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Fascinating Talk Connecting Cosmology To Life

amirm

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Fascinating talk by the famous Dr. Brian Cox on nature of the universe and connection to us. He does such a great job explaining the possibilities. And many other topics that hard to get your arms around, yet he explains them to so simply. Please allow 20 minutes to watch it:

 
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amirm

amirm

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And if you liked that, this is a good follow up:


Could it be that it really took 5 billion years and fortuitous coincidences to create us?
 

kemmler3D

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Could it be that it really took 5 billion years and fortuitous coincidences to create us?
I think it's certainly possible. As you note, a lot of things have to go right to produce a technologically capable species. Arguably there are even other intelligent species on this planet (whales, elephants, etc) but without nimble hands and writing, they stay where they are.

Out of millions of species to ever exist on this planet, exactly one has invented technology beyond a pointy stick, and there's no guarantee we won't use it to destroy ourselves within a short few thousand years of first putting pen to paper.

They estimate the number of possibly habitable planets in our galaxy at 500M. Close enough I guess. If ALL of those planets originate life, but If only 1/10,000,000 species invents technology, (the estimated success rate on our planet) then there might be 50 planets with intelligent, technological life in the milky way. If you add ONE more stipulation then you probably narrow it down to zero, with margin for error. ;)

Keep in mind that being intelligent and having technology isn't necessarily optimal for evolution. Bacteria, ants, and beetles outnumber humans by hilariously large margins. Bacteria may still get the upper hand over us, too. Our antibiotics are wearing out.

Given that the solar system also apparently needs a certain configuration to harbor complex life (large outer planet absorbs enough asteroid impacts, etc) and you can't have too many gamma ray bursts nearby and so on... I don't see why we should assume the galaxy is crawling with intelligent aliens, or even could be. With N=1 we're not left with a lot of hard data on this subject.
 
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Vovgan

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Suddenly anything with less than a golfing/football panther feels like an mocking insult to these 2 tn galaxies…
 

phoenixdogfan

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And if you liked that, this is a good follow up:


Could it be that it really took 5 billion years and fortuitous coincidences to create us?
One of the most fortuitous circumstances is the evolution of Eukaryotic cells, which seem to have come about because one Prokaryotic cell swallowed another and developed symbiosis (and mitochondria) with it rather than digesting it. Without those nucleated cells, multicellular organisms would not be possible.

Answering the question of whether Eukaryotic cells developed just once in 4.5 billion years from one single ancestor, or whether they evolved independently any number of times, could well provide a compelling answer to how rare the evolution of intelligent life is, and therefore an answer to the Fermi Paradox.
 
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amirm

amirm

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Kinda makes you feel really insignificant huh? :)
It does. At the other end of the spectrum, if the hypothesis is right that we may be the only thinking and evolved form of life, it sure makes us special. Billions of planets and we are it? Just mind boggling....
 

Marc v E

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What surprises me is that hypotheses like the multiverse so often feature in the news and modern popular science. It's a hypothesis that is not testable and thus not a valid one. You'll notice if you follow Startalk by Neil Degrass Tyson (astrophysicist) or Sabine Hossenfelder (theoretical physicist) that they don't think much at all of these kind of theories.

Imo Frank Wilczek is much more down to earth while also being accessible.

Regarding the theory of the origin of life there is much evidence pointing to the direction that it's very easy to create the building blocks of life. The main question to be answered beside the origin then becomes why don't we see many other life forms?

When you dive into it it becomes quickly obvious that it's very hard for us to observe life from very far. We're just in the infancy of this science subject.

The other thing to consider is that there can be many cataclismic events during a 5 billion year lifespan: meteorites, loss of magnetic field, black holes nearby, a dying star etc. The most special thing about earth then becomes that it has survived this long relatively unscathed.
 
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amirm

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What surprises me is that hypotheses like the multiverse so often feature in the news and modern popular science. It's a hypothesis that is not testable and thus not a valid one. You'll notice if you follow Startalk by Neil Degrass Tyson (astrophysicist) or Sabine Hossenfelder (theoretical physicist) that they don't think much at all about these kind of theories.
The theory of what Brian explains as far as life before the big band seems like the most plausible to me. That the Universe coalesces into and becomes big bang and then this keeps repeating. Otherwise, it is mind numbing for me to think of big bang just happening.
 

