OT - New Life Form on Saturn's Biggest Moon?
Because I love being OT lately (see http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/ot-alan-ameche-story ) I figured I would make the a clearly worded subject line (unlike my previous post which absolutely 100% ignores rules about subjects for posts) and let everyone know that Orson Wells was right, Will Smith and the US Marshall from 'The Fugitive' have gone back to work ('MIB III' is soon to be a reality, but a for real reality not just movie reality), ID4, or the non-sense abbreviation for 'Independence Day' is coming soon, and 'Mars Attacks', with all it's famous actors (seriously, look up how many famous people were in such a bad movie) is now 'Saturn's Biggest Moon, Titan, Attacks,' (also known as 'Clash of the Titans'?)because new life may be lurking on Saturn's biggest moon.
For those of you not wanting to read it, the headline is misleading, like most news, to grab your attention and make you read it. Life isn't a huge possibility, but there is some possibility that life forms on Titan are using Hydrogen (rather than Oxygen like on earth) to live. Just thought it was interesting and I know there are a lot of space/NASA nuts in the mgocommunity.
that exist in conditions so completely hostile to life as we know it that it is improbable to me that there is no life elsewhere in the universe. Whether there is intelligent life elsewhere is a separate but equally fascinating question.
The probability that there is life somewhere (no matter how small the percentage) has to be 1. There is life on other planets.
Is it intelligient? Is it a parallel universe? Is it completely different from life as we know it? Who knows, but statistics says that there has to be life somewhere.
but the phrase "If the Universe is infinite and ever expanding" makes no sense. Choose one or the other. You can't have both.
It is a fallacy to say that something that is "infinite" cannot get bigger or smaller. It is fully possible, in math, to add 1 to infinity. The only problem is that the answer doesn't change. It remains infinity. But that does't mean you couldn't add to it.
Furthermore, The universe does indeed have visible borders, in that all matter and energy from the big bang have a distance which they have traveled, and they do not pass beyond that distance. That said, it is highly unlikely that there is some sort of "brick wall" beyond that edge, and instead we should find some sort of universal "void" into which the universe can expand.
Finally, it is possible that there is infinite matter and space in the universe, and that the edges of what we can see are the edges of our "pocket". I've heard it speculated that the entirety of the universe as we know it is actually the result of (Ie: we are inside of) an exploded just infinitely massive black hole which occured in a much much larger infinitely large universe which lies beyond the realm of what we can see. Our infinitely large universe is expanding infinitely, and yet is still much smaller than the infinitely large universe from whence we came.
Seriously, math allows for an infinite number of different sizes and quantities of infinity.
That was very helpful.
Visual proof (the photo isn't doctored, to the best of my knowledge) can sometimes convince otherwise staunch opponents.
Come for the statistical analysis of football, stay for the other math discussions!
Wait a minute. I think you just contadicted yourself. You say it is a fallacy that the infinite cannot get bigger but then go on to say that ∞ + 1 = ∞
Adding numbers to infinity does not change the value as expressed ∞
In order to know that you have made something bigger you have to know how big it is to begin with. And once you know how big infinity is...It ceases to be infinite.
I do not mean to be arguementative. In fact I enjoy listening to everyones theory on the infinite and the eternal.
I find this interesting. You say you can add to infinity but the answer is always infinity. So here is an interesting equation. A+B=C A and B both = ∞ therefore C = ∞ as well. so if I reverse the equation then C - B = A ∞ - ∞ = ∞ One would think the answer would be zero. But if the original equation A+B=C is true then it must be true C-B=A.
Infinity is the answer in the conventional sense. Not the mathematical sense. In math, the answer indeed becomes ∞+1.
And you are correct. Infinity has some very, very odd math associated with it, but it is not false math.
(after all, every discussion about infinity is a theoretical exercise)
Where my view differs is the answer (infinity+1) can only be calculated as an equation. If you finish the equation the answer is (infinity+1)=infinity
So how does one comprehend the equation: infinity+1? How can I be sure that the number one has in fact been "added" to infinity? A comparison would be if you were talking about eternity. Every day that ever was and ever will be is encompassed in eternity. So we can't say it took forever and a day. Because that day would already have been added into the equation that is eternity. To imply that infinity can be enlarged by +1 is to say infinity is not the largest number ever imagined. That it is somehow smaller than infinity+1. When in fact it is not smaller than infinity+1. It is equal to infinity+1
Infinity+1 only exists as an equation. it is not a sum that can be quantified.
For this reason I cannot comprehend how something that is infinite can be enlarged.
The certainty that it is smarter than the average OSU graduate has to be 1 as well.
I believe there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe; however, I don't believe we'll ever encounter it. I place the probability of any lifeform able to cooperate and sustain itself long enough at a high level for interstellar communication or travel without population overshoot and resource depletion to be zero. See, e.g., peak oil and climate change.
Wierd life forms, hostile living conditions, questioning whether there is intelligent life. I seriously thought this was going to be a joke about Ohio.
For those of you not wanting to read it, the headline is misleading, like most news, to grab your attention and make you read it.
Funny, so is your title.
In your overview of the article you left out its main scientific finding/fact. Titan, it was found, is lacking hydrogen and acteylene for some reason. They clearly state that all non-biological explanations should be thought of first. However, one possibility could be that methane-based organisms (water-based organisms aren't viable at Titan's temperatures) could be using hydrogen and acetylene as food sources. And thus, a possible explanation of the lack of those compounds.
Very cool find, thanks for posting it. A space-nut has been satisfied for the night
Yay maybe I'll make some new friends someday.
I was just thinking that such a discovery would just add to the number of lifeforms disappointed by my lack of success...
Hey now, this isn't OT at all. Michigan is the home of one of the world's experts on planetary atmospheres and he has done A LOT of work on Titan. Mr Sushil Atreya is routinely cited in reports like this, but aolnews wanted to go with the awful from Stephen Hawking at the end.
Just so long as there are no Buckeyes (assuming they qualify as a life form).
John Glenn would like a word with you...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn
(here comes the negs, DfW is defending OSU again...)
Just so long as there are no Buckeyes (assuming they qualify as a life form).
I figure there's probably got to be life on Mars. Even if it didn't evolve there naturally, any space-faring microbes from Earth would have made them over on all the probes we sent there, starting with the 'Viking' spacecraft in the 70s. Or anything that hitched a ride on the probes as they went over.
hitched a ride on a Zoltan punt?
Even when I was a little kid, I wondered why they were looking for WATER as a sign of life. If something's living on a cold rock in space it's certainly not following our rules.
... I heard there are plans to explore Uranus.
But the name of Uranus has been changed to end that terrible joke once and for all.
Now it's called Urectum.
Was not terrible. It was AWESOME.
For the shameless self-promotion at the top of the post.