I hope the Phoenix lander finds absolutely no life on the Red Planet or any signs that life had once ever been there. If it did find life it would state the obvious that there must be life through out the galaxy and thus through out the universe in various forms of advancement such as tiny organisms only visible through a microscope too creatures similar in intelligence to humans and also those far beyond our intellect. With that said people would have to ask that question which was first asked in the 1950’s “Where is everybody?”

In our galaxy alone there are millions of stars which are hundreds of millions of years older then our own sun which would mean that in all likely hood a large number of them would also have had the building blocks to start life and thus have hundreds of millions of years head start on earth and our sun sol. At least a few of these maybe 10 000 would have developed intelligent life equivalent to humans and thus be millions of years more technologically advanced then us….. So I will ask that question again “where are they?”

I had never looked at finding life on other planets at this angle before until I read Nick Bostroms (my favorite philosopher/futurist) article he wrote on finding life on Mars and the “great filter”

https://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20569/
http://www.reason.com/blog/printer/126239.html

The great filter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Filter

To summaries the great filter is an observation which tries to explain why we have not met any intelligent life forms who live else where in the galaxy. This filter halts the advancement of life at a particular stage of advancement, whether or not that stage is ahead of us or behind us is the question

“There are probably planets that are billions of years older than Earth. Any intelligent species on those planets would have had ample time to recover from repeated social or ecological collapses. Even if they failed a thousand times before they succeeded, they still could have arrived here hundreds of millions of years ago.”

From the christian perspective there wont be any life from other worlds coming here in the near future...not within the time frame of "Adam and Eve til the Second Coming of Jesus Christ".
The action is already here (mostly unseen) with the huge spirit war spoken about in Ephesians chapter 6...i.e. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm".
Earth (the battleground between God and satan) is situated far from other worlds for a reason...i.e. so there can be no distractions from the spirit war thats going on, on it.
Carnal, fallen man generally doesnt accept this great spirit war because he cant see it, therefore it doesnt exist to him, unless he comes under direct demon attack.
Then he believes:)
Same with the man or woman who sincerely! approaches God is prayer; and invites the Saviour Jesus Christ into their lives.
Instantly they become saved and born-again and they receive The Holy Spirit... and He confirms the great wars' existance.
Thats it.
No big deal wondering about green men from other worlds.
Its all happening here.
Holy Angels helping men and women...coming and going all of the time...all of the time Holy Angels doing warfare with fallen angels over the souls of men.
Its all happening...all day, every day.
If UFO's one day did appear...you can bet they will be manned by men (see "The Cosmic Conspiracy" by Stan Deyo) as part of a deception.
Nothing is going to interfere with the great spirit war until Jesus returns and satan is locked up.
Poor NASA...what a waste of time and money and mens lives.
It was always... all happening here.

Some quotes from the article which caught my eyes -

"if we discovered traces of some simple, extinct life-form--some bacteria, some algae--it would be bad news. If we found fossils of something more advanced, perhaps something that looked like the remnants of a trilobite or even the skeleton of a small mammal, it would be very bad news. The more complex the life-form we found, the more depressing the news would be. I would find it interesting, certainly--but a bad omen for the future of the human race."

"If a probe were capable of traveling at one-tenth the speed of light, every planet in the galaxy could thus be colonized within a couple of million years (allowing some time for each probe that lands on a resource site to set up the necessary infrastructure and produce daughter probes). If travel speed were limited to 1 percent of light speed, colonization might take 20 million years instead. The exact numbers do not matter much, because the timescales are at any rate very short compared with the astronomical ones on which the evolution of intelligent life occurs."

And if Mars was found to be barren -

"In this scenario, the entire history of humankind to date is a mere instant compared with the eons that still lie before us. All the triumphs and tribulations of the millions of people who have walked the Earth since the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia would be like mere birth pangs in the delivery of a kind of life that hasn't yet begun. For surely it would be the height of naïveté to think that with the transformative technologies already in sight--genetics, nano­technology, and so on--and with thousands of millennia still ahead of us in which to perfect and apply these technologies and others of which we haven't yet conceived, human nature and the human condition will remain unchanged. Instead, if we survive and prosper, we will presumably develop some kind of posthuman existence."

