For whom is that a problem?
Escience News attempts to set some limits to our uniqueness
Frank said that the third big question–how long civilizations might survive–is still completely unknown. “The fact that humans have had rudimentary technology for roughly ten thousand years doesn’t really tell us if other societies would last that long or perhaps much longer,” he explained.
But Frank and his coauthor, Woodruff Sullivan of the astronomy department and astrobiology program at the University of Washington, found they could eliminate that term altogether by simply expanding the question.
“Rather than asking how many civilizations may exist now, we ask ‘Are we the only technological species that has ever arisen?” said Sullivan. “This shifted focus eliminates the uncertainty of the civilization lifetime question and allows us to address what we call the ‘cosmic archaeological question’–how often in the history of the universe has life evolved to an advanced state?”
That still leaves huge uncertainties in calculating the probability for advanced life to evolve on habitable planets. More.
Various nonsense calculations ensue. Of course, not only might we be unique, but conceivably, things could have just happened that way. Lots of things are unique. One can only derive a pattern from a number of examples.
We have never encountered the slightest evidence of an alien civilization.
The hat tipster who forwarded this item writes to say, “Because the valid examples of OOL and evolution are zero the odds are 1 in infinity, which sounds astonishingly low to me.”
Clearly the hat tipster did not study Darwin calculus in school, which make all impossible outcomes actual. The same thinking give us a multiverse.
See also: A blueprint for evidence-free thinking in science
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How do we grapple with the idea that ET might not be out there?
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Probability of life ‘arising’? Statistically ZERO!
In fact years ago Fred Hoyle arrived at approximately the same number, one chance in 10^40,000, for life spontaneously arising.
From this number, 10^40,000 Fred Hoyle also compared the random emergence of the simplest bacterium on earth to the likelihood “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 therein”.
As well, Professor Harold Morowitz shows the Origin of Life ‘problem’ escalates dramatically over Hoyle’s oft cited 1 in 10^40,000 figure when working from a thermodynamic perspective:
Dr. Morowitz did another probability calculation working from the thermodynamic perspective with an already existing cell and came up with this staggering number:
Here is a recent video by James Tour
Are we alone? As you say, no one knows yet. As a Trekkie, I believe there have been, are and will be other civilizations out there.
If it happened once, it can happen again….
From the article, Are we alone? “From a fundamental perspective the question is ‘has it ever happened anywhere before?'” said Frank. Our result is the first time anyone has been able to set any empirical answer for that question and it is astonishingly likely that we are not the only time and place that an advance civilization has evolved.”
The assertion that the researchers’ results are an empirical answer is quite interesting to me, as I do not perceive ’empirical’ in the context the researchers apparently use the term. The mathematics, statistics and probabilities, are empirical, yet the unknown object of the probabilities is not readily available for empirical results. The potential for predictability of the unknown object, other civilizations, is clarified mathematically, yet the potential remains a relative unknown in where predictability does not represent confirmatory empirical evidence. Of course, I am not discarding the probability nor the potentiality of other civilizations, rather I am seeking an understanding for the use of the term empirical in this context. Possibly I have misconstrued the short phrase ” … to set any empirical answer … ” and the key terms are ’empirical answer’ and not ’empirical’ in a physical or objective sense. If setting an empirical answer to the probabilities of an otherwise unknown object of inquiry is within the purview of scientific inquiry and broadly accepted among researchers, how does this application of mathematical methods differ from setting an empirical answer to intelligent design or intelligent agency?
Vast amounts of interest and money are also spent in the search for extra-terrestrial human life. If found what would be the implication to Judaeo-Christian scripture and original sin?
Looking into the dark vastness, surely space is a waste of space, energy and matter if no other physical life exists?
Where does space end; would we drop of the edge? It seems eternal space and time are inextricable intertwined with physical space and time, as Jesus traversed both; at his incarnation, and after the resurrection in his multiple appearances, and when he ascended and disappeared into eternal time and space with an instantly ‘evolved’ multidimensional body.
As God is unevolved (Mal 3:6), and hence Jesus, no common descent evolution would be needed. Alternatively, from the “directed panspermia” hypothesis of Francis Crick, of DNA fame: life could not have evolved on Earth, but from outer space.
However if God, after creating the Earth, and Adam and Eve on the sixth day, created other humans on other planets and placed his Spirit in them, they would be both spiritually and physically related, that is, in terms of the same elements; mainly water, dust/minerals, and the Spirit.
But, does scripture only appertain to Earth, and did Satan only target the first created ‘Earth’ for the whole physical cosmos to fall: was Adam’s Sin infinitely cosmic because it was against the infinite God?
I know of only one Catholic visionary in whom the subject appears. Maria Valtorta; controversial; was buried with ecclesiastical honours. Her tomb inscribed in Latin, “Writer of Divine Things.” She wrote, “Jesus said”:
“The Earth, which you earthlings are so proud of and so cruel to, is but one of the fine specks of dust rotating in the boundlessness, and not the largest one. Yet it is undoubtedly the most deprived. The millions of worlds which delight your eyes in clear nights teem with lives upon lives upon lives, and God’s perfection will be apparent to you when you can see, with the intellectual sight of the spirit reunited to God, the marvels of those worlds.” (Maria Valtorta, The End Times, pp. 50–51)
Her writings are now allowed, under then Cardinal Ratzinger, as long as her writing is noted as not divinely revealed. That may again change, as Pope Pius XII allowed the writings to be published without comment.
However, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22), may apply to ETs generated in the image of God: speaking in broad terms of cosmic dust and the same spirit that gives life to matter and souls.
In Judaeo-Christian terms, an objection may be, how such people would know of Jesus/Spirit?