Creationism vs. Evolution

[Cefien 361]

Great! After talking about human was apes, now we continue to aliens. I wonder what will come next, trolls? Orcs? Or maybe even the elves? Can't wait 

Anyway, don't mind me people, please, continue with your debate...endless debate. 

[LexusInfernus 908]

Ah, but see, we're just taking this from our bias. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of creatures on this planet that evolved near-sapience that use different methods of grabbing things, but there are a few. Octopus are the smartest of the invertebrates and can open jars and do many other things using their tentacles. Elephants, being also incredibly smart and very pacifistic in nature, use their trunks like an arm, grab things (like logs, paintbrushes, etc), and use it to move about, sometimes even as a weapon. Dolphins, being also pretty smart, coat their nose with sponges and use them as tools to borrow into the sand and retrieve things hiding underneath to snack on. An entire ant colony acts almost like it's one giant hive-mind organism (as scary and sci-fi-like as it sounds). Crows (being the smartest bird) use their beaks to grasp things, like sticks to pick at locks or reach for things... They have even been known to drop very hard nuts into the middle of a street, wait patiently nearby, and watch the light turn green at which moment cars swarm by and crush the nuts. Once the light turns red, they'll swoop down into the street and collect their prize!

 

Indeed, but try making a tool with only one arm or just your mouth. Their intelligence, or more their use for more complex intelligence is limited because they are physically limited. A crow, or dolphin or elephant have no use for the kind of intelligence that allows them to actually build and improve their tools, simply because they are physically not capable of doing that. You can't make tools with just your mouth or one arm. An octopus would be an exception to that, given that it has more that one tentacle. But then again, tool making intelligence does not give the Octopus the extra edge that is absolutely vital for humanoids. 

 

It doesn't just have to be hands, and it doesn't even have to be anything remotely similar to an arm, just as long as it's a free appendage to move around, preferably something to grasp with. In fact, if evolution would've been in favor of the crows (and they would've developed sapience instead of us), they might've even had a beak modified to carry all sorts of things. Can you imagine what a sapient crow-like species would be like?

 

As I said, try making a tool with just your beak. At some point you will need an extra hand. 

 

Even with this much versatility among the near-sapient creatures, I can only imagine how different alien species will look. We have noticed that things like arthropods, vertebrates, worms, and the cephalopods all evolved separate from one another, but they still managed to have their more important sensory organs and nervous system centralized in one spot... a head. So, I could definitely imagine things that look somewhat like eyes, maybe some kind of sound receptor, or chemiosensors (like taste buds, scent glands, electro-sensors like in Sharks, or some other kind of scent-like sensor for aquatic things) all focused nearby that "head".

 

But then again, we're just taking this from our Earth-bias. We know of no other place where life is possible. Who even said cells had to be the fundamental unit of all life, or that all life had to have the same building blocks as us? Life somewhere else could look and behave unimaginably different then anything we could ever imagine. Tentacles, claws, and 17 eyeballs? No, no... That's far too 1950's sci-fi B-Movie cliche. Something far more awesome and unimaginable. Maybe something that looks metallic, morphs into different shapes, or acts as a vast hive-mind. Who knows, the possibilities are endless!

 

Carl Sagan once said that aliens elsewhere should have different rates of metabolism compared to our own. Like if trying to communicate with one species via radio telescopes, one species might take as long as a year to communicate something along the lines of "hello", while another might have such intense chemistry that they can accomplish this in a nanosecond.

 

That again just proves that certain things, like a centralized nervous system has an evolutionary advantage over the alternatives. Therefor, given that life evolved on a planet with earth like conditions, it will likely be true for life over there as well. 

 

Of course, once it evolves on a planet with vastly different circumstances, this no longer holds true. 

 

I've stumbled across Hard Science Fiction books that had very different aliens than the mainstream media. Intelligence that lives on the surface of a neutron star! Or intelligence made out of dark matter (and since dark matter rarely interacts with regular matter, these beings would be largely undetectable to us and vice versa, an invisible world among us!). Beings that are actually a microscopic virus in essence and stay floating in space in dormancy until they encounter another world and attack en masse! You'll love this short video... Carl Sagan postulates on the possibility of having life on a gas giant planet, like Jupiter... Too amazing! Watch it!!! Do it now!

 

Again, life that evolved in vastly different circumstances than our own is likely very very different. I must admit however, that I find it more likely that life tends to work best on earth like planets, with roughly the same kind of conditions as over here. 

 

 

But when you start getting aliens that look unnecessarily similar to humans, like most of the ME races down below... That's when it starts getting a bit unrealistic for my tastes. Asari and Quarians take the cake for being faaaaar too humanoid. Asari look exactly like humans but with a different skin color. Seriously? Billions of years of separate evolution and they come up with that? Salarians, Volus, and Turians look unnecessarily human. The look of the Hanar was completely stolen from a Portuguese Man-of-War. I really feel like the creative designers for the game just got lazy aside from creating the most important races to the storyline and kind of added all the extra races as unpolished side-thoughts. Okay Krogans don't particularly look overly humanoid, still a wee bit too much for my tastes, however I absolutely love their back story, so they're saved from my wrath! Geth look awesome (not in this picture below though)! The Reapers themselves are what made the game for me, they're brilliant, and the idea behind them is menacingly eerie.

 

Eh well, Mass Effect in the ends remains entertainment and tries to tell a compelling story. Its much easier to care about characters that you can identify with, and for that end they must look similar to humans. I mean, no one is going to care if the giant cockroach or slimy slug sacrifice themselves to save the day. 

 

That aside, all the main races evolved on copies of earth, with only slight differences, which do actually get a nice explanation and also affect the eventual look of the characters (radiation on the Turian homeworld leads to the 'armored' skin, lack of deadly viruses on the Quarian homeworld results in their weak immune systems). Furtermore, they do not have an evolutionary head start of millions of years. The actual difference is a little less than 50.000 years.   

Ultimately my favorite sci-fi series definitely goes to Starcraft. The three races are so incredibly unique. So, it's real eye-candy to see the back story and main story play out.

 

 

*cough* Warhammer 40k ripoffs *cough*

But yeah, Starcraft is awesome. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Doc Smith (E. E. Smith, PhD.) had more odd-ball aliens than most others in the genre.  I really like Worsel the Velantian (reptile) and some of the others.  And, of course, there are the Arisians who have no physical manifestation but can take any shape as required, and the Eich who seem to be indescribably mind-boggling.

[Erle 3]

Great! After talking about human was apes, now we continue to aliens. I wonder what will come next, trolls? Orcs? Or maybe even the elves? Can't wait 

Anyway, don't mind me people, please, continue with your debate...endless debate. 

yes, i would like to philosophy a bit more about that question, because i think its just about believes.

cool, we know about the dna mixing from generation to generation. then we discover that our genetics even change within our lifetime. most possible there's much more to come

 

but to answer the question "intelligent design with a purpose or random evolution" maybe means also to answer the question "am i special or just something random".

to think that everything is "random and in fact unimportant", nja, thats a pretty dangerous ideology, i dont like that one.

so me, i leave the "christian god" just out of this discussion, because to me this world has its purpose  O_o  may sound weird to some

 

and if im thinking of ape creatures, and animals in general, i am sure that they have a consciousness pretty similar to mine, regarding things like social behaviour. what makes me different from them is my much bigger ability for imagination. and i think thats also where my morals come from, too

but how big is the humans ability for imagination? dont we just mix stuff in our brain that came from outside? its pretty difficult to think of something that we didn't receive from the "outside". thats why its difficult to create an alien image noone has ever thought before, we just mix things we already know  ; )

to use a stick or stone, thats nothing special. but the one human in the history that began to calculate, well, i guess he deserves the biggest statue on earth^^

 

i really don't wanna be unpolite to people who lived in ancient egypt, irak, middle america, japan or elsewhere, my apologies to them.

but its just some personal preference of me to imagine "higher" beings who take the smartest animal on earth, and teach them some things

if you think that humans gained every knowledge by themselves, well, then you should be interested in those highly advanced ancient civilizations, which all disappeared some thousand years ago, too, i think

(but we shouldn't begin to think about that in this thread here, yes, moose)

 

its all about believes, believe what you want, i do that, speculate till nothings left  :kitty:

cause after all, if all my logic fails, there's still the believe that everything is just imagination  ; )

[KonstantinII 1,106]

The existence of the human species is proof of creation.

We have different races of human (African,Asian) is proof of evolution.

So let's just leave it like that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

But creation of what?  Not homo sapiens.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Great! After talking about human was apes, now we continue to aliens. I wonder what will come next, trolls? Orcs? Or maybe even the elves? Can't wait 

Anyway, don't mind me people, please, continue with your debate...endless debate. 

yes, i would like to philosophy a bit more about that question, because i think its just about believes.

cool, we know about the dna mixing from generation to generation. then we discover that our genetics even change within our lifetime. most possible there's much more to come

 

but to answer the question "intelligent design with a purpose or random evolution" maybe means also to answer the question "am i special or just something random".

to think that everything is "random and in fact unimportant", nja, thats a pretty dangerous ideology, i dont like that one.

so me, i leave the "christian god" just out of this discussion, because to me this world has its purpose  O_o  may sound weird to some

 

Nope, not weird at all. Some of the greatest minds in the 20th century (like Einstein, Sagan, Feynman, Bohr, etc...), were people who rejected the idea of having a God like that of the Bible. But, they didn't completely reject the idea that there might be a creator or that there's an afterlife.

