Posted on 04/19/2002 6:07:56 AM PDT by Exnihilo
How could we, when the focus is on subsidizing the poor and increasing their numbers so as to insure a 'rat voter group?
For anyone that's interested here's a way to help with the research: Seti @ home
In fact, consciousness is SO important that...
All of existence is meaningless without consciousness in it...
It is consciousness that gives everything meaning and value...
I would suggest that God didn't make the universe for us. God made the universe for God -- for God's own purposes. To acknowledge that we somehow advance those purposes by our existence, and are even necessary for that process, doesn't sound like hubris to me.
Consciousness gives us the oppty to look for or assign meaning to things, indeed, but I think that death (the fact that all of us at one time didn't exist, and at some time in the future will again cease to exist) also gives everything meaning and value. I think that few immortals would ever ask "why am i here? what does life mean"?
Venus has no moon and Mars has two much smaller ones orbiting a different frequencies yet Venus "tilts" much less and Mars only very slightly more. Back to the drawing board on this one.
Without an extra-large moon orbiting at the right distance from us, scientists predict that Earth would be subject to a runaway greenhouse effect, as on Venus, or a permanent ice age, as Mars would experience if it had more water.
Omits that Venus is much closer to the Sun and Mars much further away, but the probably much more important difference of abundant life which has a dramatic effect on climate. Call it the weak Gaia hypothesis.
Anthropic Principle ... says that the features of the universe are constrained by the need to permit observers like us. The less delicate way to put this is to say that the universe appears to have been finely tuned in its fundamental force strengths, particle mass ratios, etc., for our benefit.
That's not less delicate, it's different and, if the author has actually read the book, the statement is an egregious case of spin (I could have put it less charitably). The latter is a religious statement (which I've heard called the Strong AP). The former (Weak AP) is a simple observation - the nature of the Universe must be compatible with our being here.
Fermi’s Paradox—Back in Style.
Seems like a slam dunk against alien civilizations in our galaxy. With an application of Weak AP you can probably draw another inference - a galaxy may only ever have one civilzation. Suppose "higher" life is quite rare so that it's very unlikely that two will arise in a brief period like that postulated for galactic colonization. Once one civilization is galaxy wide, it may be impossible for another to arise. That seems a likely outcome if humanity does so spread.
If that guess is correct then it's not surprising we don't see any others.
At time I have my doubts as to existance of intelligent life on this planet ;-)
Their book, "Rare Earth," C 2000, published by Springer-Verlag / Copernicus, is right here on my shelf if anyone wants to borrow it. It's still pretty current, although at the rate new data arrives, it will begin getting stale soon enough. I was pleased to see the book be published since it represented a break in the growing trend to believe in extraterrestrials.
Fermi's Paradox: If there are extraterrestrials, where are they?
It looks like we are alone. Usually things are as they appear to be.
BTW, your reference has an interesting proposal that the Moon may once have been a mere 20K from the Earth. By my calculation that corresponds to an orbital period of about 0.35 days. Obviously then the tides would have been much larger (the Moon being so much closer) but also would have gone "backward" relative to how they go today. (IOW they would propogate around the Earth faster than the Earth's rotation.) My intuition is that in that circumstance the Moon would have been attracted toward the Earth by tidal friction - the opposite effect of today with the Moon eventually crashing into the Earth. I'd conclude that, unless the Earth's day was very much shorter than today's, the Moon was never so close.
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