Religions > Atheism > If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search?
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Sound of Trumpet" |
| Date: |
03 Jan 2007 07:09:09 AM |
| Object: |
If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_post-darwinist_archive.html
Friday, December 08, 2006
MORE Quick posts: Recent events in the intelligent design controversy
I have decided to give up apologizing for being absent a couple of days
at a time. Basically, blogging is a volunteer activity. When I am not
here, I am off making a living as a writer somewhere. Recently, for
example, I have been researching the importance of zero as an integer
on the number line. I'm glad to know that something in the universe
besides my bank account usually corresponds to zero. Things are not as
crazy as they seem.
=A6 The Britrags (British media) are outdoing themselves to report all
sorts of irresponsible crap about the Brit ID group, . And, of course,
the educrats, terrified by the prospect that materialism is not the
default religion of - oops, did I say Britain? - of the EU, are
abetting whatever nonsense blows through.
I have been meaning to blog on this, and here is my view:
- materialism is collapsing. The big project to explain everything in
materialist terms is not working, and ever crazier theories ensue.
Bureaucrats attempt to keep this fact from students, like it was a
family scandal or something. Well, come to think of it ...
Mind cannot be reduced to matter and mathematics cannot be reduced to
turnips. However, many turnips will be injured in the attempts ...and
worse still, the integers will come out unscathed - talk about
injustice!
- Vast numbers of Brit educrats, adminbots, and pols basically know
that their duty is to front materialism to the public. Go here, here,
and here for examples.
Actually, it wouldn't matter what the facts suggest. All these people
merely know that science is nothing but applied materialism, and they
are justified in collecting taxes from a non-materialist public to
promote it as such. For their own good.
=A6 Today's Word of the Day from Merriam-Webster was "retronym",
which means a noun with a modifier (adjective) which references the
original meaning of the noun. The example given is "rotary phone." You
young ones may never have seen a rotary dial phone, but that's how we
used to do it in the Age of Analog. The dictionary records as the first
evidence of use of the term the practice of then-president of National
Public Radio, Frank Mankiewicz, of collecting what he calls
"retronyms," identified by William Safire in a 1980 New York Times
column. I wonder when Darwinism and other -isms will collect retronym
adjectives like " twentieth-century natural selection" to describe some
entirely improbable series of events in the history of life that are
supposed to have been naturally selected.
=A6 Recently, there has been a bit of a puff about what life found on
Mars would mean for old time religion. Well, what would it mean?
Surely, that largely depends on what the life in question turns out to
be?
Would you change your religion if sand dollars fossils were found on
Mars?
You would? Oh give it a rest! You really wanted an excuse to change
your religion to one that allows you to two-time your sweetie-hoo, but
doesn't allow him/her to do the same thing. Hey, Aunt Denyse knows what
you do when she's not around.
As C.S. Lewis pointed out over sixty years ago, religion is primarily
concerned with the choices made by conscious beings with free will. We
actually don't have anything to discuss until we find such beings that
are not from this planet. And then we need to see how their history
relates to ours.
A friend raises an interesting question, though: If life on Mars is a
big religious question, should governments fund the search for an
answer? Why? Apart from religion and philosophy, why does it matter if
there are bacteria fossils on Mars? I don't mind paying for an answer
to the question, but I am not sure how to justify it to fellow
taxpayers who - understandably preoccupied with more pressing problems
- do not really care.
Reality check: Life on Mars will likely turn out to be bacteria,
possibly the result of contamination between Earth and Mars during the
early period when the planets were less stable and bacteria were
already on the scene, amazingly enough.
=A6 Recently, I was on a radio show with someone who insisted that many
of the 600-plus scientists who signed the Discovery Institute's
statement dissenting from Darwinism (not from evolution, mind, but from
design-free Darwinism) were not "really" scientists, but engineers. As
a matter of fact, degrees in systems engineering at the University of
Waterloo are called degrees in "applied science." I will hardly be
surprised to learn that that is true of many engineering degrees.
Personally, I have been fascinated to see how many engineers have
spoken up about the implausibility of design-free theories of evolution
- but then engineering is the science of design.
=A6I keep hearing comments about the nutout in the Brit media about the
prospect of intelligent design being taught in the school system. And
this in a nation that has given us the soccer yob. I wish the Brit
school system could persuade all yobs that the intelligent design of
the universe guarantees that on their tenth offence against their
fellow citizens, they will be eaten by intergalactic black holes. Look,
I don't care what you tell them, as long as they believe it, tremble,
and shove off.
=A6 And while we are here, legacy media, when covering the ID
controversy, often assume when they see a headline such as "Important
new evidence for Darwinian evolution: Canadian squirrels thrive in
Washington DC" that some "important new evidence" has in fact been
discovered, that evolution is taking place before our very eyes.
Well, it could be, of course. But in reality, the story is usually just
some nonsense, no different from inflated or minimized war statistics -
with the critical difference that media have largely SET ASIDE our
customary skepticism. Journalists need to be challenged to claim
skepticism back in this area. But I do not pretend that the process
will be easy. The failure rate will be very high because so many need
to believe Darwinism fr reasons unrelated to facts.
My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and
the mind.
If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design
controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.
.
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| User: "Homer Simpson" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
08 Jan 2007 07:24:09 AM |
|
|
In article
<1167829749.066582.42240@n51g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>
"Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of_trumpet@myway.com> wrote:
If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search?
