Is element 115 a real thing in nature? What if any properties of element 115 would allow it to be used in antigravity propulsion as Bob Lazar Claims?

[dalekphalm]

20 minutes ago, tikker said:

Supporters of fringe science can have pretty sound reasoning skills. Just look at the Beyond the Curve documentary. Their process there is actually rather solid: they have their theory, they come up with an experiment to test it and even beforehand explore what the outcomes would mean. The ultimate problem is that when the observations disagree with the theory, they stick to the premise that the observations hence must be wrong, while in science it's the other way around. If the measurements are sound (which does not have to be an easy given) then we must accept that the theory is wrong or at least incomplete. It's a blurry line between "proper science" and "crackpot theory" sometimes.

Certainly - most conspiracy theorists will fit the evidence to the theory and disregard evidence that doesn't fit, rather than the other way around.

 

They don't come up with a hypothesis and then test it. They come up with the answer to the hypothesis, then they go looking for things that make it work.

20 minutes ago, tikker said:

In that regard, we cannot say cleary at all that there is life elsewhere in the Galaxy or the Universe. We have no evidence that life exists outside of Earth. As you say, however, the amount of galaxies in the Universe, and even the amount of stars with planets in our own Milky Way, do make it seem unlikely for there not to be life elsewhere If we are not a fluke and is what we now call the Fermi paradox.

Even if the Fermi Paradox is real and Earth is the only planet in the Milky Way to have life (let alone sentient life), there are literally countless galaxies in the universe. Quite simply, if we are alone in the entire universe, then most likely there's some kind of God or Higher Power that made it so. Note: I don't believe in a higher power like that.

 

The odds of us being alone in the entirety of the universe is just mind bogglingly small, given how many possible variations of galaxies there are.

 

It's true that we don't have evidence for aliens, but at the same time, our method of collecting evidence is literally light (or radio waves) - so we can only see out as far as about 100-130 years distance. If an Alien society arose a million years ago, but it's in the Andromeda galaxy, even if we're looking in the right spot, we wouldn't be able to tell for another ~1.5 million years from now.

 

TL;DR: Speed of Light sucks and really limits the kind of knowledge we can gain about the universe.

 

So while it's not 100% certain that other aliens exist, I'd suggest it's 99.9% certain that other aliens either exist right now or have existed in the universe previously.

[tikker]

56 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Even if the Fermi Paradox is real and Earth is the only planet in the Milky Way to have life (let alone sentient life), there are literally countless galaxies in the universe. Quite simply, if we are alone in the entire universe, then most likely there's some kind of God or Higher Power that made it so. Note: I don't believe in a higher power like that.

 

The odds of us being alone in the entirety of the universe is just mind bogglingly small, given how many possible variations of galaxies there are.

You're right and that is the premise of the paradox. I don't really agree that us being alone implies a higher power over us being a statistical fluke. Even with a ridiculously low probability, if the Universe is big enough it probably happens. Neutral hydrogen, for example, has a crazy small chance to emit the radiation we can detect with radio telescopes. It's offset by the amount that exists in the Universe making it relatively easy to detect. This works both ways of course and also works as an argument for there being life.

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

It's true that we don't have evidence for aliens, but at the same time, our method of collecting evidence is literally light (or radio waves) - so we can only see out as far as about 100-130 years distance. If an Alien society arose a million years ago, but it's in the Andromeda galaxy, even if we're looking in the right spot, we wouldn't be able to tell for another ~1.5 million years from now.

 

TL;DR: Speed of Light sucks and really limits the kind of knowledge we can gain about the universe.

So while it's not 100% certain that other aliens exist, I'd suggest it's 99.9% certain that other aliens either exist right now or have existed in the universe previously.

That is indeed one of the possible solutions to the paradox. The signals may simply have not arrived yet and if FTL travel/communication is not possible then communication between civilisations across cosmic distances may just inherently be nearly impossible. At the same time we can't easily distinguish that from the signal not being there in the first place. We can only estimate how many one may expect through e.g. the Drake equation by taking Earth as an example and estimating how many similar conditions you would expect, but that doesn't give you a certainty on there being life. I don't think we even have a moderate idea of the probability that Earth would have developed life still, so any extrapolation to the Universe will likely be highly uncertain. You could also argue that since none of the 5000 exoplanets we have detected so far show signs of life, that chances look rather low. A lot of those are gas giants or alike, so not the planets we'd readly expect life at the moment either thus we're also very much limited by what we can detect or measure. We are looking for either a direct detection or an imprint that can only come from life that is strong enough so we would be able to detect it, first of all, and recognise as such as well. We have ideas what to look for, but we don't have data to support that it's 99.9% certain aliens exist, or at least it would be +/- 100% error bar.

[Imbadatnames]

On 8/3/2022 at 8:28 PM, tikker said:

You're right and that is the premise of the paradox. I don't really agree that us being alone implies a higher power over us being a statistical fluke. Even with a ridiculously low probability, if the Universe is big enough it probably happens. Neutral hydrogen, for example, has a crazy small chance to emit the radiation we can detect with radio telescopes. It's offset by the amount that exists in the Universe making it relatively easy to detect. This works both ways of course and also works as an argument for there being life.

