NASA announces flowing liquid water found on Mars

[Office-Pirate]

the fifth element
ayy lmao

[Ad Bot]

[Foxscotch]

assuming anything about the fermi paradox and the great filter is correct, then i hope it's not life
that would mean the filter's still more than likely ahead of us iirc
and then we, as a species, are forgeted

what? if life was on mars, both of those things would be irrelevant. AND neither one of them says anything about hostility

[sir dooble]

what? if life was on mars, both of those things would be irrelevant. AND neither one of them says anything about hostility

He's not talking about hostility. He's talking about the Great Filter.

If we find life on Mars (that evolved entirely independently from life on Earth), then that reinforces the Fermi Paradox.
It means life starting on other planets is highly probable. It would have to be for two neighbouring planets in the same system to have developed life independently of each other.

So if it is so probable that life will come about out in the galaxy/universe, then given the age of the universe and how many stars/planets there are (in our galaxy alone), then how come we can't see signs of life out there, particularly intelligent life (like ourselves).
It means one of two things;
1) We're not looking properly or the life out there doesn't want to let people know it's here, or...
2) There's some high probability that means life doesn't develop to be intelligent enough to create a sign of itself. This high-probability, is the Great Filter, because whatever it is it filters out life.


At the moment we only know of ourselves as intelligent life, and our planet as supporting any type of life.
Therefore we have no idea if this Great Filter (if it exists) existed in our past or is it in our future.

It could be that it was something we overcome in our past. That it's improbable that life will develop to be single-celled, or multi-celled, or to reach further and develop sentience.
Or, it means that most life in the universe is destroyed, or fails to develop enough to leave a trace of itself in the cosmos.

If it's the former and we find life on mars that is equal or less inteligent than us, whether it were sentient species, simple animals, bacteria, or just amino acids, then it suggests that the easy part of developing intelligent life is the start of it. These stages.
So we can assume that all the life that should be out there, given how big the universe is, had no real difficulty starting as amino acids, or developing cellular life, or becoming sentient.

But we still can't find other life. So presumably the hard part comes after our current stage.
It must be probably that life out there regularly destroys itself by this stage, or simply finds itself lacking the resources to travel the galaxy or leave signs of existence behind.
Which means we should anticipate the same sort of things happening to us.

We can come to the assumption (although not guarantee), that humanity is doomed. Either to wipe itself out, or be wiped out by natural disaster, or to not achieve the means to leave our solar system or broadcast out into the cosmos.
We might never find intelligent life out there.

Basically, the absolute best sort of life we can find would be intelligent life.
Finding intelligent life out there suggests that we've overcome the difficult part of evolution.
Finding simple life suggests life is pretty common, but it doesn't have much luck surviving longer than we have.

[kanew2000]

meanwhile at ryan doran

[e-maxx]

jesus dooble

[Space1255]

With stuff like social justice warriors, racism, family values, etc., we've been doomed as a species since it became a huge deal.
Also, unless there are underground caverns bursting with plant life, last time I checked, Mars is full of dust. Unless said dust is edible.
Hmmmm...

[WaterOre]

I think there is intelligent life out in space, but we're just looking for them incorrectly.

I've heard stuff about how people are looking for things like dyson arrays producing an excessive amount of heat and only finding dust, but how do we know the other intelligent things out there are even advanced enough to build something like that? If we were an outside race looking for a society like the one currently on this planet, what should we be looking for?

[Swat 3]

Also they can't drive the rover there for a number of reasons, one being is that they are actually fearful of contaminating the possible organisms in the brine (very salty) water with Earth organisms that may have survived on the lander.

I think there is intelligent life out in space, but we're just looking for them incorrectly.

I've heard stuff about how people are looking for things like dyson arrays producing an excessive amount of heat and only finding dust, but how do we know the other intelligent things out there are even advanced enough to build something like that? If we were an outside race looking for a society like the one currently on this planet, what should we be looking for?

We can't, because they would have to be more advanced than us to see a signal from them (radio or some sort of electromagnetic transmission), due to the speed of light.

[}]Crazy[{]

this is old news but
a chunk of rock hit a space shuttle window and they checked it out back in earths lab later and there was sea plankton in it
k

[Space1255]

Wait what
We're talking about LFOWING water, no idea how double got to that.

[Xealyth]

Would aliens hypothetically look like humans? What if the human form is the only form that intelligence is capable to inhabit?

[shitlord]

this is old news but
a chunk of rock hit a space shuttle window and they checked it out back in earths lab later and there was sea plankton in it
k

wait

that means

we're the aliens

[Space1255]

wait

that means

we're the aliens

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Afraidanna]

this is old news but
a chunk of rock hit a space shuttle window and they checked it out back in earths lab later and there was sea plankton in it
k

source?

[sir dooble]

I think there is intelligent life out in space, but we're just looking for them incorrectly.

I've heard stuff about how people are looking for things like dyson arrays producing an excessive amount of heat and only finding dust, but how do we know the other intelligent things out there are even advanced enough to build something like that? If we were an outside race looking for a society like the one currently on this planet, what should we be looking for?

One of our issues is that we ourselves don't even send all that much out into space.

In terms of physical objects the only thing we've sent out is Voyager 1, and that was 40 years ago, travelling quite slowly, and it's gone a tiny distance. Our nearest neighbour star is 4 light years away, and Voyager has travelled 0.002 light years.

In regards to signals however, we're basically just as bad.
There's been a constant stream of radiowaves transmitted into space since the late 1930s, but it's not in a wide range of frequencies at all.
And travelling at the speed of light, it would still take 4 years for them to reach the nearest star, and the chances of intelligent life being there are basically non-existent (if they had the means to communicate back, they'd have done so, even if we were taking 4 years between each message).

It's going to take a very long time for our broadcasts to get out there, particularly ones intending to communicate with alien life (which we don't do constantly).
And then we're hoping that whatever life is out there happens to be capable of listening.
And on top of that, it happens to be listening for exactly the same frequencies we're transmitting on, which makes the chances really really low.

There could be some alien transmitting out there, but it might not reach us in our life time (or have taken so long they're long dead), or we don't have the technology to pick it up, or aren't listening for the right signal.
Or, they've considered how unlikely they are to communicate with others, and just don't even bother trying.

Would aliens hypothetically look like humans? What if the human form is the only form that intelligence is capable to inhabit?

This is probably unlikely I think.
Just given the fact that we'd likely not meet aliens of our intelligence.
But also, we're not likely to meet aliens who have evolved on a planet very similar to ours, in a similar history.

Consider that our evolution has meant that we have been correcting ourselves over millions of years to be the best suited creature to our environment that we can.
That means evolving both to adapt to our physical environment, but also to our neighbouring species. Consider how Dodo's are distant cousins of Pigeons, yet they evolved into a completely different sort of animal because of a lack of predators, while the Pigeon is adapted to live in a different environment and face attack by other birds and mammals.

Our chances of finding a human-looking alien are quite slim really.
Possibly even them being humanoid (2 legs, torso, 2 arms, head) is unlikely.