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Exoplanets

Started by Drew_2017, February 26, 2017, 06:54:39 PM

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Blackleaf

Quote from: Drew_2017 on March 01, 2017, 09:33:08 PM
I agree about the Goldilocks zone this is why they might find life on moons around Saturn and its relatively close to us.

The word faith has gotten a bad rap and become a pejorative term meaning belief in something with either no evidence or all the evidence against it. In the real world we put faith in things because they have been reliable. We have faith in chairs to support our weight precisely because for the most part they always do. Scientists have confidence in finding life because naturalism kind of demands it. According to naturalism all this is by chance and if it happened on earth then it should happen elsewhere.

I don't like that definition of faith. Mainly because I've seen it misused by Christians a ton of times. "I have faith in this chair when I sit on it. That's like how I have faith in God." No. No it's not. You can see that the chair exists. You cannot see God. You can test the chair to see if your "faith" is justified. You cannot test God. Faith that a thing will continue to behave as previously observed on many occasions is completely different from faith in an invisible god who can't be observed at all.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

doorknob

#31
Quote from: Baruch on March 01, 2017, 07:24:46 PM
Worked on silicon based life form ideas when a wee sprout ... but 3d chemical structure wasn't right, non-planar.  Sorry, no Horta for you ;-(  I suspect other random permutation coding structures are possible, other than the DNA/RNA combination.  But I didn't get a grant to do that Dr Frankenstein biochemistry.  Also Los Alamos wasn't brilliant enough to hire me to help with the Human Genome project.  All that DNA testing they are selling, they just like collecting spit, and then make up the results ;-)

I thought you might like this

https://www.wired.com/2014/05/synthetic-dna-cells/

I decided to add this too.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150710-genetic-alphabet/

Cavebear

Faith is simply all false.  I do not accept believe or faith as a basis of any argument.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Baruch

Quote from: doorknob on March 02, 2017, 02:14:17 AM
I thought you might like this

https://www.wired.com/2014/05/synthetic-dna-cells/

I decided to add this too.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150710-genetic-alphabet/

Thanks.  I was happy to stop my brainstorming, after realizing the only point of science is to create more weapons to kill more people.  Your links are just part of how bioweapons research is still ... a threat.  Physicists knew sin after Hiroshima.  Biologists will too.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

PopeyesPappy

Quote from: badger2 on March 01, 2017, 08:05:58 PM
Radioastronomer Hans Deeg has studied exoplanets for decades. When riding with him out to the Very Large Array one night in New Mexico, my question was "Is there any kind of coherent signals coming from space?" His answer was "No, there's only noise."

A better answer might have been, "There is nothing we have been able to distinguish from the noise at the frequencies we are monitoring."

I believe the probability of life elsewhere in our universe is high. The odds of another advanced civilizations capable of emitting signals we can receive and recognize during the period of time we have or even will be listening are probably very low though. The best evidence for this we have comes from observations of our own solar system. Observations that would lead us to believe that even if life is common on other planets most of them don't have an environment that remains relatively stable long enough to allow an advanced civilization to evolve. So even if life is common advanced civilizations are probably rare. The chances of one existing during a window in time at location that would allow us to hear them are very low.
Save a life. Adopt a Greyhound.

Cavebear

Quote from: PopeyesPappy on March 02, 2017, 07:52:55 AM
A better answer might have been, "There is nothing we have been able to distinguish from the noise at the frequencies we are monitoring."

I believe the probability of life elsewhere in our universe is high. The odds of another advanced civilizations capable of emitting signals we can receive and recognize during the period of time we have or even will be listening are probably very low though. The best evidence for this we have comes from observations of our own solar system. Observations that would lead us to believe that even if life is common on other planets most of them don't have an environment that remains relatively stable long enough to allow an advanced civilization to evolve. So even if life is common advanced civilizations are probably rare. The chances of one existing during a window in time at location that would allow us to hear them are very low.

Quite right.  "Noise" can be only something we do not yet understand.  Yet. 
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

PopeyesPappy

Quote from: Cavebear on March 02, 2017, 08:18:25 AM
Quite right.  "Noise" can be only something we do not yet understand.  Yet. 

It isn't just that. Our focus on the search for ET's signals has mainly focused on the 1 to 10 GHz frequency spectrum. One of the reasons for that is that above 10 GHz the universe gets very noisy. Signal to noise ratios would be very low. It becomes very difficult for us to discern them from the noise so we don't expend much effort looking for this type of signal there. Other civilizations could be communicating via frequencies we don't monitor such as ULF.

