This is a collection point for such information.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I keep a running list of reasons why Earth-Humanity are unique in the Universe. Here is my partial list. It’s incomplete and merely presents food for thought.
Earth is unique. We read about these immense numbers of galaxies, stars and planets and just *know* that there are other “earths” out there. But it will become more and more evident and publicly accepted that Earth is exceedingly unique. The list continues to grow regarding factors that make it so, but here are a few.
• Sol is singular, not a binary star system. It’s estimated up to 1/2 of solar systems are binary. This cuts the number of possible stars for Sol like systems by 2/3s.
• Sol’s position in the galaxy is out in an arm away from the chaos of inner galaxy turmoil.
• Sol’s wave path as the Milkyway revolves allows it to miss much of the disruptions in the galaxy. (Local bubble)
• Earth’s distance from Sol, Goldilocks zone, LOTS of liquid water.
• Earth’s neighbors, Jupiter’s asteroid cleaning.
• Earth’s impact from Theia resulting in a much denser iron/nickel core.
• Earth’s extensive magnetosphere (due to this larger than normal magnetic core).
• Luna’s very large size and its influence on Earth’s rotational / axial stability, not to mention tides (tide pools enhance life generation possibilities).
• The asteroid belt delivering asteroids, comets and meteors and their H2O and elements.
Here are some chemical aspects of Earth that make it unique
• Earth’s H20 to land ratio.
• Earth’s land distribution (large continents, not islands).
• Earth’s high quantity of radioactive elements within the planet interior.
• Volcanism continuously recycling minerals and elements.
• Early life starting 3.5bya, clearing the oceans of toxins.
• The tilt of Earth providing seasons.
• Ozone without which DNA would be rendered inert.
• The transition of prokaryotic to eukaryotic life (took 2.5 billions of years).
• Phosphorous, required for life as we know it, is rare. Earth has enough to make life viable.
And here are some reasons why Man is unique on this Unique earth.
• 2.5 billion years of hydrocarbon deposition.
• Humanity’s survival through and benefit from disease, we are robust.
• The decimation of prior dominant classes of animals and the rise of mammals.
• Fire both its discovery and the existence of burnable material for boosting our nutritional uptake and our ability to manipulate elements.
• Broad variety of available metals useful for life and industry and eventually the construction of communication capabilities.
• The configuration of the continents that gave rise to grasses that gave rise to agriculture.
• The existence and development of draft animals without which agriculture would not have arisen.
• Humanity had to survive, and in general, avoid having its electricity systems (generation, grid, transformers) being devastated by CMEs (coronal mass ejections).
And no doubt many more.
We are unique.
• I agree that the numbers favor life, lots of life, in the Universe. What I’ve tried to explore, over the years of gathering this list, is that the trek of humanity to the stage we enjoy today is one of tenuous happenstance. I find that many folks I’ve spoken with haven’t examined the special situational sequence of events and configuration of planetary, ecological, and geological factors that humans leveraged to get to this point in our evolution.
Take trees for instance. Where would humanity be if it were not for the existence and diversity of trees? The implications are manifold. If there are alien intelligences out there living on planets where trees or their substitute, do not exist… could they discover fire? Build shelter? Build ships? Construct tools and machinery of thousands of kinds? Produce charcoal for smelting? Produce methanol as a fuel? I realize that such a statement is highly anthropocentric. But still, imagine humanity without the ability to leverage wood as a resource. Wither wood, would we have ever reached the state we thrive in today?
It’s factors like that, in that list as well as others I’ve identified, that simply invite one to step back and think about how incredible humanity’s path to technological advancement really is.
• As I alluded to, the argument for life vs intelligent, electromagnetic capable life are two different things. Lots of life — sure. Intelligent life? Who knows. I simply list factors which many people do not take into account when examining humanity as an EMC (electromagnetic capable) species. A similar species to us would have to have enjoyed similar serendipity. That’s all my point is trying to provide. For instance, fuel for fire is necessary to smelt the metals that an EMC life-form might leverage to build their technology. Not to mention the fact that such metals must be readily available. Things like that.
• What’s unfortunate about SETI is that it’s focused on radio. It appears that even for humans, radio is a transition technology. The recent fervor regarding directed energy propulsion — lasers — to push tiny space craft out to the stars speaks of using lasers to communicate to and from said space capsules. If we’re already looking to use lasers to talk between us and our crafts or our colonies then it would seem we need to start to switch SETI over to capturing pulsed light transmissions; if we want to starting “listening” to aliens who might be using light to talk.
• Theia’s impact delivered more than just iron and nickel to Earth’s core (producting an extra large magnetosphere) but also (probably) delivered additional carbon, nitrogen and sulfur — chemicals which, like oxygen and hydrogen, are volatile and tend to get boiled off during a planet’s accretion phase (forming from the solar system’s proto-disc).
• Tidally locked planets and moons would lose their magnetosphere (the dynamo engine within a molten cored planet). Without this magnetic shield solar and cosmic radiation would ravage any life that had arisen on the planet.
