Bad news for alien life

[Dutch Uncle]

Nice.

And that is assuming a long series of improbable events over four billion years that led to the unique emergence of Homo Sapiens.

The fact that life was perfectly happy on Earth for 3 billion years as single celled microbes before making a sudden and abrupt jump to multicellular complex life, suggests life might be perfectly happy to exist as just microbes for billions of years

Agreed. Apples to apples, look at stars about the same age as ours with planets in the Goldilocks Zone. Young stars like in the Pleiades cluster are unlikely to harbor advanced civilizations.

The Pleiades: Facts about the "Seven Sisters" star cluster

The Pleiades is a bright star cluster and a popular skywatching target.

www.space.com

As an open cluster, the stars in the Pleiades were all born around the same time from a gigantic cloud of gas and dust. The brightest stars in the formation glow a hot blue and formed within the last 100 million years. They are extremely luminous and will burn out quickly, with life spans of only a few hundred million years, much shorter than the billions of years our sun will enjoy.

Scientists estimate that the entire cluster is no more than 150 million years old, and possibly as young as 75 million, according to skywatching site Constellation Guide

 

[Dutch Uncle]

Agree.

I think Star Trek, and the misuse of the Drake Equation in the 1970s primed us to believe that our galaxy would be pregnant with millions of planets with advanced life.

Agree that the laws of physics probably preclude any tangible probability of communication and travel between civilizations

Agreed that fiction stories primed us to be a little too optimistic about alien civilizations. OTOH, even scientists from 200 years ago were speculating about life on Venus or Mars.

The Drake Equation was just an estimate albeit a little more scientific than the ones I've been making. 50 years of research has altered the variables in the equation such as stated in your OP and greatly reduced the number of possible civilizations.

 

[Cypress]

Agreed. Apples to apples, look at stars about the same age as ours with planets in the Goldilocks Zone. Young stars like in the Pleiades cluster are unlikely to harbor advanced civilizations.

The Pleiades: Facts about the "Seven Sisters" star cluster

The Pleiades is a bright star cluster and a popular skywatching target.

www.space.com

As an open cluster, the stars in the Pleiades were all born around the same time from a gigantic cloud of gas and dust. The brightest stars in the formation glow a hot blue and formed within the last 100 million years. They are extremely luminous and will burn out quickly, with life spans of only a few hundred million years, much shorter than the billions of years our sun will enjoy.

Scientists estimate that the entire cluster is no more than 150 million years old, and possibly as young as 75 million, according to skywatching site Constellation Guide

Pleiades is one of my favorite astronomical features.

Agreed, we can rule out blue and red gas supergiants as oasis of life

 

[Kamala Trump]

An estimated 75 to 80 percent of the stars in the Milky Way are M-class red dwarfs, and if they are highly unlikely to support planets with life, that rules out a huge proportion of star systems that could possibly host advanced intelligent alien life, or any life at all.



A new study of red dwarf stars has revealed that even the quietest examples of this stellar class are more active and wild than the sun.

Red dwarfs, officially known as "M dwarfs" by astronomers, are the most common stars in the Milky Way and can remain placid for long periods of time before erupting with huge "superflares." These flares have previously been measured to be 100 to 1,000 times more powerful than similar flares from the sun, with young red dwarfs particularly tumultuous.

These outbursts, as well as eruptions of scorching-hot plasma known as coronal mass ejections (CMES), can be incredibly destructive to planets orbiting red dwarfs, stripping their atmospheres and emitting enough radiation to boil away liquid water even in the so-called habitable zone around them  — the region around a star in which liquid water can exist on a world's surface.

Such high activity might therefore make it tough for life to take root around red dwarfs, some scientists say.

Because astronomers have struggled to study individual red dwarfs in detail, the next best thing is looking at a lot of these stars over a long time period. A long view is needed to really get a clear picture of red dwarf variability,

Bad news for alien life? Even calm red dwarf stars rage more violently than the sun

Red dwarfs are small, but their outbursts are not.

www.space.com

why do masons always pretend there's nothing outside our sphere of knowledge?

