Now just to find those elusive fucking mass relays.
Hmm I wonder how people would react if we ever found intelligent life. They would be more advanced then us meaning that there political and religious beliefs would be completely different. I bet you anything people would call them commie anti-god demons or something.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;27826637]bad things always happen to mining ships[/QUOTE]
twinkle twinkle little star...:unsmigghh:
[QUOTE=Zeke129;27826637]bad things always happen to mining ships[/QUOTE]
And [b]especially[/b] mining space stations.
This kind of news always makes my heart beat like hell because of the exitement...
[QUOTE=TINCAN;27816799]as cool as that is, space travel is not gonna happen in our lifetime so i'm not really fussed[/QUOTE]
We already have space travel.
If only we'd find a hidden technology bank on mars that introduced us element zero and a mass relay in our syst- Oh wait.
[QUOTE=Combine_dumb;27816832]Considering our generation is estimated to live a couple hundred years or more due to the advancements of stem cell research and shit, I wouldn't sell it short just yet.[/QUOTE]
You're very optimistic about that.
[QUOTE=booster;27817441]Less money on science! More money on bombs!![/QUOTE]
You just had to fucking go there, obligatory anti-war zealot that speaks up in a thread that has nothing to do with war, didn't you?
[QUOTE=Jorori;27822636]Those are the alien creatures, not the ships :v:[/QUOTE]
I don't understand why people like to think alien life to be, well, alien looking. Principles of survival that exist on Earth should extend to other planets that resemble earth.Hell we might even find sheep-cows or massive sprawling rainforests inhabited by bald primates.
Or maybe even the common cold.
[QUOTE=WhatTheEf;27818352]Yeah, and discover a rare artifact which almost destroys humanity and then a random dude save us.[/QUOTE]
Do i have to?
[QUOTE=PunchedInFac;27850934]I don't understand why people like to think alien life to be, well, alien looking. Principles of survival that exist on Earth should extend to other planets that resemble earth.Hell we might even find sheep-cows or massive sprawling rainforests inhabited by bald primates.
Or maybe even the common cold.[/QUOTE]
Because it's generally accepted that evolution doesn't have a set course, thus species in a separate environment may be completely different from the ones here on earth.
[QUOTE=PunchedInFac;27850934]I don't understand why people like to think alien life to be, well, alien looking. Principles of survival that exist on Earth should extend to other planets that resemble earth.Hell we might even find sheep-cows or massive sprawling rainforests inhabited by bald primates.
Or maybe even the common cold.[/QUOTE]
Alien life would only resemble Earth's in the basic stuff like locomotion principles, senses and eating (A body with legs or something used for moving the body, something that lets the creature know what's happening outside of it, a hole to let food in and another to let the leftovers out). You know, the essential stuff
How it will resemble it? Well, evolution principles are a completely random thing filtered by natural selection and other external factors, of course there would be similar things to Earth's life (Physical laws and chemical compounds will be the same whenever you go) but alien creatures could be anything: completely convergent creatures that resemble Earth's in some aspects or abstract forms that defies our imagination. They could even be entirely liquid or made of gas, as speculated by Carl Sagan
I wouldn't be surprised if I see shark-like or crocodile-like alien creatures (Examples of very successful lifeforms in Earth), but human-like creatures like Greys or green popular culture aliens? I don't think so.
[QUOTE=Jorori;27851145]Alien life would only resemble Earth's in the basic stuff like locomotion principles, senses and eating (A body with legs or something used for moving the body, something that lets the creature know what's happening outside of it, a hole to let food in and another to let the leftovers out). You know, the essential stuff
How it will resemble it? Well, evolution principles are a completely random thing filtered by natural selection and other external factors, of course there would be similar things to Earth's life (Physical laws and chemical compounds will be the same whenever you go) but alien creatures could be anything: completely convergent creatures that resemble Earth's in some aspects or abstract forms that defies our imagination. They could even be entirely liquid or made of gas, as speculated by Carl Sagan
I wouldn't be surprised if I see shark-like or crocodile-like alien creatures (Examples of very successful lifeforms in Earth), but human-like creatures like Greys or green popular culture aliens? I don't think so.[/QUOTE]
I share your skepticism about the popular "men from mars" kind of aliens.
