EPTAsk and answer stupid questions here! - Page 190
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Ghostcom
Denmark4783 Posts
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ThomasjServo
15244 Posts
On February 02 2015 10:00 oneofthem wrote: best: alabama worst: boston idk lol GO SAWX! | ||
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Mutaller
United States1051 Posts
On February 02 2015 10:10 Ghostcom wrote: Baaaaawwwwwston accent worst accent. Valley girls are pretty damn annoying as well. I have no clue which accent is the best. Best accent is an Irish accent I choose Irish purely because Liam Neeson. | ||
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AbouSV
Germany1278 Posts
On January 31 2015 17:15 zatic wrote: "Would"? It looks like this: + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://www.nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Nuclear-Space-Detonation.gif) http://www.nerdist.com/2014/11/heres-what-a-nuclear-bomb-detonating-in-space-looks-like/ Higher in "space", it should look a bit the same... But with even less colour, but on the other hand there should be more of the ("Kelvin-Helmholtz") instability around that makes it look nicer than just round. But in any case for an explosion in space, don't expect to see that "ring" you see in films! It is an already stable state of matter in the vacuum (so to speak), and an explosion is anything but stable :p | ||
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fruity.
England1711 Posts
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Jormundr
United States1678 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23687 Posts
1. There is definitely alien life in the universe. 2. There is definitely not alien life in the universe. | ||
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Yoav
United States1874 Posts
It's a probability thing. Yeah, it's rare that a planet would be set up to house life, but the universe is a huge place. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the time and size scales are just enormous, and standard for life is actually pretty low. | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
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Dark_Chill
Canada3353 Posts
On February 04 2015 05:17 GreenHorizons wrote: Which position is more ridiculous 1. There is definitely alien life in the universe. 2. There is definitely not alien life in the universe. Both are kinda dumb, due to the "definitely part:, but the first one is far less dumb because of how big the universe is. | ||
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jello_biafra
United Kingdom6641 Posts
On February 04 2015 05:17 GreenHorizons wrote: Which position is more ridiculous 1. There is definitely alien life in the universe. 2. There is definitely not alien life in the universe. Number 2 is by far the more ridiculous statement given the vast scale of the cosmos. I'm looking for a short clip from a black American comedian's stand up show where he talks about people saying that the Nazis were nothing to fear "ain't shit" or something and then says how they would actually react if they were sent back in time to meet them. I had a feeling it was Richard Pryor for some reason but I'm unable to find it, anyone know what I'm talking about? | ||
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fruity.
England1711 Posts
On February 04 2015 07:56 jello_biafra wrote: Number 2 is by far the more ridiculous statement given the vast scale of the cosmos. Never quite understood the logic behind 'there is no other life in the universe'. It's too flippin big (understatement of the week right there), and life it too tenacious for there not to be. Science has shown that the complex organic compounds needed for life - at least as we currently understand it - is seeded from stars, mix in a little water, a planet in a habitable zone orbit. Dash of time.. And boom. The milky way galaxy is young comparatively speaking, yet here we are clinging to this rock spinning round the sun. Personally I feel there is more life out there than we could possibly imagine, and as out tech knowledge increases I'm sure we'll find it. The logical stance is to say "I don't know if there is other life out there", but well, look at the massive variety of life we have here on Earth, creatures that live at the bottom of the pacific ocean in crushing pressure and total darkness, to lichen that lives by boiling temperature geysers. And all this vast array of life on one tiny planet. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11769 Posts
Thus, the most important discovery we could possibly make is a) indicators that show that not all terrestrial life ultimately comes from the same source, or that there is ANY sort of non-terrestial life (even the shittiest amoeba fossil on mars would be enough), because that would show that the probability that life occurs is not extremely small in the first place. | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On February 04 2015 19:11 Simberto wrote: Yeah, but there are still arguments to be made for uncertainty. One data point is not really helpful in that regard, especially with the survivors bias. There is a lot of different life in all sorts of places on earth, but if all of that in the end trickles down to one source (Which is probably pretty hard to both prove or disprove), then the only thing that says is that once life is already existing, it spreads to all sorts of places (As long as there is water). This is not a statement about the probability of life occuring in the first place (which is what we need information about to talk about non-terrestrial life), but about its tendency to spread. Thus, the most important discovery we could possibly make is a) indicators that show that not all terrestrial life ultimately comes from the same source, or that there is ANY sort of non-terrestial life (even the shittiest amoeba fossil on mars would be enough), because that would show that the probability