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About Us & RulesBrian Cox: No Alien Life
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veya_victaous
Lone Wolf
Original Quill
Fuzzy Zack
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NewsFix :: Science :: General Science
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Original Quill Mon Oct 27, 2014 5:01 pm
So, proving that anyone who can pronounce 4-sylable words gets listened to, Cox states:
'Not inevitable' bears no resemblance to 'impossible'. We cannot even say it is improbable, as that is a claim that would depend upon ratio data. Since we have no idea what (or how much) is out there, we have no denominator upon which to predicate a ratio.
This is one of those stories about claims that have no meaning. When I read about such things I reckon that something else is afoot...perhaps the man is not getting enough attention, perhaps his agent is concerned, or indeed, maybe he has a new movie coming out...something calculated to trump up attention over a complete non-happening.
Dr. Cox wrote:'But we must be careful because the story of life on this planet shows that the transition from single-celled life to complex life may not have been inevitable.'
'Not inevitable' bears no resemblance to 'impossible'. We cannot even say it is improbable, as that is a claim that would depend upon ratio data. Since we have no idea what (or how much) is out there, we have no denominator upon which to predicate a ratio.
This is one of those stories about claims that have no meaning. When I read about such things I reckon that something else is afoot...perhaps the man is not getting enough attention, perhaps his agent is concerned, or indeed, maybe he has a new movie coming out...something calculated to trump up attention over a complete non-happening.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Guest Mon Oct 27, 2014 8:00 pm
Lone Wolf wrote:ONCE again the Fuzzy one deliberately misrepresents what somebody has said at some point, to attempt and support his own weak and shaky agendas...
THERE are these two scientific facts that have been floating around in cosmology and evolution discussion circles for decades :
* Earth still remains the one-and-only place in the universe, so far, where life is to be definitely found; while
* It still remains a mathematical "possibility" that life probably may have potentially also evolved on some other planet(s) ~ given that among the billions of stars out there, potentially there are millions of solar systems with "Earth (Terra) like" planets, where thousands of them may have experienced similar or identical conditions to what this solar system went through a few billion years ago..
ALL THAT Professor Cox has actually stated is the basic empirical principle that what is technically/"scientifically"/physically/mathematically possible ISN'T NECESSARILY ipso facto somehow"inevitable", by extension of such logical thinking.
IT ISN'T Prof. Cox who has made the claim here that such other life developing is therefore "impossible" ~ it is in fact, the Daily Flail's reporter making that erroneous and misleading misrepresentation of Brian Cox's statements ~ in this instance, more than likely to pander to his/her creationist/anti-science bosses and/or readership, under the fake banner (yet once again) of a scientific "news" report..
O-M-G......
we agree on something wolfie boy.....
Guest- Guest
Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by veya_victaous Mon Oct 27, 2014 9:43 pm
@Wolf
Zack posted and Article NOT his opinion
Attack the post not the poster Please ....
You just accused him of believing the Murdock press
Zack posted and Article NOT his opinion
Attack the post not the poster Please ....
You just accused him of believing the Murdock press
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by stardesk Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:24 pm
A bit long winded for a topic, but this is a short article I did for a magazine:
There is a lot of speculation these days as to whether there are other life-forms out there in the Universe. There are millions of stars which surely means there are billions of planets. Do you honestly believe that this ball of rock we live on, is the only planet in the Universe that hosts life? It just does not seem logical to my mind.
Being a country boy, born and bred, and observing and understanding how nature works, I cannot help but believe that this planet we live on is not the only one to host life, however it may be defined. Wherever we go, wherever we look around our world, there is life. Millions of species that have adapted to just about every environment, hostile and benign. From Antarctic ice fish to plants and creatures living in hot, arid deserts. From the bottom of the oceans around smokers, to Eagles over mountain tops. Migrating birds flying from one environment and food resource to another. From gnats to high flying birds, from worms to elephants, from a blade of grass to Giant Redwoods, in pitch black caves that have never seen the light of day. Every corner of the planet has life of one form or another. Even we humans vary from continent to continent. Adaptation and subsequent change surely encourages life on other planets. Life adapting to whatever environment in which it is spawned.
Nature will not be outdone, considering which, I see viruses as an attempt by nature to redress the balance, a balance being upset by we humans. Viruses help us to believe that surely life must be prolific throughout the universe. We may not recognise it as such, but surely it is out there.
