Comment by civilitty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by civilitty | Hacker News Reader

> These galaxies were once thought to be extremely rare in the early universe, but this discovery, plus more than a dozen additional candidates in the first half of COSMOS-Web data that have yet to be described in the scientific literature, suggests they might be three to 10 times as common as expected.

If I had a dollar for every astronomical object that turned out to be more common than expected in my life time, I'd be rich!

Exoplanets, brown dwarves, rogue planets, fast radio bursts, super-earth exoplanets, neutron stars, hot jupiters, binary star systems, ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, globular clusters in other galaxies, circumbinary exoplanets, intermediate-mass black holes, ringed exoplanets, pulsars, useful gravitational lenses, magnetars, white dwarves with planetary remnants, ultra-compact dwarf galaxies, quasars with outflows, blue stragglers... I could go on and on.

It's been a delight to watch, especially with the torrent of discoveries enabled by JWST. Maybe the astrophysicists will even be able to get our timeline back on track after the LHC screwed everything up.

I'm thinking we (on earth) had one tiny anamoly somewhere somehow and that made all the difference.

If you are saying that life on earth is an anomaly, I would strongly disagree.

I think life is the most common thing in the universe. We just don't have the tools yet. In fact we wouldn't be able to detect life on earth itself if we were on another planet.

By a huge margin, hydrogen is the most common thing in the universe, but yes, life might be one of the most common things in the universe.

I love how on magnitudes as big as the universe even the most obscure event has so many occurrences.

> By a huge margin, hydrogen is the most common thing in the universe

You never know. Maybe it's antihydrogen.

> I think life is the most common thing in the universe.

Until we have sufficient evidence we don’t know how common life is in the universe. It doesn’t take much for one of the exponents of the Drake equation to veer towards zero so closely that all the vast distances, multitude of galaxies, stars, and planets make no difference to our chances of not being alone in the universe. We won’t know until we have a body of evidence with which we can perform statistical analysis and N=1 isn’t enough. Unless you’re in possession of non-public data on the matter then your assertion is merely a kind of faith.

Drake equation is a probabilistic argument or simply science fiction of the intelligent kind. It is not science.

Life is incredibly common because nothing about us is special in the universe.

Why do you speak with such confidence when you have no data? If life is common as you've stated, then where is it? Whether ultimately true or untrue, your assertion is without evidence, yet presented as though it is the unassailable truth.

It's generally a fairly safe assumption that if something can happen once, it can likely happen twice. It's not guaranteed, but with fifteen billion years and 200 sextillion stars to work with, even the most unlikely things are pretty likely.

Space is hostile to life. After 4 billion years, life cannot propagate to nearest planet. We are lucky that life on our planet is not erased yet, but it will be erased in about 2-4 billion years, when oceans will boil, then when core will freeze, then when Sun will consume the planet.

Out of 6-8 billion years, 3 billion years was spent in single-cell form of life. We are extremely lucky.

We can calculate how many stars are formed after a supernova event, how many Earth-size planets in the habitable zone are survived after collision of two objects of comparable size, how many of them survived with ocean and large moon, to make large tidal waves (I suspect that first cells were formed as greasy puddles, then partially dried out, which created a membrane), then how many of them were far enough from a supernova or not erased by it own star in 4 billion years at least.

I suspect, that final number will be much less that 200 sextillion, because, to avoid a supernova, a star must be formed in a less dense region.

> Space is hostile to life.

Space is hostile to most Earth-style life... but so are hot springs, undersea vents, and mile-deep mines, all of which we've unexpectedly found life in. Tardigrades can survive a complete vacuum and temperatures from -450 to 300 Fahrenheit, plus significant radiation.

Slow-growing life hopping around in the Oort clouds and taking million-year interstellar hibernations on rogue planets might be common, who knows?

> in the habitable zone

Same mistake here. We define "habitable zone" very, very narrowly based on our own circumstances; it's potentially a massive misnomer.

> who knows?

Precisely the point, no one knows yet as far as is publicly known. Anyone who purports to know ought to front up with the evidence or admit they don’t know.

That's ignoring an anthrophenic argument and the finiteness of the observable universe. The probability for life to evolve on any given planet may be 10^-100. But because we obviously observe the planet where life happened to evolve, we cannot tell whether the probability is 10^-100 or 1/10.

That would mean that it would most likely only happen once in the observable universe, and the next instance may be many universe distances away. That would make us alone, even if we assume that the universe is infinite.

For the time being, being certain that life is common (or rare) is akin to believing in God: there's nothing that can prove or disprove that belief, and it is at this point a matter of faith.

Fortunately, not like religion, we may one day have a definitive answer on the matter of life in the Universe, but today there's just not enough data to affirm anything.

It’s not the same as faith:

Life observably exists

The life we know of began as soon as conditions could possibly have enabled it. This suggests that “the formula” for life may not be accidental or coincidental, but inevitable under earth like conditions.

Intelligence is not a necessary product of evolution. Large rigid bodies may not be a common pathway. If I was going to wager, I’d bet most life on other planets is microbial.

So common we haven't found it yet. Even though we went to multiple celestial bodies.

This argument would conclusively disprove exoplanets as recently as the early 1990s.

I've been to multiple buildings on my block and haven't seen a single McDonald's, I'm convinced they don't exist.

> Drake equation is a probabilistic argument or simply science fiction of the intelligent kind. It is not science.

it's a parameter-pluggable model. ISTM it's science, just needs params. I think you're dissing stuff because you say so.

Looking at your comments, you seem to like saying provocative things. Whatever.

Life on Earth has been proven 30 years ago in an experiment by Carl Sagan. https://theconversation.com/carl-sagan-detected-life-on-eart...

Just imagine the technological progress made by space faring creatures in the 30 years since! Well. Not much in our case...

Earth won multiple lotteries, at the right time, in the right amounts.

* Single-star system (not that common)

* Away from galactic radiation in the center of the Milky Way

* A stable, elliptical system without chaos or collisions

* Optimal distance from the Sun

* Optimal amount of water

* Optimal size

* Oxygen

* Iron core to protect against radiation

* The Moon, right size, right distance, to keep the spin stable

* Gas giants absorbing a lot of dangerous projectiles before they get here

Take out any one of these, and we are probably toast.

Or take #2 - most of our galaxy is a radiation oven. This is probably true for many others, making the Universe predominantly hostile to life right off the bat.

And, sure, life could mean something else, and different permutation of these or completely different variables might create life, but as far as we know - the Earth is a very, very unique place.

We can see it in our own system, with "close but no cigar" Mars.

The universe is infinite. Life is less infinite than the surrounding matter, but it is still infinite.

We should be working on seeding life on every candidate in our solar system.

Spread and consume

More like cultivate gardens.

Sure that’s where we’ll stop

Anywhere there's an untapped energy gradient, we will be there, consuming it.

Almost like some all powerful creator wanted us to see how special we are.

Maybe the astrophysicists will even be able to get our timeline back on track after the LHC screwed everything up.

To fix the timeline, we just need to build a bigger accelerator.

Sincerely,

Your friends at Fermilab^WGoogle

I'm not falling for that one again...

Brown dwarfs and white dwarfs, please. We’re not talking about Duergar or Grombrindal here.

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