 

[Cypress]

Agreed that fiction stories primed us to be a little too optimistic about alien civilizations. OTOH, even scientists from 200 years ago were speculating about life on Venus or Mars.

The Drake Equation was just an estimate albeit a little more scientific than the ones I've been making. 50 years of research has altered the variables in the equation such as stated in your OP and greatly reduced the number of possible civilizations.

Yes, agree. I wrote earlier in the thread that I don't consider all this to be pointless speculation, because we can derive better estimates as we acquire more knowledge of stellar and planetary dynamics.

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

An estimated 75 to 80 percent of the stars in the Milky Way are M-class red dwarfs, and if they are highly unlikely to support planets with life, that rules out a huge proportion of star systems that could possibly host advanced intelligent alien life, or any life at all.



A new study of red dwarf stars has revealed that even the quietest examples of this stellar class are more active and wild than the sun.

Red dwarfs, officially known as "M dwarfs" by astronomers, are the most common stars in the Milky Way and can remain placid for long periods of time before erupting with huge "superflares." These flares have previously been measured to be 100 to 1,000 times more powerful than similar flares from the sun, with young red dwarfs particularly tumultuous.

These outbursts, as well as eruptions of scorching-hot plasma known as coronal mass ejections (CMES), can be incredibly destructive to planets orbiting red dwarfs, stripping their atmospheres and emitting enough radiation to boil away liquid water even in the so-called habitable zone around them  — the region around a star in which liquid water can exist on a world's surface.

Such high activity might therefore make it tough for life to take root around red dwarfs, some scientists say.

Because astronomers have struggled to study individual red dwarfs in detail, the next best thing is looking at a lot of these stars over a long time period. A long view is needed to really get a clear picture of red dwarf variability,

Bad news for alien life? Even calm red dwarf stars rage more violently than the sun

Red dwarfs are small, but their outbursts are not.

www.space.com

Interesting. Thanks, Cypress. Gives me a great idea for a blockbuster sci-fi franchise. The scientists of Labama, an Earth-like planet circling its red dwarf star, MAGAT3, warn the populace of signs of coming upheavels and severe flares from their star. Panic ensures and t hen subsides. The Libsmartz begin to make evacuation preparations and build underground shelters for those who choose to stay. Meanwhile, the Drumptilians call the whole notion a hoax and refuse to make plans for their future safety

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

I personally think it's utterly pointless to speculate about something we will never (in this life anyway) know the truth about.

Not a sci-fi fan? I've always loved pondering about life elsewhere, with and without the aid of THC. I also like fantasy fiction about elves, fairies, dragons, etc. But life elsewhere seems far more likely, plausible, and real than unicorns and vampires.

 

[Nomad]

Not a sci-fi fan? I've always loved pondering about life elsewhere, with and without the aid of THC. I also like fantasy fiction about elves, fairies, dragons, etc. But life elsewhere seems far more likely, plausible, and real than unicorns and vampires.

Well, first of all, no I'm not a fan of the sci fi genre in books, movies and TV shows, with the exception of CE3K, which is one of my all time favorite anythings. But stuff like Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune, etc, etc, holds no appeal for me.

I do enjoy IDLE speculation about the universe and the great unknown, though.

I just think it's pointless to engage in SERIOUS speculation about it. As in trying to use what we know to extrapolate theories as to what might be.

The wilder and more unlikely, the more fun it is for me.

I think it's possible that there's a world out there somewhere in which everyone has two heads. People with only one head are pitied and regarded as freaks who must be kept away from society to hide their shame.

And I think there's another world comprised of cat people. They walk upright, have opposable thumbs (with claws of course), are covered with soft fur, live in cat condos they build themselves (licensed contractor cat people actually) and lick themselves a lot. On a nearby world are the mice people who they are constantly at war with.