 

Carl Sagan said it himself, "Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out."

 

Sagan even had a few deep talks with the Dalai Lama about reincarnation. The Dalai Lama liked science a lot and admired the discoveries made. Sagan even asked the guy, "What if science disproved the existence of reincarnation one day?". He then replied something along the lines of if reincarnation were found not to be true, then he would have to come to accept it, as painful as it might be, and move on to something else in the pursuit of the truth.

 

I have a lot of admiration for the two of them. I think Sagan actually was actually someone who really wanted to find out that reincarnation was real, and was hoping he too would live on in another life amongst us.

[Terring 6,473]

Some of the greatest minds in the 20th century (like Einstein, Sagan, Feynman, Bohr, etc...), were people who rejected the idea of having a God like that of the Bible. But, they didn't completely reject the idea that there might be a creator or that there's an afterlife

 

I also believe that our Universe may constructed by an ancient alien civilization by using God-like technology. I have no evidences to support it, but something tells my that the Big Bang took place in a "laboratory" billions of years more advance than ours. Billions of years into the future, the human race will also evolve into a godlike state of existence and build new universes.

 

 

As about afterlife, 2001:Space Odyssey comes to my mind. The astronaut David Bowman died as a Homo Sapiens, but reborn as Star Child. Maybe what we call "spirit" or "soul" is nothing more than a type of energy and not something supernatural.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Any advanced technology unknown to the natives will appear to be something from the gods.

 

What do you suppose Leonardo Da Vinci would say if he could stay sane long enough to understand our century?

[astronelson 339]

Any advanced technology unknown to the natives will appear to be something from the gods.

 

What do you suppose Leonardo Da Vinci would say if he could stay sane long enough to understand our century?

 

"It took you guys this long to get to this point?"

 

[Zukunftstraume 220]

If

you think Mass Effect is unrealistic with its aliens, try Star Trek,

where almost every single freakin' alien is a humanoid (often very alike

humans)!

(Still a fan of the show BTW...)

 

Oh lord, don't even get me started with Star Trek... They're the worst when it comes to that. I guess that's partially the reason I never turned into a Trekkie.

 

 

 

I've stumbled across Hard Science Fiction books that had very different aliens than the mainstream media. Intelligence that lives on the surface of a neutron star! Or intelligence made out of dark matter (and since dark matter rarely interacts with regular matter, these beings would be largely undetectable to us and vice versa, an invisible world among us!). Beings that are actually a microscopic virus in essence and stay floating in space in dormancy until they encounter another world and attack en masse! You'll love this short video... Carl Sagan postulates on the possibility of having life on a gas giant planet, like Jupiter... Too amazing! Watch it!!! Do it now!

 

Again, life that evolved in vastly different circumstances than our own is likely very very different. I must admit however, that I find it more likely that life tends to work best on earth like planets, with roughly the same kind of conditions as over here. 

 

 

But when you start getting aliens that look unnecessarily similar to humans, like most of the ME races down below... That's when it starts getting a bit unrealistic for my tastes. Asari and Quarians take the cake for being faaaaar too humanoid. Asari look exactly like humans but with a different skin color. Seriously? Billions of years of separate evolution and they come up with that? Salarians, Volus, and Turians look unnecessarily human. The look of the Hanar was completely stolen from a Portuguese Man-of-War. I really feel like the creative designers for the game just got lazy aside from creating the most important races to the storyline and kind of added all the extra races as unpolished side-thoughts. Okay Krogans don't particularly look overly humanoid, still a wee bit too much for my tastes, however I absolutely love their back story, so they're saved from my wrath! Geth look awesome (not in this picture below though)! The Reapers themselves are what made the game for me, they're brilliant, and the idea behind them is menacingly eerie.

 

Eh well, Mass Effect in the ends remains entertainment and tries to tell a compelling story. Its much easier to care about characters that you can identify with, and for that end they must look similar to humans. I mean, no one is going to care if the giant cockroach or slimy slug sacrifice themselves to save the day. 

 

That aside, all the main races evolved on copies of earth, with only slight differences, which do actually get a nice explanation and also affect the eventual look of the characters (radiation on the Turian homeworld leads to the 'armored' skin, lack of deadly viruses on the Quarian homeworld results in their weak immune systems). Furtermore, they do not have an evolutionary head start of millions of years. The actual difference is a little less than 50.000 years.   

Ultimately my favorite sci-fi series definitely goes to Starcraft. The three races are so incredibly unique. So, it's real eye-candy to see the back story and main story play out.

 

 

*cough* Warhammer 40k ripoffs *cough*

But yeah, Starcraft is awesome. 

 

 

Did you watch that short clip by any chance? What did you think?

 

And true, I guess a story wouldn't be anywhere as exciting if the main alien characters lacked a personality or just seemed too outlandish for us to relate to.

 

And pwah! I'm not much of a 40k fan (just never got into it). But from what I do know, the only race that  seems to be borrowed from that series for SC are the Tyranids to create the Zerg. The Protoss themselves don't match up with any of the 40k races neatly. But, if you really wanna say that the SC races are rip-offs from Warhammer, then I might as well say most things are usually borrowed from something else. It seems like the Geth and Reapers from ME were borrowed from the Necrons in 40k. And of course the Orks in 40k go back to the original orcs in Tolkien's works, along with the elf-like Eldar. Tolkien himself borrowed most of the races in his works from European folklore from centuries ago, including Beowulf.

 

On a sidenote... I get annoyed by seeing elves, orcs, etc too damn often all over high-fantasy.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Any advanced technology unknown to the natives will appear to be something from the gods.

 

What do you suppose Leonardo Da Vinci would say if he could stay sane long enough to understand our century?

 

Eh... I wouldn't say that about Da Vinci. He was a man of logic and invention. He probably had a rough idea that the world was slowly getting more advanced and technologically sophisticated over time, and might have even had dreams of the future.

 

When it comes to an ordinary uneducated person from any culture... Yup, I would agree... But not someone like Da Vinci.

 

 

Some of the greatest minds in the 20th century (like Einstein, Sagan, Feynman, Bohr, etc...), were people who rejected the idea of having a God like that of the Bible. But, they didn't completely reject the idea

that there might be a creator or that there's an afterlife

 

I also believe that our Universe may constructed by an ancient alien civilization by using God-like technology. I have no evidences to support it, but something tells my that the Big Bang took place in a "laboratory" billions of years more advance than ours. Billions of years into the future, the human race will also evolve into a godlike state

of existence and build new universes.

 

As about afterlife, 2001:Space Odyssey comes to my mind. The astronaut David Bowman died as a Homo Sapiens, but reborn as Star Child. Maybe what we call "spirit" or "soul" is nothing more than a type of energy and not something supernatural.

I'm on the same boat as you. That's what I'd like to believe.

 

But, it's not the Big Bang that was the creation of everything, our universe is most likely just another life cycle of a seemingly infinite chain of universes, that are born, grow, stop growing, shrink, and completely collapse back in on themselves into a single point, and the immense molecular repulsion "explodes" creating another universe.

 

If you're interested I actually went MUCH more into depth about that discussion elsewhere.

 

1st post was about the nature of black holes, what we know about them, and what is very interesting about them, and that they can maybe act as a "gateway" into another universe:

 

2nd post was about the nature of the cycles of the universe, the beginning and end of times. I recommend going through the 1st one before tackling the second, since the latter is somewhat of a continuation of the former:

 

Tell me what you think... It could be life-changing if you didn't already know most of this.

 

 

Oh, and Space Odyssey was a great movie! Though the ending was a bit... interesting and hard to interpret. I still don't know what to think of the ending, though it really gets you thinking about very deep things that aren't easy to put into words nor grasp.

 

Also, the idea of a spirit or soul could just be a delusion. Deep inside our mind (or the conglomerate of all the 80 billion neurons that make up our brain) we could instead have a "sense of self" to give us the feeling like we're grounded, unique individuals that are separate from everything else. That Sense of Self is for the purpose of making our likely-hood of survival increase. The result of evolving brains over time, allowed those organisms to think, and believe they are separate individuals. Everything ranging from a lobster to a dog, and us. We are all connected, all the same entity, but for the sake of our continued physical survival... We are to think of ourselves as individuals.

 

Anyways, read those two posts I linked! I tie this all together very nicely at the end of the 2nd link

[LexusInfernus 908]

 

Did you watch that short clip by any chance? What did you think?

 

And true, I guess a story wouldn't be anywhere as exciting if the main alien characters lacked a personality or just seemed too outlandish for us to relate to.

 

And pwah! I'm not much of a 40k fan (just never got into it). But from what I do know, the only race that  seems to be borrowed from that series for SC are the Tyranids to create the Zerg. The Protoss themselves don't match up with any of the 40k races neatly. But, if you really wanna say that the SC races are rip-offs from Warhammer, then I might as well say most things are usually borrowed from something else. It seems like the Geth and Reapers from ME were borrowed from the Necrons in 40k. And of course the Orks in 40k go back to the original orcs in Tolkien's works, along with the elf-like Eldar. Tolkien himself borrowed most of the races in his works from European folklore from centuries ago, including Beowulf.

