Peter, read about string theory & membranes. Maybe no need to go so fast?  

The sun is made up of mostly hydrogen gas, but the extreme gravitational pressure at the core turns the gas into something very different - plasma. The pressure is so great, and temperatures so high (around 15 million Kelvin) that the simple atoms of hydrogen fuse to create helium. During the process of this fusion reaction a small amount of mass is lost in the form of a photon, about .7 %. Even though this is a small number, it is times C (the speed of light). This results in a very large amount of energy being released.

The photons created during the fusion process deep in the core of the sun can take thousands of years to reach the surface of the sun and go on their journey into space, where eight minutes later they reach us as light.  In one second, our sun produces enough energy for almost 500,000 years of the current needs of our planet. As CoolP showed in the video our sun is just a small stable star which is good for us.

Every thing we touch and us as well came from the evolution of stars. Everything on the periodic table was created in a star and during the death of a star. We are stardust!  

Maybe this should be astronomy 101... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQu_RRLbVDA



We really know so little!  

Lou


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Don't praise mother nature too much, she will bite at times and doesn't care about creatures thinking they are intelligent but sometimes acting.. differently.  

CoolP wrote on Aug 3^rd, 2012 at 4:31pm:


Problem is that carbon happens to be the single most perfect element for creating life forms. Why? Because it has a low mass, and it has four valence electrons, which allow it to be both stable, abundant, and allow for the bonding of more carbons, and as a result, everything else.

Lets look at elements, and atoms (one in the same). An atom can have at most, 8 electrons in its valence ring (the farthest out from the nucleus), with the exception of hydrogen and helium, who only have two (since their valence ring is the first ring, and all first rings have only two). Now an element with one electron in the valence ring is incredibly unstable, because it seeks 7 more to complete the out ring, therefore, it likes bonding with group 17 elements, to form a stable compund, such as NaCl (salt). Now natrually occuring elements in group 1 (except helium) are incredibly unstable, and are explosive, especially in water. That is why they are contained in oil while in their natural state. Although these group 1 elements, called Alkali metals, are metals, they hardly are compared to iron and gold. Group 2 (alkali earth metals) are relatively reactive, at standard temperature, to other metals, and flammible (magnesium). Now lets skip ahead, since all the metals aren't a source for compounds in organisms. Boron, group 13, is a transition metal, and therefore also not suitable for life-compounds. Therefore, our very first non-metal is carbon. His four valence rings (at total of 6 electrons) make him very stable, and allow him to bond to many things, be it hydrogen, iron, more carbon, etc. A carbon atom could bond with for more carbon atoms, and each carbon after that could bond to one, and all the open places in those rings could fill up with hydrogen. Because of this, the possibilites of carbon are endless, because it can bond with more like it, and with other non-metals, and gases like H, or O, or N to make very complex compounds, which can thus form proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and the other molecules responsible for life. Plus, carbon can have double bonds, peptide bonds, and other types of complex bonds to make rigid structures, which help in teh construction of things such as a cell wall (plants). the only other element.

All other elements in group 14 (the carbon group) are either transition metals, or metals. These are unsuitable for life compounds. It is theorized that silicon could be a base for life, other than carbon, because of its lower weight, less metallic properties, and similarities to carbon (i.e. four valence electrons). However silicon, because it is a transition metal, is unable to form chemical bonds with other atoms, therefore making it unable to be a useful base for metabolic processes, which require chemicals (which exist throughout the universe, since the laws of our universe are essentially universal, pun intended). Because of silicons increased mass, it forms compounds that are bulkier and "monotonous compared with the combinatorial universe of organic macromolecules". Silicon's greater mass and atomic radius makes it very difficult for it to form a double bond with another element.

Carbon is the perfect, and in the eyes of most scientists, the only base for life.

pj747 said: Carbon is the perfect, and in the eyes of most scientists, the only base for life.

Peter, I would add, "that we know of!"

Again, my attempt at a cartoon...  



Lou

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I don't know if you've seen the old movie, The Power of Ten.

Very good look into our makeup, and I mean the whole universe.

Look at your desk that the confuser is sitting on. It looks solid, right. Well it is full of empty space. Think of it like the empty space much like the space between our sun the the planets. The nucleus of the atom is surrounded by its cloud of electrons flying around at a great distance with a lot of empty space. That is why, when a star goes novae and collapses into a neutron star, a lot of the empty space is squished down but, it still has most of its mass but in a very small diameter. A spoon full of that neutron star could weigh millions of tons.

As poor Alice said in wonderland, it's curiouser and curiouser!  



Lou 

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There is some oddness in the discussion. I'm not talking about the different opinions of each individual. That's actually the interesting part and the one to learn about. No, it's more about the ways some things get communicated.

boeing247 wrote on Aug 3^rd, 2012 at 11:28pm:

A very vague expression, 'extremely slim'. Perhaps we would have to ask to which level of 'extremely slim' you refer. So the odds that a modern plane crashes are extremely slim, the odds of winning in the lottery are and, as you say, the ones for e.t. life. Same expression, most likely different levels. Which one to pick?

