Grrl Power #755 – The great gouda caper
Ooh! Press conference bombshell!
Okay, before everyone gets too excited, Cora’s first line on the next page is, “Well, mostly.” For further explanation, you’ll have to actually wait for the actual page.
The great filters Cora talks about, if it’s not obvious from her next word bubble, is one of those things that scientists bring up when they’re speculating about why the galaxy isn’t apparently teeming with advanced civilizations. Basically, we estimate there’s between 100 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and more and more, we’re learning that probably most if not nearly all of the stars have planets around them. So that’s two parts of the Drake Equation answered. We can make some estimates about how many of those planets are in the Goldilocks zone, but there are some unknowns, like how often life will arise even when conditions are ideal. But even if we plug in some really pessimistic numbers into the rest of the equation, there should be tens of thousands of planets out there with life. So where is it?
The filters are things that would prevent life from living long enough to advance to galactic exploration. Anything from runaway global climate change, extinction from super viruses, famine from overpopulation, self destruction from nuclear or virological war, extermination from AI, or destruction by a superior alien race that wipes out species that approach a certain level of technology, a la Mass Effect Reapers. The list goes on.
Obviously in this case, there aren’t any Reaper like aliens in the Grrl-verse, otherwise Fracture Station wouldn’t have been nearly as populated. (Admittedly we don’t know what Sydney was fighting on the Alari homeworld.) The filters Cora is talking about are the ones that races have to slip through on their own. She also is exaggerating slightly about us needing to build our own warp drives. It’s preferred if a race can manage that on their own, but there are quite a few species that are part of the galactic community which never would have figured that stuff out on their own. You know, space orcs or whatever. Well, not space orcs. Just regular orcs, in space. Or an orc like equivalent. In a lot of cases, those species were brought into space because another race needed a bunch of brutes for something. War, construction… I don’t know. Bodyguards. Brute stuff. Some planets had more than one intelligent race, and the ones that advanced to space travel first brought the other ones along with them. In the cases where the more advanced race didn’t wipe out the less advanced one.
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No matter how good of a deal it, do not buy that cube!
A cenobite puzzle box, nice :)
The proper term is Lament Configuration
Love seeing that, but it also saddens me we don’t see Kirby’s Warp Star next to it.
Actually the proper term is “Lemarchand Puzzlebox”. The Lament Configuration was only one such puzzle box, and Lemarchand (the creator of the Lament Configuration in the Hellraiser universe) made others.
considering the definition of the word “configuration”, the fact the silver spike state is called the Leviathan configuration, and the fact I ignore every sequel after the second movie as anything but alternate universes…
I always assumed the “Lament Configuration” referred to the state of the box in its basic set up…or basic configuration before it is opened.
I remember. It was at the beginning, or end, of either the first or second movie, where you see the box being sold to someone in a shop by a guy sitting next to a window. There are at least 4 other boxes sitting nearby.
Also for a real treat, look at something I found on accident but was happy about: http://props.handheldmuseum.com/Hellraiser6Hellseaker/LamentSphere2.jpg
Lament Configuration + PokeBall.
You’d have to be a real pinhead to buy one of those.
I bought one of those cubes. It sits on a shelf with a pile of other diabolical puzzles I own that I cannot solve.
Oh THAT’S interesting. I figured we’re all seeded from some Ur species…. Let’s see what happens here.
Ala “StarGate” it seems
The ancestors of humanity were the seed stock, time and distance did the rest…….
Plot twist and cliffhanger!
My guess is that a tourist hooked up with a local
Yep.
Just come up with that, that’s cute…thought of that one before empire strikes back and that theory goes back to several religions. Me, I figure life got started here because of a black water issue on some passing space ship.
That is an easy and quick solution to the cliff hanger.
Or Star Trek Progenitors that seeded at the very least:
Human
Klingon
Vulcan
Romulan
Cardassian
Andorian?
Betazoid?
Ferengi?
Breen?
All the humanoid races, iirc.
And Romulans are an offshoot of Vulcans.
Vulcan propaganda! Vulcan’s are the offshoot of Romulans!!
Gorn? They are humanoid, but appear to have a radically different biology from all of the Rubber-Forehead Aliens.
Cora backstory time, squee!
The tech level bar a while back did have one of the options as “seed the Galaxy with life so all species look the same”
The problem with this theory is that DNA has been around for a lot longer than humanoid appearing life. So you run into the issue of having to assume that intelligent life has a huge bias towards developing into a humanoid form.
This assumption tends to piss off all of the non-humanoid races who, so typically for most settings, only have a single representative species to point at as a counter-argument.
The human body plan has number of advantages paired with a number of weaknesses which collectively encourage the development of tool using intelligence, so it’s not implausible that it’s the default look for intelligent tool using races out there. It’s also possible that we’re the weird ones, and everyone else follows a different body plan. We really don’t know yet.
ie. Four limbs allow for specialization of limbs, two for locomotion and two for manipulation. Six limbs could be unnecessary and use up more energy than is evolutionarily advantageous. Sorting out the pros and cons is a long process, but evolution tends to get it right, eventually.
Some differences of form can be fairly arbitrary, with many solutions working about as well as a dozen others. Some other details could have an absolute winner. Bilateral symmetry seems to be a general rule for Terran lifeforms above a certain size. That could be universally advantageous, as well.
Most of evolution is all about efficient economy of energy, expressed in the most useful output of effort.
… if you can sort out what I mean there. I know what I meant, but I don’t know if it’s obvious which meaning of each of those words I intend.
This is a fairly common xenobiological view based on Earth’s history. Life has tended with a few odd balls here and there; towards certain shapes for the environment. A streamlined body for water…with a dorsal fin somehow also popping up…seriously how this this wedge sticking out of the back pop up in reptiles and then mammals? It is…weird, like Mosasaur and seals make since but how this previously fish only trait showed up for Ichyosaurs and dolphins/whales… but I digress.
we have radial tentacle limb life forms, limbsless flexible bodies; and terrestrial life has above a certain size tended towards four limbs, a means for those limbs to either grasp or make use of the terrain in some efficient manner for locomotion; with a head at one end with all the directional sensory equipment there.
“Humanoid” is an odd term, and depending on how loosly we want to view it could consider all primates, bipedal saurian, bears, and a number of other animals with front limbs capable of manipulating their environments even if they are only partially bipeds or not. Then we have birds who flip the equation so their free limbs are for locomotion and their manipulation limbs are being walked on *see parrots for example of still using their feet to grasp and move things around at times*.
Even if that number of limbs is variable, terrestrial larger life does tend to go back to a common ancestor after all that dominated the land; it isn’t unreasonable to have a fair share of tool using species have a similar body plan…which isn’t to say there won’t still be plenty of sapient life forms who got screwed in the biological roulette table of existence by developing high intelligence *like as a fluke mutation that benefitted them mainly to outsmart and hide from predators*, but due to being shaped like Dolphins or giant slugs or whatnot couldn’t really do much to manipulate their environment beyond simple things.
Actually, even some of the quasi-radial, tentacled species are clearly bilateral. The various octopod species come to mind. The truly radial species are ones with far simpler structures.
And yeah, within a given niche, many similarities develop for very distantly-related species. Canines and felines aren’t that distantly related, but you can see stark examples there.
A fox is what you end up with when a canine slides into a role typically filled by smaller felines. A hyena is what you end up with when a feline tries to do a wolf.
Yes, hyenas are felines.
Hyenas are felines.
I did not know that.
This is one of the things I love about the internet.
Sorry, I overstated that a little. They are in their own family, but they’re pretty closely related to felines. The big point there is that you would think that they’re more canid, based upon their form and social/ecological characteristics. But they’re more feline than anything else.
Other factors that promote tool usage to a degree is the species socialization, maturation process and longevity.
On the socialization front.
Imagine if cephalopods developed a social cooperative society instead of being mostly loners.
Communication would be totally alien to us being visually based instead of auditory.
From there one wonders how they would be able to develop records until you realize that they already come onto land, wet/moist land mind you, for all sorts of activities.
There’s no reason that cephalopods couldn’t use some sort of sound-based, advanced communication. You lose a lot of clarity, but some sounds travel pretty damned well and far, underwater. See chelonians.
Of course, it could be that chelonians only have such advanced, sound-based communication because of their evolutionary trip out of the water, before wandering back into the oceans. I have no idea if anything of the sort would be likely to develop in a species that never left the water.
cephalopods along with corvids fall into an unfortunate limiter niche; *short lifespan*. It is hard to develop anything when you have to both mature very quickly and then have very little time to really build on ideas. Add the size limitation of being small beings in a world of giant competitors and predators and there really is no luxury time. Granted one kind of octopus has built little towns…with wild west strong takes what they want set ups, and Corvids have strong social networks and can make use of human stuff they see and figure out how to use even when they can’t replicate it.
Humans got stupidly lucky, barely even made it past the size issue (still plenty of predators), but size allowed numbers to actually work against them, and large enough to build large enough tools to make a difference *if you were eight inches tall the kind of spears you could build would be laughable to use against a leopard that wanted to eat you*.
Evolution functions entirely in hindsight. It does not and cannot plan. Barring outside influence, it only reacts.
Yup, natural selection is one of the ultimate examples of the later half of stimulus/response. It only looks planned after the fact. Lots of Creationists get caught up in the metaphor of “plan”, “design”, and “select”.
Well, that isn’t entirely accurate. Most Creationists engage in extremely motivated reasoning and willful ignorance, in addition to being fed nonstop lies by their religious leaders and apologetics speakers. There’s no such thing as an honest Christian apologist.
Some of you might not be familiar with the term. It refers to a specific thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_apologetics
I read somewhere that the biomass of all spiders, which of course have 8 legs, is greater than the biomass of all humans. So strictly speaking it appears as though having 8 limbs allows your species to prosper in a measurably greater way than having only 4 limbs.
I,uh, don’t recall where I read that. And maybe it was about insects? If so, it’s still apparently better to have 6 limbs than 4…
We’re working within a specific context, though. Different forms and characteristics are better or worse for different scales of size and different ecological niches. We’re only considering tool-users who are likely to get off of their planet of origin.
… or their planet of Oregon, as my phone’s keyboard first wrote it. I wonder what Swype is trying to say about Oregon.
I know that your point is definitely true in regards to ants. That’s the example that I always see. I’m not sure about spiders.
Sorry to bring up Stellaris again, but I am. There are a lot of non-humanoid spacefaring species, and for those without the ability to create tools on their own, they have to make use of what is already there, from ruins. The Prikki are a very good example of this.
Someone’s pets that lived after the world ended, with extreme pack instinct that learned to use the tools of their owners until they adapted to a better form to go further.
Like, dolphins and ravens can’t use the same type of tools we have in the same capacity, but are still sapient tool-using species. I personally think they just aren’t egocentric enough- so full of themselves that they think that their opinions need to be literally carved in stone so others of their kind born a thousand years after they’ve died can hear them.
I read a review. I have loved several space-based strategy games across the years and wouldn’t mind playing another. But the review wasn’t very positive, citing a huge bog down in the mid game, really poor diplomacy implementation, and some disturbing factoids such as a mechanic supposedly intended to reduce micro-management actually increasing it since the AI sector managers just don’t build ships at all, and to get into the sector and have ships built is very micro-managy.
I’d like to hear your take on the game (It seems clear that you’re a fan, but even a fan can have some gripes or gushes to share), and on my synopsis of this review. If I find the review again I’ll post a link.
Wonder how “mostly” human spread over the Grrl-verse :)
Some weirdo from one of the hypothetical Nth species has a weird fetish?
