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As some of you may have heard, the detection of phosphene on Venus has been making the rounds as of late; terrestrial life may no longer alone in the universe. While nothing has been confirmed, some people have been discussing the implications of (potentially) primitive life being so close to our own home. Panspermia has been mentioned as a potential origin for life both here and there, which would imply the Venusians are just figurative siblings to the Earthlings. If the source of life is extra-solar then that just leads to even more questions. Then some people are freaking out over the Great Filter, and whether or not we're ahead of it at this point. Alien life being right on our doorstep could mean the panspermia theory is true, or that life is more common that not but humanity's development is anomalous. And whether that anomaly means we're just that exceptional or about to get nuked back into bacteria. We might be a mythical precursor race from many a cheap science fantasy novel, or we might become another bug on a windshield. Still, even with aliens it seems like human civilization stands alone. Unless the Venusian skygerms (they need a better name) end up being sapient, who knows at this point.

it seems really unlikely to me that life would be isolated on just one planet, if you define "life" as any sufficiently complicated self-replicating chemical reaction, but it also seems really unlikely to me that we would ever detect interstellar civilizations. To see why: imagine you send out a *really* strong pulse of EM radiation. Something so strong it fries birds for a kilometer in every direction. Okay, it's easily detectable a few million kilometers out, but a hundred light-years out, it's going to be 1.11E-30 times less powerful than it was a kilometer out, probably barely detectable. This is because the surface area of the sphere that contains the pulse expands quadratically. Even with a directed laser, assuming you accounted for gravitational distortions perfectly, a sub-nanometer defect in your apparatus would result in massive loss of signal at the destination. The Voyager program has already had to deal with this. They have had lower and lower data rates due to signal loss, even with ever better antennae(including the ones SETI uses) Basically, if we do pick up a signal from a faraway star, it's going to either be very nearby, or it is going to be something so advanced that we really ought to be terrified of them.

>>32124 It's impossible to use life in the inner solar system to say how common the development of life is in general, in my opinion. For example, I wouldn't be too surprised if some very primitive form of extremophile was present on Mars or Venus - because the inner planets are continually bombarded. Given billions of years, that gives many ample opportunities for life to adapt if it is capable of adapting. Panspermia is fun. >>32126 >or it is going to be something so advanced that we really ought to be terrified of them. Seconding this. If the development of complex intelligence is common, we should be very scared. Take a 200 year difference in technology as an example. Fighting "us" from the 1800s would be a cakewalk. I would definitely not want to fight us in the 2200s, as they would probably have a similar opinion. Then consider that an established civilization could theoretically have an unlimited amount of time to develop, provided nothing goes wrong. I figure even several hundred years' advancement would make them appear to be gods to us, but billions of years have already passed for them to have a potential headstart. >probably barely detectable For a civilization comparable to ours, definitely. If it's like I described above though, I would refute this. A sufficiently advanced civilization would be painfully obvious in their own galaxy - in as much as you can see a patch of stars gradually being "snuffed out". I think it's only natural for a growing civilization to utilise the power available immediately around it e.g. dyson swarms. The cases in which I may see this not happening, would be a civilization going digital and focusing on their inner worlds, and thus their energy consumption is on a smaller scale. Or simply being filtered before this point, in which case there is nothing to detect.

