As Perseverance is seeking signs of (ancient) microbial life, how would you all react if such a discovery actually came through? I'm personally a bit of a doubter that life will ever be found elsewhere, so such a finding would floor me. In my mind, if we find signs of life beyond Earth, we're doomed. That's when all the implications of the Fermi paradox become real to me - it might actually be the scariest news I could hear up there with imminent nuclear war.
Don't worry, if there's some kind of galactic order, it's almost guaranteed that they'd want nothing to do with mankind at this point in our evolution.
I hope so! My larger concern would be a single, super predator race. Ignoring human ideals and morals, surely the safest thing for a race that’s vastly ahead in technology wise when finding a younger race to do would be to just wipe them out, no? Why would they risk letting humanity catch up in technology and having diplomacy potentially fail? Hopefully they’re interested in observing or working with other life forms, but if they’re not in my mind them pressing the delete button is the obvious option.
I'll put it this way; You really only go out of your way to eradicate an ant mound if they're in your backyard, and there seems to be quite a bit of wilderness between "backyards" in this sector of the galaxy. Well, so far, at least. If we get another 'Oumuamua in my lifetime, I'm gonna start thinking otherwise.
I am 97% sure we will find incontrovertible signs that microbial life existed on Mars in the past. I hope that Perseverance is the one to find it. I am 23% sure we will eventually find signs of active microbial life on Europa. It's just a simple matter of chemistry and time, in my mind. And, once confirmed, I think it will be a minor footnote for the general populace. For science it will be an important milestone. But for the general population I think a small portion will have a bit of sobering perspective on the enormity of time; how long it would take for evolution to turn microbes into human beings. Right now, in America at least, we are taught there was a ball of fire and gas, and then things calmed down and single-celled organisms emerged from the goo, and then dinosaurs, and then Columbus discovered America. They are all equidistant points on the timeline. But a discovery of the evidence of life on another planet - possibly long before there was life on Earth - would cause the "think-ier" people to have a fresh accounting of the timeline of history, and the full scope of what 3 billion years actually means. That will be exciting for some, and unnerving for others, I suspect. And there will be the dogmatic minority who cling desperately to their religion(s) and deny plain evidence. But they don't factor into my life or thinking, so I don't really care what they think.
I have no background to support my thoughts other than an interest in space and science. If humans survive long enough I expect it will happen, but I agree with your sentiment. I think the timespan will be so vast as to make it meaningless to speculate about it now. How long before we could communicate and travel to the nearest star? We should definitely still try though! My issue with the Fermi paradox is the assumption is that 1% of "life" on a planet becomes intelligent and similarly that 1% of those develop the necessary tech. I think those figure is way, way, waaaaaaaay too high. As an analogy - how many types of living creatures on earth have developed tech to communicate beyond earth? Is it 0.01%? Still like I say it's just my own thoughts without any scientific research to back it up. I'm personally a bit of a doubter that life will ever be found elsewhere,
I think we’re at a pretty similar spot here, I really do think there’s other life out there- just that it seems so unlikely we’ll find it it’s effectively not there at all, at least in a human timescale. Which is why finding it at close as Mars would be pretty devastating in my mind. Of course, finding microbes or something wouldn’t have to mean imminent death, I would just be much more nervous. I think most calculations there are at least a couple of orders of magnitude off. Doing some rough napkin math, over the course of the 3.5 billion years we’ve had 1 (2 if you’d want to include Neanderthals maybe) gain enough intelligence for my arbitrary definition to include them as “intelligent”. One could maybe argue some of the smarter animals should be included but I don’t think it’s going to affect the math much. If a species is a “type” of life form, then there’s 8.7M now, or about 8.7B ever if the internet isn’t lying to me. Sticking with the million to be safe, we’re at about 2/8.7M or 2.229e5% every 3.5B years if I’m doing that right. Then we’re the only example of intelligent life we know of to even dabble in space exploration and communication, so I’m not sure how to estimate that part - on one hand it’s hard for me to imagine intelligent life not staring at the stars and reaching out for them, on the other hand I’m stuck in my human existence and probably wouldn’t understand what a different intelligent life form’s existence is like if I had one sitting in front of me explaining. It might be unlikely even at cosmic scales, or it might be near 100%
Dude, that is an awesome shot. Hadn't seen that yet. Some tweet yesterday was like "millions of dollars and we get ONE grainy shot from Mars?? NASA is such a waste". Social media was a mistake. he said, on social media
It's only like an hour or two old, so can't blame ya. But this is one of the first of 30,000 full rgb high res stills were gonna get of just the landing, and later more of the drone theyre gonna fly as an experiment. Millions of dollars will get us some dope footage.
Maybe the most painful thing I've learned over the last few years is that the visceral appeal of pretty images is almost mandatory to justify a mission. Nevermind ever-better probes measuring magnetic and electric fields, or particle sensors with 30 ms full-sky time resolution, if you don't slap a nice camera on it and send it somewhere other than Earth, the public can't be bothered to relate.
