Always with the search for life!

Earth gets hit by stuff a lot, and got hit by more and bigger stuff nearer to its formation. It is of interest what might have come from such impacts - organic molecules, maybe? Abiogenesis is somewhat mysterious at the moment. More data can't hurt.

Sure, and there's good evidence for organic compounds -- carbon... water... i.e. hydrocarbons... viz. benzenehexol, mesoxalic acid, carbon tetrachloride -- in comets and asteroids. But the INGREDIENTS for life are a very far stretch away from the SEARCH FOR LIFE and it's only very, very sloppy science -- picked up by scientifically illiterate reporters -- that perpetuates this ridiculous "search for life."

NoCoPilot wrote:

Sure, and there's good evidence for organic compounds -- carbon... water... i.e. hydrocarbons... viz. benzenehexol, mesoxalic acid, carbon tetrachloride -- in comets and asteroids.  But the INGREDIENTS for life are a very far stretch away from the SEARCH FOR LIFE and it's only very, very sloppy science -- picked up by scientifically illiterate reporters -- that perpetuates this ridiculous "search for life."

Did you actually watch the video? I only ask, because the "search for life" is never mentioned, and they just talk about comets kick-starting life by providing key ingredients. Which doesn't sound sloppy or scientifically illiterate at all.

Yeah maybe I overreacted. But the science of asteroids & comets can be interesting enough all on their own, it bugs me that everything has to be linked to "the search for life" or "the ingredients of life."  Isn't anything in the universe interesting if it doesn't relate to humanity???

This anthrocentric lens of science prevents us from seeing -- and prevents the press from reporting -- the universe as it is, a fascinating and varied place which is almost certainly lifeless everywhere but Earth. By not reporting this accurately, the press perpetuates the "Star Trek"-inspired view with life being ubiquitous throughout the universe, leading scientifically illiterate politicians to waste money looking for it, and scientifically illiterate citizens to waste time combing data with their computers looking for signs of ETI.

NoCoPilot wrote:

the universe as it is, a fascinating and varied place which is almost certainly lifeless everywhere but Earth.

A somewhat baseless opinion. We've only examined one planet in detail, and it's covered in living things.

You still need evidence for crap science and crap science journalism?

Here is an article whose headline says we could reach Mars in DAYS, the article link says reach Mars in WEEKS, nowhere in the article is either conclusion mentioned, and to top it off a micronewton thruster would do nothing of the sort.

I'm not even going to mention Zombies in Space...

Or the confusing of causality with correlation.

Come on, NoCo. They are looking for the source of the stuff that led to the emergence of life on Earth. They're not looking for people in space.

richard09 wrote:

We've only examined one planet in detail, and it's covered in living things.

I know we've discussed this before, and I know nobody's gonna change their mind, but I still gotta call bullshit on this.

At this point we have explored "in detail" Mars and the Moon (both barren as shit), and we have fly-by pictures of almost every other body in the solar system -- what, 35-40 planets and moons? On Earth life is incredibly varied and incredibly ubiquitous, but it's still all one process -- life -- derived from a common ancestor and having certain common characteristics (reproduction, striving for survival, tendency to fill up available environments).

To assume that life exists anywhere else in our solar system would require a wholly different definition of "life" where it hides and does not dominate its environment. Where a cursory fly-by does not detect any evidence of its existence. Where an examination "in detail" (maybe a rover with a spoon?) would be required to detect microscopic life that does not alter its environment.

But would that be of any interest to us, really? I contend not.

By the same token, we have not detected -- despite decades of looking -- any radio waves indicating non-random sources outside our solar system. Granted the universe is a big place, but whatever's out there isn't making a huge effort to contact us.

If they did, even at the speed of light, the distances involved make meaningful contact impossible.

So, rather than seeing the Earth as one example proving the universe is teeming with life, I contend everything we know about the universe argues for the exact opposite.

For most of Earth's history, life existed only as single-celled organisms floating in the oceans. For most of the rest of the time, either the Earth hadn't cooled off enough for life to form, or life consisted of just plants, or finally (in the last few million years) we got to animals. Humans have only been around less than a hundred thousand years (out of 4.5 billion), and have been technologically advanced enough to undertake SETI less than 100 years (the first SETI effort was in 1960 and looked at 2, I mean 2, stars to try and find radio signals at one frequency). We have not seriously tried to send a message anywhere, and the way things are going, humans won't be around in another few hundred years, so we probably never will. Unintentional leakage signals are so faint that the chances of an extraterrestrial technological society detecting them are negligible, even if one is quite close (say, a few hundred light-years away). That cuts both ways - we won't detect them, either, unless they deliberately try and contact us. Even if they do, we can't expect a reply for quite some time. If they are about 100 light-years away (practically next door), they haven't even received our signals yet.

