Life In This Dangerous Universe

[Guest jamongo]

For many years I have believed that there had to be life in the universe, other then just here on planet Earth. But lately I have begun to doubt it more and more. I read various articles (mostly on the Internet), and I have watched various television science shows.Solar flares, super nova, super flares, gamma-ray bursts, etc.

From this information I see the universe as an extremely dangerous environment for life forms. I now basically think we ('we', being all life forms on Earth.) are probably alone, and are here only by a some quirk of nature, and will probably last just a relatively short period of time. It's a bit sad to think this way. I keep hoping I'll come across something that might sway my new opinion. I wonder if this is how religion got a foothold. Any thoughts or opinions?

[Moontanman]

I will have to disagree with you, life is just a chemical reaction between organic molecules, life is tenacious, the events you mentioned have happened to the Earth and life has persisted, even complex life has clung to existence through horrific events, sometimes being reduced to almost nothing but always coming back. I would be surprised to find that there is not life on other planets, moons and other bodies in our own solar system. The universe is full of organic molecules, they can be detected everywhere, life is out there but until we go there and look you cannot draw a curve from one data point and so looking at our planet does not tell us that life is rare or common just that it is here and it is hard to eradicate once it starts up.

[Guest jamongo]

Yes, of course all valid points. But still, life on this planet seems to exist due to happenstance. An example might be the existence of the moon. It has been put forth, that without it life would not exist of this planet. A wandering asteroid crashed into the earth and tore off parts of it. A huge chunk fell back into the earth creating the molten core. Most of the rest of the debris coalesced into our moon. The earth's rotation, wobble, tides, etc., all depend on the moon. So only by a quirk collision are we here. Our solar system is set off in the suburbs of our galaxy. It is relatively quiet here. It seems to me that other areas are not so quiet. I certainly hope life is discovered elsewhere. I would love to toss these gloomy thoughts in the trash. But for now, I am still doubtful.

[Deepwater6]

I think you must first contemplate The size and number of Galaxies in our universe. I know It's easy to underetimate it, but billions and billions and billions of Galaxies? There could very well be many places even more hospitable for life to grow and evolve than Earth. Also if it can be proven that a multiverse exists that number would become beyond comprehension. Like you I do agree and hope that other life does exists out there and we find it in my lifetime.

[CraigD]

For many years I have believed that there had to be life in the universe, other then just here on planet Earth. But lately I have begun to doubt it more and more. I read various articles (mostly on the Internet), and I have watched various television science shows.Solar flares, super nova, super flares, gamma-ray bursts, etc.

From this information I see the universe as an extremely dangerous environment for life forms. I now basically think we ('we', being all life forms on Earth.) are probably alone, and are here only by a some quirk of nature, and will probably last just a relatively short period of time. It's a bit sad to think this way.

You’re in good company, jamongo. Your shift in opinion is toward what’s generally know as the “rare Earth hypothesis”, which hypothesizes the kind of biological life necessary, to the best of our understanding, to have human-like intelligence – many specialized cells organized into wondrous nervous systems, etc – is so unlikely that it may occur only once in an entire Milky Way-like galaxy, despite there being a huge number (something on the order of 10¹¹) planets hospitable to biological life of some sort (eg: RNA, DNA, microbes).

 

Before Rare Earthers like Ward and Brownlee got serious about the hypothesis, it was more and less casually discussed in such forms as the Fermi paradox (“where are they [intelligent, galaxy-exploring extraterrestrialls]?”).

 

No matter the decade (or century) in which it’s asked, or the approach to answering it, the question remain largely answerable only by indirect statistical approaches and guesses, though I hope that this will change within this century. Finding unambiguous signs of life on other bodies in our solar system, such as on Mars or Europa, would give valuable data points supporting more confident answers, and though it seems unlikely that such searches will occur in the next decade or two other than on Mars, some serious preliminary thinking about Europa missions have been ongoing since at latest the 1990s.

 

I keep hoping I'll come across something that might sway my new opinion. I wonder if this is how religion got a foothold. Any thoughts or opinions?

Lots of them, many uplifting, many grim and disquieting – much like yours and those of many other’s seriously interested in the subject, I imagine.

 

My main optimistic though it that a variant of the anthropic principle suggests that, despite the small probability assigned it by various statistical approaches, we may simply be the first intelligent life in our galactic neighborhood that will expand beyond our planet or origin. After all, some species has to be first.

 

My main pessimistic though is that perhaps the kind of intelligence that results in the ability to expand like this may be so tremendously rare, even if Earth-like biological life is not, that not only is there none other than us in our neighborhood, but there’s none including us here. In fact, to date we’ve only “dabbled” in space travel and other technologies necessary for our such an expansion, and there appear to be many factors that might prevent great continued development of them.

