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Morris39's avatar

There may be more basic steps to explore before jumping to extraterrestrial and artificial life. All living entities share some common characteristics but we lack knowledge whether these are independent ie essential. Living things all 'want' to grow and do work to achieve that and only do it for their singular case (membrane bound) Cells convert energy to work at very low entropy change rates which we are not able to duplicate. Cell survival is limited to low kinetic energy states. Our history tells us that knowledge progresses at slow rates but only with a succession of experiments. Can those promoting complex possibilities able to suggest possible starting points for experiments (above basic facts)? Are they open to such a suggestion? If not, should motivation considered. Just musings but if this has been solved please advise.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

"Between two and three billion years from now … if [we?] make it that far, we might have the technology to colonize the closest suitable exoplanets."

Does anyone here doubt that, absent some nonobvious insuperable barrier to interstellar travel, we with our exploding technological acceleration could not only have the technology to, but actually *use it to colonize*, a few nearby exoplanets *and* begin despoiling their environments in say 100M years w/ room (& possibly orders of magnitude) to spare?

If Arthur provided details I'm dying to know them and may have to eat my metaphorical hat. Absent which the extreme duration and unexpected precision (+/- 25% for a technology project lasting *billions* of years?!?) strike me as almost comically ludicrous. I don't know much about interstellar travel, but I'd be hard pressed to come up w/ such a project timeline without inserting a *nearly* 2.5By +/- 0.5By canasta/lunch break.

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