Marc v E

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The theory of what Brian explains as far as life before the big band seems like the most plausible to me. That the Universe coalesces into and becomes big bang and then this keeps repeating. Otherwise, it is mind numbing for me to think of big bang just happening.
I understand. I can relate to that feeling of not being able to understand and trying to find the most plausible one within my own frame of concepts. Imo though, in the field between Physics and astrophysics this uneasiness is exactly what we need to deal with because it is at the frontier of science.
 

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Hermeticism wins again...
 

ROOSKIE

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I think it's certainly possible. As you note, a lot of things have to go right to produce a technologically capable species. Arguably there are even other intelligent species on this planet (whales, elephants, etc) but without nimble hands and writing, they stay where they are.

Out of millions of species to ever exist on this planet, exactly one has invented technology beyond a pointy stick, and there's no guarantee we won't use it to destroy ourselves within a short few thousand years of first putting pen to paper.

They estimate the number of possibly habitable planets in our galaxy at 500M. Close enough I guess. If ALL of those planets originate life, but If only 1/10,000,000 species invents technology, (the estimated success rate on our planet) then there might be 50 planets with intelligent, technological life in the milky way. If you add ONE more stipulation then you probably narrow it down to zero, with margin for error. ;)

Keep in mind that being intelligent and having technology isn't necessarily optimal for evolution. Bacteria, ants, and beetles outnumber humans by hilariously large margins. Bacteria may still get the upper hand over us, too. Our antibiotics are wearing out.

Given that the solar system also apparently needs a certain configuration to harbor complex life (large outer planet absorbs enough asteroid impacts, etc) and you can't have too many gamma ray bursts nearby and so on... I don't see why we should assume the galaxy is crawling with intelligent aliens, or even could be. With N=1 we're not left with a lot of hard data on this subject.
Paraphrasing Alan Watts here, '(some people feel we are) just a fluke, like you know, 1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters for a million years will eventually type the Encyclopedia Britannica.'

I am the type to beleive we live in something more akin to what we would describe as a simulation - a video game, a very complex, beautiful, frustrating and compelling one. Ah the drama of trying to understand it all, all the world is stage. I think shakespeare would have understood the world through the lens of creation itself as theater but a stage and simulation/video game are really just the same thing presented with different tools. In the same vein some lucid & waking dreamers might perceive us to be living in a dream, in a vision and that again is very similar to that of a game or a simulation right? - laying in bed while other lives unfold in ones mind while 'asleep'. Kinda holographic eh'?

Anyway, like subjective audio vs blind testing we are deeply influened by a lifetime of biases, expectations and stories. As much as I love science and devour it, in the end for myself it is a great story. One of many great stories and a great way to make concrete, iphones and warm homes with full refridgerators and accurate audio systems. Maybe not the best way really understand why the party is being thrown and why folks are having so much fun despite the mediocore PA speakers pumping out the tunes.
Mr. Watts again nails for me it when he speakes of typical approaches to understanding this place(the universe and the self) as often analogous to trying to bite ones own teeth or looking yourself in the eye.

Hermeticism wins again...
I am a bit of a hermit myself though in the end it is tantric all the way. (no not the typical western overly 'sexual' interpretation, rather the notion of life as a creative and therefore reproductive/productive/bringing forth expression) I am convinced this life is to be lived very fully, though I am a bit slow and hesitant to fully act with that vigor and trust.
It does. At the other end of the spectrum, if the hypothesis is right that we may be the only thinking and evolved form of life, it sure makes us special. Billions of planets and we are it? Just mind boggling....
I think that is part of the human conundrum though. It is weird because the most succesfull species of life here are typically not rare. Sort of by definition, they suceeded - they propagated.


Good stuff. Interesting time to be alive.
 

kemmler3D

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It's a hypothesis that is not testable and thus not a valid one.
Not testable with experimental means known to us, but it's possible (in the sense that I don't know why not) that theory and observation may advance to the point that a multiverse is logically required to support a "theory of everything".

Where do the laws of physics come from, anyway? Why would the laws we observe be the only ones? What is stopping other sets of physical laws in other universes from existing? We have no indication of where physical laws come from, nor any reason to think other universes don't exist, so we can't answer this definitively.

