If It's True......

Cranky · September 2023

It can be both. We can be alone but still just a meaningless result of evolution. All to no end in particular.

Chalky · September 2023

Science tells us that life on earth started under a large set of very particular planetary conditions, which is why we cannot reproduce those conditions and grow a new lifeform in a lab today. Those particular conditions relate to the age of the planet in its formative years.

In other words there could be a billion planets like Earth but if they haven't passed through a point where they had the right substances in the right conditions at the right time, then they will be barren.

koneguitarist · September 2023

I think life is out there. Whether it’s intelligent life or close enough for us to contact is something that will be discovered if not in our life times but eventually.
We may have been given a jump start by Aliens in past, too many discrepancies in our far distant past indicates so. At the end of the day who really knows how our ancient ancestors built pyramids etc on different continents yet having such advanced knowledge of the stars.

GoFish · September 2023

koneguitarist said:

I think life is out there. Whether it’s intelligent life or close enough for us to contact is something that will be discovered if not in our life times but eventually.
We may have been given a jump start by Aliens in past, too many discrepancies in our far distant past indicates so. At the end of the day who really knows how our ancient ancestors built pyramids etc on different continents yet having such advanced knowledge of the stars.

I feel that this does a huge disservice to the exceptionally clever men and women who had little else to do at night for millenia but to study the skies and find patterns and the days to find ways to improve their lot. Building a pyramid isn't hard, it just needs time and a fuck-tonne of effort, copoperation and human ingenuity!

Danny1969 · September 2023

GoFish said:

koneguitarist said:

I think life is out there. Whether it’s intelligent life or close enough for us to contact is something that will be discovered if not in our life times but eventually.
We may have been given a jump start by Aliens in past, too many discrepancies in our far distant past indicates so. At the end of the day who really knows how our ancient ancestors built pyramids etc on different continents yet having such advanced knowledge of the stars.

I feel that this does a huge disservice to the exceptionally clever men and women who had little else to do at night for millenia but to study the skies and find patterns and the days to find ways to improve their lot. Building a pyramid isn't hard, it just needs time and a fuck-tonne of effort, copoperation and human ingenuity!

Building a pyramid the size of the great pyramid of Giza is incredibly difficult ... to the point there's no real sensible theory of how they did it.

I personally feel there's something not quite right with our history timelines ... not just the pyramids but some other stuff too that's been discovered and doesn't for the accepted timeline

Kilgore · September 2023

koneguitarist said:

I think life is out there. Whether it’s intelligent life or close enough for us to contact is something that will be discovered if not in our life times but eventually.
We may have been given a jump start by Aliens in the past, too many discrepancies in our far distant past indicates so. At the end of the day who really knows how our ancient ancestors built pyramids etc on different continents yet having such advanced knowledge of the stars.

So the aliens showed the Egyptians how to build the Great Pyramid with stone and bronze tools but neglected to teach them how to smelt iron?

I think they dropped the ball there.

Sporky · September 2023

GoFish said:

Building a pyramid isn't hard, it just needs time and a fuck-tonne of effort, copoperation and human ingenuity!

And slaves. Lots and lots of free, expendable labour.

Kilgore · September 2023

Sporky said:

GoFish said:

Building a pyramid isn't hard, it just needs time and a fuck-tonne of effort, copoperation and human ingenuity!

And slaves. Lots and lots of free, expendable labour.

Current evidence suggests they were actually paid labourers.

crosstownvamp · September 2023

Danny1969 said:

Building a pyramid the size of the great pyramid of Giza is incredibly difficult ... to the point there's no real sensible theory of how they did it.
I personally feel there's something not quite right with our history timelines ... not just the pyramids but some other stuff too that's been discovered and doesn't for the accepted timeline

There's plenty of analysis on how they built the pyramids.

What examples are you thinking of for history timelines - Antikythera mechanism?

Danny1969 · September 2023

I think there's a possibility that there was population on earth that did get to the point they could do some fairly advanced stuff other than hunt animals and build basic huts. Technology is a linear path from where you start with new science generally built on improvement in existing science. If you start in a different place the path could well be different going forward.

The strange thing about the big pyramid is if you consider the weight of some of the large blocks then the length of the ramp required to get those blocks up there it kind of turns into the rocket equation, with the ramps length equivalent to the rockets fuel. So you end up with the ramp consuming more material than the pyramid you are building with it.