In my multiverse it was because one of the several reality warping eldritch races happened to have a vaguely similar shape (Amarians / Amana) so decided to create a bunch of things across the multiverse that resemble them, both because of form bias and because they like playing with toys that look like smaller varied versions of themselves…among other less narcissist reasons like being able to appear before your creations without freaking them out too much one supposes.
Of course to non-humanoid life they are eldritch horrors and humanoids are like their version of “Star Spawns of madness”; ya’know, you see a giant star fish eldritch abomination alien and the swarms of cephalopod/starfish like alien mortal races that worship them; only in reverse.
Heh heh heh. I like the part about them having the forethought to know that they’ll enjoy screwing with their seeded creatures, playing gods.
I think that a lot of fictional universes go with some version of partial-panspermia. You don’t even have to necessarily seed planets with actual humanoids. Once the biosphere that you’re planting is seeded with creatures from your biosphere, the intelligent beings that eventually emerge are likely to be fairly similar to you. Our gene load is full of dormant crap left over from our reptilian ancestors. Any other chromosome-based biosphere is likely to have lots of dormant crap in their various species, too.
And obviously, the beings from the biosphere that seeded ours are going to have identical chromosomal structure. Panspermia solves that probability problem, too.
When those genes get turned on and off, as the environment dictates from generation to generation, you’ll get things that somewhat resemble their ancestors.
Anyway, epigenetics is a complicated subject, and I’m screwing up the explanation a bit. I’ve had a good bit of biology, but I’m a network engineer, not a biologist.
Lots of trial and error,
actually speaking of manipulating entire bio-spheres and doing so for a fetish. While I usually mention the Amana that do things for some grand game purpose like the Architects of Magic; there is one that comes to mind in this instance.
There is an Amana who calls herself Polymorphica, and she LOVES slimes. So much so her typical physical manifestation is that of a blue humanoid slime woman wearing a silver jumpsuit. She did through direct (seed this world in my likeness) and in-direct *whisper in the ear muse methods* manipulated both spiritual and physical worlds to make all sorts of slimes; including partial and fully humanoid ones. She loves slimes, but also has a kink towards shape shifting humanoids with that slime build. She even got a whole race of these to end up with her chosen name; and to eventually get to colonize a world where most of the life forms were slime based, and even had slime monsters appearing there. Slime Swordsmen, Slime Magicians, Slime Living Battle Mechs (Polymorphica Spectra Suits), parasitic super suit slimes (Prismatic Parasites), and more to satisfy her love of slimes; even when logically shape shifting amorphous life forms really have no reason to hold humanoid shapes.
Definitely a fetish. I’ve encountered some of them, on Deviant Art and other places. They’re weird, but it’s not particularly distressing compared to lots of other things I’ve seen.
Imagine learning your entire civilization came into existence because an individual (no real governing body), of an ultra-tech species had a fetish and decided to make it real.
usual case is, explanation for why magic exists and is varied is certain ones manipulating the raw dimensional distortion potential of a planet and programming it to respond in specific ways; basically why some worlds chants or written symbols can do anything at all to simplify. But one individual upon seeing human fantasy fell in love with the whole RPG concept so created entire worlds based on it…and for this reason and that resulted in self aware NPCS spreading into the multiverse claiming to be gods… and timey whimey madness were also the inspiration for said fantasy in much of the multiverse. Among other themes, and of course cross-pollination of them.
What is the meaning of life?
Bored and horney space wizards.
I would say that it doesn’t even begin to explain why our species is so messed up. It could be a factor, though. Or it could be the instigating force, and things just spiraled exponentially out of control.
Oh no humans are messed up because someone thought it would be funny to cross breed a bonobo with a chimp; and tweek the resulting offspring over generations towards a specific aesthetic ignoring the psychological damage; thinking some (I am your god here are some general rules) type appearances would be enough to curb the dumber aspects…instead of the exact opposite and only make things worse *oopsy*, but infinite timelines and all that; just travel sideways through time and change a few variables or appear at a different point in the timeline.
ya’know like people breeding dogs for looks only, only…more globally impacting. But hey that’s what meteors are for, LoL.
The goo-girl thing is a fetish, I mean.
Evolved elsewhere, planted here, or evolved here and picked up for colonization because adaptable, which was the premise of the Orions in TMI (http://www.tmi-comic.com/)
It is the most apt line in all of Sci-fi.
Life… uh… finds a way.
Human is the default shape for the vast majority of aliens cause it makes so much sense. Evolutionarily speaking. A bi-pedal mammal, omnivore, eyes facing forward but ears pinned to the side. A preference for tribal culture and an urge to group together in large numbers.
Basic primate.
It’s the default shape in most TV and film scifi (plus what little you find on the stage) because then you can put an actor inside a fairly cheap costume and call it a day. Books and other media have no such restriction at all; there the usual constraint is lack of imagination on the part of the author.
Spend too much money (like I did) on Stellaris.
Venus Flytraps
Spiders
Tentacled Crabs
Just on our world, if we aren’t being specist: Dolphins, octopuses (man I really wanna use the other word but it’s wrong apparently), tarantulas, corvids, elephants, possibly lots of other species are sapient.
I’d say the problem those species have is they are so adapted to their specific environment that they don’t feel pressure to fill the world or create complex tools. We are jacks of all trades, so we can fit ourselves anywhere and use tools to fill in the gaps when we can’t completely deal with the environment.
Thing is, our primate ancestors were quite specialized to the forests and savannas of ancient Africa. Or hands are extremely well adapted to grasping limbs of trees and plucking fruit. It just so happens, one or those ancestors discovered how to swing a broken tree limb like a club. And bang a fruit sized rock really hard against other things.
This probably happened due to a changing climate which is a massive evolutionary pressure.
Humans are dominant on this planet out of pure unadulterated luck. Any species could ascend to sapience with the right evolutionary push.
Octopodes isn’t wrong.
Octopi
Octopi IS wrong, because it’s mixing Greek with Latin. Octopuses and Octopodes are both correct, though.
*ding ding ding*
Same with platypus. The plural is platypodes. You have to watch out for that pseudo-Latin.
The scientific name is platypoda, though, for some reason. My wife seems to like the word, since she grabbed the .com for it, years ago.
Sadly, some dictionaries list both, while mentioning that octopi is ill-formed. Usage dictates meaning.
But I’m never going to accept the rape and plunder of the word “literally”. Some dictionaries are beginning to include “figuratively” as a second meaning, since that’s how the valley-girl twerps are using it.
How do you feel about the word “very” and the word “really” and the word “actually” and about a dozen more which preceded “literally” in its factual meaning, which have already slid down that slippery slope into figurative use to the point where their factual meaning is almost gone?
I don’t see those three examples being used to mean the opposite, as I do with “literally”. I see them being used by people who are just plain wrong, though. That isn’t the same as saying, “I literally died laughing,” in which the usage is so clearly, obviously wrong.
For example, I used “actually” correctly, a little further up the page here. I use words with intentionality, and I have a fairly consistent style. You’ll notice that I put the period/comma inside of the closing quotes, in one instance above, and I put it outside of the closing quotes in another. Within dialogue or a full-sentence quote, the period goes inside of the quotes. When quoting only a word or two, it goes outside of the quotes, even if it’s at the end of a sentence.
Of course I fuck up at times, particularly here on my phone. I’m nearly perfect after a couple of proofing passes, which I don’t do on here.
A better example for you, for a long established case of misuse, would be “flammable/inflammable”. I never use “inflammable”. It vaguely annoys me, because of the unnecessary inefficiency, but the fact that the original meaning has been lost fixes the issue. Something that isn’t flammable is instead referred to as flame-retardant, or something similar.
If people started using “very”, “really”, and “actually” the same way that they do “literally” … that would be more idiotic than the misusage of “literally”, actually.
Do you have any examples of the sort of misusage to which you’re referring? (I flip-flop a bit on the incorrect reordering of prepositional phrases, depending upon flow and context)
There’s some room for conditional changes, of course, such as beginning a sentence or even a paragraph with a conjunction, for the purposes of additional emphasis. Just like the Prime Directive, grammatical rules are there to make you stop and think, before you break them.
But that isn’t what’s going on with the abuse of “literally”. In many cases, it only causes confusion. In the least case, it’s unnecessary and silly.
Another example of intentional, incorrect grammar, which I meant to point out at the end but forgot:
“… instead referred to as flame-retardant, or something similar.”
That comma is technically not supposed to be there, since there isn’t a complete sentence after the conjunction, but I wanted to force a soft stop.
“Very” for example is the modern form of “verily”, in the same sense as “verified” or “averred” etc, denoting that what one is speaking is the absolute truth exactly as spoken. I think Shakespeare might have been the first to shorten it to “very” – in a specific restricted case – but it was generations later that it got demoted to the status of being a mere intensifier.
The human mind’s need to exaggerate or engage in hyperbole, and the weird way in which those things seem to require a statement that they are real, ALWAYS brings down the meaning of a word which specifically states that an utterance is not an exaggeration or hyperbole. An individual human mind can hold the meaning steady; but in general use, it rapidly gets worn away and then folks have to invent a new word to carry the same load.
I thought you were referring to some modern abuse that was happening with those words, as is happening with “literally”.
There’s the wearing down and shifting of words, and then there’s the instantaneous (relatively speaking), complete reversal of meaning. Some hyperbole is fine, but some of the tweens are misusing it every damned time, to the point that I’m not sure if they know what the word actually means, anymore.
And the hyperbolic use of a word should not result in the distorted meaning appearing in dictionaries. Hyperbole is hyperbole, not a new meaning for the word that’s being used in a hyperbolic fashion.
I don’t think that what happened to “verily” is a particularly good example, though. It’s the truncated form that has the diminished meaning, after all. The other forms that you listed still have the original meaning.
There’s another issue here. I only ever see/hear the adverbial form being abused, in a hyperbolic, exclamatory manner. When the root word is treated correctly in every other usage, we have in issue. The simple appendage of a part-of-speech-changing suffix doesn’t seem like enough to reverse the meaning, while the forms of “very” differ to a much greater degree … and don’t actually reverse the meaning, just reduce it.
Like I said with the flammable/inflammable case, it would be problematic if “inflammable” was also still used to mean that something is not flammable. Can you imagine what a legal cluster-fuck that would be, if nothing else?
You’ve heard about the very expensive case that was lost because of the lack of an Oxford comma, right?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/09/us/dairy-drivers-oxford-comma-case-settlement-trnd/index.html
Always. Use. An Oxford. Comma.
And did you actually read my whole ramble back there, man? Heh. I’m not sure what that says about you, if that’s the case, but I’m impressed.
Basic shape maybe. However her features are very very human. Your basic features would still fit with very different head shapes for instance. An other ancestry may lead to a snout or scales. Maybe facet eyes or a carapace.
Not really.
If we go really basic, there are only two relevant criteria to be able to reach the stage where technological development can take place:
-manipulation (of objects) independent from locomotion
-enough intelligence for abstract thinking and planing
Being a social species surely helps, but I don’t think it’s a prerequisite.
Nothing about concrete body plans here.
I think ‘concrete’ body plans would be more common among silicon based life forms. :)
Which gets me thinking if subterranean (possibly blind) life forms like a horta would ever get to space travel since they would have so little contact with or knowledge about the sky.
I heard an excellent (IMHO) explanation by Neil Degrass Tyson of why we should expect carbon-based life instead of silicon-based life. The 5 most common elements in the universe are (in order of abundance) hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. Helium is really hard to work with chemically, so life can’t use it that well. That leaves the others. When you look at the chemistry of life as we know it, the elements that get used are (in order of abundance) hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen; others show up too, but in much less abundance. So we are made of the most abundant elements in the universe in the same order.
