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The known universe

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    #32
    Turtwig
    Registered Users Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    lmaopml wrote: »
    So, what is the mathmatical probability of other intelligent life to be found in the Universe?

    Any mathmeticians out there?

    Undefinable at the moment.

    For earth like planets there is some estimate that it's about .01% for life as we know it which is actually quite high.:)
    Take it with a pinch of salt though...


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    #33
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,401 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    lmaopml wrote: »
    So, what is the mathmatical probability of other intelligent life to be found in the Universe?
    You're basically looking for the solution to the Drake Equation, formulated fifty years ago next year. Here's where it's at:

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

    In summary, depending on how you estimate different things, the number could be quite small, or it could be quite large. Basically, nobody knows.

    But it's certainly a good start when trying to get a handle on how to think about the problem.


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    #34
    chozometroid
    Registered Users Posts: 626 ✭✭✭chozometroid


    Wicknight wrote: »
    No we know how obvious it is that it hasn't been fine-tuned by how many solar systems there are.

    The odds that you would fine a solar system like yours (that supports biological life as we know it) in a universe made up of billions upon billions of star systems are quite likely. You are going to fine one of them at least.

    The universe doesn't need to be fine tuned for life was we know it because it is so freaking big. The universe could be completely un-fine tuned for life and we will still appear as some fluke because there are billions upon billions of solar systems and thus billions upon billions of chances that one of them will be like ours.

    But they are still rare. The size of the universe explains why we exist at all, but it is impossible to conclude that the universe has been tweaked to allow this to happen. If the universe is fine tuned for something it appears to be fine tuned for making stars or probably dark matter, considering that is what you fine all over the universe, not Earth like planets and biological life.

    Thinking the universe is fine tuned for life is like going into a sweat shop with wall to wall sweets and thinking the whole purpose of this shop must be to keep safe the pencil in the cashier's draw.
    So you think the edges of the universe should be right outside our clouds? Or perhaps behind the sun?

    The purpose of the shop might not be to keep the pencil safe, but to show off the sweets. However, what about the drawer? If the drawer is the only place in the shop where we ever find pencils, then we know the drawer is for holding pencils. So, the drawer has a purpose, and the drawer has to be somewhere. The shop is this somewhere.


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    #35
    Turtwig
    Registered Users Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    chozometroid wrote: »
    So you think the edges of the universe should be right outside our clouds? Or perhaps behind the sun?

    The purpose of the shop might not be to keep the pencil safe, but to show off the sweets. However, what about the drawer? If the drawer is the only place in the shop where we ever find pencils, then we know the drawer is for holding pencils. So, the drawer has a purpose, and the drawer has to be somewhere. The shop is this somewhere.

    I'm sorry I don't follow..


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    #36
    chozometroid
    Registered Users Posts: 626 ✭✭✭chozometroid


    Malty_T wrote: »
    I'm sorry I don't follow..
    Perhaps you missed the that part?
    Thinking the universe is fine tuned for life is like going into a sweat shop with wall to wall sweets and thinking the whole purpose of this shop must be to keep safe the pencil in the cashier's draw.


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    #37
    Turtwig
    Registered Users Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    chozometroid wrote: »
    Perhaps you missed the that part?

    Metaphors hurt.:o
    I sorta get your point, but I'd rather you clarified it, esp the significance of the drawer.


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    #38
    chozometroid
    Registered Users Posts: 626 ✭✭✭chozometroid


    Malty_T wrote: »
    Metaphors hurt.:o
    I sorta get your point, but I'd rather you clarified it, esp the significance of the drawer.
    Hey! First you quote my grammatical error (the that), thereby preventing me from editing it to hide my mistake, then you want me to clarify? lol

    Wicknight made the analogy about a drawer holding a pencil in a shop filled with sweets wall to wall, saying it is ridiculous to think the purpose of the shop is to keep the pencil safe in the cashier's drawer. Then I replied.


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    #39
    Sam Vimes
    Registered Users Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    chozometroid wrote: »
    So you think the edges of the universe should be right outside our clouds? Or perhaps behind the sun?