I think good abstract definition of life would be stable abstract patterns whose concrete embodiment is always changing. The `sufficiently complicated' part satisfies the everchanging concrete embodiment criterion and the self-replicating part satisfies the stable abstract pattern part. One example of a living organism is a corporation. It's made of humans, buildings,, but the humans don't stay part of it forever (they quit, are fired, retire, die,,), buildings decay or are renovated,, but the corporation stays alive. Even if the only thing that is stable is the fact that it's the same corporation, even if everything about it changed, the fact that there's a stable fact about it despite it's embodiment (employees, equipment,,) changing all the time, shows that it's something alive. >The cases in which I may see this not happening, would be a civilization going digital and focusing on their inner worlds, and thus their energy consumption is on a smaller scale. Or simply being filtered before this point, in which case there is nothing to detect. It only takes one Zorblaxander the Great wanting to gaze out into the nothingness of the ocean on the other side of the galaxy to start an empire. Maybe along the way there'll be a Bogotvor of Synox to humble Zorblaxander the Great by asking to `please stand out of my quasar.' >A sufficiently advanced civilization would be painfully obvious in their own galaxy - in as much as you can see a patch of stars gradually being "snuffed out". I think it's only natural for a growing civilization to utilise the power available immediately around it e.g. dyson swarms. Have you considered that a sufficiently advanced civilization will have finally learned to not deplete natural resources? How many levels of ``oh soy we're out of fuel'' would they have had to avert by then? It's not a matter of intelligence of this or that civilization, but a matter of probability. We only in the last hundred or so years became conscious of the scarcity of natural resources. Maybe in a millennia or two we'll have gone through a few more `energy crises,' at which point we'll probably have learned our lesson. And consider the fact natural resource depletion has happened before. Take the ancient deforestations of Iceland, or Easter Island for example. Now we've gone quite far and are really hurting our environment. If we make it through this one, I still think we won't have learned our lesson fully. Maybe we'll have expanded to some other planets and found some new scarce, useful resource that we (almost---maybe) entirely deplete before we come to our senses that the only way to have long-term stability is to only use resources that are renewable. I hope it doesn't take that long to finally engineer a disentropic device. Remember: the laws of thermodynamics are not based on hard principles. The second law may well be wrong. The fact that we've only observed entropy increase does not mean entropy decrease is impossible. It only means that it's unlikely to come about without engineering. Maybe sufficiently advanced civilizations invent their energy renewal devices.

>32144 addendum: >but a matter of probability The civilizations that don't learn the lesson will eventually not just almost run out of fuel, but will run out of fuel. The probability that they will go through multiple `energy crises' without learning their lesson is low, because there's so much chance for them to extinguish themselves.

>>32144 >Remember: the laws of thermodynamics are not based on hard principles. The second law may well be wrong. the laws of thermodynamics arise from applying probability theory to the study of mechanics. It is based on just as "hard" principles as anything else in physics. There have been thought experiments showing that if the second law doesn't hold, it would be possible to resolve the Halting Problem, which is a logical inconsistency. >The fact that we've only observed entropy increase does not mean entropy decrease is impossible. that isn't what the second law states, it states that total entropy *tends* to increase, that is, it will eventually increase with probability 1, not that it will always increase.you could stop it from working for 10 million years but 10 million years is nothing compared to forever.

>>32144 >Have you considered that a sufficiently advanced civilization will have finally learned to not deplete natural resources? I could certainly imagine that we and others would over time become to an extent more responsible with them. Burning gas and coal instead of using readily available energy via solar and fusion (which we ourselves will presumably have several decades from now) is incredibly short-sighted, and to an advanced civilization would probably look like shooting yourself in the foot. But I think a dyson swarm around as many suns as they can get a hold of, would almost certainly be the preferred modus operandi for any advanced civilization looking to expand (note: probably a precursor to having civilization is intellect and willingness to explore and utilise). As for why that is, you need to think why we currently protest usage of things like fossil fuels. To make it short: 1. Very finite 2. Harms the environment we live in 3. Harms the ecosystem we depend on A dyson swarm is simply to swarm a star with billions of artificial sattellites (e.g. farms, habitats, whatever you want) to absorb the vast majority of its solar energy. It is finite, but will last billions of years - and if you don't utilise it, it's just being wasted because the star will continue to burn anyway. To take advantage of it hurts no pre-existing environment or ecosystem - and if you have the means to cloak a star in satellites, you certainly have the means to produce billions of habitats suited to all kinds of species, with far more surface area than is available on the Earth. Animals and crops win in this one. Our sun (although not a great example of all stars, stars are very varied) puts out about 4x10^26 W of energy. In 2013, world energy consumption was roughly estimated at 6x10^20 W - though I doubt they can account for everything. By those numbers, the total solar energy could support our population and the society structure around them by a factor of a million - although with better technology, energy usage will be more efficient, so that's a very low estimate. But in theory, about 7 quadrillion people. Space also has lots of 3-dimensional room for those people, you could probably fit a large number of them just in Earth's hill sphere. And as for building material, you could find enough to build trillions of habitats while barely scraping scraping into the mass of the asteroid belt. If all of it was used, each of those 7 quadrillion humans could have 286 metric tons of material to themselves - probably more than you need. If humans develop and expand exponentially lack of energy will eventually be an issue (along with getting rid of waste heat presumably) - but that will be a long way away (thousands or tens of thousands of years), with lots of time to innovate. Between innovate and stagnate/perish, I would choose the former. tl;dr - Human expansion into space would not result in an ecological or moral/ethical crisis, and although no energy source is infinite, a dyson swarm is probably the best source of energy available.

what if it's venus that's alive and not a hypothetical life-form that lives on it?