"What has all this got to do with finding life on Mars? Consider the implications of discovering that life had evolved independently on Mars (or some other planet in our solar system). That discovery would suggest that the emergence of life is not very improbable. If it happened independently twice here in our own backyard, it must surely have happened millions of times across the galaxy. This would mean that the Great Filter is less likely to be confronted during the early life of planets and therefore, for us, more likely still to come.

If we discovered some very simple life-forms on Mars, in its soil or under the ice at the polar caps, it would show that the Great Filter must come somewhere after that period in evolution. This would be disturbing, but we might still hope that the Great Filter was located in our past. If we discovered a more advanced life-form, such as some kind of multicellular organism, that would eliminate a much larger set of evolutionary transitions from consideration as the Great Filter. The effect would be to shift the probability more strongly against the hypothesis that the Great Filter is behind us. And if we discovered the fossils of some very complex life-form, such as a ­vertebrate-­like creature, we would have to conclude that this hypothesis is very improbable indeed. It would be by far the worst news ever printed.

Yet most people reading about the discovery would be thrilled. They would not understand the implications. For if the Great Filter is not behind us, it is ahead of us. And that's a terrifying prospect.

So this is why I'm hoping that our space probes will discover dead rocks and lifeless sands on Mars, on Jupiter's moon Europa, and everywhere else our astronomers look. It would keep alive the hope of a great future for humanity."

I Put these quotes in for people who did not want to register with the technology website or did not want to read the entire SA.

Below is a link to the actual Phoenix lander homepage.

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/

Well, this does make a refreshing change from moaning about dead kangaroos and a couple of photographs.

Everyone has their own ideas about what lies "out there", but I suspect we will learn absolutely nothing about the bigger picture from one tiny neighbouring planet.

Given the timeframes involved (I am aware that this is where I lose the Creationists, and possibly a few IDers as well) it is entirely possible that "maybe 10,000 would have developed intelligent life equivalent to humans", but also that none of those has actually survived.

Our own lifespan here on earth will probably be only a tiny speck in "time" as we know it and measure it. So it is entirely conceivable that many other life forms have appeared, flourished and died out in exactly the same way.

The chances therefore of actually finding one of these existences in the short time we have available must be mathematically infinitesimal, given both the minuscule number of possible locations and the tiny timespan of their existence.

In my view we should keep on looking, simply because we can, we're mankind, and "that's what we do". Just don't be disappointed when the astronomical odds against finding anything remotely useful play themselves out.

For me, I feel enormously privileged to be alive at all, and to be able to write this post.

Wow Gibo,

you really have quite the fantasy world in your head. I personally would like life to be discovered on other planets just so religious people acutally have to consider the consequences, that maybe humanity is just a simple drop in a huge ocean of life that is likely out there.

Easytimes, I too am interested in this question, although I have always understood Earth's remoteness to be a key reason why we are yet to make contact; the distances are mind-boggling, and for us to recieve radio signals now they would have probably had to have been sent millions of years ago. Any response we would send to another star system would then take millions more years to return. In that time civilations may have been destroyed, or no longer care or whatever. We have been around as a society capable of hearing such a message for perhaps a hundred years at most.

Also consider that the universe is quite capable of wiping us out in an instant - read up on Gamma-Ray bursts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst) to discover how a star collapsing 1000 light years away could instantly wipe out all life on Earth. Such a burst could have already happened and would not know it.

Probability tells me life must be out there somewhere, and we just dont know it.

Gibo - It is the greatest Hubris to think that our civilisation, which has been around for the merest fraction of a second in relation to the rest of the universe has any understanding of the true nature of the universe, and our place in it. You call your lack of understanding 'God'.

Easytimes

This is a question I have often considered and I would really love to see evidence of life outside of earth in my lifetime.

I also have a theory that intelligent life is already aware of our existence, and are keeping quiet until we either mature as a species, or, possibly preferably, just go the way of the dinosaurs.

