quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
The thing that makes me wonder what the percentages are, is the moon. According to everything I've seen, our moon is an exception. Lots of planets have moons but none that are the size of, nor have the influence of, ours.

Our moon appears to be an exception which allows many of the other items listed above (stable rotation, seasons, tidal action to create the first goo, etc...). Heck, even the creation of the moon may have been what gave us our metallic core.

Isaac Asimov wrote several articles about that idea--he referred to the Earth-Moon system as a Double Planet. He pointed out a number of anomalies regarding our Moon. For example, the Sun has more gravitational impact on the Moon than the Earth does. For another, the orbit of the Moon around the Sun is never concave--it is always curved toward the Sun; the curvature fluctuates, but never turns outward. Our Moon is 1/4 the diameter of its primary (Earth) and it's surface gravity is 1/6--no other moon even comes close to those values.

The impact of the Moon on the Earth is enormous. It stabilizes our axis of rotation, causes (at least partly) our tides, and is the most luminous body in our night sky. It has been postulated that without the Moon, life might have never developed here. (God works in mysterious ways.)

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy: Our Moon is 1/4 the diameter of its primary (Earth) and it's surface gravity is 1/6--no other moon even comes close to those values.
flashguy

I don't think we even have the capability to see planets beyond the Milky Way. How could we possibly know what relationship exists between the majority of planets and moons?

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy: Our Moon is 1/4 the diameter of its primary (Earth) and it's surface gravity is 1/6--no other moon even comes close to those values.
flashguy

I don't think we even have the capability to see planets beyond the Milky Way. How could we possibly know what relationship exists between the majority of planets and moons?

Obviously, I can only comment on those we know about.

flashguy

Who's to say that other planets' beings don't have a better understanding of physics and advanced technology than us? They may have been traveling FTL for longer than we've been around. They may be able to travel here with ease. They may be able to filter our weak sinals out of the noise. Why don't they visit us? Maybe they don't want to waste their time. Maybe they are waiting for us to grow up.

quote:

Originally posted by houndawg:
Who's to say that other planets' beings don't have a better understanding of physics and advanced technology than us? They may have been traveling FTL for longer than we've been around. They may be able to travel here with ease. They may be able to filter our weak sinals out of the noise. Why don't they visit us? Maybe they don't want to waste their time. Maybe they are waiting for us to grow up.

I can't help but wonder, how many of those other inhabited planets have democrats living there?

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:
I can't help but wonder, how many of those other inhabited planets have democrats living there?

I wonder that, too. Hey, do you guys think there are any Democrats living on other planets?

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:
I can't help but wonder, how many of those other inhabited planets have democrats living there?

I wonder that, too. Hey, do you guys think there are any Democrats living on other planets?

I don't know, but it sure is nice to contemplate the wonders of the universe in the context of petty human politics.

Considering the age of the universe, many civilizations have risen and fallen or have been destroyed when their star died.

If they had achieved FTL space travel, their craft to travel could have easily become disabled and they drift dead through the cosmos for millions of years now.

Their planet would have to have been a Goldilocks world to begin with, yellow sun, water, atmosphere, stable climate, resources to advance in technology and most important than ANYTHING else, a sustained magnetic field.

All of this combination puts us in a very exclusive club.

And in order to be come the top life form, they would have to have been the most aggressive competitor organism, which that would have not evolved out of them when they meet us.

quote:

Originally posted by BillyBonesNY:
As Para points out, it is a mathematical certainty.

I agree that it SEEMS like a mathematical certainty.

But that is only if you premise your view on the idea that things are happening "at random".

I don't believe they are, but admittedly that is just a "belief" and I would love to contact other life forms.

But the "mathematical certainty" works in another way also: We are not a particularly old planet. And we can't assume that we have anything more or less than "about average" technology.
So it is also a "mathematical certainty" that there should be many much more advanced civilizations, who have been emitting radio signals for long enough to reach the earth and that AT LEAST ONE of those civilizations would have left some radio trace, or even laser or light trace, in the universe that even our "less advanced" civilization could detect, now that we are actually looking for such things.
Yet in spite of the 'mathematical certainty" there is absolutely nothing. Why ?

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:
I can't help but wonder, how many of those other inhabited planets have democrats living there?

I wonder that, too. Hey, do you guys think there are any Democrats living on other planets?

Sometimes I think that our Democrats ARE living on a different planet. Other times I wish they were.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by Crom:So it is also a "mathematical certainty" that there should be many much more advanced civilizations, who have been emitting radio signals for long enough to reach the earth and that AT LEAST ONE of those civilizations would have left some radio trace, or even laser or light trace, in the universe that even our "less advanced" civilization could detect, now that we are actually looking for such things.
Yet in spite of the 'mathematical certainty" there is absolutely nothing. Why ?