Humans were plain lucky, when it came to us becoming the dominant species.
Physically we're disadvantaged against a whole load of other animals, we didn't have the societies in place to help us cope back when our line of evolution first separated from that of other ape-like creatures.
Our increased brain size and opposable thumbs, along with a hefty dose of luck got us to where we are at the moment, but those are some extremely lucky things to have at the same time.
[QUOTE=Miskav;27851212]I share your skepticism about the popular "men from mars" kind of aliens.
Humans were plain lucky, when it came to us becoming the dominant species.
Physically we're disadvantaged against a whole load of other animals, we didn't have the societies in place to help us cope back when our line of evolution first separated of that of other ape-like creatures.
Our increased brain size and opposable thumbs, along with a hefty dose of luck got us to where we are at the moment, but those are some extremely lucky things to have at the same time.[/QUOTE]
Yes. Evolution is simply a filtering of random genetic mutations. In human's case, apes like Australopithecus were primates that adaptated from a jungle-dwelling life to living in plains and savannas (The longer legs and loss of opposable toethumbs improved their bipedal running motion).
They had the chance to survive and evolve, they already had opposable thumbs (After they abandoned the jungles, the thumbs just stood there since they didn't offer any disadvantage to the species) that helped them to build tools that helped them to survive during the Pleistocene and the Ice Age, so the species were successful and here we are today as humans.
We were just lucky, because I think a lot of species would've developed similar evolutionary behaviours and evolve instead of us, like bears, elephants or even birds/dinosaurs, since they have a much higher brain complexity/body mass ratio than humans. The upright stance and loss of tail would be unnecesary in this case, since great apes were tailless already and the bipedal stance was just an Australopithecus adaptation for having a better eyesight range in savanna with tall grass (Any spec study saying that upright stance and lack of tail is mandatory for intelligent species is dead wrong)
[QUOTE=petieng;27824852]By the way, extrapolating from these results gives us [B]1 million[/B] Earth sized planets in the habitable zone...in our galaxy alone.
This is most likely a vast underestimate because the method the Kepler spacecraft used to find these can only detect planets that have an orbit that crosses their star from our view point, meaning there are far more that orbit at an angle relative to us which we can't detect. 1 million Earth like planets in the habitable zone is likely no where near the real number.
[url]http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/02/02/motherlode-of-potential-planets-found-more-than-1200-alien-worlds/#more-27565[/url][/QUOTE]
How common would planets with orbits that don't follow the galaxy's approximate plane be anyway? It seems to me that it should be common for solar systems to share their galaxy's plane of rotation, and if that's the case, we obviously wouldn't be missing that many planets while looking at our own galaxy.
[img_thumb]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/MilkywaykeplerfovbyCRoberts.jpg[/img_thumb]
Our system's plane of rotation is at 60 degrees' angle compared to the galactic plane, but I don't know how common such variance is and whether our system's an exception in this case.
I want to go and explore other planets. :smith: This lifetime sort of sucks.
Gonna go to the White House and fuck up the Excell spreadsheet they keep their budget on to put all military funds into space.
[QUOTE=theseltsamone;27858690]Gonna go to the White House and fuck up the Excell spreadsheet they keep their budget on to put all military funds into space.[/QUOTE]
I'll help
[QUOTE=Combine_dumb;27816832]Considering our generation is estimated to live a couple hundred years or more due to the advancements of stem cell research and shit, I wouldn't sell it short just yet.[/QUOTE]
Thank fucking god for science eh? Can't wait to become an inorganic entity with an organic mind. :twisted:
Just pointing out generally, as to whether alien life will be similar to life on earth, there is a whole another aspect to this; level of intelligence. as every-day as it seems to us, i think it's the next important part of all this.
think of humans thousands of years ago, and think of us now. in such a relatively small time we've built quite something on this planet, but now; what about the aliens?
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