What do you think about biblical archaeology? Is it,
according to you, constitutional way of spending taxpayer
money?
http://www.bib-arch.org/
If you want to be bigger defender of separation of church
and state than ACLU, can you explain why shall be tax moneys
of atheists, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and other
non-Christians spent searching whether Jesus lived?
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_post-darwinist_archive.html
Friday, December 08, 2006
MORE Quick posts: Recent events in the intelligent design controversy
I have decided to give up apologizing for being absent a couple of days
at a time. Basically, blogging is a volunteer activity. When I am not
here, I am off making a living as a writer somewhere. Recently, for
example, I have been researching the importance of zero as an integer
on the number line. I'm glad to know that something in the universe
besides my bank account usually corresponds to zero. Things are not as
crazy as they seem.
The Britrags (British media) are outdoing themselves to report all
sorts of irresponsible crap about the Brit ID group, . And, of course,
the educrats, terrified by the prospect that materialism is not the
default religion of - oops, did I say Britain? - of the EU, are
abetting whatever nonsense blows through.
I have been meaning to blog on this, and here is my view:
- materialism is collapsing. The big project to explain everything in
materialist terms is not working, and ever crazier theories ensue.
Bureaucrats attempt to keep this fact from students, like it was a
family scandal or something. Well, come to think of it ...
Mind cannot be reduced to matter and mathematics cannot be reduced to
turnips. However, many turnips will be injured in the attempts ...and
worse still, the integers will come out unscathed - talk about
injustice!
- Vast numbers of Brit educrats, adminbots, and pols basically know
that their duty is to front materialism to the public. Go here, here,
and here for examples.
Actually, it wouldn't matter what the facts suggest. All these people
merely know that science is nothing but applied materialism, and they
are justified in collecting taxes from a non-materialist public to
promote it as such. For their own good.
Today's Word of the Day from Merriam-Webster was "retronym",
which means a noun with a modifier (adjective) which references the
original meaning of the noun. The example given is "rotary phone." You
young ones may never have seen a rotary dial phone, but that's how we
used to do it in the Age of Analog. The dictionary records as the first
evidence of use of the term the practice of then-president of National
Public Radio, Frank Mankiewicz, of collecting what he calls
"retronyms," identified by William Safire in a 1980 New York Times
column. I wonder when Darwinism and other -isms will collect retronym
adjectives like " twentieth-century natural selection" to describe some
entirely improbable series of events in the history of life that are
supposed to have been naturally selected.
Recently, there has been a bit of a puff about what life found on
Mars would mean for old time religion. Well, what would it mean?
Surely, that largely depends on what the life in question turns out to
be?
Would you change your religion if sand dollars fossils were found on
Mars?
You would? Oh give it a rest! You really wanted an excuse to change
your religion to one that allows you to two-time your sweetie-hoo, but
doesn't allow him/her to do the same thing. Hey, Aunt Denyse knows what
you do when she's not around.
As C.S. Lewis pointed out over sixty years ago, religion is primarily
concerned with the choices made by conscious beings with free will. We
actually don't have anything to discuss until we find such beings that
are not from this planet. And then we need to see how their history
relates to ours.
A friend raises an interesting question, though: If life on Mars is a
big religious question, should governments fund the search for an
answer? Why? Apart from religion and philosophy, why does it matter if
there are bacteria fossils on Mars? I don't mind paying for an answer
to the question, but I am not sure how to justify it to fellow
taxpayers who - understandably preoccupied with more pressing problems
- do not really care.
Reality check: Life on Mars will likely turn out to be bacteria,
possibly the result of contamination between Earth and Mars during the
early period when the planets were less stable and bacteria were
already on the scene, amazingly enough.
Recently, I was on a radio show with someone who insisted that many
of the 600-plus scientists who signed the Discovery Institute's
statement dissenting from Darwinism (not from evolution, mind, but from
design-free Darwinism) were not "really" scientists, but engineers. As
a matter of fact, degrees in systems engineering at the University of
Waterloo are called degrees in "applied science." I will hardly be
surprised to learn that that is true of many engineering degrees.
Personally, I have been fascinated to see how many engineers have
spoken up about the implausibility of design-free theories of evolution
- but then engineering is the science of design.
I keep hearing comments about the nutout in the Brit media about the
prospect of intelligent design being taught in the school system. And
this in a nation that has given us the soccer yob. I wish the Brit
school system could persuade all yobs that the intelligent design of
the universe guarantees that on their tenth offence against their
fellow citizens, they will be eaten by intergalactic black holes. Look,
I don't care what you tell them, as long as they believe it, tremble,
and shove off.
And while we are here, legacy media, when covering the ID
controversy, often assume when they see a headline such as "Important
new evidence for Darwinian evolution: Canadian squirrels thrive in
Washington DC" that some "important new evidence" has in fact been
discovered, that evolution is taking place before our very eyes.
Well, it could be, of course. But in reality, the story is usually just
some nonsense, no different from inflated or minimized war statistics -
with the critical difference that media have largely SET ASIDE our
customary skepticism. Journalists need to be challenged to claim
skepticism back in this area. But I do not pretend that the process
will be easy. The failure rate will be very high because so many need
to believe Darwinism fr reasons unrelated to facts.
My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and
the mind.
If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design
controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.
.