Also some of those precision cuts on the granite boxes, just look at one .... it looks like it's been factory cut on a machine. This is one of the hardest materials to cut and yet here it is, cut to perfection by people living 4000 years ago who hadn't invented the wheel yet.

i wouldn't go as far as aliens and such but I think our timeline of technology is a little off and it's possible some civilisations had worked out how to harness simple powers like steam and focussed solar. With no internet, no phones, no newspapers and no means of crossing the oceans or deserts there could have been huge differences between what one large tribe knew compared to another. Then disease or some other tragedy strikes and certain things are lost.

RocknRollDave · September 2023

notanon said:

In the same vein

Strange if there is a God, even stranger if there weren't.

[Is that correct use of the subjunctive in English?]

Why is it ‘even stranger’?

Tannin · September 2023

Chalky said:

Science tells us that life on earth started under a large set of very particular planetary conditions, which is why we cannot reproduce those conditions and grow a new lifeform in a lab today. Those particular conditions relate to the age of the planet in its formative years.

In other words there could be a billion planets like Earth but if they haven't passed through a point where they had the right substances in the right conditions at the right time, then they will be barren.

Um ... no it doesn't. We haven't created life ourselves yet because we have only been trying for less than a century. The original outbreak of life on Earth had not centuries, not thousands of years, not even millions of years, it had billions of years. Even the most stupidly, outlandishly remote possibility will very likely pop up if you give it an entire huge planet and a few billion years to happen in.

The fact that we aren't quite sure exactly how it happened yet doesn't mean it was unlikely or a once-off, it just means that we humans haven't figured it out yet. It stands alongside a vast number of other scientific questions we don't have answers for either. (Yet.)

We haven't figured out how Platypuses make babies yet either - we have a vague idea but despite a century of research we still don't understand how the egg becomes either male or female. Does this mean that Platypus sex selection is near-impossible and could only ever happen once in all the billions of years the Earth has been here? No, it just means we haven't figured it out yet.

The fact that I don't know how to do calculus doesn't mean that calculus doesn't exist, it just means I haven't learned how to do it yet.

musteatbrain · September 2023

Science isn’t even certain how many planets are in our own solar system yet, there’s at least one entire galaxy seemingly older than the Big Bang and every time we get a bigger telescope we get rule breaking discoveries. I find it very hard to believe the only life is on this rock given there’s an estimated 200 billion trillion stars in the universe and in our own galaxy we know of 3000 plus stars with planetary systems.

Tannin · September 2023

Kilgore said:

Sporky said:

GoFish said:

Building a pyramid isn't hard, it just needs time and a fuck-tonne of effort, copoperation and human ingenuity!

And slaves. Lots and lots of free, expendable labour.

Current evidence suggests they were actually paid labourers.

If I remember correctly, there was also a very significant religious element. My understanding is that the leading researchers these days think that religious duty/observance on the part of the peasant labourers was the key motivation.

RocknRollDave · September 2023

There have been absolutely tons of species on our own planet that we never got to meet due to not existing at the same time, never mind on other planets.

ROOG · September 2023

merlin said:

And maybe it is true that we are special. We're also pretty fucking stupid as a species.

I agree, based on what I see, we could be the first species on Earth to be responsible for our own extinction!

Whether there is something like us out there or not, I think the chances of us meeting it are zero.

crosstownvamp · September 2023

I'm sure there's other life, but I'm not convinced by the numbers put into Drake's equation. For advanced life it really seems like a moon and plate tectonics are essential. Together they keep stirring the pot and throwing up niches that life has to conquer and then compete in, as well as plenty of extinction events to wipe the slate half clean.

Sassafras · September 2023

I'm sure there has been life on other planets but if it was anything like us, it'll have destroyed itself the same way we seem to be determined to do.

Emp_Fab · September 2023

We have absolutely no fecking idea. That's the bottom line. The universe is mind-bogglingly enormous and we are mind-bogglingly miniscule. We know almost nothing about anything beyond our own tiny solar system, and not much more about our adjacent planets.

Scaled down to help, we are discussing what is going on in Australia when we've never been further than shifting our arses 0.5mm on the sofa and the only information we have is what we can see through a dirty pair of binoculars.

Statistically, it's extremely unlikely that we are the only 'intelligent' life in the cosmos, but unless other life has managed to overcome the seemingly impenetrable problem of travelling millions of light-years in fewer than millions of years, they've never visited. Besides, imagine travelling such impossible distances then deciding not to make contact? Seems a bit pointless, going all that way to study a vastly inferior civilisation. It would be like walking all the way to Margate.