>>32144 >Have you considered that a sufficiently advanced civilization will have finally learned to not deplete natural resources? Simply put: Impossible. From what we know, a species that will come to dominate its planet is a very competitive and ruthless one. It's a species that's hard-wired to be ambitious and calculating. This is all good and dandy when facing outside adversity, but the problem comes when there are no "outside" invaders. When left to its own device, they will naturally compete amongst themselves. And the only way to guarantee your victory in a competition is to go full steam ahead. If two factions fight (clans, tribes, nations, races, whatever) and one of them is mindful of the local resources while the other goes all in, exploiting everything available to give itself as much of an advantage as possible, the victory goes clearly to the aggressor. There is a natural selection factor that pretty much guarantees that such a species will end up being the dominating element on its planet. But how long would it take to reverse that natural programming? It takes millions of years to acquire that ruthless competitiveness will that civilization have enough time to realize their mistake and put competitiveness aside and reverse their very programming? Especially when they will most likely how much in trouble they are when it's probably already too late?

>>32153 that would be pretty cool, man. It would also be cool if Jupiter were alive. Staring at us with its one big eye. >>32155 >From what we know, a species that will come to dominate its planet is a very competitive and ruthless one what, like toxoplasma gondii? unless you mean to say that only humans dominate this planet, which is silly and stupid, even if it were true, your sample size of one is not very convincing.

>>32159 >toxoplasma gondii gondii doesnt transform the planet and ruin its environment, humans do. Humans ARE dominating the planet. I agree though, the sample size is just one and this is all speculation and theory.

>>32176 >>32159 >doing without knowing is extremely dangerous >knowing without doing is harmless I don't disagree but I think pic related. It's male energy that do what they do and don't even stop for a second, think of the future consequences of their personal actions/will. I'm gonna throw the capitalism card on the table, but it's not the sole reason and it's actually a whole deck of cards. Men who do because they can, without thinking of the future. Soldiers go blindly and follow their leaders, they all do it for money and they only take orders, not think on their own.. even the 'most educated' or doctors 'harvest' placenta/etc, some of them involved in drug experiments but the pay is big (like testing new drug to infants, secretly harvesting new born blood for the huge payout and 'rejuvenation' of their rich clients) and none of them speaks about it. >inb4 wars are good bc muh inventions If 'wars' were a requirement for mankind to advance, we're fuarrrking doomed. This fuarrrking mankind haven't even solved the human trafficking issue, I wonder what the over-funded 'data collection' retards had been doing with all their funny tiny backdoors, large cracking servers, and spyware-everywhere. The tao, monks, etc. that focus on the knowing. They're our hopes, and they're not meditating bullshit to clear their mind as the mainstream portrayal. They practice the mystic arts of knowing to 'simulate' and view the future like our ancestors/oracles that had warned us of our future. If you don't believe the mystic bullshit lookup the old government experiments and 'remote viewing' soldiers. I'm sure the glows had already declassified some info about the few thing they call 'metaphysical'.

>>32180 The problem is that the mystic monks dont mean soykaf in the grand scheme of things, specifically because they don't do. All that knowledge won't mean a thing when someone on the other side of the planet decides to drop a nuke on them for good measure. And the only way to defend against a nuke? It's to have a nuke of your own to spook the enemy. All of mankind is a giant game of Prisoner Dilemma. We need to trust that everyone else will be mindful of their environment, mindful of others, mindful of life and what's beyond it... but all it takes is one guy who says "fuarrrk the after life and fuarrrk the next generations, let's live for now and they will deal with their problems later" and you will end up with the situation we're in. A race to the bottom where whoever gets there first will have the comfiest spot in hell.

>>32181 >We need to trust that everyone else will be mindful of their environment, mindful of others, mindful of life and what's beyond it... but all it takes is one guy who says "fuarrrk the after life and fuarrrk the next generations, let's live for now and they will deal with their problems later" and you will end up with the situation we're in. an entire civilization needs to do that, if one individual does it then everyone labels them a miscreant and moves on.

>>32183 Sadly it's not that simple. A community that lives together, peacefully will never feel the need for protection. But then one guy decides to sneak up to a guy and stab him in the throat at night and suddenly everyone wont feel safe. The need to protect oneself from others will rise and you know how that story will end.

