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#82
12-15-2005, 07:54 AM
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Re: Have aliens visited earth?
[ QUOTE ]
Not when the search space is as large as it is. There is an insane number of DNA combinations. Most of them are junk. Hitting upon ones that lead to complex life is rare. [/ QUOTE ] I used to think this. Then I started doing radiation work in a wetlab. Given the right conditions, evolution occurs with amazing speed. Ugh... been through this a dozen times before. If it was anyone but you I wouldn't be posting at all. 
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#83
12-15-2005, 07:58 AM
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Re: Have aliens visited earth?
Hi,it seems like more than a few people have based their opinion on a line from the movie Contact starring Jodie Foster.
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#84
12-15-2005, 02:13 PM
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Re: Have aliens visited earth?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] For all we know it could always happen given the right conditions. [/ QUOTE ] Evolution is random. [/ QUOTE ] Mutations are random, yes, but if you do something randomly for a long enough time, you eventually cover a lot of the possibilities. [/ QUOTE ] Not when the search space is as large as it is. There is an insane number of DNA combinations. Most of them are junk. Hitting upon ones that lead to complex life is rare. [/ QUOTE ] Its like the monkeys pounding on the typewriter thing. If you have enough monkeys randomly punching keys on a typewriter, eventually one of them will punch out the complete works of william shakespear. So even if intelligent life is "OMG so super super rare" The universe is just so big that its going to happen, and more than oce. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on our ENTIRE planet, thats a whole hell of a lot of chances for life to evolve into intelligence
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#86
12-15-2005, 02:22 PM
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Re: Have aliens visited earth?
Dear Jason_t,
John McLaughlin: Wrong! There is life after death. The soul does not ascend to heaven but rather rests in a limbo state that varies depending on the karma of the spirit. Issue number 4: Intellegent beings on other planets, yes or no? Pat Buchanan! Pat Buchanan: I would think so. John McLaughlin: Eleanor Clift! Eleanor Clift: Don't know. John McLaughlin: Jack Germonde! Jack Germonde: Me, either. John McLaughlin: Mortontown! Morton Kondracke: Well, no one really knows.. John McLaughlin: Wrong! There is intellegent life in the 11th galaxy on the planet Neptar, which will conquer Earth in the year 5482, utilizing us for slave labor in their Chellonian salt mines. Issue number 5: what number am I thinking of? Pat Buchanan! Regards, Sponger
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#87
12-15-2005, 04:33 PM
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Re: Have aliens visited earth?
[ QUOTE ]
Its like the monkeys pounding on the typewriter thing. If you have enough monkeys randomly punching keys on a typewriter, eventually one of them will punch out the complete works of william shakespear. So even if intelligent life is "OMG so super super rare" The universe is just so big that its going to happen, and more than oce. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on our ENTIRE planet, thats a whole hell of a lot of chances for life to evolve into intelligence [/ QUOTE ] I don't think you realize how vast the search space is. Let's take a Shakespearian sonnet. as an unperfect actor on the stage who with his fear is put besides his part or some fierce thing replete with too much rage whose strengths abundance weakens his own heart so I for fear of trust forget to say the perfect ceremony of loves rite and in mine own loves strength seem to decay oercharged with burden of mine own loves might o let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presagers of my speaking breast who plead for love and look for recompense more than that tongue that more hath more expressd o learn to read what silent love hath writ to hear with eyes belongs to loves fine wit Ignoring punctuation and capitalization, there are 596 characters in that sonnet. Assume our typewriters have 28 keys---26 letters, one space and one line feed/carriage return. Let's take a monkey and make him hit 596 keys and stop. If it's the above sonnet he gets a banana otherwise we continue starving the poor bastard and he has to keep typing. The number of 596 character-long blocks of text is 28^596. Let's estimate 28^596 ~ 27^596 = (3^3)^596 = 3^1788 = (3^2)^894 ~ 10^894. So there are 10^894 blocks of text. Let's assume our little monkey can crank out 100 characters in one minute. So approximately every 6 minutes he'll crank out a 596 character block and thus approximately 10 every hour, 240 every day and 87600 in a year. Let's just say 87600 ~ 10^5 so that the approximate number of years for the monkey to produce the above sonnet is 10^889. There are only 10^80 electrons in the universe so at most 10^80 monkeys. With this many monkeys we're producting approximately 10^86 character blocks of length 596 in one year and the approximate number of years until the Shakespeare sonnet is produced is 10^808. The sun will have expanded and swallowed the Earth long before that.
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#88
12-15-2005, 04:51 PM
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Re: Have aliens visited earth?
[ QUOTE ]
I don't think you realize how vast the search space is. Let's take a Shakespearian sonnet. as an unperfect actor on the stage who with his fear is put besides his part or some fierce thing replete with too much rage whose strengths abundance weakens his own heart so I for fear of trust forget to say the perfect ceremony of loves rite and in mine own loves strength seem to decay oercharged with burden of mine own loves might o let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presagers of my speaking breast who plead for love and look for recompense more than that tongue that more hath more expressd o learn to read what silent love hath writ to hear with eyes belongs to loves fine wit Ignoring punctuation and capitalization, there are 596 characters in that sonnet. Assume our typewriters have 28 keys---26 letters, one space and one line feed/carriage return. Let's take a monkey and make him hit 596 keys and stop. If it's the above sonnet he gets a banana otherwise we continue starving the poor bastard and he has to keep typing. The number of 596 character-long blocks of text is 28^596. Let's estimate 28^596 ~ 27^596 = (3^3)^596 = 3^1788 = (3^2)^894 ~ 10^894. So there are 10^894 blocks of text. Let's assume our little monkey can crank out 100 characters in one minute. So approximately every 6 minutes he'll crank out a 596 character block and thus approximately 10 every hour, 240 every day and 87600 in a year. Let's just say 87600 ~ 10^5 so that the approximate number of years for the monkey to produce the above sonnet is 10^889. There are only 10^80 electrons in the universe so at most 10^80 monkeys. With this many monkeys we're producting approximately 10^86 character blocks of length 596 in one year and the approximate number of years until the Shakespeare sonnet is produced is 10^808. The sun will have expanded and swallowed the Earth long before that. [/ QUOTE ] This is exactly what I was going to say, but you beat me to it. ...and if you believe me, I'll give you a banana.
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#90
12-15-2005, 05:10 PM
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Re: Have aliens visited earth?
The monkeys pounding on typewriters thing as a comparison to evolution is horse [censored]. IF the bottom 10% of monkeys that produced the least-like-Shakespearean text were shot, and the remainder allowed to breed to replace em every couple of years, that would be a fair comparison.
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