An Alien Structure could be forming in our own backyard

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
There are plenty of relatively mundane explanations that could explain it. For instance, it could be a minor planet that had been travelling through space and was caught by our sun's gravity. There is nothing, at this point, to suggest it's artificial.

Your assertion that "the universe is fine tuned to produce life" is ridiculous, given the complete and total lack of evidence to support such a conclusion. Such an unfounded statement does, however, serve to illustrate your own personal bias quite nicely.

Are you old enough to remember a few decades ago when absolutely no scientists would give the time of day to any suggestion that alien life existed out there? That was a time when the human animal was supreme and water was a rare commodity in the Universe, not to mention hydrocarbons...?

Broaden your horizons to see the Universe as it is, a long-existing incubator where absolutely anything is possible.

The universe is certainly fine tuned to support life--this is an existential reality


The question is how, who, what and why they created that tuning

I for one am loving the news stuff on space as of late between the megastar and now this; but I will hold off all assumptions/ jumping the gun as I've done before. I will say this that the optimistic side of me sure hopes there is a civilization that would be more than willing to come to us. Yet if it were something let's say "Alien" what purpose would it serve to be so far away? I remember a few months or years back? We talked about the object near Saturn and it's hexagonal pole. I figured if anything that the objects would need to be closer as I'm sure there isn't much we can do to stop them if they were at our door.

originally posted by: Aliensun
Are you old enough to remember a few decades ago when absolutely no scientists would give the time of day to any suggestion that alien life existed out there? That was a time when the human animal was supreme and water was a rare commodity in the Universe, not to mention hydrocarbons...?

Broaden your horizons to see the Universe as it is, a long-existing incubator where absolutely anything is possible.

I certainly am old enough, and now realise that sometimes the public persona was anything but their thinking in private, for often political, religious or funding reasons, or just all that allied together.
It's different now, not always for the best, but at least a dedicated scientist has some chance of funding.
Anyway, we have this thing called Niku, possibly a minor planet that has had a few shavings in a collision with something else, what ever that might have been, so it's fair to say that those scientists need a bit of, 'space' themselves while the paper is 'peer' reviewed, with that small reservation, any lateral thinking should be welcomed.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
It's the stuff dreams are made of

That would certainly be cool!
But, probably just some object that got hurled into a weird orbit by some ancient collision or near-miss that "slingshot" it way out in a weird way.
Also, better than "It's the stuff dreams are made of" (from Casablanca), a more apt quote (from 2001) might be "my god, it's full of stars."

originally posted by: jaws1975
Why are posters being so negative about the op's speculations? I don't remember seeing the same derision when scientists were claiming discovery of a possible alien megastructure by a nearby star.

You find this in every science thread, and there's a few who don't like it when other people know things they don't know, so they stamp their foot and pout in the form of rude and condescending comments..

And there sure is some kind of amazing "fine tuning" going on with our own solar system, since everything being exactly the way it is, is why we are alive today. That's pretty cool, but it will probably make someone angry..

originally posted by: Willtell
The universe is certainly fine tuned to support life--this is an existential reality


The question is how, who, what and why they created that tuning

I think the reverse, that life is finely tuned to exploit the resources of Earth. No doubt that Earth is conducive to life, but
the study of extremeopheles (SP?) shows that life could adapt to very hostile environments.

There is also 1991 VG and 1999 CG9. 1991 VG is supposed to be viewable again in 2017.

a reply to: Box of Rain

If you want to check out the other sides position on this a little more, here is a good place to start

That link is a subset of of this index

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
There are plenty of relatively mundane explanations that could explain it. For instance, it could be a minor planet that had been travelling through space and was caught by our sun's gravity. There is nothing, at this point, to suggest it's artificial.

Your assertion that "the universe is fine tuned to produce life" is ridiculous, given the complete and total lack of evidence to support such a conclusion. Such an unfounded statement does, however, serve to illustrate your own personal bias quite nicely.

Some notable geniuses would argue against your statement.

www.pbs.org...

The OP makes a fine point and I agree with it. Perhaps you could articulate an argument against that point that amounts to more than just a few sentences?

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
There are plenty of relatively mundane explanations that could explain it. For instance, it could be a minor planet that had been travelling through space and was caught by our sun's gravity. There is nothing, at this point, to suggest it's artificial.

Your assertion that "the universe is fine tuned to produce life" is ridiculous, given the complete and total lack of evidence to support such a conclusion. Such an unfounded statement does, however, serve to illustrate your own personal bias quite nicely.

I personally think it's a fair statement. The universe is fairly fine tuned for life. (I think the phrase "fine tuned" may have put you off...) But there's life all over, intelligent or not. However you look at it, there are 8/9 planets in our solar system alone. Ours has life. Mars is a question mark and some scientists even believe there may be microbial life in the clouds of Venus... just as one other example. The universe is more than likely riddled with life. So for people to suggest otherwise, in my opinion, is more "ridiculous"

Life does not = people. Life comes in all forms and do you really believe the universe isn't meant to create it?

a reply to: AdmireTheDistance

Your assertion that "the universe is fine tuned to produce life" is ridiculous, given the complete and total lack of evidence to support such a conclusion. Such an unfounded statement does, however, serve to illustrate your own personal bias quite nicely.

i think probabilty will state otherwise

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
There are plenty of relatively mundane explanations that could explain it. For instance, it could be a minor planet that had been travelling through space and was caught by our sun's gravity. There is nothing, at this point, to suggest it's artificial.