    Only if you want to argue that it's fine tuned. If there is one star and one planet and it supports life, that looks fine tuned but if there are billions upon billions upon billions of stars and planets and one just happens to support life, that doesn't look fine tuned, it looks like one planet just happened to end up that way. As someone said earlier, it's like the difference between buying a lotto ticket and buying a million lotto tickets


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    #40
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    Malty_T wrote: »
    Em you said "no" and then you proceeded to describe the vast size of the universe?:p

    whoops, I was referring to the "pretty" bit in chozometroid some what flippant post :p


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    #41
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    Wicknight wrote: »
    whoops, I was referring to the "pretty" bit in chozometroid some what flippant post :p

    Ah, so there should have been a comma after the 'No'? :)


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    #42
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    chozometroid wrote: »
    So you think the edges of the universe should be right outside our clouds? Or perhaps behind the sun?

    I think it is merely human egotism to think that the universe was fine tuned to allow life to exist when the building blocks for life account for less that 25% of the universe and life sustaining planets account for a tiny fraction of planets.

    We think the universe was fine tuned for us merely because that is how humans think about things. It is the same reason we thought the Earth was at the center of the universe, or why people think when it starts raining it is the universe trying to piss them off.

    There are lots of things in the universe that are far more abundant and more likely to happen based on the laws of physics than life. We don't think these are the purpose of the universe because they aren't us.
    chozometroid wrote: »
    The purpose of the shop might not be to keep the pencil safe, but to show off the sweets. However, what about the drawer? If the drawer is the only place in the shop where we ever find pencils, then we know the drawer is for holding pencils. So, the drawer has a purpose, and the drawer has to be somewhere. The shop is this somewhere.

    If people want to think the Earth was specifically created for life go ahead, there is better support for that since the Earth is covered in life. But then some what inevitably I imagine the conversation will move to Earth being specifically created for human life, since that is how our minds work, and you run into the same problem, that human life makes up a tiny fraction of the life that has existed on this planet over the last 4 billion years, and even now.

    I'm reminded of what J.B.S Haldane said when asked what insight into the mind of the Creator could he gleam from his work as a biologist

    "an inordinate fondness for beetles"


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    #43
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    PDN wrote: »
    Ah, so there should have been a comma after the 'No'? :)

    hey, that wasn't me that was the other guy ... I stayed out of that one :pac:


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    #44
    doctoremma
    Registered Users Posts: 1,870 ✭✭✭doctoremma


    chozometroid wrote: »
    If the drawer is the only place in the shop where we ever find pencils, then we know the drawer is for holding pencils.

    That doesn't follow at all. The drawer is simply a place where the pencils fit and says nothing about the original purpose (or lack of) of the drawer.


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    #45
    sink
    Registered Users Posts: 4,314 ✭✭✭sink


    chozometroid wrote: »
    So you think the edges of the universe should be right outside our clouds? Or perhaps behind the sun?

    The purpose of the shop might not be to keep the pencil safe, but to show off the sweets. However, what about the drawer? If the drawer is the only place in the shop where we ever find pencils, then we know the drawer is for holding pencils. So, the drawer has a purpose, and the drawer has to be somewhere. The shop is this somewhere.

    To improve the accuracy of the analogy you should add a few bits. Firstly the say the shop was 100 years old and the drawer was 30 years old and the pencil was placed inside the drawer for the first time six hours ago.

    Say the drawer was soaked in petrol and there is a sparking electrical socket nearby waiting to incinerate the drawer. Say there is an anvil suspended above the drawer by a piece of twine ready to smash the drawer into oblivion. Say there was a chainsaw resting a on top of the drawer and it was turned on with a pressure switch ready to slice the drawer in half at a moments notice. Add a few thousand more dangers that could obliterate the drawer and the pencil inside to the scenario to get an accurate picture of how precarious our situation is.


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    #46
    Gurgle
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,064 ✭✭✭Gurgle


    sink wrote: »
    lmaopml wrote:
    So, what is the mathmatical probability of other intelligent life to be found in the Universe?

