Re:Saturn moon 'able to support life'
by Razengan on Friday April 14, 2017 @05:51PM
(#14117730)
> Even stuff like mars rover could be engineered to mine, manufacture and duplicate - eventually creating a colony of rovers that populate the planet and consume the planet's resources.
That's one of my favorite thought experiments in approaching the definition of life:
Suppose we build some robots with AI, and send them into space, and they land on some planet.
Those robots can mine raw materials and build other robots like themselves.
They're able to learn and teach each other, and improve their design and invent new things on their own.
Fast forward a few hundred years. That planet now hosts a civilization of robots, with their own culture, planning their own excursions into space.
To an external observer searching for Life™ and Intelligence™ in the cosmos, what would make our robot civilization fail to be qualified as such?
That's one of my favorite thought experiments in approaching the definition of life:
Suppose we build some robots with AI, and send them into space, and they land on some planet.
Those robots can mine raw materials and build other robots like themselves.
They're able to learn and teach each other, and improve their design and invent new things on their own.
Fast forward a few hundred years. That planet now hosts a civilization of robots, with their own culture, planning their own excursions into space.
To an external observer searching for Life™ and Intelligence™ in the cosmos, what would make our robot civilization fail to be qualified as such?