Cypress (03-21-2023)
I would find it difficult to believe that in an infinite universe,
there aren't an infinite number of planets so similar to our earth
that the life forms living on them would be pretty much the same a well.
The real issue is that it can't possibly matter to us.
If they're similar to us, they can't survive the interstellar travel any more than we can.
We'll never interact, so we're completely irrelevant to one another.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Religion....is the opiate of the people. Karl Marx, 1848
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969
Cypress (03-21-2023)
An infinite universe is an assumption that requires several mathmatical constructs to be true, first and foremost that spacetime has zero curvature beyond our field of vision. It seems to have zero curvature, but that inference is limited to our field of vision and the precision of our instrumentation.
My second comment is that we will never be able to surmise if there is life in other galaxies, due to the distances involved.
But I'm not sure that matters.
By the standards of the cosmos, we live in a very large and complex galaxy of almost infinite variety. If we can't find life in this galaxy, I'm not sure why we would conclude if must exist in other galaxies.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Religion....is the opiate of the people. Karl Marx, 1848
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Religion....is the opiate of the people. Karl Marx, 1848
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969
Cypress (03-21-2023), NiftyNiblick (03-21-2023)
If spacetime has positive curvature, then space maintains a spherical shape, and if you set off in one direction, trillions of years later you would end up back where you started from.
The universe isn't expanding into anything, into any preexisting void. It is the space itself between the galaxies which is expanding.
Why would anyone bring pretzels of all things, on a 6,300 year space voyage?
C'MON MAN!!!!
Because it's a good conservative scientific assumption to focus our search on carbon based life that at least loosely followed the known laws of biology.
The Earth had has four billion years for silicon based life or other exotic forms of life to emerge. But we've never seen anything other than the one lineage of carbon based life all descended with modification from the same microbe which existed 3.8 billion years ago.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Religion....is the opiate of the people. Karl Marx, 1848
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969
Doc Dutch (03-21-2023)
Not a biochemist, but from previous posts on the subject it appears that carbon and silicon are the most likely base-elements of life due to how many combinations of molecules can be formed from them.
Not saying a lifeform couldn't evolve from Uranium, but if it did, it wouldn't look like anything recognizable by humans. Maybe a planet could be "alive", but how could we hope to communicate with a creature whose "seconds" are equal to multiple human generations?
"Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"
The stories I've read is that you can't think of it as a sphere with a two dimensional surface hanging in space like a balloon or globe.
The sphere is the only analogy our simian brains can grasp without higher mathematics.
Three dimensional positively curved space itself wraps around a fourth dimensional hyperspace we cannot percieve through sensory perception.
Doc Dutch (03-21-2023)
"Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, 1775
Religion....is the opiate of the people. Karl Marx, 1848
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969
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