phJ7yIcs.Q No.1603823]

In my humble opinion, life in the universe, even sentient life, is incredibly common.

Buuut... It gets wiped out before it can do shit.

Think of it: Remeber the asteroid Apophis that's going to fly-by Earth? And a recently discovered one that will fly-by by 2108?

Well, two possibly deadly asteroids in 100 years, and life has been here for 3,8 billion years. I'd say we've been very lucky.

Since the Ice Age ended, and humanity became civilized, we have pretty much been playing Russian Roulette with the universe, and some day we'll get the bullet, unless we colonize space.

And it's not just asteroids: You have even more comets, too. And, even worse: Wandering moons.

Then, gamma-ray bursts, coronal mass ejections, super viruses, grey goo, sudden world-wide climate change.

So, yeah. Life is everywhere, but it kinda dies too fast for it to broadcast into space. And if someone hears, they'll be dead soon.

Like in that short story that gets posted around a bit here.

[Anonymous No.1603817]

MAndatory Vinge-dump:
>Intelligent life is a rare development.

>I spent nine thousand years on this, spread across fifty million years of realtime. I averaged less than a twentieth light speed. But that was fast enough. I had time to visit the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Fornax Cluster, besides our own galaxy. I had time to stop at tens of thousands of places, at astrophysical freaks and normal stars. I saw some strange things, mostly near deep gravity wells. Maybe it was engineering, but I couldn't prove it, even to myself.

>I found that most slow-spinning stars have planets. About ten percent of these have an Earth-type planet. And almost all such planets have life.

>If you love the purity of life without intelligence, you love one of the most common things in the universe....
>In all my nine thousand years, I found two intelligent races. Both times I was too late. The first was in Fornax. I missed them by several billion years; even their asteroid settlements were ground to dust. There were no bobbles, and it was impossible to tell if their ending had been abrupt.

>The other was a nearer thing, both in space and time: a G2 star about a third of the way around the Galaxy from here. The world was beautiful, larger than Earth, its atmosphere so dense that many plants were airborne. The race was centaur-like; I learned that much. I missed them by a couple of hundred megayears. Their databases had evaporated, but their space settlements were almost undamaged.

>They had vanished just as abruptly as humankind did from Earth. One century they were there, the next-nothing.

[Anonymous No.1603829]

>>1603798

look how long it took?

are you kidding?

a fraction of a second in universal time... and with 100 billion seed beds you think only ten might have a chance?

kind of far fetched, don't you tink?

[Anonymous No.1603878]

>>1603817

Source?

[Anonymous No.1603888]

>>1603878
Marooned in Realtime or Across Realtime(collection of two books) by Vernor Vinge

Oh oops:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ymkm3zzgtmy

[Anonymous No.1603910]

>>1603888

Thank you.

[Anonymous No.1603912]

>>1603746
>>1603702

I really like these alien designs. Are there more? Artist name? Website?

[Colonel Coffee Mug !phJ7yIcs.Q No.1603921]

>>1603912

Alex Redi I think.

deviantART is something like "Abiogenecist"

[Colonel Coffee Mug !phJ7yIcs.Q No.1603929]

>>1603921

no, Alex Ries.

[Anonymous No.1603943]

>>1603929

thanks bro

[Colonel Coffee Mug !phJ7yIcs.Q No.1603939]

>>1603929

This is his dA:

http://abiogenisis.deviantart.com/gallery/

[Anonymous No.1603988]

>>1603912
his name is on the goddamn paintings or whatever the fuck they are

[Anonymous No.1603994]

If there is life, I wouldn't want to chance meeting them. They would be far too... alien. They could have a completely different perception of time than us. I couldn't really find the use in trying to talk to something that takes a year in our time to "say" a word. I believe life is common, just complex life capable of being self-aware to be not nearly as common. I'm certain it exists, though.

[Anonymous No.1603999]

Most people agree that life will probably be fairly common. Personally, I don't think a prediction of .1 to .3 planets harboring life per star system would be unreasonable.

