Dissolving the fermi paradoxon

[Wjolcz]

I'll just leave these here for anyone interested:

Also, sorry for posting like crazy. It's just one of these topics I really enjoy discussing and sharing what I know.

[cubinator]

7 hours ago, Xd the great said:

What if most life forms are 4D?

Undetectable by us?

That's not in this universe then.

13 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

This is why I hope Mars is dead (with the recent findings it's probably not). If it is then it's free real estate and we can move in without hurting anybody.

Martian life today is probably similar to sub-Antarctic microbes, I think we are unlikely to mess it up until we decide to heat up the planet again.

[kerbiloid]

50 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

I always thought these missions were more of a joke.

No-no, those missions were absolutely serious.
Setting 3 specimens of 3 different animal species you established an ecological balance on the planet.
Herbivorous ones were regulating the plants, carnivorouses were regulating the herbivorouses. 
Regulated plants were keeping temperature constant (exactly like in Daisyworld)

Planets terraforming was my favorite part of Spore.
(Of course I cheated money for this)

50 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

Seeding intelligent life all around the galaxy is kind of dangerous for you. Eventually these seeded civilizations would rise to your level and there's a very high chance they would want to take your place.

Iirc, a typical tribe of hunters-gatherers (50-100 persons) in a comfy climate requires ~1000 km² of place to hunt and gather.
Afaik, first human cities-states were ~10000 persons large, i.e. about 100 such tribes should live at the same place and have enough food (which is not trivial with lo-tech).

So, seeding even a hundred thousand humans around an Earth-like planet in tribes, you have millenia until they can something like steam.
Even if they are a team of academicians and commandos, they will be living in conditions not so easy to change in one generation.

Meanwhile, they can widely interact with local nature and either regulate it, or just beautify.
From time to time you can make for them Santorinis and Tobas to keep them at the desired tech level.

50 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

This is why I hope Mars is dead (with the recent findings it's probably not). If it is then it's free real estate and we can move in without hurting anybody.

I hope there is no signs "Stop! Private property!" there.

Btw if humans find an alien crash site, can they legally take and research the flying saucer?
As if we recognize its former owners as sapient beings, we should presume they have some laws and probably they protect this property.
Of course, humans have some laws about abandoned ships, but unlikely the alien civ accepts them.
So, it's like stealing a crashed car of a foreign citizen because we thought he doesn't need it.
And as we surely understand that this is somebody's property, but still did that, we broke their laws intentionally.

7 hours ago, Xd the great said:

What if most life forms are 4D?

Undetectable by us?

When you can't find a thing which you have put somewhere in your room last evening.

A 4D invader has stolen it.

Edited August 8, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Cheif Operations Director]

I strongly believe no other life exist beyond earth

[Green Baron]

For now and until proven otherwise it looks like and we must assume that.

As a professional agnostic, and after weighing all that i have heard of, read and talked about, i can easily imagine (trying to avoid "believe" ;-)) that self replicating chemistry and microbes are no big deal, an ongoing evolution over hundreds of millions of years, or even billions, that might lead to multicellular life or even biocenoses, is pretty improbable and may well, until now, not have happened elsewhere.

[Shpaget]

How do you go from

15 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

self replicating chemistry and microbes are no big deal

to

Quote

an ongoing evolution over hundreds of millions of years, or even billions, that might lead to multicellular life or even biocenoses, is pretty improbable and may well, until now, not have happened elsewhere.

From everything evolution has taught me, once you have microbes, multicellular life is not a far away, give the time.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Shpaget

[Green Baron]

That's the point imo, time & conditions is the limiting factor. Microbes come & go, from first oceans 300my after solidification of the crust (probably that early) until today. But >3 billion years +/- 15°C, low radiation, protected from impacts, supernovae and things, aka peace & quiet, that's a word, even on astronomical scales.

We're early ;-)

-----------

Ok, but i have been here too often. I better quit again. In the end, idk better than anyone else.

[Shpaget]

I would not assume that earth was a nice little protected place. After all, formation of first life falls pretty much in the early part of the Late Heavy Bombardment period*. We apparently survived that.

Furthermore, life forming "only" half a billion years after planetary formation would suggest that chaotic conditions are not a problem.

*I'm aware that LHB is not confirmed, but rather hypothesized.