There is 20 times more carbon in the universe than there is silicon. Reactions with silicon tend to require more energy then equivalent reactions using carbon. When we look at the moons of Jupiter and Saturn we find a lot more CH4 than SiH4. Silicon-based life can be complex, but carbon-based life is much easier.
That would lead to silicon based life being less common but it could still happen. A given star system, due to the plot device of your choice, could have an unusually high prevalence of silicon. Following that premise, silicon based life would be extremely rare, perhaps even one of a kind, but it could happen.
Hey, there is some silicon based lifeforms out there, some down here too. Us Cybertronians are REALLY good at hiding tho, so don’t expect to just see us strolling down the street, true form exposed. I like my Pretender Armour, makes me look Human and taller…
Unless it is different in the current iteration, but I recal it being revealed the Cybertronians were originally built as labor robots by the Quintessans; but developed beyond their control; giving the Cybertronians a robot uprising origin.
Explaining a preference for Carbon for anything involving complex molecules doesn’t need to go as far as elemental abundances. There are chemistry-based reasons that are completely independent of abundance, provided the quantity available in the local environment is ‘enough’.
In order to make something as complex as life-as-we-know-it, you need to be able to produce complex molecules. Carbon and silicon have the potential to make four bonds, nitrogen has three, oxygen two, and I’m going to stop there because that’s enough to illustrate the point*. Basing the molecules on an atom with four bonds lets you make lots of variations of structures, including multiple types of asymmetry; two bonds just lets you make chains; three bonds allows some networks, but not as complex as four bonds and without as much control over the asymmetry. Carbon’s the lightest four-bond atom, comparable to nitrogen and oxygen, while silicon is substantially bigger and heavier; this helps carbon to make far more variations of bond types with itself, nitrogen, and oxygen (single, double, triple, and several in-between states) than any of them can with silicon, which allows for far more complex structures. And many of those carbon/nitrogen/oxygen combinations interact with each other and the environment, building up complex reaction networks, whereas silicon doesn’t have that adaptability or mobility. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of silicon-based chemistry eventually producing something that we could recognise as life, but there would need to be something suppressing the carbon-based chemistry in order for it not to be quickly out-adapted.
* Hydrogen is very small – the smallest atom possible with normal matter – and has only one bond. It plays an important role in some of the interactions between groups of the larger molecules, but most of the time it acts as a relatively unreactive ‘stopper’ on carbon bonds that aren’t part of the structural network.
Don’t believe they meant ‘concrete’ in that sense :P
And we have already met Concretia, the Super :D
I know what Jasole is talking about, actually. There was, I think, some sort of study a while ago, which was looking at energy efficiency and safety factors and all that.
Basically, bipedal locomotion is incredibly energy efficient compared to almost all other forms of locomotion- which allows for more energy to go into things like thinking. Bipedalism requires a body shape like ours- legs about half the body length, set underneath the point of gravity.
For manipulators, you could have any number or sort- tentacles are a good one, and probably fairly common, but for fine manipulation you can’t have something like, say, crab claws or paws or whatnot- so it’s either gonna be hands or tentacles, and a lot of that depends on gross body structure (endo vs. exoskeleton vs. hydraulic squishiness). Similarly, number and position of limbs is up in the air. But assuming an endoskeletonic bilaterally symmetric being, two on-the-side arms are likely, with fingers. Fingered hands also have the benefit of being able to be scrunched up for durability, making handy clubs in the process.
As for heads and sensory organs- well, it makes sense to have sensors near mouths for food inspection and intake. Binocular vision is somewhat necessary for hunting high-protein meals and creating fine technology (or other forms of depth perception, like the Uniocs’ double-focus eye), so that’s at least two occular sensors pointed the same way. Aural sensors do best when farther apart, so ears on either side of the head are useful. Clustering these things near the main brain is a good thing as well, for speed-of-reaction. And of course, keeping this processing and sensory cluster as far away from danger as possible (so higher in the air) is also a safety feature.
But then, just about every other part of the body is up for grabs. Reproductive organs? Who knows? Same with digestive system orifices, if they’re not just using exterior digestion. Skin covering? Other limbs? Someone might have vestigial wings or wing covers, tails, multiple manipulators, more than one ‘head’ ala Puppeteers…
But yeah, based on energy efficiency, assumed safety needs, similar sensory apparatii… Humanoids are a somewhat likely body setup. And homonid behaviours are also very survival conducive.
External Digestions? Do you have any idea how many asumptions you have to make to even make this a possibility on the scale of intelligent life??
You have to do changes like make food really abundant or really scarce.
But if you make it too abundant, a brain would just be dead weight.
And if you make it too rare, it would not be able to pull it’s weight during the critical evolution phases.
Kurzgesagt did some videos on “the shape of life”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7KSfjv4Oq0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUWUHf-rzks
And TierZoo did a thing on how hard it would be to actually replace/inherit humanity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTZgLsSR5P8
A brain isn’t necessarily dead weight in a food abundance scenario. Examples:
1. A prey species who is the abundant food for a predator species — easily possible to have an evolving battle of wits between a clever attacker and a clever defender. The most overlooked fiction example: The Impossible Man from Marvel’s Fantastic Four comics: an alien from Poppup, a world filled with chaotic dangers and a wide array of species that were basically opportunistic predators of every other species on the planet. The Poppupians evolved their intellect into a planetary hive mind (“On Poppup we don’t need names; we know who we are.”) and their physical adaptability into full-blown shape-shifting just to survive their predator-rich home planet.
2. A chaotic environment, pushing the species to adapt themselves to changing requirements or develop techniques to alter its environment. You can have, for instance, rich fertile soil and abundant food, but it changes over a relatively short period of time from mainly fruits and nut (needed intellect: find it, grab it) to mainly grains, tubers and insects (needed intellect: find it underground or harvest it, modify it to edible form). That’s part of what happened to humanity’s ancestors.
The main driving force for intelligence seems to be needed to adapt to circumstances faster than physical evolution can allow, rather than solely a sweet spot of food availability.
To simplify (I think):
Excessively abundant food wouldn’t happen period, I don’t think. Life will tend to make use of what food is available. Once life has adapted to make use of the abundantly-available food, the things in that abundance-based environment will require more food, in terms of absolute quantities, to continue their existence. Things evolve to best survive in their environment, relative to other species.
After everything uses more of that greater amount of food, say bye bye to that abundance, relatively speaking. At that point, brains will once again be useful for competition.
Not simplifying my point, but making a good point all your own.
My point was that the main thing driving increased intelligence is there being an advantage to increased intelligence that offsets the disadvantages (for humans that would mainly be the nutritional requirements of a larger brain, the greater difficulty in passing a large skull through a birth canal, and an extended childhood span). Humans seem to have leveled out in terms of sheer brain capacity, probably partially due to the leapfrogging effect of oral traditions and then literacy.
Larry Niven’s story “Passerby” posits a couple of possibilities that could cause creatures to become more intelligent past sentience into who-knows-what levels of mentality (in a conversation between a people-watcher and a spaceship pilot who had been saved by a giant golden alien and deposited basically exactly in the spot in Africa where early hominids evolved sentience — he was rescued near Barnard’s Star, and hadn’t come from Earth — the alien just figured out where, ultimately, the pilot had originated).
One scenario was the sentient predator/prey competition: having to get smarter at least as fast as the thing that is try to hunt, kill and eat you is getting smarter is a good motivator. So is getting smarter fast enough to keep from being starved to death for lack of prey you’re smart enough to catch.
They ultimately decide they like the idea of sentient being modifying themselves to become more intelligent in a kind of Singularity-style artificial evolution better.
The central image is a child picking up a caterpillar from the sidewalk, looking around, and then putting it back on the tree branch. Near the beginning of the story, the pilot faints when he realizes the similarity to his own rescue. Near the end, the pilot asks the people-watcher what would have happened if an adult had seen the caterpillar first. The last line of the story is the less-than-comforting answer: “Probably would have stepped on it.”
I guess I did take a sightly different path to get to your point, further reinforcing it. Heh.
Yeah, our brains have a HUGE energy-economy cost. I don’t think we ever could have become so intelligent, if we weren’t such good endurance predators. We can run damned near any other mammal to death, because of our sweat glands. Body-cooling by way of panting just can’t keep up with our system.
People often think that we’re physically pathetic in all ways, compared to just about every other animal, but we do have some almost-unique strengths, in addition to our advanced communion and tool usage.
Your point about brain-size versus pelvis-configuration has an additional complication. The triple set of developments couldn’t have happened all at once, or it at least would have been so difficult for natural selection to sort out, such that it would have resulted in our ancestral extinction.
The shift to full bipedality caused a major hindrance to brain-size increases. Going fully bipedal couldn’t have coincided with brain-size increases, or at least it would have been the next thing to impossible. I think that two simultaneous, major structural-changes to a complicated system is the general limit.
And great story you brought up. I remembered it once you got to the golden space-being part. I forget; which book is that in? All the Myriad Ways? Limits? Is The Menace from Earth his or Heinlein’s?
I’ll have to check my bookshelves and flip through his story-compilation books. I think I have nearly all of them.
Passerby is included in both A Hole in Space and N-Space. The Menace from Earth is Heinlein.
I like to think that the emphasis on wide hips came first, with wide-hipped, large-derriered females being more attractive to potential mates (and having easier childbirths, thus having more children and being more likely to survive childbirth and rear those children). Then wider hips allowed for larger brains in children, and then came language, culture, music, and eventually a rap song celebrating the results. I call this the Sir Mix-a-Lot Hypothesis. :-)
I cannot deny Woodrobin’s hypothesis.
Hmm, I’m pretty sure I didn’t read it in either of those. I think it was in one of the much earlier books that I inherited from my father. Niven has a habit of repackaging like crazy. The Beowulf Shaeffer stories have been spread out and compiled several times.
— 20 minute break —
I finally got curious enough to go flip through my book shelves. I read it in Convergent Series, which came out in 1979. That could easily be the first appearance of the story.
And yeah, the bit about the child and the caterpillar was essentially a narrative frame, as well as the metaphor/trigger for the revelation.
I would argue that being a social species is required to become space-faring because, as a social species, you would need to develop complex communication to help manage the group dynamics which will lead into being able to tell the stories of your ancestors and even the development of scientific principals. This way, you do not have to discover how the universe works on your own all over again; you can learn from you predecessors and move on from them, saving lots of time.
I think another criteria would be to be in an environment that allows energy manipulation. Many cephalopods (octopus, squids, cuttlefish, etc.) are quite bright (as invertebrates go) and curious and can manipulate objects quite easily; locomotion is done with water jets and fins (except octopus), more often than the arms, although some octopus walk across the seabed as a major (but not exclusive) form of locomotion. Many cephalopods also have very complex visual communication that we are still trying to figure out the details of.
So that fits your criteria (even with my addition), but living in the cold ocean would prevent them from discovering fire, smelting metals (except maybe in some volcanic vents), working with water-soluble chemicals (acids and bases, for example) or much later working with electricity in anything other than an electric eel’s method. I could see some squid developing versions of animal husbandry (farming crabs and other food sources) or even domesticating other animals to do work for them, like we did with the dog and horse, but not right away.
Gorilla’s can manipulate their environment much more than us humans (way stronger, and hands pretty much as dexterous as ours), but are not as intelligent and creative as us. Dolphins are really smart and creative, but lack the environmental manipulation ability we have (also, living in water).
