What makes the Earth unique.

[old man emu]

If you were going to find a trait that makes planetary bodies unique, you couldn't go looking at the elementary chemical they are composed of. Planets might differ in the the abundance of particular elements, and maybe in the simpler chemical compounds. The majority of chemical compounds found on Earth are simple molecules - Iron Oxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, metal sulphides, silica. All these simple molecules could be found on other planets in varying concentrations, but if you were to describe the Earth by a rare trait, you would call it the Oily Planet.

 

Oil is the product of anaerobic decomposition of animal matter in undisturbed silts. This process causes the organic matter to change, first into a waxy material known as kerogen, found in various oil shales around the world, and then with more heat into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons via a process known as catagenesis. So without Life, and relatively stable geological conditions over time, we would have no petroleum oils.

 

 

[willedoo]

Most of it starts with plankton which has an exoskeleton composed mainly of a petroleum like substance. The plankton die and the exoskeleton falls to the bottom of the ocean. Erosion causes silt to build up and cover the plankton. Over time the Earth's plates move and buckle causing heat and pressure. These geological occurrences are needed to 'cook' the oil so to speak. The rare thing is that this happened millions of years ago due to a rare set of conditions occurring. It might never happen again and is not an ongoing process, so the oil we have is the only oil we will ever have.

 

You're right ome, oil is the planet's rare trait. It might be the only oil around. Australia, being an old continent, has some of the finest and oldest oil in the world. Some of it you can pump out of the ground and run a diesel engine on it. Santos run some of their Toyotas on it in SW Qld. and around Moomba. I think they have a deal with the government to do it. It must be good oil as I know a transport company that experimented with running trucks on crude and they kept blocking injectors and filters, so gave up on the idea. Our problem here in Australia is that we don't have much heavy crude.

Edited January 21, 2021 by willedoo

[onetrack]

What make planet Earth unique amongst all the planetary bodies in the Universe is that it has an atmosphere that is completely stable and which is structured in depth and composition, to support our human life form, exactly.

 

Every adventure planned to any other planetary form has to address the major and constant problem of no life-supporting atmosphere on that planet. Every planetary expedition planned, tries to address that problem using man-made, bubble-like spheres to contain and support a human-life-allowing atmosphere.

 

This then begats the question of why is Planet Earth alone in the Universe, as a human-life-supporting planet? The definitive answer is one that has perplexed the greatest minds for thousands of years.

[old man emu]

Not so much,

5 minutes ago, onetrack said:

why is Planet Earth alone in the Universe, as a human-life-supporting plane

but "Is Planet Earth the only one in the Universe that supports life as we know it, Jim?"

[onetrack]

The answer to that is a definitive Yes, IMO. Numerous Govts have spent untold millions trying to locate lifeforms of any type, in our Universe, for hundreds of years - and they have come up with exactly nothing in response!

 

I believe there are life forms out there, but they are in a parallel universe that allows no physical contact between us and them.

[nomadpete]

The evolution of complex life forms requires very very large timescale of relative stability, and relatively short lifetimes of the life forms so that there are so many generations of mostly tiny adaptations to environment.

 

So a humans lifetime of three score years and ten, is a blink when compared to a geological timescale. We are complex but we got here eventually.

 

Compare that with a simple life form such as a virus, for instance. A virus replicates in seconds, so we see virus (viruses?) Evolving into new strains within months.

 

So I don't see this planet as a Goldilocks environment made just right for us and the other warm blooded, water and carbon based oxidising mammals. I see it the other way around. It has taken us a very very long time relative to a human life cycle (over millions of years) to evolve a complex life form that succeds in this environment. Further complicating things for life on the Blue marble, the environment itself has been steadily changing as a side effect of the byproducts of earlier, more primitive life forms. Such as photosynthesis creating an unusual atmosphere that is high in oxygen.

 

And now the humans are accelerating a change of the planetary environment, and doing so faster than we can evolve to cope with it.

Edited January 22, 2021 by nomadpete
trying to make sense of life on earth

[old man emu]

'Tis indeed a wondrous place!

[octave]

The percentage of planets in the universe that we have ruled as being suitable for supporting life is miniscule.  Are search for other life hos hampered by distance and time.  

[Yenn]

We have to define life as we know it.

There could be planets which support a life which runs on something other than oxygen. Maybe ammonia. We know we have ammonia supported life on earth, so why not elsewhere.

[willedoo]

Another incredible thing is the magnetic field surrounding the Earth. Without it, everything would die from radiation. Some say it's the result of the planet having a metal core at it's centre like a dynamo.

[willedoo]

18 minutes ago, Yenn said:

We have to define life as we know it.

There could be planets which support a life which runs on something other than oxygen. Maybe ammonia. We know we have ammonia supported life on earth, so why not elsewhere.

There could be a planet of Trumps somewhere in the galaxy. The one we know might have been their brightest envoy.

[Bruce Tuncks]

The moon is the an unusual thing and without it there would be no agriculture possible. When you add this requirement to an otherwise well-placed planet, the odds grow badly against technical life.