But like I said, I believe the main reason we haven't detected signals from other civilizations is the distribution of advanced civilizations in space and time probably makes us the only one there is in this area at this time.         

Here is one for you. The pantheists could be right. Our universe is god, and the noise we hear from space could be god's own thoughts. Thoughts we are interfering with by broadcasting reruns of I Love Lucy. If so then contrary to the hopes of theists like Drew we aren't the end goal of existence but rather a parasite causing concentration problems, and all the broadcasts of The Donald lately have probably caused a hell of a migraine.
Save a life. Adopt a Greyhound.

Cavebear

Quote from: PopeyesPappy on March 02, 2017, 10:18:53 AM
It isn't just that. Our focus on the search for ET's signals has mainly focused on the 1 to 10 GHz frequency spectrum. One of the reasons for that is that above 10 GHz the universe gets very noisy. Signal to noise ratios would be very low. It becomes very difficult for us to discern them from the noise so we don't expend much effort looking for this type of signal there. Other civilizations could be communicating via frequencies we don't monitor such as ULF.

But like I said, I believe the main reason we haven't detected signals from other civilizations is the distribution of advanced civilizations in space and time probably makes us the only one there is in this area at this time.         

Here is one for you. The pantheists could be right. Our universe is god, and the noise we hear from space could be god's own thoughts. Thoughts we are interfering with by broadcasting reruns of I Love Lucy. If so then contrary to the hopes of theists like Drew we aren't the end goal of existence but rather a parasite causing concentration problems, and all the broadcasts of The Donald lately have probably caused a hell of a migraine.

I know about the frequencies, and I know the Drake equation.

I see a couple possibilities here. 

1.  Extra solar travel is simply not possible for a variety of reasons.
2.  Every galactic civilization never finds another.
3.  We are utterly unmatched in time.
4.  Every emerging space civilization is immediately killed by advanced ones,
5.  Space-faring civilizations are rare.
6.  We are the first or only.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

badger2

Keeping "noise" in context, Hans was replying to one not versed in physics or astronomy, recalling Rachel Carson's important mediation position, even though she was investigating the development of the catfish pronephros. It gets more intense when considering who the astronomer tells about the incoming asteroid.

PopeyesPappy

Quote from: Cavebear on March 02, 2017, 10:41:13 AM
I know about the frequencies, and I know the Drake equation.

I see a couple possibilities here. 

1.  Extra solar travel is simply not possible for a variety of reasons.
2.  Every galactic civilization never finds another.
3.  We are utterly unmatched in time.
4.  Every emerging space civilization is immediately killed by advanced ones,
5.  Space-faring civilizations are rare.
6.  We are the first or only.


Of the 6 I see number 3 as the most likely. Advanced civilizations are probably rare, and we are probably the only one in our bubble of influence at this point in time.
Save a life. Adopt a Greyhound.

Cavebear

Quote from: badger2 on March 02, 2017, 10:47:03 AM
Keeping "noise" in context, Hans was replying to one not versed in physics or astronomy, recalling Rachel Carson's important mediation position, even though she was investigating the development of the catfish pronephros. It gets more intense when considering who the astronomer tells about the incoming asteroid.

"Noise" is actually a very technical concept.  I'll ignore the rest...
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

badger2

#39: Yes, the substituting of faith for knowledge is the pathology, and was the cue for the theologian's deceptive use of one of the fundamental illusions of Man since the Neolithic, or Paleolithic: the illusion of not being dead once we already are. The continuity of the pathology showed up again in recent times: the deceptive use of prepositions in the U.S. Constitution.

PopeyesPappy

Quote from: badger2 on March 02, 2017, 10:47:03 AM
Keeping "noise" in context, Hans was replying to one not versed in physics or astronomy, recalling Rachel Carson's important mediation position, even though she was investigating the development of the catfish pronephros. It gets more intense when considering who the astronomer tells about the incoming asteroid.

I'm not particularly well versed in physics or astronomy either, but I am an old SATCOM guy so I have a basic understanding of what the SETI people are doing and how they are doing it.
Save a life. Adopt a Greyhound.

Cavebear

Quote from: PopeyesPappy on March 02, 2017, 10:53:38 AM
I'm not particularly well versed in physics or astronomy either, but I am an old SATCOM guy so I have a basic understanding of what the SETI people are doing and how they are doing it.

That part I understand.  And what worries me is that any new space-faring species immediately becomes the losers.  We announce our presence, we get killed.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

PopeyesPappy

Save a life. Adopt a Greyhound.