I agree that there are lots of options on forms, so long as it meets some basic criteria. Life comes in lots of different forms, and what works here may not work elsewhere and we should expect something quite different when we see actual alien life, even to the point that if we can identify a potential alien as a mammal, it is almost certainly a local (from Earth).
If you say that human is the default shape, people think you mean it is the gold standard.
But for me the humanoid shape is not a gold standart. It is simply bog-standard. And once we meet alien live, we can change the term to properly reflect that.
There are lots of issues with how human bodies are put together. My favorite two:
We have a blind spot in each eye due to the optic nerve attaching on the light-detecting inside of the retina — our brains have to edit out the spot in software (if you shut one eye and center a colorful dot on a bland background in your blind spot, the dot will disappear, because your brain fills in the blind spot by averaging the data from the areas next to it). That’s impressive image processing, but it’s really bad camera design.
Also, as Robin Williams puts it (in re: the urethra, anus, and genitalia): who puts a waste management facility right next to a recreation area?
In defense of Nature’s design criteria, She did a wonderful job. I could write a longish essay on the whys and wherfores of our–or of any being’s–conformation, so I’ll restrict myself to our eyes.
Take the most impressive/expensive/best-performing camera you can find. Now compare two aspects of that with our vision system. Our eyes can only be equalled by a contraption that won’t fit in our head, let alone our eye socket, and we need to feed that device with some electricity… The price of having resolution several thousand times better than any camera you can buy is “the blind spot”. Our image processing would require a {insert expensive government agency here} super-computer.
The most unpleasant person on the planet is still one of the most advanced pieces of technology you’ll ever see.
No it isn’t! The blind spot is just a result of vertebrates having evolved from flatfish that swam the wrong way up! Cephalopod eyes don’t have them. It’s just pure bad luck that our optic nerves run along the wrong side of the retina, not the price of anything.
Not several thousand times better. The resolution of the human eye is 576 megapixels. Humans can’t even see in 4K
Lazarus, 4k is only roughly 8 megapixels. So we still have better resolution by 2 orders of magnitude. 4k UHD which is pretty much the standard for most 4k tvs is 3840×2160 or 8,294,400 pixels (8.29 megapixels), the highest resolution in the 4k range at 4096×3072 which is a 4:3 ratio is 12,582,912 pixels (12.58 megapixels)
So yes, the human eye is still has a far higher resolution than anything we have created or will create for quite a long time. So yes we can see in 4k, very easily.
I cannot agree with you. You have compared the lens alone with the entire camera, and have omitted the image processor.
In other words, you’re pointing at the human eye and exclaiming that it is small and compact and that modern cameras cannot do what it does within the same space constraints. But the eye is just the lens, and you don’t get an image without (in modern digital cameras) an image processor. Therefore you must include the brain in your volume comparisons. And that places the volume comparison a lot more fairly in favor of the mechanical camera. My semi-pro DSLR camera with say a 50mm lens on it is about comparable to the volume of a human brain and eyeballs, but there are cameras that do this quite well within a much smaller form factor.
I suppose if you wanted to you might try to include only the part of the brain dedicated to processing visual input, but if you go down that path you’re treading a fairly slippery slope that might have neuroscientists arguing for years…
Good points. Yes I did compare the lens with the camera.
However. I have a dashcam (Itronics ITB-100HD) which records at 1080P at up to 70°C. It also records the ambient noise in the vehicle. All this in a tube ~25mm diameter and ~100mm long. So yes, take out the processing and recording, then one in each eye. It’s not very good for “extended” usage but. At night, if I need to grab a registration plate, I need to off my headlights so the blaze of light off the retroflective white plate won’t swamp the auto-exposure. In any lighting conditions it will not resolve a standard rego plate at over 15 meters as the lens is scarcely wider than a human pupil. This uses a 12 volt power source.
This is not the highest technology available. Your DSLR camera can almost certainly do better. However, we have always been talking about moving pictures. In human terms, at 10 frames/second. Also, our eyes can effortlessly compensate for brilliance levels over any part of the field of view, at 10 frames/second. At 576 megapixel definition. At 10 – 100mV.
Image processing… The human brain does most of that in the “hind-brain”, at the back of the skull. Our built-in IT system now needs to place that in memory and simultaneously forward a copy to our threat center, while also dealing with the business of listening and assessing actions based on ambient noise.
What definition does your DSLR camera have?
You don’t even need a paper with a bright spot on it to find your blind spot. You can do it anytime (except maybe while driving) with no equipment whatsoever. Close your left eye, focus on a fixed spot (e.g. a clock on the wall), hold your right fist at arm’s length in front of you, then raise your little finger and position it about two hand-widths to the right of the spot you’re focusing on. You may have to move it around a bit, but you should soon find a spot that makes your finger disappear. It reappears if you move it left or right. (Naturally, you can reverse the instructions to find find the blind spot in your other eye.)
I sometimes amuse myself by watching cars on a distant highway pass into my blind spot, vanish, and then reappear. At night, you can vanish the moon. DO NOT TRY TO VANISH THE SUN.
Oh the classic problem with budding solar astronomers – FFE
French Fried Eyeball
Gouda?
Sheesh!
Unless it’s an aged cheese, say 2 or 3 years, it’s not really worth the bother.
And why not a couple of wheels of Nagelkaas, or Norwegian Jarlsberg?
Aliens… just don’t know what’s good…
Wallace wants to know if space cheese exists.
Or even a nice Venezuelan Beaver Cheese. :-)
Larry has already set Sail! Even though it is one of the larger rodents, beavers produce too little milk to make cheese with it. You would need to feed entire forests to the things to get enough for a kilogram of beaver cheddar.
I am most glad to discover that was a Monty Python reference instead of (as I had first feared) a rather unsanitary and unfortunate euphemism. :-)
I first heard of it in a Leisure Suit Larry game, so it could have been one anyway.
There’s too much cheese on that taco!
They are not handling the merchandise very well either. A large part of the taste of a certain cheese is the aromas of the volatile compounds. Exposing it to the vacuum of space is going to boil off any scent compounds and most of the moisture. They might as well call it brick cheese because it will now have the taste and texture of your average brick.
For anyone wanting to know more about the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filters, there is the great YouTube channel of Isaac Arthur. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g
Also, from Kurtzgesagt – In A Nutshell.
Great Filters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjtOGPJ0URM
Fermi Paradox (part 1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNhhvQGsMEc
Fermi Paradox (part 2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fQkVqno-uI
I don’t get why that’s such a big riddle. “Where is everybody” – well, we are not anywhere except here as well. We sent out the first radio waves by accident, some 100 years (give or take) ago, so how far did these transmissions travel up to now? 100 LJ obviously, give or take, and they get weaker with distance, so it requires a sophisticated civilization within said 100 LJ to notice us. And we learn about their answer after it traveled the distance to us. Provided that they want to answer.
Even if there are some 10000 planets with life and, say, 10 planets with intelligent life within our galaxy, if they are far away we cannot learn about them until the message has traveled the distance from there to here. Our galaxy is 150000 to 200000 light years in diameter…
To get here requires to know about us and to be able to travel the distance with some reasonable effort, that is, it requires FTL, something we don’t have, AFAIK we don’t even have a theory about it.
It’s not only the scarcity of intelligent life it’s also the distance.
I’m with you. Heck, maybe ETs have noticed the signals but lack the technology to pinpoint the source or respond by now.
You should really lool up the details on the Fermi Paradox, which is based on statistics. The reason why it’s currently a Paradox is that statistically we should be seeing various signs (radio, and dimming of stars from Dyson swarms) by now. The probabilities say we shouldn’t be among first life to reach our current level of technology, and beyond.
Think about it, Earth is running behind on the evolutionary clock since we got wallup’ed 66 million years ago.
The only “solution” that seems viable currently is that sentient life or life in general is depressingly more rare than we think it is. In “orders of magnitude” (multiples of ten) more rare.
Always a good question: “Where are they?” Answer: “Everywhere–if you’re looking in the right Universe!”
But let’s crawl back into the square. A good argument has been made (I’m too lazy to chase up the citations) that while we will probably be unable to avoid “life”, we won’t find much advanced life, as in more than 100 or so cells in a commensal unit. The basis of this argument is that you need a suitable high-mass planet to start, with (1) a planetoid size moon and (2) a fractured crust/mantle amenable to tectonic plate movement. In addition, the importance of a large magnetic core cannot be overstated. This would almost certainly be iron.
So. Why doesn’t Mars have oceans? A: No missing crust to provide deep holes, and not enough magnetic field to ward off solar winds. A large moon would have helped. Mars is far enough from the Sun that distance would mitigate problems caused by its lower mass.
The theory requires a good-sized moon to provide for sufficient oceanic tidal movement that would fuel tide-pools to protect and nourish primitive life and proto-life forms, and geo-tidal movement to assist tectonic plate movement. I’ll let your imagination work on the weather. We also need a lot of trans-ferric elements, especially trans-uranic elements, to provide a suitable low-level background of ionizing radiation to help with evolutionary mutation.
Personally, I believe (this is faith here, not much science!) there may well be some thousands of suitable planets in this Galaxy, but to steal from Shlock Mercenary : “The Milky-Way galaxy is mind-bogglingly big. … By the time you carve our galaxy up into units you have actual, personal experience with, you’ll have to start using numbers that you won’t live long enough to count to.” Those planets will probably be very, disturbingly, far apart.
Okay, that’s enough for this pathetic universe. Life’s so much more fun in the Grrl-verse :)
Personally, our planet is so mind-bogglingly big that I couldn’t count all of the pieces in my entire natural lifetime if it were cut up into chunks of a size I’ve had personal experiences with.
I mean, sure, I’ve actually moved around a bit on it, and someone could claim the fact I’ve travelled more than 2,000 miles (furthest point to furthest point, not total distance), one could divide it into just 12 chunks. But their claim would be entirely bogus, because for most of that distance, my experience was constrained to this tiny swath of visible land. That’s not just a width limit, but a depth limit.
There’s also the fact that I have difficulty focusing on my counting in the triple digits, and that gets worse as my counting extends beyond that. Without doing some trick such as writing down the digit increases for each hundred I count to, even if I lived long enough, I simply couldn’t count that high.
While the probabilities say we shouldn’t be the first, do we really have a basis to predict by how much other intelligent species beat us to this point in radio technology? Note that I’m asking about this one specific area of technology, because a species with vastly superior biological technology doesn’t necessarily broadcast that capability at the speed of light.
While I don’t see how one could develop electronic computers without having discovered EMF transmissions, I can easily imagine circumstances where using EMF transmissions for communication would not happen to the degree that it has with us. A species evolved in an environment with a much greater level of naturally occurring EMF would likely just see EMF as something they need to shield their equipment from, rather than a data transmission opportunity. They’re also likely to be much more advanced in other areas, because that background EMF would wreck havoc on their electrical equipment, stymieing research in that area until they have the required shielding.
There’s probably more reasons than I could imagine for how an advanced race wouldn’t be blasting EMF out to the rest of the galaxy. But it’s probably worth mentioning there’s an entire class of reasons that none of us can properly imagine: they discovered technology to communicate as well as or better than what EMF provides, before they discovered EMF. Since we haven’t discovered any such thing, we can only really hand-wave towards it. (I would consider ‘telepathy’ to be a hand-wave, unless you can explain how it works in enough detail to teach someone else how to do it and how to detect it with technology.)
Assume we can travel at 1% of the speed of light(*). That means it would take between 20 and 25 million years to crosss the entire galaxy. It would take about as long for us to /colonise/ the entire galaxy.