However, a discovery on Mars would give me the opportunity to go "Nyah, nyah, nyah" to all those religious fundies. Immature? You bet. But soooo satisfying.

Cheers

PS

(I wonder what aliens think about nude photos of humans?)

I don't think that the discovery of life on Mars or any other planet we are able to probe within my lifetime would lead me to accept dire prognostications for our own planet.

Even if we were to prove that multi-celled organisms had not been able to succeed indefinitely on all of the planets within our galaxy I would need to be convinced that this circumstance pertained on every planet within every galaxy which existed. As we have no empirical proof of the size or limits of space I would not extrapolate impending failure for Earth from evidence provided only by our galaxy or even those surrounding it. Perhaps even the vast reaches of what we compute to be the whole would prove to be analogous to one sour little patch of land in a forty acre field? And I would have then wasted a lifetime in angst at worrying about whether the end was indeed nigh?

"The broading of men's views that resulted cannot be exaggerated. Before the cylinder fell there was a general persausion that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the petty surface of our minute sphere." - Epilogue to War of Worlds (Wells)

Even if we find merely aperiodical crystals that would strong indicator that we are not alone. Such a discovery would demonstrate inorganic can transmute towards the organic life: And only one planet away.

Religion would just re-invent itself.

Hello Easy Time,

A trilobite would indicate the presence of oxygen in the air - just could have been the case. Between the Pre-Cambrian period and now oxygen composition has shifted from 1% to 21%. Higher forms of life seem to some extent to be compatible a high oxygen composition in the atmosphere. What would most significant is any sign that there is a shift from inorganic and to organic, as I noted above.

If Mars did have very primative organic life far simplier than a trilobite, non-evolution is ecological. Yet, significant, it would be a strong pointer to planets having the suitable atmosphere, higher biochemical processes of species would evolve, somewhere on a suitable planet. Elseput, an aperiodical life on Mars far more primative than a trilobite, probably means that higher forms of life exists on many oxygen enriched planets[provided a Van Allen belt?].

You might also consider GW that ever since you were a kid youve been hearing stories of God and the satan.
And of a battle between good and evil and of a war for mankinds souls.
Where does that come from if not from people, down through history, who have given their testimonies about contact with both God (Jesus Christ in the New Testament age) and of contact with evil spirits.
How does such news get into world society over thousands of years if not true?
The real fantasy is the NASA dream of going out to conquer the stars.

Gibo,

"Where does that come from if not from people, down through history, who have given their testimonies about contact with both God"

I'll tell you where it come from, it comes from the same place that fairy stories, leprechauns, Father Christmas and poltergeists come from, the minds of people that want to rationalise what they don't understand, in the same way that the Druids worshiped the sun. Perhaps the latter did make some sense as the sun at least gives life.

Tell me Gibo, do you you pray and what for, to this interventionist god of yours ?

Dear Easy Times,

I've always believed that there are other life forms somewhere "out there," and that sooner or later we will discover signs of them. If
they do find something on Mars - I for one won't be surprised, but
excited.

Why should ours be the only planet in the universe that has life forms on it?

I also think that we as a species in order to survive need to keep on looking as eventually our future will be linked to those of other planets. As our earth changes climatically - our choices for survival needs to be expanded.

Astronomy records indicate that solar systems eventually disintegrate, thus inevitably our solar system will eventually do the same. Let us hope that before that time comes humanity will find other solar systems to inhabit.

Pericles,

According to Richard Leakey the average life space of a species on Earth is four million years.

On Mars, even if the atoms arranged in such a way to allow basic aperiodicals, there might have been unrealised potential for the devlopment of haploids. Even the discovery of a precursor to an hereditary mechanism would be a most significant discovery. It would show life can exist,and, only that favourable ecological conditions need to be added -as happened on Earth- for its further development.

Given a discovery of this basic nature and the billions of climatic conditions on planets across the universe, such a finding would suggest higher forms of life in other solar systems, probable.

If found, I hope it has a different DNA print, so the religionists can't say, it, what would have been found, was simply carried through space, after a meteor hit Earth, after god this planet for created for us.

