Water, Water Anywhere?

[Philboid Studge]

Cassini may have discovered liquid water (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-release-details.cfm?newsID=639) on the Saturn moon Enceladus. If true, this news falls somewhere between Pretty Goddamn Cool and Friggin' Bombshell.

Cool images, info here (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html).

[Smellyoldgit]

I've no idea how my late night porn surfing came across this little gem (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/cassini_negative_charged_water_ions_enceladus/), or how I found Philboid's long forgotten opener, but it does seem to confirm the original thoughts from 2006.

On a side note, I've always been disrespectful towards the asteroid (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/ice-on-an-asteroid/) theory of the origins of water on earth, so would the confirmation of the wet stuff being found around saturn discredit this idea in any way?

I have had a couple of Drambuies, so I may be engaging in a bit of cal-esque dot joining and will accept a reaming from any bastard more knowledgeable than I on such subjects. *cough* - Sterny?

[ghoulslime]

This comes as no surprise to Leprechaunists. We've always know that Titan's Ethane Lake is on of the favorite vacations spots for leprechauns.

Imagine if our fellow monkeys could stop breaking each others' heads over their imaginary friends and spent some money and effort trying to explore a little bit more the universe they live in!

[ILOVEJESUS]

I've no idea how my late night porn surfing came across this little gem (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/cassini_negative_charged_water_ions_enceladus/), or how I found Philboid's long forgotten opener, but it does seem to confirm the original thoughts from 2006.

On a side note, I've always been disrespectful towards the asteroid (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/ice-on-an-asteroid/) theory of the origins of water on earth, so would the confirmation of the wet stuff being found around saturn discredit this idea in any way?

I have had a couple of Drambuies, so I may be engaging in a bit of cal-esque dot joining and will accept a reaming from any bastard more knowledgeable than I on such subjects. *cough* - Sterny?
What I have read on the subject is pretty much inconclusive. There is a strong suspician water originated roughly at the same time as the rocks on earth formed our planet as opposed to arriving on comets after the earth had formed, ( due to water being slightly different from comets etc) and through the large amount of volcanic activity moved water to the atmosphere to form oceans and what not.
Water is likely to exist ( more so possibly than all the oceans on earth) on Europa. Ganymede and callisto too may harbour secret oceans beneath their surface due to Jupiter and the other moons pulling on the cores of these moons with their gravity. Ice on the moon is also a strong possibility at the poles of the moon.
Anyway it is more fascinating that on Titan, Saturns biggest moon it rains farts , huge oceans of them you know. (Methane).

[ubs]

Damn. I thought this was going to be about the Gulf.

[Kate]

:lol:

[psychodiva]

:lol:

on an almost side note- my often crazy husband is a believer in the asteroid theory of life / water etc - and sometimes includes long dead Martians in the theory too- tho at that point I very frequently have stopped listening so i may be wrong :D

[lostsheep]

This topic got me thinking....about life, then intelligent life, in the universe....If the universe is 14 billion years old, and our planet is about 4-5 billion years old...I am thinking that if conditions are similar elsewhere in the universe, then the evolution of life similar to ours, would have occurred at the same rate, approximately. And hence intelligent life, similar to ours, would evolve at about the same rate...then throughout the whole universe, other intelligent species would be at about the same place we are, technology wise...I know I am making a lot of assumptions here....but that would mean that super-advanced life forms (as compared to our own) would be very very unlikely...

[ILOVEJESUS]

This topic got me thinking....about life, then intelligent life, in the universe....If the universe is 14 billion years old, and our planet is about 4-5 billion years old...I am thinking that if conditions are similar elsewhere in the universe, then the evolution of life similar to ours, would have occurred at the same rate, approximately. And hence intelligent life, similar to ours, would evolve at about the same rate...then throughout the whole universe, other intelligent species would be at about the same place we are, technology wise...I know I am making a lot of assumptions here....but that would mean that super-advanced life forms (as compared to our own) would be very very unlikely...

