Berezow: 'we will never meet intelligent aliens'

Harte

Senior Member
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I agree that never is way too long. Even a tiny chance is enough.

We can't be the only ones forever, we're to few and tiny for the vast universe. We have to meet someone at some point in history, even if it's in a million years. Distance and means of traveling extreme distances have to be solved at some point, right?
Species don't last billions of years though, so "never" isn't really that long.
Also liquid water isn't the only thing that makes Earth habitable. If it weren't for the gas supergiants AND the Moon, no one would live here either. Both have protected this planet from thousands of major impact events, and the Moon is the reason we have a reasonably stable axial orientation.

Harte
 

Num7

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@Harte we are carbon based life forms. Do you think it's possible for life to be based on other elements, and emerge similarly to here, and potentially evolve into intelligent species?
 

lamdo263

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Sometimes at an early age men do get the urge to wear women's clothing. I think it's a mother security thing as to why they do this.
 

Harte

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4,562
@Harte we are carbon based life forms. Do you think it's possible for life to be based on other elements, and emerge similarly to here, and potentially evolve into intelligent species?
I think it might be possible.

Just want to point out that the last time I checked, most of the planets in their systems' "Goldilocks Zone" that have been found have orbits VERY close to their stars, and those stars are red dwarves.

Planets in those orbits are almost certainly tidal locked with their stars and therefore wouldn't have a climate amenable to the development of higher forms of life. Not to mention the comets and asteroids that aren't deflected by any gas giants or moons.

I also want to point out that both Mars AND Venus are in the "Goldilocks Zone" for our Solar System.

In my opinion, life that has evolved higher intelligence is extremely rare in the universe - for these reasons (and others.) And, because of the amount of time involved, speaking purely statistically one could conclude that if such other intelligent life HAD arisen somewhere, in all probability we have missed them because they are long gone (or have yet to evolve.) One fact we do know, it takes millions of years for even a relatively intelligent animal (like Homo Habilis, for example) to evolve into an intelligent species like ours. Another thing we know is that EVERY species that has ever existed is destined to become extinct.

What we don't know is how long an intelligent species can exist before extinction, and whether such an extinction would mean the end of intelligent life on a particular planet. After all, Habilis went extinct but Homo Erectus lived on.

Harte
 

Bones McCoy

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View attachment 12320

“It does not matter if intelligent life exists elsewhere. We will never find each other,” says veteran science writer Alex Berezow.

He’s not saying they are not out there. He is throwing cold water on our chances of contacting them.

Some things, he admits, have changed:

Thanks to advances in astrophysics, we now know that there are billions of exoplanets in the Milky Way alone, leading most of the scientific community to conclude that life probably does exist elsewhere in the universe. Those who do not believe so are now considered the kooks. And while alien abductions are still not in the mainstream, UFOs are — so much so that the U.S. intelligence community just issued a report on them.

But while many are willing to acknowledge that simple life forms, at least, could exist in principle on many planets, he sees two major roadblocks to assuming that they do. First, no one really understands how life got started (abiogenesis) on Earth. Berezow notes, “There are several different theories on the origin of life, and none of them are any good.” Eminent chemist James Tour has made the same point in some detail:


Continue reading:
Perhaps just as well.

 

Martian

Senior Member
Messages
1,137
I think it might be possible.

Just want to point out that the last time I checked, most of the planets in their systems' "Goldilocks Zone" that have been found have orbits VERY close to their stars, and those stars are red dwarves.

Planets in those orbits are almost certainly tidal locked with their stars and therefore wouldn't have a climate amenable to the development of higher forms of life. Not to mention the comets and asteroids that aren't deflected by any gas giants or moons.

I also want to point out that both Mars AND Venus are in the "Goldilocks Zone" for our Solar System.

In my opinion, life that has evolved higher intelligence is extremely rare in the universe - for these reasons (and others.) And, because of the amount of time involved, speaking purely statistically one could conclude that if such other intelligent life HAD arisen somewhere, in all probability we have missed them because they are long gone (or have yet to evolve.) One fact we do know, it takes millions of years for even a relatively intelligent animal (like Homo Habilis, for example) to evolve into an intelligent species like ours. Another thing we know is that EVERY species that has ever existed is destined to become extinct.

What we don't know is how long an intelligent species can exist before extinction, and whether such an extinction would mean the end of intelligent life on a particular planet. After all, Habilis went extinct but Homo Erectus lived on.

Harte
Clearly the solution to this is to launch porridge into space in every direction & observe which ones are gobbled up & which ones are left alone. It's also worth observing which are spat back out after being eaten, as it might indicate, um... something. Shit. I'm drunk. :geek:
 

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