[HN Gopher] The tantalizing, lonely search for alien life
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The tantalizing, lonely search for alien life
Author : Petiver
Score : 33 points
Date : 2023-07-15 19:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newrepublic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newrepublic.com)
| pmarreck wrote:
| Articles like this won't age well if it turns out they've been
| here for decades already, which we may imminently find out.
|
| Instead of a reasonable position given a lack of physical
| evidence, it will look like a gross mistrust of a mass quantity
| of qualified eyewitness testimony
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Why would they be here?
|
| I'm just physically incapable of the superhuman levels of
| narcissism that are required to think that if intelligent
| aliens were aware of us that they'd spend the effort to bother
| to come here.
|
| Either that effort is itself measured at godlike superhuman
| levels, or it's effortless for them (or any point along that
| spectrum). As if becomes less effort for them, we become less
| interesting. As it becomes more effort.
|
| There isn't even any happy medium for this. If there is some
| middle ground that would have them visit other civilizations...
| then why ours? Someone's closer to them. Someone looks like
| they might be worth meeting. We're the ugly guy on Galactic
| Tindr, and by virtue of their ability to do interstellar
| travel, they're the hot 9.8s. They're not going to swipe right
| on us, they'll pick someone else.
|
| Maybe some flying saucer stopped by because it was along the
| way and they like doing quick surveys... but we've been more or
| less the same level of interesting for the last 4 billion
| years. That it just happened during the 20th century instead of
| 400 million years ago seems improbable.
|
| _Superhumanly narcissistic_.
| leon_theremin wrote:
| [flagged]
| netsharc wrote:
| An announcement of the existence of alien life (even alien life
| on this planet) doesn't equal confirmation that UFO sightings
| (objects in the sky that couldn't be identified) are actually
| sightings of extra-terrestrial crafts...
| submeta wrote:
| (Haven't read the article.)
|
| Our perception of alien life may be profoundly constrained by the
| human lens through which we examine the cosmos.
|
| We must acknowledge that all our scientific knowledge, including
| our conception of life, is a product of human cognition. This
| cognition has evolved under Earth's specific conditions, thereby
| deeply influencing our understanding of what life is. We've come
| to associate life with cells, DNA, and carbon-based compounds,
| simply because these are the frameworks we're most familiar with.
|
| Yet, life elsewhere in the universe may defy these constructs. It
| could hinge on principles entirely alien to our comprehension,
| making it "life" in the truest sense of the word. Consequently,
| our current definitions might fail to recognize or comprehend
| such forms of existence.
|
| This brings us to the philosophical and cognitive underpinnings
| of this idea. It echoes solipsistic notions, where only one's
| mind is certain to exist, and the brain-in-a-vat theory, which
| asserts our inability to differentiate between real experiences
| and those simulated by our brains. These philosophies question
| the authenticity of our perceived reality and force us to
| reconsider our mental models.
|
| Such introspection is crucial when we think about potential alien
| life. For instance, we associate green vegetation with life
| because of Earth-based chlorophyll. But should we find green
| plants on another planet, can we instinctively conclude that they
| indicate life as we know it? Probably not, as such assumptions
| hinge on our Earth-centric model of life.
|
| To overcome this limitation, we might need to redefine life in a
| more universal context. We may have to accept that some entities
| might exist beyond our grasp of understanding and should develop
| novel tools that seek not only life as we know it, but any form
| of organized complexity that could denote a radically different
| kind of life.
|
| Such a perspective fundamentally changes the narrative of our
| search for alien life. It indicates a need to drastically reshape
| our understanding to truly appreciate the universe's potential
| diversity and complexity. It's a humbling reminder of how much we
| don't know, as well as a hopeful prompt of the extraordinary
| discoveries that could await us.
| zokier wrote:
| "weird life" is pretty basic idea in astrobiology. The
| scientists in the field are very much aware of the concept.
| From the article
|
| > plenty of other experts suggest that life elsewhere might be
| so different, so fundamentally alien, as to be unrecognizable
| to us as life. Surprisingly, a pretty big question amongst
| scientists searching for life on other planets is what life
| even means. Would we know it when we saw it?
|
| ---
|
| > We may have to accept that some entities might exist beyond
| our grasp of understanding and should develop novel tools that
| seek not only life as we know it, but any form of organized
| complexity that could denote a radically different kind of
| life.
|
| Maybe at some point, but right now we haven't even scrathed the
| surface in the search, and with limited resources it makes
| sense to start first by looking for earth-like life, and
| eventually expand the search for weirder things.
|
| > Such a perspective fundamentally changes the narrative of our
| search for alien life.
|
| I don't really find that to be the case. If anything, the weird
| life narrative might be overemphasized in the popsci/scifi
| communities.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_chauvinism
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Radical idea: anything that emits a signal is a life sign.
| zokier wrote:
| That's what SETI has been looking for, but it also sets very
| high bar; microbes are not exactly known for sending signals
| to space.
| eesmith wrote:
| Though to be fair, SETI is specifically looking for
| "intelligent" life.
