Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Granite26]

I wish I knew what a non linear language looked like.

dog piss

[Tormy]

Okay, some interesting stuff again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life

"Due to their relative abundance and usefulness in sustaining life, many have hypothesized that lifeforms elsewhere in the universe would also utilize these basic materials. However, other elements and solvents could also provide a basis for life. Silicon is most often deemed to be the probable alternative to carbon. Silicon lifeforms are proposed to have a crystalline morphology, and are theorized to be able to exist in high temperatures, such as on planets which are very close to their star. Life forms based in ammonia (rather than water) have also been suggested, though this solution appears less optimal than water.[4]

Technically, life is basically a self-replicating reaction, but one which could arise under a great many conditions and with various possible ingredients, though carbon-oxygen within the liquid temperature range of water seems most conducive. Suggestions have even been made that self-replicating reactions of some sort could occur within the plasma of a star, though it would be highly unconventional."


Drake equation

In 1961, University of California, Santa Cruz astronomer and astrophysicist Dr. Frank Drake devised the Drake equation. This controversial equation multiplied estimates of the following terms together:

- The rate of formation of suitable stars.
- The fraction of those stars which contain planets.
- The number of Earth-like worlds per planetary system.
- The fraction of planets where intelligent life develops.
- The fraction of possible communicative planets.
- The “lifetime” of possible communicative civilizations.

Drake used the equation to estimate that there are approximately 10,000 planets containing intelligent life, with the possible capability of communicating with Earth in the Milky Way galaxy.[27]

Based on observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, there are at least 125 billion galaxies in the universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all sun-like stars have a system of planets[28], thus if a thousandth of a percent of all stars are sun-like, and there are roughly (estimates may vary) 500 billion stars, on average, in each galaxy[citation needed], there are 6.25*1018 stars with planets orbiting them in the universe. If even a billionth of these stars have planets supporting life, there are some 6.25 billion life-supporting solar systems in the universe.

[Granite26]

Throw the Singularity into it, and you've got a party.

Some modifiers to the Drake Equation:
* The chance that a given intelligent species will be capable of grasping quantum physics to the extent it can leave it's solar system
* The chance that a given species will evolve this capability in it's expected lifetime.

It's the complex and intelligent life that we don't have a clue about, plus, the drake equation ignores a few items of flux.  Any planet suitable for life WILL get life, but planets only last for so long, and an asteroid at the wrong time can set things back hundreds of thousands of years.  It's better phrased as 'the chance that complex (multicellular) life evolves before the sun goes nova'

[Yanlin]

I wish I knew what a non linear language looked like.

dog piss

Kind of impossible to talk like that. It's also a horribly inefficient form of language.

[Granite26]

didn't say it was good or efficient, just that it was a way to assert/express multiple statements without a linear progression.

[Sean Mirrsen]

A language consisting of imagery would be nonlinear, I think. A picture describes an event or series of events without any linearity while being fairly specific. The practicality of such a language is doubtable, but if you consider innate telepathy...

[Psyco Jelly]

Aliens with TVs for heads could communicate ideas with pictures. The whole past/present/future thing would be kind of hard to grasp, but it'd be funny.

Aww, my TV died.

[Jude]

General

Head Initial

Head Final

oic

I fall pretty strongly in the innatist category

Ya me too I'm a big fan of Pinker myself

Also dog piss is not a language; it's not symbolic

Also the Drake equation (or any other attempt to statistically prove there must be intelligent life out there) fails because there is no reason why life even if it exists would advance to the point of multi-celled organisms, much less extremely complex ones like we have on earth, much less ones that evolve intelligence

[Granite26]

Also dog piss is not a language; it's not symbolic

Also the Drake equation (or any other attempt to statistically prove there must be intelligent life out there) fails because there is no reason why life even if it exists would advance to the point of multi-celled organisms, much less extremely complex ones like we have on earth, much less ones that evolve intelligence

Spraying itself, no, but it has the potential to become that.

As for the Drake Equation, you're most of the way there.  It actually contains a variable that contains multicelled organism development chance.  The problem is that we have no clue about the real values of ANY of the variables.  Hell, most people use the Roman Empire for the average duration of intelligent civilization...

[Ignoro]

The Drake Equation fails because he pulled most of those values out of his rear.

Anyway, screw life on other planets. I want the planet, and don't want to bother with foreign disease.
I rarely ever see it in 'first encounter' sci-fi, but foreign microbes would make other Earth like planets (or multicellular aliens) giant bio hazards. War of the Worlds (the original book) comes to mind on that subject.

[Strife26]

I'm sure that orbital bombardment would cure any microbe problem. The elves might get mad, but who cares?

[LASD]

What I find interesting is that people mostly imagine aliens to be more intelligent than us and their civilizations more refined than the ones we've got. What if it wasn't so? What if the human race was the most intelligent thing in the whole universe? Wouldn't that be a huge disappointment?

[Torak]

What I find interesting is that people mostly imagine aliens to be more intelligent than us and their civilizations more refined than the ones we've got. What if it wasn't so? What if the human race was the most intelligent thing in the whole universe? Wouldn't that be a huge disappointment?

Considering the age of the universe compared to the age of Earth, and even the age of the Human race as it is, I think it's mathematically impossible for us to be the first and greatest intelligent life in the universe.

[Granite26]

The Drake Equation fails because he pulled most of those values out of his rear.

The Drake equation doesn't have values....  It's a completely valueless equation filled with unknowns...  In that regard, it's perfect, and yet perfectly useless

[andrea]

Considering the age of the universe compared to the age of Earth, and even the age of the Human race as it is, I think it's mathematically impossible for us to be the first and greatest intelligent life in the universe.

it is not impossible. it is just unlikely to happen.