Why Are There 300 Sextillion Stars?

Author: FLRW

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FLRW
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Why are there 300 sextillion stars. Was it design or chance that one planet of these stars would evolve life?
I say it was chance, and because of that there is no other human life in the Universe other than that on Earth.


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@FLRW
  It was most likely chance. But there are whole ecosystems around thermal vents, so it doesn't seem so farfetched to suggest there may be other life out there.
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@Sum1hugme
Humans couldn’t evolve until fish evolved bones that let them crawl onto land. Bones couldn’t evolve until complex animals appeared. Complex animals needed complex cells, and complex cells needed oxygen, made by photosynthesis. None of this happens without the evolution of life, a singular event among singular events. All organisms come from a single ancestor; as far as we can tell, life only happened once.
Curiously, all this takes a surprisingly long time. Photosynthesis evolved 1.5 billion years after the Earth’s formation, complex cells after 2.7 billion years, complex animals after 4 billion years, and human intelligence 4.5 billion years after the Earth formed. That these innovations are so useful but took so long to evolve implies that they’re exceedingly improbable.
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300 sextillion stars? sounds hott, sexy
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@FLRW
You don't know that there is no other human life.
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@FLRW
Yes, it seems improbable, but we have the same sample size of life bearing worlds: 1. And like I said, if life can evolve in hydrothermal vents, then there's no reason to think it couldn't evolve in other harsh conditions. 

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@FLRW
no other human life in the Universe other than that on Earth.
Pretty hard to justify that statement.  If there are 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars (a very rough guess) then when we have finally completed exploring our solar system in a few centuries we will have explored far less than 1/300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th of the universe- that's a far tinier ratio than say one raindrop's worth of water taken from the ocean.  You can learn a lot about the ocean from one raindrop but you can hardly conclude what life does or does not exist in the unknown portion.  Can you conclude that there are no sharks or jellyfish just because there are no sharks or jellyfish within your raindrop?
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@oromagi

I base my figures on the fact  the simplest theorized self-replicating peptide is only 32 amino acids long. The probability of it forming randomly, in sequential trials, is approximately 1 in 10^40.



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@FLRW
There might or might not be similar or dissimilar life elsewhere.....Probability is high, given the number of stars....Whether it be chance or a basic inevitability of material development.

We perhaps owe our dominance on this planet to an extinction event, that wiped out a previously dominant species.

Asteroids.......Chance or design?
FLRW
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@janesix
You don't know that there is no other human life.

You aren't Dr. Rick  from Progressive Insurance are you?
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@FLRW
Synchronicities have been showing me lately that human life is inevitable.
Discipulus_Didicit
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@FLRW
Curiously, all this takes a surprisingly long time. Photosynthesis evolved 1.5 billion years after the Earth’s formation, complex cells after 2.7 billion years, complex animals after 4 billion years, and human intelligence 4.5 billion years after the Earth formed. That these innovations are so useful but took so long to evolve implies that they’re exceedingly improbable.
I think the biggest great filter you list here would be the jump from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cell structures. Science still does not fully understand how this jump was made, though the most common explanation is that in the past a freak event occurred where some prokaryotic cells began a symbiosis and ended up "integrating" together as a single cell that then became the precursor to all eukaryotic life that followed. this does seem like a very unlikely event to occur and it could be the case that the universe is filled with ancient planets billions of years old teeming with simple prokaryotic analogues that simply never had this rare evolutionary development occur.
FLRW
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@Discipulus_Didicit

Well stated.
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Curious that some claim that many genders
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@FLRW
I say it was chance,

Why of course you do silly, you're simple minded and a one-dimensional thinker. If you even think for yourself at all. Do you think that surprised any of us? "Chance" is the first assumption that flies across your radar and you grasp for it like it's your last breathe lol. Then you hold and cradle it as if it's all you'll ever need. God you're depressing. 

and because of that there is no other human life in the Universe other than that on Earth.

Correct simpleton...because "human" life was created as a match for its own environment, meaning that humans can only exist on our planet earth, as they are (without modifications). Other galaxies, stars and planets have lifeforms that match their own ecosystems and solar arrangements. They have evolved through intelligent processes as totally different species. 


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@EtrnlVw

I think you are right. I just asked God that if he was real to give me a sign. Then I just heard on TV that Rush Limbaugh died.
There Is A God!


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Why are there 300 sextillion stars
In and eternally existent, finite, occupied space Universe/God, that numerical value could increase or decrease, eternally.

What we do know, is that,  there exists a seeminly finite set of cosmic/universal laws/principles and one of those is as follows;

1} ......naught is created nor destroyed, only inter-transformed......

2} their cannot exist more the five, regular/symmetrical and convex polyhedra of Universe,

3} when base unity of a circle  360 degrees, the sum of angles of a Euclidean triangle can only be 180 degrees,


10 days later

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@FLRW
Why are there 300 sextillion stars. Was it design or chance that one planet of these stars would evolve life?
I say it was chance, and because of that there is no other human life in the Universe other than that on Earth.
Statistically there has to be or had to be life.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I think the biggest great filter you list here would be the jump from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cell structures. Science still does not fully understand how this jump was made, though the most common explanation is that in the past a freak event occurred where some prokaryotic cells began a symbiosis and ended up "integrating" together as a single cell that then became the precursor to all eukaryotic life that followed. this does seem like a very unlikely event to occur and it could be the case that the universe is filled with ancient planets billions of years old teeming with simple prokaryotic analogues that simply never had this rare evolutionary development occur.
We’re also limited to our understanding of biology to Carbon based life forms. It’s possible Silicon or other element based life forms are possible 
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@ILikePie5
It’s possible Silicon or other element based life forms are possible 
Silicon is about 875 times more abundant on earth than carbon yet carbon life dominates every cubic centimeter of the average backyard several feet deep while silicon life remains only theoretical. Why is this?

