Neat and convenient coincidences of planet Earth (and other planets)

[Bohandas]

I agree that coming to earth for water or metals is stupid. If they have the technology for travel between stars, I'd expect them to be using energy sources well beyond oil and coal too.

I was actually thinking more about the oil being used for plastics.

[Accelerator]

I was actually thinking more about the oil being used for plastics.

But Titan alone has entire seas of Hydrocarbons.

Why not go there?

[Fyraltari]

Honestly the only real reason to invade Earth is life in particular.
In Prey (the 2017 one) the aliens somehow feed on intelligence so of course they don't attack empty rocks and in the The Three-Body Problem trilogy Earth id attacked because A) it's the closest inhabitable world and B) the whole universe is trapped in a logic of pre-emptive strikes against other civilisations.

[warty goblin]

Honestly the only real reason to invade Earth is life in particular.
In Prey (the 2017 one) the aliens somehow feed on intelligence so of course they don't attack empty rocks and in the The Three-Body Problem trilogy Earth id attacked because A) it's the closest inhabitable world and B) the whole universe is trapped in a logic of pre-emptive strikes against other civilisations.

That's always been my thought as well. As a bonus, the most interesting life on the planet need not even be human. After all, there's loads of entirely unique species literally found nowhere else, why should we be the center of attention?

[gomipile]

[...] As a bonus, the most interesting life on the planet need not even be human. [...]

Spoiler: Star Trek 4

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I'm reminded of this

[Fyraltari]

Huh, context please? What am I looking at?

[factotum]

Huh, context please? What am I looking at?

The Whale Probe from Star Trek IV: The Journey Home, which was an alien probe that came to Earth with the intention of contacting humpback whales, which it couldn't do because they were all extinct--cue time travel shenanigans to fetch a couple from the past.

[Fyraltari]

Thank you.

[Lord Torath]

How does liquid methane compare to water? As far as planets or moons with a methane cycle instead of a water cycle? (I'm looking at you, Titan!)

[Jay R]

As a bonus, the most interesting life on the planet need not even be human.

Indeed. When the catfolk from Alpha Centauri arrive, they will be more interested in talking to our cats than to us. And if they assumed that we existed as servants for our cats, I'm not sure I could come up with a convincing argument to the contrary.

[Bohandas]

Indeed. When the catfolk from Alpha Centauri arrive, they will be more interested in talking to our cats than to us. And if they assumed that we existed as servants for our cats, I'm not sure I could come up with a convincing argument to the contrary.

Like the fact that all the cats are eunuchs, which they wouldn't be if they were in charge

[Peelee]

Indeed. When the catfolk from Alpha Centauri arrive, they will be more interested in talking to our cats than to us. And if they assumed that we existed as servants for our cats, I'm not sure I could come up with a convincing argument to the contrary.

Cats, you say?

[warty goblin]

Indeed. When the catfolk from Alpha Centauri arrive, they will be more interested in talking to our cats than to us. And if they assumed that we existed as servants for our cats, I'm not sure I could come up with a convincing argument to the contrary.

Nah, cats hardly like most other cats. What we do have is infinitely more important than lower tier felids.

We have tuna fish.

[Telok]

The alien invasion scenario I always wanted to see went something like:

"But why are you invading us?"
"Well if we didn't crush your civilization you'd blow up the farming robots and use pesticides."
"What? Farming robots?"
"Yes. Until the bshunc weed wrecks your boisphere in a couple megacycles of bdyrdj time the Jrcvdgi company is going to be amazingly profitable."

[JeenLeen]

The alien invasion scenario I always wanted to see went something like:

"But why are you invading us?"
"Well if we didn't crush your civilization you'd blow up the farming robots and use pesticides."
"What? Farming robots?"
"Yes. Until the bshunc weed wrecks your boisphere in a couple megacycles of bdyrdj time the Jrcvdgi company is going to be amazingly profitable."

Kinda like the opening of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I agree something like that would be amusing, especially in a somewhat comedy one (even snippets of humor like Independence Day had, not outright parody-comedy movie).

I also remember

Spoiler: spoiler for the Animorphs series, or one book in it

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An alien race comes to wipe out life on the planet that the good god-like being is from, because his race beamed what are essentially play-throughs of a video game into space.

Just the video game was making planets and life for fun, then having them genocide each other. And the viewers didn't realize it was a joke/game, so they thought they were wiping out an evil species that created and genocided sentient life on a whim.

[Tvtyrant]

Kinda like the opening of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I agree something like that would be amusing, especially in a somewhat comedy one (even snippets of humor like Independence Day had, not outright parody-comedy movie).

I also remember

Spoiler: spoiler for the Animorphs series, or one book in it

Show

An alien race comes to wipe out life on the planet that the good god-like being is from, because his race beamed what are essentially play-throughs of a video game into space.