Unless we are the first, or only, intelligent species in the galaxy, there should be signs of colonisation throughout the galaxy. If we don’t kill ourselves off in the next half century, odds are that we develop fusion powerplants, have enough energy to build efficient launch systems and are colonising our solar system in another half century after that. At that point somebody will construct an interstellar spaceship that uses solar sails, perhaps some mega laser to launch out of the solar system and / or an ion drive to slow down at the other end of the journey. Just for the thought that their grandchildren (or himself if we have largely conquered the difficulties of replacing failing bodyparts and become effectively ageless by then) will be the first human beings standing on a planet around a different sun and go in the history books alongside Neil Armstrong.
A quarter million years later, that is as long as our species has existed, we would have spread out to cover 1% of the galaxy and our oldest planet and colonies would be altering their solar systems so profoundly that it could be seen from across the galaxy for anybody who knows to recognise the signs.
The Fermi paradox is that we should be seeing these signs already because life, even intelligent life, ought to be common enough that at least one species arrived at this state a couple of million years before us. (after all, it took over three billion years between the first cellular organisms and multi cellular organisms, after which life happened very quickly. It is rather unlikely that nowhere else in the universe the transition happened not ten million years more quickly. Or it did not take a couple of hundred million years worth of false starts and an asteroid strike or two to get to intelligent life. If an intelligent dinosaur had happened and no asteroid wiped them out, saurianity would have spread out over most of the galaxy by now. If multi cellular life had happened after 2 billion years instead of 3.5 then whatever species had evolved would be halfway to a different /galaxy/ by now.
So, where are the signs of different intelligent life that should be all around us?
(* we can do several times that in fact. Well, we can not actually do, but we know how to create an interstellar space ship that can go that fast without having to resort to clarketech.)
p.s.
A nitpick, but the things we can do to extinct ourselves are considered the lesser filters, not the great ones.
Odd little trivia… So we started experimenting with sending out radio waves… but there was a leap forward in our understanding and the power of the signal. Most of the earlier transmissions would blend into the background noise if they could even travl that far. So what was our first large broadcast of radio waves? What is the first thing alien species would see if they were scanning the skies like we do? The 1942 Olympics. Yea, the one with Hitler and the Nazi’s. No wonder no one out there wants to talk with us.
I see from your posting you are visiting from a parallel universe with a different timeline. In this reality our Nazis had their games in 1936. I take it that your Aryans waited a little longer than ours to get the war rolling. Any other changes of note? Who got the Bomb in your universe?
In a parallel note (see what I did there?)
I remember a Sci Fi short story where two physicists were working on a way to contact alternate realities. Because his counterpart was working on the same project on his end they managed to sync up their transmitters with each other. They found they could only send data back and forth but not matter. They decided to start a business trading knowledge between their almost identical worlds. It turned out the biggest profit came from sending over copies of iconic movies that had been cast to different actors.
https://www.littlethings.com/iconic-movie-roles-almost-other-actors/1
https://www.tvovermind.com/20-famous-roles-actors-supposed-play/
I’m upvoting you for mentioning Isaac.
Cora’s bombshell isn’t really much of one in terms of fiction. Humans tend to get abducted for a lot of those reasons mentioned above… Some civilizations seem to think we make pretty decent Brutes.
There’s also sex tourism, and I figure there’s gotta be some aliens who’d take home a souvenir.
Considering Dabbler exists (remember she’s part alien, and part human along with a lot of succubus), and the scene from the club, we know aliens have been coming here and hooking up with humans for at least a generation.
Though almost definitely longer than that.
Doesn’t have to be abduction. There’s the, “Babe, we need to talk. I lied when I said that I’m from Canada…”
Leading to the question, “Do you want to meet my parents? I warn you that it is a one way trip.”
“So when you said you were from up north?”
“See that star up there? That faint one just this side of the Little Dipper? That’s where I’m from. So, yeah, up north.”
Rose Tyler: “If you’re an alien, how come you sound like you’re from up North?”
The Doctor: “Lots of planets have a North!”
(This leads to wondering what kind of planet would not have a North, but that’s another story.)
Depends on what definition you use for north. If north is a direction based on the axis of rotation of the planet, then any tidally locked planet would not have a north. North could be in reference to the plane of the solar system, in which case Neptune wouldn’t have a single “North”, but East Pole and West Pole. Places on Neptune could be north of other places, but there wouldn’t be a single place that is north of every other place.
I don’t follow the logic. A tidally-locked planet still rotates on its axis, albeit at the slow rate of 1 rotation per year. The sun would appear stationary, but the stars would still rotate around a clearly-defined “North” and “South” (even if the inhabitants have to make expeditions to the dark side to see the stars).
Trying to think of ways for a planet not have a polar star (or at least region if there’s not a single start there). The most obvious I can think of is rotation in more than one axis, even a slow one, but I’m not sure a planet could form stably in that way.
A Dyson sphere wouldn’t have a polar star as far as the inhabitants were concerned, assuming they lived on the inside of the sphere. Nor would a ringworld (ala Larry Niven) have a meaningful one. Although the Ringworld did have a superconducting grid providing a magnetic field, so it would have had some sort of magnetic orientation, but not a true magnetic North; more like ley lines. Since you could see the direction of spin from the shadows of the vast solar collectors that provided a day/night cycle, directions were spinward, antispinward, port, and starboard (that is, left when facing spinward and right when facing spinward, just as port and starboard are left and right when facing the bow of the ship).
You won’t have life on a tidally locked planet. The gravitational effects of a large moon cause not only tides, but continental drift. The heat generated by continental drift and all that accompanying friction within the core and the mantle keeps the planet from cooling much more rapidly. It also generates the planetary magnetic field which is an essential shield against external radiation.
Unless it has a perfectly circular orbit and no axial tilt, the tide-locked planet is still going to have SOME tidal flexing of the lithosphere. Whether it’s enough to make a difference is another question.
There is a possibility that her saying she is human is a linguistic quirk. Many indigenous tribes around the globe are named after the word that in their language means human. I don’t think the name of her species has been mentioned.
Sounds much more like something Cora would say, IMHO.
Even with a police force, pirates are still going to occasionally make it through, it’s not surprising that a few humans have probably made it off world over the millenia. Throw in supers and the supernatural and the number of nomadic humans is going to skyrocket. It probably happens enough to multiple species that their are probably agencies dedicated to helping you link up with your fellows, enough to then create a sustainable offworld population.
Plus, the police have to have a reason to give a shit
What with the sex tourism, Cora might be some alien lady’s unexpected souvenir from her gap year excursions.
That’s assuming her daddy wasn’t a space-seahorse, or from a species where the male (or equivalent) is the one to carry the offspring until term
That would present logistical problems with human anatomy.
And before you say “well yes but what if he was concieved with a male human”, wouldn’t that basically make the alien a female at least in comparison to human biology?
>That would present logistical problems with human anatomy.
Not if the species in question is marsupial.
Consider: male impregnates female; female gives birth to a joey, which then is placed inside the male’s pouch; male nurses the joey to a fully autonomous infant stage.
Not really: fertilisation and impregnation happens the same way, just daddy is the one to carry the offspring
That’s not how human biology works. I know America has really bad sex education but really.
Human females do not EJECT their eggs from their body. In order for a Seahorse like arrangement to work with human, the ET male would need a mechanism to GO IN AFTER IT and suck the egg our before it embeddeds in the uterine lining.
Put this image in your head, the ET would have to basically raid the Ovaries. Do what we do mechanically for IVF, only with biology.
Not a damn USAsian
And you just explained howit wuld be possible: remember, talking about an alien race
Remember (or maybe look it up) the fan-image of Soupman and Clois finally having sex? He strips, she screams about why his dick is different (can’t remember if it had spikes or tentacles)
Really sucks that Deviant Art finally closed the loophole to looking at ‘Mature’ images :(
Any good explanation of why something couldn’t possibly happen explains exactly what it takes to make it happen.
Dorje Sylas was just a bit more obvious about it than most. ;D
If you’re referring to the Stjepan Sejic drawing, Lois asks why Kal-El’s penis has pincers. His reply is “To grab onto you, of course.” It may have been a riff on Captain Hero from Drawn Together (who was himself a parody of Superman) who had pincer-tipped little arms where humans males would have nipples.
That’s the one, thank you :D
Figure it out on our own, huh? Depending on what Deus brought back from his little shopping trip, that warp coil may already be out of the nacelle.
And for perfectly explainable (if probably untrue) reasons. “We’re sheltering a whole bunch of Alari refugees in out country, a few of them were scientists and were perfectly happy about helping bootstrap us out of the gravity well.”
Deus proceeds to go all Musky describing the Martian colony he plans to have running in a few months.
One of them tripped and accidentally opened their warp drive and forgot to close it while our scientists studied it.
Don’t even need an FTL drive for that. A cost effective sublight/’impulse engine’ motive system would open up the asteroid belt and all the other planets in our system to mining/colonization as a natural first step.
“In 2086, two peaceful aliens journeyed to Earth, seeking our help…….”
No guts no glory!
Galaxy Rangers
Was always pissed about those aliens: kiwis don’t look like that!!
Unless you ARE a New Zealander, don’t be too sure of that….
To be fair, they’re really nice people though
Yes, am a New Zealander, how many fucking times do have to say that? o_O
I don’t know about the warp drive but I think the first hurdle is leaving our planet in a more cost efficient way.
Deus got his hands on the Brane Ripper and used it in conjunction with human technology to construct an interstellar portal device. That has to count as some level of “figure it out on your own,” as without the external power source, the ripper apparently wasn’t capable of that long-distance, same-universe connection.
Side note: Given that Sciona was accomplishing basically the same thing with blood magic that Deus was with a 108 megawatt power station, that gives a scary notion of what Sciona is capable of with enough people juice for fuel.
Wonder if there’s a standard unit of conversion between MW electricity and cc’s of blood, and if that factor depends on the blood type.
There are tiers of technology, and going by the chart shown before, Earth and Alar aren’t that far apart from each other. The Alari weren’t part of the Xevoarchy and came across as just to the right of the FTL boundry, possibly due to making portals using magic more so than technological means given what we’ve seen so far; while Earth is just to the left. So a little mixing and a little boost to Earth tech wouldn’t be unexpected…however the problem comes with Deus having been said to have bought what the Fracture considered “state of the art” so dish all that out too fast and it could be a case of “Hold on…the aliens you said you learned this from…weren’t even THIS advanced either.”
“Or an orc like equivalent. In a lot of cases, those species were brought into space because another race needed a bunch of brutes for something. War, construction… I don’t know. Bodyguards. Brute stuff.”
Krogans, amirite?
A HYMN BEFORE BATTLE
John Ringo
PROLOGUE
“How many worlds does this make?” The dialogue took place before a wall-sized view-screen. The image was not one to make for happy conversation.
The aide knew the question was rhetorical. As the Ghin aged he was becoming soft, without direction. Yet powerful still.
“Seventy-two.”
“Not including Barwhon or Diess.”
“They have not yet fallen.”
The answer was silence. Then,
“We will use the humans.”
At last!
“Yes, your Ghin.”
Silence, a glance at the view-screen.
“That makes you happy, does it not, Tir.”
“I believe it to be a wise decision, as all of your decisions are wise, your Ghin.”
“But slow to come, late. Without decisiveness, without, what is that human word? ‘Élan.’ ”
The words of the aide’s reply were carefully chosen. “Had the decision been reached sooner, there, perhaps, would have been greater profit. Certainly the loss would have been reduced.”
