Posted by jnord 17 hours ago
The reality we will never be able to replicate creation of life nor find life on other planets (except via contamination). it's why we've never gotten any closer. and i'm not even religious
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASP-39b
There are astronomers actively working on minor component, more biologically interesting spectrographs like chlorophyll rather than spectrograms of carbon dioxide. That'll be harder to detect and limited to shorter ranges.
At some point, probably very soon, like less than a decade, we'll be able to definitively state that we have atmospheric data in an onion layer shaped shell where we have unequivocable proof that out to X lightyears from Earth there's no planetary scale chlorophyll higher than a minimal level aka there's no earth-like plants on that planet. That shell will likely expand over time. Or, perhaps we will find a forested, or at least algae covered, planet, some light years away, which would be very interesting indeed.
The question is rapidly changing from a purely philosophical belief to scientific observation, like right now, in real time, in the 2020s. What a cool time to be alive!
This follows old, old stuff from radio astronomy along the lines of how far away could a 1960s radio telescope realistically detect life on earth. The answer IIRC was not very far LOL. But there's been a lot of progress in radio astronomy, etc.
With respect to fermi filters etc people need to pay attention to how far away the Earth can be detected using radio telescopes. That distance has imploded since the end of analog UHF TV broadcasts. We still broadcast absolute swill, in fact more than ever, but digital detection range is much lower than analog AM carrier detection range from analog TV. The Earth has, to some extent, recently gone radio-quiet, which is interesting because we are still here, in fact more of us than ever. So WRT fermi filters of not being able to detect civilizations, disappearance of 1950s/1960s signals does not necessarily imply disappearance of civilization. Another example, if any aliens are watching the high altitude freon contamination of our atmosphere they're likely really confused right about now.
But high level life was likely a series of complex accidents that is not reproducible or would be radically different than us
One of my absolute favorite PBS Space Time on the subject
What is the basis for this assertion?
* https://www.science.org/content/article/lab-created-spudcell...
somewhere among 2 TRILLION planets in our galaxy there is a planet with enough atmosphere and magnetosphere to protect it from space radiation so there is likely bacteria
but complex life far more difficult and unlikely, very rare, as explained in the PBS Space Time I linked above, the "Cambrian Explosion"
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
if there are viruses and fungi out there however, they could mutate eventually with enough permutations and outside stressors
that video explains the huge leap forward with DNA vs simple protein patterns
> somewhere among 2 TRILLION planets in our galaxy there is a planet with enough atmosphere and magnetosphere to protect it from space radiation so there is likely bacteria
I reject this conclusion; it certainly isn't justified by the links you provided.
why would Earth be that incredibly unique?
it's even plausible Earth was accidentally seeded by panspermia (bacteria on comets)
Your reversal of burden of proof is a red flag that you don't have a good argument.
IMO, it is quite plausible that OoL is extremely unlikely and that our solar system is the only place where life occurs in the visible universe. Not proved, of course, but the possibility is by no means unreasonable.
but it's pointless to go any further I guess as it's getting outside science
the weak anthropic principle can't be falsified so it cannot be argued
I don't think we'll ever hear from "ET" but I do think it's perfectly plausible to find single-celled or simple bacteria elsewhere someday (ie. Europa, comet or asteroid)
As I see it life was clearly designed by God.
Theistic Evolution is wide-enough belief, especially with Protestants.
Something exists. Therefore, on of the following 3 must hold: “one or more things exists or have existed which were not a consequence of another thing existing”, “an infinite regress of things existing as a consequence of other things”, “a cycles of consequences”.
The purported absurdity of life arising by chance is not about life existing, but about it arising by chance as a consequence of other non-living things.
The idea that god coming from nothing is absurd, well, that absurdity seemingly has to apply somewhere, as all 3 cases of the trichotomy above seem around as absurd? Eventually something has to be without explanation, whether it be a thing or a chain or cycle of things.
Or, were you not aware that most people who believe that God exists believe that God is the first cause?
Apparently you weren’t aware of that, because you said something about magic and stardust??
Yes, wide-bosomed Gaia, foundation of us all, this research is about the manner in which She did it, if it was one birth or two.
Or is that the joke and I'm missing it?
Which one? There are so many to choose from...
And what created that God? I know it's turtles all the way down but still want to know.
Personally, I don't believe in any religions. They were all developed before we had a much clearer idea of how our world works and there's just too much folklore mixed in with actual, yet primitive, philosophical discussions to abide by any of it. But like with the simulation theory, we have no way to know what exists outside our time and space so you shouldn't worry. If there is some bored extra dimensional teenager simulating our universe on their GPU, it ultimately doesn't matter because we'll never know.
What we learn from these philosophies is that God is necessarily the author of life and love, but as well hatred and destruction. Worth noting that the latter are most (but not exclusively) expressed in human conduct. Among all animals humans have the most developed ability to decide how to act. That ability is not absolute, often enough logic or reasoning is bypassed and emotion rules.
Naturally cognition is not unbounded, we are limited by constraints of our construction. It means aspects of the universe are unknowable, we can't know what we're missing.
But knowing what we can know is an obligation of our privileged existence. As knowledge expands it exposes the utter complexity of all things emerging from common fundamental processes.
Seeing what is seen, a human may for a moment get a glimpse of the hand that binds everything together. That's a gift if there ever was one.
Argument by ridicule is a fallacy.
> even more so than thinking that a computer chip was created by chance erosion of a silicone wafer in exactly the right pattern.
But, as I'm sure you have been told many times, that's an absurd strawman, and suggests that you didn't read TFA or anything else that discusses how life may have arisen, including any of the other comments here. Life didn't spring up fully formed, it developed in stages.
> As I see it
I can't think of anything less compelling.
> life was clearly designed by God.
That is semantically incoherent, as well as being a violation of HN guidelines ("Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.")