Just Add Water - planetary life may be ubiquitous

[Shemjaza]

You're the first person in years to suggest any answer. What are your sources?
Yes, I've proposed this challenge for years with no answers. It does sound like it has merit. But I'm not sure how "consuming available resources" is something chemistry is pushed to do.

It's just basic facts about chemistry.

Complex organic chemicals are favoured in higher energy environments, and will form naturally when this happens. (See Millar Urey).

Simple replicators are constructed from the same basic self organising chemicals as other long chain organics... it's just a matter of coincidence forming a replicating structure. In all the shallow oceans and volcanic depths of a planet with organic chemicals with the right other elements present it is reasonable to predict that a replicator forms... and then it will replicate unrestricted.

 

[loveofourlord]

Water is in lots of places which, (thus far), exhibit no signs of recognisable life (eg: Mars' surface, the Moon ..).

well we haven't exactly been looking for life very hard on mars and europa and such. Chances are there may be life there, on mars below the surface, and europa in the water, we will have to wait to see.

 

[Shemjaza]

Still waiting for the mission to find life there, whats going on with that? even if they don't land, I heard of plans to try to do flyby's of the gysers to check.,

I think that kind of precision instruments and flying are extremely hard to pull off. Look at how hard it is to drive in gravity on Mars or to land on a static comet, now imagine trying to fly through a cloud of ice crystals while carrying a lot of extra weight in analysis gear.

 

[SelfSim]

I sincerely think I didn't communicate well and/or you didn't read sympathetically enough. But it looks to me as if you are responding as if I had conveyed something different than I meant to convey. I don't "believe" at all in our representations -- I think they are all imaginative, and necessary. They can have varying degrees of congruence with patterns of the outside world tho.

I'm only going by what you wrote, which was predicated in your first paragraph by:

.. I have long believed (decades now) that we have only our individually unique representations of what is out there {etc}

.. Aka you hold that belief ..(?) Whether you believe in those 'representations', or not, is irrelevant once you hold the above quoted belief (your word) that they are 'representations' (presumably of 'a something else')! From that point on, the best you'll achieve is logical consistency with the idea that they only represent that 'something else' .. So, what is that 'something else'?.. It is another untestable belief you hold (but appear to not get that)?
Your initial assumption is a belief of your own choosing (and self-declaration). You choose belief as the basis for selecting from amongst others' (and your own) views about what's real, or what's not real. This process is not consistent with the scientific approach as it predicates an untestable assumption based on a belief .. you are not thinking scientifically when you take that approach .. that's what I'm saying.

If you wanted me to represent a different view than my own and just naively believe in knowledge and understanding as if they are perfect or excellent or great, I can't act in that role of someone that thinks that way, as I don't believe in such exact or perfect knowing of that kind.

Whether you, or I, do believe any of that, is not the point though .. (and I don't hold beliefs of perfect knowledge or understanding' whatever that is, I might add).

The connected but different (and interesting!) topics about whether anything exists outside of us that is fully and truly independent, and whether we can have any kind of meaningful perception of such an external reality is a very philosophical topic of much interest, and I think a few here like @public hermit will enjoy discussing it also.

(Deflection of accepting responsibility for what you wrote).

 

[SkyWriting]

It's just basic facts about chemistry.

Complex organic chemicals are favoured in higher energy environments, and will form naturally when this happens. (See Millar Urey).

Simple replicators are constructed from the same basic self organising chemicals as other long chain organics... it's just a matter of coincidence forming a replicating structure. In all the shallow oceans and volcanic depths of a planet with organic chemicals with the right other elements present it is reasonable to predict that a replicator forms... and then it will replicate unrestricted.

Sure. But Millar Urey has ever since failed to match evidence regarding the original conditions. Which is likely why it's not been replaced with supportive experiments.

 

[SelfSim]

well we haven't exactly been looking for life very hard on mars and europa and such. Chances are there may be life there, on mars below the surface, and europa in the water, we will have to wait to see.

What is the basis, in objective evidence, of the 'chances' you refer to here? I also note that those 'chances' only apply to your expectation that there 'may be life there'
(These are the points of debate in such discussions).

 

[Shemjaza]

Sure. But Millar Urey has ever since failed to match evidence regarding the original conditions. Which is likely why it's not been replaced with supportive experiments.

It has been repeated with other base makeups.

The point is not that it demonstrates the exact beginning of life on Earth, the point is that it demonstrates spontaneous organisation of complex organic molecules.

 

[SelfSim]

I think that kind of precision instruments and flying are extremely hard to pull off. Look at how hard it is to drive in gravity on Mars or to land on a static comet, now imagine trying to fly through a cloud of ice crystals while carrying a lot of extra weight in analysis gear.

I think the Perseverance rover's helicopter drone might be being used as a proof of concept demonstration for the proposed DragonFly rotorcraft exploration of Titan's surface(?) .. but flying a drone on Mars is waayy less complex than flying one in a way more distant (and vastly different) environment like Titan's.
I think they were considering an immersible probe for Europa's sub-surface environment(?)