Your assertion that "the universe is fine tuned to produce life" is ridiculous, given the complete and total lack of evidence to support such a conclusion. Such an unfounded statement does, however, serve to illustrate your own personal bias quite nicely.

Have a Snickers !

originally posted by: neoholographic

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance

Secondly, the universe is fined tuned for life. Whether that fine tuning comes from an Intelligence or it's the result of a multiverse. The whole idea of a multiverse is to try and explain the fine tuning of the universe. If you have multiple universes then our universe is just one roll of the dice out of many rolls. So in things like String Theory you have 10^500 false vacua. That's still not enough and this why I say an Intelligence fined tuned the universe for life to exist.

It is fine tuned for life and life is everywhere. Did you know most space dust is bacterial?

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were not satisfied. In the middle 1970s, they turned their attention to an apparent anomaly in the spectrum. It had a low, broad "knee" centered at about 2.3 wavelengths per micrometer (the slight convexity on the slope at the left side of the graph above) (9). This spectral feature could be explained if the grains of dust were of a certain size, and translucent. After trying almost everything else first, in 1979, they looked at the spectrum for bacteria. Dried bacteria refract light as irregular hollow spheres, and their size range is appropriate. The match between the spectrum for dried bacteria (solid line) and the ones from the interstellar grains (dots, triangles and squares) was nearly perfect. Thinking without prejudice, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe concluded the grains probably were dried, frozen bacteria (10).

www.panspermia.org...

originally posted by: Alien Abduct

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
There are plenty of relatively mundane explanations that could explain it. For instance, it could be a minor planet that had been travelling through space and was caught by our sun's gravity. There is nothing, at this point, to suggest it's artificial.

Your assertion that "the universe is fine tuned to produce life" is ridiculous, given the complete and total lack of evidence to support such a conclusion. Such an unfounded statement does, however, serve to illustrate your own personal bias quite nicely.

Some notable geniuses would argue against your statement.

www.pbs.org...

The OP makes a fine point and I agree with it. Perhaps you could articulate an argument against that point that amounts to more than just a few sentences?

As I mentioned before, these scientists are basically saying WE wouldn't be here -- "We" being the type of life that can occur in our universe given the physics of our universe

When professor Sandra Faber in your link says this...

Faber, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was referring to the idea that there is something uncannily perfect about our universe. The laws of physics and the values of physical constants seem, as Goldilocks said, “just right.” If even one of a host of physical properties of the universe had been different, stars, planets, and galaxies would never have formed. Life would have been all but impossible.

...what she is saying is that life as we understand life, and understand how it works within the physical laws of our universe, needs are universe with physical laws that are "just right" for that life.

However, instead of the universe being OUR universe with OUR physical laws, the universe may have instead been created with other weird physical laws -- maybe a form or matter made of something other than protons, neutrons, and electrons...and/or maybe some weird form of energy that doesn't use photons to carry it, and/or some other value for the force of gravity, or different values for that universe's version of the electromagnetic force -- or maybe some other weird force that we don't have in our universe.

In that other weird universe with those weird physical laws, we could not possibly exist. However, it may be possible for some other life to exist that exploits those physical laws of THAT universe (a type of life that could not possibly exist in our universe), and THEY would be the ones saying "the universe (their universe) is fine tuned for life", because THEIR universe would be "just right" for THEM.

So no. the type of life that OUR universe could possible spawn would be the type of life that could thrive in OUR universe, making it only seem that the universe was fine tuned for it. Instead, it is LIFE that is fine tuned for any universe in which it thrives.

a reply to: CunningPerson

I sure hope that is sarcasm...

a reply to: Box of Rain

I concur with your position that life emerges where it CAN.
Direct analysis of the distribution of planets sighted indicate that we may have become a fortuitous (Using the word correctly.) outcome. Improbable and statistically unlikely.

The only added comment that I have, life exists along the boundary of energy differentials. It organizes itself to take advantage of those differentials. Therefore our form of life, by my estimation, is rare but that many other types of 'life' are prevalent and pervasive. We just aren't able to see it easily.

a reply to: largo

True, but as I and others have pointed out, it isn't only the conditions of planets in a solar system that seems fine-tuned for life, or the conditions of a certain part of a galaxy, but instead the universe itself "seems" fine-tuned for life.

That is to say, if the fundamental laws of physics were different in a different universe (say in a universe that developed differently than ours) then maybe the "strong force" (one of the fundamental forces of nature) that binds subatomic particles together would be so different that matter as we know it could not possibly exist, but instead some other exotic form of matter that we could barely imagine could maybe exist instead.

Life from our universe would never exist, or even get a start, in a universe like that, but maybe some other type of intelligent being could exist in a universe like that. That would mean that life is fine-tuned to whatever universe in which it exists.

There could be countless different possibilities of universes with countless combinations of different fundamental laws of physics in which only life from each one particular universe could ever exist, and life in each one of those countless universe could say:

"Aren't we lucky that the universe is fine-tuned for life"