Sporky · September 2023

Kilgore said:

Sporky said:

GoFish said:

Building a pyramid isn't hard, it just needs time and a fuck-tonne of effort, copoperation and human ingenuity!

And slaves. Lots and lots of free, expendable labour.

Current evidence suggests they were actually paid labourers.

Zero hours contracts though, right?

Chalky · September 2023

Tannin said:

Chalky said:

Science tells us that life on earth started under a large set of very particular planetary conditions, which is why we cannot reproduce those conditions and grow a new lifeform in a lab today. Those particular conditions relate to the age of the planet in its formative years.

In other words there could be a billion planets like Earth but if they haven't passed through a point where they had the right substances in the right conditions at the right time, then they will be barren.

Um ... no it doesn't. We haven't created life ourselves yet because we have only been trying for less than a century. The original outbreak of life on Earth had not centuries, not thousands of years, not even millions of years, it had billions of years. Even the most stupidly, outlandishly remote possibility will very likely pop up if you give it an entire huge planet and a few billion years to happen in.

The fact that we aren't quite sure exactly how it happened yet doesn't mean it was unlikely or a once-off, it just means that we humans haven't figured it out yet. It stands alongside a vast number of other scientific questions we don't have answers for either. (Yet.)

We haven't figured out how Platypuses make babies yet either - we have a vague idea but despite a century of research we still don't understand how the egg becomes either male or female. Does this mean that Platypus sex selection is near-impossible and could only ever happen once in all the billions of years the Earth has been here? No, it just means we haven't figured it out yet.

The fact that I don't know how to do calculus doesn't mean that calculus doesn't exist, it just means I haven't learned how to do it yet.

I disagree @Tannin.

Here are examples of the "set of requirements" I mentioned earlier:

- For prebiotic life to begin, a powerful energy source is required. Energy from the Sun alone is not enough to break down inorganic compounds such as nitrogen (N2), carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) and convert them to complex organic molecules. However, a natural nuclear reactor would provide more than enough energy to drive the required reactions.- A supply of major elements is another condition for the formation of life, as most organisms on earth are made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. The early Earth crust, along with the atmosphere and ocean, can supply these.- As well as the elements that form the building blocks of organic compounds, there must also be a ready supply of the nutrients that sustain life. The nutrient source on early Hadean Earth would have been the rocks on the Earth’s surface, which were rich in iron and phosphorus as well as rarer elements like potassium and uranium.
- A high concentration of gases containing compounds such as ammonia and methane is another key requirement. An enclosed space, such as an underground chamber occurring in the plumbing of a nuclear geyser, would collect a sufficient concentration of these gasses.- Dry-wet cycles are another essential environmental condition for the emergence of life. Alternating between hydration and dehydration can generate more complex organic molecules from amino acids, such as RNA.- Water must be clean and non-toxic. The early oceans were highly acidic and very salty, and life would not have emerged nor survived here. This suggests that life would have formed in a watery environment on land, such as pool or wetland.- Water must also be poor in sodium and rich in potassium. We know this as modern cells contain little sodium, suggesting that life formed in an environment where this was relatively unavailable.- A cycle between day and night is another vital condition for the birth of life. Day-night cycles allow variations in temperature, with low and high temperatures driving different types of reactions, and encouraging self-replication of DNA sequences.- Finally, a diverse environment is necessary to emerge life. Variations in pH, salinity and temperature will help to drive different types of reactions, leading to more complex and varying organic molecules. Diverse environments would occur across the Earth’s landmass through plate tectonics, but not within its oceans.

crosstownvamp · September 2023

@Chalky - as you probably know some scientists favour the ocean vents as the location of origin of life. The alkaline white smokers are what Prof. Nick Lane proposes.

GoFish · September 2023

Sporky said:

Kilgore said:

Sporky said:

GoFish said:

Building a pyramid isn't hard, it just needs time and a fuck-tonne of effort, copoperation and human ingenuity!

And slaves. Lots and lots of free, expendable labour.

Current evidence suggests they were actually paid labourers.

Zero hours contracts though, right?

Quite literally. Due to Egypt's unique conditions, agriculture required comparatively little labour and left a large time surplus, allowing for silly specialisations such as full-time musician, animal tamer, artist / sculptor, chemist and so on. As money was not yet known the line between slave / indentured /employee / volunteer was tenuous.

