Outer Space Thread

[tlombard]

Well played sir, well played.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Right, that's my point. On an evolutionary scale, humans are terrible. I'm surprised we've made it this far, really. But, we still have managed to do *something* regarding space travel/exploration. Is it a lot? Of course not. Look at how stupid we are.

We're smarter than dinosaurs, but that's not saying much.

Still I think your statement about humans being terrible on an evolutionary scale is wrong.
We have evolved to be able to exist in most places on the planet. We have evolved to set foot on the moon, place vehicles on Mars and live in a space station.

Those aren't examples of evolving.

[Myles]

Right, that's my point. On an evolutionary scale, humans are terrible. I'm surprised we've made it this far, really. But, we still have managed to do *something* regarding space travel/exploration. Is it a lot? Of course not. Look at how stupid we are.

We're smarter than dinosaurs, but that's not saying much.

Still I think your statement about humans being terrible on an evolutionary scale is wrong.
We have evolved to be able to exist in most places on the planet. We have evolved to set foot on the moon, place vehicles on Mars and live in a space station.

Those aren't examples of evolving.

I still disagree. I think culture, education and other non physical items evolve.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Right, that's my point. On an evolutionary scale, humans are terrible. I'm surprised we've made it this far, really. But, we still have managed to do *something* regarding space travel/exploration. Is it a lot? Of course not. Look at how stupid we are.

We're smarter than dinosaurs, but that's not saying much.

Still I think your statement about humans being terrible on an evolutionary scale is wrong.
We have evolved to be able to exist in most places on the planet. We have evolved to set foot on the moon, place vehicles on Mars and live in a space station.

Those aren't examples of evolving.

I still disagree. I think culture, education and other non physical items evolve.

Then we're not using the same term.

[Myles]

Right, that's my point. On an evolutionary scale, humans are terrible. I'm surprised we've made it this far, really. But, we still have managed to do *something* regarding space travel/exploration. Is it a lot? Of course not. Look at how stupid we are.

We're smarter than dinosaurs, but that's not saying much.

Still I think your statement about humans being terrible on an evolutionary scale is wrong.
We have evolved to be able to exist in most places on the planet. We have evolved to set foot on the moon, place vehicles on Mars and live in a space station.

Those aren't examples of evolving.

I still disagree. I think culture, education and other non physical items evolve.

Then we're not using the same term.

So you are talking physical evolution? I didn't think you were because of your comments about how we are not doing anything to save ourselves in the case of a mass extinction event.

[jim]

Right, that's my point. On an evolutionary scale, humans are terrible. I'm surprised we've made it this far, really. But, we still have managed to do *something* regarding space travel/exploration. Is it a lot? Of course not. Look at how stupid we are.

We're smarter than dinosaurs, but that's not saying much.

Still I think your statement about humans being terrible on an evolutionary scale is wrong.
We have evolved to be able to exist in most places on the planet. We have evolved to set foot on the moon, place vehicles on Mars and live in a space station.

I agree with you, but not really for the reasons you stated. I agree with you because there N billion of us, we have perfectly adapted to this environment. For now.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Yes. I guess technically it would not be physical evolution to avoid mass extinction by fleeing to a different planet, but it would be using the characteristics we've developed to avoid it...survival being the end goal and all.

[wart57]

Maybe the physical evolution humans have is evolving a higher intelligence...well some of them anyway.

[Myles]

Maybe the physical evolution humans have is evolving a higher intelligence...well some of them anyway.

That's where I was going with it.

[pioneer98]

Yes, There Have Been Aliens

In our recent paper, Professor Sullivan and I did this by shifting the focus of Drake’s equation. Instead of asking how many civilizations currently exist, we asked what the probability is that ours is the only technological civilization that has ever appeared. By asking this question, we could bypass the factor about the average lifetime of a civilization. This left us with only three unknown factors, which we combined into one “biotechnical” probability: the likelihood of the creation of life, intelligent life and technological capacity.

You might assume this probability is low, and thus the chances remain small that another technological civilization arose. But what our calculation revealed is that even if this probability is assumed to be extremely low, the odds that we are not the first technological civilization are actually high. Specifically, unless the probability for evolving a civilization on a habitable-zone planet is less than one in 10 billion trillion, then we are not the first.

To give some context for that figure: In previous discussions of the Drake equation, a probability for civilizations to form of one in 10 billion per planet was considered highly pessimistic. According to our finding, even if you grant that level of pessimism, a trillion civilizations still would have appeared over the course of cosmic history.