Ok. Extraterrestrial life, better known as E.T.(not the alien with the long finger that glows) Do you think there are other planets in the universe that support life? I personally do.:D Please post your thoughts and oppinions!:)
The Walrus :) jk
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Ok. Extraterrestrial life, better known as E.T.(not the alien with the long finger that glows) Do you think there are other planets in the universe that support life? I personally do.:D Please post your thoughts and oppinions!:)
The Walrus :) jk
(I think you did spell it right.)
It's incredibly feasible. There are billions of planets in each galaxies, and thousands (if not millions or billions) of galaxies in the universe. That's a pretty wide space for possibilities.
I personally hope we arn't alone in the universe. I'd like to see another alien race out there. And not ones like the Covenant.
Are there planets that can support life? Undeniably, yes.
Are there planets that have life on them? Undoubtedly, yes.
Are there planets that have intelligent life on them? Arguably, the odds say yes.
I seriously hope there is. Then we can be like "YOU LOOK FUNNY!"
In the words of undoubtedly the worlds greatest philosophers:-
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
Monty Python
Possible, but not very likely in my opinion.
I say it is very plausible.... will we ever make contact... the chances are as slim as the earth being made habitable..... which was a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very slim chance.
wow thx for the comments.
Yes, I agree that the chances are very large, but I don't understand why they don't come. I mean yeah, they might have come already like in flyin' saucers and stuff, but they never try to contact us. WTF? If they were as curious as we are right now, and had the technology awesome enough to get here real easily, They would have came already. Hell, if I were them, I would come to Earth, make a suprising yet not too show offie entrance, and greet every president, prime minister and leader on the freaking planet. Wouldn't you?
There are miniscule odds of a planet being capable of supporting life, and miniscule odds of life developing on those planets, and miniscule odds of that life developing an intelligent species, and miniscule odds of that intelligence creating a civilization capable of space flight.
Then there is the utterly incomprehensible, huge, vast, enormity of space.
(probably deserves more "big" adjectives)
The odds of our two civilizations meeting are so astronomically small, I don't know how to begin to describe it.
Equally with our track record of wars and inhumanity we are probably no where near civilised enough to be worthy of contacting. Can you imagine the power struggle that would occur trying to gain their technology each nation claiming they would use it for the good of mankind - untill we stop fighting amongst ourselves and put our efforts in advancing as a peaceful world I don't think any INTELLIGENT alien life forms would come anywhere near us
Remember, it is highly likely every civilized species would have this problem. Greed, lust for power, and coveting are naturally a mainstay of sentience, as they often bring the advances we know today as normal to our world.Quote:
Originally Posted by TPUK
Well I tend to think that an advanced civilisation would need to move above/beyond that - if mankind used the money, time, knowledge and resources that they used to invent better ways of killing to improve the world as a whole we too could move beyond the baser values mankind unfortunately displays.
I couldn't agree more! Nature works as it does precisely because attributes of competitiveness promotes and spurs all life forms. It is indeed the way the universe insuflates vitality in those collections of molecular complexity that we call life forms.Quote:
Originally Posted by KOOPS95
It is incredibly naive, in my view, to suppose an hypothetical extra-terrestrial life form to be peaceful simply because it would have better space ships and would thus be able to reach us.
Likewise, I find the notion of equating pacifism to higher intelligence to be a very strange proposition.
I think there are many planets and life forms, we just haven't discovered. You know, there are life forms on Earth we have not found yet. Like lets say one planet has water, this could be a possibility of life because there could be water creatures.
Well not necessarily peaceful in totality - but as a race it would work together as a whole even if it were toward intergalactic domination.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wildor
Star Trek has a lot to answer for. LOL
i hope the aliens are like the covernet then the U.S army (which i am apart of) would destroy em
It's a very complex question. You might view it with a sort of "the universe is so big life is bound to exist somewhere" kind of opinion or with a "the things needed for sustaining life are so specific we're lucky it exists at all" opinion. Personally, i go with the latter. Just thinking about the fact that you need water, oxygen (though not too much of it), etc. to all come together on a place that is not too hot and not too cold makes the odds incredibly small. Throw in the factors that you need two species (or one cannibalistic one) in the same place for food and reproduction and you reduce the odds even more. I also agree with the earlier posters in the fact that if life does in fact exist, we will never find them. Simply because we've searched so far and wide already that even if we did at last discover some alien race, there would be no way of sending word to them that we exist. Anyways, that's just my two cents.
