Marcelo Gleiser explains, there is a “staggering diversity of worlds” out there and that diversity would shape life forms in many different ways.
Extraterrestrial life
How long will this YouTube stay up?
If it does. What do readers/viewers think? Happy New Year to you too.
Mars and the “false fossils” problem
It won’t be surprising if we hear heated controversies about whether new finds on Mars are really fossils but that’s a step in the right direction.
At Mind Matters News: Astronomer: Hunt for ET can unify science and religion
Fewer scientists seem to think we can do without any source of intelligence for the creation of the universe. Hence the idea that advanced ET created it.
At Mind Matters News: What if ET has morphed into what we now call the laws of nature?
Takehome: Scharf’s hypothesis highlights the genuine difficulty of accounting for a universe that comes into existence without any underlying intelligence at all. His thought experiment amounts to an intelligent design hypothesis for the universe in which the creators and the laws of nature turn out to be the same thing. It is much bolder than the usual arguments around fine-tuning of our universe. It highlights the genuine difficulty of accounting for a universe that comes into existence without any underlying intelligence at all.
At Mind Matters News: Astronomer: We can’t just assume countless Earths out there
Marcelo Gleiser notes that the starting point of the Mediocrity Principle assumes countless Earths. That’s not a conclusion from evidence. It’s bad logic.
At Mind Matters News: Astronomer says, ET is more likely to be AI than to be a life form
Rees and colleagues assume that artificial intelligences can be creative thinkers. But the evidence so far is against that view. It’s not necessarily a matter of just ramping up the technology. By their very nature, computers compute but creative thinking is largely non-computational. We should keep that in mind when we encounter breathless media releases claiming to have overcome the problem.
At Mind Matters News, some fun: Would ET intelligences understand the 1974 Arecibo Message?
In early, easily-mocked sci fi, a little green man points his raygun at an unsuspecting passerby and barks “Take me to your leader.” Fast forward: If the little green man didn’t have the technology to figure out who the leader was before landing, he certainly wouldn’t have the technology to get here.
Rob Sheldon on the current trend to non-theist intelligent design (ID) theory
When some people wrote privately to protest that this ET>Big Bang stuff is all just one space bunny too far down the cosmic path, I (O’Leary for News) pointed out in response that Neil deGrasse Tyson (here), Martin Rees (here), and Elon Musk (here) have also suggested that very thing. Well, now theoretical physicist Rob Sheldon writes to offer some thoughts on the new-found popularity.
At Mind Matters News: Harvard astronomer: Advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang
Avi Loeb writes in Scientific American that when we humans are sufficiently advanced, we will create other universes as well.
Theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser: The “Copernican Principle” isn’t science…
We’ve only begun to point huge telescopes at exoplanets. There are too many unknowns to be sure of our status, he thinks.
At Mind Matters News: Could advanced aliens have fine-tuned Earth for life?
As Robert Marks, Ola Hössjer, and Daniel Díaz discuss, some prominent atheists/agnostics have chosen to substitute advanced extraterrestrials for God.
At Mind Matters News: Is life from outer space a viable science hypothesis?
Currently, panspermia has been rated as “plausible but not convincing.” Marks, Hössjer, and Diaz discuss the issues.
At Mind Matters News: The UFOs Carl Sagan was convinced of but couldn’t talk about
Sagan was denied tenure at Harvard for being, according to Zabel, a little too “out there.” But today, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb openly discusses his thoughts on ETs and UFOs in popular science venues. And, in what sounds like a helpful move, NASA is seeking standards for ET life claims, rather than just denying or avoiding them altogether.
Life on Mars? Maybe it’ll happen when the first humans arrive…
In a most informative article, David. F. Coppedge contrasts known facts as to why Mars might be lifeless with science writing that relentlessly attempts to paint it as hopeful.