 

On a sidenote... I get annoyed by seeing elves, orcs, etc too damn often all over high-fantasy.

The Terrans look an awful lot like a mix between Space Marines and the Imperial Guard. The Zerg are direct ripoffs from the Tyranids, and the Protoss have enough in common with the Eldar that the word plagiarism comes to mind. Don't get me wrong, StarCraft is a great game, but their races cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called original. But I think debating the originality of fictional races is a little too off topic and more suited to pm's or something  

 

As for the video, Sagan is awesome, but I'm afraid I have to disagree with him. Evolution may be random to some extend, but the environment in which evolution happens will ensure that some forms have an advantage over others. In its randomness, evolution may create 10 different mutations, but the environment may only allow for one or two of those mutations to actually give the organism an edge in reproduction and survival, while the other mutations either do nothing, or actually weaken the organism. To take the Jupiter example from the video, the environment of Jupiter pretty much ensures that humanoids will never evolve on Jupiter, simply because those forms don't stand a chance. In the meantime, certain forms of aquatic lifeforms do actually have the right kind of body that could function in an environment like Jupiter's atmosphere. Aquatic lifeforms are much better adapted to pressure, and some of them also stand a much better chance of floating or swimming through the atmospheric currents. I mean, look at his floaters, that are just Jellyfish that are adapted to float on hot air currents rather than water, and his hunters are just adapted stingrays that use their wings to navigate the air. 

 

Therefor, life that evolves on a planet with earth like conditions, and I'm quite sure such planets exist, who have similar environments as on earth likely evolve organisms that are similar to life on earth, at least in general shape.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Almost all advanced life forms on earth are bilaterally symmetric.  In fact, I can't think of any that are not.  This must be some kind of environmental optimum or it wouldn't happen so often. 

 

Nature tends to make flora in sets of five, but primitive life such as bees then to use hexagons.  If you take a can of green peas, remove the lid then use the lid to slowly, carefully compress the peas, before they crush into mush, they first form a packed array of dodecahederons.  A solid 12-sided shape with pentagons for sides.  Just physics, but the close packing of the peas shows what deformations can occur in the optimum shape (sphere) when packed without intervening space.

 

Now, suppose the laws of physics as we know them are the universal laws.  It is a pretty good conjecture that any advanced life form will be bilaterally symmetric.  Beyond that, all bets are off.  We already have hexapodal and octapodal fauna.  We have centipedes and millipedes.  Who says an alien being has to have its brain-case at the top?  Why not closer to the blood supply? And so on.

 

An interesting sidelight, perhaps, on the rather out-dated idea that man is made in God's image.  No one knows what God looks like, and can't know.  This is just anthropomorphizing God, which I think must be some sort of blasphemy in any faith.  Similarly, believing that God created man specifically is carrying things a little far, don't you think?  If there is a supreme being watch all this, it must be having a good laugh. 

 

Mankind has a monumental ego.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Now, suppose the laws of physics as we know them are the universal laws.  It is a pretty good conjecture that any advanced life form will be bilaterally symmetric.  Beyond that, all bets are off.  We already have hexapodal and octapodal fauna.  We have centipedes and millipedes.  Who says an alien being has to have its brain-case at the top?  Why not closer to the blood supply? And so on.

 

Mankind has a monumental ego.

 

Who even said they needed to have blood? Many organisms here instead have a fluid that fills the spaces between organs, it's by no means enclosed in tubes like for us. Insects even have pores for extracting air from the environment that go straight through their body. Looking slightly like swiss cheese on a microscopic scale. If there were more oxygen in the atmosphere, insects can grow even larger because the flow of oxygen can reach the deeper interiors more easily. And that's exactly what happened in the distant past! When oxygen levels were 35% (instead of 21%) during the Carboniferous Period, insects were HUGE! Dragonflies of up to a meter in size!!!



 

Anyways, you're absolutely right. We have a bias for what life elsewhere will look like merely because of what we've been used to our entire lives, and it's very hard to imagine life evolving in any different way or looking too unlike what we've been accustomed to.

 

 

 

 





And Lexus, the thing is Carl was actually an expert in the field. He hosted the TV series Cosmos, and not once had a scientist go against what he presented. Even a decade later, after more discoveries were made, he didn't change anything in the series, if not only further elaborated on some ideas shown. He had a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, and when it came to astronomy, evolution, ecology, chemistry, and so forth, he really knew his stuff. When it comes to people like us who have mostly only taken introductory classes in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics (including myself despite being a bioengineering major), it's probably best not go against Carl, who had the entire mainstream scientific community backing him as well.



 

And, yes you're right. Life on worlds such a gas giants, on the surface of neutron stars, or made out of dark matter is obviously not going to have feet and arms with five digits. On a side note, they've even discovered that life could possibly develop in the middle of space from a collapsing cloud. Such an idea is shown in the hard science fiction novel called The Black Cloud.



 

But, when it comes to terrestrial planets, there's still little reason to believe that the organisms will look anything like us. The more the similarities, the more unlikely it becomes to exist. I'll explain…



 

Gravity for example, can play a colossal role in how life develops and looks. Here on Earth, the gravitational acceleration is 9.8 m/s² (or 1g), and for every person who doesn't know what that means, it's that for every additional second you fall, your speed increases by 9.8 meters per second. On worlds with a smaller gravitational pull than here on Earth, like Mars, the Moon, or even smaller, the gravitational pulls are a third, a sixth, and maybe up to 30 times weaker respectively. For the last one, it means we'll be able to jump 30 times higher, and it'll take us 30 times more to fall back down to the surface. Other worlds have been found and given the nickname "Super-Earths" that would have gravitational pulls maybe up to 10 times greater. In both these extremes any life would be structurally very different. On the lighter worlds, life would be more "airborne", maybe even large slender walkers. On the heavier worlds, life would be more confined to the ground, where falling could be disastrous because of the tremendous acceleration. Such inhabitants would have to be stronger, sturdier, and probably squirm about the floor to keep from being crushed under high g's. They might also make great use of the underground.



 

Another world may be bathed in light, where photosynthesis is very commonplace. While another world may be covered by very thick clouds or just in near-eternal darkness, where photosynthesis can not possibly be an energy source. On a side note, it's an accident that green is the color for photosynthetic organisms. If anything, it should've been black, since it observes light and heat much better. As to why that didn't happen here, remains an unsolved mystery. But, it's pretty safe to assume that photosynthetic life elsewhere has a myriad of different colors, one world might have purple photosynthetic organisms, while another might have red, but most will presumably be darker tones, like black.

 



In our solar system, there are 6 other worlds that seem to have been likely to develop life at one point, or could actually have it now, or in the future. They are Venus, Mars, Europa (of Jupiter), Titan and Enceladus (of Saturn), and Triton (of Neptune). Each of these is ridiculously more different than the others, and these are all terrestrial worlds like Earth:



 

Venus is bathed in sulfuric acid rain, with an inferno-like environment. It's surface is like the Earth in the sense that it has many of the same elements.

 



Mars is a cold, CO₂-rich world, with dry ice at the poles. It's covered in an iron-rust coating with many other minerals, weird rock formations, and at times bombarded by dust-storms that can cover most of the planet.



 

Europa is one of the most likely places for life to exist, under 12 miles of thick ice, there's a very good chance of a 60-mile deep ocean existing. This ocean would be completely void of sunlight, and tidal heating from Jupiter makes the ocean floor likely to be volcanic. Life could exist near these vents and use chemical reactions or thermal energy from the vents to fuel their own existence.



 

Enceladus is growing to become the most likely place where life can exist besides Earth. It has cryovolcanoes that spew out minerals and a "snow" that rains back down onto the surface. Life could exist at the exits of these volcanoes or under the surface where many of these gases, liquids, and nutrients flow around.



 

Titan is extremely unique. It's a world that has an atmosphere many times thicker than our planet's and a gravitational pull much weaker than ours (so, if you were to jump off a cliff, a human can effectively fly there by strapping on some wings). It's covered in a thick orange haze in which organic chemical reactions happen all the time. If it weren't so cold, it could effectively create a unique brand of life all on it's own. But being that cold, it's the only place discovered besides Earth to have lakes on it's surface. But not lakes of water, lakes of ethane and methane. Hydrocarbons, which would effectively be lakes of oils.

 The surface itself looks something like this: http://cdn.theatlanticwire.com/img/upload/2012/10/16/huygens-descent-browse/large.jpeg

 

Lastly, Triton. Which is very cold and far away from the sun giving it a very dim look during the day, like if a solar eclipse was about to happen. It's covered in "dirty snow", and also contains cyrovolcanoes that spew out nitrogen gas which freezes solid before it rains back down on the surface. The "dirty snow" on the surface even has a pinkish color in certain places.



 

All of these worlds are vastly different from one another. But like Earth, the chances of finding near-duplicates of these worlds anywhere else is going to be quite an undertaking. Each world out there is substantially different from the next in chemistry and physical conditions. We've even found worlds that are made entirely of graphite and diamond!!!