>b 70s Russian >conscripted to Space Program for glory of USSR >strict deadline on Venus Venera 7 lander >work long shift >go toilet to drop urgent soykaf >called back to finish spacecraft mid soykaf >fail to wash hands >touch Venus lander >half a century later the bacteria in your soykaf has created enough phosphine to be detected as proof of life on another planet >my soykaf terraformed a planet by accident >mfw

I've been lurking a bit and found something crazier. There's a hint that mars was nuked. It's based on a noble gases being usually extremely stable and if something like a nuke happens it transforms into a isotope that is again stable. So there's a longterm historical record in the noble gas isotopes. We have baseline date of this process from nuke tests here. The same isotopes recorded here from nuking where found over there however. PDF is from a .edu official site has also a heatmap.So its not uniform concentrated. They assume it was some natural nuclear reactor whatever that is supposed to mean but imagine the implication of ancient nukes blown on mars.

>>32187 >A community that lives together, peacefully will never feel the need for protection. But then one guy decides to sneak up to a guy and stab him in the throat at night and suddenly everyone wont feel safe. The need to protect oneself from others will rise and you know how that story will end. No community has ever been without the need for protection; all communities need protection from the elements and from predators. What you describe, this ever-escalating violence, is peculiar to certain human civilizations which have unfortunately become dominant in the past few thousand years. It is unsustainable and will die out, possibly taking all of humanity with it.

>>32208 >certain human civilizations which have unfortunately become dominant in the past few thousand years. It is sadly the way of the world. The only way to survive these aggressors is to be more aggressive, whether through war or economy. Maybe this is The Great Filter that would explain Fermi's Paradox, countless species on countless planets will die, until finally one of them strikes the perfect balance... Definitely won't be humans, that's for sure. >>32207 What blew my mind when I first learned of the nukes on Mars is this: What does the planet Mars represent in most cultures? fuarrrking War.

>>32210 >What blew my mind >Eyewitness accounts of things that happened and got passed down through so many generations they now sound like fanciful myths - actually happened Vimanas The following is a translation from an ancient Hindu text (The Mahabharata): “Gurkha, flying a swift and powerful vimana hurled a single projectile charged with the power of the Universe . An incandescent column of smoke and flame, as bright as ten thousand suns, rose with all its splendor. It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas. The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Hair and nails fell out; Pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white. …After a few hours all foodstuffs were infected… …to escape from this fire the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment.” — The Mahabharata

>>32207 >They assume it was some natural nuclear reactor whatever that is supposed to mean but imagine the implication of ancient nukes blown on mars. The whole Earth is a "natural nuclear reactor". That's what causes geothermal heating that increases with depth, and the molten outer core. Mine tailings can be very radioactive. It's completely "natural" and has nothing to do with man made technologies.

>>32217 Said isotopes didn't exist naturally here and were only amassed by nuke tests. That's why they attribute it to a nuclear reaction. If it was naturally occurring you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Which brings you back to if it didnt happen here naturally why should it over there.

>>32218 Utterly wrong. Do you really think the Earth has been naturally radioactive for over 4 billion years because of mankind? I suggest browsing through an elementary conceptual science textbook before saying such silly things in public.

>>32219 Learn to read. I never even mentioned anything radioactive. It's about specific noble gas isotopes.

>>32219 The name of the scientist proposing this is john brandenburg in his book life and death on mars. He is or atleast was a scientist at nasa for a long time and has done extensive research. He was originally proposing a natural explaination, but a coworker pointed out the xenon spectrum was shifted, indicating a weapons residue. It should also be noted that the two large craters on mars seem to be the epicenter of a nuclear weapons due to radiation traces and the size and shape of the craters seems to rule out natural events. Similar bizzare anomalies can be applied to the so called mars canals, they seem to be unexplainable, oddly enough electric engineers have reproduced a similar effect by applying current to sand. It might also be of interest that there is a theory that all planets in our solar system have a ratio of some sort to one another, turns out the astroid belt is exactly where a planet should be and its quite inexplicable too. Personally i couldnt really care less, i knew they were here a long time ago, i dont want to nor should get it oftopic further. Call me a schizo if you want i dont care.

>>32206 Makes you wonder what he's been eating if his germs can survive hell level temperatures and eat UV light.

>>32272 Don't forget the atmosphere that consists primarily of various strong acids. Venus is hell for most human life.