Kryton – are you alluding to the possible existance of things we cannot conceive?

yes.

1) The whole universe seems to be made out of the same basic stuff, and the same laws apply.

How do you know, if you don not know about the “other” materials you cannot concieve of?

2) This stuff would therefore be arranged in the same fairly limited combinations that we know as the periodic table wherever it ended up. So the periodic table on the planet Tharg would be the same as ours.

Why would it~? The first part of your statemount counteracts the latter part. “Limited” human knowledge doesn’t mean the planet Tharg is also limited by that knowledge.

3) Given the same set of elements with the same properties, chemistry would be the same anywhere in the universe.

Again, you are only going but we youo / we as the human race know

4) Therefore the basic compounds we know about would also exist on other planets just the same, and have the same implications.

Thats a human assumption, not proven to be correct or incorrect.

5) So a lot of what we know about the mechanics of life and things still applies.

Maybe, maybe not in some universes, planets, races, planes etc

🙂

What you have to remember is that generally speaking scientists are pretty clever. And not only have they thought of answers to most of the questions you may have, they’ve got answers to a load of questions you’ve never even thought of.

How do you know, if you don not know about the “other” materials you cannot concieve of?

We know about the very most basic building blocks – we have got a pretty decent model that describes all we can see and also all we can create in strange conditions inside particle accelerators etc. Hence the Higgs Boson stuff in the news. We know that all of space was in one place at one time, and everything we know about the universe after it started expanding suggests it’s basically the same in all directions – have a read about cosmic background radiation for example. We also know that the fundamental laws and constants still largely apply everywhere. For example – we know what elements are in stars because these elements absorb certain frequencies of radiation, and they do this because of the way they are constructed. We can look at stars from all over the universe and see the same characteristics. Therefore, they are made from the same stuff, which behaves in the same way.

Whilst possible that a local sub-universe might have appeared in some distant pocket of space with different characteristics, it seems extremely unlikely. Although if evidence for such was discovered, of course scientists would be thrilled to investigate it.

Why would it~? The first part of your statemount counteracts the latter part. “Limited” human knowledge doesn’t mean the planet Tharg is also limited by that knowledge

No, I meant that the basic protons, neutrons and electrons can only be arranged in whatever it is, 240 odd combinations. It’s like rolling two six sided die – you’re never going to roll 29 are you?

Again, you are only going but we youo / we as the human race know

Well yes but we are not flying blind here. We know that the same physical laws apply all over the place, as above. You’re never going to be able to get circles to fit together without gaps, no matter what planet you’re on. It just won’t work ever anywhere.

Yes molgrips I totally agree – but that doesn’t exclude that there’s “things” out there of which we have no knowledge, and we are limited by our knowledge and interlect (albeit expanding) as it stands today.

Vis a vis, if we have no knowledge or scientific / mathematic explaination, in our minds there is nothing to explain right? How can you explain something of which you have no knowledge or experience whatsever? You can’t.

Using your example, what if someone showed you 360 combination? Today you’d say it can’t be done, but what if someone proved it to you? You couldn’t explain it to me today, becuase you had no knowledge of it. But after you’d been shown, you’d have the ability to re-study / theorise aka a new door would have been opened.

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

but that doesn’t exclude that there’s “things” out there of which we have no knowledge

You misunderstand. Obviously there are things out there we don’t know about, but my point was that we can draw many conclusions about the rest of the universe even though we have never experienced it directly. There is a lot of unknown, but we do know SOMETHING about the unknown – that’s my point.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

There is yet another theory which states that quoting stuff everyone has heard a dozen times is tedious and cheapens the original work.

You misunderstand. Obviously there are things out there we don’t know about, but my point was that we can draw many conclusions about the rest of the universe even though we have never experienced it directly. There is a lot of unknown, but we do know SOMETHING about the unknown – that’s my point.

Ok thanks I get that now.

Kryton: this may answer some of your points above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_spectroscopy

It is certainly possible that we are somehow unique in our galaxy and other galaxies are made of some other elements which we have no trace of in our galaxy (even on asteroids etc) and just happen to absorb precisely the same wavelengths as the elements we know about.

But Occam’s Razor suggests otherwise.

By the way, as singletracked started us down this path by asking what atheists believe is out there, is it fair to ask if religious-types find their religion influences their belief in alien races? After all, surely the God(s) in many religions are an “extraterrestrial intelligence”?

Well, at a guess – the bible tells us that God created Man, but the bible doesn’t explicitly say that he created ONLY man and didn’t do anything the following week.

But after you’d been shown, you’d have the ability to re-study / theorise aka a new door would have been opened

Well that is actually a pretty good example. There could well be alternative ways of looking at geometry, because the possible variety and permutations of thought and ideas is far far greater than the possible combinations of chemical elements 🙂

However it is highly likely that other life on other planets will have a lot in common with us. For example (and this was on the telly the other day) the fact that we have a head at one end an arse at the other is pretty fundamental. Once you evolve a gut and start moving about, you immediately have a front and a back end – you’ll want the mouth to be at the front so you can eat stuff before it runs away, therefore your mouth is at the head and the simplest place to put the arse is at the opposite end. So then you have a gut running down the middle, which gives you a left and a right side and bingo – bilateral symmetry. Most life on earth has this, and it’s likely that for the same reasons life on other planets would have the same set-up.