We may be bombarded with signals from other life on a daily basis and that are either outside of the wavelengths we are able to detect or in a format that makes no sense to us.

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:

quote:

Originally posted by Crom:So it is also a "mathematical certainty" that there should be many much more advanced civilizations, who have been emitting radio signals for long enough to reach the earth and that AT LEAST ONE of those civilizations would have left some radio trace, or even laser or light trace, in the universe that even our "less advanced" civilization could detect, now that we are actually looking for such things.
Yet in spite of the 'mathematical certainty" there is absolutely nothing. Why ?

We may be bombarded with signals from other life on a daily basis and that are either outside of the wavelengths we are able to detect or in a format that makes no sense to us.

Yup.

We understand a great deal but we also have a lot to learn. A LOT.

Less than 25 years ago we had no confirmed detections of planets outside our solar system. Zero.

Today there are over 3,500 confirmed Exoplanets. To include planets about Earth size in habitable zones are their stars.

Homo Sapiens have been around for 160,000 years, yet only in the last hundred or so years have been able to transmit information off the planet and just over 50 years have learned to fling ourselves off it's surface.

We expect everything to happen so fast, yet in the scheme of the universe, if it's lifespan was a day, we have only been self aware of our place in it for the last second or so.

And then there is the fact that we have been looking for signals / signs of other life but have only covered a pitifully small portion of the sky, due to lack of funding, technological limitations, and the like.

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy:

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:
I can't help but wonder, how many of those other inhabited planets have democrats living there?

I wonder that, too. Hey, do you guys think there are any Democrats living on other planets?

Sometimes I think that our Democrats ARE living on a different planet. Other times I wish they were.

flashguy

Gives me an idea. Tesla's Elon Musk says we should start planning to colonize Mars. . . .

This about sums it up for me:
This guys has some great videos:

Where be aliens???

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7cidUaUCb5M

According to cosmologists, the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, and the Earth and Solar System are about 4.5 billion years old. So basically the Earth is 1/3 the age of the Universe. It seem to me that, that's a pretty short time, relatively speaking, from the beginning of the universe.

I think it's possible, that we are the only life in the universe. It's interesting, if that is true, because it conforms, in a sense, to Aristotelean view of the cosmos, where the Earth is at the center of creation. That's the view the Catholic Church held when it put Galileo on trial.

However, I also think it's possible that there is life out there - perhaps intelligent, perhaps not.

The problem is that we have a sample size of one: the Earth. I find it interesting that most of the planets they are cataloging are around red dwarf stars, not medium sized yellow stars, like our own.

I find it odd that they think there's an end. I would guess there are many equivalents to our universe. Probably multiple levels that we can't comprehend.

quote:

Originally posted by Storm:
According to cosmologists, the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, and the Earth and Solar System are about 4.5 billion years old. So basically the Earth is 1/3 the age of the Universe. It seem to me that, that's a pretty short time, relatively speaking, from the beginning of the universe.

I think it's possible, that we are the only life in the universe. It's interesting, if that is true, because it conforms, in a sense, to Aristotelean view of the cosmos, where the Earth is at the center of creation. That's the view the Catholic Church held when it put Galileo on trial.

However, I also think it's possible that there is life out there - perhaps intelligent, perhaps not.

The problem is that we have a sample size of one: the Earth. I find it interesting that most of the planets they are cataloging are around red dwarf stars, not medium sized yellow stars, like our own.

I have been reading that a few hundred years ago, experts at the time assured their contemporaries that the earth was ~6,000 years old, and ~4,400 years since Adam, IIRC.

I'm surprised that men continue to make such predictions, given the track record.

If you accept the Bible, which says that man was made in God's image, it's difficult to impossible to imagine intelligent life elsewhere.

The evidence suggests, though, that if a huge asteroid hadn't slammed into the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago, we might all be walking around as lizard people. Many species of small mammals survived this event and began to emerge dominant in the period known as the Paleogene.

What if that rock had not hit us 65 million years ago, or what if it were smaller or hit the Earth at a more oblique angle? What if the dinosaurs- who thrived much, much, much longer than humans have so far- what if they hadn't all died in that extinction? Lizard priests would be telling lizard people that Lizard was made in God's image.

I see the asteroid as just a part of God's plan. I don't critique how He does things.

flashguy

Do you accept the current estimate of the age of the Universe at 13.5 billion years? Or do you believe that it is only about 6000 years old?