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| User: "Howard Brazee" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
08 Jan 2007 05:12:37 PM |
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On Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:24:09 +0100, Homer Simpson <nobody@nowhere.com>
wrote:
What do you think about biblical archaeology? Is it,
according to you, constitutional way of spending taxpayer
money?
It's similar to Inca, Egyptian, Sioux, and archeology based upon
Homer.
.
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| User: "Bob T." |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
08 Jan 2007 09:24:13 PM |
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Howard Brazee wrote:
On Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:24:09 +0100, Homer Simpson <nobody@nowhere.com>
wrote:
What do you think about biblical archaeology? Is it,
according to you, constitutional way of spending taxpayer
money?
It's similar to Inca, Egyptian, Sioux, and archeology based upon Homer.
D'oh!
- Bob T.
.
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should GovernmentFund The Search? |
03 Jan 2007 08:29:36 AM |
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On Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:09:09 -0800, Sound of Trumpet wrote:
materialism is collapsing.
In your dreams.
--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
If their omnipotent, omniscient (so they say) god wants me to
believe in him, then he should know what would prove his
existence to me. He hasn't done so yet, so there is no reason
to believe in him. - Woden
.
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
03 Jan 2007 11:16:56 PM |
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Mark K. Bilbo wrote:
Sound of Trumpet wrote:
materialism is collapsing.
In your dreams.
I dunno, there isn't much left for them to steal.
.
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| User: "aversiveness" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
04 Jan 2007 08:47:04 PM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_post-darwinist_archive.html
Friday, December 08, 2006
MORE Quick posts: Recent events in the intelligent design controversy
I have decided to give up apologizing for being absent a couple of days
at a time. Basically, blogging is a volunteer activity. When I am not
here, I am off making a living as a writer somewhere. Recently, for
example, I have been researching the importance of zero as an integer
on the number line. I'm glad to know that something in the universe
besides my bank account usually corresponds to zero. Things are not as
crazy as they seem.
A friend raises an interesting question, though: If life on Mars is a
big religious question, should governments fund the search for an
answer? Why? Apart from religion and philosophy, why does it matter if
there are bacteria fossils on Mars? I don't mind paying for an answer
to the question, but I am not sure how to justify it to fellow
taxpayers who - understandably preoccupied with more pressing problems
- do not really care.
Reality check: Life on Mars will likely turn out to be bacteria,
possibly the result of contamination between Earth and Mars during the
early period when the planets were less stable and bacteria were
already on the scene, amazingly enough.
What the *****? "contamination between Earth and Mars during the early
period when the planets were less stable and bacteria were already on
the scene" ?
Either too many drugs or not enough ...
.
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| User: "Paul F. Dietz" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should GovernmentFund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 12:41:24 AM |
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aversiveness wrote:
What the *****? "contamination between Earth and Mars during the early
period when the planets were less stable and bacteria were already on
the scene" ?
Very large impacts could eject debris into solar orbit without
fully sterilizing it. Some of this debris could hit the other
planet after only a short time in space, carrying spores from
one planet to another.
Paul
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 02:41:11 AM |
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Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Very large impacts could eject debris into solar orbit without
fully sterilizing it. Some of this debris could hit the other
planet after only a short time in space, carrying spores from
one planet to another.
Short time? Ha!
| Biologists have successfully revived a bacterium after it
| apparently remained dormant for 250 million years
| encased in a salt crystal, according to a report released
| Wednesday.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/10/18/oldest.microbe/index.html
At escape velocity, 250 million years would take it many
times further than our nearest stellar neighbor.
But there's a huge flaw in the theory, and that's the fact
that nobody has announced the discovery of alien life
yet...
You see, even covering a light year every 10,000 years,
it would still take about a billion years to cross the galaxy.
Next consider that if life can spontaneously form, life
WILL spontaneously form where ever & when ever
conditions are right.
Finally, put it all together. Given the time requirements,
even with life leaping from planet to planet, there would
be plenty of opportunities for life to develop independently
on countless planets. And because they too would be
just as likely to "Seed" the galaxy with their independently
formed life, the galaxy should be filled at this point with
life kicked up from all those planets where it independently
formed, plus all those other planets which were seeded
then themselves kicked out "Seeds" when they were hit
by meteorites....
So where is all this life?
.
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| User: "Tony Williams" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 03:02:53 AM |
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JTEM wrote:
Finally, put it all together. Given the time requirements,
even with life leaping from planet to planet, there would
be plenty of opportunities for life to develop independently
on countless planets. And because they too would be
just as likely to "Seed" the galaxy with their independently
formed life, the galaxy should be filled at this point with
life kicked up from all those planets where it independently
formed, plus all those other planets which were seeded
then themselves kicked out "Seeds" when they were hit
by meteorites....
So where is all this life?
You seem to be confusing "life" with "intelligent life which has
developed a technological civilisation advanced enough to communicate
with, or travel to, other solar systems". They are VERY different.
Just consider this: life at a simple level existed for billions of
years before producing anything recognisable as an animal. Large,
complex animals existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years
without producing intelligence above the animal level. Even after homo
sapiens, the first species capable of developing complex technology,
emerged c. 200,000 years ago, it spent the first 190,000 wandering
about in small groups of hunter-gatherers, much as chimpanzees do
today. Only with the development of agriculture c.10,000 years ago did
the conditions begin to develop which enabled the development of a
technological civilisation. Only in the last century have we been able
to communicate with other planets by radio - and in the same century we
came close to crippling our civilisation in a global nuclear war, and
seem now to be heading towards other major man-made problems.