 

Besides the versatility of how rocky planets are, there is still one other thing to consider; life doesn't even have to be made of the same chemical composition as us! There are Alternative Biochemistries that could form the basis for life elsewhere. Life as we know it, requires a solvent and a chemical structural base (but of course, even this doesn't have to hold). In our case we're made out of a carbon-based structure for most molecules in our body (including carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleic acids… but not lipids) and our solvent within our body is none-other than water. But, as I'm about to point out. It doesn't have to be this way.



 

For solvents, there are two other very likely alternatives; Methane (CH₄) and Ammonia (NH₃). Water itself (H₂O) is similar to Ammonia because of something called hydrogen bonds (in which ammonia atoms can stick to themselves and other polar molecules like water can). While Methane is a hydrocarbon, meaning it's more like an oil when liquid and tries to stay away from polar things, it can still conglomerate with other non-polar things. Ammonia and Methane are only liquid at much colder temperatures. Both of which act differently than water, and as such the organisms that are made of these would have to be different from water filled organisms. I can picture ammonia-solvent organisms being metabolically much slower in nature. The methane-solvent organisms being "oily", maybe very soft-bodied, and less "solid", which means they'd come apart more easily, and be less likely to be found as completely separate individuals (strange concept to think about).



 

Another fourth possible solvent is Hydrogen Fluoride (HF), which is even more polar than water. Only problem though is that Fluorine isn't a common element in the universe, so the likelihood of encountering organisms made of this are substantially less than the other three. But, since Fluorine is more polar than water, when a certain world ends up having very high levels of Fluorine, these organisms would probably spring up very quickly, and evolve rapidly. They would be very metabolically active, and their worlds would be very versatile, and rapidly changing. Also, HF stays liquid at temperatures of a cool day (around 14 C) all the way down to the temperatures of winter in Antarctica.



 

Besides solvents, there's a large array of bases that can be used. The first one is Nitrogen-Phosphorous. These molecules can also form long chains like carbon. But since they don't have 4 bonds like carbon and only three, we can expect these organisms to be less likely to be very complex. They will however, look very different from those on Earth. They could be mainly silver-colored with a waxy-surface. A myriad of colors would result including white, yellow, red, purple, and black. Probably either crystalline-like hard parts or a flaky nature besides just the waxy-ness. More complex forms of this biochemistry would appear incredibly strange to us.



 

Silicon-based lifeforms are also another strong possibility. The organism would appear sand-like, glass-like, or plastic-like. Imagine visiting such a world. You gaze at one organism that is camouflaging, that looks like it's made of rock or sand, comes out of nowhere and attacks it's prey, which was some creature that was covered with elaborate silicate shell designs just casually strolling by. You see another creature that is a "glass walker" that captures light in darker parts of it's body to photosynthesize and deflects that same light to confuse or blind enemies. In the distance above an ocean of unidentified liquid you might see nearly-transparent "bags" flying about which travel randomly about looking like plastic, camouflaging from predators.



 

Another interesting possibility is Metal-Oxide based lifeforms. Which utilize metals and oxygen together to form their basis of life. Metal alloys can be used to create these creatures. You might turn your head to see a large predator slowly walk by, having a very rigid body, a mosaic of metals across it's body for various different purposes, giant needle-like appendages to walk around, and using huge blades to attack other solid prey. But other creatures can exist here that aren't so solid, like those that have fused the metal in it's body with other elements to break apart and recombine at will acting like a sentient metal liquid, like the antagonist of Terminator 2. Suddenly you look around and see a red-rust looking thing covering the surface in the distance, and realize it's microscopic life, rust, which flies around in the wind too and stains the ground. A world where the organism are metal!



 

Keep in mind there are many more possibilities, but most of the other ones are highly unlikely because those elements exist in smaller amounts in the universe. Another one of these is sulfur-based! But these are just but some of the possibilities for terrestrial planets, only. There are many possibilities and scenarios that can still arise from metal-oxide or silicon-based or the others that I left out, mainly because there are soooo many possible organisms that can result from this. Just gives an eerie feel as to how different the intelligent organisms would be from us.



 

But, you're right, evolution of life is completely based on it's environment. The chances of finding some world with an oxygen-rich atmosphere and soil, and nearly the same combination of minerals and elements to create salty oceans, nitrogen-rich soils, and granite rock continents are rather slim. But, even if we were able to find an environment also made of the same chemical ingredients as Earth (like carbon and oxygen in abundance and all the other elements), and have the same physical characteristics such as seasons, a thin crust for plate tectonics to work, an atmosphere about as thick as ours, and a regular day/night cycle to moderate extreme temperatures, there's still little reason to believe the organisms would be remotely similar to our own world. Evolution just turned out this way for us. Such a duplicate world might not even have anything photosynthetic (since photosynthesis only evolved out ONCE in Earth History, as shocking as that sounds). With no photosynthesis, EVERYTHING would be different. Nothing would consume light, so nothing will be able to feed on the hypothetical light consumers. Such organism would instead be confined to use chemical energy from volcanic vents, mechanical energy from tidal forces or winds, or thermal energy from hot sun-baked regions. Other organisms would evolve to eat the ones that consume energy straight out of the environment (similar to the roll animals provide in the trophic level pyramid). The food web would look nothing like ours, and those organism would have to adapt to such an environment.



 

But even if the planet had photosynthetic creatures, we shouldn't make the assumption that "plants" will evolve out, and that "animals" will evolve to feed on the plants, and "fungi" will evolve out to feed on the remains of both. We only have those organisms because that's how Earth's history turned out. Certain mass extinctions and environmental changes wiped out certain organisms, gave way to new ones, and forced others to adapt or perish. Events ranging from the entire planet being confined to a 300 million year frozen wasteland, to immense volcanic eruptions that choked and wiped out 95% of all life, to a 10 kilometer-sized meteor coming from the sky and wiping out the greatest organisms of the time.



 

If the Permian mass-extinction never would've happened Reptiles would've never become dominant and mammals and birds would've never appeared. Instead the Amphibians would've evolved into something else, maybe an intelligent amphibian species would've appeared, something that hatches it's youth in pods and moves onto land.



 

What if the Earth would've never had it's Snowball Earth stage? The Cambrian Explosion would've never happened, and organisms would've never had a reason to develop hard parts, vertebrates and insects would've never appeared. So we'd all be soft-bodied organisms. Any land dwellers would be soft things, and life in the oceans would presumably dominate and evolve into other unimaginable things.

 This is mainly due to hard parts only evolving ONCE in the history of Earth, which makes it seem like it's something that's highly unlikely to evolve out ever again.

 

But why stop there? What if life would've developed not even using cells as it's basis of formation? Everything would be different… Absolutely everything.



 

The possibilities are infinite.

[Sohaver75 2]

By definition Creationism is the religious belief that life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism).  In that context one has to examine what a super natural being is...In ontology and the philosophy of mind, a non-physical entitiy is a spirit or being that exists outside of normal reality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural_being).  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. .... (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke).  

We are not gods. Maybe, someday we will become gods, but till then we are not.  But does it take god to make different forms of life?  look at how we make genetic engineered foods, animals, and now organs.  Now advance us to the point where we are gone and an alien race sees our work.  How would they know what we did?  How can they know?  The closest in time some thing is made, the more likely it can be told if it were made by a living being, the further, the more likely it is seen as natural process.  

 

A good scientist never discounts any theory, no matter how repugnant, cause a scientist does not know everything... A Scientist is in pursuit of knowledge, not to know it all, but the enjoyment of learning.  That being said there is substantial evidence that evolution exists.  Causality is the basis for it, as well as everything in the Multiverse (that we know of)... and there in lies the rub/// what do we really know?  according to theories of evolution, causality  and the age of the universe, we should be crawling with aliens.  thus why are we not ? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox).  there has been sufficient amount of time, of growth, and of space for life to be everywhere.  Yet where is it.

 

Then there is the other question.. why is everything so similar?  There is evidence in evolution that things were not always similar  heck all one has to do is look at an insect or octopi to see this.look at the Precambrian Era and see the fossils that exist from then to now. not one creature looks even remotely like anything existing today.  How does evolution work that out? there is evidence but it is not rock solid, that efficiency is the guide there... the less use of energy, the more likely to survive (tortoises come to mind) yet here we humans are, the most expensive energy uses of all evolution (so far discovered).  

 

Then there is the universe itself.  if one thing in the basis of the cosmos were different, we would not be here ask these questions.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe)  

 

My philosophy is christian.  I believe the best way to live my life is by living how Jesus would have wanted me to.  This though does not cloud my perception on how the rest of existence is.  I believe in science will find answers that make sense   I believe the human race evolved from apes.  I believe a "BIg Bang" created the universe (as we know it).  None of this is in any doubt. but what is, lies in the details.  None of existence precludes a "Creator", just because it doesn't follow what some writers two thousands years ago described how it happens, (even though we didn't even know the existence of DNA till 50 yrs ago) doesn't mean it is wrong.  Just like how science says the way our aircraft fly doesn't preclude a bubble-bee from flying also.  

 

Everyone is a scientist who seeks answers, its whether we are open minded enough to see the answers for what they are, not what we want them to be, that makes us Great Scientists.