That is indeed one of the possible solutions to the paradox. The signals may simply have not arrived yet and if FTL travel/communication is not possible then communication between civilisations across cosmic distances may just inherently be nearly impossible. At the same time we can't easily distinguish that from the signal not being there in the first place. We can only estimate how many one may expect through e.g. the Drake equation by taking Earth as an example and estimating how many similar conditions you would expect, but that doesn't give you a certainty on there being life. I don't think we even have a moderate idea of the probability that Earth would have developed life still, so any extrapolation to the Universe will likely be highly uncertain. You could also argue that since none of the 5000 exoplanets we have detected so far show signs of life, that chances look rather low. A lot of those are gas giants or alike, so not the planets we'd readly expect life at the moment either thus we're also very much limited by what we can detect or measure. We are looking for either a direct detection or an imprint that can only come from life that is strong enough so we would be able to detect it, first of all, and recognise as such as well. We have ideas what to look for, but we don't have data to support that it's 99.9% certain aliens exist, or at least it would be +/- 100% error bar.

I think you’re failing to comprehend the sheer vastness of the universe. Also 5,000 planets that we cannot TELL if there’s life or not. We lack the resolution to actually see if there’s anything there or not. We can’t even tell if there’s life in Europa and that’s in our solar system. 

[IPD]

9 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

I think you’re failing to comprehend the sheets vastness of the universe. Also 5,000 planets that we cannot TELL if there’s life or not. We lack the resolution to actually see if there’s anything there or not. We can’t even tell if there’s life in Europa and that’s in our solar system. 

Since there are estimated to be more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth--it is beyond preposterous to make assumptions about life being statistically remote.  I agree with you.

 

Humankind has only just recently reached interstellar space.  2012 as a matter of fact.  Now if we assume that every star in every galaxy has an average of 6 planets--and none of those have any moons (ridiculous assumption, btw)--and the fact that we have yet to even reach one extra-solar planetary system--and you should begin to comprehend the vastness of possibility that the universe represents.

 

The human mind simply cannot accurately fathom the possibilities.  200 billion stars (Estimated) is the lowball figure (there's 7.5 sextillion sand grains estimated on earth....).  So let's say 1.2 trillion planets (on the extreme low end--and no moons).  That sounds like a preposterous amount of hubris to assume that life simply cannot exist on any but one of them.  If there's over a sextillion stars, and each planetary system has 2 dozen or more possible orbiting bodies that could support life--the numbers are in the octillion range. 

[Imbadatnames]

4 minutes ago, IPD said:

Since there are estimated to be more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth--it is beyond preposterous to make assumptions about life being statistically remote.  I agree with you.

 

Humankind has only just recently reached interstellar space.  2012 as a matter of fact.  Now if we assume that every star in every galaxy has an average of 6 planets--and none of those have any moons (ridiculous assumption, btw)--and the fact that we have yet to even reach one extra-solar planetary system--and you should begin to comprehend the vastness of possibility that the universe represents.

 

The human mind simply cannot accurately fathom the possibilities.  200 billion stars (Estimated) is the lowball figure (there's 7.5 sextillion sand grains estimated on earth....).  So let's say 1.2 trillion planets (on the extreme low end--and no moons).  That sounds like a preposterous amount of hubris to assume that life simply cannot exist on any but one of them.

And life doesn’t need “earth” like conditions either. It doesn’t have to be inhabitable by life from earth to be viable for something else. Obviously something at 2000K or 5K isn’t going to have a chance but there’s a fairly large window. 

[IPD]

11 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

And life doesn’t need “earth” like conditions either. It doesn’t have to be inhabitable by life from earth to be viable for something else. Obviously something at 2000K or 5K isn’t going to have a chance but there’s a fairly large window. 

Like how TOS predicted copper-blooded humanoids, and Silicon-based life-forms.

[tikker]

21 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

I think you’re failing to comprehend the sheer vastness of the universe. Also 5,000 planets that we cannot TELL if there’s life or not. We lack the resolution to actually see if there’s anything there or not. We can’t even tell if there’s life in Europa and that’s in our solar system. 

Nobody can really comprehend the vastness of the Universe, but that is by no means proof that life exists elsewhere, which is important to keep in mind. We have not yet found any (strong) evidence that life exists outside of Earth. Following the scientific method you therefore cannot claim proof of it existing somewhere. We also cannot claim proof that it doesn't exist, which is something we practically can never proof. Those kind of conundrums let to a whole bunch of science philosophy, which then grew favour for disproving things rather than proving them. The actual hypothesis at test here is therefore "life does not exist outside of Earth", because that can be disproven by a single convincing detection of life elsewhere. Similarly we have never proven and likely won't that GR, or other theories, are correct. They haven't been disproven to a significant degree yet or lack a better alternative for us to not take them as the closest to the truth we have for now with the byline mentioning any caveats. Our "truth" is something can evolves. It is not set in stone and science isn't 'the truth'. It's a tool to help us uncover the truth. The size of the Universe is only an argument to support that life not existing elsewhere seems unlikely, which I touched upon earlier regarding the Fermi paradox.

 

We don't always need spatial resolution to figure something out either. The spatial resolution is only a hard requirement if you would want to directly photograph an area covered by plants, for example, with enough detail to make out that they are probably plants, or if another imprint you are searching for disappears at too low spatial resolution. Life, as we know it, leaves certain signatures. Those signatures can be emission or absorption of light due to certain elements or molecules being present in atmospheres, polarisation signatures in light or certain spectral behaviour due to the presence of plants, for example.  Questions that are being worked on now are, for example, trying to figure out whether those signals are strong enough for us to detect from exoplanets and what exactly we need to look for. Current experiments are now trying to figure out whether we can even detect life on Earth. Launching instruments measuring what I just mentioned into space and having them look at Earth from a small distance first would be a great way to establish if we can even think about trying this for exoplanets and is being worked on, because if we can't even detect life on Earth from space we likely won't detect life as we know it elsewhere.