Put that together and what does it suggest?
Quite possibly, life at a simple level is very common in the universe.
Complex animals will be much rarer. Beings intelligent enough to
develop a technological civilisation will be much rarer still. Those
which actually go on to achieve a civilisation comparable with our own
will be much rarer still. And many of those might not last for long,
due to crippling themselves through war or environmental disaster.
So the answer to your question may be: life is almost everywhere, but
not much of it is capable of communicating with us at this precise
moment.
Tony Williams
The Foresight War: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
.
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 07:22:58 AM |
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Tony Williams wrote:
JTEM wrote:
Finally, put it all together. Given the time requirements,
even with life leaping from planet to planet, there would
be plenty of opportunities for life to develop independently
on countless planets. And because they too would be
just as likely to "Seed" the galaxy with their independently
formed life, the galaxy should be filled at this point with
life kicked up from all those planets where it independently
formed, plus all those other planets which were seeded
then themselves kicked out "Seeds" when they were hit
by meteorites....
So where is all this life?
You seem to be confusing "life" with "intelligent life which
has developed a technological civilisation advanced enough
to communicate with, or travel to, other solar systems".
No. I was far less reaching than you thought. I was actually
limiting my remarks to a very specific idea -- idea that life
could be jump from planet to planet, kicked into space by a
meteorite impact.
They are VERY different.
But if there was any truth behind the theory that life
could skip from planet to planet -- kicked into
space by large meteorite impacts -- then our galaxy
should be loaded with free-floating life.... trapped,
dormant inside rock.
And it wouldn't take a Manhattan Project to find it, either.
So, going by the fact that nobody has found it, I'd say
that's a pretty good indication that it can't happen, at
least not between solar systems.
.
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| User: "aversiveness" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 10:55:31 AM |
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Tony Williams wrote:
JTEM wrote:
Finally, put it all together. Given the time requirements,
even with life leaping from planet to planet, there would
be plenty of opportunities for life to develop independently
on countless planets. And because they too would be
just as likely to "Seed" the galaxy with their independently
formed life, the galaxy should be filled at this point with
life kicked up from all those planets where it independently
formed, plus all those other planets which were seeded
then themselves kicked out "Seeds" when they were hit
by meteorites....
So where is all this life?
You seem to be confusing "life" with "intelligent life which has
developed a technological civilisation advanced enough to communicate
with, or travel to, other solar systems". They are VERY different.
Just consider this: life at a simple level existed for billions of
years before producing anything recognisable as an animal. Large,
complex animals existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years
without producing intelligence above the animal level. Even after homo
sapiens, the first species capable of developing complex technology,
emerged c. 200,000 years ago, it spent the first 190,000 wandering
about in small groups of hunter-gatherers, much as chimpanzees do
today. Only with the development of agriculture c.10,000 years ago did
the conditions begin to develop which enabled the development of a
technological civilisation. Only in the last century have we been able
to communicate with other planets by radio - and in the same century we
came close to crippling our civilisation in a global nuclear war, and
seem now to be heading towards other major man-made problems.
Put that together and what does it suggest?
Quite possibly, life at a simple level is very common in the universe.
Complex animals will be much rarer. Beings intelligent enough to
develop a technological civilisation will be much rarer still. Those
which actually go on to achieve a civilisation comparable with our own
will be much rarer still. And many of those might not last for long,
due to crippling themselves through war or environmental disaster.
So the answer to your question may be: life is almost everywhere, but
not much of it is capable of communicating with us at this precise
moment.
The Fermi paradox is that, even if we restrict the percentage of
stars/planets that can support life to a very tiny percentage. And even
if we then restrict the number that can support _intelligent_ life to a
very tiny percentage of that. And then, if we restrict an even smaller
percentage that reach radio-technology levels before extinction (which
raises the spectre of the Brandon Carter extinction prediction) ....
given the age of the universe and the sheer number of stars / planets
that are available, there _should_ still be a ton of intelligent,
radio-technological species out there. Then, we look at time and
geometry. They would need to have reached radio-technology long enough
ago that their signals would have time to reach us, depending on their
distance away. Yeah, that means that they would need to be close
enough so that to us they are not still in primordial times - but hey,
the universe is some 15-20 billion years old. Statistically, you
would expect that _some_ earthlike planets out there started their
formation a as earlyas a few billion years before us. So the range
goes pretty far out in distance and so includes a huge pool of
stars/planets. Our galaxy is only on the order of 100,000 light years
across. So if radio-technological life developed within our galaxy
just 10s of thousands of years before us, the signals should be
reaching us.
The other side of it might be that, yeah, they reached radio-technology
and then stopped using it such that their signals all reached us and
passed us bye before _we_ became radio-technology capable. Again,
statistically this seems odd - it smacks of some sort of systematic
extinction phenomena.
To sum up, here are some possible inferences:
a) there is no life at all out there
b) there is life, but it is all unintelligent
c) there is intelligent life out there, but none of it has reached
radio-technology early enough for their signals to reach us
d) there is intelligent life out there, but all of it has stopped using
radio-technology for whatever reason long before we would have been
able to detect them
e) there is some sort of extinction phenomena or pattern at play
f) ?