I think the discussion becomes a lot more interesting when you consider intelligence. Although it's clear that multicellular life almost always develops a nervous system out of evolutionary survival imperative, actually developing higher intelligence is rare. If all of the evolutionary progression up to the first light-sensitive organism was 1mm, reaching high intelligence is a few km ahead. And then you have to consider the regular extinction events, capable of reducing any planetary population back to single-celled organisms, must be survived by the same lineage multiple times in order to reach the intelligence landmark. But the intelligent species hasn't really survived until it makes it off of it's home planet, which, of course, we haven't even accomplished yet. It seems more likely to me that the number of intelligent civilizations that make it in to outer space, thus guaranteeing survival, will be a small fraction of the number of intelligent species that die out on their home planet and are never known by any interstellar community, if one exists or ever will exist.

While it may be reasonable to conclude that life will be so common that intelligence must evolve many thousands or even hundreds of thousands of times in our galaxy alone, an intelligence that guarantees their survival by settling intergalactic space will be exceedingly rare.

[Anonymous No.1604020]

>>1603746
Evolution can take so many different routs, the artist obviously is basing it off of an animal from earth. Life on other planes would probably look drastically different from life on earth.

[macrophage No.1604032]

>>multicellular always nervous system

Hey, I hear there's these things called plants and that they TOTALLY don't have nervous systems.

The fact that clear alternatives to motility and nervous systems exist on our planet would indicate that intelligence(or even motility!) isn't necessarily going to be that common.

[Anonymous No.1604094]

Define common, if it is just a billion to one chance for every star system to harbour conditions needed for life, it would still probably be quite a number of star systems in our galaxy that developed some form of life, still we simply don't have enough information to make a real accurate guess how common it would be. How many from that form intelligent life we are just as clueless about.

However the fact that we haven't encountered intelligent alien life probably points towards that interstellar travel isn't easy or that intelligent life just isn't all that common. That we haven't received or overheard any interstellar communications is to be predicted with all the background noise and the point that it is probably never aimed at us and that we haven't been able to receive them for long enough.

Also if they can achieve interstellar travel to get here, the last likely thing they'll need is resources, so that won't be a reason to destroy us or whatever. The other reasons for it will probably already been sorted out or else they would have destroyed themselves. But who can really say how they would react, they're aliens.

[Anonymous No.1604102]

>>1603994
An intelligent species capable of technology will also be capable of understanding perception of time.

[Anonymous No.1604171]

>>1603999

If I understood you correctly you are saying that we can conclude from the fact that there aren't many species on earth that display a higher form of intelligence that intelligence must be rare in the universe.

I think this is an unfair conclusion. Something will only develop if there is an ecological niche. During the time when the dinosaurs were around mammals were very small and didn't evolve into big predators because this ecological niche was already filled by the dinosaurs. Once they were extinct the mammals quickly filled the space that was left empty by them.

I think it is fair to say that the same can be true for intelligence. Homo Sapiens just happened to be the most successful and quickly destroyed everybody who tried to rival them (Neanderthals for example). Yet if Homo Sapiens would get destroyed I think it is fair to say that any Homo genus has the ability to take their place. So there are several species on earth alone that have great potential. If on every thousandth planet in the goldilock zone life will develop then it is fair to say that sooner or later on many of these planets one species will develop an intelligence as hours (or if the rivals don't get extinct and the intelligence arms race continues then maybe even beings who's mental capabilities put us to shame).

[deleted No.1604189]

well just my personal guess, but if life appears 1/1000 times then intelligent life is probably 1/10000000000 of each of those.

It's not just the long time and the chance of catastrophic extinction, but the richness of the planet itself.

We're decended from chimps who lived in a jungle. Then our ancestors moved to a savanna. Both of those environments provide fairly good access to food and water. That's important to the development of intelligence because a large brain is energeticly expensive. Our brains consume about 1/4 pf all food we take in. We wouldn't have kept the large brain if it were too expensive. In an environment like a desert, where food and water aren't as plentiful as a jungle or a savanna, large brains are too hard to feed while keeping the rest of you healthy enough to hunt and find water. Besides that, most of the really smart animals are hunters, which implies that you need a robust enough food chain to have grazing animals and animals that hunt them.

So intelligence -- maybe a few species per galaxy, but not all that common.

[Anonymous No.1604233]

>>1604189

True. But why do we always think that the earth is special? Maybe on other planets there is much more organic material and energy sources. Maybe on our planet many organs never had a chance to develop because they are too costly Just like trees have a certain hight they can afford to grow to outgrow their competitors but can't afford to go on indefinitely. Yet on other planets where there are much more resources the natural economy is different and the optimum compromise of your energy spending is moved upwards. Maybe on such a planet big brains are so "cheap" that nearly every living organism has them.

