Anybody Out There? - Page 2

Victus · 04-27-2010, 06:52 AM

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just questions wrote

More likely, they, who have the technology to travel to us, would refuse to touch this shit. They might watch us with some faint amusement, just like we watch the dungbeetles labouring with their dung balls.

Quick, do something dramatic. Our ratings are falling!

Philboid Studge · 04-27-2010, 11:00 AM

PZM links to some blogviating on the subject here, and adds his two cents:

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If I were in charge of humanity's expansion into the universe, and if light-speed is the absolute limit it seems to be, I'd be sending out robot probes all right…all loaded with the biological seeds to impose human-compatible biospheres on any remotely human-compatible geospheres it encountered. It would bombard atmospheres with bacteria, sow the planet with algae, fungi, and lichens, and work its way up to grasses and trees and rodents and birds. And then it would start unspooling the stored genetic information of millions of humans into infants that would be raised onboard, educated by machines, and eventually transported onto the now hospitable planet surface to build a new technological civilization. Communication between planets would be limited and slow, and all the planning would be long-term — thousands to tens of thousands of years — so this wouldn't be so much the growth of a human empire, but an organic expansion.

I don't know about this plan. I agree with the robot probes--we should probably divert all resources currently poured into manned missions into cheaper, more efficient robotics. But bombarding atmospheres with bacteria sounds a little bit invasive. At the very least the probes should investigate whether there's already organic life there and then if there is, fuck off.

Victus · 04-27-2010, 12:50 PM

This is one of the drawbacks of looking for worlds we can land on and inhabit. If it's habitable, it's almost certainly already inhabited. I think I read somewhere that without organisms to produce it, an oxygen atmosphere can't/is unlikely to be generated spontaneously.

Way back when, Earth used to have purple oceans and green skies (I'm probably botching the colours), and you would die instantly upon taking your first breath.

Davin · 04-27-2010, 01:31 PM

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Victus wrote

Way back when, Earth used to have purple oceans and green skies (I'm probably botching the colours), and you would die instantly upon taking your first breath.

I don't remember anything about the colours.

IMO: Finding a planet all ready for us already is unlikely and finding it without life is even less likely. But finding a planet with breathable air and no technologically advanced species I think might be more likely than finding one with a technologically advanced species.

Smellyoldgit · 04-27-2010, 01:41 PM

Our perception of what types of lifeforms may be possible is obviously skewed towards what we currently understand about our own planet's development and evolution to date. We have no idea what types of life may be able to evolve under very different base conditions, unless one's a best selling sci-fi writer.

Victus · 04-27-2010, 01:49 PM

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Davin wrote

I don't remember anything about the colours.

I think I saw it in the context of a documentary on past mass extinctions, some of which alledgedly occured due to runaway greenhouse effects caused by algae, or something. The colours are probably wrong, but the point is that at various times, even Earth hasn't been particularly Earth-like by contemporary standards.

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Davin wrote

IMO: Finding a planet all ready for us already is unlikely and finding it without life is even less likely. But finding a planet with breathable air and no technologically advanced species I think might be more likely than finding one with a technologically advanced species.

Indeed. If Earth is any indicator, we're likely to stumble across a bunch of slime-matted worlds with breathable (if slightly off) atmospheres. Once in awhile we find some alien "animals" of some sort, some of which may demonstrate some level of intelligence (e.g., space dogs). The liklihood of stumbling across technological species depends on whether you believe they're/we're predisposed to destroying ourselves once the technological capacity is present.

Davin · 04-27-2010, 02:23 PM

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Victus wrote

I think I saw it in the context of a documentary on past mass extinctions, some of which alledgedly occured due to runaway greenhouse effects caused by algae, or something. The colours are probably wrong, but the point is that at various times, even Earth hasn't been particularly Earth-like by contemporary standards.

I meant that I don't remember what the colors were but that isn't what I said. I remember it being said that the colors were different, and it makes sense to me that different mixes of chemicals in the atmosphere would change the color of sky. Same for the water.

I don't think anything is predisposed to anything specific. I mean that I don't think a technological species is predisposed to destroying themselves, but I do think that a man with his foot nailed to the floor is predisposed to walking in circles. I don't think that intelligent life must always go through the same crap we have gone through... maybe they had only one religion for the entire planet and they killed anyone who didn't believe and they stayed that way for millions of years. Or maybe they never had even come up with the concept of a god... I can always speculate.

just questions · 04-27-2010, 02:54 PM

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Victus wrote

Quick, do something dramatic. Our ratings are falling!

Not my words. I once talk to a friend of mine, a theoretical physics scientist, about this. He thought that or noone would be able to travel so far pratically in the end, or the one that can travel so far/fast would be so advanced that we look more like ants to them, a species that is worth more to watch than to communicate with.
OK, the ants part may be exaggeration, but the last part makes sense to me. If you could travel to a far away planet and found some Homo Erectus there, what would you like to do?