More space news!

[L. Marcus]

The latest run to the ISS for the Falcon 9 went badly. As in FWOOM! badly.

[Cancer]

Time for breakfast

As long as it does not come over because the neighbours keep watching it via telescopes when it tries to eat in peace.

Could be that someone finally sank a ball in that pocket.

[L. Marcus]

Must've been Lister.

[tkdguy]

Dark spots on Pluto

[megaplayboy]

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/aliens-look-just-humans-says-222518092.html

 

Interesting theory.

[Old Man]

I've wondered about that.  Obviously aliens wouldn't look exactly like humans but there's clearly a bias towards bipedalism at least, if not also opposable thumbs and binocular vision.

[L. Marcus]

Bipedalism assumes four limbs -- I can easily imagine species with six, eight, or more. Not to mention radial symmetry, with five limbs. And binocular vision depends on what kind of eyes they end up with, and perhaps even more on what image processing wetware they evolve. For tool. use and a technological culture, some form of manipulation is needed, but opposable thumbs is perhaps too specific as well.

[Christopher]

Bipedalism assumes four limbs -- I can easily imagine species with six, eight, or more. Not to mention radial symmetry, with five limbs. And binocular vision depends on what kind of eyes they end up with, and perhaps even more on what image processing wetware they evolve. For tool. use and a technological culture, some form of manipulation is needed, but opposable thumbs is perhaps too specific as well.

Binocular vision and opposable thumbs are the simplest solution for the "hit things with bows and thrown weapons" issue. An important step if you want to ever get out of the animal phase and start a culture.

 

Opposable thumbs (or opposible hand appandages) is uniquely suited for the task of holding stuff with force, releasing it quickly on demand and precisely controling it position relative to the hand/body.

An octopus can grab fast and solidly, but it has difficulties letting go and it has issue to precisely control what it grabs in relation ot it's body.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Binocular vision and opposable thumbs are the simplest solution for the "hit things with bows and thrown weapons" issue. An important step if you want to ever get out of the animal phase and start a culture.

 

Opposable thumbs (or opposible hand appandages) is uniquely suited for the task of holding stuff with force, releasing it quickly on demand and precisely controling it position relative to the hand/body.

An octopus can grab fast and solidly, but it has difficulties letting go and it has issue to precisely control what it grabs in relation ot it's body.If 

If octopusses are such losers, how come they get all the girls? Hunh? How about them apples, smarty pants? (And don't tell me different, because I've seen the proof!)

[tkdguy]

Don't you guys realize that Star Trek already explained it? Aliens are really just humans with pointy ears or ridges on their heads, etc.

[L. Marcus]

Ridged -- for her pleasure.

[tkdguy]

Early Mars may have been cold rather than warm

[Old Man]

 

Bipedalism assumes four limbs -- I can easily imagine species with six, eight, or more. Not to mention radial symmetry, with five limbs. And binocular vision depends on what kind of eyes they end up with, and perhaps even more on what image processing wetware they evolve. For tool. use and a technological culture, some form of manipulation is needed, but opposable thumbs is perhaps too specific as well.

I failed to explain completely--bipedalism and binocular vision are examples of convergent evolution here, each having evolved on several distinct occasions. Certainly it doesn't rule out radial symmetry or crystal entities or what have you, but if I had to bet money on the form intelligent alien life will take, it'd be a bilaterally symmetrical, bipedal form with binocular vision.

[L. Marcus]

Bipedalism as convergent evolution hinges on that all common ancestors to those species had four limbs. If our forefishes had three pairs of fins instead of two when they crawled ashore that first time, we could be able to race along at the speed of mustangs, while still be able to carry spears in our forelimbs.

 

And I don't think bilateral symmetry has some inherent, automatic superiority to radial symmetry. A couple of accidents of mutations run differently, and the dominant species of the world would be descended from starfish -- as likely as anything, I think.

 

But binocular vision -- or more generally, a way to easily and speedily discern distances -- is very likely.

[Christopher]

Bipedalism as convergent evolution hinges on that all common ancestors to those species had four limbs.

