fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4668 ]

[ SECRET POST #4668 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4668 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #668.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Inspired by the first secret. Do you think there's alien life in the universe? Microbial, multi-cellular, or intelligent? How common do you think it is?

I think there is certainly microbial life. And possibly some sort of multi-cellular life. I think there could be intelligent life, maybe. But I don't think we'll ever meet them. Because I don't think, even if they exist, they're going to have the ability to come here, and even if they did I don't think they'd have any reason to come here.

I've been binging Isaac Arthur's channel the last few days: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g

Personally, I can see microbial life being fairly common. More complex life, very rare. There MIGHT be intelligent civilizations, but if so, I think they're too far away to ever contact.

I think there's SOMEthing else out there. Maybe not sentient life, but things like microbes, plants, maybe even small animals. Earth can't be the only planet capable of sustaining life.

Right? It just seems statistically impossible.

So obviously, there's every chance that there's various extremely simple forms of life throughout the universe.

However, I also think that complex life, let alone life that's complex enough to attain intelligence or form civilizations, is most likely very, very rare. Part of that is just based on the complete lack of observable evidence. But I also think that the development complex life is most likely very hard and very unlikely. The requirements are so specific, and there's so many extinction events and other dead ends that have to be avoided.

Just think about volcanism as one example - volcanism is something that's probably extremely useful for producing complex life, because of the energy that it provides. So if a planet is insufficiently volcanic, it's much harder for complex life to develop. But if a planet is too volcanic, it'll cause recurrent mass extinctions. How much luck did it require for life on earth not to be effectively eradicated in the Late Devonian extinction? So it seems like it's a razor's edge to have all of these complex conditions for life, and also avoid catastrophic extinction events. And even if you avoid extinction events, you still have to worry about organisms reaching 'dead ends' - for example, imagine an ecosystem that's completely dominated by a single species of grass. That would be a form of life, but it obviously wouldn't conduce to the development of complexity of the kind we're interested in. Even human beings might be regarded as a dead end from this point of view.

So I think we have to take really seriously the idea that we are - as far as complex life in the known universe goes - it.

I think there's alien life out there, and a lot of it, and it's as diverse as life on our own planet is. It's either too far away, or avoiding us. There are countless galaxies out there, with countless planets in them. It seems silly, to me, to assume we're the only planet in the entire universe with sustainable life.

The universe is pretty big, and astronomy keeps finding that Miller-Urey seems to happen just about anywhere you find CHON. "Intelligent" life might be a once-a-galaxy phenomenon, and I'm not sure it even exists.

"Intelligent" life might be a once-a-galaxy phenomenon, and I'm not sure it even exists.

That's a great line but

I think it's a given that life exists beyond earth. All you need for life as we know it is liquid water and some kind of energy source (does not even have to be sunlight).

My guess is that intelligent life is too far apart in space and time to be likely to meet often, but who knows what's going on out there.

you also need a magnetosphere (generated by a planet with an active/hot core of heavy metals) to shield the life from harmful radiation that would otherwise fry it. not to say there aren't plenty of other planets with water and magnetospheres out there but the importance of Earth's magnetosphere is often overlooked.

Yes, probably, maybe, do we count? And I don’t know. Not on every planet and cruising blithely through every solar system, anyway, or we’d have run into some by now. And not in a “ancient (non-white) cultures were obvious grunting imbeciles until the enlightened aliens showed them how to be civilized and build pyramids” way.

Absolutely. All of those. To imagine in the billions and billions of systems, stars, and planets out there that *we are it* is just....bizarre, to me.

I dunno if we'll ever come across any of those other life forms (though i really hope we do), but yeah - they're out there.

I believe there's some kind of life out there, even if it's only animal-like or a kind of microscopic bacteria(like alien fish or something, tbh I have the hilarious image of us one day reaching the stars, going to another planet to discover... regular fish that exist on Earth. It'd be the best kind of underwhelming discovery 'so, it's a cod, but like a Neptune cod').

As far as life like ours? Not sure. I'd hesitate to rule it out entirely because I consider it almost arrogant to assume that we're the only life-form that developed some level of intelligence, but I also think we're probably the only case of this in our galaxy, like it happens but it's not overly common? But given just how vast the universe is, the likelihood of us ever communicating with another intelligent species within humanities lifespan is probably very, very small, and even if we did the chances of us being able to actually meet would be so unlikely. Long-term space travel is really hard.

So maybe one day we'll make contact if we aren't dust by then, but I dunno.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #4668 ]

Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!

Re: Aliens!