Dear old Mother Nature, working in her kitchen, doesn’t make just one pudding, but a whole array of treats. From planet to planet, she will have done her best to spawn life. The chaos of the big-bang eventually settled down to order and some semblance of stability, allowing life to come into existence, and some eons in the future that order, our known universe, may suffer a big-crunch. But the chaos and debris of that crunch must surely eventually come together, to form yet another universe.
To simplify it, out of chaos comes order, out of order comes chaos, a never ending cycle, big-bang, big-crunch, big-bang, ad-infinitum. During the orderly calm periods, life will begin again, a momentous number of life-forms, adapting to all manner of environments, changing, evolving.
Our human species may be alone, who knows, but life, in one way or another, in one form or another, must be out there, waiting to be discovered.
There is a lot of speculation these days as to whether there are other life-forms out there in the Universe. There are millions of stars which surely means there are billions of planets. Do you honestly believe that this ball of rock we live on, is the only planet in the Universe that hosts life? It just does not seem logical to my mind.
Being a country boy, born and bred, and observing and understanding how nature works, I cannot help but believe that this planet we live on is not the only one to host life, however it may be defined. Wherever we go, wherever we look around our world, there is life. Millions of species that have adapted to just about every environment, hostile and benign. From Antarctic ice fish to plants and creatures living in hot, arid deserts. From the bottom of the oceans around smokers, to Eagles over mountain tops. Migrating birds flying from one environment and food resource to another. From gnats to high flying birds, from worms to elephants, from a blade of grass to Giant Redwoods, in pitch black caves that have never seen the light of day. Every corner of the planet has life of one form or another. Even we humans vary from continent to continent. Adaptation and subsequent change surely encourages life on other planets. Life adapting to whatever environment in which it is spawned.
Nature will not be outdone, considering which, I see viruses as an attempt by nature to redress the balance, a balance being upset by we humans. Viruses help us to believe that surely life must be prolific throughout the universe. We may not recognise it as such, but surely it is out there.
Dear old Mother Nature, working in her kitchen, doesn’t make just one pudding, but a whole array of treats. From planet to planet, she will have done her best to spawn life. The chaos of the big-bang eventually settled down to order and some semblance of stability, allowing life to come into existence, and some eons in the future that order, our known universe, may suffer a big-crunch. But the chaos and debris of that crunch must surely eventually come together, to form yet another universe.
To simplify it, out of chaos comes order, out of order comes chaos, a never ending cycle, big-bang, big-crunch, big-bang, ad-infinitum. During the orderly calm periods, life will begin again, a momentous number of life-forms, adapting to all manner of environments, changing, evolving.
Our human species may be alone, who knows, but life, in one way or another, in one form or another, must be out there, waiting to be discovered.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Original Quill Tue Oct 28, 2014 4:04 pm
What is life? The physicist who sparked a revolution in biology
Erwin Schrödinger introduced some of the most important concepts in biology, including the idea of a 'code' of life
Insights from biology and computing built upon Schrödinger's genius, changing our view of life forever. Photograph: Rick Sammon/AP
Seventy years ago, on 5 February 1943, the Nobel prizewinning quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger gave the first of three public lectures at Trinity College, Dublin. His topic was an unusual one for a physicist: "What is Life?" The following year the lectures were turned into a book of the same name.
One of Schrödinger's key aims was to explain how living things apparently defy the second law of thermodynamics – according to which all order in the universe tends to break down. It was this that led my colleague Professor Brian Cox to use Schrödinger as the starting point of his BBC series Wonders of Life, leading to What is Life? shooting up the Amazon sales chart.
But Schrödinger's book contains something far more important than his attempt to fuse physics and biology. In that lecture 70 years ago, he introduced some of the most important concepts in the history of biology, which continue to frame how we see life.
At a time when it was thought that proteins, not DNA, were the hereditary material, Schrödinger argued the genetic material had to have a non-repetitive molecular structure. He claimed that this structure flowed from the fact that the hereditary molecule must contain a "code-script" that determined "the entire pattern of the individual's future development and of its functioning in the mature state".
This was the first clear suggestion that genes contained some kind of "code", although Schrödinger's meaning was apparently not exactly the same as ours – he did not suggest there was a correspondence between each part of the "code-script" and precise biochemical reactions.
Historians and scientists have argued over the influence of Schrödinger's lectures and the book that followed, but there can be no doubt that some of the key figures of 20th century science – James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and others – were inspired to turn to biology by the general thrust of Schrödinger's work.
The role of the brilliant "code-script" insight is less clear. Reviewers of What is Life? in both Nature and the New York Times noted the novel phrase, but despite the fact that in 1944 Oswald Avery published clear evidence that DNA was the genetic material, virtually no one immediately began looking for – or even talking about – a molecular "code-script" in DNA, although Kurt Stern suggested that the code might involve grooves in a protein molecule, like the grooves in a vinyl disc.