But if intelligent life is very rare, and that seems a very safe bet, that doesn't mean that life is so rare. There could be hundreds or thousands of living worlds quite close by (in astronomical terms) that harbor nothing more complicated than pond scum or perhaps have bunches of animals like the dinosaurs. Radio telescopes won't detect them, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. You say you're not interested. A lot of people are.

In our examination of the bodies of this solar system, we have looked at Mars, and are still looking. We have established that the place was probably a lot more hospitable in the past, with liquid water on the surface, and therefore there is a real possibility that life did evolve on Mars a long time ago. It may since have died out, or may only survive as extremophiles deep beneath the surface, but we haven't finished looking, not even close. We have taken pictures of places like Titan and Europa that suggest possibilities, and to pretend that we have established anything in detail about them is just silly.

richard09 wrote:

even if one is quite close (say, a few hundred light-years away). [...] we can't expect a reply for quite some time.

You *do* realize, right, that 200 light years away means any communication in the best of circumstances would take 400 years round trip?

I believe that's what I implied.

richard09 wrote:

If they are about 100 light-years away (practically next door), they haven't even received our signals yet.

So a communication sent by Galileo (the man, not the spaceship) gets an answer to Richard09 (the man, not the spaceship). Do you even remember what he asked? Are you satisfied by his question?

Are you willing to wait 17 generations for your follow up question?

richard09 wrote:

We have not seriously tried to send a message anywhere, and the way things are going, humans won't be around in another few hundred years, so we probably never will.

You seem to be furiously arguing against things I haven't said.

So how much money is the right amount to spend on searching for life outside of Earth?

Well, it's hard to argue against, say, one one millionth of the federal budget. Given the vast amounts thrown at such sparkling endeavors as funding military research which seems to require alien invaders as the only plausible adversary, I don't think one one millionth would be excessive.

That would be an increase compared to current spending, of course.

richard09 wrote:

I don't think one one millionth would be excessive.

What's the payback?

I don't believe that we will ever make contact with another technological species. Not do I believe we will ever find compelling evidence of the existence of another intelligent species.

But I do believe that some form of life exists elsewhere, probably on billions of planets and moons, whether or not we ever find it. There is no reason to believe that Earth is the only one of trillions of planets where life exists. When a matter can be neither proved nor disproved, one must sometimes simply go with what seems the most likely.

I agree on the first two points.

On the third I contend it matters not a whit. Therefore, even 1/10,000,000ths of the national budget would be a titanic waste.

1/10,000,000ths might be a waste, but I don't think titanic is an apt description.

I see no social or economic value in proving that life exists - or existed - elsewhere. Therefore, public expenditure for the search is not warranted.

_Howard wrote:

1/10,000,000ths might be a waste, but I don't think titanic is an apt description.

When your budget is $3.77 trillion even one-ten-millionth is $377,000 (check my math).

The Titanic cost $7,500,000.

Titanic cost $200,000,000.

SETI was publicly funded for nearly twenty years, at levels ranging from $140,000 in 1975 to $12,000,000/yr in 1993, when the program was abruptly canceled as cooler heads prevailed.

So I suggest an expenditure on the order of $4,000,000 and you throw a hissy fit. The complete waste of resources known as the TSA, which has rendered air travel completely unenjoyable and hopelessly slow (without catching a single terrorist), is funded at somewhere near $5 billion a year. Military drones, and god only knows how many of those we have, cost $4.5 million each. You can't give one up? The state of Colorado, that well-known hotbed of zionist activity, contributes about $5,000,000 a year in military aid to Israel, when you crunch the numbers. If there are any jews in Colorado, I'm sure they're thrilled.

Where is the benefit to society in any of these expenditures? Finding life that didn't originate on Earth, even if it's only pond scum, would be a major poke in the eye for the fundamentalists, so it's worth it just for that, as far as I'm concerned. But almost any serious research/exploration effort would be a far better way to stimulate the economy than any of the stay-at-home bullshit schemes economists usually suggest (let alone the military spending that seems to be politicians' sole idea). The entire space program didn't get to 5% of the budget at the height of the space race. Currently it totals markedly less than 1%. I would vote for shifting a fraction of the "defence" (meaning aggression) budget over to NASA, and if a tiny fraction of that goes to SETI, suck it up. It's still better than one more stealth bomber (how many hundred million does one of those go for?).

By the way, SETI is still going, even aided by funding from the USAF, which is interested in detection technology as part of their quest to militarize space.

I'm not arguing the budget is well-spent.  You'll never hear THOSE words out of my mouth. (The F-35 isn't even wanted by the military anymore, but Congress refuses to cancel it.)

But $4m to find pond scum around Alpha Proxima?  What's the payoff?

NoCoPilot wrote:

But $4m to find pond scum around Alpha Proxima?  What's the payoff?

Knowledge.