Why Habitable Exoplanets Are Bad News

NovoJank said:
Ironically for the only person on here to claim any scientific background you sure don't seem to know much science.

I wonder why that is. You seem to know EXACTLY as much science as Doc Dutch does! Hmmmmmmm.
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Cypress is supposedly a geologist. Doc Douche is a friendless retiree with nothing going on upstairs. I wouldn't confuse the two.
 
Perry Phimosis said:
Cypress is supposedly a geologist. Doc Douche is a friendless retiree with nothing going on upstairs. I wouldn't confuse the two.
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Agree. Doc Dutch is a total asshole who thinks calling someone a woman is an insult.

Cypress is not vulgar like that, but mostly he lists names of people instead of discussing their ideas.
 
Perry Phimosis said:
Stay out of this, amateur. You wouldn't know a sphalerite from kerogen.

Literally no one cares what you think about science.
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The fact you think science only applies to those who know the difference from a sphalerite from kerogen indicates the mind of a college dropout not a mature doctor of Geochemistry...a minor branch of Earth Science.

QED. You care, Perry. Ipso facto, your claim is false...again.
 
BidenPresident said:
Agree. Doc Dutch is a total asshole who thinks calling someone a woman is an insult.

Cypress is not vulgar like that, but mostly he lists names of people instead of discussing their ideas.
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You know I love women, BP. If I thought you were a man, I'd treat you like Matt Dillon. :thup:

Agreed on Cypress.
 
A lot of these earth sized explanets we are finding might be tidally locked if they don't have a large moon like we do, and you have to wonder how hospitable they are for life if one side of the planet always faces the star, and the other side is in perpetual night.
 
Doc Dutch said:
The fact you think science only applies to those who know the difference from a sphalerite from kerogen indicates the mind of a college dropout not a mature doctor of Geochemistry...a minor branch of Earth Science.

QED. You care, Perry. Ipso facto, your claim is false...again.
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Yeah, it's not. I can tell by what you post you are completely lost in any science discussion. Why don't you go play with some legos or something more your speed.
 
Perry Phimosis said:
Yeah, it's not. I can tell by what you post you are completely lost in any science discussion. Why don't you go play with some legos or something more your speed.
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Thanks, Jank. :thup: Disagreed on your science assessment but I've always made it clear hard science wasn't my forte. My career was mostly applied physics.

NovoJank said:
Maybe you could try reading some science sometime. Then you could talk like someone who actually should be on a science thread.
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NovoJank said:
...Besides I've never seen you post any real science so you know what they say about proof an puddings....

...(Note how he avoids talking science, just like you do. Interesting parallel there, don't you think?)
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Perry Phimosis said:
Yeah, it's not. I can tell by what you post you are completely lost in any science discussion. Why don't you go play with some legos or something more your speed.
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We're all here to learn more about science. At least the 6 or 8 posters who care. It doesn't matter what degree anyone got, no human being can be an expert or even be knowledgeable in all fields of sciences.
 
Perry Phimosis said:
Sorry but your sock, Dutch, doesn't post any science.
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You can nurse your petty grudges, and parade around the board bragging about your PhD and brilliant research career if you want, but I welcome anyone who has a genuine interest in science to post in threads like this.
 
"This apparent absence of thriving extraterrestrial civilizations suggests that at least one of the steps from humble planet to interstellar civilization is exceedingly unlikely. The absence could be caused because either intelligent life is extremely rare or intelligent life has a tendency to go extinct. This bottleneck for the emergence of alien civilizations from any one of the many billions of planets is referred to as the Great Filter."

Interesting. If the universe is indeed infinite, however, actual observation may not give us a good answer. Math theory is another way to look at it.

If the universe is indeed infinite, it would seem that an infinite number of organisms that look exactly like me are typing these exact same words at this exact same time.
Infinity is awfully big, just like eternity is awfully long.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
"This apparent absence of thriving extraterrestrial civilizations suggests that at least one of the steps from humble planet to interstellar civilization is exceedingly unlikely. The absence could be caused because either intelligent life is extremely rare or intelligent life has a tendency to go extinct. This bottleneck for the emergence of alien civilizations from any one of the many billions of planets is referred to as the Great Filter."

Interesting. If the universe is indeed infinite, however, actual observation may not give us a good answer. Math theory is another way to look at it.

If the universe is indeed infinite, it would seem that an infinite number of organisms that look exactly like me are typing these exact same words at this exact same time.
Infinity is awfully big, just like eternity is awfully long.
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I'd hate to think there were infinite copies of Donald Trump.

Philosophically, it less alarming to me if we assume space has positive curvature and is there finite. That gets rid of the infinite Trump problem!
 
Cypress said:
I'd hate to think there were infinite copies of Donald Trump.

