Interesting indeed

Anticrombie0909 · 12-8-2003, 09:31 PM

I was reading 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' (great book, READ IT) when I came across something that actually made me stop and think. Here's what it said:

Quote:

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in theUniverse can be said to be Zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

Now, obviously the last part is just humor, but if you pay attention to the bolded bit and think for a minute...kind of wierd, don't you think?

eldiabo3005 · 12-8-2003, 09:36 PM

Yes, that is very interesting. That made me think for a while...

**Cenright** · 12-8-2003, 09:39 PM

Sorry, but after my AP calculus class, that just seems so simple. It isn't completely logical in some expanded logic theories, but it still makes sense.

**87x** · 12-8-2003, 09:39 PM

umm.. thought about it for like 3 seconds.. then realised that it could be true..

Anticrombie0909 · 12-8-2003, 09:45 PM

Lol I know! And this is from the book where the main theme is 'Forty-two'.

scorpio1690 · 12-8-2003, 10:02 PM

Well no shit. How could someone not know that? I mean, out of all the galxies do you actually think that ours is the only one that has a planet that con support life? Like, fuck, there's billions and trillions of galaxies. And those are only the ones we know of. Now imagine if you were in those galaxies, everything could be horribly different, fuck, for all we know life could just be a play, like Shakespeare (sp?) said, and we are just actors on a set. Could the audience possibly be celestial beings?

**Cenright** · 12-8-2003, 10:10 PM

If you belive in the evolutional theory that life was a mistake that came all together (I don't), the you don't know the odds. The odds are so slim, that you can't even see how slim it is with a microscope. It is getting into numbers that don't have names. We are talking googlepex size numbers. So yes, if you believe that the evolutional theory could have worked, then yes. There is a very slime chance that there is other life out there. Then again, you also have to add in all the factors that make this life more intelligent than a microbial being. That means the numbers are so great that it is near impossible.

Let me name some factors that lessen the odds for even life to start.
Habitable planet
-distance from sun
-atmospheric composition
-planet rotation speed
-gasses forming other compounds
I HAVE NOW LESSENED THE SUITABLE SITES TO ONE EVERY 10,000 SOLARSYSTEMS AT BEST.

Now we get into chemistry and all the compounds needed in that atmosphere and everything else. The chance that even a few of these needed compounds are created are slim. A few hundred thousand make it hard. Then EVERY SINGLE one has to be in the right place at the right time in the right condidtion.

WE KNOW WHAT CHEMICALS LIFE CONSISTS OF. WE HAVE NEVER EVEN COME CLOSE TO MAKING IT. AND THIS HAS TO HAPPEN OUT OF CHANCE? THEN IT ALSO HAS TO SURVIVE? THEN IT HAS TO REPLICATE?

See the odds?

BluE_MeaniE · 12-8-2003, 10:21 PM

Oh, man, I love this kind of discussion....

**Cenright** · 12-8-2003, 10:24 PM

Well there sure are a finite number of living planets in this universe.

scorpio1690 · 12-8-2003, 10:44 PM

The way I figure it, the earth will end up as mars, I believe there was life on Mars at least a millenia of years ago. I believe they've done exactly as we're doing and that it drove itself to extinction as we will in years to come. People are to ignorant and one sided to see what we're doing to the wildlife and atmosphere to do anything about it. Or maybe, still on the Mars supporting life topic, maybe they did what is just a couple buttons away, launched all their A-Bombs and destroyed their surface, thos, we have enough to destroy the planet what, 42 times?

**87x** · 12-8-2003, 10:47 PM

WELL.. Cenright.. you seem to be very intelligent on this subject.. and i am liking this topic.. with that said.. I would have to say.. there HAS to be other planets out there that support life.. as cenright said that there has to be certain conditions for life to form.. very true.. rotation of a planet.. some sort of gravitational pull is needed.. but.. water.. oxygen.. and other things you would think something would need to survive may not be true.. you base these assumptions on Earth life.. and what we know life to be.. but our life, the life on our planet, are based on the conditions we had on our planet at the time of the forming cells.. there could be different types of cells (if thats what they are) forming for the different conditions of the different plants.. so saying that the odds are against other life forms isnt necessarily true..

**Cenright** · 12-8-2003, 11:08 PM

The laws of physics never change. There is no force in the other galaxies ( I know you didn't think that, but I'm clarifying.) There could be anerobic bacteria, but since the same chemistry is UNIVERSAL, things have the same basis of life. Water is still the basis of complex life.