[tater]

I think the paper is on the right track. The point is not that we are alone, the point of the paper is that being alone, or effectively alone, is not so unlikely that the paradox exists. The Fermi Paradox requires a sufficiently large number of civilizations to exist for there to be any paradox in not observing them.

So you either posit large #s of civs, and some rationale for not seeing them, or you acknowledge there is a decent chance that the number per galaxy might be low. Low is not zero, BTW, and many of the paradox explanatory rationales in fact work much better with smaller numbers of civilizations.

[Cheif Operations Director]

I highly doubt any life exist beyond earth (unless it came from earth).

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

I would not assume that earth was a nice little protected place. After all, formation of first life falls pretty much in the early part of the Late Heavy Bombardment period*. We apparently survived that.

Not when life first came about, but Earth has been a very ideal place for large, complex multicellular life to develop for 3 billion years after that, barring a few hiccups. We may have been very lucky compared to other planets regarding stability.

[HebaruSan]

3 hours ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

I strongly believe no other life exist beyond earth

34 minutes ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

I highly doubt any life exist beyond earth (unless it came from earth).

Sounds like your position is gradually softening?

[Cheif Operations Director]

1 minute ago, HebaruSan said:

Sounds like your position is gradually softening?

Na lol

I think that earth contains the only intelligent life forms in the universe. The "their is no evidence" arguement is unrealistic   Though because we do not know how big the universe is. That being said I already have a problem with the base chemicals in life evolving from chemicals to humans. 

It just does not seem realistic 

[Wjolcz]

1 hour ago, cubinator said:

Not when life first came about, but Earth has been a very ideal place for large, complex multicellular life to develop for 3 billion years after that, barring a few hiccups. We may have been very lucky compared to other planets regarding stability.

Well, while I agree that Earth is not the worst place in the universe for life to arise there's also a reason to think that it isn't the best either. There are stars more stable and there probably are worlds that have better odds of life arising and surviving on them.

Now, I feel like in order to get something more complex than bacteria and archaea the planet needs to get whacked (just not hard enough to be destroyed) by some major disaster from time to time. It's not uncommon in nature that sudden environmental changes drive biological changes (pretty much what happened to our ancestors in Africa). So perhaps unstable-ish worlds with stars that aren't always that friendly are best for intelligent life to eventually arise.

I think I've mentioned this already but anyone who's ran an evolution simulation in Cell Lab will understand that population bottlenecks and constant changes to environment force the organisms to mutate and adapt until they become that hard to kill and quickly spreading Alien parasite that can hijack other organisms in order to spread or live on its own just fine.

 

[Xd the great]

55 minutes ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Na lol

I think that earth contains the only intelligent life forms in the universe. The "their is no evidence" arguement is unrealistic   Though because we do not know how big the universe is. That being said I already have a problem with the base chemicals in life evolving from chemicals to humans. 

It just does not seem realistic 

The early days of earth is methane plus ammonia plus water plus hydrogen plus lightning. Someone did a experiment to simulate this life, and got some glucose and amino acids.

Wouldnt be surprised if the first microbes formed this way, or is carried to earth by asteroids.

And Darwin, evolution, radiation, extinction... HUMANS!

[tater]

1 hour ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Na lol

I think that earth contains the only intelligent life forms in the universe. The "their is no evidence" arguement is unrealistic   Though because we do not know how big the universe is. That being said I already have a problem with the base chemicals in life evolving from chemicals to humans. 

It just does not seem realistic 

I'm utterly open to whatever. My gut says it's unlikely we're alone in the universe, even if intelligent life is exceedingly rare, and even if we'll never find any (if it's in another galaxy, or otherwise outside our personally observable universe (places we can actually get to)).

This paper puts the lower bound on my opinion at 47%. Different incertainties might give different values, but it's likely we are at least functionally alone, if not actually alone. More data will constrain this more.

 

[cubinator]

I wonder what the likelihood is of a civilization in Andromeda. If we are alone in our galaxy, we still may encounter them during or after the galactic merger in 4-5 billion years. That would only be likely if the likelihood of advanced life is 1 per galaxy.

Edited August 9, 2018 by cubinator

[tater]

A "normal" Fermi Paradox discussion must also include time windows.