 

[SelfSim]

Sure. But Millar Urey has ever since failed to match evidence regarding the original conditions. Which is likely why it's not been replaced with supportive experiments.

There have been heaps of empirically supported developments since Miller Urey! (The best they came up with was only tholins, IIRC?)
ETA: Correction .. subsequent Miller Urey-like experiments came up with racemic mixtures including amino acids, also.

 

[SkyWriting]

There have been heaps of empirically supported developments since Miller Urey! (The best they came up with was only tholins, IIRC?)
ETA: Correction .. subsequent Miller Urey-like experiments came up with racemic mixtures including amino acids, also.

You can show billions of naturally occurring machines that spit out bricks,
but getting a brick house built is a different science story.

 

[Gene2memE]

This website really needs a shifting goalposts emoji. It would save so much time.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You can show billions of naturally occurring machines that spit out bricks,
but getting a brick house built is a different science story.

Poor analogy - much of organic chemistry is self-assembling, under the right conditions. Not like bricks at all.

 

[SelfSim]

.. much of organic chemistry is self-assembling, under the right conditions.

Sort of brings us back to how 'Earth-like' does some other moon/exoplanet have to be in order to produce life? Speculation excluded, we really don't have even a objective clue about this aspect.

Every single moon or planet we've thus far surveyed, is, from our observational viewpoints to date, unique in its own way, as far as its environment, geology, atmosphere, chemistries, (etc) .. in spite of their similarities, which happen to define them as moons or planets.

I cannot see why Earth's most striking defining characteristic, life, cannot be Earth's uniquely defining characteristic, in spite of it being a water/land based planet? Focusing on commonalities such as water/land/habitable zones, is primarily driven by our obsession to find another instance of what could possibly be our singular defining (unique) characteristic.

Its ok to think this way too .. for eg: Lorentz systems are notable for having chaotic solutions for certain parameter values and initial conditions. In the absence of perfect knowledge of initial conditions of a Lorentz system, (as we have about our own planet's historical physical process evolution), our ability to predict the future course of another 'earth-like' one, will surely also always fail, when this imperfect knowledge of what 'earth-like' means persists in the absence of objective evidence, (just as Lorentz systems show us)?

I don't know that we are dealing with a Lorentz system when it comes to life formation but the physical processes thought to lead to life, sure look intrinsically intertwined with planetary evolution ones, some of which are actually what started the whole investigation into Lorentz systems?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I cannot see why Earth's most striking defining characteristic, life, cannot be Earth's uniquely defining characteristic, in spite of it being a water/land based planet? Focusing on commonalities such as water/land/habitable zones, is primarily driven by our obsession to find another instance of what could possibly be our singular defining (unique) characteristic.

Meh - I don't see why life, per se, should be our 'singular defining (unique) characteristic'. There's plenty of bigger-scale stuff - plate tectonics? Mega-crystalline iron core?

Its ok to think this way too .. for eg: Lorentz systems are notable for having chaotic solutions for certain parameter values and initial conditions. In the absence of perfect knowledge of initial conditions of a Lorentz system, (as we have about our own planet's historical physical process evolution), our ability to predict the future course of another 'earth-like' one, will surely also always fail, when this imperfect knowledge of what 'earth-like' means persists in the absence of objective evidence, (just as Lorentz systems show us)?

I dunno, another characteristic of Lorentz systems are chaotic attractors...

Who knows? That's why they try to find out.

 

[SelfSim]

.. Who knows? That's why they try to find out.

Agree with everything you said there, 'cept the above bit.
I'd say they're looking for a useful way of explaining whatever shows up.

 

[SelfSim]

I'd say they're looking for a useful way of explaining whatever shows up.

For example these dudes, (a relatively recent preprint), are trying to convince others of 'the possibility' that the entire universe is, on its most fundamental level, a neural network!?

Goodness knows how life is explainable by doing that though ..(?)

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

For example these dudes, (a relatively recent preprint), are trying to convince others of 'the possibility' that the entire universe is, on its most fundamental level, a neural network!?

Goodness knows how life is explainable by doing that though ..(?)

From what does a neural net that comprises the whole universe learn? what are the training data?

 

[Shemjaza]

From what does a neural net that comprises the whole universe learn? what are the training data?

The whole universe is a Boltzmann brain... odd.

 

[SelfSim]

From what does a neural net that comprises the whole universe learn? what are the training data?

I'd say that issue/question arises from a particular, chosen philosophy (.. which doesn't have to be held as being true .. and thus can be ignored).
One might also say it may learn from itself .. (which can also be ignored .. for the same reason).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I'd say that issue/question arises from a particular, chosen philosophy (.. which doesn't have to be held as being true .. and thus can be ignored).
One might also say it may learn from itself .. (which can also be ignored .. for the same reason).

I just don't understand what it means to say the universe 'is a neural network'. I suspect that what they are really saying is that it is possible to find aspects of the mathematics that describe the universe that have parallels with the mathematics that describe neural networks... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