I don't claim to know what the answer is. It is a very interesting
paradox.
.
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| User: "Cary Kittrell" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 11:34:27 AM |
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In article <1168016131.347596.114350@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com> "aversiveness" <aversiveness@gmail.com> writes:
Tony Williams wrote:
JTEM wrote:
Finally, put it all together. Given the time requirements,
even with life leaping from planet to planet, there would
be plenty of opportunities for life to develop independently
on countless planets. And because they too would be
just as likely to "Seed" the galaxy with their independently
formed life, the galaxy should be filled at this point with
life kicked up from all those planets where it independently
formed, plus all those other planets which were seeded
then themselves kicked out "Seeds" when they were hit
by meteorites....
So where is all this life?
You seem to be confusing "life" with "intelligent life which has
developed a technological civilisation advanced enough to communicate
with, or travel to, other solar systems". They are VERY different.
Just consider this: life at a simple level existed for billions of
years before producing anything recognisable as an animal. Large,
complex animals existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years
without producing intelligence above the animal level. Even after homo
sapiens, the first species capable of developing complex technology,
emerged c. 200,000 years ago, it spent the first 190,000 wandering
about in small groups of hunter-gatherers, much as chimpanzees do
today. Only with the development of agriculture c.10,000 years ago did
the conditions begin to develop which enabled the development of a
technological civilisation. Only in the last century have we been able
to communicate with other planets by radio - and in the same century we
came close to crippling our civilisation in a global nuclear war, and
seem now to be heading towards other major man-made problems.
Put that together and what does it suggest?
Quite possibly, life at a simple level is very common in the universe.
Complex animals will be much rarer. Beings intelligent enough to
develop a technological civilisation will be much rarer still. Those
which actually go on to achieve a civilisation comparable with our own
will be much rarer still. And many of those might not last for long,
due to crippling themselves through war or environmental disaster.
So the answer to your question may be: life is almost everywhere, but
not much of it is capable of communicating with us at this precise
moment.
The Fermi paradox is that, even if we restrict the percentage of
stars/planets that can support life to a very tiny percentage. And even
if we then restrict the number that can support _intelligent_ life to a
very tiny percentage of that. And then, if we restrict an even smaller
percentage that reach radio-technology levels before extinction (which
raises the spectre of the Brandon Carter extinction prediction) ....
given the age of the universe and the sheer number of stars / planets
that are available, there _should_ still be a ton of intelligent,
radio-technological species out there. Then, we look at time and
geometry. They would need to have reached radio-technology long enough
ago that their signals would have time to reach us, depending on their
distance away. Yeah, that means that they would need to be close
enough so that to us they are not still in primordial times - but hey,
the universe is some 15-20 billion years old. Statistically, you
would expect that _some_ earthlike planets out there started their
formation a as earlyas a few billion years before us. So the range
goes pretty far out in distance and so includes a huge pool of
stars/planets. Our galaxy is only on the order of 100,000 light years
across. So if radio-technological life developed within our galaxy
just 10s of thousands of years before us, the signals should be
reaching us.
The other side of it might be that, yeah, they reached radio-technology
and then stopped using it such that their signals all reached us and
passed us bye before _we_ became radio-technology capable. Again,
statistically this seems odd - it smacks of some sort of systematic
extinction phenomena.
To sum up, here are some possible inferences:
a) there is no life at all out there
b) there is life, but it is all unintelligent
c) there is intelligent life out there, but none of it has reached
radio-technology early enough for their signals to reach us
d) there is intelligent life out there, but all of it has stopped using
radio-technology for whatever reason long before we would have been
able to detect them
e) there is some sort of extinction phenomena or pattern at play
f) ?
I don't claim to know what the answer is. It is a very interesting
paradox.
I highly recommend this book on the subject: it's wide-ranging,
amazingly well researched, and simply a great deal of fun
to boot:
If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody? Fifty
Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life.
by Stephen Webb
see < http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Aliens-Everybody-Solutions-Extraterrestrial/dp/0387955011/sr=8-1/qid=1168018410/ref=sr_1_1/103-9271659-1492667?ie=UTF8&s=books >
-- cary
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| User: "aversiveness" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 12:07:24 PM |
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Cary Kittrell wrote:
In article <1168016131.347596.114350@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com> "aversiveness" <aversiveness@gmail.com> writes:
Tony Williams wrote:
JTEM wrote:
Finally, put it all together. Given the time requirements,
even with life leaping from planet to planet, there would
be plenty of opportunities for life to develop independently
on countless planets. And because they too would be
just as likely to "Seed" the galaxy with their independently
formed life, the galaxy should be filled at this point with
life kicked up from all those planets where it independently
formed, plus all those other planets which were seeded
then themselves kicked out "Seeds" when they were hit
by meteorites....
So where is all this life?
You seem to be confusing "life" with "intelligent life which has
developed a technological civilisation advanced enough to communicate
with, or travel to, other solar systems". They are VERY different.
Just consider this: life at a simple level existed for billions of
years before producing anything recognisable as an animal. Large,
complex animals existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years
without producing intelligence above the animal level. Even after homo
sapiens, the first species capable of developing complex technology,
emerged c. 200,000 years ago, it spent the first 190,000 wandering
about in small groups of hunter-gatherers, much as chimpanzees do
today. Only with the development of agriculture c.10,000 years ago did
the conditions begin to develop which enabled the development of a
technological civilisation. Only in the last century have we been able
to communicate with other planets by radio - and in the same century we
came close to crippling our civilisation in a global nuclear war, and
seem now to be heading towards other major man-made problems.