Part of the reason for this lack of immediate excitement and for Avery's discovery not being widely accepted was that DNA was thought to be a "boring" molecule with a repetitive structure – exactly what Schrödinger had said a gene could not be. It took the work of Erwin Chargaff, inspired by Avery, to show that the proportion of the "bases" in the DNA molecule – generally presented by the letters A, T, C and G – differed widely from species to species, suggesting the molecule might not be so boring after all.
As early as 1947, Chargaff suggested that the change of a single base "could produce far-reaching changes … it is not impossible that rearrangements of this type are among the causes of the occurrence of mutations." The culmination of this line of work was Watson and Crick's double helix model, which was based on the experimental data of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins.
But in 1947 there was a missing component in biological thinking about the nature of the code, one which was at the heart of Watson and Crick's decisive interpretation of their discovery a mere six years later – "information". That idea entered biology through some applied research carried out to aid the war effort.
In 1943, the US National Research and Development Committee set up a group of scientists to study "fire control" – how to ensure accurate anti-aircraft fire, by the control of information from radar, visual tracking and range-finding. Two of the men involved in this project were Claude Shannon, a mathematician who developed what became known as "information theory" to understand how signals were processed, and Norbert Wiener, who thought there were parallels between control systems in machines and in organisms, and who coined the term "cybernetics".
The first person to argue that a gene contains information was the co-founder of cybernetics, John von Neumann. In 1948, von Neumann described a gene as a "tape" that could program the organism – like the "universal Turing machine" described in 1936 by Alan Turing (intriguingly, Turing had discussed it with Shannon while working in New York in 1944). A few years later in 1950, geneticist Hans Kalmus deliberately applied cybernetic thinking to the problem of heredity and suggested that a gene was a "message".
Cybernetics briefly became wildly popular, filling the pages of broadsheet newspapers all over the world and encouraging biologists to look for feedback loops in living things. Following the 1948 publication of Shannon's dense book Information Theory (co-authored by Warren Weaver, who had chaired the fire control group and also coined the term "molecular biology"), the abstract concept of information percolated into the scientific mainstream.
Although the term had a precise meaning for Shannon, in the hands of the biologists it turned into a vague metaphor, a way of thinking about something they as yet had no real understanding of: the nature of the gene.
Ten years after Schrödinger's brilliant insight, Watson and Crick's second 1953 article on the structure of DNA provided the world with the key to the secret of life, casually employing the new concepts that had been created by cybernetics and propelling biology into the modern age with the words: "it therefore seems likely that the precise sequence of the bases is the code which carries the genetical information."
These prophetic words – shorn of the conditional opening phrase – are uttered in biology classes all over the world, every single day.
In a decade of tumultuous discovery, insights from biology and computing built upon Schrödinger's genius, changing our view of life forever. Life had become information, genes were the bearers of that information, carrying it in a tiny, complex code inside every cell of our bodies. And the breakthrough began in a Dublin lecture theatre 70 years ago this week.
Matthew Cobb is professor of zoology at the University of Manchester and was a consultant on Wonders of Life. His history of the genetic code will be published next year by Profile. On Twitter he is @matthewcobb
Erwin Schrödinger introduced some of the most important concepts in biology, including the idea of a 'code' of life
Insights from biology and computing built upon Schrödinger's genius, changing our view of life forever. Photograph: Rick Sammon/AP
Seventy years ago, on 5 February 1943, the Nobel prizewinning quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger gave the first of three public lectures at Trinity College, Dublin. His topic was an unusual one for a physicist: "What is Life?" The following year the lectures were turned into a book of the same name.
One of Schrödinger's key aims was to explain how living things apparently defy the second law of thermodynamics – according to which all order in the universe tends to break down. It was this that led my colleague Professor Brian Cox to use Schrödinger as the starting point of his BBC series Wonders of Life, leading to What is Life? shooting up the Amazon sales chart.
But Schrödinger's book contains something far more important than his attempt to fuse physics and biology. In that lecture 70 years ago, he introduced some of the most important concepts in the history of biology, which continue to frame how we see life.
At a time when it was thought that proteins, not DNA, were the hereditary material, Schrödinger argued the genetic material had to have a non-repetitive molecular structure. He claimed that this structure flowed from the fact that the hereditary molecule must contain a "code-script" that determined "the entire pattern of the individual's future development and of its functioning in the mature state".
