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Why just biological life?

disappoint

disappoint

Lifer
So some scientists state that although life is rare, there are a lot of planets and the universe is so vast, that is to say very large in size, that even rare events such as life may not be so rare after all.

It's like the lottery. one attempt and a win would be very unlikely (though still not impossible). Many attempts and the chances become more likely.

Similarly, we have it seems won the lottery of life on Earth.

But why not a watch? Or an internal combustion engine? Why not a naturally occurring transistor? Just biological life? Isn't that just a bit odd?

Why has no radio transmitter been accidentally created on a planet within reception of EM waves distance from Earth for example?

Why is it only biological life has accidentally occurred, and in so many different forms here on Earth?
 
disappoint said:
So some scientists state that although life is rare, there are a lot of planets and the universe is so vast, that is to say very large in size, that even rare events such as life may not be so rare after all.

It's like the lottery. one attempt and a win would be very unlikely (though still not impossible). Many attempts and the chances become more likely.

Similarly, we have it seems won the lottery of life on Earth.

But why not a watch? Or an internal combustion engine? Why not a naturally occurring transistor? Just biological life? Isn't that just a bit odd?

Why has no radio transmitter been accidentally created on a planet within reception of EM waves distance from Earth for example?

Why is it only biological life has accidentally occurred, and in so many different forms here on Earth?
Click to expand...

Not sure if you're trolling or not.

For some reason humans like to think of themselves as special when in fact we probably aren't. There is no lottery involved here.

We know there is one intelligent life form in our galaxy. If there was just one in EACH galaxy the numbers would be larger than you could fathom. There might be silicon or germanium based life and other forms which we can't even imagine. However right now although we can play the statistics game it might be more interesting to think about how it will change human culture when we do find some form of life off our planet. I think it's inevitable but it's going to take an awful long time if we don't start investing more in space sciences.

Now as far as the rest of your post I'm not sure what you're talking about. Are you saying that it you find it odd that we haven't discovered the combustion engine on another planet?

Take the time to first understand the distances between stars. Even if we somehow knew that there were Aliens on worlds all around us there's a good chance that we will go extinct before we ever come up with a way to reach them. If it's even possible. We could theoretically receive a radio signal from a planet so far away that the star it orbited has long since died.

Arecibo tries to pick up radio signals but it's incredibly hard. We'll be far better off once we built a radio array in space. We're listening to a very small segment of the sky and we aren't doing a very good job with it. In the grand scheme of things we haven't been doing it for very long either. If an Alien 500 light years from us transmitted a signal 300 years ago we would have missed it and if they transmitted it today we're going to have to wait a long time to hear it.
 
Life didn't just pop into existence. It evolved from chemistry, then simple life, then complex life and then finally, watches and transistors. Maybe one day god will evolve as well.
 
Is that what this thread is about? Someone who doesn't understand evolution, statistics, and astronomy and thinks God made us special and gave us the combustion engine, watch, and transistor?
 
disappoint said:
So some scientists state that although life is rare, there are a lot of planets and the universe is so vast, that is to say very large in size, that even rare events such as life may not be so rare after all.

It's like the lottery. one attempt and a win would be very unlikely (though still not impossible). Many attempts and the chances become more likely.

Similarly, we have it seems won the lottery of life on Earth.

But why not a watch? Or an internal combustion engine? Why not a naturally occurring transistor? Just biological life? Isn't that just a bit odd?

Why has no radio transmitter been accidentally created on a planet within reception of EM waves distance from Earth for example?

Why is it only biological life has accidentally occurred, and in so many different forms here on Earth?
Click to expand...

Life started really simple. Like really simple. We are talking about a few molecules in a chain. What is special about life is that once started it is capable of becoming more complex.

Evolution is not random, it is selective. Things that work become more common, and things that don't work become less common. Non-life, for the most part, does not have that quality. That means that when that one in a trillion event happens that creates the basics of life, life starts to ratchet itself up to complex organisms.

Compare that to a radio. If the most basic component of a radio should spontaneously come together from a random bonding of a bunch of molecules (which physics tells us is possible given enough time and enough molecules) nothing more happens. So forming a fully functional radio from random mixing of molecules is many trillions of time more unlikely then the basics of life forming. Therefore we would expect to see a lot more planets with life then ones with a fully formed radio. But, it is possible that there is a planet out there with a randomly formed radio just sitting on it.
 
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spittledip said:
Well, if evolution is true, it is the simple going to the complex, not the complex happening in one fell swoop.
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SMOGZINN said:
Life started really simple. Like really simple. We are talking about a few molecules in a chain. What is special about life is that once started it is capable of becoming more complex.

Evolution is not random, it is selective. Things that work become more common, and things that don't work become less common. Non-life, for the most part, does not have that quality. That means that when that one in a trillion event happens that creates the basics of life, life starts to ratchet itself up to complex organisms.