A long minute later the answer: “The profit will be greater in the short run, surely. But at what loss in the long, Tir?”
“Surely the programs have taken effect. The humans are controllable.”
“So thought the Rintar group.”
“Those humans were half formed, brutish. They were unrefined and wild. The new races are much more malleable and well-adjusted to technological controls. They are minimally dangerous and after the invasion the few that remain will be grateful for any bone we toss them.”
Another long silence as the Ghin stared at the view-screen.
“Perhaps you are right, Tir. But I doubt it. Do you know why I am allowing the human project to go forward?”
“If you think the premise flawed, I wonder, yes.”
Silence.
“Why?”
“Guess.”
A pause, a breath, then a longer pause.
“Because we will lose many more worlds without their aid?”
“In small part. Tir, we will lose all the worlds without the humans.”
“Your Ghin, our projections indicate that the Posleen will fail if slowed to their current rate, they will senesce. However, we stand to lose two hundred more worlds before that happens, surely an unacceptable loss.”
“Those projections are flawed as our projections of the humans are flawed. At the end of this era the humans will be the masters and the Darhel will be an outcast race living on the edge of civilization scavenging the garbage. And your human project will be the cause.”
The Tir carefully schooled his features. “I . . . question that projection, your Ghin.”
“It isn’t a projection, you young fool, it’s a statement.”
On the view-screen a world burned.
Also “Deathworlders” series, aka “Humanity, F* yeah!” https://deathworlders.com/books/deathworlders/
Meh, you want a real series about humans taking to the stars as miltary/mercenaries for alien governments, see The Dammed by Alan Dean Foster. Old book, but good one.
https://www.amazon.com/Damned-Trilogy-False-Mirror-Spoils-ebook/dp/B06XRRMTKD/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1563816634&sr=8-2
I remember that series. I start out with the false mirror because I like the cover and the name treat after that I had to go looking for the other two it was a good series. If I can find it on tape so I can listen to it while I’m at work I particularly enjoyed how that 1 group of aliens that most people are fighting foiled Humanity right before the final battle you’ll never guess how.
Human being the term most aliens apply to themselves. Also, her light drive replicates whatever she tells it to a d since she knew where she was going, she set the biology to human.
Yeah, I go with this! Like, Earth means dirt. How many species evolved and lived on the dry ground for a vast majority of their lives? They’d probably call their planet (once translated) Earth. Everyone is from Earth. I guess except for fish species, which would be from Aqua?
Anyway, every planet is Earth. Everyone is an Earthling. ‘Human’ is a translated word that means ‘the name a sapient species gives to itself’.
The great filter is one possible answer to the fermi paradox, but far from the only one.
For example, while intelligent life is relatively easy to detect, life itself is hard. And evolution is not directed, so on many living planets intelligence might not evolve. Ever.
Also, the more we discover about other star systems, the more it seems that our system is exceptional. The vast majority of stars are red dwarfs. Those do, according to current estimations, strip their close planets of the atmosphere. Larger stars are shorter-lived. Sol is really just in a rare sweet spot between calmness and longevity, so live can and has enough time to evolve and advance.
Red dwarfs will calm down eventually and it is assumed that planets can regain an atmosphere. It is assumed that earth has done exactly that. So the assumed advanced civilizations might all be in the future. Compared to the estimated possible age of a red dwarf, the universe is not really old. So we might just be one of the first.
Yes, humanity might be a progenitor race.
Other solutions like simply the vast space out there in space, and so on, of course also still exist.
We are still not very good at detecting Earth-like worlds in an orbit as far out as ours, as the main techniques use either looking for a transit of the star (requires much luck with a long-period orbit) or watching for the wobble that the planet causes in the star (which is pretty small for us). We don’t actually know how common are rocky worlds with around 1 earth-mass of material orbiting with a period of around a year. It’s much easier to detect worlds that are closer in, especially much larger planets, and those are less habitable for a whole bunch of reasons.
In short, we would be hard pressed to detect Earth’s twin even if it was orbiting our nearest Sol-equivalent star (there are closer stars, but they’re different types). Because we can’t really spot that, we can’t make any kind of guess how common true Earth-like planets really are as we’ve basically no data whatsoever.
That is right.
I was not talking about planets around Sol like stars, I was talking about the rarity of Sol like stars themselves. Smaller stars have not yet calmed down enough, larger stars do not live long enough.
Here is a better explanation of what I wanted to say: https://youtu.be/af4yCiI-Sjs
They estimate there’s between 100 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy, the rarity of Sol like stars is relative. Dave was right when he said “Even if we plug in some really pessimistic numbers into the rest of the equation, there should be tens of thousands of planets out there with life.”
exactly. Then add to that higher levels of technological advancement. While there may have only originally been a few thousand “Homeworlds”, terraforming and interstellar colonization is obviously an available and likely relatively easy thing for a lot o those civilizations at this stage of the game.
Right, and you know you could still a lot without warpdrive. Yeah without it we won’t be setting up interstellar colonies any time soon but there’s a lot to do in this star system: We could have an “Expanse” level civilization if we wanted.
50 years ago we sent men to the moon, on a spaceship designed & guided by computing power you can now slip into your back pocket. Imagine what we could have been doing now if we had thought about long term gains instead of short term ones; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjFyRBRuYoo
The biggest thing is finding an easier, cheaper, more efficient way of expending enough energy to claw our way out of this 1g hole we’re in.
That’s actually part of my “solution” to the Fermi Paradox – by the time you’ve solved the tech needed to go travel to another planet…you’re already quite capable of colonizing your own system’s asteroids and Oort cloud, which have more, easier to obtain resources than any number of planets, largely because of that whole gravity-well thing. Even if your species leaves the native system, there’s no good reason to go planethopping.
From what I’ve heard, the Oort cloud is so big it actually reaches into the Oort clouds of our nearest neighbours and that there is some exchange between them. So rather than a Great Filter the Oort cloud becomes a Great Sponge, soaking up any increase in population. Some could still choose to go to another star, even without warpdrive, by islandhopping until they find one that’s going their way but by the time they get there they will be so adapted to quietly living on/in cold dark objects, and have so many new ones to colonize, they won’t have any good reason to go farther in where they’d be noticed.
For referencing Mass Effect in your commentary, you get a gold star. Also a Prothean artifact paperweight. Guaranteed to be actually Prothean, or your money back. If your paperweight starts to whisper to you and turn you into a neurotic slave of a race of omnicidal cyborg Cthulu spaceships, please contact your local retailer for a full refund.
“Make your own way” doesn’t mean you have to do it from scratch, just be able to replicate the process yourself
Basically: make it worth the effort for some other species to come and drag your sorry tail-less arses into space, even if it’s just as a food source
They’ve got two big helps at this point.
1. They now know it is possible.
2. They now know it is worthwhile.
3. Deus has a literal spaceship with a working drive being repaired in his front yard and a stargate to the space-mall in his basement for the supplies
And every possible thing to gain if the stargate in his basement remains the only conduit of interstellar trade.
Which is conceivably one of the reasons why the Braneripper was in the vault.
Actually it’s even better if he can get control of the spaceship market as well as the wormhole – he can maintain the illusion of competition and avoid regulation, while still having a monopoly behind the scenes.
If there is a spaceship market, a monopoly becomes unmaintainable.
Which is why secrecy is preferable. There is no possible “if he can control it.”
Even having the Alari in his country is drawing unwanted attention.
Doesn’t have to be a pure monopoly, look at Apple and Android, or Mac and Windows, or the primary telecomms in the USA. Sure, there are a few other options but they have a vanishingly small cut of the market.
Now pick your favorite shadow organization to secretly own all the major players through some shell companies and have poeple sitting on the boards, and it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t manipulate the markets to make insane profits.
We choose to go to the stars. Not because it is easy, but because there are bodacious space babes out there.
(sometimes known as the ‘Kirk’ paradigm of space travel)
That explains Kennedy’s interest…
I wonder if it’s common that races of a certain build tend to refer to themselves by by the same name . I wonder if this is true even if they come from planets that never even heard of each other.
Halo defeated a giant chtuluesque alien and seduced a handsome alien. Being the nerd she is it’s strange that she haven’t changed her name to Commander Sidney Shepard yet.
Or Sydney T. Kirk :P
No one deserves to be stuck with the middle name Tiberius.
What’s wrong with Tiberius? o_O
Being named “Shepard” isn’t always a GOOD thing when it comes to space based affairs…….
Ever heard of “Babylon 5”?
Yeah, I watched B5 but I don’t remember a “Shepard” – unless you mean the actor who played a Soul Hunter?
Or SGA, for that matter.
What about Shepard Book?
In the case of Shepard Book, Shepard is a title rather than a name, as it’s what the priests (male and female) of his order are called.
As DaveB noted there are an estimated 100 to 400 Billion stars in our galaxy, that’s 10-40 to the 12th power. The lowest estimate I’ve seen of life forming on just our planet are 1 in 7 to the 70th power and it goes way up from there. Many people say finding life on other planets would be proof the Bible is wrong but at those odds the opposite would be true. Keep in mind the estimated number of ATOMS in the universe is 10 to the 80th power. (I wish I knew how to do scientific notation in these comments.)
Contrary to popular opinion, Borel’s Law does not actually state “Odds below 10 to the 50th power have a zero probability of ever happening.” What he actually said is that’s the point at which the odds of an event happening are negligible. The difference between negligible and zero are huge. The odds against winning the lottery are estimated as 1 in 14 to the 9th power but someone always wins and it’s never someone who doesn’t play. It’s never me either.
2.1 x 10^5 as an example.
One hundred billion is 10^11 (unless you mean a long-form billion, in which case it would be 10^14) .
If you want to do scientific notation, there are a couple of options. One is to write it explicitly – there are 7.7*10^9 humans alive today. The other standard notation is 7.7e9 (or 7.7E9).
For the lottery, odds of 1 in 14e9 (or 1.4e10) seem unlikely – if everyone alive today bought a single ticket, and had independent odds of 1 in 1.4e10, then the chance of there being a winner would be less than 50%. Here in the UK, the National Lottery, when it launched a quarter-century ago, had a 1 in 1.4e7 chance of any given ticket winning. The rules were changed a while back (more balls were added) making it a 1 in 4.5e7 chance of any given ticket winning. Before the change, roughly 1 in 4 draws had no jackpot winner (if everyone in the UK bought a ticket, you’d expect between 4 and 5 winners every draw).
But, yeah, to the overall point, a very small probability, with a very, very large number of opportunities to come up, will come up a lot. The chances of being involved in a traffic accident are pretty small – small enough that people can go their entire lives without ever being involved in one (statistics vary by country) – but there are still tens of thousands of accidents every year in the UK. That doesn’t mean that crossing the road is high risk in itself, but crossing multiple roads daily for decades means the risk accumulates.
“The chances of being involved in a traffic accident ”
There is a story of two motorists, that the only 2 in Wyoming, had a head-on collision.
Not to nitpick Dave, but the US flag is hung wrong. The field of stars should ALWAYS be in the upper left corner when viewed if it is hung on a wall. A military org like ARCHON would not make that mistake.
and to answer “why is it worn with the star field in the upper right on a uniform sleeve then?” it’s because the flag is worn “going forward and not retreating” on the right arm. We have some interesting customs and superstitions in the military
Goldfish in a bowl will foul the water until they die. Environmental degradation is likely to be our own great filter.
After it dies it will continue to foul the water until it stops rotting, or is removed.
Or until something is introduced the three processes the waste material into more useful forms. Nature does this by recycling waste products and corpses into grass and trees and small waste processing insects. I’ve been saying for years but if Humanity wants to survive long-term we have to start treating our economy like an ecology and building sustainable models based off of nature.
