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On September 13 2011 06:06 sh4w wrote:
I believe Stephen Hawking theorized that with how fast and efficiently life began on Earth, it would be silly to assume that there were no other instances like Earth in the universe. I believe that if these planets CAN support life on them that we WILL find life on them. I think this is the next big venture for mankind...I really hope that we are doing everything we can to make reaching other worlds possible.
The idea that if a planet can support life we will find life on it is not logical from all data we have. For that to be true we should see evidence of life starting on earth continuously but its not.
The complexity of a simple single cell is amazing. I believe the smallest combination of genes we have found in a living cell is around 600 in an algae, which should be roughly 400 times less than a human has. We don't see things coming together and almost forming life or anything like that. My biology professor said that biologists in general think we don't see new life forming because there are so many efficient "killing machines" that it doesn't take hold, but granted that it also must be a very rare, very specific circumstance for the life on this planet to have come about.
Most of the talk of life being everywhere is almost a cult-like religious following. Its weird because its like atheism as a religion with the need to show that life erupts everywhere. Why not just study and see and figure out what it would take? Because we haven't figured that out yet...
I think all the data suggests that we will the galaxy a lonely place. We could get lucky though and the only planet with life in our galaxy could be somewhat close in the Orion arm. One thing that we should remember is that our sun is really big for a star (88.6% of stars are classified in sizes smaller than the sun) and most stars are tiny red dwarves (78%) and if we are going to look for similar situations there aren't near as many as just saying planets in the habitable zone. Start looking at similar stars with similar planets, but I mean...if life is as common as so many people want to believe we should find floating organisms in Venus's clouds or underground on Mars or in the ocean on Europa. However, this seems to be wishful thinking at this point.
Let's work on sub light speed travel and figure out how to get some exploration done of our neighbor stars and see what we see. If we could get a probe to 30% of light speed it would only take about 13 years of travel time to get to our neighbors and then there would be a reasonable wait for the transmissions to start coming in on what the probe sees. Although the next generation of telescopes are going to be telling us a ton more about what's out there in less than 10 years.
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On April 24 2014 03:31 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
Ideally you could send robots ahead of the colonization fleet before you move out. Ships with only robotic factories can be cheaper and travel faster than human ships since they don't need any pesky life support stuff. That way when the humans arrive they can have at least housing and a surveyed planet ready and waiting for them. By the time we can send a colony ship I'm pretty sure computers should be able to handle setting up factories and mining operations on their own.
Step 1: Send a couple of drone fleets that begin basic things like survey work, building landing pads and housing, setting up basic factories and if they are able to strip mine resources.
Step 2: Send a small contingent of human engineers (100-200 or so, enough that social problems aren't to harsh. They can live in a colony ship and then a smaller spaceport) that should arrive ~30-50 years before main colony fleet together with another drone fleet. These guys set up robot mining operations, more advanced facilities (basically the previous drones have dug out and set up houses, these guys make the hospitals etc).
Step 3: Main colony fleet arrives.
Since different ships can go at different speeds you can basically send all of them at once too.
Don't you think by the time we colonize space with spaceships, we'll have the technology to make drones that are better builders than engineers..?
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On April 24 2014 08:21 Eliezar wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2011 06:06 sh4w wrote:
I believe Stephen Hawking theorized that with how fast and efficiently life began on Earth, it would be silly to assume that there were no other instances like Earth in the universe. I believe that if these planets CAN support life on them that we WILL find life on them. I think this is the next big venture for mankind...I really hope that we are doing everything we can to make reaching other worlds possible. The idea that if a planet can support life we will find life on it is not logical from all data we have. For that to be true we should see evidence of life starting on earth continuously but its not. The complexity of a simple single cell is amazing. I believe the smallest combination of genes we have found in a living cell is around 600 in an algae, which should be roughly 400 times less than a human has. We don't see things coming together and almost forming life or anything like that. My biology professor said that biologists in general think we don't see new life forming because there are so many efficient "killing machines" that it doesn't take hold, but granted that it also must be a very rare, very specific circumstance for the life on this planet to have come about. Most of the talk of life being everywhere is almost a cult-like religious following. Its weird because its like atheism as a religion with the need to show that life erupts everywhere. Why not just study and see and figure out what it would take? Because we haven't figured that out yet... I think all the data suggests that we will the galaxy a lonely place. We could get lucky though and the only planet with life in our galaxy could be somewhat close in the Orion arm. One thing that we should remember is that our sun is really big for a star (88.6% of stars are classified in sizes smaller than the sun) and most stars are tiny red dwarves (78%) and if we are going to look for similar situations there aren't near as many as just saying planets in the habitable zone. Start looking at similar stars with similar planets, but I mean...if life is as common as so many people want to believe we should find floating organisms in Venus's clouds or underground on Mars or in the ocean on Europa. However, this seems to be wishful thinking at this point. Let's work on sub light speed travel and figure out how to get some exploration done of our neighbor stars and see what we see. If we could get a probe to 30% of light speed it would only take about 13 years of travel time to get to our neighbors and then there would be a reasonable wait for the transmissions to start coming in on what the probe sees. Although the next generation of telescopes are going to be telling us a ton more about what's out there in less than 10 years.
