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| Ghosts vs Aliens | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 10 2012, 12:47 PM (1,847 Views) | |
| MysticGotenks | Apr 16 2012, 09:17 AM Post #16 |
 
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The problem is that we seem only to look for potential Earth-like planets which could sustain what we think is life. Why does life need oxygen, or the sun, or water etc. Life could easily be like the Geth, or other sentient beings that do not need ANY of the things we need to sustain life. When aliens RETURN to Earth to see how we have developed since their meddling and GM's then we will truly see what an advanced race it like. It makes so much sense that aliens exist, more so that they have had such an impact on our development. As for ghosts. Well, I have been looking into parallel universes, and discussing interesting things with my physics lecturer at university and I have come to the conclusion that ghosts are simply the rare point where two parallel atoms come in contact with each other, thus we 'see' a ghost, but that is why a ghost does not look human, rather see through etc etc, cliche, etc. I believe they could exist, but not in the 'dead family member is now a ghost' type way. It all reverts back to aliens imo. All hail harbinger. |
| Hey Piccolo......are..are you a Yoshi? | |
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| InterWebZ | Apr 18 2012, 11:33 AM Post #17 |
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The main reason that water is often assumed to be a requirement is that its chemical properties are quite unusual, and it can sustain a huge array of reactions, literally more than any other molecule. It's possible in principle for life to exist on another chemical basis, but it's not terribly likely- if you want complex chemistry, your options become more limited. You could easily get away without the sun, though- moons of large planets can be heated by "tidal heating", which could sustain comfortable temperatures. This is what fuels the intense volcanic activity on Io, and may well be sustaining liquid oceans on Europa. |
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| MysticGotenks | Apr 18 2012, 04:31 PM Post #18 |
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Well sure. I mean recently (recent for science, anyway) they found hundreds of species of life living well beyond ANY natural heat or light source coming from the sun in the Benthic zones of the ocean. The Earth's core literally rages through the outer crusts of the Earth, providing hydrothermal vents providing the surrounding life forms with tasty sulfides and minerals to feed off. The sun has no effect on them. My point is, we should definitely look for sister Earth's in the cosmos, but we should also consider the idea that life could come about from something completely unusual, a reaction we never thought could take place nor sustain life. I 99% understand the reasons to look for water sources planets - all life on this earth originated from it one way or another, yet it has created such a vast array of different life - why waste time (and a LOT of money, trying to chase after gas planets with the potential to be life on it being near 0%....you just never know. It's an apparent miracle that life was surviving on this planet, what about on another planet with it's main source of sustaining life could be hydrogen? The most abundant chemical element. The other thing is, when aliens return it would most likely be for our water - if they have not yet experienced it, they would see the diverse life that it controls, and would be sure to collect a big 'sample'. There's no doubt life is out there, once we build a ship that can travel FTL and make it past Pluto, we will find the Mass Array and everything will be fine from then on. :P |
| Hey Piccolo......are..are you a Yoshi? | |
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| lunar2 | Apr 23 2012, 07:15 PM Post #19 |
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1. there is no evidence of any alien interference on this planet, past or present. 2. water is the most common compound in the universe, they don't need to come here to sample it. 3. we primarily look for carbon based life that uses water as a solvent because that is what is most likely to form. water is extremely common, maintains a liquid state over a large range of temperatures where chemical reactions can take place easily, and requires significant amounts of energy in order to change its temperature. carbon is extremly common, can forms stable bonds with a wide variety of elements, and can form up to 4 bonds at a time, something that few other elements can do. |
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list of canon sources: the DB manga, and the Dr. Slump manga as it applies to the crossover during the rra saga. list of non canon sources: everything else, regardless of origin, format, or quality. for those that blindly follow word of god | |
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| InterWebZ | Apr 28 2012, 08:26 AM Post #20 |
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Well, there's just not much you can do with hydrogen- hydrogen atoms can only form a single chemical bond with another atom. That doesn't leave much option for complex hydrogen-based molecules. The thing about carbon is that it forms 4 bonds, which allows for very complex molecules. The geometry of these bonds and how they interact (which is based on some extremely complex quantum effects) is also unique, which is why it forms a ridiculous number of molecules- there are more organic compounds than all other compounds put together. The only element that most scientists think could even possibly compete is silicon, but its chemical properties are far less tuned for this purpose than carbon. You'll also note that even though the Earth contains hundreds of times more silicon than carbon, it still uses carbon-based life. |
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| * Yu Narukami | Apr 28 2012, 05:30 PM Post #21 |
Izanagi!