"from the minds of people who want to ralionalise what they dont understand"?
Sorry snake... the worlds awareness of God (and the other side) hasnt come that way.
All of history is events eyewitnessed and recorded or shortly thereafter the eyewitnessing, recorded... while the events are still in the individual or the culture.
There are too many eyewitness testimonies recorded in the Bible and outside of the Bible, as in history books, for the truth not to be there that God is real and the war is a genuine war and not a made up conflict.
Hundreds of millions of born again christians in history speaking about how The Holy Spirit has Come and set them free.
Christian bookshops likewise are full of testimonies about God and the war from people in the current age.
What do we pray for? That guys like you Snake come to Jesus and get born again.
Giving your life to Christ and receiving what He did on the Cross with his Shed Blood immediately jumps you right over the Final judgment and the lake of fire and into Heaven:)

I already discovered "Life on Mars." Best television show I've seen in years. Can't wait until "Ashes to Ashes come out on the ABC here :-)

Pericles you are 100% right with regards to our place in time and space. I think the quote is 2 seconds to midnight with regards to our place in the history of our earth let alone the universe so as you said a lot can happen and we have been around for just a tiny mirco second in the overall scheme of things. Who knows earth may have been visited by “others” in the Triassic period or the Jurassic period we will never know all we know is that in the last 5000 years no little green men have dropped in to say hello and with the size and breadth of the universe there are a lot of other things to see and do then just visit little old earth.

gw – You say “earths remoteness” is our star on average further away then most other stars are to the parts of the galaxy where “all the action is”?

You are right about the gamma ray burst if it is big enough it could wipe out all life on earth, although they are a regular occance it just the big dose of gamma rays is what will kill us.

There is a big star very close to us ready to go super nova very soon called “Eta Carinae” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae and its very over due so hold on.

When it does go bang and if we all live to tell the story it will probably be a very spectacular site seeing what was said about a similar incident in 1054AD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1054

Romany - I am not trying to make people worried I am merely putting forward an observation made by a great philosopher/futurist. We are all going to die one day so the end is always near.

As you said Romany we have no proof of the size of space but I think it is similar too the concept we call “time” that being it is infinite with no start or finish. To say that the universe and time have boundaries would be a total paradox but then again to say that they dont have boundaries would also create a paradox. If either are correct it would boggle the mind and one of them has to be!

Oliver – You don’t even need oxygen to support “life” http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22232138-30417,00.html as you can see by this example we have a very narrow concept of what life actually is. Silicon based life forms are possible and these could evolve almost anywhere seeing that they don’t need the complex imputs that humans and other life on earth require.

Foxy – You are right we should keep looking for signs of life and expanding our knowledge of science and the universe. It’s a very exciting time to be alive

Easy Times.

I know not all organism need oxygen : e.g., anaerobic bacteria in the Earth's biosphere. With word limits, it is necessary to focus a little too much.

Regarding, ourselves in time AND space Kant posited before-after perception is internal and time and space are external and that causality might be a delusion. A coping mechaninism. The idea was dropped, after Einstein started working with space-time. However, Kant's concept re-emerged in the 1950s in the context of QM [from c.1900].

Even on Earth, finding life-forms over 600 million years old is difficult, because generally [not universally] soft-bodied creatures do not fossilise and if they do the fossils are often crushed by the build-up of rock sentimentation [Leakey] or destroyed by weather or displaced by plate tectonics.

The point about oxygen was that if primitive creatures tend be associated with low oxygen levels. If the aforesaid were found on Mars, it is a pointer to more advanced forms of life existing on planets with higher oxygen levels. It would show the "potental for life" is not merely an Earth-place phenomenon.

Cheers,

O

Easytimes -

No, I didn't think for a moment you were trying to scare people: was just leading into why I actually didn't find the premise you referred to very convincing.

I was clumsily trying to say what you said so much better: "To say that the universe and time have boundaries would be a total paradox but then again to say that they dont have boundaries would also create a paradox. If either are correct it would boggle the mind and one of them has to be!" In either case I personally would not take evidence from our limited area of knowledge as representative of any truisms which would pertain throughout. I simply cannot get my head around contemplation of the infinite - and paradoxically cannot accept that there are limits or boundaries to the universe.