Your counter-logic doesn't make much sense. How do you know that there isn't new life forming all the time? It's microscopic. You wouldn't be able to see it form out in the ocean or in the depths of the earth's mantle because you don't have microscopes there all the time looking at organic particles and lipid membranes floating into and out of existence. Any life that did form would take millions and millions of years to evolve into a macroscopic life form. How long has science been around? About 500 years. How on earth (pun intended) do you propose to have found new life forms evolving in that time period?
There are plenty of very simple organisms and an increasing number of theories proposed for how those life forms would have come about. If you are arguing that we don't have a whole bunch of transitional forms from non-life lipid membranes to "living" organisms that too is pretty weak. Any transitional form would likely not last very long, as it needs a stable way to reproduce in order to be a living thing.
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On April 23 2014 23:12 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2014 22:27 FFW_Rude wrote:
I guess if we could build a ship to go there, i believe it would make so much years that population would have to renew itself ON BOARD of the ship, so you would need a vessel way over 40K people capacity.
Also i wonder in how many years 40K different people would start to have cross genes (i mean you know, if you breed in the same family you have a chance of the child being... retarted (sorry i don't know the english word but you understand what i mean). If we model this in a perfect scenario... 20k men, 20k women, each couple has 2 kids, averaging out to 1 boy and 1 girl. If we assume no cross-generational mating, there are now 20k men and 20k women that can have kids with 19,999 of the opposite sex without fear of inbreeding. Every generation, this subtraction doubles, 3rd generation has 19,998, 4th 19,996, 5th 19,992, and so on. You have to get to the 13th generation in this perfect world to have a pool of about half of potential mating partners. By the 4th generation or so, though, most defects are negligible (you theoretically only share 0.002% of significant inherited genetic material with 4th cousins), which leaves the idealized chance of mating with somebody undesirable at 1 in 19,996, or 0.005% of dangerous inbreeding in every generation if done randomly. Of course, this increases as more imperfections are added to the model, but 40k people is more than enough to maintain enough genetic diversity to not have significant problems with birth defects. One might have to establish some sort of rules or regulations that ensure inbreeding doesn't occur, but it shouldn't exactly be common.
Wow, i wasn't thinking someone would take the time to calculate  That's really interesting.
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On April 23 2014 23:27 FallenStar wrote:
There's no need to make a gigantic space ship that could support more than 40K people, we could just as easily build more ships of lesser size, and it would be more safe that way (if one of the ships is destroyed, there are others still en route to the other planet).
About the social problems being in a space ship with no way out causes, if there's more than one ship, you could move to one of the others vessels in case there's any problem of importance (like, someone threatened to kill you, or something). If the ships are still large enough, it would be just like living in a small village, so this topic probably doesn't deserve much attention, apart from the fact that you're stuck in space. I think the best way to overcome this is by either educating children so that they love being in space, or at least, they don't feel deppresed about it, or by putting them in hibernation, which would solve any problem about this topic because they'd be effectively dead.
Lastly, I'm sure we'll find a way to overcome inbreeding by the time we're capable of interstellar travel, so maybe we won't need 40k people in spaceships in the first place, maybe only a thousand or so. Or we may even be able to just send robots and make them artificially create humans (robot sex :D).
