Odds of other life in the Universe (Page 9)

Corwin: Okay, Bobby, I tried to steer the thread back on topic, and we get it... you're a Creationist who doesn't believe in Evolution. But knock it off with that crap or I'll start just deleting your posts.

These are the SCIENCE forums, not a Religion forum for you to attack Science and preach Creationism. And this particular thread is about other life in the Universe. You already have two other threads about Evolution to comment in with those views. Keep it in there.

kittybobo34: Have to agree with you Corwin, 100-200 billion stars per galaxy, 200 billion galaxies that we can see. Imagine the possiblities.

chronology: Possibilities? really? for what? The Hubble has raised more questions than it has answered. NASA say all they do is provide the instruments, what conclusions people draw from the use of the machine is their business. But Astronomers have found some odd data. Some stars are, it seems, older than the Universe. This would seem impossible, but that is what the data says. Also the expanding 'Big Bang' idea is being questioned as well. And 'Black Holes' are not what we thought either. Hubble has found Black Holes' as big as Galaxies sucking in billions of tons of matter a second.

Corwin: @Duncan - Your post was about Neanderthals, was mostly nonsense, and had absolutely nothing to do with the topic/title of this thread.
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@chrono - That is all irrelevant as to the possibility of life elsewhere. What we have also found with our deep-space observations (and the Hubble is only a tiny part of that and sees only the narrow visible spectrum) is that the same conditions that exist in our neck of the woods exist throughout the Universe.

Some regions are more hostile, such as closer to the centers of galaxies where the densely packed stars and intense activity create too much radiation to allow for life. But out in the more sparse and calm of the outer spiral arms we see pretty much the same conditions we have here.

Next to molecular Hydrogen (H2), water (H2O) is the most abundant molecule in the Universe, and plenty of all the other elements such as Carbon that make life possible here. Certain specific conditions are needed, such as a "stable" star that isn't too large (larger stars live shorter lives ), and a rocky planet orbiting in the Habitable-Zone. But with hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars...
... possibilities? .... Of course.

Corwin: Also, those numbers (billions, trillions ) are hard to wrap our heads around, and most can't appreciate the vast scale of that. But someone came up with a great analogy some years ago that helps a bit...
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Imagine each star as a grain of sand. All the stars you see on a clear night would fill a thimble.

All the stars in the Milky Way galaxy would fill a dump-truck.

All the stars in ALL the galaxies (within the "visible" Universe)?... we need something a lot bigger. Picture a freight-train, and each freight-car is filled with grains of sand. We're stopped at a railway-crossing as the train speeds past us, one freight-car per second.
You'd be waiting at that railway crossing for over 3 YEARS before you saw the last car pass.

And that's only within our "visible sphere" of the Universe (roughly 28 billion light-years in diameter). It's been theorized that because of something called the "Inflationary Epoch" during the early Universe, that our visible sphere is only a FRACTION of it's true entirety. So allowing for that, you would likely grow old and die waiting at that crossing before that train finished passing.

That's a lot of stars.

kittybobo34: Interesting, your comment about the inflationary Epoch. I have always thought that the universe was way way bigger than what we could see. May even be older dead universes out there.

Corwin: Yeah, it only makes sense. We have an odd visual perspective. From our standpoint, we appear to be at the very "center" of that visible sphere, with a radius in all directions from our viewpoint to the "beginning" of 13.8 billion light-years (away or ago, depending how you look at it).

But it would be a ridiculously improbable coincidence to actually be in the "center", if that term can even apply to our placement within an expanding bubble of Space/Time where it's Space/Time itself that's expanding. So therefore it must be a lot bigger than what we see.

It's difficult to calculate an exact estimate of it's true size, and estimates range greatly, but it could be orders of magnitude larger than our visible sphere.

It boggles the mind.

But also, in reference to that train again... to think of a life-time worth of freight-cars passing, all filled with sand... for only ONE of those grains of sand to harbor life... that just seems silly.

kittybobo34: It makes a very visual point. Chrono comented earlier that black holes the size of galaxies have been found (not sure I believe that one) but if so I think that could be the seed of a new big bang.

Corwin: There is that theory, that Black Holes squeeze matter "outside" of our Universe and starts another Big Bang with it's own Space/Time continuum. But that's basically just imagining possibilities without any real Hypothesis to explain how that could be, nor any real Science to support the idea. And since it's been calculated that Black Holes "evaporate" over time when matter stops falling into it, it kind of lends doubt to that possibility.