    Any mathmeticians out there?
    That's impossible to say as we don't yet know how life began we can't say how likely or unlikely an occurrence it is.
    I'm willing to make a stab at it, based on the available data:
    100% probable.


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    #47
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    doctoremma wrote: »
    That doesn't follow at all. The drawer is simply a place where the pencils fit and says nothing about the original purpose (or lack of) of the drawer.

    Or the shop, which was the point of the analogy.


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    #48
    doctoremma
    Registered Users Posts: 1,870 ✭✭✭doctoremma


    Wicknight wrote: »
    Or the shop, which was the point of the analogy.

    Indeed. I was going to work it out through the whole analogy but thought I'd keep it simple at the start...


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    #49
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    sink wrote: »
    To improve the accuracy of the analogy you should add a few bits. Firstly the say the shop was 100 years old and the drawer was 30 years old and the pencil was placed inside the drawer for the first time six hours ago.

    That is a good point, time is nearly always ignored in these sort of arguments for a fine tuned universe.

    To say the purpose of the shop is to hold the pencil becomes even more ridiculous if the shop has been around for a 100 years and the pencil was just placed in there yesterday and will be taken out tomorrow.


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    #50
    doctoremma
    Registered Users Posts: 1,870 ✭✭✭doctoremma


    Wicknight wrote: »
    To say the purpose of the shop is to hold the pencil becomes even more ridiculous if the shop has been around for a 100 years and the pencil was just placed in there yesterday and will be taken out tomorrow.

    What if we find that, prior to the existence of the pencil, the contents of the drawer were elements which, by simply obeying the laws of chemistry and physics, could cause a pencil to gradually come into existence?


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    #51
    mewso
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 8,876 Mod ✭✭✭✭mewso


    Can't someone describe the video for PDN seeing as he doesn't watch these things? Should be easy for any reasonably intelligent poster. :D


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    #52
    chozometroid
    Registered Users Posts: 626 ✭✭✭chozometroid


    Wicknight wrote: »
    That is a good point, time is nearly always ignored in these sort of arguments for a fine tuned universe.

    To say the purpose of the shop is to hold the pencil becomes even more ridiculous if the shop has been around for a 100 years and the pencil was just placed in there yesterday and will be taken out tomorrow.

    The argument is not that the purpose of the shop is to hold the pencil, but that the purpose of the drawer is to.
    And the shop had to be constructed and furnished first, so of course it's older than the drawer, if it provides a place for the drawer. If we see that there is no where else in the shop where a pencil can be placed, even for a day, then the drawer must have a purpose, OR there was a purpose in placing a pencil in the only safe place for one.
    To improve the accuracy of the analogy you should add a few bits. Firstly the say the shop was 100 years old and the drawer was 30 years old and the pencil was placed inside the drawer for the first time six hours ago.

    Say the drawer was soaked in petrol and there is a sparking electrical socket nearby waiting to incinerate the drawer. Say there is an anvil suspended above the drawer by a piece of twine ready to smash the drawer into oblivion. Say there was a chainsaw resting a on top of the drawer and it was turned on with a pressure switch ready to slice the drawer in half at a moments notice. Add a few thousand more dangers that could obliterate the drawer and the pencil inside to the scenario to get an accurate picture of how precarious our situation is.
    That does not improve the accuracy, because all of those "dangers" should be all over the shop, and not just focused on this one drawer.


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    #53
    opinion guy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 11,001 ✭✭✭✭opinion guy


    Cool video...but I think its been done by the Simpson's before.....


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    #54
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    Wicknight wrote: »
    That is a good point, time is nearly always ignored in these sort of arguments for a fine tuned universe.

    To say the purpose of the shop is to hold the pencil becomes even more ridiculous if the shop has been around for a 100 years and the pencil was just placed in there yesterday and will be taken out tomorrow.

    Well, to be honest, that's because you purposely picked an analogy that was designed to be ridiculous. You could just as easily picked an analogy that made perfect sense.

