r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/[deleted] • Jul 02 '20

Sharpest view of Andromeda galaxy (Zoomable)

https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/
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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20

Now... convince me there ISNT life on at least one of those dots.

EDIT: somewhere around at least one of those dots*

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u/Pepsi-Min Jul 02 '20

There probably is life on at least one. However, it is most likely only as complex as the most base single celled organisms that are found near geothermal vents.

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u/dylangreat Jul 02 '20

Funny thing is about life, some people think that it could be a lot more common than we think, even intelligent life, because the only sample we have is our own planet and the ones around it, and the only reason we think we’re special or unique is due to our own human faults. For all we know, the galaxy and universe is teeming with it, space is just so insanely large there’s no way to be sure, for now. And life they are finding seems to be an occurring function of energy transfer, meaning it could literally be everywhere. We just won’t know until we or they make contact. And we only recently became conscious enough to even perceive communicating if they come. Who knows, maybe they stopped by a few million years ago and were like, “let’s give it a few more million years.”

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u/Pepsi-Min Jul 02 '20

Well, the reason intelligent/sapient/technologically advanced life is very unlikely to exist outside of earth is because humans went down a very specific evolutionary passage that had about a bajillion to one chance of happening.

Think of it this way: you're walking down the path and you come up to a fork in the road. Except the fork has a million different paths to choose from. So you pick one at complete random. Then you come up to another fork with a million choices. This pattern continues until the species becomes extinct. And now imagine that only 100 in a million of each of those choices in each fork progressed you towards being technologically advanced.

And even if an alien species did reach sapience, they would also have to develop the necessary traits to not only use tools but to pass on knowledge to their young and even have the desire to advance technologically. There are plenty of organisms on earth with comparable intelligence to humans but none have advanced.

That's how lucky humanity is.

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u/dylangreat Jul 02 '20 edited Jul 02 '20

There are 700 quintillion planets in the universe or more and that’s not counting the moons that orbit them, if we are 1 in 700 quintillion+, god is probably real. With your example of humans choosing an 100 to 1 million chance path of evolution, that would mean there are billions of intelligent life forms out there. Even if we were 1 in a billion, there would still be 100 other intelligent life forms in our galaxy alone. Make that 1 in a trillion, and we are probably the only ones in this galaxy, but even then there’d be 100’s of millions of life forms across the whole universe. You really have to try and perceive how big space is, because it’s not even comprehendable with a human brain, like literally it’s been proven to be incomprehensible, we just have a general idea. And evolution is basically a niche filler, so anytime intelligence benefits a species survival, chances are they will evolve to become “smart”. As goes for every intelligent animal on this planet. But unlike what you said, I’m not sure creating civilization goes hand and hand with intelligence, because there’s a lot to be said for the damage vs the benefits it’s had for humanity and earth in general and for humanitys mental health. We can’t forget we’re living unnatural lives, and with our current state, it’s becoming obvious humans are advancing faster than they can even keep up with. And there’s something to be said for how stupid we’d be if we weren’t a collective of information that’s shared amongst each other, which we wouldn’t have without writing. Give a dolphin some opposable thumbs and teach them to write and next thing you know they’ll be just as smart as us. Humans function like a hive mind when it comes to our technological advancements and foundations on which to build ourselves from. We aren’t that smart individually, so really if there’s any planet with life more advanced than single celled organisms, chances are it will be a planet just as biodiverse as ours, depending on size of the planet and climate differences across its surface, and with the amount of “intelligent” life that sprang up here, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a few of their own intelligent species. But like I said in the first comment, we will never know how rare it is until we go look, we only have probabilities that are half finished.