Dev.SN

Life On Earth Might Not Be So Special After All

posted by janrinok on Sunday March 02 2014, @09:30PM   
from the its-life-Jim-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.

AnonTechie writes:

"What If We Have Completely Misunderstood Our Place in the Universe ? A Harvard astronomer has a provocative hunch about what happened after the Big Bang. Our universe is about 13 billion years old, and for roughly 3.5 billion of those years, life has been wriggling all over our planet. But what was going on in the universe before that time ? It's possible that there was a period shortly after the Big Bang when the entire universe was teeming with life. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb calls this period the 'habitable epoch,' and he believes that its existence changes how humans should understand our place in the cosmos. The full article is here"

• Re:Blink of an eye Re:Blink of an eye (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday March 03 2014, @11:38AM

  by Thexalon (636) on Monday March 03 2014, @11:38AM (#10080) Homepage

  It's hard to imagine how intelligent life, like us, could ever be "gone".

  Oh, I can imagine lots of ways we could be done in as a species right now:
  - Out-of-control global warming turns Earth into Venus faster than we can adapt.
  - Large asteroid impact a la the dinosaurs 66 millions years ago.
  - Neutron star or other giant celestial object swats away the entire planet like it's a flea.
  - Yes, nuclear war. Remember, it's not just surviving the initial barrage of nukes (which are now powerful enough that your 60-year-old backyard bomb shelter won't help much), it's having enough supplies underground to manage several centuries with no ill effects, and then enough seeds and enough non-radiated soil and the right atmosphere to come up with food once you reach the surface.
  - Gray goo, as rampaging nanobots destroy everything in their path.
  - Skynet / Matrix, where rampaging sentient artificial intelligence tries to destroy all humans.
  - Virus or bacteria. While often there's enough diversity that at least a few members of a species will make it, sometimes there isn't.
  - Invasion by aliens. (you said "imagine")
  - A religion with an apocalypse story turns out to be right, and some sort of deity / deities kill us all. (Again, you said "imagine") Note that the Norse Ragnarok story does not qualify, since 2 people survive that one to repopulate the world after it's all over.

  You're severely lacking in imagination. I understand why you want to have faith in humanity, but you might be completely wrong.

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• Re:Blink of an eye (Score: 2) by evilviper on Tuesday March 04 2014, @09:31AM

  by evilviper (1760) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @09:31AM (#10599) Journal

  - Out-of-control global warming turns Earth into Venus faster than we can adapt.

  So we survive under-ground. Not too hard. We have glass to allow limited light through for growing plants... solar power would still work, and wind-power would have one hell of a ROI.

  - Large asteroid impact a la the dinosaurs 66 millions years ago.

  Nope. Dinosaurs didn't know how to create bomb shelters, or manage the most basic forms of agriculture and teraforming (eg. shading or using green-houses for plants).

  - Neutron star or other giant celestial object swats away the entire planet like it's a flea.

  In the next couple centuries, I'd expect humanity will have self-sustaining colonies on Mars that would survive the loss of Earth.

  - Virus or bacteria. While often there's enough diversity that at least a few members of a species will make it, sometimes there isn't.

  There are extremely isolated pockets of humanity on earth.

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