This was the first clear suggestion that genes contained some kind of "code", although Schrödinger's meaning was apparently not exactly the same as ours – he did not suggest there was a correspondence between each part of the "code-script" and precise biochemical reactions.
Historians and scientists have argued over the influence of Schrödinger's lectures and the book that followed, but there can be no doubt that some of the key figures of 20th century science – James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and others – were inspired to turn to biology by the general thrust of Schrödinger's work.
The role of the brilliant "code-script" insight is less clear. Reviewers of What is Life? in both Nature and the New York Times noted the novel phrase, but despite the fact that in 1944 Oswald Avery published clear evidence that DNA was the genetic material, virtually no one immediately began looking for – or even talking about – a molecular "code-script" in DNA, although Kurt Stern suggested that the code might involve grooves in a protein molecule, like the grooves in a vinyl disc.
Part of the reason for this lack of immediate excitement and for Avery's discovery not being widely accepted was that DNA was thought to be a "boring" molecule with a repetitive structure – exactly what Schrödinger had said a gene could not be. It took the work of Erwin Chargaff, inspired by Avery, to show that the proportion of the "bases" in the DNA molecule – generally presented by the letters A, T, C and G – differed widely from species to species, suggesting the molecule might not be so boring after all.
As early as 1947, Chargaff suggested that the change of a single base "could produce far-reaching changes … it is not impossible that rearrangements of this type are among the causes of the occurrence of mutations." The culmination of this line of work was Watson and Crick's double helix model, which was based on the experimental data of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins.
But in 1947 there was a missing component in biological thinking about the nature of the code, one which was at the heart of Watson and Crick's decisive interpretation of their discovery a mere six years later – "information". That idea entered biology through some applied research carried out to aid the war effort.
In 1943, the US National Research and Development Committee set up a group of scientists to study "fire control" – how to ensure accurate anti-aircraft fire, by the control of information from radar, visual tracking and range-finding. Two of the men involved in this project were Claude Shannon, a mathematician who developed what became known as "information theory" to understand how signals were processed, and Norbert Wiener, who thought there were parallels between control systems in machines and in organisms, and who coined the term "cybernetics".
The first person to argue that a gene contains information was the co-founder of cybernetics, John von Neumann. In 1948, von Neumann described a gene as a "tape" that could program the organism – like the "universal Turing machine" described in 1936 by Alan Turing (intriguingly, Turing had discussed it with Shannon while working in New York in 1944). A few years later in 1950, geneticist Hans Kalmus deliberately applied cybernetic thinking to the problem of heredity and suggested that a gene was a "message".
Cybernetics briefly became wildly popular, filling the pages of broadsheet newspapers all over the world and encouraging biologists to look for feedback loops in living things. Following the 1948 publication of Shannon's dense book Information Theory (co-authored by Warren Weaver, who had chaired the fire control group and also coined the term "molecular biology"), the abstract concept of information percolated into the scientific mainstream.
Although the term had a precise meaning for Shannon, in the hands of the biologists it turned into a vague metaphor, a way of thinking about something they as yet had no real understanding of: the nature of the gene.
Ten years after Schrödinger's brilliant insight, Watson and Crick's second 1953 article on the structure of DNA provided the world with the key to the secret of life, casually employing the new concepts that had been created by cybernetics and propelling biology into the modern age with the words: "it therefore seems likely that the precise sequence of the bases is the code which carries the genetical information."
These prophetic words – shorn of the conditional opening phrase – are uttered in biology classes all over the world, every single day.
In a decade of tumultuous discovery, insights from biology and computing built upon Schrödinger's genius, changing our view of life forever. Life had become information, genes were the bearers of that information, carrying it in a tiny, complex code inside every cell of our bodies. And the breakthrough began in a Dublin lecture theatre 70 years ago this week.
Matthew Cobb is professor of zoology at the University of Manchester and was a consultant on Wonders of Life. His history of the genetic code will be published next year by Profile. On Twitter he is @matthewcobb
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Tue Oct 28, 2014 5:05 pm
Given that....
Astronomers at the University of Auckland claim that there are actually around 100 billion habitable, Earth-like planets in the Milky Way — significantly more than the previous estimate of around 17 billion. There are roughly 500 billion galaxies in the universe, meaning there is somewhere in the region of 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5×1022) habitable planets.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/152573-astronomers-estimate-100-billion-habitable-earth-like-planets-in-the-milky-way-50-sextillion-in-the-universe
It would be extremely unlikely that we are the only one with life forms.