Put that together and what does it suggest?
Quite possibly, life at a simple level is very common in the universe.
Complex animals will be much rarer. Beings intelligent enough to
develop a technological civilisation will be much rarer still. Those
which actually go on to achieve a civilisation comparable with our own
will be much rarer still. And many of those might not last for long,
due to crippling themselves through war or environmental disaster.
So the answer to your question may be: life is almost everywhere, but
not much of it is capable of communicating with us at this precise
moment.
The Fermi paradox is that, even if we restrict the percentage of
stars/planets that can support life to a very tiny percentage. And even
if we then restrict the number that can support _intelligent_ life to a
very tiny percentage of that. And then, if we restrict an even smaller
percentage that reach radio-technology levels before extinction (which
raises the spectre of the Brandon Carter extinction prediction) ....
given the age of the universe and the sheer number of stars / planets
that are available, there _should_ still be a ton of intelligent,
radio-technological species out there. Then, we look at time and
geometry. They would need to have reached radio-technology long enough
ago that their signals would have time to reach us, depending on their
distance away. Yeah, that means that they would need to be close
enough so that to us they are not still in primordial times - but hey,
the universe is some 15-20 billion years old. Statistically, you
would expect that _some_ earthlike planets out there started their
formation a as earlyas a few billion years before us. So the range
goes pretty far out in distance and so includes a huge pool of
stars/planets. Our galaxy is only on the order of 100,000 light years
across. So if radio-technological life developed within our galaxy
just 10s of thousands of years before us, the signals should be
reaching us.
The other side of it might be that, yeah, they reached radio-technology
and then stopped using it such that their signals all reached us and
passed us bye before _we_ became radio-technology capable. Again,
statistically this seems odd - it smacks of some sort of systematic
extinction phenomena.
To sum up, here are some possible inferences:
a) there is no life at all out there
b) there is life, but it is all unintelligent
c) there is intelligent life out there, but none of it has reached
radio-technology early enough for their signals to reach us
d) there is intelligent life out there, but all of it has stopped using
radio-technology for whatever reason long before we would have been
able to detect them
e) there is some sort of extinction phenomena or pattern at play
f) ?
I don't claim to know what the answer is. It is a very interesting
paradox.
I highly recommend this book on the subject: it's wide-ranging,
amazingly well researched, and simply a great deal of fun
to boot:
If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody? Fifty
Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life.
by Stephen Webb
see < http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Aliens-Everybody-Solutions-Extraterrestrial/dp/0387955011/sr=8-1/qid=1168018410/ref=sr_1_1/103-9271659-1492667?ie=UTF8&s=books >
Thanks. That looks like a fun read.
Did you read Stephen Baxter's Manifold books? If not, I give a thumbs
up to the 'Time' and 'Space' volumes. The 'Origin' book is not as good
a read (imho).
-- cary
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| User: "David Johnston" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 03:08:22 PM |
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On 5 Jan 2007 08:55:31 -0800, "aversiveness" <aversiveness@gmail.com>
wrote:
that are available, there _should_ still be a ton of intelligent,
radio-technological species out there. Then, we look at time and
geometry. They would need to have reached radio-technology long enough
ago that their signals would have time to reach us, depending on their
distance away. Yeah, that means that they would need to be close
enough so that to us they are not still in primordial times -
Actually it means they would need to be close enought that we could
make out an identifiable signal. Just how many light years away can
we really do that?
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| User: "Fred J. McCall" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 03:35:04 PM |
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David Johnston <rgorman@block.net> wrote:
:On 5 Jan 2007 08:55:31 -0800, "aversiveness" <aversiveness@gmail.com>
:wrote:
:>
:>that are available, there _should_ still be a ton of intelligent,
:>radio-technological species out there. Then, we look at time and
:>geometry. They would need to have reached radio-technology long enough
:>ago that their signals would have time to reach us, depending on their
:>distance away. Yeah, that means that they would need to be close
:>enough so that to us they are not still in primordial times -
:
:Actually it means they would need to be close enought that we could
:make out an identifiable signal. Just how many light years away can
:we really do that?
More than enough so that if such were numerous we would have detected
a lot of them by now.
The question now is just how long the interval is when a species emits
a lot of broadcast signals that are detectable at any range. Perhaps
we blinked and missed 'em?
--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw
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| User: "David Johnston" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 04:22:55 PM |
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On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:35:04 GMT, Fred J. McCall
<fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:
David Johnston <rgorman@block.net> wrote:
:On 5 Jan 2007 08:55:31 -0800, "aversiveness" <aversiveness@gmail.com>
:wrote:
:>
:>that are available, there _should_ still be a ton of intelligent,
:>radio-technological species out there. Then, we look at time and
:>geometry. They would need to have reached radio-technology long enough
:>ago that their signals would have time to reach us, depending on their
:>distance away. Yeah, that means that they would need to be close
:>enough so that to us they are not still in primordial times -
:
:Actually it means they would need to be close enought that we could
:make out an identifiable signal. Just how many light years away can
:we really do that?
More than enough so that if such were numerous we would have detected
a lot of them by now.
