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^fucking lol
I love that video of the Christians saying god must have made the world because a banana fits in our hands nicely or something

dont be hatin on kirk cameron

knell wrote:

hugh wrote:There's probably millions and billions of other populated planets in our Galaxy.

no. like most people, you've forgotten the dimension that boils all over this idea - time. you're stuck in a different "half-grip" of the assumption that we live in some sweet spot for life, and that everything that exists does so within our own tiny timeframe, which is foolish when you apply it to the same grand scale you expound upon.

or perhaps you were just oversimplifying for the point of this thread, i don't know.

edit: just saw that you even limited it to "our Galaxy" oh dear.

Universe, you knew what I meant.

Also, I don't get your point in the slightest. We are talking about the inevitability of life, so obviously as time goes on the more and more inevitable it becomes.....I never stated anything about time, or how long the Universe has been, or whether planets once populated are now extinct, whether planets and life my spring forth on other planets in the future, or anything of the like? What has this got to do with time? Why are you assuming I think that everything that exists in the universe exists now? I don't really understand your point sorry, I need you to clarify what you are saying cos it just doesn't make any sense in the context of what I was saying.

and FYI Knell
Space = Time
so yeah, nice one

hugh wrote:and FYI Knell
Space = Time
so yeah, nice one

i was going to respond to your paragraph up there, but then read this. If youre going to oversimplify everything, it's not worth it, so ill just wish you luck on all your scientific endeavors

knell wrote:

hugh wrote:and FYI Knell
Space = Time
so yeah, nice one

i was going to respond to your paragraph up there, but then read this. If youre going to oversimplify everything, it's not worth it, so ill just wish you luck on all your scientific endeavors

ok, but I still don't understand what you were saying, and even if I vaguely think I get it, you were making some pretty large errors in your assumptions. I think you think that I think that all life in the universe that has existed and ever will exist, exists now - I wasn't saying this and I didn't even suggest it, it would be incredibly foolish to do so, if that isn't what you were getting at then I am really lost.
All I said was the universe is very very large, so large that the chances of there being many many many (probably uncountably so) planets that could have, could have had, or could at some stage in the future, have potential for life.
Out of these unfathomably large amounts of potential planets, it is a statistical inevitability that some of these planets (probably still an uncountably large number) will propagate life.

knell wrote: so ill just wish you luck on all your scientific endeavors

Knell, I would have blown your mind back in 1751 when I told you about radio waves. You wouldn't have believed it though because there was no empirical scientific evidence to prove it.

Just like how you thought the Earth was flat back in 533.

Time is in the Drake Equation.

mks wrote:

Time is in the Drake Equation.

YOLO

hugh wrote: Out of these unfathomably large amounts of potential planets, it is a statistical inevitability that some of these planets (probably still an uncountably large number) will propagate life.

agreed, i was just trying to clarify one of your points, not counter it (i think that's what is causing the confusion). if we're going to be scientific, we have to be pedantic, right? we haven't even gotten into what constitutes "life", but i'll also make some assumptions and guess we're on the same page there as well.

mks wrote: Knell, I would have blown your mind back in 1751 when I told you about radio waves. You wouldn't have believed it though because there was no empirical scientific evidence to prove it.

Just like how you thought the Earth was flat back in 533.

this is the most tired, pretentious ad hominem of them all. do you have anything productive to add?

mks wrote: Time is in the Drake Equation.

and the fact that you referenced it in the first place implies that you have absolutely no clue. how's that for personal story time?

I added the Drake Equation for you per your comment about time not being factored in.

The Drake equation uses time to determine galaxy age which is kind of irrelevant to the grand-scale of the universe. The Drake equation is a lot more practical when we are talking in smaller scales such as Galaxies. It is almost impossible to apply to the whole universe because we simply do not know how big the universe is, and there are even theories flying round suggesting that the Universe is in fact infinitely huge. We can assume the oldest, most outlying galaxies were formed very shortly after the Big Bang, but the maths behind this is rather confusing due to the absolutely insane levels of speed that the most outward Galaxies are travelling away from the centre of the universe (i.e. relativity)

Of course, this all just lends potential to life surfacing, it certainly doesn't detract from it.

knell wrote:

hugh wrote: Out of these unfathomably large amounts of potential planets, it is a statistical inevitability that some of these planets (probably still an uncountably large number) will propagate life.

agreed, i was just trying to clarify one of your points, not counter it (i think that's what is causing the confusion). if we're going to be scientific, we have to be pedantic, right? we haven't even gotten into what constitutes "life", but i'll also make some assumptions and guess we're on the same page there as well.

OK I think I just misunderstood what you were getting at, sorry for bein a tnuc

yes hugh, now we're speaking the same language, i apologize for pigeonholing your point, i just get weird OCD itches

@mks, nowhere did i say that time wasn't factored into Drake's equation, i was responding to hugh. you really thought i was unaware of it as a concept/prediction?

as an aside, it's a bit of a myth that everyone thought the Earth was flat. Most educated and cultured civilisations (Ancient Egyptian/Chinese/Greek/Arabic) worked out that earth was curved. Aqueducts actually use this science to work, as far as I know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth


Honestly, I think people were a lot smarter back in the day, they just didn't have the technology yet. I'm amazed they could do this kind of stuff without calculators and computers and whatnot

hugh wrote:The Drake equation uses time to determine galaxy age which is kind of irrelevant to the grand-scale of the universe. The Drake equation is a lot more practical when we are talking in smaller scales such as Galaxies.

The universe is so vast that you might as well start at the galaxy level. Everything about the universe is still just a hypothesis.

The Drake Equation, if anything, just shows that the rate of civilizations rising and falling is so fast compared to the age of the galaxy, that it would be pretty difficult to locate any other sentient species in our galaxy.

mks wrote:

hugh wrote:The Drake equation uses time to determine galaxy age which is kind of irrelevant to the grand-scale of the universe. The Drake equation is a lot more practical when we are talking in smaller scales such as Galaxies.

The universe is so vast that you might as well start at the galaxy level. Everything about the universe is still just a hypothesis.

The Drake Equation, if anything, just shows that the rate of civilizations rising and falling is so fast compared to the age of the galaxy, that it would be pretty difficult to locate any other sentient species in our galaxy.

You can't just say that like it's true! We are talking about the inevitability of life, and when addressing this issue you absolutely MUST observe that the Universe is infinitely large, because it is used as a covariant in statistical analyis... You can't just replace it with the size of a Galaxy and expect it to work in the same way. It won't. Even when working with the upper estimate of the number of stars in the Milky Way (I think it was 800 billion but can't remember, doesn't matter too much anyway) you are working with a number that is totally dwarfed by the total number of stars in the whole universe, which is potentially infinite.

so.. there definitely has been intelligent life in other star systems over the past few billion centuries, but probably isn't right now?