that life occurs is not extremely small in the first place. I don't feel it is that important to know if life comes from a single source or not. You could still argue that the conditions for it to happen are still very rare, but if you do happen to get the right condition, life can appear in parallel. Anyway, one data point is important, because it says the probability for life to appear on a planet isn't zero. So then either 1) Universe is infinite --> infinitely many planets --> infinitely many planets with life (as probability is larger than 0). Maybe not in the visible universe, but that wasn't the question. or 2) Universe is finite, containing N planets. If a) probability of having life on a planet is larger than 1/N (by at least a bit), we can expect life on other planets as well. b) probability is close to 1/N, then it is possible (but not guaranteed) that we are alone. c) probability is smaller than 1/N (by at least a bit), we probably wouldn't be here to start with. There is no reason to believe that 2b is the case, as there is no reason (known to us) for the probability be exactly 1/N, with all these orders of magnitude between these number. This is a case of fine-tuning issue. You COULD make a case for 2c with the anthropic principle, saying that there are (infinitely?) many universes, and most will not have life, but a few will have one planet with life. Even fewer universes will have two planets with life, etc. In that scenario, a random planet with life is likely to be the only planet with life in that universe. But there would ofc be life in other universes, so not really sure if that counts in the way the discussion is formulated. Anyway the multiverse idea doesnt have the slightest empirical evidence anyway, so I don't really feel that this possibility is worth much consideration. All in all, option 1 and 2a seem like the two most reasonable. The word ridiculous should probably be used cautiously in a handwaving and guessing discussion like this, but if we have to pick one, I'd say that there are good reasons to guess that there is other life in the universe (or very least multiverse). Note however, that the existence of other life doesn't mean that we will ever encounter it. For that you have to make a whole lot of new guesstimates of how long the average life lasts, to what distance they can emit/detect signals, whether there is a way around the speed-of-light issue and so on. And I will not go there.  Personally, I think it's a safe assumption that we won't encounter any aliens in our lifetime, and that we should focus on not making ourselves go extinct, to maybe still be alive if we get into contact with something in millions or billions of year or so. Or maybe we will even find primitive life in close by star systems in (tens or hundreds of) thousands of years, who knows??  | ||
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fruity.
England1711 Posts
On February 04 2015 22:06 Cascade wrote: whether there is a way around the speed-of-light issue and so on. An argument against ever finding other life in the universe is it's scale. If we can't break the speed of light how will we ever reach another galaxy 1 million light years away in any sort of meaningful time span? One theory goes that you have your little space ship. And rather than trying to move, compress space time at the front, and expand it at the rear. The ship itself wouldn't even be moving, therefore speed of light isn't an issue. Bullshit I hear some cry, it's total science fiction. A problem with space travel is radiation. Star Trek have their fancy shields to protect them. But now they can do just that.. The foundation has been laid for this very sorcery. link Science fiction becomes science fact it's just a matter of time. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11769 Posts
And Cascade, my point is that from a single point of data which only observes itself, you can not make any deduction as to the probability of that event. We can say that it is possible for life to exist. We can not say how likely it is to occur given the right circumstances. You don't even need multiple universes or anything along those lines. We exist. That is a fact. We wouldn't observe anything if we didn't exist, and thus we can not reasonably judge the probability of our own existance. 1) is weird because infinity is weird. Everything involving infinity tends to stop making sense, and thus i don't really think that an infinite universe (as opposed to a really big one) really makes sense as a concept. I would like to discuss on the base of a really large, finite universe (It can be shaped however, that doesn't really matter) We have absolutely no data to determine if 2a) or 2c) are the case, which makes the whole argument pretty futile. Which would make the discovery of even the tiniest speck of non-terrestrial life, or proof of the fact that terrestrial life did not all originate from one single first living thing an incredibly important discovery, because in that case we actually have data and could make a very strong case for 2a). So far we have not found any, but we also haven't really looked in a lot of places. | ||
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Dark_Chill
Canada3353 Posts
