Life elsewhere? Who cares?

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by iacobus

He! He! I do seem to be slipping around, don't I.

Yes. Since the topic of this thread is about life elsewhere I see no reason to discuss NEOs here. Start a new thread if you like - we try to keep things manageable.

[iacobus]

No, my original post pertained to why we should care if there is other life out there in space. I have great difficulty understanding why so much effort should be put into this search. The thread slid off track because of comments about the funding.
Getting back to finding life. We transmit a signal, and if there were something out there relatively close to us, it would be 200 years or so to get a reply. Even then, it would be purely by chance that the return signal would be picked up here.
I can't see the reasoning behind this. Why invest in something like this?
I can see returning to the moon. In fact, if there were calls for volunteers to set up a moon base, I would jump at the chance.
I'm trying to understand, but I have to tell you, it is very very difficult for me.
Iacobus

[Stargazer]

Well we're mostly listening, actually. I don't see why SETI is so bad, really. It's part of our scientific study of the universe. More insight regarding other solar systems, extraterrestrial life and intelligent life, would increase our understanding of the universe, and probably see ourselves in different light. What, exactly, is wrong with looking for answers?

[Tormod]

iacobus, I think you are vastly overestimating the amount of money and resources put into the search for life in the universe. Do you have any facts or figures to back up your concern that too much is being spent?

[Aki]

Originally Posted by iacobus

No, my original post pertained to why we should care if there is other life out there in space. I have great difficulty understanding why so much effort should be put into this search.

I think it's just for curiosity. Man always want to find an answer to their question.

[iacobus]

The following excerpts do not answer your question, but it's all I could find on a short notice.
Here are some data.

Key Points on the President's FY 2005 Budget

The Budget requests $16.2 billion in FY2005 and $87 billion for NASA over five years, an increase of $1 billion over the FY 2004 five-year plan.

This seems to me to be very realistic and acceptable.
Now the above figures apply to N.A.S.A., and includes things I most definitely approve of. Moon, Mars, our Solar System, things near to home. Things that can directly affect our planet, and therefore our lives.

I am having a bit of difficulty finding any listings for the private funding for the long distance stuff. But I'll continue to search for something. And as you mentioned, I might be over-estimating the amount of money and resources being spent on the search for life in the universe. It would be interesting to know how much has been spent on these ventures. And what the human race has gained from it.
Iacobus

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by iacobus

Now the above figures apply to N.A.S.A., and includes things I most definitely approve of. Moon, Mars, our Solar System, things near to home. Things that can directly affect our planet, and therefore our lives.

"near to home" is of course a matter of definition. 100 years ago nobody would think we could ever reach Mars with a space probe. Now they're sent out every two years.

The Solar System is so vast that it's hard to imagine the size of it - it streches from the sun an many, many times further out than the outer planets. The Oort cloud hols endless amounts of icy material, clumped up in snowballs, which occasionally dive in towards the sun as comets. These are believed to be carriers of key elements for the building blocks of the basis of life as we know it - hydrogen and oxygen (ie, water), carbon, and other elements. Studying these can teach us something about how the solar system formed, because they are remains of the matter that was around then. They are 4,5 billion years old. That is what the Rosetta mission is currently on it's way to do - and that mission is funded by the European Space Agency, by the way.

I am having a bit of difficulty finding any listings for the private funding for the long distance stuff. But I'll continue to search for something. And as you mentioned, I might be over-estimating the amount of money and resources being spent on the search for life in the universe. It would be interesting to know how much has been spent on these ventures. And what the human race has gained from it.

For me, the term "search for life" is a bit misleading. Some people do exactly that. They may be hobby astronomers paying out of their own pockets, or they may be astronomers on the payroll of any university or insitution world-wide.