You could have hundreds or thousands of civilizations in a given galaxy that are capable of communication, but they could be separated in time. They could hit a filtering moment and poof.

Functionally, we're still alone.

I think the best case for intelligent life makes it still incredibly rare to last.

[cubinator]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

A "normal" Fermi Paradox discussion must also include time windows.

You could have hundreds or thousands of civilizations in a given galaxy that are capable of communication, but they could be separated in time. They could hit a filtering moment and poof.

Functionally, we're still alone.

I think the best case for intelligent life makes it still incredibly rare to last.

That's quite true. Probably only a Type 3 civ would be able to last more than a few billion years, and that is a very difficult level to achieve.

[Cheif Operations Director]

7 hours ago, Xd the great said:

The early days of earth is methane plus ammonia plus water plus hydrogen plus lightning. Someone did a experiment to simulate this life, and got some glucose and amino acids.

Wouldnt be surprised if the first microbes formed this way, or is carried to earth by asteroids.

And Darwin, evolution, radiation, extinction... HUMANS!

Yes I'm aware that being said having the building blocks of life and life are different. For example if I die right not my body still contains the building blocks of life, but I'm not alive. Also going from amino acids to humans is obsured. I mean this is it

Chemicals+Time=Humans

It makes no sense.

This is why I do not think their is intelligent life or anything except a stray strand of bacteria that floated away from earth. 

[Xd the great]

1 minute ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Yes I'm aware that being said having the building blocks of life and life are different. For example if I die right not my body still contains the building blocks of life, but I'm not alive. Also going from amino acids to humans is obsured. I mean this is it

Chemicals+Time=Humans

It makes no sense.

It took 3.8 billion years. Incredible. Going from amino acids to the first life was hard, going from unicellular to multicellular was hard, going from multicellular to intellegent was hard.

[Cheif Operations Director]

8 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

It took 3.8 billion years. Incredible. Going from amino acids to the first life was hard, going from unicellular to multicellular was hard, going from multicellular to intellegent was hard.

Again like I said if a cell dies the "building blocks of life" are their just not life. You whipping up amino acids in a lab just shows the chemical equation works. We could be in a world of building blocks of life with no life. As you said

Chemicals+Time=Humans. The biggest problem with that evolutionary model is the transitions from "chemicals" to life and from small microbes with just DNA and a membrane to multi cellular organisms. 

Why would a microbe need to evolve

If you are a one cell organism and your job is "eat" and cell division why change

[Xd the great]

6 minutes ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Again like I said if a cell dies the "building blocks of life" are their just not life. You whipping up amino acids in a lab just shows the chemical equation works. We could be in a world of building blocks of life with no life. As you said

Chemicals+Time=Humans. The biggest problem with that evolutionary model is the transitions from "chemicals" to life and from small microbes with just DNA and a membrane to multi cellular organisms. 

Why would a microbe need to evolve

If you are a one cell organism and your job is "eat" and cell division why change

Because environment changes and you cannot find enough food.

[Cheif Operations Director]

2 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

Because environment changes and you cannot find enough food.

Are microbe/bateria fossils similar the ones today? If so that would suggest that they did not need to evolve. Also if I remember correctly a microbe requires chemicals rather than food/other organisms to sustain itself.

[Green Baron]

11 hours ago, Shpaget said:

... After all, formation of first life falls pretty much in the early part of the Late Heavy Bombardment period*. ...

 

It is probably much older, almost seeming a spontaneous natural reaction (don't cite me ;-)). Latest work hints to 4.2by (even 4.3 is in discussion), but still needs more confirmation. It might have been wiped out by impacts/environmental changes and formed over and again at vents (many more of them over the thin crust at that time), shallow warm seas, until it got more stable after 3.6by. That is why i think no problem for microbes, and it is the chance to look in our solar system (*).

Long term stability, constant slow change to allow for adaptation, no or few abrupt steps with enough time in between to recover, constant exchange of nutrients, self sustaining and stabilizing circuits, that's what it needs. I'd look for stars that formed in the same cluster as our sun, they are from the same stuff and they may have shared the same fate over much of their time. But its just an opinion.

(*) Edit: though i have grave doubts that they find something clear anywhere else right here.

Edited August 9, 2018 by Green Baron