[Anonymous No.1604241]

Is it possible for life to evolve in space not bound to a planet? I think thats an interesting question.

[Anonymous No.1604246]

define life

[Anonymous No.1604265]

>>1604241

In principle: yes

is it likely enough that it could ever have happened: nobody knows

[Anonymous No.1604282]

>>1604246

No.

I just want to see space whales. Or creatures so large they have their own moons. With life. Imagine that, a star creatures that radiates light and heat. With a planet orbiting it with life on it. Imagine how religious that life would be.

[Anonymous No.1604285]

Maybe. How knows?

Let's find out. My mega awesome space ship is ready. It's time for some serious space adventuring!

[Anonymous No.1604290]

>>1604285

I call first officer!

[Anonymous No.1604296]

>>1604285

>How knows?

How indeed...

[Anonymous No.1604329]

>>1604233
If there are more resources the sustainable population will change as to reach equilibrium, thus organs need to justify their exsistance somehow because competition never goes away. So a brain still has to compete on what set of organs are more useful no mater what the environment. I think we tend to use earth as starting point because it is the only data point we have. I don't think that necessarily makes earth special.

[Anonymous No.1604358]

>>1604329

Yes but a bigger population means more to eat in total. So a predator can afford bigger jaws (for example) to catch more of the available animals he eats. Yet if there aren't many to begin with evolution will never allow for bigger jaws.

I think the same could be said for brains why not? Big brains are costly but enable you to outwit the animals with smaller brains. If there are more of them then a big brain pays off.

[Boomer !!bcdVCSUmpgT No.1604373]

>>1604290
Cool, Chief Engineer is still open! Tagged!

[Anonymous No.1604384]

>>1604373

I am fine with being the the cook. I will leave the hard work and all the responsibilities to you.

[Anonymous No.1604393]

>>1603823

theres the stephen baxter proposition that maybe theres a big as star that releases pulses of gamma radiation in big bursts that sterilizes the galaxy before life can leave evidence of itself for other civs

[Anonymous No.1604410]

>>1604393

That.

What was the name of that short story where the guy flies around space and finds everyone dead? The one CCM mentioned?

[Anonymous No.1604413]

>>1603748
I agree. I think a planet like earth is rare itself, so life is rarer, and intelligence rarer still.

>>1604241
I think the most likely life to grow in space is that which we make ourselves. Things that started as robotic space factories and asteroid harvesters.

Gregory Benford's timescape novels are how I think of the dominant spacefaring life: evolved mechanicals originally created by organic planet-bound cultures.

[Anonymous No.1604427]

I think life is common, complex life far less common, and sentient life exceptionally rare.

[Anonymous No.1604446]

Intelligent life, if we can take earth as an example must be pretty rare. We got the technology to meaningfully interact (as in we can send and receive matter and energy) with things out side of our atmosphere only some 100 years ago or so. Before that we could very well pass of as very funny looking monkeys, which some humans could have actually thought when the americas were discovered, some even questioned whether native americans even had souls (which is a point to illustrate how dynamic is the definition of concepts such as "like us" and "intelligence"). Of course I use intelligence in two ways: one is finding some other creature that can send energy and matter our side of their planets atmosphere, but also just having a brain because lets face it, at least in mammals it is obvious that differences in intelligence are in degree not kind. So as far as detectable potentially spacefaring and communicating intelligent life concerns, humans have only just begun to be "intelligent" and that took around 4billion years and we have had local crashes which seem to indicate that life capable of being "intelligent" is very delicate (Easter island, the fall of rome, numerous cases of stagnation). So, "intelligent" life as far as we can detect takes a long time. It may be possible however that a lot of intelligent creatures are right now as we speak beginning to discover almost simultaneously all these things. We might be in a time where "intelligence" might be ripe.

TL;DR: Space capable creatures, which are the only kind detectable at long ranges, take a long time to happen. We only stepped on the moon within the last 100 years.

[Anonymous No.1604449]

>>1603748

What about the rest of the homo genus.

Also dolphins and a few birds.

We aren't even the only intelligent species on earth.