21 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Also 5,000 planets that we cannot TELL if there’s life or not.

Which is in line with what I said. With our current instruments and thoughts of what life would look like or leave as an imprint, we haven't found significant evidence. To turn this around: even with trillions and trillions of galaxies in the universe we cannot TELL of that they contain life without observing it first. Therefore, we cannot say that there is life anywhere until we find signs that do tell us. We can only say that given our assumptions we find it rather unlikely and that it would be surprising if there wouldn't be.

21 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

We can’t even tell if there’s life in Europa and that’s in our solar system. 

Which isn't really a resolution problem since we have high-resolution pictures of certain area's on Europa already. Here are pictures taken by the Gallileo probe that have features of 460 metres (combining low-resolution colour images and high-resolution grey-scale images for the features):

and here is a picture taken by Cassini also Gallileo it turns out, just used by NASA on an article about Cassini:

https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/signs-of-europa-plumes-remain-elusive-in-search-of-cassini-data

https://scitechdaily.com/chaos-terrain-of-jupiters-moon-europa-shown-in-crisp-detail-in-nasa-galileo-images/

 

They don't really lack the resolution. Just area and instrument coverage.

 

21 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

And life doesn’t need “earth” like conditions either. It doesn’t have to be inhabitable by life from earth to be viable for something else. Obviously something at 2000K or 5K isn’t going to have a chance but there’s a fairly large window. 

Depends on what you call a large range. Life on Earth has a range of about 140 °C

Quote

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1304212111
Life can grow and reproduce at temperatures as low as −15 °C, and as high as 122 °C. Studies of life in extreme deserts show that on a dry world, even a small amount of rain, fog, snow, and even atmospheric humidity can be adequate for photosynthetic production producing a small but detectable microbial community.

biologically that's a large range. Astrophysically that's often a rather narrow range. We also can't just consider where life on Earth survives now, but also need to consider what temperature ranges and other conditions would allow life to start developing at all, which is a big point of study still, because we simply don't really know:

Quote

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01699-8

The emergence of life as we know it is generally understood to require three building blocks: an energy source, access to nutrition and the presence of liquid water^1,2. Apart from these requirements, it remains unknown to what extent conditions on other planets need to resemble Earth to be habitable.
...
Life has adapted to many other relatively extreme environments, such as the depths of the ocean at kbar pressures⁶, although it is unknown how many of these organisms live independently from life on the surface. In the search for life on extraterrestrial planets, it needs to be considered that life might manifest and thrive under conditions that would be considered extreme on Earth.

Even our definition of the habitable zone is simply based on where liquid water could exist, because as far as we know water is essential to life.

[Imbadatnames]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

Nobody can really comprehend the vastness of the Universe, but that is by no means proof that life exists elsewhere, which is important to keep in mind. We have not yet found any (strong) evidence that life exists outside of Earth. Following the scientific method you therefore cannot claim proof of it existing somewhere. We also cannot claim proof that it doesn't exist, which is something we practically can never proof. Those kind of conundrums let to a whole bunch of science philosophy, which then grew favour for disproving things rather than proving them. The actual hypothesis at test here is therefore "life does not exist outside of Earth", because that can be disproven by a single convincing detection of life elsewhere. Similarly we have never proven and likely won't that GR, or other theories, are correct. They haven't been disproven to a significant degree yet or lack a better alternative for us to not take them as the closest to the truth we have for now with the byline mentioning any caveats. Our "truth" is something can evolves. It is not set in stone and science isn't 'the truth'. It's a tool to help us uncover the truth. The size of the Universe is only an argument to support that life not existing elsewhere seems unlikely, which I touched upon earlier regarding the Fermi paradox.

 

We don't always need spatial resolution to figure something out either. The spatial resolution is only a hard requirement if you would want to directly photograph an area covered by plants, for example, with enough detail to make out that they are probably plants, or if another imprint you are searching for disappears at too low spatial resolution. Life, as we know it, leaves certain signatures. Those signatures can be emission or absorption of light due to certain elements or molecules being present in atmospheres, polarisation signatures in light or certain spectral behaviour due to the presence of plants, for example.  Questions that are being worked on now are, for example, trying to figure out whether those signals are strong enough for us to detect from exoplanets and what exactly we need to look for. Current experiments are now trying to figure out whether we can even detect life on Earth. Launching instruments measuring what I just mentioned into space and having them look at Earth from a small distance first would be a great way to establish if we can even think about trying this for exoplanets and is being worked on, because if we can't even detect life on Earth from space we likely won't detect life as we know it elsewhere.

Which is in line with what I said. With our current instruments and thoughts of what life would look like or leave as an imprint, we haven't found significant evidence. To turn this around: even with trillions and trillions of galaxies in the universe we cannot TELL of that they contain life without observing it first. Therefore, we cannot say that there is life anywhere until we find signs that do tell us. We can only say that given our assumptions we find it rather unlikely and that it would be surprising if there wouldn't be.