[LexusInfernus 908]





And Lexus, the thing is Carl was actually an expert in the field. He hosted the TV series Cosmos, and not once had a scientist go against what he presented. Even a decade later, after more discoveries were made, he didn't change anything in the series, if not only further elaborated on some ideas shown. He had a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, and when it came to astronomy, evolution, ecology, chemistry, he really knew his stuff. When it comes to people like us who have mostly only taken introductory classes in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics (including myself despite being a bioengineering major), it's probably best not go against Carl, who had the entire mainstream scientific community backing him.



 

That is an appeal to authority. I'm well aware who Carl Sagan is and how much of a respected scientist he is. That however, does not mean he can't be wrong, nor is it a good reason not to question him. You should know that science progresses because people question, including the well established and well respected theories. 

 

Do note however, that I only disagree with his statement that the randomness of evolution will cause randomness in the appearance of life on other planets. Evolution is not random, or at least, the things that stay are not random. Mutations that are beneficial to procreation or survival will be adopted while mutations that are not beneficial or even harmful do not. 

 

But, when it comes to terrestrial planets, there's still little reason to believe that the organisms will look anything like us. The more the similarities, the more unlikely it becomes to exist. I'll explain…



 

Gravity for example, can play a colossal role in how life develops and looks. On worlds with a smaller gravitational pull than here on Earth, like Mars, the Moon, or even smaller, the gravitational pulls are a third, a sixth, and maybe up to 30 times weaker. For the last one, it means we'll be able to jump 30 times higher, and it'll take us 30 times more time to fall back down to the surface. Other worlds have been found given the nickname "Super-Earths" that would have gravitational pulls maybe up to 10 times greater. In both these extremes any life would be structurally very different. On the lighter worlds, life would be more "airborne", maybe large, slender walkers. On the heavier worlds, life would be more confined to the ground, where falling could be disastrous because of the tremendous acceleration. Such inhabitants would have to be stronger, sturdier, and probably squirm about the floor to keep from being crushed by pressure. They might also make great use of the underground.



 

Another world may be bathed in light, where photosynthesis is very commonplace. While another world may be covered by very thick clouds or just in near-eternal darkness, where photosynthesis can not possibly be an energy source. On a side note, it's an accident that green is the color for photosynthetic organisms. If anything, it should've been black, since it observes light and heat much better. As to why that didn't happen here, remains an unsolved mystery. But, it's pretty safe to assume that photosynthetic life elsewhere has a myriad of different colors, one world might have purple photosynthetic organism, while another might have red, but most will presumably be darker tones, like black.

 

No offense, but I think you are missing the point. Look, why do species evolve? It is nature's compensation mechanism. If you are a hunter, you evolve in such a way that you can better catch your pray. Why? Because if you are better at catching your prey, your survival odds go up and you are more likely to procreate and spread your genes. If you are prey, you evolve to compensate for being hunted. Therefor you evolve defense mechanisms. Why? Because if your defense mechanism is better than everyone else, you survive to procreate while your competitors get eaten. This is a universal concept, this holds true for life everywhere in this galaxy, no matter the planet type its born on. 

 

So then who gets intelligence? The species that needs it of course. And who needs it more than anyone? Humanoids, because face it, our build is terrible for when it comes to physical defense or offense mechanisms. Our frames aren't suitable for strength or speed, we don't have wings and we are not particularly agile. We don't procreate fast enough to find strength in overwhelming numbers. But what do we have? A set of arms with hands, very suitable for grabbing or holding things. And add intelligence in that mix and you got yourself a winner, since intelligence allows for more effective use of your hands. The more efficient you can use your hands, the better the chances you have to procreate.

 

Now does that mean that winged creatures can't evolve to the point of human intelligence? Theoretically I suppose that is possible, however I think the chances of it are...slim. A winged creature has no use for human intelligence, unless it also has hands or something like hands. But even then, it is much more likely that a winged creature simply learns to fly faster or with more skill in order to increase its chances on survival. Such a mutation is more likely to occur and to have immediate beneficial effects than intelligence.    



In our solar system, there are 6 other worlds that seem to have been likely to develop life at one point, or could actually have it now, or in the future. They are Venus, Mars, Europa (of Jupiter), Titan and Enceladus (of Saturn), and Triton (of Neptune). Each of these is ridiculously more different than the others, and these are all terrestrial worlds like Earth:



 

Venus is bathed in sulfuric acid rain, with an inferno-like environment. It's surface is like the Earth has many of the same elements.

 



Mars is a cold, CO2-rich world, with dry ice at the poles. It's covered in an iron-rust surface with many other minerals, weird rock formations, and bombarded by dust-storms that can cover most of the planet at times.



 

Europa is one of the most likely places for life to exist, under 12 miles of thick ice, there's a very good chance of a 60-mile deep ocean existing. This ocean would be completely void of sunlight, and tidal heating from Jupiter makes the interior likely to be volcanic. Life could exist near these vents and use chemical reactions from the chemicals spewed out to fuel their own existence.



 

Enceladus is growing to become the most likely place where life can exist besides Earth. It has cryovolcanoes that spew out minerals and a "snow" onto the surface. Life could exist at the exits of these volcanoes or under the surface where many of these hot gases roll around.



 

Titan is extremely unique. It's a world that has an atmosphere many times thicker than our planet's and a gravitational pull much weaker than ours (so, if you were to jump off a cliff, a human can effectively fly there by strapping on some wings). It's covered in a thick orange haze in which organic chemical reactions happen all the time. If it weren't so cold, it could effectively create a unique brand of life all on it's own. But being that cold, it's the only place discovered besides Earth to have lakes on it's surface. But not lakes of water, lakes of ethane and methane. Hydrocarbons,  which would effectively be lakes of oils.



 

Lastly, Triton. Which is very cold and far away from the sun giving it a very dim look during the day, like if a solar eclipse was about to happen. It's covered in snow, and also contains cyrovolcanoes that spew out nitrogen gas which freezes solid before it rains back down on the surface. The "dirty snow" on the surface even has a pinkish color in certain places.



 

All of these worlds are vastly different from one another. But like Earth, the chances of finding near-duplicates of these worlds anywhere else is going to be quite an undertaking. Each world out there is substantially different from the next in chemistry and physical conditions. We've even found worlds that are made of graphite and diamond!!!



 

Yes, and on all of these worlds, the chances that life more complex than bacteria and small sea creatures is unlikely. They are to energy deprived for complex life to occur. Or just to volatile for complex life forms to survive long enough to evolve. 

 

And as there are only limited elements in this universe and therefor also only limited possibilities in a galaxy with billions of stars and perhaps even more planets, Id say the odds of finding a world that is remarkably similar to Earth in size, temperature and make up are pretty decent. 

Besides, the versatility of how rocky planets are. There is still one other thing to consider, life doesn't even have to be made of the same chemical composition as us. There are Alternative Biochemistries that could form the basis for life elsewhere. Life as we know it, requires a solvent and a chemical structural base (but of course, even this doesn't have to hold). In our case we're made out of a carbon-based structure for most molecules in our body (including carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleic acids… but not lipids) and our solvent within our body is none-other than water. But, as I'm about to point out. It doesn't have to be this way.



 

For solvents, there are two other very likely alternatives; Methane (CH4) and Ammonia (NH3). Water itself (H2O) is similar to Ammonia because of something called hydrogen bonds (in which ammonia atoms can stick to themselves and other polar molecules like water can). While Methane is a hydrocarbon, is more like an oil and tries to stay away from polar things, but can conglomerate with other non-polar things. Ammonia and Methane are only liquid at much colder temperatures. Both of which act differently than water, and as such the organisms that are made of these would have to be different from water filled organisms. I can picture ammonia-solvent organisms being metabolically much slower in nature. The methane-solvent organisms being "oily" in nature, maybe very soft-bodied, and less "solid", which means they'd come apart more easily, and less likely to be found as completely separate individuals (strange concept to think about).



 

Another fourth possible solvent is Hydrogen Fluoride (HF), which is even more polar than water. Only problem though is that Fluorine isn't a common element in the universe, so the likelihood of encountering organisms made of this are substantially less the other three. But, since Fluorine is more polar than water, when a certain world ended up having very high levels of Fluorine, these organisms would probably spring up very quickly, and evolve rapidly. They would be very metabolically fast, and their worlds would be very versatile, and rapidly changing. Also, HF stays liquid at temperatures of a cool day (around 14 C) all the way down to the temperatures of winter in Antarctica.



 

Besides solvents, there's a large array of bases that can be used. The first one is Nitrogen-Phosphorous. These molecules can also form long chains like carbon. But since they don't have 4 bonds like carbon and only three, we can expect these organisms to be less likely to be very complex. They will however, look very different from those on Earth. They could be mainly silver-colored with a waxy-surface. A myriad of colors would result including white, yellow, red, purple, and black. Probably either crystalline-like hard parts or a flaky nature besides just the waxy-ness. More complex forms of this biochemistry would appear incredibly strange to us.



 

Silicon-based lifeforms are also another strong possibility. The organism would appear sand-like, glass-like, or plastic-like. Imagine visiting such a world. You look at one organism that is camouflaging, that looks like it's made of rock or sand, comes out of nowhere and attacks it's prey, which was some creature that was covered with elaborate silicate shell designs just casually strolling by. You see another creature that is a "glass walker" that captures light in darker parts of it's body to photosynthesize and deflects that same light to avoid enemies. In the distance above an ocean of unidentified liquid you might see nearly-transparent "bags" flying about which travel randomly about looking like plastic, camouflaging from prey.