So the bets are
Humans were seeded across the galaxy in the past (Star Gate: Goa’uld and retconned for even older with the Ancients)
Humans are some hybrid or local colony that has to grow on its own for some reason (Tenchi Muyo, and various sci-fi pulling a simplest form colonization I claim this land because my mutant hybrid descendants live here)
As she is saying she is human rather than humanoid chances are the seeded likeness thing could still be around, just not the reason for her.
But then of course there is the adventurer aspect, some Star Lord types get out there one way or another and due to this or that handwave to genetics have children with aliens.
oh right, nearly forgot, as the Star Gate ancients kinda cover this, but also pulled the seeding their descendents crowd; you have the pre-human super advanced civilization route too. The Lost Civilization, Hyborean…(Atlantis…note I hate using this example but sci-fi loves using the name despite…I digress)…Previous Quantum Age, but not globally spread.
Like Marvel’s Eternals, Inhumans, and such who advanced but stayed separate from the rest of humanity and got into space.
There is even a surprisingly rare UFO conspiracy theory that the flying saucer people are actually hominids that evolved a high intelligence but low birthrate so quickly they got into space and came back before the homo sapiens even discovered fire and the “flying saucers” are actually much more short range and just hanging about this solar system and in the oceans.
Of course could also throw in alternate dimension/timeline humans and such; we’re like you but evolved slightly differently or out timeline is like thousands of years ahead of yours but have totally different histories anyway and I just hang out in this one because I have friends here.
Oooh NOW it is getting interesting, for there are quite a few theories to be had.
1. There have been at least two major advanced civilizations prior to ours which either were able of space travel or knew about space traveling people. This theory is based upon finding “cargo culture” artefacts all over the globe, as well as reports of the ancient Hindu people about flying crafts called “Vimana”, which either were the “chariots of the gods” or build to resemble them.
2. There are theories about “seeding the earth from afar” considering earth a colony of a space faring people. Some, especially those investigating the “two sun theory”, believe the origin of men to actually be within our solar system, naming either Mars or “Planet 9” as the theoretical astro-body that should be there even if it hasn’t been seen thus far.
3. Science fiction and fantasy, as named by you (Rhuen) have their own explanations of course.
4. … and it doesn’t end here …
I can hardly wait which route DaveB will take. :-)
We still don’t know where Sydney’s orbs came from or how they got to Florida.
Maybe the orbs have been sending out psychic/psionic feelers searching for a compatible companion/host. If we posit that this could have a variably deranging mental effect on incompatible humans, we may have explained the Florida Man trope (at least in the Grrl-verse . . . it remains inexplicable in our own reality).
We are from the earth. Genetics shows this. We may have been engineered. Humans have way too many genetic problems. We have major differences from other primates, even without needing any outside force to have caused them. (Humanity’s ancestor was almost certainly aquatic. Africa has lots of lakes/marshes/rivers. Humans have a blubber layer. Webbed hands. Diving reflex. Instinctual ability to swim. Only aquatic mammals have sex belly to belly. Savana adaptation does not explain bipedalism (other savana primates are not bipedal). streamlined bodyform)
you know this about the comic above and where the blue woman talking by the name of Cora who just said she is human is from right? This isn’t a lecture about permaspermia xenogenesis, but sci-fi stuff; like Cora is human for the same reason the Jaffa from Star Gate are human despite not being from Earth because aliens took humans from Earth and then spread them across the galaxy.
or the idea of a pre recorded history advanced civilization that didn’t become global but did get into space being the reason why Cora could be human, a descendent of those. Earth is still the origin point in this discussion.
Having aquatic ancestors indeed it highly likely. And you forgot that the percentage of salt in our veins match the ocean’s. This, as well as the shared characteristics and DNA with countless life-forms on earth, makes it nearly certain humanity originated from here.
This, however, still does not rule out “seeding from afar” and / or terraforming like scenarios completely if we are talking about highly advanced civilizations or a Sci-Fi context.
And, as Rhuen has stated, there still are our classic alien abductions and several Star-Gate / Atlantis like exodus scenarios. ;-)
I am not rolling out those things to decide upon right or wrong, but because the topic greatly fascinates me, and I like myself the “what if”s .
This ‘the bad news is the same as the good news’ bit is what I expected. It’s an old joke in my house, something of a running gag.
I hope Cora has an explanation for that little revelation of hers….
I didn’t know that was Suzie for a second,her hair looks different.
I was expecting Suzie to ask if other races had Supers or is Earth Special.
*THAT* might be a Great Filter.
Once you have Supers the brakes are off.
(Eh. Could just as easily be the edge that gets around the Great Filter, I suppose.)
Or it could be the other way around. The webcomic PS238 had a bit where a member of a race of totally-not-kryptonian/saiyans was apalled at the fact that Earth still had ‘Feral Talents’, that humans hadn’t taken steps to homogenize whatever super powers manifest. Their species purged anyone who wasn’t a “F.I.S.S” (Flight, Invulnerability, Strength, Speed), the bog-standard “super” profile.
Maybe one of the filters is to pick a power set and work out a eugenic program to standardize it across the population.
On the last panel, shouldn’t Ariana’s statement be, “We’re taking questions after …”? The “s” is missing.
Small criticism: instead of reusing “bust up” in the bad news, you could have used “boost up” instead. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
“Tens of thousands of years ago, my ancestors followed a land bridge to Sirius, but it subsided due to geological drift. Same way the Americas got populated.”
Us doggies would never have made it into space without our handy servants to build rockets for us. Of course we had to go before humans, to show our superiority. But we are quite happy to leave it up to the servants to take the long hard slog to make space environments a suitable habitat for long term doggy habbitation. Keep working on trees or lampposts for proper sanitation.
https://i.imgur.com/DpnoBHJ_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium
Read to the end, please.
Daaw.
Actually Yorp has a bit of a familial resemblance to Laika.
Personally I thought she bore a closer resemblance to my late jack russell terrier. Currently scouting the afterlife, for a good spot for us to hang out together.
Cora’s missing limbs make more sense now. It would be more likely to see developmental abnormalities when trying to cross breed different species, even when you filter in any genetic engineering to make the cross possible.
The problem is our language. “Human” is a broad term that refers to a greater range of species, and we lack a proper term to refer to the subset of that species that we are.
What would we pay with anyway? Governments usually just hand out gobs of debt backed fiat. That one South Park episode did it best with the fake alien armored car heist. It’s just paper and look at what it did to you. I seriously doubt an alien will care to collect pieces of paper with a picture of a dead human politician on it.
Here’s another theory why we see human DNA outside of Earth: The Neanderthals did not just die off. They built space ships and all left for someplace else. “Those awful Cro Magnons are moving in. There goes the neighborhood. We need to find a more exclusive community to live in.” And to make their new home a gated community they took all their tech with them so the we couldn’t follow.
NIMBY is a powerful motivator, had no idea it could push people all the way into space though.
You’ll be surprised how far someone will go to get away from a ‘Neddly Flanderino’, or even a face-less ‘Wilson W. Wilson’
The interesting thing about life on Earth is, it only took half a billion years (or less) to get started once the planet cooled enough to support it. And that’s assuming that the first instance of abiogenesis is the one that survived and eventually became us. This makes the Fermi Paradox even more paradox-y, because if Earth is typical, then life on planets (or moons, or whatever) where conditions allow it isn’t a possibility, it’s a near-certainty.
Though it does have to be said, the universe is really, really young in comparison to its projected lifespan (except for the Big Rip scenario, in which case the universe is over the halfway point). Star formation is expected to continue for at least another trillion years, and the high estimate is a HUNDRED trillion. For comparison, the current age of the universe is calculated to be around 0.137 trillion—we’re barely 10% of the way through our first trillion, and there’s at least a hundred more of ’em coming.
So maybe there just aren’t that many life-supporting planets yet?
It only took (much less than 500 million) years for single-cell life to form once the Earth cooled off. It took two and a half billion for it to evolve into multi-cellular. That step is much more likely to be a filter than bio-genesis is.
Jeez, Cora really was blunt with that, “Then frankly, we don’t want you hanging out with us.”, line.
The assumption that there aren’t any Reapers just because of a big, well populated space station don’t fly. That station could be a century old, with galactic civilization going back a thousand years and if those Reapers only come by every 10,000 years (in Mass Effect it had been 50,000 since their last visit) well, the clock might be ticking. Maybe Sydney is using their technology!! Maybe it’s discovery and use is what signals that it’s time to return!! Sydney’s existance leads to the destruction of Galactic Civilization in a cycle that has repeated for a billion years!!
The spacestation is implied to be much, much older than that.
It’s at least been around longer than humanity has existed.
Given their reaction I am still backing she is using magi-tech from something they are either enemies with or afraid of. Like a Shadows vs Vorlons situation; or some planet bandits recognizing a Green Lantern ring.
I think meant the diversity of the station implied it being less likely to have a culling crew type species, no Reapers or Marvel’s Celestials judging worlds (not that Marvel didn’t just ignore this later and over populate its galaxy anyway), as it would mean fewer would likely have gotten to that shared point and thus fewer Different species present instead of the MIB spaceport level grab bag we saw.
In my view, there are two great filters.
The first is that technology bearing civilizations is in any way an inevitable result or the goal of evolution following abiogenesis, regardless of how long you let it run for.
The second is that if by some wildly improbable chance you DO end up with a technology bearing civilization, technology is so energy hungry that such civilizations probably burn up all their fuel and ability to make renwables long before they get very far off their own miserable rock, and wind up irrevocably back in the their own stone age, assuming they survive global warming.
The biggest great filter we can see is all around us on Earth. Life likes to prey on other life. We even have terms like “the food chain” to describe it. Why would interstellar life be any different? We like to think that there could be mutually beneficial exchanges. However other civilisations are more likely to be so advanced that there is nothing we could meaningfully give them.* But we could pose a serious threat, if we duplicated their technology, took resources they wanted, occupied planets (including our own) which they desired or even just messed up planets (or lagrange points) with pollution and junk.
Survival may go to those who wipe out their rivals before they get exterminated in turn.
And we do have deep history supporting that. We used to have several other types of humans on the planet. Now there is only homo sapiens.** However that happened we only ended up with the one surviving
* Other than things similar to what Cora suggests above. But only for aliens who happen to be interested in primitive art, which may not be a common trait. And a liking for sex with really weird aliens is more likely to be an extremely niche species trait.
** Whilst homo sapiens did breed with some, that is really unlikely to be possible with aliens (barring both the use of advanced technology and a desire to do such).
Regarding your **, neanderthals were also homo sapiens… homo sapiens neanderthalis, where as we are are homo sapiens sapiens.
I don’t believe that interstellar species are likely going around killing everything that broadcasts their I Love Lucy. There’s so much space, and so many filters between them and civilizations that’s just beginning to learn to harness energy for use in higher technology, that it’d be just a waste of resources.
Up until the rats start getting into the pantry. Then the poison is deployed.
Of course that analogy only works if rats are so widespread that it is simply too much hassle to try and exterminate them all.
Don’t you think that humanity will try to avoid carrying rats to any new colonies we build in the solar system? And if we spot one that gets off Earth, we would try very hard to wipe it and its friends out quick, before the problem spread out of control?
And if we spotted a really nasty mutation in some rats on Earth, say ones who’s pee could cause concrete to rapidly crumble, would we not send in exterminators really fast, from all over the place? OK we would also put a few in (steel) laboratories for examination. But we would not want to risk the ones which could endanger our whole civilisation spreading out of control. If we could nip them in the bud.
