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#21
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Fermi paradox, your own belief?
"gswork" wrote in message om... ON the off chance you don't know, Fermi's paradox is basically - if even conservative estimates suggest that adanced life in the galaxy is abundant then even more conservative estimates show that the entire galaxy should be explored already, so why aren't the aliens here? My belief is that Someone much more powerful than even the universe itself controls it. Therefore, barriers, such as the enormous distance between stars, were already put in place before the universe was created. There are certain thresholds that no one will ever cross. Jon |
#23
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Fermi paradox, your own belief?
While reading in the bathroom on 18 Jun 2004 01:51:13 -0700, I saw
that (gswork) had written: [Bear with me to the end of this, you'll see that my response really does relate] I think this because, based on what i've read, Earth has been around for nearly 5 billion years, 13.7 billion microscopic life for perhaps 3 billion, Err, ahhh, "September 21," on the Cosmic Calendar. That translates to roughly 3,787,500,000 years and more complex life for only 700 million or so. Define "roughly." The CC places stromatolites at September 29, and sex (yippee!) at November 30. A couple of billion years hence, maybe more, the earth tips over into runaway greenhouse and becomes a milder, but equally deadly version of Venus, utterly devoid of life. See Sagan's "Cosmos." He has a neat sentence in there that introduces the entire sequence: "There will be one final, perfect day, then..." So Earth can support complex life for something like 1.5 billion years start to finish. It took half that to to get to Humans... Again, we need to clarify definitions: Do you mean "could" support life, or "did" support life? And what kind of life? While the CC puts the advent of "life" at September 21, it wasn't until November 8, that there was a significant oxygen atmosphere. Seaweed didn't appear until December 5, apes at 1 AM on December 31, homonids at 9 PM, and tool-making "humans" at 10:30 PM (homo sapiens came along at 11 54 PM). Anyway, even without doing all the conversions, it's easy to see that Humans have been around for far, far less than half the time that earth has been capable of supporting life. Even using just the CC, the difference is staggering: "life" first appeared on September 21, but human ancestors didn't come along until 90 minutes before the year ended, and true humans only six minutes before.. Life itself may be rarer than we think, and space faring life may be so exceptional that it's more likely we *won't* encounter aliens. It's apparently a lot more rare than you thought. On the Cosmic Calendar's scale, Copernicus lived in the final second of the year. At this scale, human spacefaring isn't even a blip. [ATTENTION!!!! We have finally arrived at my point!!!] Now, assuming that any other planet will follow roughly the same development on roughly the same time scale as earth did, but that it starts to form one or two Cosmic Minutes earlier or later than earth, where does that leave us as far as actually meeting the other civilization? If their galaxy/solar system/planet formed just one Cosmic Day earlier, then they would have first entered orbit just as our dinosaurs became extinct. A Day later, and they will first leave their planet just as earth's humanoid descendants become extinct, whether through evolution or self-immolation. Whatever, the prospects for meaningful communication between the two races don't look good. (perhaps you have book recommendations in this area too?) The Cosmic Calendar can be found in Sagan's "Cosmos" (and "Pale Blue Dot"?), and is available in poster form from Allposters: http://www.allposters.com/gallery.asp?aid=817727252 Also, keep an eye out for an oop paperback, "Interstellar Travel, Past, Present and Future," by John W. Macvey. A believer, he still attempts to keep things realistic. He approaches the question from the angle of "Assuming that we have been visited by ETs, and assuming that the laws of physics hold true as we know them, then how could they do it?" -------------- Beady's Corollary to Occam's Razor: "The likeliest explanation of any phenomenon is almost always the most boring one imaginable." -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =----- |
#24
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Fermi paradox, your own belief?
John Beaderstadt wrote:
I think this because, based on what i've read, Earth has been around for nearly 5 billion years, 13.7 billion That's certainly not the age of the Earth. -- __ Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ / \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis \__/ Smaller than the eye can see / Bigger than the mind can conceive -- India Arie |
#25
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Fermi paradox, your own belief?
John Beaderstadt wrote:
I think this because, based on what i've read, Earth has been around for nearly 5 billion years, 13.7 billion That's certainly not the age of the Earth. -- __ Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ / \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis \__/ Smaller than the eye can see / Bigger than the mind can conceive -- India Arie |
#26
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Fermi paradox, your own belief?
On 2004-06-18, Tony Flanders wrote:
Well, my own hunch is that humans will never travel (in person) to another star. I can give supporting arguments, but obviously that kind of statement can't be more than a hunch; it can never be proved. Sure it can. Eliminate the human race. Methods are left as an exercise to the reader. -- Aaron Denney -- |
#27
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Fermi paradox, your own belief?
On 2004-06-18, Tony Flanders wrote:
Well, my own hunch is that humans will never travel (in person) to another star. I can give supporting arguments, but obviously that kind of statement can't be more than a hunch; it can never be proved. Sure it can. Eliminate the human race. Methods are left as an exercise to the reader. -- Aaron Denney -- |
#28
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Fermi paradox, your own belief?
Aaron Denney wrote:
Sure it can. Eliminate the human race. Methods are left as an exercise to the reader. Well, that's not really validating a prediction, now is it? -- __ Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ / \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis \__/ You are my martyr / I'm a vestige of a revolution -- Lamya |
#29
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Fermi paradox, your own belief?
Aaron Denney wrote:
Sure it can. Eliminate the human race. Methods are left as an exercise to the reader. Well, that's not really validating a prediction, now is it? -- __ Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ / \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis \__/ You are my martyr / I'm a vestige of a revolution -- Lamya |
#30
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Fermi paradox, your own belief?
On 2004-06-18, Erik Max Francis wrote:
Aaron Denney wrote: Sure it can. Eliminate the human race. Methods are left as an exercise to the reader. Well, that's not really validating a prediction, now is it? Sure it is. He's part of the human race, so it counts as natural evolution. -- Aaron Denney -- |
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