Which isn't really a resolution problem since we have high-resolution pictures of certain area's on Europa already. Here are pictures taken by the Gallileo probe that have features of 460 metres (combining low-resolution colour images and high-resolution grey-scale images for the features):

and here is a picture taken by Cassini:

https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/signs-of-europa-plumes-remain-elusive-in-search-of-cassini-data

https://scitechdaily.com/chaos-terrain-of-jupiters-moon-europa-shown-in-crisp-detail-in-nasa-galileo-images/

 

They don't really lack the resolution. Just area and instrument coverage.

 

Depends on what you call a large range. Life on Earth has a range of about 140 °C

biologically that's a large range. Astrophysically that's often a rather narrow range. We also can't just consider where life on Earth survives now, but also need to consider what temperature ranges and other conditions would allow life to start developing at all, which is a big point of study still, because we simply don't really know:

Even our definition of the habitable zone is simply based on where liquid water could exist, because as far as we know water is essential to life.

Um… the life in europa thing would be from INSIDE the moon in the theoretical sub surface oceans that exist there. Hubble can’t see through rock dude. 
 

You really have no clue. LIFE MUST BE EXACTLY THE SAME AS ON EARTH AND MUST BE IN EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE!

[dalekphalm]

"Resolution" isn't exactly the correct term. We lack precision in telescopes to be able to do things like analyze the spectrum of a planetary atmosphere outside of our solar system.

 

That is changing though. In fact, the JWST recently did a spectrograph of a planetary body as a demonstration.

 

So, in the very near future, we're going to learn a lot more about various exoplanets. But even then, it's still really difficult to properly analyze them.

[tikker]

3 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Um… the life in europa thing would be from INSIDE the moon in the theoretical sub surface oceans that exist there. Hubble can’t see through rock dude. 

First that's not Hubble, they were space probes that did a fly-by. Secondly, it was your own argument that posed resolution as the problem, so for Europa I answered in terms of spatial resolution while for exoplanets I touched on ways we can get around the lack of spatial resolution. Looking below the ice will be a completely different game indeed.

3 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

You really have no clue.

And on what basis do you make that accusation, clearly not knowing what my knowledge or line of work is?

3 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

LIFE MUST BE EXACTLY THE SAME AS ON EARTH AND MUST BE IN EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE!

That is not what I said. In science you work off of what you know. We are not saying that life absolutely must be exactly the same as here on Earth as you portray here. It is simply so that Earth is the best and only example we have of what to look for. You can think of various other exotic (for us) mechanisms on which life could be based, but reality is that we know even less about that than about life on Earth. The simplest start is therefore to consider life on Earth as a reference and look for things that are similar to that. Once we gain a better understanding of other life through modeling and improvements to theories about how life could form, then we can also start looking for those signatures.

 

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

"Resolution" isn't exactly the correct term. We lack precision in telescopes to be able to do things like analyze the spectrum of a planetary atmosphere outside of our solar system.

If you mean what I think you mean (correct me if I'm wrong though), then that's also called "resolution" in spectroscopy. That is expressed as the difference in wavelength you can measure compared to the (average) wavelength you measure at. For example, if you can distinguish wavelengths 2 nm different at an observing wavelength of 5000 nm, you would say you have a resolution of 2500. The word precision is mostly used in the statistical sense of how large your uncertainties on a measurement are.</pendantry> You are of course right that it plays a huge role. You can be right on the money with something, but if your error bars make it uncertain then it carries less weight.

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

That is changing though. In fact, the JWST recently did a spectrograph of a planetary body as a demonstration.

 

So, in the very near future, we're going to learn a lot more about various exoplanets. But even then, it's still really difficult to properly analyze them.

I'm curious to see what JWST will bring us for planets. A huge benefit over ground-based spectroscopy is that it doesn't have to deal with Earth's atmosphere, which is nasty business at IR wavelengths. Great for seeing what constitutes planetary atmospheres, less great if your on that planet looking up.

[Imbadatnames]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

First that's not Hubble, they were space probes that did a fly-by. Secondly, it was your own argument that posed resolution as the problem, so for Europa I answered in terms of spatial resolution while for exoplanets I touched on ways we can get around the lack of spatial resolution. Looking below the ice will be a completely different game indeed.

And on what basis do you make that accusation, clearly not knowing what my knowledge or line of work is?

That is not what I said. In science you work off of what you know. We are not saying that life absolutely must be exactly the same as here on Earth as you portray here. It is simply so that Earth is the best and only example we have of what to look for. You can think of various other exotic (for us) mechanisms on which life could be based, but reality is that we know even less about that than about life on Earth. The simplest start is therefore to consider life on Earth as a reference and look for things that are similar to that. Once we gain a better understanding of other life through modeling and improvements to theories about how life could form, then we can also start looking for those signatures.

 

If you mean what I think you mean (correct me if I'm wrong though), then that's also called "resolution" in spectroscopy. That is expressed as the difference in wavelength you can measure compared to the (average) wavelength you measure at. For example, if you can distinguish wavelengths 2 nm different at an observing wavelength of 5000 nm, you would say you have a resolution of 2500. The word precision is mostly used in the statistical sense of how large your uncertainties on a measurement are.</pendantry> You are of course right that it plays a huge role. You can be right on the money with something, but if your error bars make it uncertain then it carries less weight.

I'm curious to see what JWST will bring us for planets. A huge benefit over ground-based spectroscopy is that it doesn't have to deal with Earth's atmosphere, which is nasty business at IR wavelengths. Great for seeing what constitutes planetary atmospheres, less great if your on that planet looking up.

You don’t have a clue based on your answers and lack of knowledge. 
 

