Owen -
Can't remember if I've recommended this here in the past . . . but apropos
various of these topics is "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" by Barrow and
Tipler. It's getting a bit old now (1988), but I think still worth the read .
. . they cover tons of fascinating stuff . . . (and are likely to annoy more
than a few :-)
http://www.amazon.com/Anthropic-Cosmological-Principle-Oxford-Paperbacks/dp/0192821474
Thanks . . .
tom
On Apr 1, 2012, at 8:25 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> Doug: I'm not sure if we're on the same page. Let me be as simple as
> possible.
>
> Because I had earlier belonged to the Sagan school of Billions being
> Important, I had assumed the possibility of life was pretty much spread over
> the era of galaxy formation.
>
> But after being a bit more analytic, it occurred to me that one could reduce
> one of the billions .. the percent of the life of the universe w/in life
> formation might occur .. by a considerable amount.
>
> What I found interesting was that (considering star generations of import)
> that all life may be starting at about the same time .. w/in a billion or two
> years of each other.
>
> Does that make sense? You keep blinding me with science and billions, about
> which I am already aware. I'm interested in a different phenomenon .. adding
> stellar evolution (and why would you presume I don't understand evolution, of
> all things) and using that to be a bit more intelligent about boundary
> conditions.
>
> I think the answer is: You don't care about trimming the era of life
> formation from 12BY say, to 2-4BY. Right?
>
> -- Owen
>
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 7:16 PM, Douglas Roberts <[email protected]> wrote:
> As to being the first, we've only been civilized, if you can call it that,
> for a mere 5,000 years - the working definition for that descriptive being
> the length of recorded history. Cripes, we've only existed as a unique
> species for ~20,000 year. At the rate we're going, I'd place even money on
> us no lasting another 20,000.
>
> So, given this, and the fact that there has been evolved multicellular,
> animate life on the planet for the last ~500 million years, who can state
> with authority that we are the first "intelligent" specie to evolve?
>
> Unless you don't believe in evolution... Oh wait, I guess we decided not to
> go there. Back to our main program.
>
> Anyhow, 500 million years on a geological time scale is sufficient for
> subduction to have completely obliterated sizable portions of earthly real
> estate. Evidence of some unfortunate prior specie's ephemeral 20,000 year
> claim to having become civilized could well never be found by today's
> archaeologists.
>
> This is not a new concept, several science fiction writers have written
> stories that transpire over geological time periods. Frederich Pohl, Larry
> Niven, and more recently, Michael Seimsen who wrote The Dig which addresses
> this very proposition. In his story, a hominid species rose to approximately
> iron-age levels of technology ~120 million years ago, before having been
> being wiped out in the Cretaceous era mass extinction. These unfortunate
> individuals had a rough go of it, what with all the dinosaur predators
> roaming around at the time (Sarah Palin would have *loved* this story,
> presuming she could have gotten past the 6,000 year issue). As a result of
> the relative hard times they were living in, these hominids did not expand to
> the point of becoming a global blight, unlike the current inhabitants. The
> did have art, though.
>
> On a much broader scale, we have what: 200 billion galaxies that we can see,
> each with tens to hundreds of billions of potentially habitable planets? I
> have a sneaky suspicion we are not the first to have experienced "the
> quickening", universally speaking.
>
> --Doug
>
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote:
> Gentle readers, as much as I like /.-like digressions, interesting humor (but
> not religious rants), has anyone anything to add to the idea that life
> origins may be bound to the era after Population II star formation?
>
> If so, we may be among the first of these very young life forms, +/- a
> billion years or so.
>
> -- Owen
>
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>
>
> --
> Doug Roberts
> [email protected]
> [email protected]
> http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins
>
> 505-455-7333 - Office
> 505-670-8195 - Cell
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
