Does the cosmos have a reason?

Dutch Uncle said:
Agreed life appears to be very rare judging by the results. Why remains a mystery. Do other advanced civilizations kill themselves off before being able to move off world?

Again, not a physicist, but it seems that, without life, be it rare or common, the motions of the Universe were set at Big Bang in predictable ways. Life alters those motions in unpredictable ways.

Sure, we can predict that a bean sprouts roots will grow down, but exactly how it grows from there seems unpredictable. I'm not sure a math formula for that is achievable. If it was, then our entire lives could be reduced to a mathematical formula. A feat I strongly doubt it possible.
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actually a good post........

I think this is a concept that goes along with the 'there's no fee will" concept that the nihilists also spout.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Given there are a minimum of 100B stars in our galaxy and the odds of life evolving, literally, a million to one, then that leaves a 100,000 stars with life. Wipe out 99% of that life prior to achieving the ability to move off planet, and that still leaves 1,000 space-faring lifeforms

Life must be exceedingly rare, indeed, to not give a sign of existence as we've been doing for over 100 years.

Given that the Universe exists for a reason then it seems life exists for a reason. Following the Red Queen hypothesis, all life, if it survives, will eventually evolve sentient consciousness.

There are different models for estimating the number of stars in the Milky Way and the answers they give differ depending on what is used as the average mass of a star. The most common answer seems to be that there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way on the low-end and 400 billion on the high end. But I’ve seen even higher numbers thrown around.
www.thoughtco.com

What Is the Red Queen Hypothesis?

Discover an explanation of the Red Queen hypothesis, how it relates to evolution, and in particular, coevolution of species in symbiotic relationships.
www.thoughtco.com www.thoughtco.com
The “Red Queen” hypothesis in evolution is related to the coevolution of species. It states that species must continuously adapt and evolve to pass on genes to the next generation and also to keep from going extinct when other species within a symbiotic relationship are evolving.
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I would challenge the 100 billion number.

One star is not equal to another star.

Large gas giants don't exist long enough for evolution to take hold on orbiting planets.

Only stars enriched in heavy elements could possibly host a solar system primed for life, aka carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, iron, etc.

I think something like 80 percent of stars are M-class red dwarfs. It's debatable whether red dwarfs even put out enough solar radiation to be an energy source for planetary life.

If I had to guess, only ten or 20 percent of all stars in the galaxy even have the remotest possibility of hosting life, and even then one has to get down to other perfect storm parameters, like liquid water, magnetic fields, stable orbital dynamics, etc.
 
Cypress said:
I would challenge the 100 billion number.

One star is not equal to another star.
Large gas giants don't exist long enough for evolution to take hold on orbiting planets.

Only stars enriched in heavy elements could possibly host a solar system primed for life, aka carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, iron, etc.

I think something like 80 percent of stars are M-class red dwarfs. It's debatable whether red dwarfs even put out enough solar radiation to be an energy source for planetary life.

If I had to guess, only ten or 20 percent of all stars in the galaxy even have the remotest possibility of hosting life, and even then one has to get down to other perfect storm parameters, like liquid water, magnetic fields, stable orbital dynamics, etc.
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The 100B, per the link, was the low end with 400B on the high end.

Good point about heavy elements AKA Type I stars. Only about 2% of stars in our galaxy are Type I, about 2B to 8B stars. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Starlog/pop12.html

Most Type I stars in are in galactic arms. Something to consider about life being wiped out is that a supernova within 25 LY or less of Earth could kill everything on it. The closer to the galactic core, the more likely a supernova of an old Type II star would kill all life within that radius.
 
Cypress said:
No.

Newton's laws of motion are fixed and well known, and in principle if you know the momentum, acceleration, and mass of interacting macro-scale objects moving at less than relativistic speeds and the forces acting on them, you could predict their motion arbitrarily far into the future or the past.

That's why we know when there will be solar eclipses decades into the future.

That's why we know where Pluto will be in 15 years when we are designing exploratory space probes.

That's why ballistic analysis works for forensic criminal investigators - they know the laws of motion are fixed and well established.

That's why we know how to calculate the energy released by asteroid impacts.
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but it's NOT determined at the point in time when the FIRST ball is struck. it's never "determined".

fact.

you're still wrong.

and then there's wind variables which aren't considered in your simplictic model.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
that still leaves abiogenesis out in the cold.....
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Nah, I don't think so, really. Infinite time doesn't guarantee the occurrence of anything, but it makes even extremely improbable events possible, including abiogenesis. The laws of probability dictate that, over an infinite stretch of time or in an infinite universe, even incredibly rare events -- like life arising from non-living matter -- can occur. All that has to be true are that it is possible. Abiogenesis might be rare, but given the vastness of time and space, it is not excluded; rather, it becomes a matter of probability. So, abiogenesis isn’t 'left out in the cold' -- it's simply one of those rare events that, given enough opportunities, becomes inevitable, noting that, with infinity as the backdrop, all numbers, including the astronomical, become infinitesimally small. The debate then is over infinity. Does it exist? I'd say it does exist, at least in the abstract. One might also argue that our known universe is old enough that, for all intents and purposes, the concept still works, but, it's speculation, of course. I think it's valid because i beleive the universe is infinite, and infinity, via the concept that all that is possible is inevitable, thus infinity is the mother of all things. Life exists because it is possible, and with infinity, it becomes inevitable. This, for me, makes more sense than life exists because of an intelligent designer (who created the intelligent designer? so that is a half baked solution, and as such, isn't a solution).
 
Cypress said:
Yes, I understand you believe in an infinite universe. I am agnostic about that.
Even an infinite universe cannot have any life that we would would recognize if the physical laws and constants are different outside our visible cosmic horizon. So I do not see infinity as being conclusive proof that an infinite variety of alien life exists.

