Lake found on Mars

[modo]

Remy, why the insults....did it have to come to that again?

 

[remydat]

see the bolded part......that is my whole point.

we as a species don't understand it...not just me

Yes but because we don't understand it, you have no basis to claim it is meaningless. Your reasoning is flawed for that reason. Probability is just math. What meaning it has can only be determined based on the knowledge we possess regarding the underlying reality it pertains to. So you can't make the claim you did because by your own admission, you don't know enough about the underlying reality.

Remy, why the insults....did it have to come to that again?

I am not insulting you. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge and you admitted you don't have knowledge over exactly how abiogenesis occurs so by definition you are simply too ignorant regarding it to make the claim you did. That is not an insult but a statement of fact. Just as I would be too ignorant to make a similar statement.

All I relayed to you was the fact that for life to not occur would need to be a 1 over 10 to the 22nd power. In saying that I am making no inferences or forming no opinions on how likely abiogenesis is. I am just telling you the cold hard math of how low that chance would have to be given the vastness of the universe as per the scientist that studied it.

So yes you coming along with no actual evidence of how frequent abiogensis occurs to already conclude that probability is meaningless is in fact very ignorant as you are professing to not have knowledge of something yet arriving at this broad conclusion regardless.

 

[modo]

I am not insulting you. Ignorant is a lack of knowledge and you admitted you don't have knowledge over exactly how abiogenesis occurs so by definition you are simply too ignorant regarding it to make the claim you did. That is not an insult but a statement of fact. Just as I would be too ignorant to make a similar statement.

it isn't ignorance, we have access to the same information....you are ignorant to how abiogenesis has started as well....how does that support your point...it actually illustrates mine....

 

[xer0h0ur]

I am not insulting you. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge and you admitted you don't have knowledge over exactly how abiogenesis occurs so by definition you are simply too ignorant regarding it to make the claim you did. That is not an insult but a statement of fact. Just as I would be too ignorant to make a similar statement.

 

[remydat]

it isn't ignorance, we have access to the same information....you are ignorant to how abiogenesis has started as well....how does that support your point...it actually illustrates mine....

Did you read what I said. I already said it would be ignorant of me to make a similar statement. I never claimed I was knowledgeable about abiogenesis. I simply gave a probability. You can't on one hand say it is not ignorance and then on the other say but you are ignorant as well, lol.

You seem confused by the fact that all I did is tell you how statistically small something has to be for life to not occur. Meanwhile, despite having no knowledge of something, you are forming opinions not facts about how meaningless something is.

Put another way, various equations in physics predict all sorts of outcomes. Some of those outcomes can actually happen in reality and some of those outcomes may just be mathematical in nature. However, if I don't know with certainty which outcomes are truly exist in reality and which do not, I can't then say what is meaningful or what is meaningless.

A simple example. Time travel is theoretically possible given some of the solutions to Einstein's equations. However, you nor I have any basis to claim whether it being theoretically possible is meaningless unless we knew with 100% certainty the truth. We don't. So in this example, all I gave you was a fact ie that it is theoretically possible and you responded by forming an unsubstantiated opinion that the fact I gave you is meaningless. In short, you veered into making an ignorant opinion. All I did was give you the math.

 

[modo]

You can't give abiogenesis a probability. We don't understand the process enough to even understand if it happened more than once. Any probability given to it is meaningless.

If you can't give abiogenesis a probability, you can even begin to calculate any chance of life in the Universe. You can, however, calculate what we believe to be potentially habitable planets, but as I said that is only part of the equation that we cannot even calculate because of our lack of understanding of abiogenesis.

Therefore we have no idea if the chance of life outside of Earth is nil or some other number.

 

[Gustavus Adolphus]

So anyways, I think most aliens would look at us and think: why do they worship the Kardashians?

And then they would leave.

 

[modo]

So anyways, I think most aliens would look at us and think: why do they worship the Kardashians?

And then they would leave.

can they take the kardashians with them

 

[remydat]

You can't give abiogenesis a probability. We don't understand the process enough to even understand if it happened more than once. Any probability given to it is meaningless.

If you can't give abiogenesis a probability, you can even begin to calculate any chance of life in the Universe. You can, however, calculate what we believe to be potentially habitable planets, but as I said that is only part of the equation that we cannot even calculate because of our lack of understanding of abiogenesis.

Therefore we have no idea if the chance of life outside of Earth is nil or some other number.

Please cite where abiogenesis was given a probabality. That is not what the article says.

Maybe read the article and you will grasp why you are incorrect.

 

[The Apostate]

Conditions in our solar system on Earth led to carbon-based life evolving.

Conditions drastically different are required elsewhere for non-carbon-based life evolving, this is how I see it.

The Universe is huge, personally I find it childish to think we're the only life of any kind that exists.

Ok so full disclosure: I'm certainly no pro, but I have been a star gazer/backyard astronomer for over 30 years, so I'm pretty familiar with the ground being trod here.

As far as non-carbon based life goes, the probability is pretty much nil. There's a good reason all life we know of is carbon based, that reason being that carbons' 4 valence electrons allow it to create long chain molecules (like DNA) fairly easily. Other elements are much less efficient in doing so and in the real world efficiency = winning.

And as far as undiscovered elements go, sorry, but that's not how chemistry works either. Old saw in astronomy, if we ever do meet aliens, they'll be using the exact same periodic table as us. It's that basic.