 

At the heart of the balance between my optimistic and pessimistic guesses about the future is a deep question about the “personality” of humankind as a whole. Do we, collectively, want to do more than live comfortably much as we have for the tens of thousands of years we’ve existed in our present, modern anatomical and neurological form, struggling to enjoy brief personal advantage over and admiration in the eyes of each other? Can any happenstance – population pressure, fear of extinction from an astronomical catastrophes like a giant meteor impact, a nearby gamma ray burst, or the steady increase in the Sun’s brightness, or more outlandish pressures such as fear of hostile invaders from beyond, possibly magnified by a grand hoax – force us to focus our collective goal on expanding beyond Earth? Can technology make such expansion so inexpensive that it doesn’t require a large fraction of humankind’s support to expanding beyond Earth?

 

I’ve lots of questions, but little but guesses for answers. It feels good. :)

[Guest jamongo]

I agree that finding any type of lifeforms in our solar system would sway my opinion a bit. But being a betting man, I would wager any such life discovered would be spoken of in the past tense. Also, this newly discovered life would be somewhere at the microbe level. Which means that it couldn't develop to a higher level. If Rover finds a big bug in the Endeavour crater, I'll concede and be happy to do it. Very happy!

[Moontanman]

I agree that finding any type of lifeforms in our solar system would sway my opinion a bit. But being a betting man, I would wager any such life discovered would be spoken of in the past tense.

 

I'll take that bet...

 

Also, this newly discovered life would be somewhere at the microbe level.

 

Most life in the universe is probably microbial, it is on the earth, microbes out number complex life forms in numbers (the human body contains far more microbes than human cells), total weight, microbes mass far more than all the complex life forms on the planet, and if microbes all died out complex life would die as well.

 

Which means that it couldn't develop to a higher level.

 

What? Why? Please explain what you mean by this...

 

If Rover finds a big bug in the Endeavour crater, I'll concede and be happy to do it. Very happy!

 

 

I would as well but that would be a bet I wouldn't take...

[Guest jamongo]

Do you seriously believe we will find life on in our solar system? I hope you're right.

 

What? Why? Please explain what you mean by this...

 

Well if we speak of them in the past tense, then they must not have developed.

 

This has been a good thread for me. I feel better knowing there are humans here, (hey, you guys are humans, right?), that have a strong belief that we are not alone.

[CraigD]

Do you seriously believe we will find life on in our solar system? I hope you're right.

I seriously believe there’s a reasonable possibility that we’ll find life on other planets, moons, or other bodies in the solar system.

 

Venus and Mars likely had millions of years of conditions similar to the early Earth on which life appeared and evolved, but billions of years ago, each took a different turn toward the inhospitable, nearly (85%) Earth-mass Venus accumulating too much heat and atmosphere via an apparent run-away greenhouse effect, much less massive (11% Earth) Mars loosing heat and atmosphere to become frozen and nearly vacuous. Some strange extremophile organisms might be living now on either of these, or even less hospitable bodies – we’ve found such organisms in such inhospitable places as undersea volcanic vents and deep underground on Earth – but it seems impossible that the sort of big, complicated, multicellular organism it seems is needed to have human-like intelligence could.

 

My big hopes are on Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. Theory and observation suggests that between its water ice surface and its rocky core, there’s a layer of liquid water, constantly heated by gravitational kneading. Though Europa is tiny compared to the rocky inner planets (1% Earth), its under-ice ocean could have many times more water than Earth’s, and have been life-hospitable for as long or longer than Earth’s. What sort of life there could be in Europa’s subsurface ocean challenges the imagination.

 

Explore Europa’s ocean is a big challenge – not only must you fly and land a spaceship there (landing conditions are about like the Moon, though cis-Jovian space is full or machine-damaging radiation), you must then penetrate 10+ km of super-cold/hard (-200 C) ice (the record for ice-drilling on Earth is 3.7 km).

 

Exciting times – even if these times are decades away, and depend on uncertain funding and yet-to-be developed and proven technology.

[ivantheboss1]

I see the universe as an extremely dangerous environment for life forms. I now basically think we ('we', being all life forms on Earth.) are probably alone...

Don't forget that the universe is larger than anyone could imagine. If there is an intelligent life forms(humans)here, so there is a chance ... somewhere in the universe.... :)

[Guest jamongo]

Yes, I know that there is a chance. It's just that, for a long time I felt positive there was life out there. Now we, (at least me), are finding out how chaotic and unstable the universe is. Now I am not so certain.