 

Another interesting possibility is Metal-Oxide based lifeforms. Which utilize metals and oxygen together to form their basis of life. Metal alloys and variety of metals can be used to create these creatures. You might turn your head to see a large predator slowly walk, it's has a very rigid body, a mosaic of metals across it's body for various different things, giant needle-like appendages to walk around, and uses huge blades to attack other solid prey. But other creatures exist here that aren't so solid, like those that have fused the metal in it's body with other elements to break apart and recombine at will acting like a sentient metal liquid, like the antagonist of Terminator 2. Suddenly you look around and see a red-rust looking thing covering the surface in the distance, and realize it's microscopic life, rust, which flies around in the wind too and stains the ground. A world where the organism are metal!



 

Keep in mind there are many more possibilities, but most of the other ones are highly unlikely because those elements exist in smaller amounts in the universe. But these are just but some of the possibilities for terrestrial planets, only. There are many possibilities and scenarios that can still arise from metal-oxide or silicon-based or the others that I left out, mainly because there are soooo many possible organisms that can result from this. Just gives an eerie feel as to how different the intelligent organisms would be from us.



 

No matter the chemical composition of these creatures, the same rules of evolution that apply to us apply to them. That said, of course it is possible that a planet does not evolve a creature that lacks the physical capabilities that make intelligence a useful mutation. It is entirely possible that there are planets that evolves only predators and prey that depend entirely on physical superiority. In fact, that is what happened on earth during the time when Dinosaurs ruled the world as the dominant species. So far, intelligence like we have is an exception rather than the rule, and that does suggest that intelligent life will be rare, only capable of evolving under the right set of circumstances. 

 

 

But, you're right, evolution of life is completely based on it's environment. The chances of finding some world with oxygen-rich atmosphere and soil, and nearly the same combination of minerals and elements to create salty oceans, nitrogen-rich soils, and granite rock continents are rather slim. But, even if we were able to find an environment also made of the same chemical ingredients as Earth (like carbon and oxygen in abundance and all the other elements), and have the same physical characteristics such as seasons, a thin crust for plate tectonics to work, an atmosphere about as thick, and a regular day/night cycle to moderate extreme temperatures, there's still little reason to believe the organisms would be remotely similar to our own world. Evolution just turned out this way for us. Such another world might not even have anything photosynthetic (since photosynthesis only evolved out ONCE in Earth History, as shocking as that sounds). With no photosynthesis, EVERYTHING would be different. Nothing would consume light, so nothing will be able to feed on the hypothetical life consumers. Such organism would instead be confined  to use chemical energy from volcanic vents, mechanical energy from tidal forces or winds, or thermal energy from hot sun-baked regions. The food web would look nothing like ours, and those organism would have to adapt to such an environment.



 

Actually, I think it is quite likely that on a planet that is almost completely similar to earth, plants will evolve, simply because photosynthesis is a very very useful mutation, and the organism that gets it most certainly will gain a tremendous advantage over all other life forms. 

 

 

 

But even if the planet had photosynthetic creatures, we shouldn't make the assumption that plants will evolve out, and that "animals" will evolve to feed on the plants, and "fungi" will evolve out to feed on the remains of both. We only have those organisms because that's how Earth's history turned out. Certain mass extinctions and environmental changes wiped out certain organisms, gave way to new ones, and forced others to adapt or perish. Things ranging from the entire planet being confined to a 300 million year frozen planet, to immense volcanic eruptions that choked and wiped out 95% of all life, to a meteor coming from the sky and wiping out the greatest organisms of the time.



 

If the Permian mass-extinction never would've happened Reptiles would've never become dominant and mammals and birds would've never appeared. Instead the Amphibians would've evolved into something else, maybe an intelligent amphibian species would've appeared, something that hatches it's youth in pods and moves onto land.



 

What if the Earth would've never had it's Snowball Earth stage? The Cambrian Explosion would've never happened, and organisms would've never had a reason to develop hard parts, so we'd all be soft-bodied organisms. Any land dwellers would be soft things, and life in the oceans would presumably dominate and evolve into other unimaginable things.



 

But why stop there? What if life would've developed even using cells as it's basis of formation? Everything would be different… Absolutely everything.



 

The possibilities are infinite.

No, but it is a very logical next step in evolution. Not all creatures will be plants as it simply benefits some creatures to become adept at eating plants, especially in the early stages, as plants have yet to evolve defense mechanisms. And evolving a defense mechanism likely takes so long that by the time you have them, those creatures have already evolved to a more complex next stage. And animals eating the plant eaters is again a logical step, given that the same situation applies to them is it did for the plants. By the time the plant eaters come up with effective defenses a large number of the plant eaters are already 'locked in' and will evolve to surpass the defense mechanisms. 

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Oh sorry, it's not that I won't question Carl, it's just that I've never really found any real evidence to contradict anything he's ever said. So for the time being, I really have no reason to question him.

 

*Also, I'm not directing anything particularly at you (like assuming you had no idea who Carl was), I always make my posts very detailed because there are really many people that will read this, and maybe a few them have little idea about the topic being discussed, or who people like Carl are. I personally think you're very well informed about all of these topics.

On another note. It's not that evolution will cause complete randomness, he wasn't even saying that. Of course evolution will bring about the changes that are needed for survival! I can definitely voucher for that. Only, I really think we won't get life that looks too much like our own, even on worlds that have the same exact composition as Earth. <--- That was actually the point I was trying to get at, that sentence should've been my stated thesis in the last colossal post... My fault :/

Then again, this topic has been going on for quite some time amongst many professional astronomers, and many of them treat the approach to extraterrestrial life quite differently. We won't be able to know for certainty until we find another world that has life (whether it's simple or complex), for now it's just speculation and throwing beliefs into the mix.

 

On a side-note: Stephen Hawking is quite the pessimist compared to Carl, he actually condemns people for trying to find life, when he says we shouldn't make our presence known, otherwise we might get ourselves accidentally wiped out for being too welcoming.

And whoops my fault for going off like that. I wasn't even arguing against how Natural Selection works. I think I got so into explaining alternate biochemistries that I stirred away from the point.

And, I feel like anything can evolve intelligence, if it benefits them. But, what we know from the smartest creatures around, the smartest ones tend to be predators, with the exception of the elephant. Creatures that hunt usually have to be smarter and come up with better strategies for catching prey, all a rabbit has to do is run. Elephants evolved their intelligence because where they live they're particularly susceptible to droughts, so with an excellent memory and good cognition, the older elephants can remember where certain things like water holes were found in the past, and then lead their entire heard there.

I actually think it's maybe nearly as equally likely for a winged creature to evolve intelligence as it is for bipedal organism with two free hands. Especially if the winged organism already has an appendage or two for grasping things easily. But then again, that's just my hunch, I don't have any real evidence for this, I just think if it benefits their existence, why not? A dolphin sure doesn't have any free limbs, yet that didn't stop it from becoming the smartest non-primate in existence.

And hopefully it is the case that we'll find a planet remarkably similar to Earth, because that's what most astrophysicists think we'll be the prize-winning places. It would be quite tragic to see them wasting their times. I personally think that life is probably more likely to evolve with a carbon-basis and water as a solvent than the other options, but then again, I feel like they shouldn't just limit their options to only looking for Goldilocks planets.

Personally, I think life is rather common in the universe, but that intelligence is rare… Extremely rare. So rare, that this one of the few times I'll go against Carl's beliefs. I've estimated before that the chances of finding intelligence in a galaxy our size are less than 0.01, meaning we'd have to comb at least a hundred Milky-Way sized galaxies to find intelligent life. The Fermi Paradox really drove me into trying to be very analytical with this.

One other theory is that we're just far too early in the universe's stage of evolution. Maybe we're just one of the newcomers. I actually also support that idea, instead of the cosmos being filled with intelligence.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Oh sorry, it's not that I won't question Carl, it's just that I've never really found any real evidence to contradict anything he's ever said. So for the time being, I really have no reason to question him.

 

 

*Also, I'm not directing anything particularly at you (like assuming you had no idea who Carl was), I always make my posts very detailed because there are really many people that will read this, and maybe a few them have little idea about the topic being discussed, or who people like Carl are. I personally think you're very well informed about all of these topics.

 

 

 

Oh my bad then, I thought you did direct it to me. And thanks! 

 

 

 

On a side-note: Stephen Hawking is quite the pessimist compared to Carl, he actually condemns people for trying to find life, when he says we shouldn't make our presence known, otherwise we might get ourselves accidentally wiped out for being too welcoming.

 

Hehe, he's afraid we attract the attention of the Reapers? 

 

Well he has a point. Say there are aliens out there, who are capable of FTL travel and who are ahead of us in the evolutionary curve by thousands or even millions of years. Their technology would also likely be thousands of years ahead of us. And assuming that the law of accelerated technological increase holds true, that difference in technology would be absolutely staggering. These beings would be...well, like Gods really. Absolutely beyond our comprehension, to the point that they are closer to Lovecraftian horrors than anything else. Even if they mean us no harm, their very presence would likely have disastrous consequences. I believe this is also the basis for a theory on why we haven't encountered anyone else yet. They believe that the alien's mean us no harm, but know that if they would reveal their presence right now, it would wreck us, so they hide themselves and wait for us to reach a certain point.  