Then, if you are symmetrical, it’s likely that larger life-forms will have four legs because that’s the fewest number that makes you reasonably stable. Then from that four legged base intelligent life will need hands to express its intelligence and build spaceships, so the two front legs nearest the head are best candidates.

So I reckon it’s odds on that an intelligent alien would have two arms, two legs, two eyes and a head, for the same reasons we do.

everything is consciousness experiencing itself

How do you know, if you don not know about the “other” materials you cannot concieve of?

What oither materilas how do you knwo they exist when you cannot concieve of them – not sur ewhat your point is tbh

Why would it~? The first part of your statemount counteracts the latter part. “Limited” human knowledge doesn’t mean the planet Tharg is also limited by that knowledge.

Its limited by the rules of the universe and prime number is a prime number is a prime number
An elemnent is an element is an element I am not getting your point here tbh.

Again, you are only going but we youo / we as the human race know

Your right lets make upo some stuff that a mad eup race knwo that we dont as that will help 🙄

We may have discovered some universal truths about gravity, chemistry you know

Thats a human assumption, not proven to be correct or incorrect.

That your assumption without any evidence – there is strong evidence to suggest the rukles we discover are universal

Maybe, maybe not in some universes, planets, races, planes etc

Again another guess – you seem to be accepting you dont know and therefore this means we dont know

It really depends what the question is
We do know how elements are formed for example and that is all there will be in the universe wherever you go – higher atomic nuimbers can be made artifically but they are unstable and very short lived.

Yes molgrips I totally agree – but that doesn’t exclude that there’s “things” out there of which we have no knowledge, and we are limited by our knowledge and interlect (albeit expanding) as it stands today.

This will always be true unless you think we can one day know everything – that would involve predicting the future for example. This doe snot mean the laws of chemistry are wrong or incomplete as you seem to suggest
FWIW Scientist can prove we dont understand everything or we would have a UTE [ Universal theory of everything – as it stands we cannot get classical and quantum to “mesh”]

Vis a vis, if we have no knowledge or scientific / mathematic explaination, in our minds there is nothing to explain right? How can you explain something of which you have no knowledge or experience whatsever? You can’t.

I am not getting your point here
Its just thought experiment twaddle

the reason science trumps philosphy is there is always a question in philosphical discussions and rarely an answer [science at least answers some of the questions]. Nothing will answer all the questions or we would be gods.

As your post show you can say the stuff you say if you wish but it is pointless.

The face we do not know everything doe snot mean we dont know anything

Your right lets make upo some stuff that a mad eup race knwo that we dont as that will help

Oi, this is a thread about intelligence, leave the sarcamsm out of it 🙂

He’s not trying to suggest that the laws of chemistry are wrong, he’s saying that there may be unknowns out there.

I’m saying yes there might be, but I’m trying nicely to explain via why it’s unlikely (although not impossible) based on the education I happen to have received.

There are always unknows as we cannot predict the future and we do agree it is deterministic in nature [ opens can of worms]

I remember doing all this in philosophy and its easy to do but it makes little sense to assume everything we know is wrong because it is incomplete* – it make equally little sense to assume we know everything though [ if we did science would stop] – we need to work at our known unknowns 😉

Ok I will stop the sarcasm

Well, at a guess – the bible tells us that God created Man, but the bible doesn’t explicitly say that he created ONLY man and didn’t do anything the following week.

True, though my understanding is that the Christian God seemed to spend quite a lot of time tinkering about on Earth compared to the slightly rushed half-day job he did on the heavens and cosmos. 😀

Through pursuing known unknowns we discover new unknowns which were previously the unknown unknowns. Those are pretty useful.

True, though my understanding is that the Christian God seemed to spend quite a lot of time tinkering about on Earth compared to the slightly rushed half-day job he did on the heavens and cosmos

Yes but he’s good at multi-tasking. He’s omnipotent and omnipresent after all, and those words taken literally would suggest he can be out and about doing anything he fancies in any part of the universe whilst tinkering here too.

However He’s clearly got bored and gone to do something else this last 2,000 years or so – he was all over the Old Testament talking to people and showing himself, but it’s all gone quiet lately.

I think what Kryton was trying to suggest was that what we know about this one might not apply to another. Which is true as far as it goes, which is about as far as “what other universe?”

I’m saying yes there might be, but I’m trying nicely to explain via why it’s unlikely (although not impossible) based on the education I happen to have received.

