Yeah I think the impact that created the moon is the main reason why there’s life on this planet. That impact also mixed up the heavier metals and liberated enough phosphorus making the composition of earth’s crust unique. Also the two metal cores fused and made it oversized, prompting the difference between the rotation of the Earth and the core, making the magnetic field that protects our atmosphere possible…
So yeah, I’m definitely not optimistic about life on different planets…
But hey, if it happened once, maybe we’ll get to find some remains of another system to which this happened as well. Or maybe, someday, someone else will find ours. Or perhaps gravity is the only force keeping us from drifting off the surface of our rock, preventing us from falling into the darkest void for eternity, with the vain hope that your frozen corpse will someday land in someone else’s yard, like a cosmic frisbee.
The universe is large enough that similar combinations of events could have happened elsewhere too. But it’s also large enough that those places are most likely further from us than our species will ever travel.
Honestly, if we ever got a really credible answer, I’m sure we’d dramatically increase the pace of space travel research, to the point where we might innovate a way to get there. Maybe we do one of the space/time bending options, or maybe we find a way to punch a hole through spacetime or something like that. If there’s a will, we’ll put a ton of resources into exhausting every potential way to do it before giving up. It might even create multi-national unity in a way that we’ve never thought possible.
So please, if you’re an alien that’s been quietly listening to our broadcasts, please send an answer somehow.
I feel like the most disappointing answer but likely answer is that life is out there (and even if we do get some whisper of communication with them), but a method of travel capable of crossing the distance between us is downright impossible to make. Like “break the laws of physics” impossible.
Our understanding of the laws of physics is constantly changing, and there’s almost always some loophole to accomplish some seemingly impossible task by satisfying the requirements in some other way. For example, we know that information can’t travel faster than the speed of light, but we also know that the light bends around massive objects, meaning we can cause light to take longer to reach a given place by making the distance longer. If we can make distances shorter, we don’t need to break the laws of physics to travel seemingly faster than light.
We’re pretty good at innovating ourselves out of seemingly impossible challenges. We figured out how to split atoms and control it well enough to produce energy, we figured out how to heat a room by transferring heat from a colder room, and I think we’ll figure out how to make long-distance space travel possible by working around our current understanding of the laws of physics.
And I’m sure the strong tidal pull likely had an accelerating effect on the early stages of the emergence of life, since the first steps would have basically had to crash into each other in water without having any other way to move. There are many other ways for that to happen on the “millions of years” time scale, but the amount the moon moves our water has got to have had a notable effect.
One of the current theories of life formation involves thermal vents, which provide energy and motion (and necessary chemicals) without any need for lunar tides.
Yeah, I suppose I could have made a list of the various other ways, like the water cycle, thermal vents, and the effects of surface level winds on water below the surface too. But even given all those methods, anything else that helps move water around faster is gonna have some effect.
Yeah I think the impact that created the moon is the main reason why there’s life on this planet. That impact also mixed up the heavier metals and liberated enough phosphorus making the composition of earth’s crust unique. Also the two metal cores fused and made it oversized, prompting the difference between the rotation of the Earth and the core, making the magnetic field that protects our atmosphere possible…
So yeah, I’m definitely not optimistic about life on different planets…
But hey, if it happened once, maybe we’ll get to find some remains of another system to which this happened as well. Or maybe, someday, someone else will find ours. Or perhaps gravity is the only force keeping us from drifting off the surface of our rock, preventing us from falling into the darkest void for eternity, with the vain hope that your frozen corpse will someday land in someone else’s yard, like a cosmic frisbee.
The universe is large enough that similar combinations of events could have happened elsewhere too. But it’s also large enough that those places are most likely further from us than our species will ever travel.
Perhaps too far to ever travel, but if we can detect it to at least be aware of their existence, then that might be enough for us. Just an answer.
Honestly, if we ever got a really credible answer, I’m sure we’d dramatically increase the pace of space travel research, to the point where we might innovate a way to get there. Maybe we do one of the space/time bending options, or maybe we find a way to punch a hole through spacetime or something like that. If there’s a will, we’ll put a ton of resources into exhausting every potential way to do it before giving up. It might even create multi-national unity in a way that we’ve never thought possible.
So please, if you’re an alien that’s been quietly listening to our broadcasts, please send an answer somehow.
I feel like the most disappointing answer but likely answer is that life is out there (and even if we do get some whisper of communication with them), but a method of travel capable of crossing the distance between us is downright impossible to make. Like “break the laws of physics” impossible.
Our understanding of the laws of physics is constantly changing, and there’s almost always some loophole to accomplish some seemingly impossible task by satisfying the requirements in some other way. For example, we know that information can’t travel faster than the speed of light, but we also know that the light bends around massive objects, meaning we can cause light to take longer to reach a given place by making the distance longer. If we can make distances shorter, we don’t need to break the laws of physics to travel seemingly faster than light.
We’re pretty good at innovating ourselves out of seemingly impossible challenges. We figured out how to split atoms and control it well enough to produce energy, we figured out how to heat a room by transferring heat from a colder room, and I think we’ll figure out how to make long-distance space travel possible by working around our current understanding of the laws of physics.
And I’m sure the strong tidal pull likely had an accelerating effect on the early stages of the emergence of life, since the first steps would have basically had to crash into each other in water without having any other way to move. There are many other ways for that to happen on the “millions of years” time scale, but the amount the moon moves our water has got to have had a notable effect.
Earth is and always has been the giant beaker of chemicals that has one of those magnetic stirrers in it, thanks to the moon.
One of the current theories of life formation involves thermal vents, which provide energy and motion (and necessary chemicals) without any need for lunar tides.
Yeah, I suppose I could have made a list of the various other ways, like the water cycle, thermal vents, and the effects of surface level winds on water below the surface too. But even given all those methods, anything else that helps move water around faster is gonna have some effect.
I believe there is but it’s also kind of unnecessary to think about it since regardless of where it is past Mars and Venus it’s unreachable anyway.