The oldest continents in the Milky Way may be 5 billion years older than Earth's

[admin]

Several exoplanets at the edge of our galaxy could have formed continents — and advanced life — 5 billion years earlier than Earth, new research suggests.

The oldest continents in the Milky Way may be 5 billion years older than Earth's : Read more

 

[Jim Doggett]

I find it rather humorous that two exo planets, even if supporting life as we know it, the author posits that both due to being a couple billion years older could have evolved life more advanced than our own. I think that watching too much Star Trek could be responsible. The notion that intelligent species are inevitable in the evolution of living organisms is a bit far fetched given that homo sapiens are a one in a trillion shot on this planet, alone, compared to all that has evolved.

And a major event that undid an equilibrium that spanned millions of years was needed to pave the way to us, and would have endured for millions more had the mass extinction event not occurred. And without the sudden stirring of the evolutionary pot, dinosaurs would never have come close to evolving into intelligent life.

Plus how many other potential trajectories might life have evolved into were the event that lead to us having evolved been one percent greater or lesser in impact? Myriad other changes in the evolutionary path could have occured and it's not rational to assume that they would have lead to intelligent life when no such trajectory existed previously.

You could have billions of Earth like planets and still not be certain that intelligent life would come about at any time in the planets existence. The Fermi Paradox is spot on, IMO. If indeed we were the inevitable outcome of evolution, the Milky Way would be littered with it and the galaxy would be an orgy of signals that were obviously the creation of intelligent life. But there's nothing yet and I doubt there will be any time soon, as in we are still in existence.

And I believe human kind would be better served by understanding how truly precious and very possibly unique we are. We might be better to one another and take preserving this planet more seriously. Colonizing Mars is absurd. Try colonizing Antarctica. At least it's got breathable air and ample sources of fresh water. Billionaire's folly should not cloud or reason, much less science fiction nonsense, especially among our scientific community.

 

[TorbjornLarsson]

I find it rather humorous that two exo planets, even if supporting life as we know it, the author posits that both due to being a couple billion years older could have evolved life more advanced than our own.

The paper was looking at possibilities: "could have evolved life more advanced than our own." Anatomically modern humans almost certainly is a rare outcome of evolution - if that and not intelligence is your yard stick - but the planet numbers stack up.

The so called "paradox" was a question resolved by Fermi himself: as long as we don't know if we can travel to other planetary systems there isn't any tension in our observations.

Your futile rant against science and technology is neither here nor there.

 

[Paul Mah]

I find it rather humorous that two exo planets, even if supporting life as we know it, ...The notion that intelligent species are inevitable in the evolution of living organisms is a bit far fetched...

And a major event that undid an equilibrium that spanned millions of years was needed to pave the way to us, and would have endured for millions more had the mass extinction event not occurred. And without the sudden stirring of the evolutionary pot, dinosaurs would never have come close to evolving into intelligent life.

Plus how many other potential trajectories might life have evolved into were the event that lead to us having evolved been one percent greater or lesser in impact? Myriad other changes in the evolutionary path could have occured and it's not rational to assume that they would have lead to intelligent life when no such trajectory existed previously... believe human kind would be better served by understanding how truly precious and very possibly unique we are. We might be better to one another and take preserving this planet more seriously. Colonizing Mars is absurd. Try colonizing Antarctica.

Earth's life has developed from cooperation to conquer... the 1st multicellular life was a cooperation to consume, the path since has been for those cooperations to dominate.

Our Homo Sapien intelligence has developed from dominating other life on our planet.

You assume a LOT putting our evolutionary path as the only path to intelligence.

And did you really suggest colonizing Antarctica? Why don't you suggest the speed-up of destroying this planet by saying we can just Nuke it to temperate climates.

 

[Jim Doggett]

Earth's life has developed from cooperation to conquer... the 1st multicellular life was a cooperation to consume, the path since has been for those cooperations to dominate.

Our Homo Sapien intelligence has developed from dominating other life on our planet.

You assume a LOT putting our evolutionary path as the only path to intelligence.

And did you really suggest colonizing Antarctica? Why don't you suggest the speed-up of destroying this planet by saying we can just Nuke it to temperate climates.

I don't assume that at all. Intelligence can come in many forms, such as big lizards or fishes and birds. I reject the notion that human like intelligent life is an inevitability or even at all likely. Exceedingly remote possibility, since we are a 1 in a Trillion outcome on this planet. And in the Grand history of it have been around half a million years and can see our own success could conceivably be an extinction level event, I'd not bet paychecks we'd make it another half million years.

A supreme rarity and around a blink of an eye in our own geological time. If other intelligence is out there somewhere it's irrelevant. We won't ever know nor will they. That's Star Trek fantasy.

 

[Hartmann352]

I’d like to offer the nickels worth of information.

Our rise to intelligence required a stable G2 star on the main sequence of the Hertzsprung/Russell diagram, a stable orbit in the habitable zone, a plethora of comets to deliver water over a billion years, a companion moon of sufficient size* to soak up many of the incoming comets and meteors and a huge outer planet like Jupiter to absorb many of the rocks whistling out of the Kzuiper belt.

We won’t understand other planets until we can accurately quantify the above.

* The moon is a bit more than one-quarter (27 percent) the size of Earth, a much larger ratio (1:4) than any other planet and their moons. Earth's moon is the fifth largest moon in the solar system. The moon's gravitational force is about 16.6 % of Earth's gravity.

See: https://www.space.com/18135-how-big-is-the-moon.html

Hartmann352