And yep - I agree 100% that it is mind-boggling! Perhaps because I am way out of my depth here.

Read the Book of Revelation.
Nothing is going to happen that is not in that book.
Luke chapter 21 and Matthew chapter 24 are also references.
Gods Got His hand on the planet and its going to be His Way not the way of mens thinking.
A quick reference can also be seen on signs that we are in the endtimes.

Romany,

And time and space may have been smeared before Planck time. Weird stuff.

Greetings.

Gibo,

I have been thinking about your account of Relevation and still feel it could be a mimic of Titus crossing the Euphates c. 70 CE.

If the accounts of John's exile are true, he would be writing around c. 95, about five years before the Jewish eschation [year 4,000] and less than a generation after the event, I have just outlined. So, John had a recent template and near-coming event in his mind. John's end days being 100 CE [equal to the year 4,000 on the Jewish calendar]?

p.s I have had a looked at Dodecanesian Patmos on a map, as you prompted.

Cheers.

Thanks Oliver I did not know that about the problem of soft bodied creatures being fossilized it maybe a lot harder to find proof of life on places like mars after all. It was also interesting the point you made about the relationship between oxygen levels and the intelligence of the life forms. 600million years ago were earth’s oxygen level substantially less then they are today?

Romany – Its really an amazing thought isn’t it – You cant have a beginning of time because what was happening before time began? But if time is infinite an infinite number of steps must occur before we get to this current period in time.. thus if time was infinite we would never get to where we are now.

If space is infinite then every possible observation MUST be made due to the fact that there are infinite possibilities within infinite space. So every movie/story whether true or fiction is actually occurring somewhere in the universe right now due to infinitecy if you believe this theory. If the universe is of a fixed size what is the barrier? and whats outside the barrier?

To get around these problems some people have put forward the idea that both space and time are round. So if you go far enough in one direction you will come back to the beginning. Time travel is even proposed in this way. Who knows this maybe the ten zillionth time I have posted this message and I may post it ten zillion times more if that theory is true

On a slightly different subject does anybody know if any scientist have run big bang simulators to try and work out how much of the universe we can observe from earth? We know currently that there are more then 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe but we don’t know how many are out side the observable universe due to the fact that the light from them has not reached us yet.

If I remember correctly everything is moving away from everything else at the speed of light so we will never be able to see most of the universe due to the light from it never being able to catch up to us. So the 100 billion galaxies may only be 0.000000000000001% of the universe

Easy Times,

Your are correct that univserse is expanding at a speed faster than c. The value c., is associated with the speed of light "in a vacuum" for particles, is "inside" the universe the fabric of the expansion of space-time, is not so contained by the limit.

The speed of light is less for "some" particles with mass say passing through the earch. Still incredibly fast. Certain exotic particles -Mesons?- still travel @ c. through matter, because these particles have no mass.

Infinity is interesting. For example, think about it:

The infinity of irrational numbers is greater than the infinity of rational numbers. Strange but it is mathematically correct.

Today: Have a good one :-).

Hi Romany,

I think why it is hard for us to perceive boundaries to ths universe is that we are told that Universe expands. This begs the question: into what? As mammals interacting in our ecology, we see cause and effect and we move through 3-D space during time, so our mind-maps are not really built to "see" space-time expanding itself, into nothing, not even a vacuum. In a macro-sense, the Universe is finite but contains infinities. Hard for humans; okay for mathematics.

Where the infinites will occur is the domain of quantum mechanics: e.g., infinite indeterminancy.

O.

Easytimes, Oliver,

Yes! That's it exactly: if the Universe really keeps on expanding then what is it expanding INTO? I mean, there's no such thing as nothingness and the paradox there lies in the fact that if there were such a concept as nothing it wouldn't exist by very virtue of the fact that we had defined it.

