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The question of extraterrestrial lifeforms ability to exsit rests on probability....the probabilty of been the first instance of a natural process not only of  happening twice but producing the same phenomena twice ....why would biology happen again if Abiogenesis is required to happen again first?....Nothing in nature is observered  to happen again or twice ...have a look yourselves! The indistinguishable particle from the field of quantum physics only remains so to you humans as of yet ....  other lesser complex mechanical/chemical reactions are yet to be observed to produce anything twice or the same again ...Is extraterrestrial  biology  destined to be the first rather than copper happening twice .. A.Henderson June 2021

 

Edited by Andrew William Henderson
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1 minute ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

Nothing in nature is observered  to happen again or twice ...have a look yourselves! 

I looked, and you're wrong, so this is a bad basis for your hypothesis.

All electrons and positrons are identical. Many plants actually make clones of themselves (strawberries and potatoes are two of them). Many natural events and processes happen over and over the same way. They seem different because nature is always building on what is already there. Nature doesn't have to start from scratch every time.

13 minutes ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

The indistinguishableparticle from the field of quantum physics only remains so to you humans as of yet .... 

"You humans"? Did I choose the wrong thread?

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30 minutes ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

Nothing in nature is observered  to happen again or twice

Octopus eyes and human eyes are "wired" differently (humans have a blind spot); they did not arise from a common ancestor. Eyesight is something that developed multiple times in the course of evolution. It's not the only trait to have done so. 

 

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39 minutes ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

The question of extraterrestrial lifeforms ability to exsit rests on probability....the probabilty of been the first instance of a natural process not only of  happening twice but producing the same phenomena twice ....why would biology happen again if Abiogenesis is required to happen again first?....Nothing in nature is observered  to happen again or twice ...have a look yourselves! The indistinguishable particle from the field of quantum physics only remains so to you humans as of yet ....  other lesser complex mechanical/chemical reactions are yet to be observed to produce anything twice or the same again ...Is extraterrestrial  biology  destined to be the first rather than copper happening twice .. A.Henderson June 2021

 

Processes happen many times over in nature. The outcomes of those processes may not be exactly the same every time.

For example, many millions of stars have formed, but no two stars are exactly alike. So, we might expect that life can arise many times over in the universe, but it is unlikely that the form it takes each time will be identical to that we see on Earth. 

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Which one is the eye then ....the eye in reality is collection of cells that collect light ...spiders have legs and often as hairy as humans ...eyes are just a collective word ..The octopuses concept and interpretation of light into the reality of its surroundings is not the way other body models see things ...convergent evoulution isnt a species happening again just a similar shape ..fish been a good example ..

If it's not biology how could it be biology ...?  Another process from totally unique circumstance and material and point in time is not observed in nature to produce the same thing ...the laws of physics may be universal but its effects are not ..!

  

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34 minutes ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

convergent evoulution isnt a species happening again just a similar shape

No, it's not. Convergent evolution wouldn't result in identical species. But you didn't say anything about the same species emerging.

The claim that "Nothing in nature is observered (sic) to happen again or twice ...have a look yourselves! " is not the same as saying some species would emerge twice. The former is very vague* and demonstrably false, while the latter is true and unsurprising, given what we know of evolution.

 

* "nothing" covers a pretty wide range of items and phenomena. All of them, in fact. So as exchemist notes, processes repeat all the time, even if the outcomes differ.

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52 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I looked, and you're wrong, so this is a bad basis for your hypothesis.

All electrons and positrons are identical. Many plants actually make clones of themselves (strawberries and potatoes are two of them). Many natural events and processes happen over and over the same way. They seem different because nature is always building on what is already there. Nature doesn't have to start from scratch every time.

"You humans"? Did I choose the wrong thread?

Actually they are not identical at all ..the atomic particles of copper are not the same they are modeled by humans to  have mathmatical properties.. a clone isnt something happening twice at  what point was it identical.? once exposed to exsitence it was never the same  identical human twins would have more dissimilar attributes than similar dispite the obvious asthetics...a particular monkey species does not happen twice and the monkey species can not produce an identical individual from another ...would you expect a grain of sand to have an exact duplicate ...? So why a complex chemical reaction forged by unreatable mechanical circumstance ...?

9 minutes ago, swansont said:

No, it's not. Convergent evolution wouldn't result in identical species. But you didn't say anything about the same species emerging.

