Do you believe in Extraterrestrial Life?

im not some alien toting trailer park guy, ive never seen a UFO, ive never seen anything to indicate ET life. I am 100% convinced that there is ET life out there, somewhere. Will we ever be sure of this? maybe, its possible, i wouldn't bet on it for a long time though, if ever. i mean, there just HAS to be dude, as you put it, theres just so so much already, our human minds cant even begin to comprehend the vastness that is space... and what if that is only the beginning? what if its 1000x1000x1000x bigger than we even think it is now? the odds are astronomical that we are the only, sentinent, so to speak, lifeform alive in everything that is all..... for all we know dude, we're just some expierment some higher lifeforms dropped off on this rock millions of years ago. maybe they had planned to come back and check on us, but what if they got wiped out suckah?! and nobody else knows about us?! or what if something out there really is trying to contact us, and has been, for the last 10,000 years? and they just think we're too dumb to respond?

by the way, i came to this conclusion about ET life while watching a documentary on aliens on the history channel while tripping my fucking balls off..... i ended up in my bathtub on like the verge of tears trying to deal with it all.... it was intense.... not just aliens man, but life in general..... think about it.... your one of 6-7 billion + human beings...... ONE, of 6-7 billion! your not even 1%.... your not even like .0001% of what is life.... and then factor in every single animal, insect included in the world..... good lord, how much LIFE is on our planet alone? 50 billion animals? 200 billion? 5 trillion? each one of us.... what is 1 life? we're fucking nothing compared to it all.... but we are each our own little god.... it crippled my veiw of life....

 

Quick answer: no.

Because it requires faith. We have no solid evidence of life anywhere else in our universe but our planet.

Could their possibly be some form of life out there? Absolutely. probability is very good. Evolutionary biology tells us that given the right circumstances that life can indeed be formed by simple, naturally occurring proteins. Conway's game of Life tells us that from simple rules, complex patters can emerge. patterns which can yeild life (obviously, since we exist)

But then the biggest question ; how far could they advance? Life on this planet has almost been wiped out more than a dozen times. It required probability that is astronomical. Probability that is beyond the most renowned mathematicians.

It has taken 4 billion years for life to evolve as far as us; the sentient beings we are. Could we be the only spark of life? It's a possibility. Because we simply don't know enough.

Maybe these early micro-organisms can only evolve past this stage every 100 billion years.

Then we must ask ourself if we can ever find them? Will they be in our local solar cluster? Will they be in this quadrant of our galaxy? Will they even be in our galaxy? Or are they simply so far away that we will never be able to know they exist? Will it take so long for the light and electromagnetic radiation to travel that distance that by the time it reaches them, our planet will be lifeless and barren?


I think you should watch the documentary "What We Still Don't Know" with Martin Rees. They are available here, under 'Technology', there are two parts. along with MANY other documentaries about truly wonderful and horrible things.

EDIT: and by the way, there are approximately "ten thousand, billion, billion stars" in our perceivable universe. We don't know how often planets occur though.

 

There are hundreds of millions of galaxies. We are just a small small fraction of that. Do you think we are the only planet out of millions that has life? I don't know...

 

Probability seems to say there has to be some other life-sustaining planet out there to some form of life. Whether that life is intelligent or not I wouldn't know because I don't know enough about Astronomy or any kind of science to make a truly educated guess. In my opinion, there has to be some out there, that is, intelligent life. We are so minute compared to how vast the universe is. For all we know the universe is infinite, and if that's the case, there must be some intelligent life out there somewhere.

 

I'd like to agree with this. In my thoughts on "aliens", this has always come up in my circle of friends. But, I'm more quick to agree with R_M:

Will we ever contact it, encounter it, or find it? Maybe not. The probability of encountering these beings or them encountering us is small. In order for our worlds to ever meet, either us or them will have to develop technology far beyond what we have now. And who knows what they could possibly have. And besides, with all those stars, planets, galaxies, the probability of encountering each other would have to be almost accidental. It is unlikely.

I do enjoy entertaining the thought of extra terrestrial life, but at this point it doesnt seam likely.

 

woohoo! .. and this is where I specialize... yes, I'm one of those singularitarian nuts


okay lemme break it down... technology is advancing towards the point where we will have the ability to create the world's first super-humanly intelligent computer(I should know, I'm on it ) from which point the acceleration of technology should reach speeds beyond the limit of the imaginations we're saddled with today.

Almost all the technological progress in humanity has been made in the last 150 or so years. During this period, informations store have increased dramatically, the effect being that the intelligence that our former generations have taken years to reach has been summarised and encoded in books and downloaded into our brains much faster than they did, giving us more time to advance. This is to emphasize that all this progress was not made by increasing our hardware power(brains) but only our software. Well, now we can increase both.

This significantly superintelligent computer will have the ability to read its own code and make improvements to make itself more intelligent than we could possibly have. The improved version will do the same, and so will its successor, and so on. The result will be a race of superintelligent computers working in our bio labs, chem labs, physics labs and so on. Quite accurately, some say this is the last invention man ever need make.

From my perspective, it wont take long from this point before we have technology which can enable us to take advantage of the peculiarities of physics(wormholes, singularities, the curvature of space, etc) to accelerate and revolutionize space travel, from which point contact with alien civilizations should be inevitable. Right now we only know of one universe, but as astronomy has usually shown, there tends to always be a bigger picture, and I somehow feel that if we zoom out we'd be in one out of a number of universes, which would also form some kind of collective body, of which there are more.... it hurts my brain just thinking about it, but I'm speculating that there are quite a bunch of alien races out there. But for there to be some as intelligent as we are now, there would have to be millions halfway there, but then again, we might just be the last to evolve.