WATER IS SUCH AN ULTIMATE SUBSTANCE. PEOPLE, WHEN YOU TAKE CHEMISTRY, YOU UNDERSTAND HOW INCREDIBLE AND UNIQUE IT IS.

There is no substitute for water, where ever you are. If there was another substitiute that was created so easily that it could double as water, it would already have been found. Something so universal creates itself. (One of those main building blockes that DOESN'T have almost any odds at all.)

______________________________________
Universal properties that are so much better than any other substance that makes water so special:
Polarity
-Adhesion
-Cohesion
PH
-Can act as a base
-Can act as an acid
-Its own buffer solution
-Is the start of all base and acidity because of OH- and H30+
The universal solvent
Aquias by its self (water dissolved in water)
Start of a carrier for electrical current
IT'S SOLID FORM IS NOT ITS DENSEST FORM
_____________________________________
These are just off the top of my head. There are MANY more.

Water is the basis of ANY complex life, no matter where it is. That makes all the other chemicals fairly the same also. Yes, oxgen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen might be altered, but all of those WILL be present and in fairly close structures, because there are only a certain amount of working with water and altering that can be done.

N2, O2, CO2, CH4, H2, C6H12O6, and NH3 can all be altered within reason, but you will find all of those in any life bigger than a few prokaryotic cells.

You have the failure of the cytokinesis (splitting of 2 cells) after binary fission (replcation) to get simple eukaryotic cells.
-Or-
You have the consumption of one prokaryotic by another to get simple eukaryotic cells.
(This starts the big stepping stones!)

We are now at least 3 billion years into the evolution process.

qualy · 12-8-2003, 11:17 PM

i dont really know enough to contribute to this discussion... but i sure am learning a lot! thanks guys!

**Cenright** · 12-8-2003, 11:19 PM

I'm just barely getting into my AP Class Cirriculum.

This is the caliber of discussion that my family has at the dinner table. Sad isn't it? Our entire family got the intelligence gene (IF it exists, but that is a WHOLE 'nother discussion).

It is my bed time decreed by my parents for the night. I will hope to keep this going tomorrow.

**87x** · 12-8-2003, 11:32 PM

Alright.. we came up with these "assumptions" that water is the basis of all life because we study it on earth.. scientist can say that it has to be there.. BUT.. in reality they don't really know for fact.. it is all in theory.. so although all life on earth is made up of water.. that doesn't mean that all life must have water.. I can not give any examples.. or even begin to try to describe how it would come to be.. because there is no truth to my logic.. and there is also no falsifications to it either.. It is just as easy to think that there can be life with water.. to think that there can be life without it.. Reason for it beign so hard to conceptualize is because you have always been tought the water ways and there has never been prove to support anyother type of life..

If i repeated anything in here.. or left out reasoning behind something.. then just tell me.. i dont hae time to re-read and fix all the errors
..peace..

jewpinthethird · 12-9-2003, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cenright

Let me name some factors that lessen the odds for even life to start.
Habitable planet
-distance from sun
-atmospheric composition
-planet rotation speed
-gasses forming other compounds
I HAVE NOW LESSENED THE SUITABLE SITES TO ONE EVERY 10,000 SOLARSYSTEMS AT BEST.

See, those are the right conditions for life, as we know it, on Earth to be. But, as Anti said "there are an infinite number of worlds". And those worlds might contain a life form unimaginable by human minds. Remember, there are only 5 kingdoms of living organisms on Earth. Who knows what lie out in the unseen cosmos.

"Reason for it beign so hard to conceptualize is because you have always been tought the water ways and there has never been prove to support anyother type of life"
-87x

Whingo.

Tasuke · 12-9-2003, 12:27 AM

Gahhhh. so confusing
Losing brain stuff
Brain hurt. Can't not think forword
*falls down and starts to drool*

I think that somewhere in the universe there are planets where other beings have evolved to the type of enviroment that they live in, but here we are just begging the chain of events that could posssibly determine what way we destroy ourselves (if we do) in the future.
But the other planets in our solar system have (probably) microorganisms living and evolving in a way that lets them to adapt to their enviroment. But, we were first to acttually sprout life because of the chopice factors that helped creat our planet. So say for instance in a few hunderd, thousand years life we be advanced enough on possibly habital( planets like our own) will be just expirincing what we did thousands of years ago. Causing like a dinosaur age or something.
Then think of the awsome irony. By the time anouther might have evolved enough to expirince space-travel they see our "doomed lifes and such and think that there "might of been" life on our Panet

**Cenright** · 12-9-2003, 02:41 PM

The commoness yet uniqueness of water makes it #1. It is embedded into physics itself. Let's pretend that there is another substace that works like water.

