The trouble I have with statements like this is that “as we know it” is doing so much of the heavy lifting. We don’t have any experience with extraterrestrial life so it’s difficult to imagine how different or similar it may be to our own. We have a sample size of 1 with a completely unknown population. The best we can do right now look at line spectra and make inferences from organic chemistry. But that tells us very little about the potential forms life may take.
Comment on Stop right there
Zehzin@lemmy.world 7 months agoJupiter is our guardian angel. A big asteroid-deflecting gas giant might be a condition for complex life as we know it to evolve.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Zehzin@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Well yeah, but if you want to look for planets with life, it’s probably a good idea to look the ones with conditions we know work.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Or at the very least, look at planets that have minimal global catastrophes
AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Trisolaris has entered the chat
GBU_28@lemm.ee 7 months ago
It’s always impressive how perfect our solar system is.
Our range from the sun, our own moon, our magnetosphere, Jupiter…
IndiBrony@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Well if it wasn’t perfect we wouldn’t be here to observe it not being perfect, so just by our existence we can’t observe conditions that are not perfect for us existing… or something like that 😅
exocrinous@startrek.website 7 months ago
“Wow,” says a puddle in a ditch. “This ditch is shaped exactly like me. If it weren’t for the ditch’s precise shape, I couldn’t have formed here. I’m really lucky.” The puddle, of course, has never seen a puddle in a different ditch and never realised that puddles come in many shapes.
GBU_28@lemm.ee 7 months ago
How clever. The point is this puddle has seen many other ditches, and we’ve learned that the particulars of our solar system are interesting, if not uncommon.
Spare me the condescension with the storybook reply
helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Don’t forget about Pluto protecting us from the cold unknown.
AEsheron@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I never got that. Surely, it’s nearly as likely to divert an asteroid that would miss us to a course that would hit us as it is to do the opposite, right? The number that are actually trapped/impacted is a tiny percentage, and then the percentage of those that would have hit us must be a small percentage of that, is it really enough to be statistically significant?
helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Dont forget Pluto out there protecting us from the cold unknown
niktemadur@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Every good solar systems has a big ol’ Electrolux in common.