:this: :this: :this: it's 100 times easier for single celled organisms to live and reproduce than whatever the fuck we have going on
hell for all we know we came from the rubble of some progenitor species' planet exploding and all of our "siblings" are billions of light years away by now
We haven't even seen single celled life. All we know of exoplanets is the slim information that can be gleaned from the shadows they cast as they pass in front of their star.
It is rather silly, yes. I personally put more stock in the idea that we're probably on the early side. We may even be the first. 12 billion years is not all that long if you let the physics calculations play out.
Very true. I suppose what I like about the "early humans" hypothesis is that it forces one to consider that, as far as we know, this is it. We should treat life as precious because, even if it's common, we don't actually know that.
But isn't that the kind of take only a self important human would have? What makes us special that we are the thing that "interrupts" the otherwise uninterrupted universe?
I’m not only talking of humans, I mean the small speck of multicellular creatures in a seemingly infinite universe. And your second question lends to exactly what I’m saying, I find it borderline narcissistic to think there’s nothing quite like us in the entire universe.
Well what was being discussed above was contact, and single called life isn't going to be able to be doing that.
Regardless, it's still being "self important" to think the universe is essentially empty were it not for this specific configuration of matter that happens to be what we consider "like us." The fact of the matter remains, there is no evidence of intelligent life elsewhere and is probably extremely rare, even if single celled life is common. It's not narcissistic to recognize that super rare even one off events (like a configuration of matter that can be conscious) do actually occur.
yeah but while the universe is huge and has a ton of stuff in it and likely billions intelligent species, all we can ever hope to know is in the milky way and andromeda and honestly we probably wont ever know everything in these two galaxies
the most we 'explored' thousands of planets is seeing their stars wobble back and forth or dip in brightness and saying 'yep probably a planet', its way too early to rule out single celled life on any of these planets before we can even tell what kind of planet it is
What? We have explored like 2 planets, and some moons and asteroids. Telescopes won't really tell you anything about simple life on expolanets. Even our furthest probe is voyager what is .056% of the way to the nearest star and has been traveling for decades.
Some molecules are unstable and unlikely to be in high concentrations but also leave obvious spectra (like O2, O3, CH4). You can tell by atmospheric scattering. I doubt we have any telescopes powerful enough to resolve far enough though, planets are pretty tiny.
Yeah I have some passing familiarity with this from reading a few papers about the Venus phosphine thing from about a year ago that turned out to be a measurement error. If we can mess up measuring the closest planet, think about how hard it is to see planets light years away.
:this: :this: :this: it's 100 times easier for single celled organisms to live and reproduce than whatever the fuck we have going on
hell for all we know we came from the rubble of some progenitor species' planet exploding and all of our "siblings" are billions of light years away by now
Meat-gundamns are unlikely, treat your cells with respect.
we've explored thousands upon thousands of planets and i'm unsure if we've ever seen anything beyond single cell life, so yeah
We haven't even seen single celled life. All we know of exoplanets is the slim information that can be gleaned from the shadows they cast as they pass in front of their star.
then why would we ever expect to be contacted by aliens? have you ever tried contacting a friend by pointing a laser pointer in random directions?
It is rather silly, yes. I personally put more stock in the idea that we're probably on the early side. We may even be the first. 12 billion years is not all that long if you let the physics calculations play out.
I just find it extremely improbable that in a limitless universe, there is nothing but an endless void interrupted by dogs and selfimportant humans.
Very true. I suppose what I like about the "early humans" hypothesis is that it forces one to consider that, as far as we know, this is it. We should treat life as precious because, even if it's common, we don't actually know that.
But isn't that the kind of take only a self important human would have? What makes us special that we are the thing that "interrupts" the otherwise uninterrupted universe?
I’m not only talking of humans, I mean the small speck of multicellular creatures in a seemingly infinite universe. And your second question lends to exactly what I’m saying, I find it borderline narcissistic to think there’s nothing quite like us in the entire universe.
Well what was being discussed above was contact, and single called life isn't going to be able to be doing that.
Regardless, it's still being "self important" to think the universe is essentially empty were it not for this specific configuration of matter that happens to be what we consider "like us." The fact of the matter remains, there is no evidence of intelligent life elsewhere and is probably extremely rare, even if single celled life is common. It's not narcissistic to recognize that super rare even one off events (like a configuration of matter that can be conscious) do actually occur.
universe isn't limitless. we have a gravity group of only two galaxies.
That’s still absolutely massive, isn’t it? I
yeah but while the universe is huge and has a ton of stuff in it and likely billions intelligent species, all we can ever hope to know is in the milky way and andromeda and honestly we probably wont ever know everything in these two galaxies
the most we 'explored' thousands of planets is seeing their stars wobble back and forth or dip in brightness and saying 'yep probably a planet', its way too early to rule out single celled life on any of these planets before we can even tell what kind of planet it is
well in that case we have no way to prove any hypothesis and this is all navel gazing for the purpose of paranoia and self-sabotage
What? We have explored like 2 planets, and some moons and asteroids. Telescopes won't really tell you anything about simple life on expolanets. Even our furthest probe is voyager what is .056% of the way to the nearest star and has been traveling for decades.
Some molecules are unstable and unlikely to be in high concentrations but also leave obvious spectra (like O2, O3, CH4). You can tell by atmospheric scattering. I doubt we have any telescopes powerful enough to resolve far enough though, planets are pretty tiny.
Yeah I have some passing familiarity with this from reading a few papers about the Venus phosphine thing from about a year ago that turned out to be a measurement error. If we can mess up measuring the closest planet, think about how hard it is to see planets light years away.