Astronomers at the University of Auckland claim that there are actually around 100 billion habitable, Earth-like planets in the Milky Way — significantly more than the previous estimate of around 17 billion. There are roughly 500 billion galaxies in the universe, meaning there is somewhere in the region of 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5×1022) habitable planets.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/152573-astronomers-estimate-100-billion-habitable-earth-like-planets-in-the-milky-way-50-sextillion-in-the-universe
It would be extremely unlikely that we are the only one with life forms.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Ben Reilly Tue Oct 28, 2014 6:39 pm
Is part of the controversy here whether we're talking about life (could be bacteria, cows, koalas) or intelligent life (humans, dolphins, cows)?
I think Cox probably has a point about intelligent life, if that's the issue. Intelligence is just a survival strategy, not really any more successful -- debatably a lot less successful -- than being strong, fast, tiny, gigantic, able to fly, able to swim, able to dig, having really sharp vision/smell/hearing/whatever ...
Aside from that, while there might be many habitable planets, they may be younger, where life hasn't developed or evolved, or they might be less lucky than Earth have and suffered a total extinction at some point in their history; also quite possible that some habitable planets once had intelligent species that went extinct and gave way to non-intelligent life.
I think Cox probably has a point about intelligent life, if that's the issue. Intelligence is just a survival strategy, not really any more successful -- debatably a lot less successful -- than being strong, fast, tiny, gigantic, able to fly, able to swim, able to dig, having really sharp vision/smell/hearing/whatever ...
Aside from that, while there might be many habitable planets, they may be younger, where life hasn't developed or evolved, or they might be less lucky than Earth have and suffered a total extinction at some point in their history; also quite possible that some habitable planets once had intelligent species that went extinct and gave way to non-intelligent life.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Tue Oct 28, 2014 8:08 pm
Or there could be loads of older planets with much more intelligent life forms.....
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by veya_victaous Tue Oct 28, 2014 9:29 pm
Lone Wolf wrote:veya_victaous wrote:
@Wolf
Zack posted and Article NOT his opinion
Attack the post not the poster Please ....
You just accused him of believing the Murdock press
I refer you to Fuzzy's stupidly arrogant insult against me above there, veya !!!
that he thinks what you directed at him must be a Joke????
that is not arrogant or an insult. he posted an Article, did not mention you and your first post accuses him of misrepresenting when he only said what the headline says.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by veya_victaous Tue Oct 28, 2014 9:42 pm
Ben_Reilly wrote:Is part of the controversy here whether we're talking about life (could be bacteria, cows, koalas) or intelligent life (humans, dolphins, cows)?
I think Cox probably has a point about intelligent life, if that's the issue. Intelligence is just a survival strategy, not really any more successful -- debatably a lot less successful -- than being strong, fast, tiny, gigantic, able to fly, able to swim, able to dig, having really sharp vision/smell/hearing/whatever ...
Aside from that, while there might be many habitable planets, they may be younger, where life hasn't developed or evolved, or they might be less lucky than Earth have and suffered a total extinction at some point in their history; also quite possible that some habitable planets once had intelligent species that went extinct and gave way to non-intelligent life.
actually Koalas are one of the closest closest non primate to humans
if they were to suddenly lose trees they could possible evolve to hominid like form
they already have the fused spine like humans from sitting upright in trees as our ancestors did. Plus front facing eyes and actually have 2 thumbs and relativity large brain.
the planet age thing is not so relevant because it took ages for mammals to dominate and even then they only could cause of previous extinctions. No meteor strike and the Descendants of Trodon may have built cities 60 million years ago (Trodon to the Hominid-like is less change in 4 million years than humans have in the last 4 million years)
I think If you start getting large sentient beings (which may be very rare as there are more massive mutations required getting to the stage than from that to high intellect) Intelligence is actually going to be fairly inevitable (but may not be us we are a combination of traits opposable digits, spare limbs not required for movement, highly social and intelligent. take out one and we may never have built anything)
Intelligence is a Survival trait that fills a Niche and life evolves to fill every niche possible.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:53 pm
Well it happened on this planet so equally likely to have happened on one of the other billions of planets in 'goldilocks zones' throughout the universe.
We don't even know how many species are on this planet...... or how big the universe actually is.....
We don't even know how many species are on this planet...... or how big the universe actually is.....
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by stardesk Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:01 pm
---------------------------Tommy Monk wrote:Well it happened on this planet so equally likely to have happened on one of the other billions of planets in 'goldilocks zones' throughout the universe.
We don't even know how many species are on this planet...... or how big the universe actually is.....