|
| It may be possible to identify biosignatures on other
| planets, like looking for evidence of atmospheric gasses
| far from ordinary chemical equilibrium (like how microbes
| emit methane here on Earth), or unusual spectra, like
| spotting the signature of chlorophyll absorption.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Other than bioluminessence. One possible means of detecting
| life on water/ice worlds could be glowing oceans on the
| night/dark sides of exoplanets.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not as much as you would think. Carbon and water are common and
| have some interesting chemical properties that are not common
| overall. While other organizations are possible, between the
| other elements being less common, and how much more difficult
| the chemistry is the odds of it are low.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Yet, life elsewhere in the universe may defy these
| constructs. It could hinge on principles entirely alien to our
| comprehension, making it "life" in the truest sense of the
| word. Consequently, our current definitions might fail to
| recognize or comprehend such forms of existence.
|
| This is a cop-out. It might make for a good episode (or a bad
| one) of Star Trek, but in the real world, life's going to be
| made out of particles. Likely even out of atoms/molecules.
|
| It will be recognizable, in that it is self-sustaining... it
| creates itself. It will, for lack of a better term, "do
| things".
|
| The chemistry might be weird (hell, we almost expect that). The
| effects might be subtle (at minimum, we imagine we'll need
| microscopes, but it gets more difficult from there).
|
| But none of these things are incomprehensible.
| "Incomprehensible" is probably nearly non-overlapping with
| "life", if not outright incompatible.
|
| > But should we find green plants on another planet, can we
| instinctively conclude that they indicate life as we know it?
| Probably not, as such assumptions hinge on our Earth-centric
| model of life.
|
| This is incoherent. I don't even know how to parse it.
|
| "We found photosynthetic organisms on another planet, but are
| they life?"
|
| Like, seriously? Are you saying that plants aren't really alive
| here on Earth, or that plants are only alive _if_ on Earth? If
| I take a potted plant to Mars, "is it really life as we know
| it"?
|
| > We may have to accept that some entities might exist beyond
| our grasp of understanding and should develop novel tools that
| seek not only life as we know it,
|
| I think that some people learn to think like this because their
| mouth-breathing public school system teachers gave them B+s for
| this bullshit in 7th grade. It's bizarrely bad. Have you never
| listened to yourself?
|
| > Such a perspective fundamentally changes the narrative of our
| search for alien life.
|
| Yes. It hobbles the search in any number of ways. Entire
| generations of children grow up thinking this poorly.
| Influencers and politicians start thinking such is somehow
| clever or insightful, and money/effort is wasted on it.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _(Haven't read the article.)_
|
| Its not paywalled.
|
| _Our perception of alien life may be profoundly constrained by
| the human lens through which we examine the cosmos._
|
| Here's the subtitle:
|
| _Scientists disagree about what life on other planets even
| means. Would we know it when we saw it?_
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Pop culture is certainly full of films and novels and TV
| series that gleefully break this rule, but some of the best
| aliens are the ones we only catch glimpses of, who exist only
| partially, only in darkness, only in fleeting, frightening peeks.
|
| And then there's the Alien xenomorph, whom we do get to see. Oh
| yes, sir-ee.
| gfodor wrote:
| Weird to have these kinds of articles coming out at the same time
| the US government appears to be lining up an entire set of
| institutional infrastructure and laws to disclose to the public
| that we have evidence of non-human intelligence.
|
| Also I really hope to god we are alone, if we are not then it
| seems far more likely we are in some kind of zoo or are going to
| be boxed out from advancement.
| flarg wrote:
| I doubt the US govt is doing any such thing. There is no
| advantage for them in doing so even if extraterrestrial
| intelligence does exist. Space is too vast to allow for
| visitation or effective communication between planets never
| mind solar systems.
| qawwads wrote:
| I'd expect that information to come first from arXiv or
| Nature. Or even maybe The Daily Mirror. Why would a
| governments be involved?
| yreg wrote:
| The research could be done using military equipment with
| strings attached. Alternatively, in US the researchers
| could be under some national security gag order by one of
| the agencies, no?
| dmvdoug wrote:
| Haha, I hadn't really thought of it in those terms before. " I
| really hope we are alone because if we're not, it's gonna be so
| embarrassing for us." :D
| echelon wrote:
| If we have detected aliens, I'll be so incredibly disappointed
| if they're _biological_. That would violate my assumptions
| about the universe. Biology seems as though it 's a stepping
| stone to pure compute.
|
| Detecting alien "techno signatures" should imagine
| industrialization in support of compute and nothing more. A lot
| of the stuff we currently manufacture and need would go away if
| we didn't have to support metabolisms, agriculture, and the
| long-distance transportation of bodies.
| yreg wrote:
| > the US government appears to be lining up an entire set of
| institutional infrastructure and laws to disclose to the public
| that we have evidence of non-human intelligence.
|
| Could you please expand on this?
| astronads wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senators-move-require-
| relea...
|
| https://thedebrief.org/the-uap-disclosure-act-
| of-2023-what-w...
|
| There will be a public congressional hearing on this aired
| within the next two weeks.
| yreg wrote:
| As I understand it they plan to release their files on UFOs
| and other anomalies.
|
| TBH it sounds to me like wishful thinking that those files
| will contain evidence of alien intelligence.
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