shouldn't be over looked, we are just one species of animal amongst many forms of life on the blue speck from the smallest bacteria to the tallest tree and anything in between and beond .is a pitty the whole picture can be ignored for the sake of a so called "intelligent life" form

...oh and while I'm ranting...

May as well say that you're right - conditions on any of the moons thought to have liquid water would be pretty inhospitable to human life. But conditions would be far better than they are in the vacuum of space itself and there are humans living and working in space every day.

elbeau said...


Read it again. Sound infrastructure, Govt not too corrupt. Rules out large parts of

Africa. Populations world wide tend to regulate themselves with prosperity. Research

it!

I did read it, you said that there is 'enough for everyone', to which I refer you to my earlier post..

I have researched it, I did a whole course at uni on it, and the lecturer had the same utopian ideas.. She wanted to bring the poorest 4 billion people up to the same living standard as the west, while distributing all our money and food evenly amongst the 7 billion.. She also wanted to bring every persecuted African to Australia, damn she was crazy..

She never quite understood that as people have less children as a result of prosperity, their per capita consumption goes thru the roof.. They buy a car, bigger cars, houses, bigger houses, and eat better food which requires more agriculture.. And as my earlier post points out, our current output of food, oil, and water is not sustainable..

Pale Blue Dot cannot afford more wealthy consumers.

Populations do regulate themselves with prosperity, but consumption doesn't.. Fortunately populations also regulate themselves with natural factors, and those are a whole lot less desirable..

Fertility rates have declined in most OECD countries to levels that are well below those needed to secure generation replacement.

woohoo, i thought i was born a dummy, now i got someone to blame for my dumness

thank you ajenda 21

SomeOtherGuy said...

dinsdale said...

Where do you get that from?? 100% of our experience, so far, tells us that they're NOT there! That's a cool 100%! As I said though, that doesn't preclude the possibility of find 1/some. Thus far, however, 100% of our experience says an emphatic, "NO!"

I'm talking dinsdale but I get the feeling you're not listening. Show me one experiment/technique/whatever that can provide hard evidence of Earth sized planets at Earth-like distances from a Sun-like star. If you can't then there is no "knowledge or experience". If there is no knowledge or experience then the knowledge or experience we have doesn't tell us anything.

Hmmm. Now I'm confused. You seem to be arguing my case for me - almost. However, we do have experience and knowledge. We do have the experience of looking (for quite a long time now) and finding nothing suitable. All that searching (experience) simply must have produced knowledge. What we know (so far) is that we've not found even 1 suitable place for the support of human life. So we (that is we humans, collectively) have experienced a fruitless search (so far) therefore we know that there are no suitable places found yet. I know it sounds a bit circular, but the fact that our experience has been fruitless so far means that our knowledge is -ve, so to speak. Any'ow, you can't do all that work and learn nothing.

SomeOtherGuy said...
You can assume that this tiny corner of the universe is special but that's a poor bet - every time that bet has been made in the past, it's been lost. So there's bugger all reason to think that it's going to be a good bet this time.

This bit's fine. One can speculate that there will be suitable planets found, but that's it - speculation! It might come to pass and it might not. From here on it's entirely subjective. I sort of agree with you, but not quite as emphatically. Yes, I reckon there's a chance of finding another suitable planet, whereas you're certain they will. I allow for the possibility and you believe in the inevitability. I can live with that divergence, so long as it's recognized as a faith position, or a belief, not a scientific fact (on both our parts).

Thus far, to the full extent of human knowledge, this is the only dot which supports human life. I specifically said knowledge. That makes this a very very special dot in the universe. If the speculation about other suitable dots comes to pass +vely then it may be relegated to a tiny bit less special. Until then this remains the most special, privileged speck in the entire known universe.

dinsdale said...

SomeOtherGuy said...

...oh and while I'm ranting...

May as well say that you're right - conditions on any of the moons ought to have liquid water would be pretty inhospitable to human life. But conditions would be far better than they are in the vacuum of space itself and there are humans living and working in space every day.

Do the easy one first.

A space station, space ship, space suit et al are all artificial environments. You can have someone live almost anywhere if you artificially provide the environment. I think that's a complete irrelevance in this discussion.

There are no known "heavenly bodies" beyond Earth which will support human life! Period!!

If you keep adding more constraints, then sure, eventually we'll get to the point where I'd have to admit that there are indeed no heavenly bodies capable of harboring life for humans who are male, less than four feet tall and going by the name of Nigel.