Tommy, at the last count, a couple of years back, there were 30,000,000 (thirty million) known species.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Original Quill Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:42 pm
Ben_Reilly wrote:Is part of the controversy here whether we're talking about life (could be bacteria, cows, koalas) or intelligent life (humans, dolphins, cows)?
I think Cox probably has a point about intelligent life, if that's the issue. Intelligence is just a survival strategy, not really any more successful -- debatably a lot less successful -- than being strong, fast, tiny, gigantic, able to fly, able to swim, able to dig, having really sharp vision/smell/hearing/whatever ...
Aside from that, while there might be many habitable planets, they may be younger, where life hasn't developed or evolved, or they might be less lucky than Earth have and suffered a total extinction at some point in their history; also quite possible that some habitable planets once had intelligent species that went extinct and gave way to non-intelligent life.
Hi Ben,
Here you are talking about adaptation and survival skills. That is different. The issue is "life" and that is a different issue. This is why I posted the article on the definition of life.
Life can assume many forms, including very large and, as we see, very small. In fact, we haven't even imagined how large or small. Could there be a form of life that is greater than the size of the multiverse? Is there anti-matter life? Can life be made out of time? Or, can life be made out of light? We have identified some eleven dimensions...can life either be, or exist in any one or several of these?
These are all elements in our experience. We have found successful life in all environments. Are not anti-matter, time, and light merely different elements of environments? We need to begin to think about what we mean...must life be material? Or can life be anything cognitive, regardless of form? Must life be self-aware or self-protective. And consider colony-creatures...what is self-aware or self-protective to them?
Again, which is why I posted the article on the definition of life.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Wed Oct 29, 2014 5:14 pm
From lone idiots first link.....
The numbers most accurately represent all living species of mammals, birds and coniferous plants. Only for those groups have scientists almost completely identified all the world's species.
Biologists have yet to describe many species of plants, invertebrate animals and lichens. So the number of these species known to science increases substantially every year.
And what about this......
No one knows for sure how many species of animals exist on Earth. In
fact, some 10,000 species of animals are discovered each year, with over
one and a half million species already described. Projections for the
total number of species on Earth range from 2 million to 50 million.
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0934288.html
What a complete twat that lone woof/flea keeper is.
Proving it every time he posts!
Somebody please quote this so he can see what knob he is as he has me on ignore and won't see this otherwise.
The numbers most accurately represent all living species of mammals, birds and coniferous plants. Only for those groups have scientists almost completely identified all the world's species.
Biologists have yet to describe many species of plants, invertebrate animals and lichens. So the number of these species known to science increases substantially every year.
And what about this......
No one knows for sure how many species of animals exist on Earth. In
fact, some 10,000 species of animals are discovered each year, with over
one and a half million species already described. Projections for the
total number of species on Earth range from 2 million to 50 million.
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0934288.html
What a complete twat that lone woof/flea keeper is.
Proving it every time he posts!
Somebody please quote this so he can see what knob he is as he has me on ignore and won't see this otherwise.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Wed Oct 29, 2014 5:51 pm
And.....
So how big is the universe? No one knows if the universe is infinitely large, or even if ours is the only universe that exists. And other parts of the universe, very far away, might be quite different from the universe closer to home.
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/5-8/features/F_How_Big_is_Our_Universe.html
Can someone quote this too so lone woof can see it?
So how big is the universe? No one knows if the universe is infinitely large, or even if ours is the only universe that exists. And other parts of the universe, very far away, might be quite different from the universe closer to home.
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/5-8/features/F_How_Big_is_Our_Universe.html
Can someone quote this too so lone woof can see it?
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Lurker Wed Oct 29, 2014 6:59 pm
Someone once said that life on Earth is just moss growing on a rock compared to what we don't know about what's out there.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Ben Reilly Wed Oct 29, 2014 7:14 pm
veya_victaous wrote:Ben_Reilly wrote:Is part of the controversy here whether we're talking about life (could be bacteria, cows, koalas) or intelligent life (humans, dolphins, cows)?
I think Cox probably has a point about intelligent life, if that's the issue. Intelligence is just a survival strategy, not really any more successful -- debatably a lot less successful -- than being strong, fast, tiny, gigantic, able to fly, able to swim, able to dig, having really sharp vision/smell/hearing/whatever ...