The probes can’t see through rock, not ice, either numb nuts. I mention Hubble because it saw water vapour plumes coming from Europas surface. 
 

Resolution in terms of interstellar objects. But then the example was that even with something fairly close we can’t even tell there. 
 

The science doesn’t say that. For a start you can’t prove a negative, science doesn’t prove negatives. You cannot say through science that no other method for life is possible because there just isn’t the evidence for it. You also don’t work off what you know, that’s just inductive or deductive reasoning. Life on earth requires water because it’s the most common solvent for the chemistry that facilitates life, there could be a planet who’s most common solvent would be say toluene so life would be based off that. 
 

You are incredibly small minded. If scientists were like you we’d still think atoms were like plum puddings. 

[dalekphalm]

44 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

...numb nuts.

Okay, let's stop that right here - whether or not you disagree with @tikker you can be respectful about disagreeing with him.

[tikker]

13 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

You don’t have a clue based on your answers and lack of knowledge. 

I see. Fine with me, it's within your rights to disagree with me.

14 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

The probes can’t see through rock, not ice, either numb nuts. I mention Hubble because it saw water vapour plumes coming from Europas surface. 

I never said we could look through rocks or ice.

15 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Resolution in terms of interstellar objects. But then the example was that even with something fairly close we can’t even tell there. 

The way you phrase this makes it sound like there is life on Europa that we haven't detected yet, which we don't know. You're not wrong though. Since we won't get surface-level resolution for exoplanets soon we'll have to resort to other methods that I mentioned earlier. The problem there is that we don't properly know if we can even do this for Earth looking down from say the ISS. People are working on this planning to take such observations and then degrading the resolution to simulate as if the Earth was observed as an exoplanet to see how feasible it is. If we can't detect life on Earth that way, we'll need to figure out other ways or other signatures to look for to detect it.

35 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

The science doesn’t say that. For a start you can’t prove a negative, science doesn’t prove negatives.

Also not what I said. I said science usually works on disproving hypotheses. This is how I have been taught and what I experience around me. It's a way of thinking that stems from Karl Popper and his theory of falsifiability. As its name implies, it proposes that a good scientific theory is one that can be proven false. The idea of proving things false instead of true is that you only need a single counter example to proof something false. You also have trains of thought that are based on verifying things. Alien life admittedly falls in between the cracks of either camp. Finding life elsewhere will proof that life exists outside of Earth. It's just that in the falsifiability paradigm the theory "life exists outside of Earth" isn't a proper theory since it can't practically be proven false: for every planet where you don't find life you'll have to search another and since we don't know how big the Universe is, you won't know when you've covered all the planets. You can't realistically check them all. We can disprove the theory "life does not exist outside of Earth" easily by finding one single planet with signs of life. Practically it still means we have to search a huge number of planets for signs of life and the statement "life exists outside Earth" is easily proven by the same detection. It's (quite literally in this case) an academic exercise rather than a hard law.

1 hour ago, Imbadatnames said:

You cannot say through science that no other method for life is possible because there just isn’t the evidence for it.

Again not what I said. Please don't twist my words. I said the best example we have is life on Earth. I never said that anything else is impossible.

1 hour ago, Imbadatnames said:

You also don’t work off what you know, that’s just inductive or deductive reasoning.

I mean deductive reasoning is often exactly what you want and very useful. Anytime you apply if A is true and B is true then C you have applied deductive reasoning. That's ubiquitous in science as we wouldn't get anywhere without it. If I tell you to invent a car that is super fuel efficient, you will most likely look up reference how cars have worked up until now and what their limitations or reasons for inefficiency are before you start to think about how to improve it.

1 hour ago, Imbadatnames said:

Life on earth requires water because it’s the most common solvent for the chemistry that facilitates life, there could be a planet who’s most common solvent would be say toluene so life would be based off that.

Please elaborate on what makes you so certain about this. What allows you to extrapolate from water, an inorganic substance, to a completely different organic compound that has different properties and assume it would trigger life all the same? If you are certain that toluene can facilitate the formation of life then write a paper and submit it for peer review and publication. That is after all how our knowledge progresses.

1 hour ago, Imbadatnames said:

You are incredibly small minded 

I don't think so. Nowhere have I denied that life could take different forms than what we observe on Earth. It may very well be the case. That doesn't change the fact that we really don't know what to look for in the slightest if we don't look for Earth-like, carbon-based life which is hard enough already. What features would it imprint on the surface of the planet, on its atmosphere, what properties would light reflected off of it have etc. We have no examples of toluene based life, so we don't know what to expect. We can't look for something if we don't know how to look for it and should we detect it next week, we most likely wouldn't recognise it because we wouldn't know what we would be looking at or for.

[Imbadatnames]

25 minutes ago, tikker said:

I see. Fine with me, it's within your rights to disagree with me.

You are incorrect. It’s not disagreeing. 

25 minutes ago, tikker said:

I never said we could look through rocks or ice.

You literally posted photos so show the lack of life in Europa. 

25 minutes ago, tikker said:

The way you phrase this makes it sound like there is life on Europa that we haven't detected yet, which we don't know. You're not wrong though. Since we won't get surface-level resolution for exoplanets soon we'll have to resort to other methods that I mentioned earlier. The problem there is that we don't properly know if we can even do this for Earth looking down from say the ISS. People are working on this planning to take such observations and then degrading the resolution to simulate as if the Earth was observed as an exoplanet to see how feasible it is. If we can't detect life on Earth that way, we'll need to figure out other ways or other signatures to look for to detect it.

