Neil deGrasse Tyson - A fascinatingly disturbing thought

Miramonti

Lifer
Aug 26, 2000
28,651
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He's way too cool to be as smart as he is...relative to normal human intelligence that is. ;)
 
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Cuda1447

Lifer
Jul 26, 2002
11,757
0
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He raises some really good points. He also makes me feel stupid. He is so much smarter and so much of a better person than I am. It makes me feel like a waste of life and really admire him.
 

Baked

Lifer
Dec 28, 2004
36,052
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81
If you don't agree, you can fuck off! Brilliant. I'm gonna use that as my motto of the week.
 

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
3,732
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It's so nice to hear these really smart people talk. If you watch news or most television shows you have to listen to idiots talk 99% of the time. I can't watch it.
 

dennilfloss

Past Lifer 1957-2014 In Memoriam
Oct 21, 1999
30,509
12
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dennilfloss.blogspot.com
The problem I have with panspermia is that, with the same elements being abundant on Mars and Earth (and other rocky planets), in the same proportions as throughout the universe and within Earth lifeforms, and the same laws of the universe and complexity conditions & outcomes applying in both locales, Ockham's razor favours life evolving independently in both places as a simpler solution than life evolving in one place and seeding the other after surviving a bolide impact, reaching escape velocity, wandering into the other planet's gravity field where the ejectum is caught, then surviving fiery entry into the atmosphere and another impact on the other planet's surface. Not saying it can't happen but I'm saying it's less probable as it needs more conditions to be fulfilled. My opinion is that, if the conditions are right, life will appear as a direct consequence of increasing chemical complexity and such increase is itself a normal outcome from the laws that govern how elements are formed and behave/combine in our universe. Nothing else is needed.

To me, panspermia is akin to saying ancient aliens built some structure on Earth (like the Gizeh pyramids for example) when the simpler solution is that humans did it.
 
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yh125d

Diamond Member
Dec 23, 2006
6,886
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The problem I have with panspermia is that, with the same elements being abundant on Mars and Earth (and other rocky planets), in the same proportions as throughout the universe and within Earth lifeforms, and the same laws of the universe and complexity conditions & outcomes applying in both locales, Ockham's razor favours life evolving independently in both places as a simpler solution than life evolving in one place and seeding the other after surviving a bolide impact, reaching escape velocity, wandering into the other planet's gravity field where the ejectum is caught, then surviving fiery entry into the atmosphere and another impact on the other planet's surface. Not saying it can't happen but I'm saying it's less probable as it needs more conditions to be fulfilled. My opinion is that, if the conditions are right, life will appear as a direct consequence of increasing chemical complexity and such increase is itself a normal outcome from the laws that govern how elements are formed and behave/combine in our universe. Nothing else is needed.

To me, panspermia is akin to saying ancient aliens built some structure on Earth (like the Gizeh pyramids for example) when the simpler solution is that humans did it.

Except that we know it could happen, and already have proof of concept. We already know that hundreds of tons of Mars rocks have made it to Earth, and we already know of bacteria that can survive throughout those conditions of heat, cold, vacuum, radiation. It seems totally plausible for that to be what really happened. Or hell, maybe we got hit by a big chunk of Europa ice some time which may have life on it


Now Dr's Dawkins and Tyson do bring up a good point about this in their talk, that it would be extremely disappointing for us to find life on Mars (or Europa) based on DNA like ours, proving panspermia true because that would mean we weren't discovering independent new life, just old ancestral life
 

DigDog

Lifer
Jun 3, 2011
14,075
2,559
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not trying to hate on NDT but why does he have to always speak to the audience/class like they are a bunch of morons and why does he always take ten minutes to say anything. say what u have to say ffs man you don't need to tell a story every time.
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,916
2,156
126
He raises some really good points. He also makes me feel stupid. He is so much smarter and so much of a better person than I am. It makes me feel like a waste of life and really admire him.

I used to think like that, but then I realized it just has to do with specialization. If your sole job was to sit around and think about how systems you've been trained in work, and then bounce these ideas off of some of the other greatest minds, you would probably be just like him.
 

rasczak

Lifer
Jan 29, 2005
10,437
22
81
The problem I have with panspermia is that, with the same elements being abundant on Mars and Earth (and other rocky planets), in the same proportions as throughout the universe and within Earth lifeforms, and the same laws of the universe and complexity conditions & outcomes applying in both locales, Ockham's razor favours life evolving independently in both places as a simpler solution than life evolving in one place and seeding the other after surviving a bolide impact, reaching escape velocity, wandering into the other planet's gravity field where the ejectum is caught, then surviving fiery entry into the atmosphere and another impact on the other planet's surface. Not saying it can't happen but I'm saying it's less probable as it needs more conditions to be fulfilled. My opinion is that, if the conditions are right, life will appear as a direct consequence of increasing chemical complexity and such increase is itself a normal outcome from the laws that govern how elements are formed and behave/combine in our universe. Nothing else is needed.

To me, panspermia is akin to saying ancient aliens built some structure on Earth (like the Gizeh pyramids for example) when the simpler solution is that humans did it.

If we want to prove panspermia, why don't we drop some bacteria off on mars and wait a couple million years?

Oh and OP, awesome link!
 

njdevilsfan87

Platinum Member
Apr 19, 2007
2,336
258
126
Maybe the 1% difference between chimps and us IS special. I'm sure life has no problem forming in the universe... but for it to be sustained long enough to develop self awareness and intelligence is probably very small to the point where there may only be a handful of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. This planet only formed an intelligent species as a byproduct of evolution, and luck. The dinosaurs didn't require it to make it to the top of the food chain. Had they never been wiped out, this planet may have never developed an intelligent species.

Or maybe that's just normal... a planet capable of supporting life like this continuously experiences extinction events until finally at some point an intelligent species comes along capable of preventing it... All part of the master plan of who the hell knows what!!

He's probably right, that maybe we're just too dumb to figure out the universe. :(