REF:
https://anonymole.wordpress.com/2016/01/21/drake-equation-more-on-the-topic/
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-sun-was-dimmer-when-earth-formed-how-did-life-emerge-20220127/
A Solution to the Faint-Sun Paradox Reveals a Narrow Window for Life
Back when the sun was 30% dimmer, Earth should have frozen solid. Yet water flowed and life blossomed. The solution to the paradox shows that we might have that faint sun to owe for life’s existence — with critical consequences for the possibility of life outside Earth.
LikeLike
Living with Fermi’s Paradox it occurs to me that we seem to be experiencing a tautology of sorts. And the tighter and tighter we wind the spring of internal references the more obvious it becomes that Fermi’s Paradox may not be a paradox at all.
For instance, the more and more rare we decide Sol+Earth+Life+Humanity appears to be, the more and more we push out the possibility that there are other star-faring races in our galaxy. That is, for every doubling of our rarity, we halve the possibility that there are other beings. If we eventually decide that the events and circumstances that led to humanity’s existence, in addition to being electromagnetically capable, is two to the 100’th, then is not the probability that there are other life forms as capable as we — the inverse of that?
If we flip 100 coins and they all land up heads — that’s us.
What’s the probability that we could flip another 100 coins and they too, would all land up heads? That would be them.
Paradox? What paradox? Humanity is unique — if not alone — in the universe.
LikeLike
Living with Fermi’s Paradox it comes to me that we seem to be experiencing a tautology of sorts. And the tighter and tighter we wind the spring of internal references the more obvious it becomes that Fermi’s Paradox may not be a paradox at all.
For instance, the more and more rare we decide Sol+Earth+Life+Humanity appears to be, the more and more we push out the possibility that there are other star-faring races in our galaxy. That is, for every doubling of our rarity, we halve the possibility that there are other beings. If we eventually decide that the events and circumstances that led to humanity’s existence, in addition to being electromagnetically capable, is two to the 100’th, then is not the probability that there are other life forms as capable as we — the inverse of that?
If we flip 100 coins and they all land up heads — that’s us.
What’s the probability that we could flip another 100 coins and they too, would all land up heads? That would be them.
Paradox? What paradox? Humanity is unique — if not alone — in the universe.
LikeLike
Isotopic Abundance
Birth Environment
Orbit
Tides
Element Abundance
Luminosity
Metallicity
Impact Flux
Magnetic Field
Dust
Minor Planets
Eccentric Oscillations
Rotation
Activity
Companions
Satellites
Obliquity
Surface Temps
Radius
Albedo
Clouds
Outgassing
Composition
Liquids
Surface pressure
UV Shielding
Atmospheric Structure
Density
Sibling Planets:
Orbits
Masses
Liquid Water
Planetary Properties
Atmosphere
Surface
Interior
Dynamics
Stellar Effects:
Composition & Structure
Galactic Location
Spectral Energy Distribution
Planetary System:
Orbital Evolution
LikeLike
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/04/habitable-zone-waterworlds-would-usually-have-no-land-or-very-little-land.html
LikeLike
In a study published today in the journal PLOS Genetics, Shriver shows how the temperature and humidity of the air we breathe has impacted the shape of what we breathe with.
The idea that climate impacts nose shape is not new. By 1905, U.S. Army physician Charles E. Woodruff was writing in his scientific treatise The Effects of Tropical Light on White Men that “the shape and size of the nose and the position of the nostrils are now fairly well proved to be a matter of selection of the fittest varieties.” He went to describe how, in his opinion, a nose’s shape could help one adapt to a climate over time:
“In the tropics where the air is hot and therefore rarefied, more of it is necessary and it is essential that there should be no impediment to the air currents so the nostrils are open and wide and the nose very flat. Such a nose is unsuited for cold countries as it permits masses of cold air to flood the air passages and irritate the lining membrane, so that the nose must be large and have much warming surface, and the nostrils therefore are slender slits to admit air in thin ribbons easily warmed. […] Hence there must have been a natural selection in cold countries of one kind of variations—large contracted noses, and a selection in hot countries of the other extreme, so that the various types gradually arose.”
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-changed-shape-your-nose-180962567/#t0QuOj4xcG2cHcdL.99
LikeLike
CMEs will have a greater impact on society, on an electricity powered society, than anyone currently believes.
Humanity has experienced just one CME of a size to do serious damage. I’m sure you’re well aware of the Carrington Event and the government reports on the next CME that will hit us (as well as the July 2012 CME that barely missed us.)
What I don’t believe anyone has theorized is the extent to which a CME (every few hundred years, or more frequently) will have on an advanced tech society. Will have on THIS advanced tech society.
If CMEs slam electricity enabled civilizations, over and over, each time knocking them back, wasting resources (like irreplaceable fossil fuels), maybe this is a solution to the Fermi Paradox.
If a pair of massive CMEs were to hit during our summer, 10 to16 hours apart — say goodbye to civilization in the Northern Hemisphere.