During the annual flooding season, there was little productive work to be done. One of the benefits of civilisation was centralisation - so Pharoh could send for work gangs who could journey up to Memphis, Samarra, Elephantine etc to do some "honest toil" and be paid in bread and beer. No doubt there was an added religeous / social cohesion factor - essentilly like a very hot and hard seasonal job with nightly drink.

Not saying it went down exactly like that, but it could have.

Chalky · September 2023

crosstownvamp said:

@Chalky - as you probably know some scientists favour the ocean vents as the location of origin of life. The alkaline white smokers are what Prof. Nick Kent proposes.

I haven't heard of Nick Kent and can't seem to find him on Google, unless I'm missing something? My knowledge was from a few Youtube videos a few years ago. They were showing the move away from "add water and rock and simmer for 100 million years" primordial stew, and moving towards a more demanding recipe needing the rather more intricate preparations and progressions I listed above.

crosstownvamp · September 2023

Chalky said:

I haven't heard of Nick Kent and can't seem to find him on Google, unless I'm missing something?

Damn - after my brain got in gear I edited my post to change it to Nick Lane but you beat me to it.

Nick Kent was an NME writer!

Lane's book on this is The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is?

Chalky · September 2023

crosstownvamp said:

Chalky said:

I haven't heard of Nick Kent and can't seem to find him on Google, unless I'm missing something?

Damn - after my brain got in gear I edited my post to change it to Nick Lane but you beat me to it.
Nick Kent was an NME writer!

Yes, for a moment I thought he was like Brian Cox - a scientist with a side job in pop music!

Devil#20 · September 2023

Anyway, if we are going to get a visit then it'll have to be soon. According to leading anthropologists we are about 1000 years from extinction.

dazzajl · September 2023

Tannin · September 2023

Chalky said:

Tannin said:

Chalky said:

Science tells us that life on earth started under a large set of very particular planetary conditions, which is why we cannot reproduce those conditions and grow a new lifeform in a lab today. Those particular conditions relate to the age of the planet in its formative years.

In other words there could be a billion planets like Earth but if they haven't passed through a point where they had the right substances in the right conditions at the right time, then they will be barren.

Um ... no it doesn't. We haven't created life ourselves yet because we have only been trying for less than a century. The original outbreak of life on Earth had not centuries, not thousands of years, not even millions of years, it had billions of years. Even the most stupidly, outlandishly remote possibility will very likely pop up if you give it an entire huge planet and a few billion years to happen in.

The fact that we aren't quite sure exactly how it happened yet doesn't mean it was unlikely or a once-off, it just means that we humans haven't figured it out yet. It stands alongside a vast number of other scientific questions we don't have answers for either. (Yet.)

We haven't figured out how Platypuses make babies yet either - we have a vague idea but despite a century of research we still don't understand how the egg becomes either male or female. Does this mean that Platypus sex selection is near-impossible and could only ever happen once in all the billions of years the Earth has been here? No, it just means we haven't figured it out yet.

The fact that I don't know how to do calculus doesn't mean that calculus doesn't exist, it just means I haven't learned how to do it yet.

I disagree @Tannin.

Here are examples of the "set of requirements" I mentioned earlier:

- For prebiotic life to begin, a powerful energy source is required. Energy from the Sun alone is not enough to break down inorganic compounds such as nitrogen (N2), carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) and convert them to complex organic molecules. However, a natural nuclear reactor would provide more than enough energy to drive the required reactions.
- A supply of major elements is another condition for the formation of life, as most organisms on earth are made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. The early Earth crust, along with the atmosphere and ocean, can supply these.
- As well as the elements that form the building blocks of organic compounds, there must also be a ready supply of the nutrients that sustain life. The nutrient source on early Hadean Earth would have been the rocks on the Earth’s surface, which were rich in iron and phosphorus as well as rarer elements like potassium and uranium.
- A high concentration of gases containing compounds such as ammonia and methane is another key requirement. An enclosed space, such as an underground chamber occurring in the plumbing of a nuclear geyser, would collect a sufficient concentration of these gasses.
- Dry-wet cycles are another essential environmental condition for the emergence of life. Alternating between hydration and dehydration can generate more complex organic molecules from amino acids, such as RNA.
- Water must be clean and non-toxic. The early oceans were highly acidic and very salty, and life would not have emerged nor survived here. This suggests that life would have formed in a watery environment on land, such as pool or wetland.
- Water must also be poor in sodium and rich in potassium. We know this as modern cells contain little sodium, suggesting that life formed in an environment where this was relatively unavailable.
- A cycle between day and night is another vital condition for the birth of life. Day-night cycles allow variations in temperature, with low and high temperatures driving different types of reactions, and encouraging self-replication of DNA sequences.
- Finally, a diverse environment is necessary to emerge life. Variations in pH, salinity and temperature will help to drive different types of reactions, leading to more complex and varying organic molecules. Diverse environments would occur across the Earth’s landmass through plate tectonics, but not within its oceans.