If there was, we would see it ON EARTH because of its commoness. The other galaxies still have to follow the "Universal Laws of Physics" There can be variation in the variables, but they can NOT break the rules, just as our system can NOT break the rules.

This means that although their "habitable life conditions" might be completely different, they still have to follow physics, and there must be a basic chemical of life.

That chemical for US is water. The formation of water is a basic process that is easily done by the universe itself (in habitable conditions of course).

There are only a certain amount of different atoms on the periodic table. These only make compounds a certain way. The life chemical has to be one of simplicity or it defeats its own purpose. THERE ARE NO "DIFFERENT PERIODIC TABLES FOR DIFFERENT GALAXIES".

There might be a few compounds that are used less or more, but Water is the same whether it is here or anywhere else. It is made from the same UNIVERSAL atoms. And therefore, there is no substitute

VxDx · 12-9-2003, 02:57 PM

The math in the beginning is all wrong. If there is an infinite number of planets and we assume that, say every trillionth or so is inhabited, then there are an infinite number of inhabited planets. If you were to say that there are, say, 500 inhabited planets, out of an infinite number, you are still making that assumption that you get a finite result from an infinite set.

It's like prime number theory, there are an infinate number of numbers, and there are a certain amount of numbers that are prime as well. Well as you go towards infinity, the prime numbers get further and further apart, but there is still an infinite number of primes.

As for the evolution business, supposing the universe is relatively infinite, no matter the odds of creation, it is a certainty.

heyhey11 · 12-9-2003, 03:29 PM

i am so thankful to anticrombie for making a thread with a meaningful thought provoking substance unlike pyramids which are fun indeed but extremely pointless

12-8-2003, 09:36 PM	#2
eldiabo3005 FFR Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: The Pits of Hell Posts: 630	Yes, that is very interesting. That made me think for a while... __________________

12-8-2003, 09:39 PM	#3
Cenright You thought I was a GUY?! Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Beaumont (A town with 25 times fewer people than this site) Age: 37 Posts: 3,139	Sorry, but after my AP calculus class, that just seems so simple. It isn't completely logical in some expanded logic theories, but it still makes sense. __________________ http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...Cube_in_55.mpg

12-8-2003, 09:39 PM	#4
87x Retired Staff Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: VA Age: 38 Posts: 4,379	umm.. thought about it for like 3 seconds.. then realised that it could be true.. __________________ RAVEnHEXa: Lip ring is because I want to be a professional piercer. 87x: more like.. professional goth.

12-8-2003, 10:10 PM	#7
Cenright You thought I was a GUY?! Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Beaumont (A town with 25 times fewer people than this site) Age: 37 Posts: 3,139	If you belive in the evolutional theory that life was a mistake that came all together (I don't), the you don't know the odds. The odds are so slim, that you can't even see how slim it is with a microscope. It is getting into numbers that don't have names. We are talking googlepex size numbers. So yes, if you believe that the evolutional theory could have worked, then yes. There is a very slime chance that there is other life out there. Then again, you also have to add in all the factors that make this life more intelligent than a microbial being. That means the numbers are so great that it is near impossible. Let me name some factors that lessen the odds for even life to start. Habitable planet -distance from sun -atmospheric composition -planet rotation speed -gasses forming other compounds I HAVE NOW LESSENED THE SUITABLE SITES TO ONE EVERY 10,000 SOLARSYSTEMS AT BEST. Now we get into chemistry and all the compounds needed in that atmosphere and everything else. The chance that even a few of these needed compounds are created are slim. A few hundred thousand make it hard. Then EVERY SINGLE one has to be in the right place at the right time in the right condidtion. WE KNOW WHAT CHEMICALS LIFE CONSISTS OF. WE HAVE NEVER EVEN COME CLOSE TO MAKING IT. AND THIS HAS TO HAPPEN OUT OF CHANCE? THEN IT ALSO HAS TO SURVIVE? THEN IT HAS TO REPLICATE? See the odds? __________________ http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...Cube_in_55.mpg

12-8-2003, 10:24 PM	#9
Cenright You thought I was a GUY?! Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Beaumont (A town with 25 times fewer people than this site) Age: 37 Posts: 3,139	Well there sure are a finite number of living planets in this universe. __________________ http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...Cube_in_55.mpg

12-8-2003, 09:45 PM	#5
Anticrombie0909 FFR Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 4,683	Lol I know! And this is from the book where the main theme is 'Forty-two'.