    For example, you could have used the analogy of a stadium that was built specifically for the Olympic games. Then you could apply the same kind of questions that you have been asking:

    1. Does it make sense to argue that the stadium was fine-tuned for athletics events just because a small portion of the overall stadium complex (a complex which, incuding parking, covers several square kilometres) happens to be an oval shape of exactly 400m which, from our human perspective, appears to be suited to running races? Er, yes!

    2. Given that only a few competitors actually run on the track, is it reasonable to argue that the stadium was created for that purpose since it is occupied by hundreds of thousands of spectators, stewards, hotdog-vendors, toilet cleaners, ticket touts etc? Er, yes!

    3. Is it reasonable to argue that the stadium was created for the purpose of running races during a short period of a few weeks, given that the entire process of constructing the stadium (submitting the bid, design, planning permission, construction etc) took over a decade? Er, yes!

    So, depending on which analogy we choose, the logic looks very different, doesn't it?

    The fact is that our choice of analogy is determined by our presuppositions. If you think humanity is no more than an accidental afterthought then you will compare it to pencils stuffed in a drawer. If you think humanity is the pinnacle of God's creation then you will compare it to a headline event like the Olympics.

    Which all goes to demonstrate my original point, that the size of the universe does not logically impact either positively or negatively on people's arguments for or against God. Both sides will use it to bolster their preconceived ideas.


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    #55
    chozometroid
    Registered Users Posts: 626 ✭✭✭chozometroid


    doctoremma wrote: »
    What if we find that, prior to the existence of the pencil, the contents of the drawer were elements which, by simply obeying the laws of chemistry and physics, could cause a pencil to gradually come into existence?

    Perhaps we should just get rid of the analogy altogether, lol.


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    #56
    doctoremma
    Registered Users Posts: 1,870 ✭✭✭doctoremma


    chozometroid wrote: »
    The argument is not that the purpose of the shop is to hold the pencil, but that the purpose of the drawer is to.

    There is no logical conclusion that because you find pencils in a drawer, that the drawer was designed or intended to hold pencils.
    chozometroid wrote: »
    If we see that there is no where else in the shop where a pencil can be placed, even for a day, then the drawer must have a purpose,

    The drawer may indeed have a purpose but just because it can act as a safe sanctuary for pencils amid a sweet-shop of destruction does not mean the drawer is designed for such a purpose.
    chozometroid wrote: »
    OR there was a purpose in placing a pencil in the only safe place for one.

    Or there were pencils all over the shop and it's only the ones in the drawer which survived.


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    #57
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    mewso wrote: »
    Can't someone describe the video for PDN seeing as he doesn't watch these things? Should be easy for any reasonably intelligent poster. :D

    I actually knew the universe was very big already. A video would not change that. But it might helpful for those who hadn't yet grasped that concept. ;)

    However, to clarify, (as appears to be often necessary on this forum) what I said was that arguments on video are a waste of time. A music video, or one demonstrating the beauty or grandeur of something, is often well worth watching (but not from home given my location in a village and this country's third world broadband provision).


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    #58
    doctoremma
    Registered Users Posts: 1,870 ✭✭✭doctoremma


    chozometroid wrote: »
    Perhaps we should just get rid of the analogy altogether, lol.

    I'm warming to it :)


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    #59
    mewso
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 8,876 Mod ✭✭✭✭mewso


    Forget the analogy. Lets just remember what the people of Uranus said about how the universe was created for them:-

    " "


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    #60
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    PDN wrote: »
    For example, you could have used the analogy of a stadium that was built specifically for the Olympic games.
    Everything built for an Olympic games has a purpose and is used.

    Perhaps your stadium analogy would be more realistic if a billion stadiums were built for the event and only one of them actually saw any action.


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    #61
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,401 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Near the mid-Atlantic Ridge, there's a hydrothermal vent,
    With there lived a small amoeba who wondered what it meant.
    He pondered all around him, surveying the wide, deep sea,
    Then finally concluded, "I think it's made for me".


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