Also not what I said. I said science usually works on disproving hypotheses. This is how I have been taught and what I experience around me. It's a way of thinking that stems from Karl Popper and his theory of falsifiability. As its name implies, it proposes that a good scientific theory is one that can be proven false. The idea of proving things false instead of true is that you only need a single counter example to proof something false. You also have trains of thought that are based on verifying things. Alien life admittedly falls in between the cracks of either camp. Finding life elsewhere will proof that life exists outside of Earth. It's just that in the falsifiability paradigm the theory "life exists outside of Earth" isn't a proper theory since it can't practically be proven false: for every planet where you don't find life you'll have to search another and since we don't know how big the Universe is, you won't know when you've covered all the planets. You can't realistically check them all. We can disprove the theory "life does not exist outside of Earth" easily by finding one single planet with signs of life. Practically it still means we have to search a huge number of planets for signs of life and the statement "life exists outside Earth" is easily proven by the same detection. It's (quite literally in this case) an academic exercise rather than a hard law.

Again not what I said. Please don't twist my words. I said the best example we have is life on Earth. I never said that anything else is impossible.

I mean deductive reasoning is often exactly what you want and very useful. Anytime you apply if A is true and B is true then C you have applied deductive reasoning. That's ubiquitous in science as we wouldn't get anywhere without it. If I tell you to invent a car that is super fuel efficient, you will most likely look up reference how cars have worked up until now and what their limitations or reasons for inefficiency are before you start to think about how to improve it.

Please elaborate on what makes you so certain about this. What allows you to extrapolate from water, an inorganic substance, to a completely different organic compound that has different properties and assume it would trigger life all the same? If you are certain that toluene can facilitate the formation of life then write a paper and submit it for peer review and publication. That is after all how our knowledge progresses.

I don't think so. Nowhere have I denied that life could take different forms than what we observe on Earth. It may very well be the case. That doesn't change the fact that we really don't know what to look for in the slightest if we don't look for Earth-like, carbon-based life which is hard enough already. What features would it imprint on the surface of the planet, on its atmosphere, what properties would light reflected off of it have etc. We have no examples of toluene based life, so we don't know what to expect. We can't look for something if we don't know how to look for it and should we detect it next week, we most likely wouldn't recognise it because we wouldn't know what we would be looking at or for.

You’re literally writing a wall of text and it’s just deluded rambling. You have no knowledge on any relevant sector of science or the scientific method. You have no understanding of solvents  and think that because earth is based around an inorganic one that nowhere could possibly be based on an organic one. Not everywhere has to be within the same temperature range as earth, not everywhere needs to have the same chemistry, pressure, radiation etc etc etc. The possibilities are incalculable and with the maths involved means it is nigh on impossible that there isn’t some other form of life in the universe. We’ll never see or contact it because space is fucking massive and light is just too slow a vector to contact something with and we don’t live in Star Trek so FTL or even close to light speed travel is off the cards. 

[tikker]

10 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

You are incorrect. It’s not disagreeing. 

Then bring more to the table then just mindlessly repeating that I'm incorrect.

10 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

You literally posted photos so show the lack of life in Europa. 

You are twisting words again. You said, and I quote:

On 8/5/2022 at 12:52 AM, Imbadatnames said:

I think you’re failing to comprehend the sheer vastness of the universe. Also 5,000 planets that we cannot TELL if there’s life or not. We lack the resolution to actually see if there’s anything there or not. We can’t even tell if there’s life in Europa and that’s in our solar system. 

You started about resolution, nothing about your post here was about looking under the ice, so I showed pictures that support resolution not likely being an issue for Europa. Saying resolution isn't an issue does not at all equate saying we can look through ice and rock. That is something you said, I never did.

 

10 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

You’re literally writing a wall of text and it’s just deluded rambling. You have no knowledge on any relevant sector of science or the scientific method.

My bad, your impeccable rhetoric of attacking people's credibility is much more convincing indeed. How did I not realise that before.

10 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

You have no understanding of solvents  and think that because earth is based around an inorganic one that nowhere could possibly be based on an organic one.

Twisting my words again. Not what I said if you read back what was written.

10 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Not everywhere has to be within the same temperature range as earth, not everywhere needs to have the same chemistry, pressure, radiation etc etc etc.

Never said that either. I'm sure you know the difference between a best guess and denying something.

 

10 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

The possibilities are incalculable

They are not. There are plenty of groups in astronomy working on simulating planetary systems all the way down to models of there atmosperes now:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.08149.pdf

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ac3f3d

Incidentally that second paper even try to move away from Earth, because, surprise, not every exoplanet behaves like Earth:

Quote

A common criticism of 3D climate models used for exoplanet modeling is that cloud and convection routines often contain free parameters that are tuned to the modern Earth, and thus may be a source of uncertainty in evaluating exoplanet climates.

 

10 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

and with the maths involved means it is nigh on impossible that there isn’t some other form of life in the universe.

i.e. the Fermi paradox that came up before.

10 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

We’ll never see or contact it because space is fucking massive and light is just too slow a vector to contact something with and we don’t live in Star Trek so FTL or even close to light speed travel is off the cards.