Thankyou for vaguifying the confusion.
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| User: "Fred J. McCall" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 06:13:20 PM |
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David Johnston <rgorman@block.net> wrote:
:On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:35:04 GMT, Fred J. McCall
:<fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:
:
:>David Johnston <rgorman@block.net> wrote:
:>
:>:On 5 Jan 2007 08:55:31 -0800, "aversiveness" <aversiveness@gmail.com>
:>:wrote:
:>:>
:>:>that are available, there _should_ still be a ton of intelligent,
:>:>radio-technological species out there. Then, we look at time and
:>:>geometry. They would need to have reached radio-technology long enough
:>:>ago that their signals would have time to reach us, depending on their
:>:>distance away. Yeah, that means that they would need to be close
:>:>enough so that to us they are not still in primordial times -
:>:
:>:Actually it means they would need to be close enought that we could
:>:make out an identifiable signal. Just how many light years away can
:>:we really do that?
:>
:>More than enough so that if such were numerous we would have detected
:>a lot of them by now.
:
:Thankyou for vaguifying the confusion.
My pleasure. That's what happens when you ask an overly vague
question.
[To answer your question with specifics, you would need to specify
power level, direction, signaling protocol, band, etc.]
I seem to recall seeing somewhere that the Earth is actually
'brighter' in the radio bands than the Sun is and the Earth is putting
out a signal that is obviously not 'natural'.
So, to a first approximation, how far away can a Sun-type star be
detected by a radio telescope? There's your distance.
Of course, if it's dangerous to advertise your presence in the
Universe (Berserker hypothesis), they may all be hiding from us (or
have been visited and kicked back into pre-radio technology).
--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw
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| User: "Kevin" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
06 Jan 2007 12:27:16 AM |
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In rec.arts.sf.written Fred J. McCall <fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:
David Johnston <rgorman@block.net> wrote:
:
:Thankyou for vaguifying the confusion.
My pleasure. That's what happens when you ask an overly vague
question.
[To answer your question with specifics, you would need to specify
power level, direction, signaling protocol, band, etc.]
I think maybe the question is the following. If there are other
planets out there that emit radio signals similar in power level,
frequency, and so on to the signals that we ourselves emit, how far
away could we detect such signals?
I seem to recall seeing somewhere that the Earth is actually
'brighter' in the radio bands than the Sun is and the Earth is putting
out a signal that is obviously not 'natural'.
I don't have any hard facts to cite, but the above sounds pretty
unlikely to me.
Kevin
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| User: "Tony Williams" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
07 Jan 2007 09:07:08 AM |
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Kevin wrote:
I think maybe the question is the following. If there are other
planets out there that emit radio signals similar in power level,
frequency, and so on to the signals that we ourselves emit, how far
away could we detect such signals?
Dunno, but there's a little item in the latest New Scientist. They had
a fun New Year competition asking readers to make up brief messages
from aliens who have just visited Earth. One of the winners went as
follows:
"Source of electromagnetic pollution located. Initiating steps to turn
it off. Will ensure solution is permanent."
Tony Williams
The Foresight War: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
08 Jan 2007 04:04:51 PM |
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On Sat, 6 Jan 2007 06:27:16 +0000 (UTC), Kevin
<ktn3654@linux3.ph.utexas.edu> wrote:
In rec.arts.sf.written Fred J. McCall <fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:
David Johnston <rgorman@block.net> wrote:
I seem to recall seeing somewhere that the Earth is actually
'brighter' in the radio bands than the Sun is and the Earth is putting
out a signal that is obviously not 'natural'.
I don't have any hard facts to cite, but the above sounds pretty
unlikely to me.
The sun isn't much of a radio star. We detect Sol-type stars
visually, not by radio telescope and while Earth may put out more
energy in the radio bands as a whole, we don't put out that much at
any particular frequency.
If we include changing technology the situation gets even worse.
Seventy-five years ago, anyone receiving a DSS signal would have
considered it noise, since we had no idea that such a thing was even
possible. How much "interstellar noise" is actually intelligent
signaling that we aren't yet able to decode. (SETI wouldn't consider
my cordless phone transmission to be an intelligent signal.)
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| User: "Volker Hetzer" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should GovernmentFund The Search? |
06 Jan 2007 02:22:49 PM |
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Tony Williams wrote:
Quite possibly, life at a simple level is very common in the universe.
Complex animals will be much rarer. Beings intelligent enough to
develop a technological civilisation will be much rarer still. Those
which actually go on to achieve a civilisation comparable with our own
will be much rarer still. And many of those might not last for long,
due to crippling themselves through war or environmental disaster.
OTOH, even if they survive, they'll probably use communications we
can't detect. Like we start now with spread spectrum communications.
So, to pull a number out of thin air, let's assume a period of 300
years in which accidental transmissions are detectable by other
civilisations.
How many civilisations have to exist in the milky way so that the
likelyhood of us detecting one in the next 100 years is above 50%?
Can anyone do the math?
Lots of Greetings!
Volker
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| User: "Paul F. Dietz" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should GovernmentFund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 07:41:18 AM |
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JTEM wrote:
Short time? Ha!
[...]
At escape velocity, 250 million years would take it many
times further than our nearest stellar neighbor.
The messatge I was responding to was about transfer
between Earth and Mars. Sheesh.