Aside from that, while there might be many habitable planets, they may be younger, where life hasn't developed or evolved, or they might be less lucky than Earth have and suffered a total extinction at some point in their history; also quite possible that some habitable planets once had intelligent species that went extinct and gave way to non-intelligent life.
actually Koalas are one of the closest closest non primate to humans
if they were to suddenly lose trees they could possible evolve to hominid like form
they already have the fused spine like humans from sitting upright in trees as our ancestors did. Plus front facing eyes and actually have 2 thumbs and relativity large brain.
the planet age thing is not so relevant because it took ages for mammals to dominate and even then they only could cause of previous extinctions. No meteor strike and the Descendants of Trodon may have built cities 60 million years ago (Trodon to the Hominid-like is less change in 4 million years than humans have in the last 4 million years)
I think If you start getting large sentient beings (which may be very rare as there are more massive mutations required getting to the stage than from that to high intellect) Intelligence is actually going to be fairly inevitable (but may not be us we are a combination of traits opposable digits, spare limbs not required for movement, highly social and intelligent. take out one and we may never have built anything)
Intelligence is a Survival trait that fills a Niche and life evolves to fill every niche possible.
Interesting ... I actually almost listed koalas twice instead of cows, but cows seemed funnier.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Guest Wed Oct 29, 2014 7:15 pm
Tommy Monk wrote:From lone idiots first link.....
The numbers most accurately represent all living species of mammals, birds and coniferous plants. Only for those groups have scientists almost completely identified all the world's species.
Biologists have yet to describe many species of plants, invertebrate animals and lichens. So the number of these species known to science increases substantially every year.
And what about this......
No one knows for sure how many species of animals exist on Earth. In
fact, some 10,000 species of animals are discovered each year, with over
one and a half million species already described. Projections for the
total number of species on Earth range from 2 million to 50 million.
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0934288.html
What a complete twat that lone woof/flea keeper is.
Proving it every time he posts!
Somebody please quote this so he can see what knob he is as he has me on ignore and won't see this otherwise.
Well there is a first, Tommy being right!
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Guest Wed Oct 29, 2014 7:16 pm
Tommy Monk wrote:From lone idiots first link.....
The numbers most accurately represent all living species of mammals, birds and coniferous plants. Only for those groups have scientists almost completely identified all the world's species.
Biologists have yet to describe many species of plants, invertebrate animals and lichens. So the number of these species known to science increases substantially every year.
And what about this......
No one knows for sure how many species of animals exist on Earth. In
fact, some 10,000 species of animals are discovered each year, with over
one and a half million species already described. Projections for the
total number of species on Earth range from 2 million to 50 million.
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0934288.html
What a complete twat that lone woof/flea keeper is.
Proving it every time he posts!
Somebody please quote this so he can see what knob he is as he has me on ignore and won't see this otherwise.
Well there is a first, Tommy being right!
Guest- Guest
Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Wed Oct 29, 2014 7:30 pm
Can you quote my other post too about the universe please dodge?
And you know I'm always right....
And you know I'm always right....
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by stardesk Wed Oct 29, 2014 9:02 pm
Hi folks. I have to say this: We humans are judging everything by our own cognizance and understanding of what's on our planet. But, because of our Earth's life forms we tend to think 'that's it, we're alone in the Universe.'
We should stop judging things by our standards and try to accept that the Universe may teem with life, life that we may not recognise at first. As I said earlier, surely out of what must be billions of planets, our ball of rock isn't the only one to host life.
We should stop judging things by our standards and try to accept that the Universe may teem with life, life that we may not recognise at first. As I said earlier, surely out of what must be billions of planets, our ball of rock isn't the only one to host life.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Thu Oct 30, 2014 12:43 pm
The abuse is constantly coming from you lone woof against me.
And yes I did read your post and you are wrong.
With an estimated 500 billion planets in the 'goldilocks zone', there is every chance at least one or more of them also developed life as the chances of liquid water being there is extremely high.
And my earlier statement that we don't know how many species there are on earth or how big the universe is was true on both counts, so for you to then say I need to 'up my game on matters scientific, maths and biology', And post links to species number and universe would strongly suggest you were disagreeing with my earlier statements.
Which I have proved to be true.
And yes I did read your post and you are wrong.
With an estimated 500 billion planets in the 'goldilocks zone', there is every chance at least one or more of them also developed life as the chances of liquid water being there is extremely high.
And my earlier statement that we don't know how many species there are on earth or how big the universe is was true on both counts, so for you to then say I need to 'up my game on matters scientific, maths and biology', And post links to species number and universe would strongly suggest you were disagreeing with my earlier statements.
Which I have proved to be true.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Thu Oct 30, 2014 7:16 pm
I made 3 points.
1) we don't even know how many species are on earth.
2) we don't know how big the universe actually is.