The ISS is in space. Humans live on it. They could just as easily be living on a moon of Jupiter. In reality they could probably live there far more easily than on the ISS if the moon has liquid water.

It could also (more importantly) hold non-human life. *If* Europa has liquid water under its surface then it could conceivably hold life. Let's say Europan squids. So you could then say Europa is super extra-special because nowhere else in the universe has Europan squids. Well... yes...

Likewise if you say planet Earth is super duper extra-special because no other planet holds human life... yeah, OK... but only because your constraints are so tight the there's no other possible conclusion. But life in general could be common as dirt out there. Again, we have NO knowledge either way on this so your guess is as good as anyone else's.

barn said...

SomeOtherGuy said...


It could also (more importantly) hold non-human life. *If* Europa has liquid water under its surface then it could conceivably hold life. Let's say Europan squids. So you could then say Europa is super extra-special because nowhere else in the universe has Europan squids. Well... yes...

Likewise if you say planet Earth is super duper extra-special because no other planet holds human life... yeah, OK... but only because your constraints are so tight the there's no other possible conclusion. But life in general could be common as dirt out there. Again, we have NO knowledge either way on this so your guess is as good as anyone else's.

I would set the bar even lower than 'squids'.. Any self replicating 'life form' would be enough..

You also have to understand where dinsdale is coming from, what he is getting at is that the Earth is so 'Super duper special' because God made it like that.. It's not possible for any other planets to match ours for amazingness, because we are unique, thanks to Yaweah.. All the stars empty, they hold no life, they are for the decoration of the night sky..

Anyway there is no point arguing over if we could find a planet that can support 'human life'.. Presumably this means you would be able to jump outta the spaceship and take a deep breath of refreshing martian air..

Not even the Earth could not support human life until recently.. The 'Boring Billion' for example, was inhospitable. You need highly evolved microbes to create a hospitable world for vertebrates. A planet without life, could not not support air breathing vertebrates.. You need resident life to transform an atmosphere to the point where we could live without an space suit or station...

So your right, we are better off arguing if we know of any planets that could support 'Life' in any form.

And we are finding 'earth like' planets every day, just google it..

Here is a neat passage from one of Dawkins books, dinsdale will know which one it's from...

It has been estimated that there are between 1 billion and 30 billion planets in our galaxy, and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Knocking a few noughts off for reasons of ordinary prudence, a billion billion is a conservative estimate of the number of available planets in the universe. Now, suppose the origin of life, the spontaneous arising of something equivalent to DNA, really was a staggeringly improbable event. Suppose it was so improbable as to occur on only one in a billion planets. [...] Even with such absurdly looking odds, life will still have arisen on a billion planets - of which Earth, of course, is one.”

If we found life in our solar system it would mean that life is ridiculously common.. Life independently developing twice in the same solar system, would mean the universe would be even more crowded than earth.

Did you have toys when you were young barn?

barn said...

doggie said...

Did you have toys when you were young barn?

Yeah sure, whats that got to do with anything?

Doggie=
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My point exactly

If we found life in our solar system it would mean that life is ridiculously common.. Life independently developing twice in the same solar system, would mean the universe would be even more crowded than earth.

I read somewhere that it was very likely that Europa (one of Jupiter's moon) had some sort of life on it as they detected water kept warm by volcanic activity under the ice crust.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa(moon)#Subsurface_ocean

barn said...

See my point?

Do you sniff glue?

I now feel like a real douche. I thought Barnsey made a nice drawing of a lovely little doggie, how sweet I thought, then Barnso said it was a picture of his penis ,and then I had to go to the bathroom to see if it was anything I should be concerned about . And it turns out that Mr.barny needs to see a doctor

I seem to remeber recently that they had discovered an alien microbe in a metor which suggest that all life started with an alien life form microbes from space in metors & this has then mutated to be the current life on earth . This theory would have many life forms in space most possibly on the microbe level & thus unable to be deceted by us at this stage.

oooohhhhhh man.... she is sooooo hot....

actiomax said...

I seem to remeber recently that they had discovered an alien microbe in a metor which suggest that all life started with an alien life form microbes from space in metors & this has then mutated to be the current life on earth . This theory would have many life forms in space most possibly on the microbe level & thus unable to be deceted by us at this stage.

No, what you heard/read was speculation that there might have been a chance of finding some evidence of microbial life. Alas and alack, it all came to naught!