And for the record, I am understanding that, and find it quite interesting, thanks. Sorry to sound a bit agressive perhaps, but my playing devils advocate is for the purpose of that very education, I perhaps don’t have the best manner about me with regard to asking questions on an internet forum.

However He’s clearly got bored and gone to do something else this last 2,000 years or so – he was all over the Old Testament talking to people and showing himself, but it’s all gone quiet lately.

To be fair, he also seems to have not done very much on Earth for the first few hundred thousand years that humans were around, only bothering to give us the ten commandments 4000 years ago, and even then just to one small tribe living as slaves in the Middle East.

However He’s clearly got bored and gone to do something else this last 2,000 years or so – he was all over the Old Testament talking to people and showing himself, but it’s all gone quiet lately.

Ah yes.. that tricky second album…

There is yet another theory which states that quoting stuff everyone has heard a dozen times is tedious and cheapens the original work.

Oh well, excuse ME all over the place, knowitall.

What you have to remember is that generally speaking priests are pretty clever. And not only have they thought of answers to most of the questions you may have, they’ve got answers to a load of questions you’ve never even thought of.

I see what you did there.

Sorry to sound a bit agressive

You weren’t at all, it’s a pleasure to join in such threads 🙂

Oh well, excuse ME all over the place, knowitall.

I’ve got a whole bag of offence here with your name on it, brought it in specially to see how you like it 😉

What you have to remember is that generally speaking priests are pretty clever

Quite so. If you recall, that’s been my point on many religion threads. Of course the difference between priests and scientists (nowadays anyway) is to what they are applying that intelligence.

I’ve got a whole bag of offence here with your name on it, brought it in specially to see how you like it

Oh yeah? Go on then…

Actually – WTF has that got to do with it, smartarse?

Lol nothing, I’m just giving you a bit of light grief, because of your history of being rather abrasive in the past. But not really seriously.

Woppit is abrasive? Really?*

*Can you prove that? 😉

Oh, I nearly forgot,

Molgrips > cheers for the silicon-based-life-form explanation earlier. Interesting stuff.

cheers for the silicon-based-life-form explanation earlier. Interesting stuff.

Another different form of life: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/cave_slime.html

There were a whole skipload of points raised over the last three or four pages, that I was poised to try to answer, in my usual clumsy, half-arsed fashion, (never did all that college/uni stuff, you see), then lo! And behold! Molgrips turns up and does a vastly better job than I ever could, with wit, and patience.
Chapeau, sir, and thank you. 😀

This last page has some excellent Rumsfeldian poetry, liking it!

Molgrips > cheers for the silicon-based-life-form explanation earlier. Interesting stuff.

I went to a talk on exobiology when I was in 6th form college, I asked the same question you raised, and got that answer 🙂

Chapeau, sir, and thank you

You are all most welcome 🙂 my knowledge of astrophysics/biology isn’t all that great but I absolutely bloody love the process of reasoning forward from a small number of known facts, like a big version of one of those logic puzzles. There’s a hell of a lot of information that can be derived from the simple fact that we are here thinking about this stuff, which I find truly beautiful and exciting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

1) The whole universe seems to be made out of the same basic stuff, and the same laws apply.

Agree with a lot of what you posted molgrips, except the very first principle of your argument. 😉
Almost 5% of the universe seems to be made out of the same basic stuff. Another 95% appears to be required to exist in order to make the equations of our scientific models balance.
However, I don’t think this detracts from the rest of your explanation, but maybe it would have been more appropriate to talk about the “observable universe” than the “whole universe”, but even that isn’t strictly accurate.
Possibly Kryton57’s queries earlier could be within this 95% of the universe’s mass-energy that we can’t currently observe or fully understand?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

There’s a hell of a lot of information that can be derived from the simple fact that we are here thinking about this stuff, which I find truly beautiful and exciting.

Oh, absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. I pretty much understand a lot of the current theories and principles behind much them, but trying to express said understanding leaves me tripping over my own feet.

This is how a proper discussion should occur, in a gentlemanly manner, like.

knowing we are all literally stardust probably appeals to Yunki

cuddles appeal to yunki

Kryton57
This is how a proper discussion should occur, in a gentlemanly manner, like.

Bloody hippy 😉

Almost 5% of the universe seems to be made out of the same basic stuff. Another 95% appears to be required to exist in order to make the equations of our scientific models balance

Yep, agreed – that’s a fair cop. Although, the reason it’s called dark matter is that it doesn’t interact with anything else apart from gravitationally. The fact that we didn’t know anything about it here until recently would imply that it doesn’t do a fat lot, or interfere with chemistry.

This is how a proper discussion should occur, in a gentlemanly manner, like

Piss off.

Ah no, I see where you’ve gone wrong. This is abuse; we want room 12A, next door.

molgrips – Member

Lol nothing, I’m just giving you a bit of light grief, because of your history of being rather abrasive in the past. But not really seriously.

Oh, fair enough. Go on then…

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Z6sNCMvhc[/video]

Some more reading that Cougar may find interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_chauvinism