Comments on: Earths may be common in the galaxy

By: khrystal

khrystal — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:53:58 +0000

i was just wondering. what if the earth is the most backwards of all life in the universe. What if “the others” can see us but we cant see them. They may be trying to contact us but we cant hear them. Very interesting topic.

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:56:51 +0000

Old thread, no time. FWIW., @ andy:

Sure, dry Venus. I’ve seen the idea, but IIRC a geologist I discussed it with was skeptical. And rightly the dryness can be an effect of the lack of plates, and the atmosphere that gave.

But I see your point about the lack of answers (or even correct questions) all around. Thanks for the answer!

By: Thohry

Thohry — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:32:04 +0000

OK, there may be numerous Earth like planets out there, but it is a long way until we can ’see’ those planet and even very very long way before we can see if there are any sign of life over there.

By: Snake

Snake — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:51:39 +0000

Its not whether our galaxy and others are teaming with life,its about interstellar travel.Hell even i have to stop for coffee when i travel by car.

By: Tom Marking

Tom Marking — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:33:19 +0000

The 80/20 rule or so called Pareto Law seems to be a variation of Zipf’s Law which is used in linguistics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law

This is nothing but a power law distribution which frequently occurs in nature in a variety of settings. Not sure how it applies to extraterrestrial life or how it helps us find it.

By: Courtney

Courtney — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:31:06 +0000

Saw this posting from digg yesterday - what do you think of the logic of applying the 80/20 rule to where and how much intelligent life there is in the universe and galaxy. Conceptially makes sense……if you’re not religious.

http://www.alienreviews.com/b/life-on-other-planets.htm

Also, heard that there are religions that believe in life outside of earth - mormons?? Scientollogy???

By: Tom Marking

Tom Marking — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:28:09 +0000

“They need (reasonable) plate tectonics. It’s easy to see why Mars doesn’t have any at all (too cold) but do we yet know why Venus recycles its surface so rapidly? Without plate tectonics and reasonably stable continents, life will never leave the oceans and therefore won’t ever invent radio.

They need to go into a snowball mode at some point to nudge evolution away from the remarkably stable state of producing nothing but stromatolites forever.

They need to come out of snowball mode some time later, in order to give all those new species a chance to develop into a Cambrian explosion.”

These are arguments straight out of Ward and Brownlee’s book “Rare Earth” so I’m assuming you’ve read that book. Of course, the thesis of the book is controversial and it’s still being debated. I’m not sure where I stand on the issue. I guess I would be more on the skeptical side of these claims that plate tectonics is essential, a large satellite is essential, a large Jupiter in the right place is essential, etc., etc. If taken to the extreme such arguments would suggest that Homo sapiens is the only intelligent organism in the entire universe, which seems patently ludicrous to me.