But what usually happens is that we make a discovery of some kind - like seeing a Hubble shot which shows how stars are born or die, and we see a planetary nebula and watch solar systems be born. We use satellites like Integral and Swift to study gamma rays in order to learn how these incredible strong events occur, and how often - because our cosmos is swamped with radiation. The search for life takes place inside all of this. Just like a geologist studies fossils in the ground, a planetary scientist or exobiologist study the observations made by our instruments and try to find out if there is life out there, or if life is unique to Earth.

What "the human race" benefits from it? This universe is our home. If we keep studying our back yard forever then we might fail to find out if we live in a desert or just on the outskirts of a big jungle swamped with life, if you allow a bit of science fiction into it. We may also learn how whether there are planets out there which we might one day colonize.

In a larger picture, I see no difference between studying the universe and studying the earth. We need to learn more about our earth for many reasons - like finding out how to battle pollution, predict global warming trends, and make better navigation systems. But I wish more money was put into cosmology and astronomy than what is currently spent. It is a much more worthwhile pursuit than that of, say, "war on terrorism". Now what has the human race gained from that? If you took a tiny fraction of what the US government has spent on wars in the past decade, you could probably fund ten times the exploration of the cosmos that we are able to do today.

[Stargazer]

I most certainly agree with the stuff NASA does, like the exploration of the solar system (especially after Bush's new Exploration Vision.) But, even the search for Earth like planets will be part of this Vision programme. Some SETI projects are funded by private financers, for example Paul Allen, who is right now funding a large array radio telescope, consisting of 350 antennas á 6 m if I remember correctly. This is built by the SETI Institute. There are other projects around the world, but I don't know enough about them.

[iacobus]

Okay, here's what we don't know:
1. How old is the universe?
2. How far away are the many stars we look at?
3. What is the matter that makes up our universe?
4. And if we enter into the realms of physics, wow!
So, what good has been derived from all this investigation of the far away places?
Compare this to the results of the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs of the 60's.Yes, I know many have said all we gained were a bunch of moon rocks that cost x million dollars per kilogram. But a little investigation shows there have been many advantageous fallouts.
That's my point. Spend money on those things that will advance us NOW, not on some far flung search, that even if proven to be successful, won't make a damn bit of difference to us. We will all be long dead before any answer comes streaming across the vast open space. And with the run-away population of the earth, in two hundred years no one will care if alien life forms answered or not. Everyone will be trying to find some beans to eat.

BUT, and this is a big but, I thank you all for you inputs. You have certainly given me some things to think about. I may even change my mind a bit, especially since I found out the funding isn't so horrendous.
Again, thanks for the inputs. I'm going to go crawl into a comfortable cave and ponder on these things.
Iacobus

[BlameTheEx]

In principle, the higher the gravity, the smaller the lifeforms. A tree will grow as high as it can to steal the light from it's shorter neighbours. The limit on its height is gravity. Too high and it can't support its own weight. Less gravity, less weight.

Of course this is not true if the lifeforms are supported by water or some other fluid.

Gravity limits the maximum size of lifeforms, but evolution favours the small. Small lifeforms on Earth have shorter lifecycles, and greater actual numbers. Both effects mean that smaller lifeforms evolve faster. Any large lifeform is doomed. It will eventually be replaced by a large version of something small that has out-evolved it. I dare say we will one day be replaced by oversized rodents.

Still, while a small lifeform can increase in size rapidly over only a few generations (as we are doing right now. Consider the smaller size of our ancestors, or even our parents), it can't help being badly designed for size. Before evolution can correct the faults that stop it to reaching ultimate size, it too will face competition from a suddenly larger version of something that has evolved advantages in matters other than size.

It has always been assumed that the largest dinosaurs plodded along because anything faster would snap their bones. I wonder at this. Perhaps they had better bones than the mammals that replaced them. The mammals of that time were never big. They probably never had the pressure to evolve for strength of bones that the dinosaurs did. The dinosaurs are gone, and mammals replaced them, but the elephant is a lot smaller than the dinosaurs best. Strong bones just wasn't enough of an advantage to save the dinosaurs.