Tris, it’s not my science. It’s yours, too.
Step 1. Hypothesis
Step 2. Testing the hypothesis.
Unless you’ve got evidence of such testing going on, all you’ve got is a fanciful idea.
We KNOW that carbon-based life forms exist. We don’t know of any other types that exist. I’m willing to jump through your hoops to see if life can exist elsewhere, but I draw the line when you light the hoops and hold them above a vat of acid. I’m just trying to stay within the logical and realistic limits that we know of. If you want to add magic to this equation, write a novel.
Are you trying to tell the universe that beyond the quest for food, without competition with another species, these things I’ve listed are of no interest to them?
So, let me be sure I understand you, ok? You are saying that no other basis for life is possible other than carbon-hydrogen-oxygen, and that considering any other possibility is unscientific, akin to jumping into a vat of acid. Because of this, you find me unreasonable? Am I following you so far?
<P ALIGN=“CENTER”> Tris </P>
Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have. – **René Descartes, **
So, assuming for the sake of argument that life arises in some environment, it might be a wholly uniform and quiescent one in which mutation and selection never happen?
I know that some posters believe that biological evolution is the Devil’s hypothesis, but is kowtowing to these idjits (sic) appropriate for purposes of this thread?
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
The odds on our form of life occuring outside our galaxy are incredibly slim. for one reason. We are a product of our environment. It is fairly impossible for that environment to be created. The theory dosent cover life “but not as we know it”, only our explination of how our form of life occured.
is there life out there other than our own?
who knows?
J
“We should have as high a regard for the church so as to keep it out of as many things as possible”
Fluther Good -the Shadow of a Gunman.
Sean O’Casey
I do believe that we are talking about technological evolution, Lib.
Tris, I am sorry that you are having such trouble with the difference between “possible” and “probable”. It is “possible” that there are sections of the moon inhabited by space mice that live off of the unexplored parts of the moon that are made out of green cheese, but is it “probable”?
Krispy, I asked for examples of technological evolution without competition, not wild imaginings. The world I am trying to discuss here is the real world.
Folks, we have a few billion individual people here on Earth. If that isn’t enough, we have an uncountable number of species that we can deal with. Why do some people insist that, dispite all odds against it, and the total lack of hard evidence supporting it, there must be something else on our level or above it out there.
Try to imagine the King of Hearts sitting alone on the top of a deck of cards. He loudly proclaims that there MUST be other Kings of Hearts out there, while totally ignoring the 53 cards below him.
Ok slythe…although you didn’t originally specify technilogical advancement, I’ll play that game…
Depending on your point of reference, a wheel is technology. Your logic says that on a planet with a single species a wheel would never be invented due to lack of competition for food and other resources with other species.
Can’t you honestly envision that the single species might have the desire to become more efficient?
I’m curious about the statistics evidently backing the allegations that slythe posts – why, for example, is the Sun’s stellar type “not as common as we had hoped”? I was under the impression that the proportion of G-type stars was pretty well established – has somebody gotten some new numbers that skew the old figures?
Also, and I have nothing but Larry Niven’s word to support this, the idea that Earth would have a Venus-type greenhouse atmosphere if it weren’t for our relatively giant Moon having helped strip a great deal of it off by tidal drag is worth addressing.
Quick comment overall: until we have some clear evidence for the total composition of other solar systems, we cannot generalize. So far as I know, exactly one planet has been directly observed, and that in transit across its star. Something like two dozen stars are known to have planets on the “wobble” theory; two of them are known to have more than one (one two and one three). All the known planets are gas giants or possibly brown dwarfs – the line between them gets fuzzy up around 1,000X Earth.
In a world “without competition” a wheel could be invented for various reasons.
Perhaps as a form of entertainment…as in rolling it over the ground for kicks…
Perhaps to improve efficiency…as an improvement to a hand cart…
Your premise seems to be that lack of competition between species completely eliminates any inovation or improvement (keeping in mind that we hypothesize about a sentient species).
Although neither of us can absolutely prove our opposing view on this, I feel certain that most people that would care to take the time to think about this premise would share the point-of-view that I hold.
It comes down to is: Is it possible or impossible, probable or improbable, that a sentient species living on a planet with no other species of any kind would have any impetus to develop any form of technology?
I say possible and probable. Anybody else have an opinion?
If we suppose that they are vegetarians(no other sentient species), then the first weapons would not be made. They would live out in the open without fear of other species. There would be no need to gather in groups for protection, so any ideas that might develop would spread very slowly.
Have I left out any other factors?
Not necessarily. We all know who kills more humans every day - other humans! There is no reason to think that a species couldn’t be barbaric and fight amongst itself even without any predatory foes around.
Actually, this idea originated in the mid '60s, when it was discovered that the Cytherean (<-- note obscure classical reference) atmosphere was roughly 90 times as dense as Earth’s. It was pretty rapidly discredited, as it was understood that the dense, CO[sub]2[/sub]-laden atmosphere of Venus was due to none of that CO[sub]2[/sub] being locked up in crustal carbonates. Niven began writing when the idea was vogue, however, and, as he is not about to go back and rewrite a bunch of 30-year-old short stories, that particular bit of misinformation will remain forever enshrined in them.
As slythe pointed out in the OP, a large moon does help stabilize the axial tilt of the Earth. However, this does not rule any but large-mooned/double planets as potential abodes of life, as it fails to account for:
[list=1][li]The effects of smaller but closer moons;[/li][li]The possible synergies of multiple moons;[/li][li]Satellites of jovian or superjovian primaries.[/list=1][/li]
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
But Satan, would we have developed such a vicious nature without first having the self-defense instincts we needed to survive in the first place? If a person isn’t threatened by nature, there is no need to build a shelter(except for natural covering), no need to establish common living areas because a completely vegetarian species would have to roam as seasons change, and thus no great wealth to establish or steal. Without a great self-defensive instinct, how violent do you think a nomadic species could get?
Akatsukami, you have some good points about the other types of moons that might stablize a planet’s orbit. Can anyone provide info on how stable the axes are of the planets in our solar system, both the moon and the moonless ones?
Well, I looked around briefly and I can’t find any web-based information on axial tilt (the technical term, I find, is “obliquity”) stability for any planet except Earth.
I dimly remember James Oberg referring to a Gedankenexperiment in which putting a suitablt massive object in equatorial orbit about Mars would, by pulling on the Tharsis plateau, cause the planet’s obliquity to stablize at 35°. I’ll see if I can track down that.
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
Thank you for the effort!
On the related note, if a vegetarian species without predators or competition existed, who would they develop? Outside of domestic cows, which of course don’t know of the danger they are in, can we reference any species?
Slythe, I don’t know, my man. I think I agree with Satan.
I mean, I get your point, but you’re not accounting for psychosis or neurosis, are you? You’re talking about how, given ideal situations, there would be no need for externalities, and that point is well taken. But wouldn’t the subject in the environment also have to be ideal?
