Show me the scientists who are surprised by the fact that we haven’t found life on another planet yet. Where are those scientists? Are they even real?
"Earth-like"
Submitted 11 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@startrek.website to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://startrek.website/pictrs/image/9e3389b4-8599-4942-9ae6-0f8cecc96349.jpeg
Comments
bentropy@feddit.de 11 months ago
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 11 months ago
I mean, isn’t the entire concept of the Fermi paradox that given the universe is so large and old, it seems surprising that we see no signs of aliens anywhere, and therefore some explanation must exist for why we have not? That’s more focused on intelligent life than extraterrestrial life of any sort I suppose, but given it’s even named a paradox in the first place, someone must find it surprising
Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My argument of that is that we’ve only just started looking in a massive, massive, massive universe. Like, the other day. The big bang theory is less than a hundred years old and we only just discovered cosmic background radiation in 1964
We JUST started looking and we probably have no idea what we are looking for or at.
Also, these earth like planets are a fucking guess, a giant maybe. They make their star, which we make assumptions of about their size make a tiny hardly perceptible dip in light and we measure the wavelengts that were filtered out.
The more I learn about how this science is done, the more it all just looks like a big fucking maybe that someone spouts so confidently as fact. Like, the track record for fact is pretty thin in science.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 11 months ago
In addition to the other helpful replies, one of the major flaws of the Fermi paradox is that it fails to account for the vastness of time. Our failure to observe spacefaring intelligent life is the metaphorical equivalent of a baby born at some point in human history somewhere on earth, opening it’s eyes only long enough to blink, and not observing Cher. It doesn’t mean that Cher doesn’t exist, or even that Cher should be observable given that humanity is so large and old.
sab@kbin.social 11 months ago
I guess people tend to look to astronomers for information about space, while the Fermi paradox probably borders more on philosophy than on astronomy. And in a lot of people minds philosophers are not real scientists, unlike astronomers.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Earth was like those planets at various points in time.
perviouslyiner@lemm.ee 11 months ago
like when the whole world froze en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician
or thousands of years of lava pouring out …wikipedia.org/…/Permian–Triassic_extinction_even…
photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Thousands of years of lava? Try millions, shortly after the earth’s formation and collision with Theia, forming the Moon.
callyral@pawb.social 11 months ago
It could just be that they’re just so far that we’re looking at these planets millions/billion of years in the past, meaning there may may be life there but we can’t see it yet.
Earth looked pretty icy when it was “snowball Earth” and early Earth’s surface was full of molten rocks.
Thorry84@feddit.nl 11 months ago
The Milky Way galaxy is “only” 100.000 light years across, so any planets we see around stars in our galaxy we would only see about 100.000 years in the past. So it would be very unlikely there would be detectable life now, where there wasn’t 100.000 years ago. And even if there were, it wouldn’t be complex life.
The most distant exoplanet we’ve found to date is 27.710 light years away, so we see that planet as it was 27.710 years ago. We’ve had humans running round for at least a 100.000 year on Earth, so if there are any aliens on that planet we would see them.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s worth mentioning that we can’t “see” any exoplanets at all. We know they are there by the gravitational lensing that occurs when a planet passes in front of the star it orbits. Once we calculate the position and orbit, we can track the planets and listen for any radio waves or radiation that would indicate life. We are also getting better as guessing the chemical composition of the planets, but it’s not like we can scan the surface for plants and animals.
callyral@pawb.social 11 months ago
There’s always a relevant xkcd!
Yeah I didn’t know we were mostly looking at planets in the Milky Way, but it makes sense. Rocky planets are very tiny compared to other stuff in the universe so it’s gotta be hard detecting them millions of light years out.
digger@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Wake me up when they find a Class M planet.
I_Has_A_Hat@startrek.website 11 months ago
I hate the term earth-like when all they really mean is rocky surface with signs of maybe water.
Nevermind if it’s a frozen wasteland. Nevermind if it’s atmosphere is made of sulphuric acid like Venus. Nevermind if it’s so close to it’s star that it’s tidally locked and half of it is a constant inferno. It’s “earth-like”!
FrullaPapaya@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There are places on earth that look likes both of those pictures
aeronmelon@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Yo, is that second picture Mustafar?
FippleStone@aussie.zone 11 months ago
It totally is, good eye
MidRomney@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Be patient. We’re getting there
Thorry84@feddit.nl 11 months ago
Remember Venus is a Earth like planet and even relatively close to the habitable zone (depending on your definitions and error bars). Just because it’s a planet like Earth, doesn’t mean it would support life.
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 11 months ago
I wouldn’t be particularly surprised to find out Venus has life. Complex life, probably not, but something like the life we have around undersea volcanic vents seems more than possible.
Thorry84@feddit.nl 11 months ago
I really don’t see how. Yes there is life at undersea volcanic vents on Earth, but they don’t live like in the vent itself. It’s where the temperature gets lower there is life.
As far as I know nothing can survive boiling temperatures for long and Venus has been way above boiling for millions of years. There are extremophiles that survive a little above boiling, but 400+ degrees I really don’t see how.
There is a chance in the atmosphere where there are parts with reasonable temperatures and pressures. But there is also a lot of acids floating around, which is sorta incompatible with life. If some photosynthetic life was present in the atmosphere, floating around and living on sunlight, we would have seen it by now. There would be seasonal blooms, similar to plankton in the oceans on Earth.
It’s cool to think about and I remember reading old sci-fi with Venus as a forest planet, since it’s so like Earth in a lot of ways. But in reality it’s dead dead.
Same for Mars I feel like. We might find indications life once lived there, which would be a huge deal. But as far as actual current life, I think chances are slim to none.
jormaig@programming.dev 11 months ago
To me it feels that if the planet cannot support life, then it’s not an Earth-like planet. So, the definition of Earth-like planet is broken