Does mathematics help so very much, Oliver? I mean, I remember when first learning about a number recurring after a decimal point I asked my father to SHOW me...so he kept on writing the number after the decimal point...but eventually ran out of paper so, to me, the edge of the paper defined the point at which the number stopped having any reality for me. It became theoretical. There were always boundaries when I was trying to grasp these concepts first: the edge of the paper or the blackboard - or even being told that something could go on from the earth to the sun many times over: the sun and the earth then anchored it in my reality for me.

But there surely comes a point where, even in mathematics, our knowledge becomes theoretical- it simply can't be empirical with such vast numbers and computations. So surely one has to have faith in mathematics itself just as some people have faith in a deity?

Even if Phoenix detects life or its remanets it may not allow us to draw too many conclusions about life elsewhere in the universe. There are some thinkers (backed by recent experiments) that have proposed that meteorite impacts may have ejected Earth rock into space which eventually fell to ground on Mars , & visa versa .And such rocks falls could have seeded/transferred life from one to the other, more than once.

With regard to why ETs have not made contact. Pericles has already
highlighted the time & distance barrier - it's likely to be a major
factor.

Some of the approaches to this question sound a bit like experts
cocksure predictions re earlier conundrums :man would never fly,
automobiles would never replace the horse & buggy, Kevin Rudd & (new)labor were the champions & darlings of the Arts - just to mention a few!

Still, there's no harm in pondering such questions ...

I suspect there could be something in our mode of communication. When we Earthlings transmit radio communications we disperse them far & wide -imagine such offerings as "I Love Lucy" coming at you, night after night,year after year, decade after decade...

We're like the bikie gang who just rode into town and began all night party in the park. When faced with such - company- locals tend to draw blinds, bar their doors, and pretend there's no one home.

Though, I suspect a few of the braver ETs may tune into a few of our more sophisticated offerings . They are probably scanning OLO right now and saying - 'HMMM, that Horus character is pretty cluey, we'd better head hunt him for our galactic council - or (better still!) put him to work in our stud to enrich our gene pool".

Romany,

In another thread I looked at Faith. My research found that at the time Moses faith meant "steadfastness" [Catholic encyclopaedia], in the first century, "truth" and "obedience"; and from 1392 CE [OED - Unabridged], faith means "truth" and "obedience" WITH "conviction". Herein, lies I think the difference in Faith in Religion and Faith in Mathematics. The former is purer etymologically, undoubted Faith; Sciencists [mathematicians] have a tentative conviction. Both need to deal with abstracts.

Cheers,

O.

Hello Horus,

Paul Davies deals quite a bit with your posit and meteors have been found with oganic material denser closer to the centre than to extremities.

Pehaps, to test for/again cross-over, one would needs to look at primitive DNA in the subterranian biospheres of both planets?

Oliver is it also true that there are more odd numbers then even in infinity? I know I read about something like that or it may have been the thing you were talking about.

Romany its amazing how the universe revolves around mathematics. Its really shows itself in the fact that if the laws of gravity that are fine tuned too about 100 decimal places where changed by just 1 point at the hundredth decimal place the entire universe as we know it would not be able to exist due to the fact that the planets and stars would be unable to form due to the change in the value of gravity.

With regards to Aliens and intelligence it also must be considered that what is regard as intelligent? I am sure a chimp thinks its highly intelligent when comparing itself to a rat. And I am sure humans think they are very smart seeing that nothing else comes close to us that we know of. But it is quite possible we are the laughing stock of the galaxy and no other civilizations out there consider us remotely intelligent and thus don’t even give us a second look. Ignorance is bliss.

Hey Horus I have also heard about the meteorites spreading life from mars to earth or earth to mars. Its quite possible and seeing the age of the universe it could be quite possible that life from far away planets thousands or even millions of light year away could spread to earth. Every time a meteor enters the atmosphere it could be carrying life forms from far away who knows!

"Oliver is it also true that there are more odd numbers then even in infinity? I know I read about something like that or it may have been the thing you were talking about."

Will see if I can find out. That there more irrationals than rationals is understood. I have read somthing about adding the integer one to the sum of the infinity of primes. It seems odd to add an number to to an infinity.

What is the value between 0.9999... repeater and one?