Wich is just another convergent evolution. So not that far fetched either.

 

Also, 6 limbs: 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, 1 tail. We got rid of the tail.

[tkdguy]

NASA Briefly Loses Contact With New Horizons

[procyon]

Four limbs isn't all that common on this planet.

We just think it is.

Most have 6 or 8.

And have been around far, far, far longer than the 4 limbed varieties.

 

Edit

Ok, by numbers the most common don't actually have 'limbs' at all.

 

And in my opinion, should we ever find life anywhere but on this planet - we may have a hard time initially recognizing it as life.

And it will probably force us to redefine just what 'life' is.

[L. Marcus]

Wich is just another convergent evolution. So not that far fetched either.

 

I think you'll have to expand on your point here, because it looks like you're saying that because the first four-limbed amphibian's descendants in general all have four limbs, that this would be convergent evolution -- which is not the case. Convergent evolution would be like the dolphins and the ichtyosaurs having evolved a similar body shape in response to similar impulses, despite not being that closely related.

[Christopher]

Four limbs isn't all that common on this planet.

We just think it is.

Most have 6 or 8.

And have been around far, far, far longer than the 4 limbed varieties.

But only it made sense for the environmental niche, did it?

It does not scale up or translate to other media that well, does it?

Is there any land species with tentacles at all? Anything bigger then an insect with facett eyes? Anything heavier then a small, flight capable bird with hollow bones?

 

Number of species or how many there are on the planet does not count. By that count Bacteria have beat all species on the planet combined.

If it can not translate the medium or scale up to support a brain, it won't bring you anywhere (evolutionary).

 

I think you'll have to expand on your point here, because it looks like you're saying that because the first four-limbed amphibian's descendants in general all have four limbs, that this would be convergent evolution -- which is not the case. Convergent evolution would be like the dolphins and the ichtyosaurs having evolved a similar body shape in response to similar impulses, despite not being that closely related.

You just prooved the point, by pointing out that Doplhins/Wales and Fishes have the same body shape due to living in the same environment. Despite being totally different classes of animals.

 

Evolution had a few billion years to find another effective way to make an intelligent species on this planet. It came out at bipedal/4 limbs with 2 eyes.

But all other forms it tried either don't scale up, don't have ability to manipulate tools, or are tied to a specific medium.

 

If it was a viable form, it would have found a way to scale up or translate the medium already.

[procyon]

But only it made sense for the environmental niche, did it?

It does not scale up or translate to other media that well, does it?

Is there any land species with tentacles at all? Anything bigger then an insect with facett eyes? Anything heavier then a small, flight capable bird with hollow bones?

 

Arthropleura was about 8 feet long.

Many insects/arthropods in the historical record were 2+ feet in length.

So there were multifaceted eyes on creatures larger than many current terrestrial animals.

And those huge 2' long dragonflies didn't even have bones.  They had an exoskeleton.

And you are just looking at this planet.  Which is very inappropriate.

On the moon Titan, you will find an atmosphere 1.4 times Earth density with a gravity closer to that of Luna.

There, a human being could strap on plywood wings and fly under muscle power.  No hollow bones required.

In a world with incredibly low light levels, 'sight' may be based off of sound or even a magnetic sense.

 

Life can take a nearly limitless number of forms on our planet.

When it evolves someplace else, it is not going to be limited by our environment - but by its own.

 

So if life was to appear on a gas giant deep within the atmosphere, we may find something with tentacle like arrangements to deal with the fluid like dynamics of an atmosphere under intense pressures where 'swimming' to maintain your altitude may be more important than 4 limbs with manipulative digits.  And it may see and communicate using electrical charges to capitalize on the properties of the 'metallic hydrogen' it lives in.

And until we have some way to peer into the depths of a gas giants atmosphere, or that life discerns a way out of it - we would never even realize it existed.

Heck, we don't know very much about what lives on our own planet's oceans more than a few hundred feet down.

We have better maps and images of Mars surface than we do of our ocean floor.

