Nova Tendril said:
bowserboy26578 said:
Nova Tendril said:
How the hell would rock men be possible?
theoretically, in a carbon deprived galaxy, silicon could take some carbon like properties. there actually are silicon orgamisms on our planet called... well i don't remember, but it's like that only on a grander scale. Kind of like the one Hunter from Metroid Prime Hunters. the Diamont Spire. I think that's what the microbes are called- diamonts. pretty close atleast.
Rocks are inorganic material. If something was living it could not be made out of rocks because it would have to be organic.
organic means "containing carbon", and so if some other element were to replace carbon's role as a building block of life, it would be "inorganic life".
The probabilities that led to the existence of life on earth are not unique, to believe such is slap-in-the-face foolish. That, and the results of the Stephen Miller experiment completely convince me that life does in fact exist out there. What is it like? I would place good money on a very similar evolutionary pathway to ours, for any species capable of speech and technology. My reasoning for this is that in our estimated pathway, as we began to need to stand upright and see farther the gradual remodeling of the cranial vault caused a responsive increase in the size of association cortex, which eventually became a survival adaptation as we became able to grasp more abstract ideas, and once the limbic system and amygdala became involved in association pathways, response generated memory became a reality. While there may be life out there totally different from our understanding, I would bet that it's not very smart. It could be, I'm just saying that my money is on a creature of some kind that we might recognize, or who had similar pathway changes at some point resulting in association cortex and memory.
Will we contact them? That depends on us.
The nearest planetary system outside of ours is 20 light years away. It probably doesn't have life on it. But suppose we wanted to send someone to find out.
If you built a spaceship that accelerated at 1g constantly for a year, it would be traveling very close to the speed of light. Suppose you only accelerated at 1g for long enough to be traveling half the speed of light. It would take your vessel 40 years to get there. That's an awful long time to be in space. But who cares? it's SPACE!!! It is 'doable', and the expense of doing so is largely created out of thin air. The chinese space program is embarassingly cheaper than ours was, I say WAS because the shuttles are due to retire next year and that leaves us with rocket propelled robots and precisely dick else. Also, the outer planets like uranus and neptune are conviniently made out of the necessary fuel sources, like water, hydrogen, and what all else.
I think a faster than light drive of some kind is only a matter of time and money away, and contact with whatever life is on other worlds will come shortly therafter.
In short: yes.