 

And, I feel like anything can evolve intelligence, if it benefits them. But, what we know from the smartest creatures around, the smartest ones tend to be predators, with the exception of the elephant. Creatures that hunt usually have to be smarter and come up with better strategies for catching prey, all a rabbit has to do is run. Elephants evolved their intelligence because where they live they're particularly susceptible to droughts, so with an excellent memory and good cognition, the older elephants can remember where certain things like water holes were found in the past, and then lead their entire heard there.

I actually think it's maybe nearly as equally likely for a winged creature to evolve intelligence as it is for bipedal organism with two free hands. Especially if the winged organism already has an appendage or two for grasping things easily. But then again, that's just my hunch, I don't have any real evidence for this, I just think if it benefits their existence, why not? A dolphin sure doesn't have any free limbs, yet that didn't stop it from becoming the smartest non-primate in existence.

 

Of course, if it benefits a creature, there is a good chance it will evolve it. But do not mistake our human intelligence with Dolphin and Elephant intelligence. They are smart, to some extend, but not in the sense that they will ever begin making their own tools. Elephant intelligence for example is very good at remembering data, including a mental map of their surroundings. But that's it. Its basically just a very good biological harddrive, but it sucks at using that data in a creative way to innovate. And that is why the humanoid form is best. Its physically capable of interacting with the environment in a very precise way. Our hands do that. But more importantly, we naturally lack speed and strength, so the guys who thought of combining a strong stick with a sharp edged rock had the best chance of surviving while all those who would only use a stick or only use a sharp edged stone would more likely fail. An Elephant or a Dolphin don't need to make tools in order to survive, nor can they.   

And hopefully it is the case that we'll find a planet remarkably similar to Earth, because that's what most astrophysicists think we'll be the prize-winning places. It would be quite tragic to see them wasting their times. I personally think that life is probably more likely to evolve with a carbon-basis and water as a solvent than the other options, but then again, I feel like they shouldn't just limit their options to only looking for Goldilocks planets.

 

Meh, with a limited budget they simply have to prioritize. And Goldilocks planets do present the best chance of advanced life. I mean sure, they might find bacteria on planets like Mars, and while that would be an awesome breakthrough, I think scientists are more interested in finding life that is more advanced than bacteria. I know I would be. 

 

Personally, I think life is rather common in the universe, but that intelligence is rare… Extremely rare. So rare, that this one of the few times I'll go against Carl's beliefs. I've estimated before that the chances of finding intelligence in a galaxy our size are less than 0.01, meaning we'd have to comb at least a hundred Milky-Way sized galaxies to find intelligent life. The Fermi Paradox really drove me into trying to be very analytical with this.

One other theory is that we're just far too early in the universe's stage of evolution. Maybe we're just one of the newcomers. I actually also support that idea, instead of the cosmos being filled with intelligence.

We aren't that new. There are billions of stars just in the Milky Way, Im pretty sure some of them have earth like planets with similar compositions in similar conditions. And Im also pretty sure that some of them were formed a billion years earlier than we did. If life evolved on that place, with a billion extra years? There is a reasonable chance that it evolved intelligent life. 

 

That aside, there are more than enough reasons why even if a place evolved a species with human intelligence or something similar wouldn't make it out in space. What if they had their own Cuban Missile crisis, only they botched it? Goodbye intelligent life. Or what if its simply not possible to achieve FTL travel? So they were stuck in their home system, resources became scarce and then they died out. Just a number of the staggering lists of things that could prevent us from ever leaving our own star system. 

 

Though personally I think that list is actually just a list of reasons of why we should start spending a looooot more money on space exploration. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

When I suggested blood, I didn't mean it in the literal sense.  However, any complex being would probably require some kind of energy distribution system to nourish its parts in the sense that we expect an advanced being to have more than a single cell of whatever construction.  If you prefer you may read it as "energy distribution substance".  It is very hard to keep up with all the politically correct euphemisms in this sort of discussion.  You may also read it as quanta of energy is you wish.

 

I think that even given a life form composed entirely of energy there will have to be some sort of energy flow in order for it to be classified as alive.  I do not mean to infer that a black hole might be alive.

[Gannet 34]

OMG That's what you people actually believe!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

OMG That's what you people actually believe!

Perhaps a little clarification is needed on that remark.  Whom do you mean by "you people"?

 

I think there are good arguments for reconciling the two points of view.  One is a matter of faith, the other of demonstrated fact.  One can certainly have faith where facts are lacking.  However, US presidents notwithstanding, facts never become inoperative. 

 

One of the worst days in the life of a scientist is the day when a cherished hypothesis hits the waste basket when confronted with contradicting facts.

 

On the other hand, you have those whose belief includes a solipsistic attitude of ignoring facts and clinging to beliefs.  Pity.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

OMG That's what you people actually believe!

 

Eh........ Who are you pointing the finger at again? Was it at Me, Lexus, and The Moose? Or at some other people?

 

 

We aren't that new. There are billions of stars just in the Milky Way, Im pretty sure some of them have earth like planets with similar compositions in similar conditions. And Im also pretty sure that some of them were formed a billion years earlier than we did. If life evolved on that place, with a billion extra years? There is a reasonable chance that it evolved intelligent life. 

 

You would think we're not that new, but our universe started out with only Hydrogen, Helium, and Lithium. Many generations of huge stars had to grow, and fuse heavier elements in it's core, and then eventually explode (creating all the elements heavier than Iron in that moment) in order for any elements like Carbon, Oxygen, and many others to exist in such high levels across the universe.

 

The newest stars at the most metal-rich and the sun is one of them. Older stars that were born twice as long ago as the sun were metal-poor and unlikely to have rocky world orbiting them, thus a much smaller chance for life to appear... Much much lower.

 

The universe is 13.75 billion years old, okay... I know... That's a HUGE number, the sun has been around for 4.6 billion out of those 13-some, so roughly a third of the time. According to theory, the universe will keep producing stars until it reaches the age of 100 trillion years. After that, stars will stop forming, and the last ones will die no more than 10 trillion years later, and we'll enter the eternal age of absolute darkness... But anyways, before then, we've only been around for 1/10,000th of this time scale!!!!

 

So, technically... We're still very very early!

 

That, and the calculation I made using the [u=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation]Drake Equation (which is very easy to understand), took into account the 400 billion stars in the Milky Way and a bunch of other factors on our current understanding of life, how it came to be here, the conditions that need to be right for it to exist, and using percentages based on exo-solar planets found in habitable zones or near our same size.

 

These are our most likely contenders down below we've found out of several thousand planets found so far (size comparison to Earth and Mars on top). Of course, the colors are probably completely fictionalized. We know so little about them, so there could actually be no atmosphere whatsoever on these worlds, and even if there was, there's still little probability it'll be near our density and that there will be liquid water on the surface. Also taking into account how long the day-night cycles are, if they're tidally locked with their star, if these worlds have a "moon" to stir up their ocean contents, oh if the atmosphere is too dense or too thin that the temperatures/pressures don't permit the existence of liquid water in the first place (like Mars or Venus). Or better yet, any guarantee that they're even rocky planets as opposed to gas giants.

 

Sadly, I think at this point, we can only tell their orbital characteristics and mass. Size and composition are much harder to deduce. Maybe soon.

 

[LexusInfernus 908]

OMG That's what you people actually believe!

 

Eh........ Who are you pointing the finger at again? Was it at Me, Lexus, and The Moose? Or at some other people?

 

 

>We aren't that new. There are billions of stars just in the Milky Way, Im pretty sure some of them have earth like planets with similar compositions in similar conditions. And Im also pretty sure that some of them were formed a billion years earlier than we did. If life evolved on that place, with a billion extra years? There is a reasonable chance that it evolved intelligent life. 

 

You would think we're not that new, but our universe started out with only Hydrogen, Helium, and Lithium. Many generations of huge stars had to grow, and fuse heavier elements in it's core, and then eventually explode (creating all the elements heavier than Iron in that moment) in order for any elements like Carbon, Oxygen, and many others to exist in such high levels across the universe.

 

The newest stars at the most metal-rich and the sun is one of them. Older stars that were born twice as long ago as the sun were metal-poor and unlikely to have rocky world orbiting them, thus a much smaller chance for life to appear... Much much lower.

 

The universe is 13.75 billion years old, okay... I know... That's a HUGE number, the sun has been around for 4.6 billion out of those 13-some, so roughly a third of the time. According to theory, the universe will keep producing stars until it reaches the age of 100 trillion years. After that, stars will stop forming, and the last ones will die no more than 10 trillion years later, and we'll enter the eternal age of absolute darkness... But anyways, before then, we've only been around for 1/10,000th of this time scale!!!!

 

So, technically... We're still very very early!

 

That, and the calculation I made using the [u=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation]Drake Equation (which is very easy to understand), took into account the 400 billion stars in the Milky Way and a bunch of other factors on our current understanding of life, how it came to be here, the conditions that need to be right for it to exist, and using percentages based on exo-solar planets found in habitable zones or near our same size.