My personal hunch is that everything that isn't prohibited by basic logical inconsistencies exists "somewhere", simply because nothing stops it from existing. In other words, my hunch is the multiverse exists because nothing stops it from existing. Not just marvel-style series of universes that resemble ours, but with different things in them, but a true infinity in all dimensions and parameters.

Either that, or it turns out that there are basic logical/mathematical reasons that the laws of physics couldn't be any other way than the way they are in this universe, but that's just as hard to imagine as other universes for me, I don't have a basis on which to decide or speak on that.
 

Marc v E

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Not testable with experimental means known to us, but it's possible (in the sense that I don't know why not) that theory and observation may advance to the point that a multiverse is logically required to support a "theory of everything".

Where do the laws of physics come from, anyway? Why would the laws we observe be the only ones? What is stopping other sets of physical laws in other universes from existing? We have no indication of where physical laws come from, nor any reason to think other universes don't exist, so we can't answer this definitively.

My personal hunch is that everything that isn't prohibited by basic logical inconsistencies exists "somewhere", simply because nothing stops it from existing. In other words, my hunch is the multiverse exists because nothing stops it from existing. Not just marvel-style series of universes that resemble ours, but with different things in them, but a true infinity in all dimensions and parameters.

Either that, or it turns out that there are basic logical/mathematical reasons that the laws of physics couldn't be any other way than the way they are in this universe, but that's just as hard to imagine as other universes for me, I don't have a basis on which to decide or speak on that.
If an hypothesis is not testable it's not science. It means we're asking the wrong question, which is not specific enough to gain any knowledge from.

Tbh I don't think science can give an answer to everything, especially my personal life and how to deal with it in the best way possible.

Having said that, I don't see what anyone would gain from these fantasies by a scientist without scientific basis either. Imo it's back to square one instead of admitting we don't know certain things.

Maybe most of it stems from an urge in all of us to know the meaning of life. Science knows a lot of specific answers to specific questions, but this one it can't answer.
 
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Holmz

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I am the type to beleive we live in something more akin to what we would describe as a simulation - a video game, a very complex, beautiful, frustrating and compelling one. Ah the drama of trying to understand it all, all the world is stage. I think shakespeare would have understood the world through the lens of creation itself as theater but a stage and simulation/video game are really just the same thing presented with different tools. In the same vein some lucid & waking dreamers might perceive us to be living in a dream, in a vision and that again is very similar to that of a game or a simulation right? - laying in bed while other lives unfold in ones mind while 'asleep'. Kinda holographic eh'?

The threory seems like it is more popular with people whom are gamers.
 

kemmler3D

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If an hypothesis is not testable it's not science. It means we're asking the wrong question, which is not specific enough to gain any knowledge from.
Well, certainly this is the realm of philosophy at best for now, really more like idle speculation that happens to relate to science. But I still think it's interesting.
Tbh I don't think science can give an answer to everything, especially my personal life and how to deal with it in the best way possible.
Well no, because "best" is subjective, and we don't have a theory of neuro-physical consciousness that's useful for anything remotely like that, yet. However, if they ever "solve" the brain then potentially a "best" personal life could be computed and implemented. Very Black Mirror type of concept though.
 

egellings

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If an hypothesis is not testable it's not science. It means we're asking the wrong question, which is not specific enough to gain any knowledge from.

Tbh I don't think science can give an answer to everything, especially my personal life and how to deal with it in the best way possible.

Having said that, I don't see what anyone would gain from these fantasies by a scientist without scientific basis either. Imo it's back to square one instead of admitting we don't know certain things.

Maybe most of it stems from an urge in all of us to know the meaning of life. Science knows a lot of specific answers to specific questions, but this one it can't answer.
Maybe there is no meaning for life at all. It just happened without intent.
 

WillBrink

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Fascinating talk by the famous Dr. Brian Cox on nature of the universe and connection to us. He does such a great job explaining the possibilities. And many other topics that hard to get your arms around, yet he explains them to so simply. Please allow 20 minutes to watch it:

Dr Cox is a good communicator, usually rare for scientists, physcists working at that level in particular. I always enjoy his info.
 
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