Paul
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 08:09:39 AM |
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Paul F. Dietz wrote:
JTEM wrote:
Short time? Ha!
[...]
At escape velocity, 250 million years would take it many
times further than our nearest stellar neighbor.
The messatge I was responding to was about transfer
between Earth and Mars. Sheesh.
The specific comment I was responding to was the "short
time." Like you said, "Sheesh."
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| User: "aversiveness" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 11:30:13 AM |
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Paul F. Dietz wrote:
aversiveness wrote:
What the *****? "contamination between Earth and Mars during the early
period when the planets were less stable and bacteria were already on
the scene" ?
Very large impacts could eject debris into solar orbit without
fully sterilizing it. Some of this debris could hit the other
planet after only a short time in space, carrying spores from
one planet to another.
Okay, I see. Has anybody modeled what the likelyhood of this actually
happening might be?
Considering the heat / cold / vaccuum involved, not to mention the
energetics involved with impacts sufficient to toss stuff through
escape velocity and then all that followed by impacts on the other
planet, I would expect the survival chances to pretty damn marginal.
I know that on earth, we have seen microbe spores survive incredibly
long time encased in salt crystals and other substances here on the
nice safe earth, shielded from cosmic radiation. But this
ejectile-sporing idea seems pretty marginal. I mean, if something is
so well protected that it could survive all the above, it probably is
completely shielded and will survive almost anything indefinitely.
Wouldn't we also expect to find such spore ejecta on the moon?
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
05 Jan 2007 05:31:12 PM |
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aversiveness wrote:
Okay, I see. Has anybody modeled what the likelyhood
of this actually happening might be?
Modeled? Sheesh!
Either the odds are about absolute zero, or nobody has
ever bothered to look very hard.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
04 Jan 2007 01:35:39 PM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_post-darwinist_archive.html
Since life on Mars is not a big religious question, the entire article
is rather irrelevant.
Only one religious question is "big":
How long are those loons gonna continue to believe that *****?
-Panama Floyd, Atl.
aa#2015, Member Knights of BAAWA!
EAC Martian Commander
Plonked by Kadaitcha Man Sept 06
"..the prayer cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next."
-Mark Twain
Religious societies are *less* moral than secular ones:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
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| User: "Tony Williams" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
03 Jan 2007 08:57:14 AM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_post-darwinist_archive.html
Well now, I hardly know where to begin!
You seem to be using the creationists' favourite ploy of equating
religious belief with creationism. Not true: the Roman Catholic and
Anglican churches are comfortable with the theory of evolution, and so
are a substantial percentage of US Christians. Creationism is primarly
the obsession of the fundamentalist wing of US Christianity, with some
minor offshoots elsewhere. So if people are turning from materialism to
religion (for which there is no evidence here in the UK at any rate) it
does not at all follow that they will accept creationism.
As far as I'm concerned, there is no controversy over "intelligent
design"; it's just a devious ploy by fundamentalists to get around the
ban on teaching creationism in US schools, as was pointed out - with
some force - by the judge in the Dover school board case.
Tony Williams
The Foresight War: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
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| User: "Kevin" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
04 Jan 2007 01:42:06 AM |
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In rec.arts.sf.written Tony Williams <Tony.Williams@quarry.nildram.co.uk> wrote:
As far as I'm concerned, there is no controversy over "intelligent
design"; it's just a devious ploy by fundamentalists to get around the
ban on teaching creationism in US schools, as was pointed out - with
some force - by the judge in the Dover school board case.
I would really like to understand your thinking. (I know that on Usenet
statements like that tend to come across as sarcastic, but I am giving you my
word that I mean it. I am more interested in understanding your position than
in debating you.)
Even if you are correct that intelligent design is merely a "devious
ploy," how does it follow that there is no controversy about it? Or perhaps
the key question is, just what do you mean by "controversy"? To me, a
controversy just consists of two groups of people saying contradictory things
and each trying to show the other is wrong. One group may have absolutely no
good reasons for its position, in which case you might say that the controversy
_shouldn't_ exist; are you saying that then the controversy actually _doesn't_
exist? By "controversy," do you mean what I would call a "merited controversy"?
Kevin
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| User: "JTEM" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
04 Jan 2007 04:00:50 AM |
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Kevin wrote:
I would really like to understand your thinking.
(I know that on Usenet statements like that tend
to come across as sarcastic, but I am giving you
my word that I mean it. I am more interested in
understanding your position than in debating you.)
I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe I can answer
your question....
There is no "Theory of Intelligent Design."
That's just a fact. There is nothing to debate, nothing
to attack, nothing to argue over. nothing.
I am not being mean here. I am not being disrespectful
of offering a personal opinion. There is no "Theory of
Intelligent Design." Period.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search? |
04 Jan 2007 08:22:44 PM |
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JTEM wrote:
I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe I can answer
your question....
There is no "Theory of Intelligent Design."
That's just a fact. There is nothing to debate, nothing
to attack, nothing to argue over. nothing.
I am not being mean here. I am not being disrespectful
of offering a personal opinion. There is no "Theory of
Intelligent Design." Period.
What is a theory?
It is a claim that things could be a certain way which has not yet been
proven.
Some people have theorized that the different types of life on the
Earth, instead of having their structure arising through natural
selection, were brought into being by an intelligent designer. Or, of
course, an intelligent Designer.
That's the theory.
John Savard
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