A Premise For Life Existing In The Universe Outside of Earth

Communications Center Out Of Pod Experience
1

There has been a lot of discussions about Tabby’s Star being influenced by a Dyson Sphere or Dyson Swarm. With Tabby’s being 1,275 light years from Earth, determining that an artificial source, such as a Dyson Sphere, could be responsible for the fluctuation in a light Sun’s light curve is a “best guess possible” scenario.

But…but if we look at Earth’s own technological advancements over the course of thousands of years that culminates with space exploration we can see that there are two elements that have been critical to Earth’s technological and advancements that have built a stairway into the unknowns of space.

Those two elements are gold and copper.

Silver has the best thermal conductivity and highest light reflectance value, but copper and gold have a higher corrosion resistance value compared to silver.

But why is gold a better conductor?

The electrons in gold have less resistance and can move more easily. The level of resistance is caused mainly by the amount of energy that is needed for electrons to detach from their valence state (fixed state of electron, close to proton) to their conductive state (able to move freely). If the energy needed for electrons to detach is low, more electrons are in their conductive state, making this metal a better conductor of electricity.

At the base of the Kardashev Scale is the type I Civlization - A Type I designation is a given to species who have been able to harness all the energy that is available from a neighboring star, gathering and storing it to meet the energy demands of a growing population. This means that we would need to boost our current energy production over 100,000 times to reach this status. However, being able to harness all Earth’s energy would also mean that we could have control over all natural forces. Human beings could control volcanoes, the weather, and even earthquakes! (At least, that is the idea.) These kinds of feats are hard to believe, but compared to the advances that may still be to come, these are just basic and primitive levels of control (it’s absolutely nothing compared to the capabilities of societies with higher rankings).

A Type I Civilization would have discovered that gold and copper are the best conductors to use in any technological component meant to transmit a set of orders to another component in their attempts to harness the energy from their sun.

The simplest component transmission would be from a computer to a servo that is used to position a solar array panel to collect the energy from the sun at all angles.

Therefore a solar system that is being considered a likely candidate for a potential Type I civilization should first have its gold filament volume established. A gold filament volume is the amount of gold that can be detected in orbit around the sun being scanned.

Since gold is created in super nova that then releases the gold into the surrounding region, a region must be determined to have had a super nova event in its past. A super nova event in the regions past would distribute enough gold to the surrounding systems and evolving planets to allow for advanced components to be developed. Advanced components that would need the best source of conductive elements in order to transmit and process orders at the fastest possible speeds possible. The faster a computer is able to transmit it’s communications the faster that an order is received and the end process achieved. Time and efficiency if you will.

Copper is a second best conductor to gold but a second best is not good enough for the rigors of space travel and harvesting energy from the sun and establishing colonies away from the home planet.

Copper would allow for advanced civilizations, but without gold the Type I civilization would most likely be confined to their own planet or planets such as Mars or the Moon that are relatively close to each other.

A region that has a high gold particle content would be a system that would be justified as having the potential to support a Type I Civilization. If a large quantity of gold is found in the region then most likely other metals such as lead, zinc, silver and copper will also be found on rocky planets within a solar system.

If the gold levels of KIC 8462852’s solar system or other scanned solar system can be determined to be comparable to the levels of gold in our own solar system then the scanned solar system is more likely to be a potential for a habital planet or a solar system that has a Type I civilization with life already in the system.

2

What about the recent news about the lack of potassium signature? Accordingly, the lack of means that carbon-based life, as we know it would be rare.

1 Like
3

One of the latest studies by Dr. Boyajian (Janaury 2018) shows that whatever is blocking the light, it absorbs different wavelenghts differently, thus it can not be opaque. This reinforces the idea of dust, since different particle sizes would interact differently with wavelengths, but more work is needed.

2 Likes
4

Wouldn’t a dyson sphere block all light?, i mean they are built to encapsulate a star…

1 Like
5

It can generate energy used by civilizations, better than dyson spheres.

5 Likes
6

OMG, You need to send this to Paradox Interactive. I need this in Stellaris grabs Nana and shakes her

2 Likes
7

Mind blown. :exploding_head:

1 Like
8

Yes,the Fedos must be behind it.

2 Likes
9

@Nana_Skalski -interesting, ty

I have a new response for when people ask me “how are you today?” I will say; “Living in the Ergosphere, evidently”.

2 Likes
10

A Dyson sphere would be huge and would have the surface temperature that was desirable for its inhabitants, thus it would be very visible as infrarred source. Also its spectography would be very unique, belonging to the material of the sphere and different than a star.

1 Like
11

Another question is if a Dyson Sphere did exist and it completely encapsulated the systems star, wouldn’t the pressure of the solar winds emitted by the star blow the Dyson Sphere apart?

Obviously a Dyson Sphere engineer would build vents into the Dyson Sphere’s design to release the accumulated heat inside of the Dyson Sphere that would be pretty much the same as an oven.

With vents releasing the stored heat to keep the interior from burning up I think a telltale sign of a Dyson Sphere existing would be visible as plumes of heat are detected around the sphere itself much like the plumes of water are detected on Enceladus.