There's an infinite number of possibilities. I keep suspecting that we're some kind of alien experiment or something along those lines. The main reason I believe that is that if we found a planet with less intelligent beings on it god knows we'd steal a bunch of them and shove all kinds of probes up their asses. And sometimes I feel there's an alien civilization secretly prodding our technology to get us to their level so they can communicate with us. The whole issue is not really relevant in the end, and you wont see me on a street corner with a cardboard sign saying 'theyre coming', but the singularitarians here will support me when I say we'll find out soon enough

 

I'm almost certain there is intelligent life somewhere else in the universe. I'll even go so far as to assume life is so abundant that in this galaxy alone, there should be several, maybe even hundreds (which is quite a tiny fraction of available starsystems/planets) of civilizations.

There is at least good probability for such a scenario. But ofcourse, a few assumptions and WAGs go into the equation.

 

I think the question of otherworldly life illustrate just how rare and precious we are. It's truly staggering to think about how immense the universe is, but in spite of this or because of it we have been given the gifts of life and sentience. Maybe the universe is teeming with life, but then again maybe it's a type of life we could have no meaningful relationship with. In my opinion we humans have got a hell of a deal here on planet earth because life through the lens of a telescope seems so far away.

<O</OThe possibilities of what's out there are big enough to fit a God or two that's for sure. Is there life on other planets or could it be drifting around somewhere in all that dark matter? Who knows, all I know for certain is that there's life here on earth and for all we know this may be all there is.<O</O
<O</O

[And through a crack in the nexus a choir could be heard singing hallelujah.]<O</O​

<O</O

Stay green.

 

just recently i read a theory about our encountering other lifeforms. (i have no idea where i read it, but the theory was interesting)

it said if there are other forms of life more developed than humans, they might have seen all the problems that humans have inflicted on one another...nuclear weapons, war, etc. a more advanced civilization, which would theoretically not practice such violence as they understand the repercussions of it, may attempt to keep us from spreading our ignorance through the universe by hindering our attempts to come into contact with other beings.

as i remember, though, there was no evidence for this, of course. but it's something i thought was interesting to think about.

 

I think the the universe we live in is osrta like a plane with 4 quadrents and that each quadrent is is similar to the other but has some distinct differences meaning i belive there are 3 other planets just like earth in those other quadrants but they have some distinct differences none of which i can exlain or even begin to understand .

but yes i do belive there is ET out there somewhere and that we wont find it for a very long time cause right now we are movign at a snails pace through space and until we can make ships that can carry us to say a far off planet liek venus or mars in just 10 days we arent going to get anywhere near finding anythign out there.

 

again, if you're new to pondering this vast topic, seek out the DRAKE EQUATION, and let that be only a very, very rough guide.

through analysing the spectrum of light from large clouds, its strongly suspected that there are large clouds of sugars and alcohols and other chemistry that is very suggestive of biological processes at work.


abundant.

life, gallore.


life as we know it, ie, the barionic biological carbon based kind, very abundant. we crop up everywhere (conditions permiting).



ps, i now pray for rastaman to be taken for a short ride around in some benevolent entity's interstellar craft.

 

Hey, you and me both, bro.

I've always wanted to see an interstellar nebula up-close!

 

The way I see It there are so many millions of galaxies out there all having billions of stars, why would we be the only living things that exist in the entire infinite amount of space within of the universe? Not to mention the theories of parallel universes, other dimensions etc., makes no sense. Anyone ever see this video? It has to do with a lot of my thoughts concerning this 'issue'.

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I do.

Only because, a year or so ago, i was probed..When i had awoken it was an Alien looking dude..

 

I wonder if the guy above me is kidding.... If there are - Our planet needs to merge with the Aliens. How fucking sweet would it be to toke up with an Alien? Seriously. But I totally agree with R_M on this matter.

 

If we find single celled organisms on even one planet in our solar system other than earth...wouldn't that blow the doors wide open? IF that happens, I think it would be safe to say that life in the universe IS rather abundant...or would it? The question would remain I suppose, because we sure as hell aren't getting to the next solar system any time soon.

 

They're here now!!

 

I totaly think so. The govt Is keeping sooo much shit from us.
but i dont know the odds of them having the technology to leave their atmosphere, travel space, enter our atmosphere, and then surviving in our conditions.

But hey, if we only use like 10% of our brain, think about a species that uses, say, 50%. A baby would figure out how to build a car from scratch.

but maybe not.

 

It would, but only if we can prove that these organism arose separate from our planet's ecosystem.

Some evidence suggest that Mars was very earth-like several hundred million years ago. some theories states it's quite plausible that life originally began to evolve on Mars, at which time, some catastrophic event occurred and remaining micro-organisms were deposited on primordial earth via space debris.

They don't suggest some ancient sentient alien species, but even primordial plant-life could be a real possibility. Perhaps the first cyanobacteria really did evolve on Mars.

Both of which would be incredible discoveries -- but it may take quite some time to determine the origins of any said fossils or living organisms. Hell, it could be decades before we find the evidence on Mars -- if it even does exist. It could be a wild goose-chase for all we know.

Even then, consider the closest solar system is 4.39 light years away. Even our earliest probes (the Voyager Program) have only yet made it past the Heliosphere with conventional rocketry. And that took them 30 years.

Annnyways, I'm just saying you shouldn't get your hopes up for this occurring within your lifetime.

But then again, as Jack Cohen has said: "Maybe there are planets just bristling with life all over the galaxy... but we're all just sitting around, waiting for each other to arrive". We've only taken the first tiny baby-step into our universe. We need to be bold, we can only learn so much from sitting around and looking up.