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The problem, we have only our observations of life to go on. Because we know that a majority of life on this planet is carbon-based and survives on water, we narrow our choices down to planets similar to Earth because we can't comprehend how any other different form of life can exist. Searching for life on every single planet would be impossible, at least if we narrow down the options we would have a chance. Just because all life we've seen is what you've all said before, it doesn't mean that something has to be exactly like that to be alive. |
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| lunar2 | Apr 30 2012, 04:05 PM Post #22 |
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it's true that life could be very different than what we've seen on earth, but that doesn't change the fact that water is the best solvent for life, and carbon is the best basis. i don't remember the exact math, but i read somewhere that there is a greater than 99% chance that any life we encounter will be carbon based and using water as a solvent, based on the quantity of those resources and the suitabilty for use in life. |
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list of canon sources: the DB manga, and the Dr. Slump manga as it applies to the crossover during the rra saga. list of non canon sources: everything else, regardless of origin, format, or quality. for those that blindly follow word of god | |
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| * Yu Narukami | Apr 30 2012, 04:08 PM Post #23 |
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Izanagi!
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That's interesting. I fully agree by the way, any life out there is probably going to be similar to us, well, similar to us in the need of water to survive, that is. Water is, quite literally, universally the best solvent for life. I just thought that the potential for other life forms not needing water was out there, but the best way to search for life is obviously the most probable, thus we search for carbon-based life forms on planets with water. |
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| Bluesummers | Apr 30 2012, 06:20 PM Post #24 |
 
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[Deleted: Conspiracy theory]
Edited by Rogue, May 13 2012, 07:54 PM.
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| InterWebZ | May 11 2012, 02:14 PM Post #25 |
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The other thing, I suppose, is that even if there is non-carbon-based life out there, we're very unlikely to have much chance of detecting at this time. The conditions needed to sustain life would be very different to those for carbon-based life (i.e. different temperature, different chemical background, etc), and if we don't even know what we're looking for, we'd have no idea where to look. With carbon-based life, at least we know vaguely what to look for, so it makes sense to narrow our search to those conditions at this time. If and when we can analyse other planets in more detail, we could potentially find other forms of life out there, but right now we can't do that. |
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| lunar2 | May 13 2012, 06:59 PM Post #26 |
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finding life of any form actually isn't very difficult if you know what to look for, the problem is looking in the right place at the right time. any complex life is going to leave chemical byproducts that can be detected from a distance. for example, anyone looking at earth is going to see an atmosphere that's over 20% oxygen, something that couldn't happen unless there was some kind of chemical reaction that continuously released oxygen into the atmosphere. non-organic reactions could release oxygen, but not in the quantities that are actually present. to the best of our knowledge, only widespread, complex life could maintain reactions on that scale. so, any planet with significant amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere will be harboring life, and a lot of it. another thing is radio frequency emissions. on some frequencies, the earth actually emits more radio waves than the sun, something that is impossible without technology (or at least life that uses radio waves). looking for signs such as these are the quickest and easiest way to find life, once we know where to look, and have the necessary equipment to look properly. |
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list of canon sources: the DB manga, and the Dr. Slump manga as it applies to the crossover during the rra saga. list of non canon sources: everything else, regardless of origin, format, or quality. for those that blindly follow word of god | |
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| InterWebZ | May 14 2012, 01:37 PM Post #27 |
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The catch is, most of those don't work at any appreciable distance, at least with the technology we have now. For instance, analysing the atmosphere of a single planet is nigh-impossible unless you're quite close to the solar system in question (you can of course use spectroscopy to do it from a distance, but even that still requires getting pretty close). Radio waves are one way to identify a technological civilisation, but even they have limitations. For one thing, their range is still pretty short; although I haven't seen the analysis for a while, the usual consensus is that it would be almost impossible to detect earth-based emissions above the background after a few tens of light-years (by which point it would also be impossible to tell if they were coming from the sun or the Earth as well). Any potential contacts would also have the problem of not knowing what frequencies to scan nor what we were saying- most transmissions, especially digital transmissions, would be difficult to interpret unless you knew roughly what the transmission was about (a digital transmission would sound like noise to anyone who didn't understand the decryption algorithm). And obviously this will miss any life-bearing planet that doesn't have radio for whatever reason. This is why right now, all we can really do is identify planets that could potentially satisfy the conditions for life. While there would indeed be ways to analyse a specific planet further, we don't yet have the capacity to analyse other planets in that detail. |
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