GeekInCloset wrote:
Let me put it this way - it might sound strange but I don't consider myself a human being, hence the reason I don't feel like one. Humans have such a terribly greedy selfish manner in which they think things are eternal and can never end, yet they are wrong in SO many ways.
I 100% believe there is another life form out there as intelligent as we are if not more intelligent. The universe is FAR too big for there not to be another life form or several. Just think, humans have been here for millions of years, in that time before there would have been millions if not billions of other planetary collisions just like earth, they create bacteria after thousands of years, that bacteria evolves into maybe a bug then after another several thousand years that bug turns into a rodent and so on, until they become a large mammal that can swim, run, jump etc, then that mammal evolves into a human like form and thats where the life form for that planet begins. Same goes for earth, my theory is that life began in a bacterial form then evolved over billions of years into what we are now. When the dinosaurs became extinct the life under the sea would have survived and therefor evolved into an amphibious mammal, creating many different species of Earth beings.
So no, I don't believe complex life is more rare than diamonds & gold, because the universe is just far too vast for there not to be another complex life form out there!
I wouldn't even bring intelligence into it since I don't think what we consider human intelligence is necessary for what we would also consider complex life. While it is possible that there is other life out there (need not be intelligent or even multicellular to be amazing and rare) due to the large size of the universe, I have to agree with 000ana000 that life is more rare.
Diamonds? Feh! We found a whole planet of the stuff.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1377 ... ond-planet
Quote:
Scientists at Yale University have discovered a nearby super-Earth that is a “diamond planet” — a planet that has a mantle made of graphite and diamond.
The planet, called 55 Cancri e, is just 40 light years from Earth and orbits the binary star 55 Cancri, which is located in the constellation of Cancer. When the planet was first observed last year, it was originally thought to be a water planet, similar to Earth, but new information has allowed the scientists to infer that the planet is much more likely to be a diamond planet.
I guess you have to be an astronomer to consider 40 light years "nearby" but it is a hefty chunk of diamond that we've found and we have yet to find life anywhere else.
There's also gold, although less.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2 ... ter-space/
Quote:
“We estimate that the amount of gold produced and ejected during the merger of the two neutron stars may be as large as 10 moon masses — quite a lot of bling!” says Edo Berger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), the lead author of a study presented Wednesday in a press conference at the center.
So gold too, but not life. So even if there is life somewhere else out there (and I hardly think it matters if it's intelligent) it is officially rarer than diamonds and gold.
Whether our earth situation is special or common seems to be in dispute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesisQuote:
In planetary astronomy and astrobiology, the Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the emergence of complex multicellular life on Earth (and, subsequently, intelligence) required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances. The hypothesis argues that complex extraterrestrial life is a very improbable phenomenon and likely to be extremely rare. The term "Rare Earth" originates from Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), a book by Peter Ward, a geologist and paleontologist, and Donald E. Brownlee, an astronomer and astrobiologist, both faculty members at the University of Washington.
An alternative view point was argued by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, among others. It holds that Earth is a typical rocky planet in a typical planetary system, located in a non-exceptional region of a common barred-spiral galaxy. Given the principle of mediocrity (also called the Copernican principle), it is probable that the universe teems with complex life. Ward and Brownlee argue to the contrary: that planets, planetary systems, and galactic regions that are as friendly to complex life as are the Earth, the Solar System, and our region of the Milky Way are very rare.
On 4 November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.[1][2] 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars.[3] The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists.[1][2] With the next closest found at 16 light-years (Gliese 832 c). Nonetheless, by concluding that complex life is uncommon, the Rare Earth hypothesis is a possible solution to the Fermi paradox: "If extraterrestrial aliens are common, why aren't they obvious?"[4]
So some say that other planets with the same situation as earth are common and others say they are rare. In any case, we already found a diamond planet so that makes 000ana0000's statement accurate so far. If it is actually true that earth-ish conditions happen frequently around the universe, that would be great! But so far it's the diamond planet that we've found.
01 Jan 2015, 2:12 pm