And as also mentioned before, that is indeed a possible solution to said paradox. That doesn't mean we have proof that life is out there and we just can't contact it. By that logic I could claim I'm sitting in your backyard right now, you just can't see me because I have high-tech cloaking gear. As far as we know now. I don't consider it likely, as our current knowledge points to impossible or highly unlikely at best, but we don't know what people will invent in 100 or 1000 years if we're still around.

[486DX Win3.1]

16 minutes ago, tikker said:

Then bring more to the table then just mindlessly repeating that I'm incorrect.

You are twisting words again. You said, and I quote:

You started about resolution, nothing about your post here was about looking under the ice, so I showed pictures that support resolution not likely being an issue for Europa. Saying resolution isn't an issue does not at all equate saying we can look through ice and rock. That is something you said, I never did.

 

My bad, your impeccable rhetoric of attacking people's credibility is much more convincing indeed. How did I not realise that before.

Twisting my words again. Not what I said if you read back what was written.

Never said that either. I'm sure you know the difference between a best guess and denying something.

 

They are not. There are plenty of groups in astronomy working on simulating planetary systems all the way down to models of there atmosperes now:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.08149.pdf

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ac3f3d

Incidentally that second paper even try to move away from Earth, because, surprise, not every exoplanet behaves like Earth:

 

i.e. the Fermi paradox that came up before.

And as also mentioned before, that is indeed a possible solution to said paradox. That doesn't mean we have proof that life is out there and we just can't contact it. By that logic I could claim I'm sitting in your backyard right now, you just can't see me because I have high-tech cloaking gear. As far as we know now. I don't consider it likely, as our current knowledge points to impossible or highly unlikely at best, but we don't know what people will invent in 100 or 1000 years if we're still around.

"oh wow, look, I can't understand something, therefore it MUST be impossible." 

[tikker]

7 hours ago, 486DX Win3.1 said:

"oh wow, look, I can't understand something, therefore it MUST be impossible." 

You guys are having a field day twisting my words to fit your narrative don't you. I haven't claimed this at all. We don't know if there is life outside Earth, because we haven't found evidence of it yet. We don't know if non-carbon based life is possible since we neither have evidence of it existing and probably also don't know how to make it ourselves and have it stick around long enough to allow long-term study (otherwise I figure we would have done that already). What we do know is that life exists on Earth and how it generally functions, making that an undeniable starting point. Could it be the wrong starting point? Of course it could be, but you have to start somewhere.

 

Don't twist not knowing or not having evidence for it as absolutely denying it. I'm not denying alien or non-carbon life and neither is science. I don't understand many things and I have no issue admitting that since that is what drives research.

 

Look at it this way. If I told you I would be arriving by air, what would you think my means of travel would be? Chances are high you'd assume I'm taking a plane as that is the most common means or air travel for most people. That doesn't deny I could be arriving by fighter jet, helicopter or alien space ship, but given the knowledge you have your starting point is plane until enough evidence or suspicion builds that it may not be a plane.

[dalekphalm]

On 8/6/2022 at 4:21 AM, 486DX Win3.1 said:

"oh wow, look, I can't understand something, therefore it MUST be impossible." 

As someone who believes that there is a very very high probability that alien life exists out there, your response here is is not only rude to @tikker, but also wrong. Tikker not once claimed that aliens, or non-carbon life was impossible.

 

If you're gonna join the discussion, please add substance to it, not just shit on your opponent.

 

Sincerely, someone "on your team".

[OrdinaryPhil]

On 8/6/2022 at 10:28 AM, tikker said:

You guys are having a field day twisting my words to fit your narrative don't you. I haven't claimed this at all. We don't know if there is life outside Earth, because we haven't found evidence of it yet. We don't know if non-carbon based life is possible since we neither have evidence of it existing and probably also don't know how to make it ourselves and have it stick around long enough to allow long-term study (otherwise I figure we would have done that already). What we do know is that life exists on Earth and how it generally functions, making that an undeniable starting point. Could it be the wrong starting point? Of course it could be, but you have to start somewhere.

 

Don't twist not knowing or not having evidence for it as absolutely denying it. I'm not denying alien or non-carbon life and neither is science. I don't understand many things and I have no issue admitting that since that is what drives research.

 

Look at it this way. If I told you I would be arriving by air, what would you think my means of travel would be? Chances are high you'd assume I'm taking a plane as that is the most common means or air travel for most people. That doesn't deny I could be arriving by fighter jet, helicopter or alien space ship, but given the knowledge you have your starting point is plane until enough evidence or suspicion builds that it may not be a plane.

Inference and deduction are beyond the capacity of most humans.
Assumption is within virtually everyone's capacity.

I would however like to take a moment and remind everyone that practically nothing is known about what exists beyond our own solar system. To be clear, I am not stating explicitly that nothing exists beyond it, but all present assertions that anything at all existing is theory. Those theories could be correct... or not.

A huge part of this misconception comes from the the fact that people rightly know what a telescope is and how it works - so when we launch a platform into orbit like Hubble or Webb, and call it a telescope, people assume that they function the same way a traditional telescope would but on a larger scale. This could not be further from the truth.

The telemetry fed back to these sensory arrays is purely "non-visual". That specific data is referred to as a "residual" or "print", meaning the data collected after a sensor or instrument is left exposed for a period of time and then closed. The data from the exposed instruments are placed together in sequence creating a layered composite. To the human eye this would look like static or visual noise. Layers are then removed until the analyst "sees something" that isn't totally lost int he noise. That selection of the composite is then sliced and sent to be "colored" - typically by an simple program that assigns a color value based on meta-data fed into it by a user. 