The claim that "Nothing in nature is observered (sic) to happen again or twice ...have a look yourselves! " is not the same as saying some species would emerge twice. The former is very vague* and demonstrably false, while the latter is true and unsurprising, given what we know of evolution.

 

* "nothing" covers a pretty wide range of items and phenomena. All of them, in fact. So as exchemist notes, processes repeat all the time, even if the outcomes differ.

Examples please ....if two seperate chemical processes can produce the same product ...are you able to distinguish each end product from each other ....a native  example would be  Could iron and custard make a identical and indistinguishable product from nitrogen and cheese ....

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1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

I looked, and you're wrong, so this is a bad basis for your hypothesis.

All electrons and positrons are identical. Many plants actually make clones of themselves (strawberries and potatoes are two of them). Many natural events and processes happen over and over the same way. They seem different because nature is always building on what is already there. Nature doesn't have to start from scratch every time.

"You humans"? Did I choose the wrong thread?

 "We humans "sorry ...I hope you didnt think I was A.I. from the future or lord GORDOR king of the  martians ..🙂

1 minute ago, Kartazion said:

Can you detail?

They are just not the same they are just  similar at a picoscopic level ..there properties are not even exact ...

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9 minutes ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

They are just not the same they are just  similar at a picoscopic level ..there properties are not even exact ...

Isn't a gold ring uniformly the same? The environment of the exposure of metals under subject to the external elements, which will make a difference in terms of appearance. (light, temperature, oxidation)
 

Damaged plastic will not look the same as the same plastic in good condition.

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22 hours ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

Actually they are not identical at all

Sure they are. And as such, fermions follow Fermi-Dirac statistics. Bosons follow Bose-Einstein statistics. Both of which require identical particles.

 

Quote

 

Examples please ....if two seperate chemical processes can produce the same product ...are you able to distinguish each end product from each other ....a native  example would be  Could iron and custard make a identical and indistinguishable product from nitrogen and cheese ....

This is the opposite of what was discussed, which was: same process, different outcomes. You are asking for identical outcomes. 

If I drop two masses off the tower of Pisa, they will both undergo the same gravitational acceleration, even as other forces may be present to give small differences in their velocities at any point.

21 hours ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

Well would you expect to find a identical gold ring even if you had the access to them ...the gold found in California can be distinguished from gold found in Queensland ...the amount of circumstance  to form gold  is obvisously  less  than the amount to form biology ...

You seem to be conveniently ignoring the fact that your original framing did not ask for identical results. You said nothing happens again or twice. Gold being formed in California and again in Queensland (or vice-versa) is something that happened.

You are now moving the goalposts, something that has also happened many times, particularly in arguments like this.

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1 hour ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

Actually they are not identical at all ..

Repeating this doesn't make it true. It does give you an excellent opportunity to learn something you didn't know before that may help you understand this area of science better. Yay for you!

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56 minutes ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

Well would you expect to find a identical gold ring even if you had the access to them ...the gold found in California can be distinguished from gold found in Queensland ...the amount of circumstance  to form gold  is obvisously  less  than the amount to form biology ...

I'm now not at all sure what you are arguing. I think we can all agree that if life arises somewhere else in the universe it is very unlikely that it will be identical to the form it takes on Earth. So that seems to be exactly in line with this analogy of yours, about the composition of gold from two locations not being identical. The same geological process took place in both, leading to a gold deposit in the rock, but the outcome was sightly different between the two. 

However, in your opening post, you said something quite different, namely that you did not think "biology", or abiogenesis, could occur more than once. Now that is saying that the process can't occur more than once, not that the outcome would be different. And that makes no sense. There is every reason to suppose that a natural process that has occurred once will do so again, given suitable circumstances. 

If you just want to say that if life occurred elsewhere you would probably not see cows, bees and human beings, but some other kinds of creatures, with different biochemistry, we can all agree on that, I think.   

  

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13 hours ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

 ...the gold found in California can be distinguished from gold found in Queensland ...

11 hours ago, exchemist said:

So that seems to be exactly in line with this analogy of yours, about the composition of gold from two locations not being identical. The same geological process took place in both, leading to a gold deposit in the rock, but the outcome was sightly different between the two.   

Unless I am mistaken, gold in its natural state is already slightly alloyed. Hence his information of its origin (for example inserted or disseminated in quartz veins with different sulphides, for example in cupro-leado-zinc veins, or in pegmatites. It can be associated with skarns near sites of contact metamorphism and hypothermal deposits, sometimes in sedimentary rocks.).

- Electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver
- Porpezite, a natural alloy of gold and palladium
- Rhodite, a natural gold alloy, and originates from Mexico and Colombia.
- The Amalgam alloy of gold and Mercury.

There is no such thing as 100% pure gold. In the precious metals industry, 24-karat gold is said to be pure. If it is lower, it means that the other parts of its alloy are made up of other metals.

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14 hours ago, Andrew William Henderson said:

Examples please ....if two seperate chemical processes can produce the same product ...are you able to distinguish each end product from each other ....a native  example would be  Could iron and custard make a identical and indistinguishable product from nitrogen and cheese ....

If you meant something different than what you said in the OP, just correct yourself. Don't dig the hole deeper.

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DNA is made of H, C, N, O, elements, but they are not just made of identical elements, but also isotopes H-1, H-2, H-3, C-12, C-13, C-14, N-14, N-15, O-16, O-17, O-18 etc. etc.

If you take two (long enough) "identical" DNA chains and compare not just elements but also isotopes, you will find that they have different isotopes in different places in the chain..

So they are not identical at quantum level..

Simpler example, water can be made of H2O, DHO, D2O... add to it isotopes of Oxygen and you have even more possible variations. With obviously dominant (H-1)2(O-16). Just because these isotopes are the most abundant.

 

 

Edited by Sensei
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The reason of the inconclusive research of extraterrestrial lifeforms is the "Time", let me explain this concept with Drake's equation:

This probabilistic equation describes the possible number of alien intelligent lifeforms in our galaxy, their biological or technological signatures coulde be detected with our instruments.

N=R* x fp x Ne x Fe x Fi x Fc x L

N is the number of alien lifeforms in our galaxy, R* the rate of formation stars in our galaxy, fp the fraction of planets for those stars, Ne the number of planets with suitable condition for life, Fe the fraction of planets with life ( also primitive), Fi Fraction of planets which hosts intelligent lifeforms, Fc the amount of civilizations which emitt technological signature ( radio, microwave...) and L is the leght of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

This factor L is very important in our reserch; Imagine you want to listen on the radio your favourtite song: it lasts 5 minutes and it appears on radio once a day. The probability of listen it in a day if you switch on the radio in a random moment is:

5/1440= 0,34% where 5 is the lenght in minutes of the song and 1440 is the lenght of a normal terrestrial day. This value is quite low

In the end, we are noting that the time is an important factor in the research of alien primitive or intelligent life; Maybe we are born too late or too early to live with others...

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7 hours ago, Kartazion said:

Unless I am mistaken, gold in its natural state is already slightly alloyed. Hence his information of its origin (for example inserted or disseminated in quartz veins with different sulphides, for example in cupro-leado-zinc veins, or in pegmatites. It can be associated with skarns near sites of contact metamorphism and hypothermal deposits, sometimes in sedimentary rocks.).

- Electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver
- Porpezite, a natural alloy of gold and palladium
- Rhodite, a natural gold alloy, and originates from Mexico and Colombia.
- The Amalgam alloy of gold and Mercury.

There is no such thing as 100% pure gold. In the precious metals industry, 24-karat gold is said to be pure. If it is lower, it means that the other parts of its alloy are made up of other metals.

None of this is relevant to the discussion on this thread. 

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To the OP,

Andrew,

Can you clearly define what you are arguing please. The title of the thread implies a question - Why Are We alone...

You then state that nothing ever happens twice (as Swansont pointed out to you). You then move on to try and defend the argument that nothing is ever created identical to anything else. ???

Are you are arguing that there is no reason to believe abiogenisis could repeat elsewhere in the observable universe, and this is why we are alone?

Assuming this to be the case, then my answer would be that, I don't personally believe anything. I think we don't yet know enough to make a judgement on abiogenisis either way.  As far as I'm aware, we have not been successful in replicating (based our current data and understanding) abiogenisis in the lab experimentally using the basic chemicals and environmental conditions present around 4 billion years ago.

However it appears that this is what happened here on Earth, so we are confident it has happened at least once (we are good evidence), given the right conditions there is no reason to believe it may not be possible to repeat elsewhere.

How rare life emerging is, how often it may occur and how complex it may become are further arguments we can extrapolate from this original one.      

