Reflections (and questions) on Life in the Universe

[KerikBalm]

What I meant was that you can find life here on Earth in the most hostile places, even places we thought life could definately not exist some years ago. So thats what I originally meant with "steps into existence". Nothing else. There is basically no single place on Earth where some sort life does not exist.

Sooooo, we are to believe that your statements about "live arises" and "steps into existence", which were in reply to a comment about only having evidence for life starting once... were not actually referring to life starting, but rather life adapting once its already started.

Also, please provide an example of life in places we "thought life could definately not exist some years ago." I think this statement is misrepresenting the facts.

So my conclusion is that if life is so persistent, resistent and versatile chances are quite high that this happened on other planets and / or moons aswell.

Life may be resiliant, but if its not there to begin with... you seem to be missing the entire point... back to page 2

"Conditions that life can adapt to and conditions that life can arise in can't just arbitrarily decided to be the same."

I honestly have no idea what both your (and Krytens) problem is, making you go crazy and being insultive like 3-4 pages.

From your perspective I am being crazy? Perhaps we should take a vote?

Please elaborate how I have been insulting these last 3-4 pages. Quote specific examples please.

you have no right in the world to get down on me and proof me wrong, even if you are 100% sure that I'm wrong - unless I ask you to. If you force yourself and your "knowledge of truth" upon someone else without being asked to, then this is nothing better than what the Church did in medieval times. And no, I don't mean that you are not allowed for "constructive discussion" - You see how easy it is to get something wrong?

So... we have no right to offer our opinion on your opinion?

Yet you are right now offering your opinion of my opinion? Shall I claim you have no right to do this?

Oh, you claim we can have a constructive discussion? We tried that back on page 2, and you got offended.

Trying to have a rational discussion about a point of view is the same as burning people at the stake for not holding the same view?

However, if the sphere was the size of an planet, had far more variation and you waited millions of years your chances are significantly higher.

And yet, without a thermal and chemical gradient, they'd still be pretty close to zero.

We've had a very hard time replicating the conditions needed to sythnesize all the RNA bases and amino acids needed... its seems it can't be done under the same set of circumstances. You need 1 set of conditions in one place, another set of conditions in a different place, different forms of eneryg sources, a medium that allows products from the two sets of conditions to diffuse and mix... That glass ball won't have a tidal pool where things can dry out and be altered by UV, and then added back to the mixture... etc

This is the sort of thing that I'm talking about when I say what you need for life to start isn't the same as what you need for life to continue existing.

Rolls back to my original point, life on earth started early, this leaves two options either life is created easy or we was lucky, if the average time for life to start is 10 billion years or longer life would still be pretty common, this would put Earth as a lucky 1% who got life early. occam's razor cuts down this path pretty easy.

Occam's razor doesn't help this at all. Both conditions require 1 additional supposition:

1) Life happens fast

or

2) We are lucky.

Case (1) has a whole host of other subsequent things we have to suppose, its far from simple to explain a fast origin to life, particularly when you change conditions from Earthlike to... Titan or Europa.

Life starting fast here doesn't mean it would on Europa.

Case (2): what are the odds that we got lucky? 100%

The ability to ask the question is predicated on getting lucky in the first place.

Just as Probability of A is not the same as Probability of A given B.... the chances that a world got lucky, are not the same as the chances of our world getting lucky, given that we are asking the question.

Edited September 20, 2014 by KerikBalm

[GoSlash27]

From a cosmological/ chemical standpoint, life cannot exist just anywhere. You need multiple stellar life cycles in order to produce elements suitable for life, yet not so much activity that the radiation breaks chemical bonds.

Your galactic "neighborhood" can't be too old or too new. This limits the... I'll call it "habitable" region of a given galaxy to a certain band.

Within our arm of our galaxy, the only places likely to support life would be very close to us on a cosmic scale. I think it's just a matter of time until we find it.

Best,

-Slashy

[magnemoe]

And yet, without a thermal and chemical gradient, they'd still be pretty close to zero.

We've had a very hard time replicating the conditions needed to sythnesize all the RNA bases and amino acids needed... its seems it can't be done under the same set of circumstances. You need 1 set of conditions in one place, another set of conditions in a different place, different forms of eneryg sources, a medium that allows products from the two sets of conditions to diffuse and mix... That glass ball won't have a tidal pool where things can dry out and be altered by UV, and then added back to the mixture... etc

This is the sort of thing that I'm talking about when I say what you need for life to start isn't the same as what you need for life to continue existing.

Occam's razor doesn't help this at all. Both conditions require 1 additional supposition:

1) Life happens fast

or

2) We are lucky.

Case (1) has a whole host of other subsequent things we have to suppose, its far from simple to explain a fast origin to life, particularly when you change conditions from Earthlike to... Titan or Europa.

Life starting fast here doesn't mean it would on Europa.

Case (2): what are the odds that we got lucky? 100%

The ability to ask the question is predicated on getting lucky in the first place.

Just as Probability of A is not the same as Probability of A given B.... the chances that a world got lucky, are not the same as the chances of our world getting lucky, given that we are asking the question.

Yes, good points about the starting conditions, they was not unique for earthlike planets, however it might stop life from appearing on Europa and similar places as they miss some starting conditions.

And yes had life not started we would not have this discussion, however the speed argument still holds true. It would be pretty weird if we got life almost at once it was possible wile its very rare, it has to pass some time from life begun until we got organisms we are capable of finding traces of to.

[Vanamonde]

Second warning: leave the personal comments out of it. Discuss each other's ideas and not each other's personalities.