P.S.: All of this is, of course, just a random guy from the internet theorycrafting. So I'm probably wrong :D
Well you have problems with lots of ships. Every ship would have is own "mini governement" and you would have rivalties to deal with etc...
EDIT : Are we COMPLETLY out of topic here ?
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On April 24 2014 08:29 SC2Toastie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2014 03:31 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
Ideally you could send robots ahead of the colonization fleet before you move out. Ships with only robotic factories can be cheaper and travel faster than human ships since they don't need any pesky life support stuff. That way when the humans arrive they can have at least housing and a surveyed planet ready and waiting for them. By the time we can send a colony ship I'm pretty sure computers should be able to handle setting up factories and mining operations on their own.
Step 1: Send a couple of drone fleets that begin basic things like survey work, building landing pads and housing, setting up basic factories and if they are able to strip mine resources.
Step 2: Send a small contingent of human engineers (100-200 or so, enough that social problems aren't to harsh. They can live in a colony ship and then a smaller spaceport) that should arrive ~30-50 years before main colony fleet together with another drone fleet. These guys set up robot mining operations, more advanced facilities (basically the previous drones have dug out and set up houses, these guys make the hospitals etc).
Step 3: Main colony fleet arrives.
Since different ships can go at different speeds you can basically send all of them at once too. Don't you think by the time we colonize space with spaceships, we'll have the technology to make drones that are better builders than engineers..?
Engineers are not construction workers, if that's what you're implying. Farrrrrrrrrrrrr from it.
I think you mean construction work though, right?
Future robots could potentially do a fair amount of construction work, but you can't replace the work that goes into engineering with dumb build bots. As it's kind of what I do, I can assure you, while we're far, far away from having robots replace construction work, we're infinitely far away from having them replace engineers, as well as the underlying sciences. Robots cannot replace that ingenuity and creativity.
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Howcome we aren't detecting alien radio signals? I've never really found a satisfying answer to that question, maybe somebody can help me out.
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On April 24 2014 17:52 Crushinator wrote:
Howcome we aren't detecting alien radio signals? I've never really found a satisfying answer to that question, maybe somebody can help me out.
That is a reaaallly vague question to ask Maybe Aliens don't use radio signals 
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or the universe is just too large
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On April 24 2014 17:57 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2014 17:52 Crushinator wrote:
Howcome we aren't detecting alien radio signals? I've never really found a satisfying answer to that question, maybe somebody can help me out. That is a reaaallly vague question to ask Maybe Aliens don't use radio signals
Why wouldn't they? It would seem to me that radio signals would be part of any intelligent species path of technological advancement. It would also seem to me that our planet would be of interest to other intelligent species, as it should be apparent to them it can support life when they do detect it, so they would have an interest in aiming shit at us. Considering the number of intelligent species suggested by people like Sagan, it seems strange that we aren't getting anything at all.
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On April 24 2014 17:52 Crushinator wrote:
Howcome we aren't detecting alien radio signals? I've never really found a satisfying answer to that question, maybe somebody can help me out.
http://zidbits.com/2011/07/how-far-have-radio-signals-traveled-from-earth/
TLDR: Signals get much weaker compared to distance travelled. Unless aimed right at us, probably wouldn't see them unless within a few light years. Random website but sounds reasonable.
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On April 24 2014 17:57 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2014 17:52 Crushinator wrote:
Howcome we aren't detecting alien radio signals? I've never really found a satisfying answer to that question, maybe somebody can help me out. That is a reaaallly vague question to ask Maybe Aliens don't use radio signals
Out of curiosity, how easily detectable are our radio signals (or other artificially generated electromagnetic waves) from several light years away?
edit: nvm already answered
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On April 24 2014 18:04 Crushinator wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2014 17:57 FFW_Rude wrote:On April 24 2014 17:52 Crushinator wrote:
Howcome we aren't detecting alien radio signals? I've never really found a satisfying answer to that question, maybe somebody can help me out. That is a reaaallly vague question to ask Maybe Aliens don't use radio signals Why wouldn't they? It would seem to me that radio signals would be part of any intelligent species path of technological advancement. It would also seem to me that our planet would be of interest to other intelligent species, as it should be apparent to them it can support life when they do detect it, so they would have an interest in aiming shit at us. Considering the number of intelligent species suggested by people like Sagan, it seems strange that we aren't getting anything at all.