[lawcat]

jamongo, I hope you are correct. I hope we do not find any life form outside of our planet. IMO, that is a very optimistic view.

 

A pessimistic views is that somewhere there is some lab pet freaky microbe or an alien form that some geek in some lab can play with and there is more information to catalog and learn. Like we don't already have enough to document and learn. OMG, please spare us the trouble. Or worse yet, may we not become someone's lab pet.

 

Honestly, we need to focus on exploring, and harnesting energy, and terraforming, and just controlling and harvesting the spacetime environment instead of this biologists' pipedream bullcrap.

 

Kudos on your optimistic view!

[Guest jamongo]

Sometimes it seems to me that the people presenting their case for the possibility of intelligent life in the universe have a tendency to lead viewers astray. I was watching a video, "Are We Alone In the Universe". The presenter was very dramatic, citing how the antennae were searching the skies for that elusive signal. What he fails to mention is even if we were to pick up a signal that could be identified as being from an intelligent source, the first question to come to my mind is, how far away is it. 100 light years? 500 light years? How far? And how could we possibly know if the creatures that transmitted the signal are still around? Take 200 light year as an example. Their signal took 200 years to get here. We respond instantly, and it will take our signal another 200 light years to get to them. They are out there, jumping for joy to have received a signal, and immediately send another. We receive it 200 years later. That's 600 years drifting by. Lots of things, both good and bad can happen in 600 years. I think it would be a stroke of luck if anyone on earth actually kept track of these signals for 600 years. Damn, I know I'm being a pessimist about this, but I just can't help it.

[Cyberia]

Jamongo. Mars gassing off methane every Martian summer is generally believed to be bacteria under the surface. It is believed that some of the moons of the gas giants could harbour life under an icy surface, and the best explanation for chemical reactions on Titan was said to be methane loving microbes.

 

It is possible that the universe is full of life but 99.99% of it is in hostile environments and low down on the evolutionary ladder.

 

There is also the time scale that if aliens had come here a thousand years ago they would have found a primitive people and a thousand years from now we may be extinct. Some decades ago it was revealed that a glitch in Russian radar showed they thought Americans had launches a first strike at them and they ordered a retaliatory nuclear strike. Luckily one technician guessed it might be some kind off glitch and waited and it cleared. we nearly never made it to the 21st century.

 

It is a matter of catching an alien race at the right time to communicate with them as maybe 50 years from now we'll be using something completely different from radio waves and the like.

 

But there is said to be 2,000 stars within a radius of 50 light years from us so a reasonable [possibility of some advanced life close to us. HOWEVER, four decades ago a scientist warned that we should stop advertising our presence in the universe as it may attract some hostile aliens who may regard us as savages, or even animals (being "non-human" themselves). So someone nearby might know we are here but refuse to answer us. After all, we are quite hostile ourselves.

 

Flying saucer sightings go back centuries, even in the bible (Ezekiel). They have been seen by people in all walks of life included people who "can be trusted". They have been seen by millions as they flew over Washington DC, over Japan, over New Zealand, etc. Most of the old fuddy-duddies who laughed at them are now dead, and many people now believe in them. It is possible that they are not contacting us deliberately as in look what happened to the Red Indians, the Aborigines and other primitives we contacted. We ruined their civilizations. Maybe first contact could do that to us if it happens before we are ready for it.

[sigurdV]

Cheer up Jamongo!

Life may be what universes use to reproduce themselves. Then there should be at least one species in every universe.

[Wanderlust]

There are a couple hundered trilion galaxies in the universe. Plenty of quiet safe places for planets to roam in! The space we fly through is huge and the likelness of a black hole or GRB lining up to us are remote. Asteroids are in system and are more common but generally surviable once the system has calmed down.

[Fluxus]

FWIW, I don't expect to make contact with any other intelligent life forms during our lifetime -- sort of like the Cubs winning the World Series... :D There likely is some kind of intelligent life, but any signals they're putting out will likely be very weak and diffused, and millions of light-years away. Intelligent organisms are unlikely to survive the millions, if not billions, of years it would take any species to travel to our planet safely.

 

Meanwhile, the observable universe is around 46 billion light-years wide, there may be 10¹⁵ planets in total, and perhaps 10 billion of those are habitable by some kind of life form. Of course this would be spread out over billions of years as well; e.g. we could kill every mammal on the planet, and in a hundred million years another intelligent species may well come into existence. Organisms are also very tenacious; iirc there's already indications that microbes can survive extreme environments. possibly even the vacuum of space.

 

That said, I don't see any reason to pin my happiness on whether or not life as we understand it exists anywhere else.