Here’s a theoretical scenario that explores this possibility: https://davecline.wordpress.com/2017/01/03/blue-across-the-sea-epilogue/
LikeLike
Bio, hydro, wind all got humans into the 1700’s, that’s true. But now the factor of time enters the equation. The trajectory of development of technology without fossil fuels, I believe, would ramp so slowly, due both to the availability of fuels for tech as well as exponentially affect the population (and the ideas generated by those billions of extra humans), that the time needed to get to an equivalent level, that we enjoy today, would take extra millennia. And by then — the next calamity would befall humanity resetting their tech-clock.
In addition, without fossil fuels, how does any species launch thousands of rockets into LEO much less launch them out to protect the planet from asteroids and comets? (Again, within the brief time window allotted to them.)
I think the influence on society’s ability to avert existential risk is critically linked to fossil fuels. But there is another threat that most dismiss as incidental — Coronal Mass Ejections.
LikeLike
I’ve personally been collecting Fermi’s Paradox supporting evidence for a number of years. I stuffed a few of my additional points into your Fermi’s compendium video’s comments. One factor that you’ve mentioned, but may need further examination, is the concept of time. More specifically the concept that any civilization that arises in the galaxy/universe must do so quickly enough to get to the point where it can protect itself from the myriad existential threats.
Of the 4.5B years Earth has had, the Holocene has been a very special, stable, warm, interglacial period where humanity could spring forth into a civilization — and hopefully (if you’re not a nihilist like me), one which can protect itself from the next natural calamity to befall the planet.
That is, there are these windows of opportunity that must exist for a sentient lifeform to become a technologically advanced civilization. These windows of time, I believe, are brief and probably infrequent.
Our own Holocene window comes at a time when an extremely rare (planetarily speaking) quantity of fuel has been deposited and offered to humanity to launch its own technological civilization. I posit, that without fossil fuels to spawn the great agricultural and industrial revolution thereby prompting the technological and informational revolutions — humanity would not achieve a technologically advanced state. Why? Because the window to do so would have closed by the time humanity figured out how to protect itself.
Of course this theory is utterly anthropocentric. Yet, I believe this occurrence, that of the massive deposition of gigatons of nearly free energy over the last 2.5B years, is key to ANY civilization.
Unless these windows of time between planetary natural disasters are so wide that a sentient intelligent species could take 500k or a million years to slowly create its technology from the poor energy sources at hand — a vast NFE energy source is a requirement for civilizations outside our own.
LikeLike
Life vs sentient life vs intelligent life vs EMC life (electro-magnetically capable)
Is there extra-terrestrial life in the galaxy/universe – probably.
Is there sentient life? Again, probably.
What about intelligent life? Maybe, but we won’t learn about any of these three grades of life unless the forth kind actually exists. And to create the forth kind, one needs to assume a number of developmental characteristics.
In order to build an electromagnetic generation system (one that emits electromagnetic signals so that we can detect them) a species must have the following terrestrial attributes available to them:
• Fire
• Fuel to drive fires to smelt metal.
• Metals available for smelting, forging, construction and refinement.
• A vast enough food source to drive a population into work stratification (farmers, engineers, magistrates, etc.)
• A longevity of civilization great enough to bring all of the above together between natural catastrophes (Holocene).
This is just a sample of aspects required to build an EMC species. There are no doubt others. So, given this list, what physical characteristics must a species have in order to build EMC generators?
• Material manipulation appendages (hands+fingers).
• Material transportation capability (feet).
• Probably the 5 senses for touch, hearing, sight, smell, taste (these last two might only be required as evolution dictates for survival).
Given the above stipulations, there indeed could be other EMC life that looks very little like humanity, but it will be recognizable as EMC life. Anthropocentric views cannot be avoided. But in their defense, these views are anchored in 3.5B years of evolutionary experimentation. Convergent evolution does occur and there are reasons that it does. Nature (generally) finds the most efficient means of survival and procreation (sexual selection being one of those things that does not select for environment survivability).
So will alien EMC life look like us – possibly, but if it doesn’t it will be pretty darn close.
LikeLike
ALL of the prior extinction events needed to occur for humanity to arise.
LikeLike
* Rhizobium bacteria were a requirement in the establishment of human agriculture. Such bacteria fix Nitrogen. They are symbiotically associated with legumes. Without such fixing early agriculture would have failed.
rhizobium leguminosarum
LikeLike
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/04/habitable-exoplanets-are-bad-news-for-humanity/
“Proponents of this “Rare Earth” hypothesis also argue that the evolution of complex life requires an exceedingly large number of perfect conditions. In addition to Earth being in the habitable zone of the Sun, our star must be far enough away from the galactic center to avoid destructive radiation, our gas giants must be massive enough to sweep asteroids from Earth’s trajectory, and our unusually large Moon stabilizes the axial tilt that gives us different seasons.
These are just a few prerequisites for complex life. The emergence of symbolic language, tools and intelligence could require other such “perfect conditions” as well.”
LikeLike
Do you receive this email?
Sent from my iPhone
>
LikeLike