Just the video game was making planets and life for fun, then having them genocide each other. And the viewers didn't realize it was a joke/game, so they thought they were wiping out an evil species that created and genocided sentient life on a whim.

Spoiler

Show

Ironically leading to the creation of the God of Life later on down the line. The Chronicles books were all surprisingly good compared to the normal stories.

[Ginasius]

Speaking of coincidences, I read in an Asimov book a long time ago (it may be 1980) that Neptune's moon Nereid had an orbital period around its planet of 365.25 days.

That is an extremely good measure of a solar year on Earth and if Nereid was easily visible to the naked eye from our planet, ancient astronomers could have worked out a very precise calendar even in prehistoric times.

I am sorry to say that I consulted Wikipedia before writing this and the current estimate of Nereid's period is 360.11 days. This is no better than an imprecise 12-month, 30-day lunar calendar.

[TommyJo]

The original post expressed the idea that many things related to Earth seem like incredible coincidences. And that repetitions in the Universe are hardly possible. But initially, we consider the universe to be infinite. Although now they talk about the size and age of + -14 billion years. But I think that this only means that our tools do not allow you to see further. If we accept that the Universe is still infinite, then we get the probability of repeating all Earth processes an infinite number of times in 100 percent. We just can't find these planets yet. Despite the successful discovery of over 3,700 exoplanets. But we understand that this is a very small percentage of infinity?)

[Khedrac]

The original post expressed the idea that many things related to Earth seem like incredible coincidences. And that repetitions in the Universe are hardly possible. But initially, we consider the universe to be infinite. Although now they talk about the size and age of + -14 billion years. But I think that this only means that our tools do not allow you to see further. If we accept that the Universe is still infinite, then we get the probability of repeating all Earth processes an infinite number of times in 100 percent. We just can't find these planets yet. Despite the successful discovery of over 3,700 exoplanets. But we understand that this is a very small percentage of infinity?)

I don't think we do accept that the universe is infinite in terms of the amount of matter contained. Space may be infinite but the matter has a finite source. The age of the universe goes back to the big bang, what we are observing with new tools is objects so far away that they were closer and closer to that time point when the radiation we are observing left them. Further measurements may make the 14 billion year figure more precise, but they won't be making it noticeably bigger.

Further, once you get far enough away the expansion of the universe makes points effective move faster than the speed of light w.r.t. to each other at which point they are effectively in different universes.

And back on topic - at the point when the sun touches the horizon as it sets, the distance from the earth to the sun is such that the sun's actual position is just touching the horizon having finished setting... I.e. the rotation of the earth and is such that the sun moves one apparent solar diameter in the time that the light takes to get to earth.

[Tvtyrant]

The original post expressed the idea that many things related to Earth seem like incredible coincidences. And that repetitions in the Universe are hardly possible. But initially, we consider the universe to be infinite. Although now they talk about the size and age of + -14 billion years. But I think that this only means that our tools do not allow you to see further. If we accept that the Universe is still infinite, then we get the probability of repeating all Earth processes an infinite number of times in 100 percent. We just can't find these planets yet. Despite the successful discovery of over 3,700 exoplanets. But we understand that this is a very small percentage of infinity?)

Yeah there are some holes in our understanding of physics that make this basically a fruitless line of inquiry. The Big Bang is essentially an attempt to save the Axiom of Universality and with it the Laws of Thermodynamics. "Ok, so all the evidence suggests the laws of physics must have changed. We will keep the Axiom and push back the change point to the furthest possible time."

The game at this point is "How far back can we plausibly assume the current rules apply" and move on.

[TommyJo]

Yeah there are some holes in our understanding of physics that make this basically a fruitless line of inquiry. The Big Bang is essentially an attempt to save the Axiom of Universality and with it the Laws of Thermodynamics. "Ok, so all the evidence suggests the laws of physics must have changed. We will keep the Axiom and push back the change point to the furthest possible time."

The game at this point is "How far back can we plausibly assume the current rules apply" and move on.

First to the previous post: matter is finite in our understanding at the moment. Although I also think it is, in the end, we both can be wrong. I was leading rather to the fact that even in a not infinite world, the coincidences described in the original post have a very high probability. The human mind is designed to see certain patterns. This has been inherent since ancient times when people did not have time to analyze everything for a long time. Then it was necessary to quickly assess the danger and avoid it to survive. This is how the need to classify everything and bring it under our ideas about the world was formed in our consciousness. It is this feature that allows us to see patterns where they may not actually be.

And regarding your post, I think this answer is partially suitable. Besides, I wanted to say that you are right, that we are still very far from understanding all the processes. Although progress is taking place by leaps and bounds