But it's not like there are only two civilizations in the whole universe. There might be millions!!! Which means, for example, planet A might contact planet C, while planet B might contact Planet D, and so on. So, if there were a serious amount of civilizations in the universe, we're bound to find at least ONE civilization. If we're lucky, we may even find two!Quote:
Originally Posted by Rota
But, as I said, if it's so easy to find a civilization in space, why haven't we found one yet? Project S.E.T.I (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Inteligence) is searching for some right now, but they've only found space dust and nebulas. Plus, they're also starting to lose some funds, and if they're broke, no more satalites for them.:( which means there will be an even lower chance to find intellegent lifeforms other than humans.
If we ever encounter intelligent life, it'll be like the dove scene in Mars Attacks. Except we'll be the martians.
No mountain nor sea,
no thing of this world
could keep us apart.
Because this is not my world
...you are...
Montros, allow me to be completely off-topic for a second and say this is the loveliest sig!
Granted. I probably chose my words poorly when i said "two."Quote:
Originally Posted by Montros
But my point still stands.
Even if there are thousands of spacefaring species, the sheer mega-huge, utlra-big, enormously-large, (no bigger than that), and even bigger than that size of space means we are so incredibly unlikely to run into them.
Not impossible.
I'm just saying, that it's a heck of an ego to think Earth is even on their radar.
Well the thing is, if we were to actully find a civilization, its a high posibility that they are much more advanced than us. like you guys said, they might have space ships and lasers, but more important is the fact that they will probably have more experience in politics( since they've been in the universe longer), which means that they have also probably put violence and greed aside, kind of like a utopia.
Also, other civilizations can be more advanced than us not only because they may have evolved faster, but maybe because nature allowed a better "Learning environment". Earth, is just about right in the life zone. The life zone is the zone in space at which life can be sustained. But, Earth isn't exactly at the middle. If we were, it may effect how we live, such as better agriculture. Or, maybe we're just slow learners :D. For example, When there were futuristic technologies in India and Saudi Arabia, there was iron age technologies in europe, and stone age technologies in North America. This shows that some countries are slow learners, and some are fast.
Yes, you are also right. Maybe they're so intelligent that they think we're really puney and insignificant, so they don't even bother to look. They may even be in our backyard. Or maybe we're the most intellegent civilization and the others are really stupid and didn't even develop sliced bread yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rota
Anyway, there is many possibilities, and your right. There is a small possibility we will find them. And like I said too, most of the other civilizations will most likely be more intellegent than us. And since they are, the thing with us being the smartest wouldn't be so realistic.
are there extraterrestrials? -most deffinately 100% yes.
why? just go out at night and look up,,, even in a city with all it's pollution there are still more stars than i can count. Then there is the fact that a lot of those points of light aren't single stars, but entire galaxies with billions and billions of there own stars,
so even if only 0.1% of stars have planets - and only 0.1% of those planets have basic life - and only 0.1% of Those planets remain stable enough for long enough to develop complex life - and only 0.1% of THose planets lifeforms survive long enough to become 'advanced' that still leaves you with millions of extraterrestrial species out there.
The problem, i think, is the likelyhood of ever coming into contact with one of them. If human beings do come into contact with alien species, in the forseeable future, chances are that they would have come to us, as opposed to us going to them. so we can make a few assumtions;
1. they will be FAR more advanced than we are - because they are obviously capable of traveling such unthinkable distances
2. they probably didn't come all that way just to say hello
3. if history does repeat itself; we're screwed - [every single time in earths history when an 'advanced' people has come into contact with a 'less advanced' people it has been a massacre,,,
so lets hope they don't find us just yet i say ;)
That's good thinking except for the fact that the planets that have the conditions required to maintain the most basic form of life is FAR less then 0.1%. I'm not ruling out the possibility of other life forms existing, i'm just saying that it's unlikely. Just read my earlier post.Quote:
Originally Posted by Smythe
even if those lifeforms are only single cell organisms there are most definitely other planets in the universe which can host life other than our own. to believe otherwise is simply ludicrous
Quote:
Originally Posted by theturkeywithin
This has come up in a couple of other posts as to the conditions for life to exist - this is based on out current understanding and knowledge. However although a carbon based lifeform is possibly the most likely since as early as 1891 it has been theorised that Silicone could also be a basis for life (and not just breast implants), Silicone based life forms could tolerate much higher tempreatures so this would increase the amount of planets that could potentialy sustain life. Whilst current scientific theories put forward say that Silicone life forms are unlikely for a variety of reasons this is again based on our current knowledge and understanding.
