Absent repetitive environmental collapse/extinctions events amphibians would probably still be the dominant species. And after 350 million years they would likely be highly evolved.
Posted on 11/20/2013 9:33:30 AM PST by Dysart
THE recent announcement by a team of astronomers that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable planets in our galaxy has further fueled the speculation, popular even among many distinguished scientists, that the universe is teeming with life.
The astronomer Geoffrey W. Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, an experienced planet hunter and co-author of the study that generated the finding, said that it “represents one great leap toward the possibility of life, including intelligent life, in the universe.”
But “possibility” is not the same as likelihood. If a planet is to be inhabited rather than merely habitable, two basic requirements must be met: the planet must first be suitable and then life must emerge on it at some stage.
What can be said about the chances of life starting up on a habitable planet? Darwin gave us a powerful explanation of how life on Earth evolved over billions of years, but he would not be drawn out on the question of how life got going in the first place. “One might as well speculate about the origin of matter,” he quipped. In spite of intensive research, scientists are still very much in the dark about the mechanism that transformed a nonliving chemical soup into a living cell. But without knowing the process that produced life, the odds of its happening can’t be estimated.
When I was a student in the 1960s, the prevailing view among scientists was that life on Earth was a freak phenomenon, the result of a sequence of chemical accidents so rare that they would be unlikely to have happened twice in the observable universe. “Man at last knows he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he has emerged only by chance,” ... Today the pendulum has swung dramatically..
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Absent repetitive environmental collapse/extinctions events amphibians would probably still be the dominant species. And after 350 million years they would likely be highly evolved.
And as in your scenario, constructing an artificial atmosphere in order to allow habitation, would itself prove that the native setting is not suitable for our existence.
By your definition it is the artificially devised environment supporting life, and perhaps technologically achievable, still, it is not the native one and doesn't imply Mars is then inhabitable.
At minimum maybe they have a great recipe for Shepherd's Pie.
The chance of a single cell evolving by chance into life is about one in one trillion. The chance of that single cell evolving into sentience about one in one trillion. So a trillion times a trillion = one sextillion. Divide 40 billion by one sextillion = .000001% chance that life exists elsewhere in our galaxy. Not likely - we are the lottery winners at least here in the Milky Way, maybe in the entire Universe.
Yes, delving deep into to such complexity makes it seem very unlikely and even less so that we’d be able to discover it. I do suspect there is life out there somewhere, though not nearly as confident we will ever discover, much less, connect with it.
There should’ve been millions of inhabited planets and so many radio voices it would sound like static. Instead - nothing. Something doesn’t add up...
There should’ve been millions of inhabited planets and so many radio voices it would sound like static. Instead - nothing. Something doesn’t add up...
I’m going with program loop that’s been running for billions of years..
Ban faculty lounges!
If only three ants lived on planet earth, one in the Americas, one in Japan, and one in Africa, they would each be effectively alone.
We may have the same predicament in regard to other life in the universe. It may very well exist, but be so far away that it just doesn’t matter.
Stars are ~8 light years apart from each other. Unless physics allows us to increase the speed of a spacecraft by multiple magnitudes, we are looking at 36,000 years to cover the distance from just one star to another.
I'm one of those who also believe in the truth of mathematical odds. I am certain there is other intelligent life in the universe. That same data will tell us that we are closer to the middle of that intelligence rating line than either end.
For any disbelievers I have a bet for you. I'll bet you at the odds of 40 billion to one, that any specific team in the NFL will win the superbowl next year. As long as I can place that bet I'll put one dollar down on each team.
Save your dollar, and don't bet on the Lions.
Life may indeed be plentiful, in a sense, though the process that allows it to happen requires thousands of separate events to coincide.
The Drake Equation is replaced by the newer Rare Earth Equation.
Yet, even so, even though life may be not common, but plentiful, intelligent life may be almost unheard of.
It's a horror book, once you read it and understand the implications.
But it does explain the Fermi Paradox.
I do suspect that there is dust on the moon, though not nearly as confident we will ever know for sure. Words that were probably spoken a hundred years ago.
The universe is probably a bit older than 10 billion years, but the big thing to remember is that life requires elements that did not exist until supernovae created them. That is gonna shrink the time window considerably.
I have always though the infinite scope and age of the universe proves we are alone.
An infinite space with nearly infinite time has failed to generate even one being to reach out and communicate with us?
We are alone— with God.
That’s good enough for me.
The only evidence we have is that advanced intelligence development requires a tribal war making disposition driven by vanity and envy. An advanced civilization out there would not likely be our friend. We're asking for it broadcasting non-random appearing signals indiscriminately. Our Milky Way could very well be a nasty neighborhood.
I’m with you. I’m a lot more optimistic about human potential. Technologically we’re probably within a generation of being able to send a craft to the Alpha Centauri system within a century but costs are astronomical.
The ‘others’ probably figured out a long time ago that they could communicate instantaneously (or at the very least order of magnitude faster than light speed) by using separated/paired particles Even binary code can be sent instantaneously from one star to another via this paired particles method using ‘action at a distance’ technology.
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