One of the primary requirements for life is respiration. For carbon life this is easy, oxygen is the most common solution these days but other options exist. Silicon does not react as well with oxygen as carbon does however, so what would silicon life use to respirate?
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@Discipulus_Didicit
One of the primary requirements for life is respiration. For carbon life this is easy, oxygen is the most common solution these days but other options exist. Silicon does not react as well with oxygen as carbon does however, so what would silicon life use to respirate?
Dunno, but you’re just making the point. We don’t know and we can’t know because our knowledge of biology is limited. We can only have conjectures but those conjectures don’t drive our search for life. 
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@ILikePie5
We don’t know and we can’t know because our knowledge of biology is limited.
Don't presume that the limitations of your knowledge of biology are necessarily shared by biologists.

Biologists know that the chemical process of respiration is required for living organisms to function. Biologists know the chemical equations involved in this process and can extrapolate from them that a theoretical silicon based lifeform would not be able to respirate using oxygen. Biologists know that carbon posseses several properties that are necessary for a building block of life. Biologists also know that these properties are for the most part less present or sometimes completely missing in the case of silicon.

Let's go back to the basics of your proposal. Why specifically do you propose silicon based life as a likely possibility?
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Let's go back to the basics of your proposal. Why specifically do you propose silicon based life as a likely possibility?
I don’t, it could be Sulfur based. The point is our biology is limited. It’s possible that alien organism do not need oxygen to respirate. It’s what makes our biology limited to what we already know.
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@ILikePie5
There are not many other elements which appear to be promising candidates for supporting biological systems and processes as fundamentally as carbon does, for example, processes such as metabolism. The most frequently suggested alternative is silicon Silicon shares a group in the periodic table with carbon, can also form four valence bonds, and also bonds to itself readily, though generally in the form of crystal lattices rather than long chains. Despite these similarities, silicon is considerably more electropositive than carbon, and silicon compounds do not readily recombine into different permutations in a manner that would plausibly support lifelike processes.
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@FLRW
There are not many other elements which appear to be promising candidates for supporting biological systems and processes as fundamentally as carbon does, for example, processes such as metabolism. The most frequently suggested alternative is silicon Silicon shares a group in the periodic table with carbon, can also form four valence bonds, and also bonds to itself readily, though generally in the form of crystal lattices rather than long chains. Despite these similarities, silicon is considerably more electropositive than carbon, and silicon compounds do not readily recombine into different permutations in a manner that would plausibly support lifelike processes.
We don’t know that because our biology is limited. Our knowledge is limited to our environment and historical evidence. The point is that on another planet life could conceivably based on other elements and would undergo the same process of evolution. We can’t replicate that in a lab 
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Because NASA fancied saying there are and Roscosmos saw no reason to fight it.
FLRW
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@ILikePie5
We don’t know that because our biology is limited. Our knowledge is limited to our environment and historical evidence.
Not true, we know exactly how many elements there are in the Universe and physics can predict exactly how something can be made to replicate.
A team led by associate professor Yutetsu Kuruma of the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology has constructed simple artificial cells that can produce chemical energy that helps synthesize parts of the cells themselves. This work marks an important milestone in constructing fully photosynthetic artificial cells, and may shed light on how primordial cells used sunlight as an energy source early in life's history. Scientists build artificial cells as models of primitive cells, as well as to understand how modern cells function. Many sub-cellular systems have now been built by simply mixing cell components together. However, real living cells construct and organize their own components. It has also been a long time goal of research to build artificial cells that can also synthesize their own constituents using the energy available in the environment.
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@ILikePie5
It’s possible that alien organism do not need oxygen to respirate.
Yes, even carbon based life is capable of respiration without oxygen though it is significantly less efficient due to how respiration works, but there are specific chemical formulas you can look at to see what is possible and what is not.

Let's say you have a scale and you weigh an object. The scale says it weighs 3 kilograms. You weigh another object and the scale says it weighs 5 kilograms. If you want to know what the scale would say with both objects on it you don't have to physically place both objects on it and read the results, you can use your knowledge of weight measurements and math to correctly predict the outcome. Similarly if a biologist wants to know how a theoretical silicon based metabolism could work they don't need to have one to physically examine, they can use their knowledge of biology and chemical formulas to predict the results and thus whether such a thing is even possible.

We could go into detail on the chemical formulas involved if you would like to.

It’s what makes our biology limited to what we already know.
The problem is that what we (humanity) already know seems to be very different from what you (as an individual) already know. As I said there are certain things required by any material before it can be used as a building block of life and silicon simply does not come close to carbon on any of these, which is why when life developed naturally carbon won out despite it's relative rarity compared to silicon. Artificial life is a different story, but your very first post on this topic was specifically in response to a comment I made regarding the natural development of life and besides any artificial life requires some other natural life to develop in order to create it.
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@Discipulus_Didicit

Well stated

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@FLRW
Thanks. I never heard of that project with the artificial cells before, seems worth a read.