On February 04 2015 23:44 Simberto wrote: You don't need FTL if you have time. If you send out a colonizing ship, that colonizes a planet and sends out another wave of colonizing ships a thousand years later, you can still colonize the whole of the galaxy in a not-too long period of time (cosmologically speaking). Meaningful timespan is relative. There is a lot of time out there, and so far human history is just a minor, minor speck in that ocean of time. Millions of years are not that relevant in cosmic time, where stuff usually happens in the order of billions of years. Which brings you into the topic of the Fermi paradox, which is another utterly complicated issue in itself. And Cascade, my point is that from a single point of data which only observes itself, you can not make any deduction as to the probability of that event. We can say that it is possible for life to exist. We can not say how likely it is to occur given the right circumstances. You don't even need multiple universes or anything along those lines. We exist. That is a fact. We wouldn't observe anything if we didn't exist, and thus we can not reasonably judge the probability of our own existance. 1) is weird because infinity is weird. Everything involving infinity tends to stop making sense, and thus i don't really think that an infinite universe (as opposed to a really big one) really makes sense as a concept. I would like to discuss on the base of a really large, finite universe (It can be shaped however, that doesn't really matter) We have absolutely no data to determine if 2a) or 2c) are the case, which makes the whole argument pretty futile. Which would make the discovery of even the tiniest speck of non-terrestrial life, or proof of the fact that terrestrial life did not all originate from one single first living thing an incredibly important discovery, because in that case we actually have data and could make a very strong case for 2a). So far we have not found any, but we also haven't really looked in a lot of places. Aren't water bears pretty good evidence of life in the rest of the universe? | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18232 Posts
On February 05 2015 00:17 Dark_Chill wrote: Aren't water bears pretty good evidence of life in the rest of the universe? No. The question isn't where life can thrive here on earth, because ALL life we have found so far, including those weird bacteria that use sulphur instead of oxygen in (some) of their cells, is RNA and DNA based, and can thus reasonably be assumed to stem from one single point of origin. That it afterwards diversified into the most incredible niches says nothing about the probability of such an origin event. That said, the question posed is a false dichotomy, because both of the statements are ridiculous due to the inclusion of the word "definitely". I think it is more likely that there is life elsewhere in the visible universe. We are finding far more planets than we expected to find, and are finding far more planets and moons within our own solar system that are theoretically capable of supporting life AS WE KNOW IT (so imagine life as we don't know it and where that might thrive). However, it is still a probability game with far too many unknowns. We can guesstimate that we are in that guy above's situation of 2a, but insofar as we know, we could be in 2c and have an extremely weird anomalous event that caused life to originate here on earth. Maybe, and here we get spiritual (and I am an atheist, so clearly not my domain), that weird anomalous event was God. Or maybe there are intelligent aliens on a planet circling Alpha Centauri, looking up into the sky and asking whether they are alone. We simply do not know, and we don't even know enough to make an accurate guess. | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On February 04 2015 23:44 Simberto wrote: You don't need FTL if you have time. If you send out a colonizing ship, that colonizes a planet and sends out another wave of colonizing ships a thousand years later, you can still colonize the whole of the galaxy in a not-too long period of time (cosmologically speaking). Meaningful timespan is relative. There is a lot of time out there, and so far human history is just a minor, minor speck in that ocean of time. Millions of years are not that relevant in cosmic time, where stuff usually happens in the order of billions of years. Which brings you into the topic of the Fermi paradox, which is another utterly complicated issue in itself. And Cascade, my point is that from a single point of data which only observes itself, you can not make any deduction as to the probability of that event. We can say that it is possible for life to exist. We can not say how likely it is to occur given the right circumstances. You don't even need multiple universes or anything along those lines. We exist. That is a fact. We wouldn't observe anything if we didn't exist, and thus we can not reasonably judge the probability of our own existance. 1) is weird because infinity is weird. Everything involving infinity tends to stop making sense, and thus i don't really think that an infinite universe (as opposed to a really big one) really makes sense as a concept. I would like to discuss on the base of a really large, finite universe (It can be shaped however, that doesn't really matter) We have absolutely no data to determine if 2a) or 2c) are the case, which makes the whole argument pretty futile. Which would make the discovery of even the tiniest speck of non-terrestrial life, or proof of the fact that terrestrial life did not all originate from one single first living thing an incredibly important discovery, because in that case we actually have data and could make a very strong case for 2a). So far we have not found any, but we also haven't really looked in a lot of places. At least a few years ago, an infinite universe was a possibility in cosmology, related to the large scale metric of the universe. Not sure if anything has changed since, but I'm fine with restricting to a single finite universe. I'm arguing that, assuming a single finite universe, the single data point that we do exist is an argument for 2a. If you are familiar with Bayesian statistics, if you don't have a prior bias toward 2a or 2c, the small likelihood of 2c should push your posterior probability towards 2a. Essentially I am saying that we would have had to be extremely lucky to exists at all in 2c, while 2a doesn't require any such luck, so unless we have other argument for 2c, we should be leaning towards 2a, as we don't believe in extreme luck. I'm not willing to bet my life on this of course, and Definitely is a too strong word in this case. | ||
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