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1 hour ago, exchemist said:

None of this is relevant to the discussion on this thread. 

Perhaps there is some bit of relevance: the differences in the gold between two locations is dependent on stuff that isn't gold. The gold itself (the atoms of a given isotope) are identical

16 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

However it appears that this is what happened here on Earth, so we are confident it has happened at least once (we are good evidence), given the right conditions there is no reason to believe it may not be possible to repeat elsewhere.

I'm not even sure you could rule out life emerging more than once on earth. Abiogenesis happens, and then some cataclysm wipes it out before it can spread and take hold, and a thousand years later abiogenesis happens again. This could potentially have happened many times. None of the evidence would have survived.

 

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8 hours ago, Kartazion said:

Unless I am mistaken, gold in its natural state is already slightly alloyed. Hence his information of its origin (for example inserted or disseminated in quartz veins with different sulphides, for example in cupro-leado-zinc veins, or in pegmatites. It can be associated with skarns near sites of contact metamorphism and hypothermal deposits, sometimes in sedimentary rocks.).

- Electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver
- Porpezite, a natural alloy of gold and palladium
- Rhodite, a natural gold alloy, and originates from Mexico and Colombia.
- The Amalgam alloy of gold and Mercury.

There is no such thing as 100% pure gold. In the precious metals industry, 24-karat gold is said to be pure. If it is lower, it means that the other parts of its alloy are made up of other metals.

What your not taking into account is ..the reason the product isn't the same ( gold) is because the process isnt the same  just similar enough to produce  our definition of gold ..the process is just a product of an earlier process ... 

Happening twice = the same thing happening twice

 Same= exact 

Similar = not exact ....! 

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15 minutes ago, swansont said:

I'm not even sure you could rule out life emerging more than once on earth. Abiogenesis happens, and then some cataclysm wipes it out before it can spread and take hold, and a thousand years later abiogenesis happens again. This could potentially have happened many times. None of the evidence would have survived.

 

Yes I agree, this is why I was asking Andrew what he is stating/asking and if he is arguing that abiogenisis is not repeatable. It appears, as you clearly pointed out to him, that he is changing his argument from unrepeatable process to identical outcome.

Edited by Intoscience
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44 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

To the OP,

Andrew,

Can you clearly define what you are arguing please. The title of the thread implies a question - Why Are We alone...

You then state that nothing ever happens twice (as Swansont pointed out to you). You then move on to try and defend the argument that nothing is ever created identical to anything else. ???

Are you are arguing that there is no reason to believe abiogenisis could repeat elsewhere in the observable universe, and this is why we are alone?

@Andrew William Henderson I am as confused as intoscience (+1) as to your thesis.

 

I would therefore welcome your comment in this up to date research, excerpt from the book accompanying a BBC science series of the same name.

Life in Colour : How animals see the world.

Martin Stevens

Witness Books 2021

life1.thumb.jpg.b57d335ebe19bde6c91c4ec4fa8aa6fc.jpg

Edited by studiot
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31 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

To the OP,

Andrew,

Can you clearly define what you are arguing please. The title of the thread implies a question - Why Are We alone...

You then state that nothing ever happens twice (as Swansont pointed out to you). You then move on to try and defend the argument that nothing is ever created identical to anything else. ???

Are you are arguing that there is no reason to believe abiogenisis could repeat elsewhere in the observable universe, and this is why we are alone?

Assuming this to be the case, then my answer would be that, I don't personally believe anything. I think we don't yet know enough to make a judgement on abiogenisis either way.  As far as I'm aware, we have not been successful in replicating (based our current data and understanding) abiogenisis in the lab experimentally using the basic chemicals and environmental conditions present around 4 billion years ago.

However it appears that this is what happened here on Earth, so we are confident it has happened at least once (we are good evidence), given the right conditions there is no reason to believe it may not be possible to repeat elsewhere.

How rare life emerging is, how often it may occur and how complex it may become are further arguments we can extrapolate from this original one.      

It wasnt a question ....the title  is why we are alone not why are we alone...its statement  of point 

  The same thing Happening twice = the same thing 

Same = exact

Similar = not exact 

 The point is no other reactions found in nature despite been logically less complex than abiology are observed ....suns don't happen twice  there resulting planetary system don't nor the resulting set of circumstance placed on it and its planets ...what magic is used to allow Abiogenesis to bypass entropy and the Lorenz effect 

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