The meta-data in this case is the theory; if we think that what we pointed the instrument cluster at is one hundred billion zillion macguffins away, we plug in that value, as well as values for things that we think it could be made of - elements that we know to exist here on earth and therefor assume to exist in other places. The system takes these values, and creates a final composite that would probably look like a very grainy photo of vague "rings" or focal patterns that are then given to an artist to "clean" and "colorize" the image you then see is functionally a work of art, based on data that humans here on earth, fed into a program, and ultimately told it what to produce, then heavily edit based on our own visual preconceptions.

This is what I call the "star trek" problem. So many people now have been exposed for such a long time to shows like star trek that it's become an almost universally shared fiction. For nearly a century it has been shown to people as a "real-enough" version of what space may be like that most laypersons simple don't think any more about it. The fact that human minds are extremely malleable and vulnerable to suggestion means that for most people, they aren't aware that they're view of the universe has even been influenced.

Another important factor to account for is that the vast majority of "work" being done in the field of astronomy is purely academic - not just in the literal sense but also the physical. University campuses are where most of the theorycraft takes place, and since there is very little work outside of academia for a person with a degree in astronomy that would generate an income - the institution becomes somewhat self-propagating and serves increasing as a means of justifying its own existence.

Combine that with the inherent flaws of the peer review process, where newcomers are basically forced to agree with the existing theories or risk not being favorably reviewed, and therefore not published, and therefore unable to find work.

This means that the articles being written are the least subject to real critical scrutiny, and are less about a scientific inquiry, and more about sustaining the academic model.

 

My position is of course only my own - I'm not suggesting that everyone be as critical as I am about the data they are given. I personally have no interest in the field of astronomy as it doesn't presently and will very likely never affect the course of my life. But as a mental exercise I do find it interesting that so many people have accepted what to me seems like a strangely preposterous view of the universe.

For what it's worth I've also had quite a bit of whiskey tonight so... there's that. GN all

 

 

 

[IRMacGuyver]

115 is too unstable to survive as a useful substance.  You're probably not gonna see useful stable elements until 184 or something like that and we just don't have the power needed to synthesize that.

[tikker]

5 hours ago, OrdinaryPhil said:

A huge part of this misconception comes from the the fact that people rightly know what a telescope is and how it works - so when we launch a platform into orbit like Hubble or Webb, and call it a telescope, people assume that they function the same way a traditional telescope would but on a larger scale. This could not be further from the truth.

They assume correctly. Telescopes like JWST and HST operate just like telescopes have done for ages, bar advances in detector technology making them more sensitive. It's a mirror that focusses light on a camera where pixels gather light and record the image. They aren't different from their smaller or larger Earth-bound counterparts.

5 hours ago, OrdinaryPhil said:

The telemetry fed back to these sensory arrays is purely "non-visual". That specific data is referred to as a "residual" or "print", meaning the data collected after a sensor or instrument is left exposed for a period of time and then closed. The data from the exposed instruments are placed together in sequence creating a layered composite. To the human eye this would look like static or visual noise. Layers are then removed until the analyst "sees something" that isn't totally lost int he noise. That selection of the composite is then sliced and sent to be "colored" - typically by an simple program that assigns a color value based on meta-data fed into it by a user. 

Raw JWST or HST images don't look like noise at all if you are not looking at really faint objects. They are exposures just like you would take with your own camera. The pixel are then "read out" (i.e. the amount of charge accumulated in them is measured) and stored as the measurement for that location. Do that for all pixels keeping track of where they are and you get a 2D matrix of measurements which is your image. The (false) colour images simply make RGB composites using each individual exposure, but each individual exposure still shows most to all of that structure (depending how strongly they vary with wavelength). As an example, the image below is what a single science-ready (identifying unusable pixels, making sure the image has sensible units etc.) HST exposure looks like pulled straight from the HST data archive (I forget the length here, I think it was of the order 15 minutes). No vauge rings that an artist interprets. This is what the telescope delivers to scientists who then do their science.

 

 

6 hours ago, OrdinaryPhil said:

Another important factor to account for is that the vast majority of "work" being done in the field of astronomy is purely academic - not just in the literal sense but also the physical. University campuses are where most of the theorycraft takes place, and since there is very little work outside of academia for a person with a degree in astronomy that would generate an income - the institution becomes somewhat self-propagating and serves increasing as a means of justifying its own existence.

It'll vary a bit with your actual degree, but an academic background doesn't lock you into that field at all. An academic background teaches you important skills in the way you tackle problems. That critical thinking is a good asset for industry as well. As an astronomer you can easily land jobs at other technical companies, ASML being a prime example. Staying in astronomy is actually pretty much the worst decision you can make if money is what you are after. Academia is an almost constant struggle for money to continue doing research both in terms of keeping a position and having funds for your project.

6 hours ago, OrdinaryPhil said:

Combine that with the inherent flaws of the peer review process, where newcomers are basically forced to agree with the existing theories or risk not being favorably reviewed, and therefore not published, and therefore unable to find work.

This means that the articles being written are the least subject to real critical scrutiny, and are less about a scientific inquiry, and more about sustaining the academic model.

There is certainly bias, but you won't be rejected from publishing just because you go against the status quo in my experience. Publication pressure does make researchers go for the so-called 'low-hanging fruit' often, but those studies are not less scientific or less sound overall. It will indeed be harder if you are chasing a very niche something that susbtantially goes against the established things.