[Anonymous No.1604453]

There are many possibilities, one is that they are in need of resources and wouldnt mind taking ours. Another is that they are incapable of spacetravel.

[Anonymous No.1604493]

>>1604453

What about the possibility that they are in principle capable of space travel because they are intelligent enough but simply don't have any urge for exploring? We always seem to think that if there are other complex minds in the universe that they too want to find out if there are others and take efforts to find out - yet maybe this curiosity is the thing that is rare and not intelligence.

[Anonymous No.1604831]

There aren't any aliens because we already kicked all of their asses.

You see, while colonizing the galaxy we encountered hostile aliens and fought them back at heavy mortal costs. After our victory we found a naturally occurring stable wormhole and it took us to a billion or so years after the development of stars and heavy element-bearing planets. To ensure that no alien threat would risk the extinction of humanity, The future us colonized the universe in the past with the Prime Directive of never interfering with life on earth until the historically recorded 'first contact' and wiping out any alien life in the process.

In a few years we'll find out that humanity has already colonized the galaxy, and life as we know it... will largely stay the same.

[Anonymous No.1604912]

>>1604449
We use tools... to make other fuckin' tools. Feels good, man.
>>1604831
cannot be un-read. Or disproven.

[Anonymous No.1604935]

>>1603888
didn't even notice
Vingetriples!

[Anonymous No.1604997]

>>1603702

there is an equation..

[Anonymous No.1605003]

>>1604997
the drake equation is shit

[Anonymous No.1605018]

Looks like I missed the real fuckin' discussion, dammit.

[Anonymous No.1605033]

I think that life is as common as it is in our galaxy, pretty rare, but at the same time, if the odds are still only one in a million, that's still enough for there likely to be billions of other planets with sustained life. I'm pretty sure there is.

[Anonymous No.1605041]

i beleif life is common but just orgnicly not intelegent life well thats just my opineon got 2 go

[Anonymous No.1605073]

>>1603816
The idea is not the same between, the existance of god, in which there is no evidence that type of thing ever existed or even can exist. However the idea here is if life, which came into existance on two different planets ON THE SAME SOLAR SYSTEM, and sapient life which happened on one planet can happen on other parts of the universe. That subject is fair for speculation.

[Anonymous No.1605088]

I think humanity has to consider the possibility that FTL is not possible. There may very well be countless civilizations out there, some capable of amazing feats of technological progress, but perhaps this speed limit can never be breached.

To return to the idea of different perceptions of time. I find it interesting that, with that concept, there could be an intelligent organism among us right now that simply travels and perceives much faster than we can measure. Imagine that for ourselves, though, that we find an intelligent species and find them to act like plants when the reality is that we are percieving and moving through time much more quickly than they can comprehend.

These concepts are what makes me love my Biology Major.

[Anonymous No.1605095]

>>1605088
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1l1Yyw7dMQ
beings with faster time
Tolkien's Ents
beings with slower time.

[Anonymous No.1605102]

>>1605003
it IS at lease a good approximation

[Anonymous No.1605104]

>>1605095
No, wait, not that one....

[Anonymous No.1605108]

>>1605104
>>1605095
This one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJj4T_arcmk

[Anonymous No.1605115]

The earth has been harboring life for billions of years, across trillions of trillions of species. And only a handfull of species around today are what I would consider intelligent (sentient). That goes without saying that humans are the only ones intelligent enough to attempt to communicate with life on other planets.

That's one survival strategy out of the trillions and trillions and trillions that have adapted to this planet. And you guys are saying intelligence is a common thing?

[Colonel Coffee Mug !phJ7yIcs.Q No.1607476]

bump

[Cunt Mouth Delicious Face !jWwIlynQcU No.1608560]

All intelligent life capable of technological development reaches a singularity upon which it realizes the futility of of existence and destroys its self.

[Anonymous No.1608604]

>>1603823
>grey goo

[Anonymous No.1608611]

how can you believe in aliens if theres no proof? (a fact?)

[Colonel Coffee Mug !phJ7yIcs.Q No.1608614]

>>1608604

I don't think it's a possibility with our current technology, but remember: Clarketech.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Who knows if the aliens didn't Von Neumann their world?

[Anonymous No.1608621]

>my face when humans in the future will be hostile aliens, slave and rape other alien species