12

But dust would not remain in a consistent pocket to generate the same dips in the light curve every transit however, because dust would be very susceptible to influence from solar winds.

13

What about Sodium?

Potassium occurs with an abundant radioactive isotope, K40. … Potassium metal rarely is used for anything, because sodium will do the same things potassium will do and sodium is a lot cheaper. Even so, potassium is very common, being the 7th most abundant element in the Earth’s crust.

If potassium and sodium create the same reactions then if sodium is present then life might still exist.

1 Like
14

I’ve been recently watching One Strange Rock, and while I’ve watched many documentaries in the past and who doesn’t like a good documentary, does One Strange Rock make a good case for life on Earth to be something very special and exceptional.

I find it is one thing to stand in an auditorium of a university and to explain to students how to deduct a probability for life in the universe. It’s however a completely different thing to go out and to study the Earth and then to realize that with each new factor we find how special Earth actually is.

I’m not saying we’re alone in the universe, but when we know little about ourselves, then it’s obviously easy to conclude from the few factors we know that there must be a whole lot more life in the universe. Instead, it should be equally important to understand not just what factors are needed to support life, but how little of a change it can take to destroy it.

1 Like
15

Well, it’s easy to be mistaken about probability…

Say that you try to recreate a car crash, so each and every part and fragment is exactly as the first time… it will be nigh impossible. Glass will shatter in different pieces, metal will bend in different ways, paint flakes will fall in different places… everything will be different, so you can say, “its impossible that an accident like this ever happens again!” And that’s right, but wrong, because if what you aim for it’s just a messed up car, that’s very easy to achieve.

Uniqueness is not the same as unlikeliness. Each car crash is unique, but they are not unlikely to happen.

The same way we could argue that, even if the history of Life on Earth is very unique, that doesn’t means necessarily that it’s also unlikely.

1 Like
16

If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail, so they say.

If you keep comparing life on Earth to a car crash, then you’re doing the exact same thing. You strip life of all the details we actually know about it and you replace them with random chaos, just so you can say that anything is possible. But what you’re really doing is that you’re ignoring the details that led to life, and which we do know about.

For example, back when telescopes could only produce a blurry image of Mars at best did people also think that behind the blur there is life, cities, oceans and forests. Truth is as we know now it’s just a lifeless dusty ball, but of a breathtaking beauty, and even when we now have better images do we end up with only more questions, but still no life.

But when you like theorizing then understand this, even when a universe is infinite in dimension and had infinite dimension, and not just 3, then you still have an infinite number of possibilities where we here on Earth are the only life in existence. Why? Because infinity isn’t actually quantifiable. And yet do we imagine that somewhere out there there could be life and we even try to tell us that there has to be life.

If the universe wasn’t of such a mind-boggling size, then some might say that what we do is just wishful thinking.

1 Like
17

Why do you ignore the point?

Uniqueness is not the same as unlikeliness.

Life on Earth is extremely complex and there’s bilions of things that, had they been dfiferent, would have brought a different outcome, or maybe not even life at all. But given the same start conditions, something else would have happened. It would be totally different to life on Earth today, but would happen nonetheless.

We don’t know what are the chances of getting good start conditions, and can only specualte on how different could be those conditions before rendering life impossible, because we only have one case for study. But we know that life on Earth is made of pretty ordinary stuff.

As unique as it is, we can’t assess how unlikely it is. Claims that life is extremely unlikely to happen as it happened often stem from a “designer” standpoint: “if you had to design life so Man happened…” But as soon as the question becomes “if you had to set up a planet so life happened in whatever form”, well, the unlikeliness shrinks.

This, by the way, is a collateral of the big philosophical discussion: the anthropic principle. Was the universe tuned for life? Or life just tuned itself to the universe? Praised be the universe for the properties of Carbon 12? Or Carbon 12 just will create life as soon and as often as possible so why bother with fictional universes with diffferent properties to Carbon 12?

BTW: the whole Astronomical concept of life on Mars was created by the optical illusion of straight lines in the blurriness, a bad translation of the Italian word “canali”, and a good dose of scientific enthusiasm.

1 Like
18

As for now we have experience only with one universe, and the appearance such as life is what we know from it. Tuning would mean that someone could change universe physics. Its an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence. We cant create universe or universes in that sense - to make it unable to summon life. We dont know a way to make it possible to create universe or modify its physics. If by any means what we know as conditions for life to appear could change, its universe changing, phases slowly shifting. We could even saay in some scenarios the universe will became lifeless with eons passing and universe cooling down.

19

The sentence makes no sense. Are you saying given the same start conditions there may be no life? Because if you do then I don’t see how you can possibly prove this without removing yourself from this universe!

We only don’t know the start conditions, but this doesn’t mean the universe is suddenly unpredictable and indeterministic. And your assumption that it has a start condition only works when you also believe in determinism.

But if this is what you’re trying to say then we have left science and entered into religion, in which case I’ll leave you to it.

1 Like
20

It’s not literally tuning, more like “we exist because the universe is exactly as it is”.