 

These are our most likely contenders down below we've found out of several thousand planets found so far (size comparison to Earth and Mars on top). Of course, the colors are probably completely fictionalized. We know so little about them, so there could actually be no atmosphere whatsoever on these worlds, and even if there was, there's still little probability it'll be near our density and that there will be liquid water on the surface. Also taking into account how long the day-night cycles are, if they're tidally locked with their star, if these worlds have a "moon" to stir up their ocean contents, oh if the atmosphere is too dense or too thin that the temperatures/pressures don't permit the existence of liquid water in the first place (like Mars or Venus). Or better yet, any guarantee that they're even rocky planets as opposed to gas giants.

 

Sadly, I think at this point, we can only tell their orbital characteristics and mass. Size and composition are much harder to deduce. Maybe soon.

 

 

Alright, life on this planet is relatively early. But I doubt we are the first. There may have already been planets like ours a billion years earlier than ours. On the galactic scale, a billion more or less is not that much. 

 

Furthermore, life on this planet has already been around for millions of years. Who knows how the evolutionary order on other planets went. Could be they skipped the giant lizard phase entirely and went straight to mammals. Or perhaps their lizards evolved humanoid forms with intelligence. 

 

And even if that didn't happen, a species that reached sapience and intelligence only a thousand years sooner than us, but which evolved technologically at the same pace as us (so who is about a thousand years ahead of us) could already be like Gods. I mean, look at the huge technological advancements of the past 30 years, and the rate at which they are increasing (exponentially) and extrapolate from there to a thousand years? Or say 950 years post singularity? We'd already be talking about a species that has achieved near immortality by fusing with machine intelligence. At least, assuming the newly developed AI didn't kill them all. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ Of course this assumes that we don't in the normal order of things, destroy ourselves.  It is well known that no organism can live in an environment of its own waste products.  We use that fact every day.  Enjoy your yeast bread.

[astronelson 339]

^ Of course this assumes that we don't in the normal order of things, destroy ourselves.  It is well known that no organism can live in an environment of its own waste products.  We use that fact every day.  Enjoy your yeast bread.

 

A thought on this: what about plants?

 

During the day, they take carbon dioxide and water and use sunlight to convert this into sugars and oxygen. During the night they use the sugars and oxygen to release energy, producing carbon dioxide and water. When fully grown these two processes should balance each other out.

 

Coupled with fires and other causes of plant death to release any remaining carbon to the environment, I see no reason, if given an ample starting supply of carbon dioxide, why they shouldn't be able to survive until the sun makes the surface of the planet uninhabitable even to the hardiest of species.

 

And, in a broader sense, there are organisms that live off the waste of other organisms, and organisms that live off these, and so on in a plethora of cycles. Cattle dung fertilises the grass it later eats.

 

Which is not to say we should pollute the Earth more than we should, but rather that, up to a certain point, we can live comfortably with it.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Alright, life on this planet is relatively early. But I doubt we are the first. There may have already been planets like ours a billion years earlier than ours. On the galactic scale, a billion more or less is not that much

 

Furthermore, life on this planet has already been around for millions of years. Who knows how the evolutionary order on other planets went. Could be they skipped the giant lizard phase entirely and went straight to mammals. Or perhaps their lizards evolved humanoid forms with intelligence. 

 

And even if that didn't happen, a species that reached sapience and intelligence only a thousand years sooner than us, but which evolved technologically at the same pace as us (so who is about a thousand years ahead of us) could already be like Gods. I mean, look at the huge technological advancements of the past 30 years, and the rate at which they are increasing (exponentially) and extrapolate from there to a thousand years? Or say 950 years post singularity? We'd already be talking about a species that has achieved near immortality by fusing with machine intelligence. At least, assuming the newly developed AI didn't kill them all. 

 

With the size of this universe, I'm very certain life is pretty darn common, it might be only once in every 100 cubic light-years, but it's definitely out there! Even if say, there were only 1 world in every 100 cubic light-years that currently has life, it would mean our galaxy would have 1 million different worlds that house life!!!

 

As for intelligent life, if the calculations I did for the Drake Equation are indeed correct, we would have to travel 100 million light years to find another intelligence. I personally believe that in this age of the universe, there definitely are other intelligences out there, when you take the observable universe as a whole though (assuming my calculation is again correct), there would be currently 1 million intelligences out there. As huge and amazing as that number sounds, we're all so few and so in between. 100 million light years might as well be 10 billion, because such a distance is so gargantuan that most of them may never encounter another single intelligence.

 

Also, it's our assumption at this day and age, that we'll eventually develop the technology to travel faster than the speed of light, or find some kind of other short-cut to travel insanely huge distances. It's all science fiction, because there's not a single thing in physics that agrees with or allows anything similar to "hyperspace", "slipspace", or FTL travel to even exist. We may never find such a technology, and it may be theoretically impossible to do so.

 

For all we know, the only way we'll be able to colonize something the size of the Milky Way, or let alone go out to other galaxies, might only be using the old-fashioned method. Slower-than-light travel. Where we send out robotic interstellar ships to explore the galaxy and beam back information at us at light-speed while we eventually send out "sleeper" ships with it's inhabitants frozen in time to eventually awaken in another world far, far, away and centuries or millenia later with everyone they left behind long gone. This may be the reason why we haven't encountered such "incredibly advanced" beings that theoretically could've existed for billions of years now. It maybe because the physics in this universe does not allow for FTL travel whatsoever.

 

On a sidenote: I think that the notion of AI's taking us over and starting some kind of war with us is just a misplaced fear. Unless anyone purposely made killing machines to attack us, I sincerely disagree that our own creations that we programmed to the very core will rebel against us. If we program them a certain way, with certain rules embedded into their coding, it'll be physically impossible for them to go against those rules... Much like it's physically impossible for us to fly, our own code (genetic code that is) does not allow for us to break those rules.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Also, it's our assumption at this day and age, that we'll eventually develop the technology to travel faster than the speed of light, or find some kind of other short-cut to travel insanely huge distances. It's all science fiction, because there's not a single thing in physics that agrees with or allows anything similar to "hyperspace", "slipspace", or FTL travel to even exist. We may never find such a technology, and it may be theoretically impossible to do so.

 

For all we know, the only way we'll be able to colonize something the size of the Milky Way, or let alone go out to other galaxies, might only be using the old-fashioned method. Slower-than-light travel. Where we send out robotic interstellar ships to explore the galaxy and beam back information at us at light-speed while we eventually send out "sleeper" ships with it's inhabitants frozen in time to eventually awaken in another world far, far, away and centuries or millenia later with everyone they left behind long gone. This may be the reason why we haven't encountered such "incredibly advanced" beings that theoretically could've existed for billions of years now. It maybe because the physics in this universe does not allow for FTL travel whatsoever.

 

On a sidenote: I think that the notion of AI's taking us over and starting some kind of war with us is just a misplaced fear. Unless anyone purposely made killing machines to attack us, I sincerely disagree that our own creations that we programmed to the very core will rebel against us. If we program them a certain way, with certain rules embedded into their coding, it'll be physically impossible for them to go against those rules... Much like it's physically impossible for us to fly, our own code (genetic code that is) does not allow for us to break those rules.

For the FTL thing, I wouldn't be so sure that FTL is not possible. I mean, all the renowned physicists were also utterly convinced that we would never be able to fly and that it was impossible with the laws of physics. And then came the Wright brothers and showed everyone how wrong they were. Our current understanding does not allow for FTL travel, certainly, but who knows what breakthrough will happen in the future that completely changes our understanding? If the history of science tells us one thing, its that the people who said something is impossible have almost always been proven wrong at some point. 

 

As for our AI, just think for a moment what our most advanced robots do, who build them and for what purpose. Thats right, they are drones, build by the military with the purpose of killing people. Imagine putting an AI in there. I wouldn't trust the army with building advanced artificial intelligence that don't break the three laws of robotics. And we could try to build in a source code that makes them not wanting to kill us, but a true AI, and every post singularity AI has by definition the capability of rewriting their own code. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

As far as AI is concerned, it is something like a hot potato.  There has been some speculative fiction written about this as long ago as 1920 (R.U.R. - Karel Capek). 

 

Then there is that overblown motion picture based on a short story by Arthur C. Clarke (2001 - A Space Odyssey) in which the successor of Its a Big Machine (HAL) goes mad because it is unable to resolve conflicting instructions.  AI in the service of man will be a very delicate issue. 

 

This is also illustrated by Isaac Asimov's long running series on robots, the three laws, and a vast future history (the Foundation Trilogy).  In the end, the machines develop a new zeroth law overriding the first law.  One must ignore the currently circulating travesty of a pot boiling motion picture called "I Robot" which makes a total mish-mash of the whole Asimovian model.

 

AI robots are perhaps currently in reach.  FTL is a matter of new physics.  There hasn't really been any since Einstein and Schrodinger.  The final tests of these theories is ongoing.  They work well enough to create our turned-on society.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Actually, its only in one of Asimov's stories that end with robots rewriting the the three laws of robotics (and subsequently turning them into the three laws of humanity). In pretty much all his other stories, robots remain nice to humans. 

 

It is pure speculation, we cannot be sure what actual AI's will think once they are developed. Though I do believe its not in our best interests to have the military develop them.