There is common thought now, especially amongst those in SETI that once life becomes technically advanced, as we have for a short burst, it is a short window till said technology either becomes part of that biological life form, or surpasses it. With the advent of AI only decades away and the possibility to enhance our own bodies with technology too only decades away from becoming the norm , one can see that is a very distinct possibility. It also means the chance of getting involved with lifeforms like ourselves, or of the same level of intelligence and advancement is a very small window of opportunity. More chance of contacting or discovering a race of self aware computers etc.

[Victus]

This topic got me thinking....about life, then intelligent life, in the universe....If the universe is 14 billion years old, and our planet is about 4-5 billion years old...I am thinking that if conditions are similar elsewhere in the universe, then the evolution of life similar to ours, would have occurred at the same rate, approximately. And hence intelligent life, similar to ours, would evolve at about the same rate...then throughout the whole universe, other intelligent species would be at about the same place we are, technology wise...I know I am making a lot of assumptions here....but that would mean that super-advanced life forms (as compared to our own) would be very very unlikely...

I think this is generally correct, but there is a helluva wide margin of error on our estimates. We know there are limits on how old a species could be, because they couldn't be older than the universe, and probably couldn't have started to develop within, say, the first few billion years due to the conditions of the universe (radioactive soup). But this leaves a span of ~12 billion years in which star systems have existed. Our system is something like 4.7 billion years old, so in principle, there could have been life generating systems in existance for ~7.3 billion years before the sun even existed.

So, yes, there are limits to how much more advanced another species could be, but these limits might include numbers up to several billion years greater than our own history, making it entirely possible for dusty old super-advanced species to exist.

[dogpet]

Depending on the retarding god* factor, they may have invented worse than us.

[clambake]

So, yes, there are limits to how much more advanced another species could be, but these limits might include numbers up to several billion years greater than our own history, making it entirely possible for dusty old super-advanced species to exist.

This is just off the top of my head but there's also the issue of elements other than hydrogen being created from the novae of old stars, thus life was impossible for the first ??? billion years.

[Victus]

This is just off the top of my head but there's also the issue of elements other than hydrogen being created from the novae of old stars, thus life was impossible for the first ??? billion years.

That too, if we're limiting ourselves to live anything like us. The first 1-3 billion years of the universe are probably a lost cause in terms of generating life in the traditional sense.

[Jimble]

Correct me if i'm wrong, some stars burn out in only millions, not billions of years. These still undergo stellar necleosynthesis.

Not to mention if you ran the evolution of life on Earth over again you could come up with wildly different results, some intelligent technological species arriving much sooner potentially.

Similarly, technological evolution seems to progress orders of magnitude faster than biological evolution. If our own continues at this rate, devices from 500 years in the future would seem utterly astonishing. So even if an alien race was the same age as us, I don't see why they couldn't have become smarter sooner, or even if not, have a magic-seeming technology (thankyou Arthur C Clarke) and completely foreign chemistry.

So I'd bet almost all the human conceptions of an "alien race" are probably quite tame to what's really out there.

[Smellyoldgit]

Not sure how to take this. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15754786)

Scientists have found the best evidence yet for water just beneath the surface of Jupiter's icy moon, Europa. Analysis of the moon's surface suggests plumes of warmer water well up beneath its icy shell, melting and fracturing the outer layers. The results, published in the journal Nature, predict that small lakes exist only 3km below the crust.

Any liquid water could represent a potential habitat for life.
Part of me is excited at the thought of conditions for life existing elsewhere, but my darker side thinks it won't be long before the religotards start continue bullshitting about Walt Brown's hydroplate 'theory' (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hydroplate_theory)

[ILOVEJESUS]

Well we would have to see if the Europeans (lol) believe in an ark story too. With a 100km of water to play with under the ice crust, thin or not, the possibilities are quite exciting. I am not sure what would survive under the pressures of water and ice at many 10's of km's. But what may float around could be amazingly profound. We all know how creationists would explain it anyway. God did it. Simples.