Compare that to a radio. If the most basic component of a radio should spontaneously come together from a random bonding of a bunch of molecules (which physics tells us is possible given enough time and enough molecules) nothing more happens. So forming a fully functional radio from random mixing of molecules is many trillions of time more unlikely then the basics of life forming. Therefore we would expect to see a lot more planets with life then ones with a fully formed radio. But, it is possible that there is a planet out there with a randomly formed radio just sitting on it.
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Right but not even simple machines have been discovered anywhere. Ever. Granted we haven't looked very far yet beyond our own planet and part of our solar system but it still stands that only biological life spontaneously formed on this planet in many different forms.

I understand that life has it's innate ability to change and evolve but not even the most basic simple part has ever formed on it's own without us creating it.

Does it have to do with just the fact that carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, et al. are more prevalent and their structures more likely to form life than silicon and other elements we use to build machines just don't have the structure to spontaneously form? So then it's not likely we would find silicon or some other based life somewhere else someday?

I'm just thinking if we ever discover life somewhere else someday if it would be more like us in terms of the likelihood of structures forming given high probability to interact materials found in the universe (well what we've seen of it so far).
 
Are you being serious?

You're honestly thinking that because machines haven't just magically appeared that life should be just like us? You are confused as to why silicon microchips haven't just popped into existence?

You're comparing inorganic and organic objects first of all and you're completely ignoring evolution.
 
AViking said:
Are you being serious?

You're honestly thinking that because machines haven't just magically appeared that life should be just like us? You are confused as to why silicon microchips haven't just popped into existence?

You're comparing inorganic and organic objects first of all and you're completely ignoring evolution.
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Where did I say anything about machines magically appearing? Since you brought it up, what is your definition of magic?

I think the universe obeys the laws of physics. Even ones we don't know about. I don't think there is an invisible magician pulling organic matter out of a hat and placing it on Earth 6000 years ago.

Why do you think I'm confused and ignoring evolution?

I think you're confused as to what I posted and why.
 
@ OP, we are machines. We are machines that assembled themselves. You are talking about machines that serve a human purpose, and only humans would make those. I mean, the chances of even the simplest machine coming about on its own are ridiculous! Wait...um...😕
 
moonbogg said:
@ OP, we are machines. We are machines that assembled themselves. You are talking about machines that serve a human purpose, and only humans would make those. I mean, the chances of even the simplest machine coming about on its own are ridiculous! Wait...um...😕
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We are organisms not machines. Machines are tools for a specific purpose. While one might be tempted to list some examples of humans that could be described as tools, 😀 I'd refrain from doing so and stick to the dictionary definition. But I understand where you were going with it so: :thumbsup:
 
disappoint said:
Granted we haven't looked very far yet beyond our own planet and part of our solar system but it still stands that only biological life spontaneously formed on this planet in many different forms.
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A correction -- life did not spontaneously form on this planet in many different forms. While scientists believe life could have arisen independently multiple times on Earth, statistical analysis shows that all current life appears to be descended from a common ancestor, indicating that everything on Earth came from a single incident of life arising. (Here's an article giving an overview of a study supporting this idea).

Additionally, it did not spontaneously arise in multiple forms. Life likely started as a single-cell organism and THEN evolved into multiple forms over hundreds of millions of years.

It isn't out of the realm of possibility that silicon-based life exists elsewhere in the universe. As someone else stated earlier, even if it turns out that life is exceedingly rare, the size of the universe and even our own galaxy dictates that there are likely billions of planets harboring life. Some will be intelligent life at or above our level, some will be intelligent life below our level, while still others may be non-sentient life. We just don't know because as you've said, we haven't looked long enough and don't yet have the technology to really examine even our neighboring star systems in great depth.
 
AViking said:
Link?
Click to expand...

Did you not pay attention in school? Did you go to college?

Are you implying that none of this happens off the planet Earth?

Electric storms and other types of phenomena like them have been known to exist elsewhere for centuries.

It's just life we aren't sure about.
 
Our understanding of life is severely limited. One could argue that the technological singularity we are approaching could be described as the birth of a new lifeform. One could further argue that this new lifeform actually already exists, in much the same way that a fetus exists and is very much alive in the weeks before it is born. We also know that the fetus can have a direct and profound impact on people well before it is born. So one can easily make the case that this new lifeform does indeed already exist and we as a society are already deeply interacting with it although we still do not recognize it for what it is. We still do not even have a name for these interactions. But I believe that is going to change fairly soon.

Sooner or later one has to ask: if this is the birth of a new lifeform, then what/where is the parent? And then you have to start looking at things like the pyramids, ley lines, the flagellar motor, the pineal gland, etc and realize that something very big and profound has been going on for millions of years and most people really havent the slightest clue what it is. In fact most people havent even tried to contemplate any of it.
 
alkemyst said:
Did you not pay attention in school? Did you go to college?

Are you implying that none of this happens off the planet Earth?

Electric storms and other types of phenomena like them have been known to exist elsewhere for centuries.

It's just life we aren't sure about.
Click to expand...

How does a storm equate to a battery on other planets? What simple electronics are on other planets?
 
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