3) there are an estimated 500 billion planets in 'goldilocks zones' alone which have the strong possibility of having liquid water so also maybe life.
None of these statements are wrong.
1) we don't even know how many species are on earth.
2) we don't know how big the universe actually is.
3) there are an estimated 500 billion planets in 'goldilocks zones' alone which have the strong possibility of having liquid water so also maybe life.
None of these statements are wrong.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Ben Reilly Fri Oct 31, 2014 6:35 am
I was thinking about that sentiment earlier, Veya -- weird thing is, I saw a YouTube video that expressed the same thing.
If there's an atheist miracle, it's that we're here, now, looking at the universe, talking and thinking about it. Such an incredible experience, afforded to such a tiny percent of the matter and energy that makes up the universe. How much of the rest of the universe has had the chance to think about the rest of it, explore the rest of it (directly or vicariously), learn about the rest of it, laugh with other parts of it, get drunk with other parts of it, have sex with other parts of it?
You, me, anyone reading this ... we are the .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent (probably an even smaller percentage than that). If there's any borrowed wisdom I agree with, it's that we should never, ever, EVER treat it as a burden, as so many, unfortunately, do.
We are so lucky!
If there's an atheist miracle, it's that we're here, now, looking at the universe, talking and thinking about it. Such an incredible experience, afforded to such a tiny percent of the matter and energy that makes up the universe. How much of the rest of the universe has had the chance to think about the rest of it, explore the rest of it (directly or vicariously), learn about the rest of it, laugh with other parts of it, get drunk with other parts of it, have sex with other parts of it?
You, me, anyone reading this ... we are the .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent (probably an even smaller percentage than that). If there's any borrowed wisdom I agree with, it's that we should never, ever, EVER treat it as a burden, as so many, unfortunately, do.
We are so lucky!
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Original Quill Fri Oct 31, 2014 4:17 pm
And after all that, think how lucky you were, as an individual, to have won the sperm race. Boggles the mind, it does.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Fri Oct 31, 2014 6:37 pm
If I annoy idiots like lone woof then I get a warm feeling inside and I know I must be doing something right!
He is still ranting about me but yet to prove anything I've said on this thread is wrong.
What a twat!!!
He is still ranting about me but yet to prove anything I've said on this thread is wrong.
What a twat!!!
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by stardesk Fri Oct 31, 2014 9:22 pm
Not often I get out of my pram, but for bloody Hell's sake give it a rest guys. If you enjoy the baiting and banter then start another thread specifically for that purpose.
BOG OFF and stop spoiling what could have been an interesting topic.
----------------------------------------------------------------
As I said earlier we judge and compare everything by our own standards and understanding of life. I'm sure there are life-forms out there that may defy recognition by humans. Nature doesn't work in singularities, it will spawn, seed, multiply life, anywhere and everywhere that life can take advantage of, or adapt to. This idea makes our planet's 30m species not unique.
Someone above mentioned water. It exists out there, even if it's ice on asteroids and comets etc. By crashing into planets they are bringing life-giving water. So again, this is not the only planet where they hit. Talking of water, it is postulated that Mars has perma-frost at its poles. Who knows, perhaps the probes will find life, even if it's just microbic. Watch this space, as they say.
BOG OFF and stop spoiling what could have been an interesting topic.
----------------------------------------------------------------
As I said earlier we judge and compare everything by our own standards and understanding of life. I'm sure there are life-forms out there that may defy recognition by humans. Nature doesn't work in singularities, it will spawn, seed, multiply life, anywhere and everywhere that life can take advantage of, or adapt to. This idea makes our planet's 30m species not unique.
Someone above mentioned water. It exists out there, even if it's ice on asteroids and comets etc. By crashing into planets they are bringing life-giving water. So again, this is not the only planet where they hit. Talking of water, it is postulated that Mars has perma-frost at its poles. Who knows, perhaps the probes will find life, even if it's just microbic. Watch this space, as they say.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Ben Reilly Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:24 am
Always been interested in the different forms life could take -- imagine the amazing time early biologists had when they started to discover the fauna of Australia, and that's really just a little different from what the rest of the world has ...
I once read that if non carbon-based life is possible, it could be thriving on this planet without us even realizing it.
I once read that if non carbon-based life is possible, it could be thriving on this planet without us even realizing it.
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Re: Brian Cox: No Alien Life
by Tommy Monk Sat Nov 01, 2014 4:28 pm
Unfortunately for you lone woof, everyone can read for themselves that it has always been YOU who has been on the attack and dishing out the insults, plus the fact that you have yet to show anything I have said to be wrong.
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