[nomadpete]

Yeah, the moon brings lunacy to planet earth. So don't be surprised about our politics!

[onetrack]

Trump definitely lives on another planet - and it's not Planet Earth!! And if he's the brightest envoy of that other planet, God help that planet!!

 

Edited January 22, 2021 by onetrack

[willedoo]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

Trump definitely lives on another planet - and it's not Planet Earth!! And if he's the brightest envoy of that other planet, God help that planet!!

Yes, I guess there's a lot of holes in that theory. If they were all like Trump, they wouldn't have the brains to build a spaceship to come here.

[Marty_d]

I think it's a bit wrong to assume that just because we can't see other "goldilocks" planets, means they don't exist.

 

They estimate around 100 billion planets in our galaxy alone, and there are millions of galaxies.  There could be literally thousands of Earth-like planets out there, which we may never know about.

 

[facthunter]

The  RARE nature of our planet is becoming more obvious. WE are of it and the balance is very fine for it to stay inhabitable by us. The universe generally is extremely hostile.. The substances of high atomic weights come from the debris of black holes. Our blue planet is indeed a goldilocks place not likely to be replicated exactly anywhere. We are looking at evolution over an unimaginable timeframe.  Any different turn over all that time would produce a very different result. We certainly are not "created" in the image of the God of the universe. . From the distance of Pluto, the earth is very hard to see.  and that's within our solar system. The nearest star is about 2-3 light years away. The sun is 9 minutes away at the same speed and so much bigger than the earth., we would be a dot on it's surface. Nev

[octave]

We have not even scratched the surface when it comes to discovering planets outside of our solar system. There are various estimates of the likely number of planets in our solar system but a middle of the road number is around 6 billion.  Even if the odds of a planet being capable of supporting life are extremely low, you still end up with a huge number.  Drake Equation

 

It is understandable that we think this planet is so perfect for sustaining life but of course successful inhabitants of any planet will fall for the illusion that the planet seems to be custom made to suit us. The planet is ideal for us because we evolved to suit it.  Many forms of life did not last for long because they did not suit the planet. In other words the world does not suit us, we suit it.

 

Douglas Adams: The Sentient Puddle

[facthunter]

Second line ... Do you MEAN galaxy?  Even in identical circumstances if it happened over again we would NOT look as we do. THAT race has been run.  Supporting "life" is  not the entire issue. even though an important one as it's the pre requisite for anything. "Organic" Chemistry is about CARBON. and earth life forms. Is there any evidence of any other  "element" ie silicon  likely to be able to form living organisms.  Nev

[nomadpete]

Octave. That link sent me down the YouTube rabbit hole again.

I've always been a Doug Adams tragic.

Thanks.

[willedoo]

The portrayal of aliens in movies and media has some reference to evolution. Assuming they are an older and obviously more advanced form that is. They have bigger heads to hold a bigger brain and bigger eyes for more screen time. Their bodies are weaker because the need for physical strength is less. Their ears and mouth are smaller because they don't use them as much as we do; they just text each other with their long fingers. If we stayed around long enough, we would probably evolve that way.

 

 

[octave]

35 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Second line ... Do you MEAN galaxy?

 

Yes. typo, I meant galaxy

[willedoo]

On 21/01/2021 at 10:19 PM, old man emu said:

If you were going to find a trait that makes planetary bodies unique, you couldn't go looking at the elementary chemical they are composed of. Planets might differ in the the abundance of particular elements, and maybe in the simpler chemical compounds. The majority of chemical compounds found on Earth are simple molecules - Iron Oxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, metal sulphides, silica. All these simple molecules could be found on other planets in varying concentrations, but if you were to describe the Earth by a rare trait, you would call it the Oily Planet.

 

Oil is the product of anaerobic decomposition of animal matter in undisturbed silts. This process causes the organic matter to change, first into a waxy material known as kerogen, found in various oil shales around the world, and then with more heat into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons via a process known as catagenesis. So without Life, and relatively stable geological conditions over time, we would have no petroleum oils.

Thanks ome, it got me interested enough to drag out some old oil and petroleum geology books and have a read. All interesting stuff. When people retire, they tend to delete a lot of work related stuff from memory to make room for all the new stuff. But it's good to go back now and again.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Those aliens couldn't be born like we were nomad. Already the head is too big for the birth passage, and if women's hips were any bigger then they couldn't walk.

So we are in an evolutionary dead end.

And this planet is very old. It has less time between now and the seas going dry than there is between us and the dinosaurs.

Gosh that robert burns was right...  " till ah the seas gang dry m'dear, and the rocks melt wi the sun... "

This has nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with the sun's behaviour.

[nomadpete]

If those little green men.... Er, androgenous persons... are truly more advanced than us, they've probably abandoned animal reproduction methods, and mechanically automated it. Allowing the most intelligent offspring to survive in spite of their big heads.

Edited January 23, 2021 by nomadpete