Dwarf planet Ceres may have been habitable - for microbes - a couple of billion years back Dwarf planet Ceres, the unpleasant lump of icy rock orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, once had an environment in which microbes might have thrived. So says a paper titled “Core metamorphism controls the dynamic habitability of mid-sized ocean worlds—The case of Ceres” published this week in the journal Science Advances. As …
So, that's how much we have lowered our expectations. We'll be happy to find the dead, fried remains of some bacteria somewhere before Jupiter.
I remain convinced that there is intelligent life out there in the Universe. You can point a telescope anywhere in the night sky and, with enough time, you'll find entire galaxies. You can't expect me to believe that none of them have developed intelligent life. Beings that look up into the night sky and wonder, who else is out there ?
The only problem is the trillions upon trillions of kilometers between us and them.
And there's no Universal Postal Service.
I tend to agree with the general idea, but one has to admit that "intelligence" is a loaded term, since in the context it usually means "having the intelligence of humans". Microbes do have some kind of intelligence too, even plants do. So, "intelligent life" isn't the life which would vote for the same people as we do, it just means it can and will actively adapt to environment changes.
Your right there. Apparently sterilzed sealed comtainers full of sterilized nutrients can be left for a very long time without showing any signs of life. Nicolas Appert's and Louis Pasteur foumd this out a long time ago. If the planet Earth was completly sterilized it would stay like until seeded by life from outside.
> Nicolas Appert's and Louis Pasteur foumd this out a long time ago.
Except they didn't leave those containers for a "very long time". If they had waited a million years (or two) more, and the containers had been exposed to high energies, they might have spawned some primitive life.
In other words, you're comparing apples to oranges.
(Didn't downvote you though.)
In fact there could be a thriving civilisation just 12 light years away.
Its got laws and customs for guiding its society, various social classes, public works for the benefit of all, and those at the top can afford to play politics.
Sad thing is it will be another 2000 yrs before they develop radio and can hear us.
Although more likely that other intelligent life has arisen in our galaxy (never mind the millions of others) but they've florished and died long before we even considered banging the rocks together.
"Dwarf planet Ceres, the unpleasant lump of icy rock orbiting between Mars and Jupiter,"
I don't see why it's unpleasant. Inhospitable, as far as terrestrial life goes, yes, but it's still fascinating and no more unpleasant than, say, the moon.
As for alien life beyond the solar system: we exist, and it seems very unlikely that would be a unique event in such a large universe. That alien life has, does or will exist seems virtually certain. Finding the buggers, though, might take a while.
Or they just are so different they don't even notice us. Xkcd nailed it: https://xkcd.com/638/
"A civilisation twice as old as ours may exist, and would regard us as very primitive, not worth bothering with."
It would be interesting to see some papers on possible civilizations older than Earth.
In the beginning there was nothing, which then exploded and it took some time from that point to have stable H, He and a dash of Li. It took a few generations of stars to form, burn hot and then explode to create larger elements and for those to go off and condense into solar systems, etc. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
I think we are limited in our thinking by not having examples of any other sort of life that isn't similar to what's on Earth (DNA, etc). Do we really need 1-92 inclusive to have complex life or would 1-60 be ok?That might lower the number of solar lifetime cycles before a system can form with enough building blocks. And then there's the whole Panspermia concept that give a hypothesis around something that could jumpstart life once a planet cools down and has the right conditions to support life (as we know it). We've collected free-floating amino acids, but we don't know for certain that they make a difference. They may just be something that's very easy to make through a self-folding mechanism. Organic chem/biology wasn't a big interest of mine since it doesn't often go boom.
"You should have considered organic chemistry, because I don't know a single organic chemist that hasn't been in an explosion."
I blame it on not having good teachers growing up in that subject. I had a great chemistry teacher in school and my physics teacher in high school was a good friend of my father's so I got a lot of extra help from "uncle Jack". I firmly believe that having good teachers is a major component in one's career choices. My scoutmaster (a school mates father) was an EE and that got me into electronics with ME being a really obvious degree to get after that since much of the coursework overlapped.
Oh, I agree completely! I went into undergrad for comp sci, but then I sat in on a geology class a friend was taking. I hadn't really thought about geology since I was a kid, but the professor for that class really captured my attention and I ended up getting a geo minor and going to grad school for geochemistry after undergrad. A good teacher can have a massive effect on one's life.
"We could have rovers, some with return missions, on many of the planemo worlds in the solar system for the cost of the ISS that never gets more than 300 miles from the surface of the Earth."
Why not both?
Rovers and landers are great for going and looking at something, but not as good if you want to run experiments on what you find. ISS isn't anywhere that's good for looking at much, but can be used to do experiments. China has plans for a grab and dash sample return Mars mission. The US mission was too complex and now the samples the rover has collected and shat out won't be collected, so, fail. I see the same issue with lunar missions going to the south pole to find water when it would be much easier to land somewhere in the middle and work on perfecting research stations and ISRU on the moon first. If you've never climbed a mountain before, Everest is a poor choice for a first go. Start with Fuji the hard way, Kilimanjaro or Mt Whitney (in winter) and see how you get on. I don't do that well over 11,000ft so even Whitney was very difficult for me and I stopped making trips like that afterwards. Everest? no way.
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