this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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Science Memes

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Stop right there (mander.xyz)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Jupiter is our guardian angel. A big asteroid-deflecting gas giant might be a condition for complex life as we know it to evolve.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Every good solar systems has a big ol' Electrolux in common.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (3 children)

It's always impressive how perfect our solar system is.

Our range from the sun, our own moon, our magnetosphere, Jupiter...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 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 😅

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Don't forget about Pluto protecting us from the cold unknown.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Or at the very least, look at planets that have minimal global catastrophes

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Trisolaris has left the chat

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 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?