Twelve reasons we haven't found aliens

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by wegs, Feb 5, 2020.

  1. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    How can we be so sure (no doubts) it didn’t?
     
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  3. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Nature cannot produce wheels.

    I shouldn't be the one to say never, but there are some very severe restrictions on the potential evolution of wheels.
     
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  5. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Because Venus, Mars, Jovian and Saturnian moons etc. are not showing any signs of life.

    When it happened on Earth, it overran the planet - covering it virtually from pole to pole with cyanobacteria. So much so that it transformed the very atmosphere itself with its own waste products. It's funny - when we talk about humans poisoning our planet to our own near-extinction, we forget that we are neither first nor the best at it.
     
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  7. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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  9. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Let me know when they get to put a beetle on the moon

    Good catch

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  10. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I believe they have already put Tardigrades on the moon or planning to bring them to Mars. It's probably the only organism that could possible survive the moon's atmosphere for any extended length of time and most likely would thrive on Mars. They are found in every environmental condition on earth.

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Physiology
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2020
  11. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    We can't, not at the basic level anyway....The probably Oceans of Europa, the geysers of Enceldeus....
     
  12. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    In furtherance of the wheel. Nature did in fact devise a turning rotor, which drives a flagella and theoretically could turn a wheel. And points to the function of microtubules.
     
  13. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Beetles put Tardigrades on the moon?

    Good for them

    Pity they crashed but was great effort

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  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Well they did the maths in feet and inches, but programmed the rocket in meters and centimeters.

    It's what happens when different species use their own mathematics........the dust cloud was visible on Earth.
     
  15. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Ya I heard that happens

    Wasn't that the case in the botched Mars instrument landing when the American species misidentified the British species measurement units

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    ?

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  16. Orion68 Registered Senior Member

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    In my personal opinion. If intelligent life has arrisen somewhere in our cosmic neighbourhood and they survived all kind of calamities what are the chances of such a civilization developing at the same time as ours?
    Let's say they're really close to us in cosmic sense in time and are only ahead one million years from where we are now with our knowledge.
    I think we're worth studying, hence the many sightings, but I don't think we're at such a level that we are being welcomed as equals in mind.
    Maybe, when everything goes wrong here in what we're doing to our earth, to maybe even an extinction point, they're willing to help us after making contact, but I think the more plausibele scenario is that they will just stay observers and let nature on earth take it's course.
     
  17. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Yep, unfortunately neither side admitted to that fact at the time. There was a diversionary tactic which sabotaged the entire inquiry.
     
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    In a mathematically functioning Universe it would be quite possible that an alien race would have the same type of scientific understanding, but would use a different symbolic notation from human notation. Therein lies the crux.

    This already happened on Earth with the scientific evolution in different cultures. The science was fundamentally the same, the scientific symbolic representations were different.

    Today science has been standardized, so that everyone understands the symbolic representations and can exchange scientific knowledge and engage in cooperative scientific efforts. Makes things easier.....

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  19. Orion68 Registered Senior Member

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    It sure makes things easier

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    I do think that a civilization one million years ahead of us will have little trouble in finding a way to communicatie with us, so any notation we or them use could easily be converted by them in for us understandable information (that is information that we are capabele of understanding, we don't know if and how much our interstallar friends have way more conscious understanding than we humans do).
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    But IMO, that's beauty of universal mathematical functions. Everyone understands the fundamentals. On Earth, once we became aware that everyone was talking about the same thing, translation or adoption of symbolic representation became easy.

    Tegmark postulates that all universal mathematics can be represented by some 32 relative values (symbolic numbers) and a dozen equations (functional constants). The problem lies in the enormous amounts of information to be processed. That why the chief technician of the Mars rover stated; "we don't need to do things right, we only need to do them just right enough", in reference to taking shortcuts in the programming of the "law of falling bodies", in order to keep things manageable during the landing on Mars.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2020
  21. Orion68 Registered Senior Member

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    IMO you are right concerning the mathematical basics and their universality. Not a 'But IMO' but a 'And IMO'. In other words; I agree.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2020
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  22. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. One of the restrictions I mentioned is size. Wheels cannot be produced on an organism that's too large (larger than microscopic).

    The square-cube ratio applies to the ability of an organism to transfer nutrients to its "wheel(s)". An organism's mass - and thus nutritive needs - increases as the cube, whereas the surface through which it can transfer those nutrients increases as the square.
     
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  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Hey. Why am I hearing these cultist mantras again after months of peace?

    Oh right. I foolishly turned off 'Ignore'.

    *click*
     
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