12-8-2003, 10:02 PM	#6
scorpio1690 FFR Player Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: canada eh? Age: 33 Posts: 4,817	Well no shit. How could someone not know that? I mean, out of all the galxies do you actually think that ours is the only one that has a planet that con support life? Like, fuck, there's billions and trillions of galaxies. And those are only the ones we know of. Now imagine if you were in those galaxies, everything could be horribly different, fuck, for all we know life could just be a play, like Shakespeare (sp?) said, and we are just actors on a set. Could the audience possibly be celestial beings?

12-8-2003, 10:44 PM	#10
scorpio1690 FFR Player Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: canada eh? Age: 33 Posts: 4,817	The way I figure it, the earth will end up as mars, I believe there was life on Mars at least a millenia of years ago. I believe they've done exactly as we're doing and that it drove itself to extinction as we will in years to come. People are to ignorant and one sided to see what we're doing to the wildlife and atmosphere to do anything about it. Or maybe, still on the Mars supporting life topic, maybe they did what is just a couple buttons away, launched all their A-Bombs and destroyed their surface, thos, we have enough to destroy the planet what, 42 times?

12-8-2003, 10:47 PM	#11
87x Retired Staff Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: VA Age: 38 Posts: 4,379	WELL.. Cenright.. you seem to be very intelligent on this subject.. and i am liking this topic.. with that said.. I would have to say.. there HAS to be other planets out there that support life.. as cenright said that there has to be certain conditions for life to form.. very true.. rotation of a planet.. some sort of gravitational pull is needed.. but.. water.. oxygen.. and other things you would think something would need to survive may not be true.. you base these assumptions on Earth life.. and what we know life to be.. but our life, the life on our planet, are based on the conditions we had on our planet at the time of the forming cells.. there could be different types of cells (if thats what they are) forming for the different conditions of the different plants.. so saying that the odds are against other life forms isnt necessarily true.. __________________ RAVEnHEXa: Lip ring is because I want to be a professional piercer. 87x: more like.. professional goth.

12-8-2003, 11:08 PM	#12
Cenright You thought I was a GUY?! Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Beaumont (A town with 25 times fewer people than this site) Age: 37 Posts: 3,139	The laws of physics never change. There is no force in the other galaxies ( I know you didn't think that, but I'm clarifying.) There could be anerobic bacteria, but since the same chemistry is UNIVERSAL, things have the same basis of life. Water is still the basis of complex life. WATER IS SUCH AN ULTIMATE SUBSTANCE. PEOPLE, WHEN YOU TAKE CHEMISTRY, YOU UNDERSTAND HOW INCREDIBLE AND UNIQUE IT IS. There is no substitute for water, where ever you are. If there was another substitiute that was created so easily that it could double as water, it would already have been found. Something so universal creates itself. (One of those main building blockes that DOESN'T have almost any odds at all.) ______________________________________ Universal properties that are so much better than any other substance that makes water so special: Polarity -Adhesion -Cohesion PH -Can act as a base -Can act as an acid -Its own buffer solution -Is the start of all base and acidity because of OH- and H30+ The universal solvent Aquias by its self (water dissolved in water) Start of a carrier for electrical current IT'S SOLID FORM IS NOT ITS DENSEST FORM _____________________________________ These are just off the top of my head. There are MANY more. Water is the basis of ANY complex life, no matter where it is. That makes all the other chemicals fairly the same also. Yes, oxgen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen might be altered, but all of those WILL be present and in fairly close structures, because there are only a certain amount of working with water and altering that can be done. N2, O2, CO2, CH4, H2, C6H12O6, and NH3 can all be altered within reason, but you will find all of those in any life bigger than a few prokaryotic cells. You have the failure of the cytokinesis (splitting of 2 cells) after binary fission (replcation) to get simple eukaryotic cells. -Or- You have the consumption of one prokaryotic by another to get simple eukaryotic cells. (This starts the big stepping stones!) We are now at least 3 billion years into the evolution process. __________________ http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...Cube_in_55.mpg

12-8-2003, 11:17 PM	#13
qualy FFR Player Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Sierra Vista, Arizona Age: 34 Posts: 864	i dont really know enough to contribute to this discussion... but i sure am learning a lot! thanks guys!