[Sundog]

The primary body plans on earth - arthropods, quadropedal vertebrates, worms and radial animals - are dominant for only one reason: Pure chance. Those body plans survived the upheaval of the Cambrian Extinction Event. We have found numerous OTHER body plans in pre-extinction fossil beds- but they didn't live through it.

Given it was pure luck that our body plan survived HERE, I don't think we can make ANY accurate guesses as to what any other environment might produce.

[procyon]

The primary body plans on earth - arthropods, quadropedal vertebrates, worms and radial animals

 

Those aren't the main types of life.

But everyone only counts animal life, and pretty much ignores any other type of eukaryote type of life.

And the other eukaryotes (fungi, plants) are even closer to us than the archaea and bacteria (based on genetics).  And plants / fungi have no bilateral symmetry, etc....

So life based on even our closest eukaryotes - doesn't fulfill your ideas of what 'life' is supposed to look like.

So anything that evolved from archaea would likely resemble a person even less than a tree does.

 

And that is assuming that this life is going to have any type of resemblance to DNA based life.

[Old Man]

Given it was pure luck that our body plan survived HERE, I don't think we can make ANY accurate guesses as to what any other environment might produce.

Unfortunately this world and its species are all we have to go on at the moment. It's possible that we've actually observed intelligent life elsewhere in the solar system and just haven't recognized it.

[Zeropoint]

 

Evolution had a few billion years to find another effective way to make an intelligent species on this planet. It came out at bipedal/4 limbs with 2 eyes.

But all other forms it tried either don't scale up, don't have ability to manipulate tools, or are tied to a specific medium.

 

If it was a viable form, it would have found a way to scale up or translate the medium already.

You seem to be assuming that evolution was "trying" to make intelligent life, and/or that life forms "want" to evolve to intelligent tool users.

 

Neither of these is the case.

 

Humans are not the goal or end product of evolution; we're just a thing that happened one time thanks to a bunch of chance occurrences lining up. We have four limbs, for instance, NOT because that's the optimum number for intelligent life, but because the lobe-finned fish we evolved from happened to be one with four fins.

 

We have ONE example of a sapient species evolving on ONE planet--I really don't think it's a big enough data set to generalize from.

[Christopher]

You seem to be assuming that evolution was "trying" to make intelligent life, and/or that life forms "want" to evolve to intelligent tool users.

 

Neither of these is the case.

 

Humans are not the goal or end product of evolution; we're just a thing that happened one time thanks to a bunch of chance occurrences lining up. We have four limbs, for instance, NOT because that's the optimum number for intelligent life, but because the lobe-finned fish we evolved from happened to be one with four fins.

 

We have ONE example of a sapient species evolving on ONE planet--I really don't think it's a big enough data set to generalize from.

I am the first one to admit, the human is a terrible animal. We waste way to much resource on that brain and half the time it brings us into more trouble.

3/4 of the reason we even have a childhood phase is that a human with fully developed brain could not fit into a womens stomach. That is how insanely oversized our brain is compared to our body.

If you compare our strenght, speed, mobility, offenses and defenses we are a terrible predator*. Some of that most basic systems like locomotion are way overcomplex (bipedal, wtf?). Bipedal, Stereooptic vision is a terrible design for an animals body. The human body is supposed to be intelligent design - in what reality are you living???

In fact you have to wonder why humanity has not been selected out yet?

 

Tool use is the answer. Tool use allows to extend natural weaponry. Tool use is the only way our species managed to sustain and thrive with that oversized brain of ours hogging up all the power and the design concessions we have in our body.

Tool use makes our brains possible. Our brains make tool use possible. That in turn makes bigger brains and better tools possible. And the higher tools transcend weaponry. The ability to truly understand** medical plants could never develop without tool use allowing us such a brain.

 

Aside from magically dodging all predators***, tool use is the only way intelligent life can develop imho.

 

*We are a predator. Our eye form says so.

**Understanding goes beyond. "I once had fever, ate this, it got better. Always eat that plant if you get fever."

***You have to wonder why the common ancestor that changed the medium not also resulted in new predators for that medium.