 

[nc0gnet0]

brine shrimp on mars......

 

[modo]

Please cite where abiogenesis was given a probabality. That is not what the article says.

Maybe read the article and you will grasp why you are incorrect.

It doesn't matter. If you can't know the frequency of the creation of life you can't predict how often it may or may not occur in the Universe outside of Earth.

 

[The Apostate]

It doesn't matter. If you can't know the frequency of the creation of life you can't predict how often it may or may not occur in the Universe outside of Earth.

Google "Drake Equation"

 

[modo]

brine shrimp on mars......

does it cost .99 to add them to your Red Lobster Salad.

 

[modo]

Google "Drake Equation"

also pointless....it doesn't take into effect abiogenesis either, mostly the amount of planets.....already addressed this.

 

[remydat]

It doesn't matter. If you can't know the frequency of the creation of life you can't predict how often it may or may not occur in the Universe outside of Earth.

Again not what the article does. If I have an equation and I plug in known variables and the only unknown variable is abiogenesis then I can calculate the lowest probability necessary for the equation to not result in zero as the answer.

X +Y = Z.

If I know X and I know Z then I can calculate what Y has to be to return Z. Read the below again and what I just said.

The probability of a civilization developing on a potentially habitable alien planet would have to be less than one in 10 billion trillion — or one part in 10 to the 22nd power — for humanity to be the first technologically advanced species the cosmos has ever known, according to the study.

The above is not trying to figure out the probability of abiogenesis. It is calculating what that unknown variable would have to be based on other known variables to result in an answer of 0. So the 1 over 10 to the 22nd power is what the unknown variable has to be to get to an answer of 0 other civilizations than Earth.

 

[modo]

Again not what the article does. If I have an equation and I plug in known variables and the only unknown variable is abiogenesis then I can calculate the lowest probability necessary for the equation to not result in zero as the answer.

X +Y = Z.

If I know X and I know Z then I can calculate what Y has to be to return Z.

you only know 1 of them as far as life goes.....

 

[modo]

here is an article from a theoretical astrophysicist that illustrates my point a bit....


https://www.forbes.com/sites/starts...umans-are-alone-in-the-universe/#6a0c12bb7d3b

here is part of it

In particular, there are a few steps that we simply don't know how frequently they occur. They clearly occurred here on Earth, but we haven't, as of yet, discovered anyplace else in the Universe where even one has occurred. These are the steps that lead us from non-living molecules to the complex, differentiated, intelligent species that we fancy ourselves to be.
This equates to two (in the Drake equation) unknowns that are absolutely necessary to reach the ultimate goal of intelligent aliens:

1. the likelihood of creating life from non-life on an Earth-like world,
2. and the likelihood of that life evolving into an intelligent, communicative, and possibly interstellar species.

In terms of raw probability, we have no idea how likely or unlikely these events are.

Sure, there are plenty of sensible things we can say about them. We can talk about the experiments we've done to create organic molecules from raw, inorganic ingredients. We can discuss the complex organic molecules we find in interstellar space or in meteorites. We can mention the tantalizing hints that worlds in our Solar System house about watery pasts, sub-surface liquid oceans, and potentially fossilized microbes. And we can look at the fact that, if we extrapolate the genetic information encoded in extant organisms back to the formation of the Earth, they indicate that what we consider "life" to be may have had its origin billions of years before our planet came into existence.

But none of that is reasonable for calculating a probability for the likelihood of life arising from non-life, given an Earth-like world. The odds may be extremely high, like a few percent, as some have estimated. But the odds could be catastrophically low: one-in-a-million, or even worse. Life could be incredibly rare. The fact that life exists on Earth does not mean we didn't win the cosmic lottery. We cannot draw a reasonable conclusion from a sample size of one.

....


This is not a surprise to anyone who has thought about the consequences of drawing sweeping conclusions from a position of insufficient evidence and ignorance. If you haven't thought about it, the main results is that you probably shouldn't do it if you care about your conclusions being based in facts.
You cannot simply state, "here are my estimates for these quantities" and then calculate how many civilizations you expect. What are the probability ranges for your estimates? How robust are they? What evidence backs them up?
The answer is "none."

 

[Warden of the Northeast]

If there's any sort of life in that water just imagine what could be under that ice on Europa...science is so cool.

 

[remydat]

you only know 1 of them as far as life goes.....

No I don't. In alegbra, If I know X (e.g. all the other components in the equation such as size of universe, age,) and I know the solution ie I want Z to be 0 then I can solve for Y.

In the article they are estimating all the other variables they can ie X and they know that Z is going to be 0 so they are solving for Y. Y in this case is the number 1 over 10 to the 22 power that civilized life has to be under in order to return 0 for Z.

Like this is basic math. They know other variables and they know the answer they want ie Z = 0 so they can calculate what Y has to be. That doesn't mean Y is actually 1 over 10 the 22 power. They are not actually calculating the true probability of Y. They are simply saying that as long as Y is not less than 1 over 10 to the power of 22 then life exists.

Get it yet? If not, ask you kid's algebra teacher as I honestly don't understand why this is hard to grasp unless you didn't actually read the article. I don't know what the probability of abiogenesis is. And nor do I need to because I am solving for that variable. All I know is it has to be less than 1 over 10 to the power of 22. I have no idea if it is or not. I just know if that is what it has to be then that is a very tiny fucking number.