12-8-2003, 11:19 PM	#14
Cenright You thought I was a GUY?! Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Beaumont (A town with 25 times fewer people than this site) Age: 37 Posts: 3,139	I'm just barely getting into my AP Class Cirriculum. This is the caliber of discussion that my family has at the dinner table. Sad isn't it? Our entire family got the intelligence gene (IF it exists, but that is a WHOLE 'nother discussion). It is my bed time decreed by my parents for the night. I will hope to keep this going tomorrow. __________________ http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...Cube_in_55.mpg

12-8-2003, 11:32 PM	#15
87x Retired Staff Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: VA Age: 38 Posts: 4,379	Alright.. we came up with these "assumptions" that water is the basis of all life because we study it on earth.. scientist can say that it has to be there.. BUT.. in reality they don't really know for fact.. it is all in theory.. so although all life on earth is made up of water.. that doesn't mean that all life must have water.. I can not give any examples.. or even begin to try to describe how it would come to be.. because there is no truth to my logic.. and there is also no falsifications to it either.. It is just as easy to think that there can be life with water.. to think that there can be life without it.. Reason for it beign so hard to conceptualize is because you have always been tought the water ways and there has never been prove to support anyother type of life.. If i repeated anything in here.. or left out reasoning behind something.. then just tell me.. i dont hae time to re-read and fix all the errors ..peace.. __________________ RAVEnHEXa: Lip ring is because I want to be a professional piercer. 87x: more like.. professional goth.

12-9-2003, 12:27 AM	#17
Tasuke FFR Player Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: where ever you aren't Age: 33 Posts: 1,671	Gahhhh. so confusing Losing brain stuff Brain hurt. Can't not think forword falls down and starts to drool I think that somewhere in the universe there are planets where other beings have evolved to the type of enviroment that they live in, but here we are just begging the chain of events that could posssibly determine what way we destroy ourselves (if we do) in the future. But the other planets in our solar system have (probably) microorganisms living and evolving in a way that lets them to adapt to their enviroment. But, we were first to acttually sprout life because of the chopice factors that helped creat our planet. So say for instance in a few hunderd, thousand years life we be advanced enough on possibly habital( planets like our own) will be just expirincing what we did thousands of years ago. Causing like a dinosaur age or something. Then think of the awsome irony. By the time anouther might have evolved enough to expirince space-travel they see our "doomed lifes and such and think that there "might of been" life on our Panet __________________

12-9-2003, 02:41 PM	#18
Cenright You thought I was a GUY?! Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Beaumont (A town with 25 times fewer people than this site) Age: 37 Posts: 3,139	The commoness yet uniqueness of water makes it #1. It is embedded into physics itself. Let's pretend that there is another substace that works like water. If there was, we would see it ON EARTH because of its commoness. The other galaxies still have to follow the "Universal Laws of Physics" There can be variation in the variables, but they can NOT break the rules, just as our system can NOT break the rules. This means that although their "habitable life conditions" might be completely different, they still have to follow physics, and there must be a basic chemical of life. That chemical for US is water. The formation of water is a basic process that is easily done by the universe itself (in habitable conditions of course). There are only a certain amount of different atoms on the periodic table. These only make compounds a certain way. The life chemical has to be one of simplicity or it defeats its own purpose. THERE ARE NO "DIFFERENT PERIODIC TABLES FOR DIFFERENT GALAXIES". There might be a few compounds that are used less or more, but Water is the same whether it is here or anywhere else. It is made from the same UNIVERSAL atoms. And therefore, there is no substitute __________________ http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...Cube_in_55.mpg

12-9-2003, 02:57 PM	#19
VxDx FFR Player Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 1,871	The math in the beginning is all wrong. If there is an infinite number of planets and we assume that, say every trillionth or so is inhabited, then there are an infinite number of inhabited planets. If you were to say that there are, say, 500 inhabited planets, out of an infinite number, you are still making that assumption that you get a finite result from an infinite set. It's like prime number theory, there are an infinate number of numbers, and there are a certain amount of numbers that are prime as well. Well as you go towards infinity, the prime numbers get further and further apart, but there is still an infinite number of primes. As for the evolution business, supposing the universe is relatively infinite, no matter the odds of creation, it is a certainty.

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