Philosophically, it less alarming to me if we assume space has positive curvature and is there finite. That gets rid of the infinite Trump problem!
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The good news is that in some alternative universes, he's dead....for an infinite number of reasons; still birth, abortion, abandonment in the woods, thrown off a boat (accident at sea), drug OD, fell off a building, murdered by gangsters, heart attack, cancer, car accident, etc, etc, etc.

OTOH, there might be a few universes where he turned out to be a decent human being.
 
Cypress said:
We're all here to learn more about science. At least the 6 or 8 posters who care. It doesn't matter what degree anyone got, no human being can be an expert or even be knowledgeable in all fields of sciences.
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I honestly can't wait until you roll out some science. That should be really cool.
 
Cypress said:
You can nurse your petty grudges, and parade around the board bragging about your PhD and brilliant research career if you want, but I welcome anyone who has a genuine interest in science to post in threads like this.
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Well, that's a lie. Clearly. The minute someone posts science you are no where to be found. LOL.
 
Cypress said:
A lot of these earth sized explanets we are finding might be tidally locked if they don't have a large moon like we do, and you have to wonder how hospitable they are for life if one side of the planet always faces the star, and the other side is in perpetual night.
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The star they orbit will cause a tide but nothing like our moon.
 
Cypress said:
Why Habitable Exoplanets Are Bad News for Humanity's Future

Kepler-186f is the first planet almost exactly the same size as Earth orbiting in the “habitable zone.”

Last week, scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a planet 492 light years away in the Cygnus constellation. Kepler-186f is special because it marks the first planet almost exactly the same size as Earth orbiting in the “habitable zone” — the distance from a star in which we might expect liquid water, and perhaps life.

What did not make the news, however, is that this discovery also slightly increases how much credence we give to the possibility of near-term human extinction. This because of a concept known as the Great Filter.

The Great Filter is an argument that attempts to resolve the Fermi Paradox: why have we not found aliens, despite the existence of hundreds of billions of solar systems in our galactic neighborhood in which life might evolve? As the namesake physicist Enrico Fermi noted, it seems rather extraordinary that not a single extraterrestrial signal or engineering project has been detected (UFO conspiracy theorists notwithstanding).

This apparent absence of thriving extraterrestrial civilizations suggests that at least one of the steps from humble planet to interstellar civilization is exceedingly unlikely. The absence could be caused because either intelligent life is extremely rare or intelligent life has a tendency to go extinct. This bottleneck for the emergence of alien civilizations from any one of the many billions of planets is referred to as the Great Filter.

Are We Alone?
What exactly is causing this bottleneck has been the subject of debate for more than 50 years. Explanations could include a paucity of Earth-like planets or self-replicating molecules.

Other possibilities could be an improbable jump from simple prokaryotic life (cells without specialized parts) to more complex eukaryotic life — after all, this transition took well over a billion years on Earth.

Proponents of this “Rare Earth” hypothesis also argue that the evolution of complex life requires an exceedingly large number of perfect conditions. In addition to Earth being in the habitable zone of the sun, our star must be far enough away from the galactic centre to avoid destructive radiation, our gas giants must be massive enough to sweep asteroids from Earth’s trajectory, and our unusually large moon stabilizes the axial tilt that gives us different seasons.

These are just a few prerequisites for complex life. The emergence of symbolic language, tools and intelligence could require other such “perfect conditions” as well.

Or Is the Filter Ahead of Us?
While emergence of intelligent life could be rare, the silence could also be the result of intelligent life emerging frequently but subsequently failing to survive for long. Might every sufficiently advanced civilization stumble across a suicidal technology or unsustainable trajectory?

Continued
https://www.discovermagazine.com/th...-exoplanets-are-bad-news-for-humanitys-future
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I'd like to think there's other life out there. As huge as the universe is - I find it unlikely we're the only intelligent life.

Unfortunately, it might be centuries or longer before any is discovered.

If one believes in the "big bang" theory, it's unlikely there is life any more advanced than we because all would develop at the same pace as us.
 
LurchAddams said:
I'd like to think there's other life out there. As huge as the universe is - I find it unlikely we're the only intelligent life.

Unfortunately, it might be centuries or longer before any is discovered.

If one believes in the "big bang" theory, it's unlikely there is life any more advanced than we because all would develop at the same pace as us.
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The evidence of the Big Bang is very solid. Disagreed on your conclusion, since stars are of different ages. Even if the difference is a few hundred thousand to a million years, that's in incredible amount of time for species development given how far humans have gone in the past 30,000 years.

Another factor is that the Earth has experienced five major extinction events in the past. What if there'd only been 2 or 3? How much more advanced would life be on Earth? Even if stars with planets capable of life were all the same age, the number of extinction events could easily cause a large variation in the relative levels of advancement on each planet.
 
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