As to how wide we have searched so far not very much in the scheme of things it is very much like searching for a specific grain of sand on a beach, we might if we get lucky find it quickly but the chances are it will take a long time
Ooo, a fun thread.
Here's a little interesting read for those interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
Unfortunately I can't find the theorized number of planets that could exist in the universe, but this is as close as I can find at the moment:
With that said, the odds of there being another planet being able to support life is fairly decent, and there are some planets within (relatively speaking) range of Earth that are theorized to potentially be able to support life, such as Gliese 581 d.Quote:
Based on observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, there are at least 125 billion galaxies in the universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all sun-like stars have a system of planets, [and] there are 6.25?10^18 stars with planets orbiting them in the universe. If even a billionth of these stars have planets supporting life, there are some 6.25 billion life-supporting solar systems in the universe.
Of course, this is assuming that a world has to be Earth-like to sustain life. So far we can only use life on Earth as a reference, so it's hard to say what other possibilities there could be.
However, while the odds of basic life (IE, micro-organisms) or perhaps even primitive animal life can be fairly decent, the odds of intelligent life is slimmer, I'd say. Considering of all the races that have existed on Earth, mankind is the only one to become a sentient species (as far as we know ;)), it's probably safe to say the ratio of "primitive life vs. sentient life" across the universe could be equally probable (or improbable, in this case).
That's not to say I believe we're the only race to be that way, though. I do believe there could quite possibly be other intelligent lifeforms in our universe. However, considering the diameter of the "observable universe" is proposed to be at least 93 billion light years, I'd say the odds of us bumping into them would be about the same as two randomly chosen specks of dust crossing paths somewhere on Earth. And even that comparison is probably rather generous.
I'd say we have better odds of inventing sentient AIs first. :p
I agree! If they are out there, why would we send out beacons with directions to our planet?? It's like a buffet advertisement: We have water and delicious meat and we are defenseless! Our only hope to win against you is a cool voice-over by Morgan Freeman or total pwnage by Jeff Goldblum uploading a virus into your mother-ship with his uber-cool laptop.Quote:
Originally Posted by Smythe
yes, the drake equation. isn't that the one where they say the possibilities of a planet that can sustain life, then the possibility of it having intelligent life, and so on? I heard that on tv. it was awesome :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Alusair
The drake equation is good. It's just too bad we don't know what number to put in for any of the variables.
well as i said before, most of the planets that would have life will most likely be more advanced than us. Think of how long ago we developed radio technology and satalites. About 70 years ago. Now think of how long the universe has been here. I don't know, but it's really really really really really long ago.(no offence to creationism.) So, if the alien civilization was to really exist, they would be much, or at least a little more advanced than us. to think that other planets with life on them would just be single cell or micro organisms would be ludicrous too.Quote:
Originally Posted by that guy
if you see my previous posts, you'll see that I posted that "in the universe, there will probably be more than two civilizations with intellegent capabilities" or something like that. :P The example of just TWO specks of dust is, im not trying to make you angry, kind of stupid. If any of you watched any kind of Star Trek before, you will know that there are different species of aliens, such as Vulcans, Klingons, Humans, Romulans, Telerites and much much more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alusair
So, if you add lets say 10 specks of dust, or 100 specks, the odds would increase. There might even be thousands or millions of specks of dust!:eek:
its not that we don't know, it's that our want to find other civilizations is affecting our judgement. Originally, Dr. Frank Drake(the guy who made the equation) did the equation himself, and got to the answer that there will be 10 civilizations in our whole entire galaxy (which is reeeeally low comapred to how massive our milky way is). But, other scientist and astronomers tried it again, and this time with different numbers. And they got the answer of 1 civilization(which means only us. onoz!!), 5000 civilizations (which is a pretty nice number), and 50 civilizations. I would go with the 50 civilizations. not too big and not too small. the 5000 civilizations would be too much because think of all the galaxies in the universe. Thats just too unrealistic. The one where we are the only one in our galaxy would suck too because the real number is 0.5 or something. Thats a fifty fifty chance in just one galaxy!Quote:
Originally Posted by Rota
I have a question, again.
which way to contact another civilization is better. Universal traveling(Space ships and junk), or radio contact(satalites and junk)?
post your opinions, again <(^-^)>
I think we absolutely, positively, without a doubt, definitely need to work on cutting down the number of extraneous adverbs being used in this discussion, don't you think?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rota
whats an adverb? lol jk.