Okay, scientist, strap in. I'n'I am just now starting Season 2 of For All Mankind, which bloody hell is a series I wish I'd thought of. Basic premise: The Soviets beat us to the Moon by a few weeks, thereby changing the dynamics of the space race and therefore the Cold War immeasurably. I'm really pretty lukewarm on alternate history in general but the prehistory of Kubrick's 2001? I'm there. The point nobody wants to make, but which For All Mankind makes with every major plot point, is that space exploration of any kind is proxy warfare. It's Great Game power competition through and through and the reason the US gave up on space is principally because the Soviets couldn't afford to lose over and over and over again to a nation that was willing to spend a gajillion dollars on a symbolic victory. Werner Von Braun famously thought a single mono shortwave audio communication would be plenty for any space mission because "the science" wasn't about glitz. Werner Von Braun also famously used slave labor from concentration camps to build his terror weapons because what else was he supposed to do, right? In his favor, Hitler spent more on the V-program than we spent on the Manhattan Project but fuckin' hell we spent more on the B-29 than the Manhattan Project, too because you know what? It's about the next war, which is a continuation of politics by other means. You seen the terror weapons Putin's pumping out? Despite the fact that Russia is considered an "emerging market" by economists? So look, mutherfucker. Mars2020 is prolly gonna end up costing about $3b. That's effectively $10 for every man, woman and child in these here United States. My family's buy-in on that rover? $30. And yer damn skippy I watched it, and yer damn skippy I made my kid watch, and as I said to a friend, the best phrase NASA has coined in several dozen years is "seven minutes of terror" because if you're going to spend three billion dollars throwing a robot at a rock a gajillion miles away You Have to get MY FUCKING BUY IN. Why. Why do I give a shit about space. Why does my wife give a shit about space. Why the fuck should ANYONE give a fuck about space? Because we should eat our fucking vegetables? FUCK YOU. Because there's some unresolved who-the-fuck-knows question that may or may not tie back to string theory or some shit? FUCK YOU. You know when the public started giving a shit about a fucking satellite? 'member a few weeks back when you had to get a parrot to explain why we should give a shit about Arecibo for more reasons other than it was cool and was in Goldeneye and Contact? NOT THE POINT. The point is it was in Goldeneye and it WAS in Contact and it was fucking cool and everyone was sad and the fact that something that big and expensive and cantankerous was originally created for science? It's totally fucking fine. I grew up with scientists. Big ones. Nobel ones. Household name ones. And you know what FUCKING SUCKS about scientists? Their insistence on the purity of fucking science. No. Fuck you. If you wanna take thirty fucking dollars from my family, you don't get to decide it's going to be used on something too pure for me to enjoy. I want fucking technicolor. I want to be invested. I want a narrative for that goddamn rover to be every bit as decent as David Attenborough bemoaning the goddamn icebergs. Fucking SELL ME. "Painful thing." Get over yourself. You can't wanna ride on billion dollar flown projects without giving me a reason to pay for it. What was the fucking point of Magellan's mission? Spanish Fucking Prestige. What did it accomplish? Spanish Fucking Prestige. I know how much your nerdly heart wants to pretend that science is done for science's sake but get the fuck over yourself. It's a goddamn rap battle between institutions and world powers that pushes back against the dark as a side effect. Every fucking scientist worth their salt will insist that manned space flight is a waste of time, and every fucking scientist will studiously ignore any triumph of human endeavor because fundamentally? They don't get invited to the parties and they're salty. Millions of people thought they watched Sputnik flash through the sky. They didn't; they watched the black-striped booster stage spinning behind Sputnik because goddamn Khrushchev knew the point wasn't the science, the point was the spectacle. And he was right. And the Soviets would have won if they could have just spent their way to the moon instead of going up in a hypergolic catastrophe. Stop hating on spectacle. It's the only reason you have a job.
OH YEAH?! WELL I'M NEVER COMING TO A JITSI MEETUP AGAIN!!! Nah, jk. By and large, I do agree with you, and I'm always good for a sesh of playing rhetorical punching bag. I did! And you bought it, IIRC. Your family has spent ~$20 on the mission I'm working, so far. It's a harder sell to peeps with less scientific background than you, and I gotta get better at keeping those eyeballs from glazing over. Most of that's on me, for sure, and I can totes polish my pitching, but: 1) people are tired of hearing about scientists working on fusion. 2) ITER and KSTAR are kinda disparaging America's fusion prestige, atm, if it ever existed. 3) the other major angle, pretending like we need to better characterize the space environment for astronauts, is becoming increasingly disingenuous. and 4) it's getting harder and harder to convince myself that solar isn't the best thing to fund, energy-wise (besides some goddamn winterization, locally), at this point, in tandem with schemes to boost Earth's albedo, etc., 'cuz climate change. So. Other than (finally) finishing my doctorate, I think it's time to leverage social media to my benefit. Not here, I'm talking my personal YouTube account. If nothing else, it'll give me the valuable experience of interacting with the general public ('Tube skews hella young, though). My work does excite me, most people do find it inherently exciting, and even though there are no pretty pics coming out of anything on board, I can make some hella memey shit (unrelated [OC]) with this Adobe subscription we all hate. Thanks for that. I know, my/scientists' branding could use some work. I will always be good for reposting this one more time: Finding exactly who's to blame for that bullshit has been impossible. But Jesus if it still doesn't piss me right off, and I'm doubtful that the main culprit is "because scientists are unable to effectively communicate the potential benefits of unlimited clean energy". And as a "progressive", I've already used my once-weekly "blame oil and gas" punchcard for, uh, something in Texas. Edit: not really, btw, it was simply poor governance, it's just that the government here shares a massive revolving door with the fossil fuel energy sector (this edit is for posterity).You can't wanna ride on billion dollar flown projects without giving me a reason to pay for it.
Perseverance telemetry just indicated the lander successfully pulled 10 G's. Still going 1 km/s at 16 km altitude. EEEeeeeeeee Update: it's now subsonic, has shed its heat shield, only 9.5 km altitude. UPDATE: SUCCESS!!!
I'm watching the realtime simulation over at https://eyes.nasa.gov/, which is close enough to Kerbal to make me even more excited about this.