Did those chances ever receive a defined number? Is there something like a consensus on that number?

We've detected some billions of stars out there, but, as of now, we are on some 777 planets which we were able to detect. Read it again if you like. 777 in the year 2012. We have sent some vehicles to the closest ones in our solar system and we are eager to sent some more to e.g. look for water or ice probes as we are not sure, from just observing, if there is or was any form of life on the moons of Jupiter for example.

I don't know what those numbers will tell you, but I do know that some human beings are well aware that knowledge consists of two levels. The one you have and the one you need to form up something in the means of awareness.

Quote:

Please don't make sentences that long, they are hard to read.   I know about AP and one main phrase is missing. I've added it to your sentence. This may slightly change the context.  

Quote:

After the vague stuff, there seems to be a more defined status. What makes you think that you might be the first life form? Why not the second, the one after one billion or, in the eyes of a totally different being, no life form at all?

If you alter some reference frame very slightly, you and I are just about the same as the monkey in some lab, being degraded to another form of life, the one we run tests on. Altering the reference frame some more, perhaps on the time scale, the root of human existence could hardly be detected or even differentiated from some planetary elements.

Now we do know a bit about what lead to the development of human skills, but we have no idea about other reference frames than our own. It's not that we have to force ourselves to 'think alien'. No, it's just about being aware that we may always 'think human', therefore blocking some paths for our minds and, later, acting.

Quote:

Mind your first sentence and the left out phrase, life 'as we know it'. Speaking of facts would be scientific but always applies to a state of current knowledge. Not many years ago, nobody expected life at extremely hot, acid or otherwise life-threatening places on our own planet. It took some folks to actually look up those places and.. find life. So within a short amount of time, facts were changed.

Combining the word odds and facts in one sentence often makes no sense. The one thing is an assumption, which can be made mathematically, on a rhetoric level or e.g. by religious 'laws' in place. The other one sums up what does exist, what is explored or just states, as a fact, that we don't know yet.

Quote:

That's the one paragraph I can relate to. However, it features a very human centric viewpoint. That's not a problem as long as you don't lock yourself (your mind and thinking) out by just wondering if there could be 'something like humans' out there, forgetting about all the other possibilities.

There's also one disturbing part. The way to relate intelligence to something which is only possible with a human-alike development. The mind is blocked for anything being outside of that frame. You may not be able to see it, even if it was right in front of you.

Don't get that wrong, in evolution theory, it makes sense to rely on former experiences and then develop improved ways. But even evolution cuts some corners and if you are looking for another, for a new life, you may have to leave behind those ways you got so used to. This starts with the thinking and surely is a major limiting factor in science.

Finally, to assume that being 'capable of invention and scientific curiosity' is something only being bound to 'our' ways of life, here on earth, may even contradict the statement itself.  

Quoting another member because he's posted a beautiful closing sentence.
dbhally wrote on Aug 2^nd, 2012 at 8:01pm:

CoolP, you seem to have completely misinterpreted my point. 

Well, not completely. I was being human-centric, but that's because, let's face it, building spacecraft to visit other planets is a very human idea. My point was that, if life exists elsewhere, it wouldn't be [b]life as we know it[b], which means that it probably wouldn't be building spaceships to come visit us in.

I didn't talk about life as we know it, because the odds of that developing on other planets are nearly nonexistent, and if life exists in a completely different form from humans, then the whole UFO and extraterrestrial visitor points are moot, because life like that wouldn't be exploring the cosmos.

And the reason I said "extremely slim" is because the odds are something like a billion to one or more, and I didn't want to look it up. But to give you an idea, The Physics Book (which is a great book, by the way), says that if the rapid expansion that occurred one second after the big bang had been one part in one thousand million million (not sure what number that's supposed to be) off, the Universe would either have collapsed in on itself, or would have expanded too rapidly for subatomic particles to form atoms.

(And sorry for my apposition-filled, extraordinarily long sentences. I think I'm going to break the comma key on my keyboard pretty soon  )

All I'm saying is that, if life were to develop on other planets, it would be very different from life on Earth. Because it would have gone down a completely different evolutionary timeline, it is extremely unlikely that life with intelligence such as ours (a brain that makes the organism want to explore and possibly contact extraterrestrial life) would evolve. That makes me seriously doubt the validity of claims that say aliens have come in ships that are usually said to be made out of metal and are covered in lights that resemble Earth-made lights.

I wasn't actually using the Anthropic Principle to prove my point, I was actually using the same evidence that supports the AP (that the odds of life forming anywhere are astronomical).

And the "if we were the first life forms" was just me musing on the Anthropic Principle. I was just saying that, perhaps, if the Anthropic Principle is designed to create beings that can observe the Universe, then if Earth were the first place that life developed, then perhaps it wouldn't need to develop on other planets, and it wouldn't. But that is far beyond the realm of today's science, so I'm totally speculating.