I give you kudos for being honest enough to admit you are using AI and Chatgbt to help compose your posts
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I think it's a misunderstanding to say I use 'AI' to 'compose' my posts. I'm a writer, (it's a hobby, I'm retired) with published material and several copyrights, so I don't need AI to write for me. Instead, I use it for data gathering, grammar checking, critiquing my work, and offering suggestions for improving my ideas. Essentially, AI functions like my editors do for my published work, but for debate forums -- and it’s free.

The core idea I’m discussing came to me long before AI existed. I used AI to test whether it could falsify the idea. Initially, it did, but I noticed an inconsistency in the AI's reasoning. When I pointed it out, the AI conceded that it had been wrong and agreed that my idea was plausible, assuming the concept of infinity. So, the debate really hinges on that idea. It expressed: "This is true in the context of non-zero probability events in an infinite number of trials—where, given infinite chances, any possible event, no matter how improbable, becomes inevitable. In that sense, your proposition holds." See, it didn't realize I was framing in the context of 'non zero probability'. I'm not a mathematician, so I didn't even know I was doing it, or I would have mentioned at the outset. If I do use anything that IS composed by AI, I will put it in italics. (But don't assume that anything I put in italics is automatically AI, I might quote someone, or myself, even, and put that in quotes, or I might use italics for emphasis, and in other words, all the legit reasons to use italics, is how I use them. )

At the very least, infinity exists in the abstract, just as mathematics does, and mathematics exerts a powerful influence on the physical world, even though it exists only in the abstract. So, even if infinity only exists in the abstract, could that still make my statement true? That’s what I’m exploring, at least intellectually, because that’s about as far as we can take it.
 
Publius said:
At the very least, infinity exists in the abstract, just as mathematics does, and mathematics exerts a powerful influence on the physical world, even though it exists only in the abstract. So, even if infinity only exists in the abstract, could that still make my statement true? That’s what I’m exploring, at least intellectually, because that’s about as far as we can take it.
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I agree, that's what I said before: infinity is an abstract mathematical concept, but we have never seen anything like it in physical reality.

Usually, physicists will throw out results or equations that give infinity as an answer in the belief it is providing nonsense answers, or the equations do not adequately reflect something real.
 
Cypress said:
I agree, that's what I said before: infinity is an abstract mathematical concept, but we have never seen anything like it in physical reality.

Usually, physicists will throw out results or equations that give infinity as an answer in the belief it is providing nonsense answers, or the equations do not adequately reflect something real.
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"God doesn't play dice with the Universe" Albert Einstein
 
Cypress said:
I agree, that's what I said before: infinity is an abstract mathematical concept, but we have never seen anything like it in physical reality.

Usually, physicists will throw out results or equations that give infinity as an answer in the belief it is providing nonsense answers, or the equations do not adequately reflect something real.
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It's not a matter of 'we have never seen anything like it in physical reality', not at all. [

Infinity, even if true, is something that is IMPOSSIBLE to realize or know, or falsify, even if it was a physical reality. Think about it.

There is the notion that anything in physical reality is falsifiable. There is one exception, and that is infinity.
 
Publius said:
It's not a matter of 'we have never seen anything like it in physical reality', not at all. [

Infinity, even if true, is something that is IMPOSSIBLE to realize or know, or falsify, even if it was a physical reality. Think about it.

There is the notion that anything in physical reality is falsifiable. There is one exception, and that is infinity.
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In number theory, it has been proven that Infinity comes in different sizes. So what size is infinity, and how do you really understand it as a tangible presence in reality? That's another reason for me that Infinity is abstracted from the mind, but might not manifest physically.
 
Kafka said:
That's your problem. I understand grad school was hard for you. You couldn't hack it so you dropped after the MS.

The kind whose degree is CONSTANTLY ATTACKED by people like you with high school, BS and MS degrees.
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Perry, your obsession with @Cypress and this fantasy you have about earning a PhD is both interesting and very telling.

One thing low IQ people like you don't understand is that claiming something and displaying it are two different things.

It doesn't take a degree to differentiate between JPP members who have an education and/or are intelligent from those who are poorly educated and/or low IQ. You can Google all the shit you like but when you are unable to put something into your own words, it proves you are both poorly educated and low IQ.
 
Cypress said:
In number theory, it has been proven that Infinity comes in different sizes. So what size is infinity, and how do you really understand it as a tangible presence in reality? That's another reason for me that Infinity is abstracted from the mind, but might not manifest physically.
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I completely agree that in number theory, infinity comes in different sizes. Cantor's work on transfinite numbers is a fascinating exploration of this. However, I’m not discussing the mathematical abstractions of infinity but rather its implications when considered as a physical reality -- or more accurately, its impossibility to be realized, known, or falsified in the physical world.

The concept I'm dealing with isn’t about how we ‘size’ infinity, but about how it applies to the idea of probability and inevitability. If infinity were a physical reality (an assumption for the sake of argument), then anything that can happen -- no matter how improbable -- must happen given infinite time or space. That’s the point I’m making. Infinity challenges our understanding of physical reality because it can't be tested, and yet its implications are profound. So, while the infinity of number theory remains abstract, the infinity I’m referring to questions how we think about possibility and inevitability in a universe that may or may not be bounded.

And so, the issue isn't about the size of infinity, but how the idea of infinity impacts our conception of reality and probability. We can't dismiss the notion simply because it's abstract. Its hypothetical existence leads to interesting consequences that affect our interpretation of reality, especially when we consider large-scale or cosmic phenomena.
 
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