^And none of those things are difficult or rare. Energy? Thunderstorms provide way more than enough. Diversity? That's a given on any place the size of a planet. Minerals? Life is formed, for the most part, from very common ones. And so on. There is no mystery, no miracle, we just don't know the right combination yet. With an entire planet and billions of years, the formation of life is only to be expected. .

Chalky · September 2023

Tannin said:

Chalky said:

Tannin said:

Chalky said:

Science tells us that life on earth started under a large set of very particular planetary conditions, which is why we cannot reproduce those conditions and grow a new lifeform in a lab today. Those particular conditions relate to the age of the planet in its formative years.

In other words there could be a billion planets like Earth but if they haven't passed through a point where they had the right substances in the right conditions at the right time, then they will be barren.

Um ... no it doesn't. We haven't created life ourselves yet because we have only been trying for less than a century. The original outbreak of life on Earth had not centuries, not thousands of years, not even millions of years, it had billions of years. Even the most stupidly, outlandishly remote possibility will very likely pop up if you give it an entire huge planet and a few billion years to happen in.

The fact that we aren't quite sure exactly how it happened yet doesn't mean it was unlikely or a once-off, it just means that we humans haven't figured it out yet. It stands alongside a vast number of other scientific questions we don't have answers for either. (Yet.)

We haven't figured out how Platypuses make babies yet either - we have a vague idea but despite a century of research we still don't understand how the egg becomes either male or female. Does this mean that Platypus sex selection is near-impossible and could only ever happen once in all the billions of years the Earth has been here? No, it just means we haven't figured it out yet.

The fact that I don't know how to do calculus doesn't mean that calculus doesn't exist, it just means I haven't learned how to do it yet.

I disagree @Tannin.

Here are examples of the "set of requirements" I mentioned earlier:

- For prebiotic life to begin, a powerful energy source is required. Energy from the Sun alone is not enough to break down inorganic compounds such as nitrogen (N2), carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) and convert them to complex organic molecules. However, a natural nuclear reactor would provide more than enough energy to drive the required reactions.
- A supply of major elements is another condition for the formation of life, as most organisms on earth are made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. The early Earth crust, along with the atmosphere and ocean, can supply these.
- As well as the elements that form the building blocks of organic compounds, there must also be a ready supply of the nutrients that sustain life. The nutrient source on early Hadean Earth would have been the rocks on the Earth’s surface, which were rich in iron and phosphorus as well as rarer elements like potassium and uranium.
- A high concentration of gases containing compounds such as ammonia and methane is another key requirement. An enclosed space, such as an underground chamber occurring in the plumbing of a nuclear geyser, would collect a sufficient concentration of these gasses.
- Dry-wet cycles are another essential environmental condition for the emergence of life. Alternating between hydration and dehydration can generate more complex organic molecules from amino acids, such as RNA.
- Water must be clean and non-toxic. The early oceans were highly acidic and very salty, and life would not have emerged nor survived here. This suggests that life would have formed in a watery environment on land, such as pool or wetland.
- Water must also be poor in sodium and rich in potassium. We know this as modern cells contain little sodium, suggesting that life formed in an environment where this was relatively unavailable.
- A cycle between day and night is another vital condition for the birth of life. Day-night cycles allow variations in temperature, with low and high temperatures driving different types of reactions, and encouraging self-replication of DNA sequences.
- Finally, a diverse environment is necessary to emerge life. Variations in pH, salinity and temperature will help to drive different types of reactions, leading to more complex and varying organic molecules. Diverse environments would occur across the Earth’s landmass through plate tectonics, but not within its oceans.

^And none of those things are difficult or rare. Energy? Thunderstorms provide way more than enough. Diversity? That's a given on any place the size of a planet. Minerals? Life is formed, for the most part, from very common ones. And so on. There is no mystery, no miracle, we just don't know the right combination yet. With an entire planet and billions of years, the formation of life is only to be expected. .

You blathered on about a topic you knew nothing about.

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