Originally Posted by DaFace (Post 10645995)

A point made by Cosmos in a recent episode is that we're not only dealing with a challenge of space, but also of time. In other words, the math says that there should be a ton of other planets with life on them, but what's to say that life hasn't already come and gone on most of them? If it turns out that there just isn't a way to go faster than the speed of light, it's entirely plausible that we just won't have anyone else close enough and at the right point in time to find anything out there.

Originally Posted by Buck (Post 10646000)

I wish we (as a species) would put as much effort into exploring beyond Earth as we do trying to be as rich and powerful as possible.

Originally Posted by ChiliConCarnage (Post 10645921)

A bit like saying the pony express or telegrams could never allow us to have instant-contact with people in China. Life the last few centuries has changed at an unbelievable if not unsustainable rates.

I'm not sure why they need to find planets Humans could have survived on. Life finds a way under bizarre circumstances. Even Humans as they exist are only around due to ancestors surviving hard to imagine catastrophes.

Originally Posted by loochy (Post 10645938)

I always think that is weird too. Life could develop anywhere. Why does it have to have water and moderate temperatures?

Originally Posted by DaFace (Post 10645995)

A point made by Cosmos in a recent episode is that we're not only dealing with a challenge of space, but also of time. In other words, the math says that there should be a ton of other planets with life on them, but what's to say that life hasn't already come and gone on most of them? If it turns out that there just isn't a way to go faster than the speed of light, it's entirely plausible that we just won't have anyone else close enough and at the right point in time to find anything out there.

Originally Posted by ChiliConCarnage (Post 10645921)

I'm not sure why they need to find planets Humans could have survived on. Life finds a way under bizarre circumstances. Even Humans as they exist are only around due to ancestors surviving hard to imagine catastrophes.

Originally Posted by Detoxing (Post 10646019)

Great read. Something else for me to trip on while i toke this bowl.

Originally Posted by DaFace (Post 10646018)

A lot of it really comes down to water. Everything we know about life suggests that H2O is necessary for it to work (reacting with carbon), so at a minimum you need a planet that is somewhere between 32F and 212F.

It's theoretically possible for life to be built in a very different way (silicon is a possibility in place of carbon), but we don't even know what we'd be looking for to try and find something like that.

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins (Post 10646045)

If you want some whack shit, consider this: all naturally occurring amino acids on Earth are left-handed, even though there is no real functional advantage for an AA to be right or left-handed. It's just an evolutionary quirk. Meteorites with trace amino acids have been found to have a 50-50 split of right and left handed AA's.

Originally Posted by -King- (Post 10646048)

Whoa, that's whack!

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins (Post 10646045)

If you want some whack shit, consider this: all naturally occurring amino acids on Earth are left-handed, even though there is no real functional advantage for an AA to be right or left-handed. It's just an evolutionary quirk. Meteorites with trace amino acids have been found to have a 50-50 split of right and left handed AA's.