So, insted of complaining about these so called "adverbs" of yours, wat do YOU think about ways of contact?
The universe is estimated to be approximately 13.7 billion years old. However, considering the millions or even billions of years it would take for ideal circumstances to allow life somewhere (I think it's suspected that the universe would have been far too unstable to support life for the first few billion years of its existence, not to mention the additional years it would take for suns and planets to form), and then the additional millions or billions of years it would take for life to sufficiently evolve to an intellectual point, we're not really so far off. I believe the oldest known life on Earth was found to exist 3.5 billion years ago, so consider that any other place with intelligent life might need a stable and ideal environment for approximately the same amount of time.Quote:
well as i said before, most of the planets that would have life will most likely be more advanced than us. Think of how long ago we developed radio technology and satalites. About 70 years ago. Now think of how long the universe has been here. I don't know, but it's really really really really really long ago.(no offence to creationism.) So, if the alien civilization was to really exist, they would be much, or at least a little more advanced than us. to think that other planets with life on them would just be single cell or micro organisms would be ludicrous too.
Star Trek isn't a good comparison, considering that it's entirely fiction. And of course alien races will encounter each other in sci-fi series frequently, else they would be amazingly dull and uneventful. No one wants to watch a TV show that reflects reality: years of monotonous searching for intelligent life with no results.Quote:
if you see my previous posts, you'll see that I posted that "in the universe, there will probably be more than two civilizations with intellegent capabilities" or something like that. :P The example of just TWO specks of dust is, im not trying to make you angry, kind of stupid. If any of you watched any kind of Star Trek before, you will know that there are different species of aliens, such as Vulcans, Klingons, Humans, Romulans, Telerites and much much more.
So, if you add lets say 10 specks of dust, or 100 specks, the odds would increase. There might even be thousands or millions of specks of dust!:eek:
And I'm not saying there'd only be two intelligent lifeforms in the entire universe. I'm saying for any two civilizations to come into contact with one another (whether there be 2, 200, or 200,000 in existence), the odds would be less likely than two specks of dust on Earth meeting, given the immense size of the universe.
No, it's because we don't know. If you study the figure, you'll see we'd need to know the exact number of many things we don't know and couldn't find out with current technology. You are correct that personal opinions do effect the outcomes, but at the moment, any figures are entirely speculative and not precise, so opinion (based on what little studies we have now) is all we can really work with.Quote:
its not that we don't know, it's that our want to find other civilizations is affecting our judgement. Originally, Dr. Frank Drake(the guy who made the equation) did the equation himself, and got to the answer that there will be 10 civilizations in our whole entire galaxy (which is reeeeally low comapred to how massive our milky way is). But, other scientist and astronomers tried it again, and this time with different numbers. And they got the answer of 1 civilization(which means only us. onoz!!), 5000 civilizations (which is a pretty nice number), and 50 civilizations. I would go with the 50 civilizations. not too big and not too small. the 5000 civilizations would be too much because think of all the galaxies in the universe. Thats just too unrealistic. The one where we are the only one in our galaxy would suck too because the real number is 0.5 or something. Thats a fifty fifty chance in just one galaxy!
And I think the Milky Way is suspected to have somewhere around 200-400 billion stars. Assuming it had 200 billion only, no star was home to more than one advanced civilization, and there were 5000 advanced civilizations, then only 0.000000025% of the galaxy's stars would be home to an advanced civilization (0.0000000125% if 400 billion stars). Those odds aren't really that extreme.
I like how everyone assumes that we are primitive if their are extraterrestrials out there. Who is to say that we are not the most advanced intelligent life there is currently, for all we know earth developed the capability to support life billions of years before any other planet. Also earth is a horrible example of a "life supporting" planet much of what is necessary for creating life is found in extremely minuscule amounts compared to what you think would be here. So for all we know there could be an advanced civilization on a planet that has only been able to support life for 1 billion years because of the fact it had a greater ability to support and nurture it. We can't really use our development as a basis for other life. A more stable planet that was hit by less asteroids and naturally contained the optimum amount of everything needed for creating life and allowing it to evolve and become intelligent then they could have surpassed us in a quarter of the time it took us to get where we are.
Also just for something to chew on, all early on significant growth in human technology is completely unexplainable, we seemed to periodically just jump ahead in our development, also we learned how to smelt gold before we learned who to do things that were much more simple.