Well it would be if they are like us. But they could not need them sine ... random specifics or not be advandced enough. And i believe radio signals gets weaker in space or something
EDIT : oh ninjad
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I believe we will find life on other planets at some point. Not intelligent life, but bacteria or other simple life forms. I believe we have found traces of life on Mars which is only barely in the habitable zone so why not on one of these exoplanets?
Intelligent life tho, that's a different story. If we look at how short the time frame is that humans live on earth compared to how long earth, the galaxy or even the universe exists, it really only is a glimpse. And we might very well go extinct in a couple thousand years.
In order to communicate with intelligent life on other planets, we would have to be very lucky that these civilizations exist in the same time frame AND use the same kind of communication technology. It gets even more unlikely if you think about how long radio signals take to travel. If there was another civilization out there that sends radio signals in our direction, we might never detect them because by the time the signals reach us, we might not use radio anymore. Maybe space-archeology will become a thing in a couple hundred years tho
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As others have said, Space is mind bogglingly big. While there is almost certainly other intelligent life out there the chance they are near enough to us to be detectable is tiny.
That is before we factor in the chance of them using detectable signals in the first place. While it may be normal for us to think about radio signals there is no guarantee that radio is somehow required for technology to advance, it depends on so many social factors how a civilization advances it is hard to predict what form they will take.
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There were actually some very interesting points being made in that article Moonfire posted. I thought I would quote it here for easy reference:
So Why Does SETI Bother To Listen To Radio Signals In Space?
While no alien civilization is likely to pick up our television or radio broadcasts unless they’re within a few light-years, radio signals can be focused and amplified. Most of our broadcasts were not intended for detection in space. Radio signals can be aimed, focused and amplified to mitigate signal degradation for interstellar communication. These signals would also eventually degrade but are able to travel much, much further before degradation occurs. Hundreds of light-years or more depending on how much power is used.
It’s now becoming possible to detect the atmospheric composition of extrasolar planets. This breakthrough has allowed researchers to narrow down our hunt for earth-like worlds. It’s quite possible that an advanced alien culture can also do this, and detected an abundance of water in our atmosphere. If they have, they may have sent a focused radio message in our direction. If we’re not listening though, we may just miss it.
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I'm going to read that article. It sounds interesting.
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On April 25 2014 00:01 FFW_Rude wrote:
I'm going to read that article. It sounds interesting.
Actually there is a second, quite fascinating article written on the same blog about Warp drives (specifically the Alcubierre warp drive). Just completely fascinating stuff about what the current level of research (string theory) says about how feasible they are. If string theory is true, it is easier to do than before, and the speeds you could travel are unbelievably fast. From the article:
However, if you could travel at that speed, you would be able to reach the edge of the visible universe (14 billion light years) in 4.4 femtoseconds flat.
Here's a link.
I also enjoyed the article on what life is like for a photon . Anyway back to my work.
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That website actually has a load of interesting stuff. Thanks for making me google stuff to find it
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Gliese 832, also known as HD 204961 or LHS 3685, is a M1.5 dwarf located in the constellation Grus, about 16 light-years from Earth. It has about half the mass and radius of the Sun. This star is already known to harbor Gliese 832b, a cold Jupiter-like planet discovered in 2009. “With an outer giant planet and an interior potentially rocky planet, this planetary system can be thought of as a miniature version of our Solar System,” said Prof Chris Tinney, an astronomer with the University of New South Wales and a co-author of the discovery paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The newly discovered exoplanet, labeled Gliese 832c, has an orbital period of 35.68 days, a mass 5.4 times that of Earth’s and receives about the same average energy as Earth does from the Sun. Gliese 832c might have Earth-like temperatures, albeit with large seasonal shifts, given a similar terrestrial atmosphere. “If the planet has a similar atmosphere to Earth it may be possible for life to survive, although seasonal shifts would be extreme,” Prof Tinney said. A denser atmosphere, something expected for Super-Earths, could easily make this planet too hot for life and a Super-Venus instead. ![[image loading]](http://cdn4.sci-news.com/images/2014/06/image_2029_4-GJ-832c.jpg)
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EPT
