Vatican Observatory - Astronomical Institution of the Holy See - this week organizes a major scientific conference with the above theme
In 1600, the Roman Inquisition burned Giordano Bruno at the stake, after condemning him as a heretic. One of his offenses was to assert that every star in the sky was a sun like ours, with its own collection of planets revolving around it. These worlds, in turn, be populated according to the philosophical
A search for life beyond our solar system seems to be futile when human race as a collective entity is destroying life in its own backyard as well as its own life.
Dear Adam
Thank you very much
It is fundamental the preservation of our environment
Regards
Always an interesting topic. Are we alone and whether such individuals have access to all information????? Given the size of the universe and the number of galaxies think it is unlikely that life exists only on Earth. I think it is possible that there are planets in the galaxy where there is life, but the question arises as to which stage of development. Is it to a greater or lesser degree of development than us. Also I agree with Adam.
greeting
P. S. I use google translator, so forgive the mistakes in translation
Dear Alan
I totally agree with your opinion. Your english is better than mine !
Best regards
If we consider primitive, single cell life forms, they appeared on earth about 100 million years after the planet cooled sufficiently to allow permanent water bodies to form. This is amazingly fast and we can tentatively conclude that primitive life forms may well be relatively common.
Intelligent life has much, much more stringent requirements. These are described in "Rare Earth" by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. They deal with the physical requirements, which imply something like one hospitable planet per galaxy (my guesstimate). Then there are the mutational requirements. It took about 1.5 billion years for marine organisms to appear that could use sunlight to split water and produce free oxygen.(anaerobic metabolism cannot generate energy at the intensity necessary for surface locomotion and intelligence) and then another 1.5 - 2 billion years before atmospheric oxygen reached levels sufficient to allow aerobic metabolism and colonisation of the surface. Intelligence is not then inevitable and it is hard to know how likely it is that intelligence will arise. During this very long time the temperature must be very stable (10-50 deg C) over a significant fraction of the planet's surface while solar output has increased by about 30% The authors conclude that we may well be alone in the universe ..... and I can't disagree....
I agree with Adam and Nelson. What's the point of spending time and resources looking for life on other planets? It is amazingly self-indulgent.
Another absolute requirement for intelligent life is plate tectonics.
First because, if a planet has water but no mechanism for raising some large areas of land above water level the planet's surface it will always be under water (the average depth of surface water on Earth would be just over 2.7 km or nearly 10000 ft.).
Secondly Plate tectonics is the only way to recycle carbon - essential to provide material for many generations of evolution.
Although life on this planet developed from plants-then-animals and intelligence happened to increase with time, such events don't have to be duplicated exactly in this fashion in other extra-solar planets.
Other-than-carbon life forms could exist and plate tectonics may be missing in extraterrestrial life.
The search for life elsewhere is, I think, pointless since scientists choose to ignore phenomena like crop circles and UFOs. They could at least study them and decide if they are fake or not. But just to ignore them is hypocritical of any "scientist". I have tried to explain events that I have witnessed, but can't find answers to these, so I don't know if they are genuine or not. However, I find them amazing to say the least.
The late Fred Hoye described an alternative life form in "The Black Cloud" But the consensus is that there is no alternative to carbon as the basis of life in our universe. No other element(s) have the capacity for their atoms to combine together and with other elenents to produce the range and diversity of substances that fuel the evolution of life.
UFO'S are just UFOs; nothing more. The distance between potentially habitable planets in our galaxy rage from 10 to 100 million light years and no life form coud survive the journey
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