redlightning
Banned
What happens if during the 2000s microbial life is found on a moon in the Solar System?
WI: Microbial Life Found in the Solar System
- Thread starter redlightning
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Driftless
Donor
The idea of life within our solar system has been batted around for long enough where I think you get the whole gamut of emotions: a comparative minority are ecstatic that we are not alone, another minority has their faith that we are certainly alone utterly crushed, a larger minority do not & will not ever believe the news(it's all a government plot...); and the great majority doesn't care...(gimme me another beer Agnes...)
The idea might take time to get traction. Cripes, there's still folks who don't believe that man has been to the moon, or that we have landed objects on other planets.
The idea might take time to get traction. Cripes, there's still folks who don't believe that man has been to the moon, or that we have landed objects on other planets.
The only lander that landed on a moon in the 2000s was Huygens, so that narrows the list of sites of discovery to Titan. I suppose Huygens drops into one of the methane lakes and discovers some sort of methane-based microbes. Not sure if any of the instruments could do that, but let's say they could.
A follow-up Titan mission is authorized immediately and launches some time in the 2010s. The lander is much more capable--along the lines of Titan Mare Explorer. Another lander--maybe even a Titan Sample Return mission--launches in the late 2010s.
The planetary science and astrobiology communities are ecstatic. Most people say, "oh, that's neat," and lose interest soon after.
Complex or simple? I.e. eukaryotic-type or prokaryotic-type?
Because if it's prokaryotic, it's interesting, it's a spur to science. But if it's eukaryotic, evolved independently, you have an insidious meme in the scientific community: that one of the prime Great Filter candidates, the high unlikelihood of simple cells becoming complex, and thence multicellular, does not exist behind us. Thus, the Great Filter is in front of us. Far, far more doubts and second guessing about every new tech in the scientific community.
Because if eukaryotic life is common, we're most likely fucked.
Because if it's prokaryotic, it's interesting, it's a spur to science. But if it's eukaryotic, evolved independently, you have an insidious meme in the scientific community: that one of the prime Great Filter candidates, the high unlikelihood of simple cells becoming complex, and thence multicellular, does not exist behind us. Thus, the Great Filter is in front of us. Far, far more doubts and second guessing about every new tech in the scientific community.
Because if eukaryotic life is common, we're most likely fucked.
I'm going to be slightly more optimistic. If life is discovered on Titan, than it would cause more probes to be approved, each with instruments to find other forms of life. Some to Europa, some to the other Saturnian moon suspected of having life. I assume that, like the Moon landings, people lose interest, but it survives in its effect on culture, and definitely in its importance in history.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
To me, that's kind of assuming the Fermi Paradox works out a certain way.
For example, how about this possibility: Marconi did the first radio transmission across the Atlantic around 1901 from Cornwall, England to Newfoundland. And now perhaps smaller range cell towers and other more targeted? So, maybe the period of radio visibility of a developing civilization is roughly 100 years.
Or, I read one guy who seemed to think the great filter behind us was speech. Of some many thousands and thousands of pretty intelligent animals does only one have anything approaching human speech.
Deleted member 83898
In this scenario, we have found other eukaryotic life within our system. If we have already found complex life within our own system, it can be inferred that complex life likely exists within many other (and, if one postulates that our solar system is average/unexceptional/mediocre, then complex life likely exists within a majority of the universe's solar systems) solar systems. But if complex life is so common, then why haven't we encountered other intelligent species? Clearly, there is some unseen "filter" just over the horizon which will prevent us from becoming a space-faring, colonizing race. Extinction.
In that circumstance, might we suspect it to be the transition from fossil fuel to non fossil fuel energy that may be seen as the 'Great Filter' I wonder?
Could even spur a more meaningful response to climate change / green energy if the idea gains traction?
How widespread is belief in the Great Filter in the scientific community?
Because if only 3% of scientists worry about uber-tech leading to human extinction, 6% of scientists taking the position might be a great increase over the previous number but not have significant effects.
Or perhaps the distances and energy requirements to cross said distances are so huge that most species don't even bother.
Honestly, this sounds like more of a crisis of faith than of science. It assumes that any intelligent life out there MUST have developed interstellar travel, MUST have sought us out, MUST have wanted to contact us. And that said intelligent life INEVITABLY developed from multicellular life. None of this has any real evidence behind it.
This was my thinking. The Octopoids of Xenon-5 could live in a futuristic utopia, near god-like to our comprehension. Doesn't make it easier to travel light years to other systems.
there are somewhere around 10 million or so different species of life on the earth. Only humans have ever developed sapience (maybe Dolphins but that doesn't seem so likely). That doesn't sound like your filter right there? I mean why assume where their is complex life there is Intelligence? It sounds almost teleological, we don't assume complex life will inevitably develop the camouflage of Cameleon or the speed of a Cheetah, what about Sapience makes it so damn inevitable? Given how energy hungry it is and how many things had to go a certain way for it to come about, I would say it seems very unlikely.
Archibald
Banned
Want to search for microbes in the solar system ? here's where to start the search
https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=...mtmu6ayc-ZOHJ3w&bvm=bv.98197061,d.bGg&cad=rja
https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=...mtmu6ayc-ZOHJ3w&bvm=bv.98197061,d.bGg&cad=rja
Hows about all species create artificial intelligences that wipe them out before interstellar travel becomes practical, meaning that it's the AI's develop interstellar travel, but they won't speak to meat?
There are other options besides the Great Filter, yaknow. I actually have a book on my TBR stack that is just a list of 50 proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox. Personally, my preference is for "they exist, but they're not here because the galaxy is not evenly settled."
Actually, I think the Great Filter is implausible because at least one intelligent life form ought to have made it through the Filter, whatever it is, just statistically. So there must be some other reason they're not here.
If its microbes then most people will lose interest after a few weeks (or days)
Now if Huygens photographs herds of something on the way down and gets close ups after a herd walks by after landing that will get people excited (and guarantee at least one follow up probe with a lander)
And if something pokes at it with something and calls/gestures more of whatever it is over then reactions get very interseting and there may be studies to figure out how to get humans out there.
Now if Huygens photographs herds of something on the way down and gets close ups after a herd walks by after landing that will get people excited (and guarantee at least one follow up probe with a lander)
And if something pokes at it with something and calls/gestures more of whatever it is over then reactions get very interseting and there may be studies to figure out how to get humans out there.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Point very well taken. There is nothing inevitable about our specific type of verbal, self-reflexive intelligence.