There’s a crucial aspect that the Drake Equation is missing when used in conjunction with the Fermi Paradox: Detection threshold.
If our civilization had a perfect duplicate in orbit around Proxima Centauri we would be completely unable to detect it by any means available to us. Currently the only civilizations we would be able to detect would be ones rapidly disassembling stars for resources, and that’s because they would be causing sudden and otherwise inexplicable changes in the properties of stars.
Yup. But in just a few years we will have a better generation of telescopes which will be able to give us much more information about exoplanets, including atmospheric content. Which would make Twin Earth stand out like a sore dew claw!
Importantly though the odds of us discovering another civilisation, at a similar stage of development to our own, are really really bad. If working with the assumption that life can spontaneously develop under the right planetary conditions, and takes about the same amount of time to mature to a civilisation, there should have been lots which developed billions and billions of years ago. More than long enough to have explored from one side of the galaxy to the other. So unless they had a reason not to stay, or leave any visible trace (and that reason would have to apply to all such races), then we should not have to look at other planets, we should be able to see them here!
*looks suspiciously at white mice and octopussies*
I knew the mice and dolphins were in on it, didn’t realize the cephalopods were too!
Humans have an urge to explore. Most animals simply don’t. The urge to go look at the other side of the moon may be the rarest thing of all, in large scale terms.
Why we have this assumption that other species would think like us is beyond me. But it’s an assumption in virtually every discussion of “where are the aliens”. Nobody wants to consider “sitting happily at home and not caring what you are up to at all”.
Piffle. Everywhere humans have gone they have found other animals got there first (barring places where life cannot be sustained of course)!
I saw my kittens exploring from the day that they got big enough to climb out of their cardboard box nursery! Whilst they do tend not to stray too far from home, that is because they know they can always find food here.
However if that food ceased to be available, or the environment became hostile, then they would not come back and would explore until they found somewhere they liked. Just like humans.
Admittedly some humans like to explore just for the fun of it, but so do my cats. They only lack the ability to pack enough rations on their back to do so quite so easily as humans can, for prolonged explorations.
And my assumption was not that aliens would think like humans. My initial point was that our entire planet is full of species preying on one another. Animals eating animals, animals eating plants, plants eating animals and so on. And if any of them get a competitive advantage they tend to keep breeding until they wipe out enough of their food source that starvation starts to equalise things.
So why do you think that aliens would not behave like all the other life forms we can observe around us? Exploiting whatever resources happen to be around, which they can make use of, be they from other lifeforms or otherwise.
Species Drift.
Animals explore all the time, especially as populations grow and they need to find more food. It is how you got so many species in different parts of the world before humans came along and transported them.
Hence why when Central America formed, the large mammalian carnivores of North America explored southward over the increased territory to South America, how Dingoes got to Australia, and so on.
Generally speaking, very few intelligent creatures don’t explore that we know of unless they are in a less than favorable niche for their environment, but finding so many sub-species of them suggests they did in the past explore ALOT.
Last I read, our telescopes etc. have gotten just barely good enough that the SETI types are fairly sure we’d detect the presence of contemporary Earth strength transmissions from the nearest sunlike stars. But we sure as hell couldn’t actually decipher what they said.
The Drake equation is actually rather outdated. As science has progressed we’ve discovered that the 20 or so items proposed were only the tip of the iceberg, then there is the matter of precision, and data – we now know that the biggest issue is the way data is built into nature: the coding sequences are too long.
The problem is so vast, that scientists are now wondering how even one planet could have sentient life, any life, or even planets. One in a million? It’s probably closer to one in 10^1000000!
The Drake equation never was meant to be definitive. It was the back of an envelope equation to kickstart discussion in the field.
As for complexity, such things only seem to be complex until we find out how the simple steps ending up at the present day evolved product came about. Once you see how dinosaurs had fluff, which developed into proto feathers and finally into the fully featured ones of the dinosaurs we see flying around us, it is easier to visualise.
Likewise the encoding of information in primitive life can be equally primitive. And there is no reason why it had to use DNA, it is entirely plausible that the earliest used other means, including RNA. Thus allowing one or more transitional stages.
Plus many of the building blocks can be observed in asteroids and comets. If much of the ingredients for life, and information storage, just fall down onto planets, around the galaxy, then there should be many many planets where the astronomical odds are being challenged.
Let alone the possibility of panspermia speeding things along.
Of course, if one assumes dark matter interacts with itself that opens up the possibilities of self organizing structures. Great leviathans of the deep swimming in the thin gravities between the stars angrily breaking the clumps of hard matter that venture into thier realms
You’ve been reading Shlock, haven’t you…
:)
Why should the dark matter part of the universe be any less complex and with the potential for life than our (far smaller) proportion of it?
Incidentally there is a reasonable scientific proposal that dark matter is responsible for various mass extinctions.
To paraphrase, dark matter is clumped around the galactic disc (and in a sphere around it, but less so, and not pertinent to this). Our progression around our galactic orbit is not a flat path, rather we also oscillate up and down slowly. Meaning that once in every (lots) of millions of years we cross the galactic disc. Drastically increasing our chance of bumping into a big mass of dark matter.
When that does happen it interacts with the Earth, and can trigger super massive volcanoes (which we DO know have been the cause of mass extinctions). These can cover half a continent in lava, ash or pumice. I like to think of it as the dark matter squeezing the Earth until lots of the juicy magma squeezes out of it.
Maybe the Pa’anuri get a tingling sensation from tasting oozing hot lava?
I’m always disturbed by the concept of pushing the origins of whatever as far as possible AWAY from us/here.
As if we/here do not have the competence to begin the task. The question is still where we put it: “What are the preconditions, prerequisites, for beginning life?” And pushing the origins to some other place/time DOES NOT ANSWER the question.
I am very happy to accept that at least a few of the requistes are or were part of the stellar dust as the planets were coalescing in orbit. Linda Nagata treats this very seriously in “Vast” (1998). But this thinking still means that life (IM not so HO) developed on any planet quite independently of any other solar system. Earth life developed on this Earth, with no help from any other agency.
Mind you, we still must answer the question, “How?”
I guess the characterization of Orcs depends on which version of Orcs you’re thinking about. Most story/game Orcs are at least human level intelligence, some are quite a bit smarter than humans. LOTR is the only thing I can think of offhand where Orcs are just plain cannon fodder stupid.
WoW Orcs are smart enough to build their own warp gates – that’s how they enter the story! Elder Scrolls Orcs are just mutated humans with different customs. Orks in Warhammer were essentially comic relief – but they do maintain a high level of technology. And so forth.
The commonality though is that orcs are most often foes of humanity. They are ugly looking, ferocious, evil or otherwise having attitudes that put them at odds with humans. They are in such systems to provide foes that can be defeated by humans. Be those in game or holding a controller or set of dice.
Orks in Warhammer 40k are a purpose-designed warrior race (created by a reptilian Progenitor race about 60 million years ago, along with the Eldar/Aeldari (space elves), who were designed as psychic warriors instead of brute fighters) who reproduce from spores and have genetically encoded tech know-how (expressed in the sub-variant MekBoyz) and who project a communal psychic effect that warps probability to make what they believe should be happening actually happen. So, for instance, because most Orks believe that painting red stripes on vehicles makes them go faster, doing that actually makes their vehicles faster. Similarly, their big, ridiculous guns work when they fire them, but tend to jam, explode or fall apart if a human takes one and tries to use it.
Orcs in LOTR are descended from corrupted Elves. It isn’t that they’re dumb, it’s more that they’re so selfish and unruly that they all tend to do whatever they think serves them best (attack, run, fight among themselves over loot, etc.) unless they’re so terrified of their commander that they don’t dare break discipline.
1. An alien tourist had a child with a human.
2a. “Human” dna evolves quite often during the evolution process on alien planets
2b. “Humans” have a set of evolutionary tools that allow them to pass most of the great filters with ease.
Important evolution steps
Planet in goldilocks zone of star
Planet large enough it doesn’t cool down too quickly, and retains a molten core.
Planet with lots of carbon and lighter elements
Magnetic field to protect planet from solar wind, to maintain an atmosphere
Volcanic era to seed atmosphere with water and acid rain, to erode mountains and form primordial ocean.
Life has to evolve from primordial ocean
Life has to evolve at least two sets of limbs propulsion and other
Life has to evolve to be capable to walk on land
Life has to evolve large enough brains to problem solve and use and make tools
Life has to evolve to be carnivorous or omnivorous as a better way to acquire nutrients from it’s food
Life has to learn to use fire to cook it’s food, eases digestion kills parasites.
Fire Requires the species to live on land for the majority of it’s life
Fire can’t be discovered by an aquatic species
Fire is also a prerequisite for more advanced technogies such as metals and glass
Metal and glass are both needed to get into space and off planet.
Politically you have a few paths
1. Warlords
2. Peaceful abolish all war with diplomacy
3. Peaceful but paranoid prepares for war. Carry big guns but try not to use them.
If you fight war you have to be ruthless to ensure you live
Or you have to be diplomatic enough to end any war before it starts
But if you are too peaceful and don’t stockpile weapons
Any warlords you meet will destroy you when you attempt diplomacy.
*nods*
Although that is a list of things humans did. Aliens need not follow exactly the same path. We could well meet space faring aliens from a water covered world, for example. And they might evolve with a hive mentality, like bees or ants. In which case the politics (if any) would not necessarily parallel the examples given. Albeit that ants do indeed engage in warfare with rival ant and termite colonies. Bees though can solve such issues queen to queen.
We could experiment with turning the UN HQ into a gladiator arena, giving our world leaders swords, and let them resolve conflicts in a more civilised way?
Nominate Der Fuhrer Arseburn for the first round (if the bitch wants a Nobel Peace Prize, she can fucking fight, and earn it, like Obammallama, oh wait… he didn’t earn one either…)
What the actual bile-spewing hateful heck? Do you realize that no one outside of your particular political bubble is going to be able to jump on board with you referring to a black man who was President of the United States as an animal, or to whoever the **** you’re talking about (apparently a woman, considering the name you call her in parentheses) as a Nazi? Are you trolling, or are just so far up your own . . . something . . . that you don’t get that what you wrote just makes you look ridiculous?
Also, as an aside, how/why the **** would anyone be fighting to earn a peace prize?
The human species, are animals.
You… do realise that ‘Fuhrer’ simply means ‘Leader’, right? Guess not
Yorp suggested putting our world leaders into gladiatorial combat
As for the bit about the Peace Prize: she is being considered for receiving one after not doing shit to earn one, just like Obamallama (and you are aware, obviously not, that nearly all presidents have been referred to as animals? can remember a few clips of Bush morphing into a chimpanzee, as for Oblammo, adding llama was simply for the rhyming)
Still going from generic ‘world leaders’ to naming (sorta) specific world leaders is rather crossing the divide that Dave has asked us to keep out of the comments board. We know that can cause vitriol and abuse, which you also brought straight in.
Not to mention that these are people. They (or some of their friends or relatives) may even be readers. And other readers are likely to admire them (given that they did get voted into power, so somebody appreciates them, even if they have contrary political views to you).
You would not like you (or your family, or someone you admire) being described in these ways. So why inflict such hurt on other people?
Have you not been paying attention dear puppy? They do that to me every fucking week
Why is it okay to attack Der Don, and every other POTUS since Ronnie, butt no one, not even the Late Night Talkshow host or SNL dared say anything about Oblammo?
And if anyone says anything positive about Donnie, they are automatically labelled Schtrumpettes? o_O