But Chrono is partly correct about giant Black Holes, but he used the wrong term... "size" doesn't really apply... "mass" is the correct term. All galaxies like our own have a monster Black Hole at its center. Just as solar systems orbit stars, galaxies such as ours rotate around a massive central Black Hole. Ours has a mass of billions of Suns.

As far as "size", the heart of a Black Hole is called a "Singularity", which has no spatial dimensions at all... a point of infinite density, and space bends within itself so it's merely a "point" in space. It has "mass" and it has "spin" but has no "diameter".
What does have a diameter is the "Event Horizon"... this is the point where matter falling into it reaches the speed of light and is no longer visible.
If our Sun was the Milky Way's central Black Hole, its Event Horizon would be somewhere out at the orbit of Neptune.

But these Black Holes aren't as "dangerous" as some have imagined. It's a misconception that they "swallow up" everything around them and will one day swallow everything. Most matter is either locked in a fast orbit around them, or matter that is falling inwards is far more likely to get "sling-shotted" away again. For instance our Milky Way's giant has been quiet for quite some time now, and most galaxies were more active in that way in their earlier formative years.

When they do gobble up some new matter they eject giant jets of radiation and particles from their poles which blast out for hundreds of thousands of light-years. When we first observed this happening billions of light-years distant we called them "Quasars"... but we know now that they were merely "active" young galaxies in their formative stages, with their central Black Hole swallowing up matter and growing in mass, until it all reaches an equilibrium and calms down to become more what we familiarize with as a typical galaxy.

Corwin: Duncan... we're going to discuss Science stuff now.

I'm not going to go back through this entire thread and delete irrelevant posts, as that would take me all week... but from here on it's going to be Science, relating to the posted topic/title.
Straying a bit from the topic to expound on a point or question of a scientific nature, as I just did, will be allowed.

And Cosmology has a HECK of a lot more to do with the topic on hand than a Creationist arguing the invalid nature of evolutionary theory. As I pointed out on the previous page:

Whether life evolved on other planets or was put there by a "God" is a moot point.
And we have other forum threads to discuss Creationism vs. Evolution.

Besides, scrolling up, I see that the Black Hole post is in fact relevant... Chrono used them as an example of why life elsewhere would be improbable. I quoted valid Science that dispels that notion, as giant Black Holes are not only commonplace, but possibly even "necessary" for galaxies like ours to exist.

kittybobo34: That is another thing that escapes my rational mind, how radiation can escape at the poles. So much gravity is sucks in light, yet radiation gets ejected at the poles.

angpd: Someone mentioned a while back that life could not exist at the centers of galaxies, With a higher density of stars and the radiation. I kind of figure that galaxies, like a solar systems, have their own Goldilocks zone. Thus eliminating a large number of stars, and therefor the chance of life in their solar systems.

kittybobo34: That is correct, the radiation from the center and the cluster of new born stars would kill any complex life from the start.

angpd: My point being everyone seems to be using all these large number as a way to say with all these stars there must be a chance of life on one of them. Like 1 or 2 billion stars in a galaxies. We should start subtracting those stars where life is impossible or improbable instead of including all the stars. No idea how many stars that would leave, Do you?

kittybobo34: we dont know enough to do that kind of averaging, The planets we can see around stars are just the ones that occult the sun or are big enough to put a drag on their local sun. We don't really know what the average of goldilocks zone planets would be until we get a better visual system.

kittybobo34: The new space telescope will be in a pairing, so we can get a binocular image, so not only will it be larger but it will be distance accurate.

angpd: very interesting. but away from my point. just talking about stars here. Assuming there are a great number of them with solar systems and some planets are bound to be in the Goldilocks zone. There is also a great number of stars where complex life could never form, even if they have planets in their Goldilocks zone. Just saying we should eliminate them from the equation.

duncan124:

I rather agree with Chono and others that there is little chance of life elsewhere and think that maybe we are not alone here.

The title is only asking if there is other life and not insisting it is somewhere else!

kittybobo34: angpd, My point was that there is no way we can do that. We don't know how often stars have planets in the zone or what the average of anything is out there..

angpd: I agree with everything you are saying. but surly we could eliminate all the stars in the central cluster. where conditions are incomparable with life.

kittybobo34: OK, that would probably eliminate half, you could probably eliminate 2/3 of the rest of the planets because they are not in the goldilocks zone, and all blue giant stars because of their radiation.

Evelyn99: I will guess a lot less specially for what we here comcider intelligent life because it’s a very long and vanrble process. But even if very good planets like earth or better are very rear it’s tons more than Bill gates has pennies

angpd: hahaha