In my opinion it seems incredibly unlikely that life has only ever come to exist once, here on earth. When you think about how huge and how old the universe is, there just has to be life elsewhere. Either way the implications are incredible! Whether or not we will ever discover extra terrestrial life (especially 'intelligent' life) is another matter all together.
It's absurd to believe that our planet is the only source of life. I just don't find it feasible for aliens to contact us, unless we are worth something to them. You also have to understand that our consciousness is based one hundred percent with our surroundings. We have evolved to fit that. Say a life form were to operate on another wavelength of what we consider "reality". Couldn't that entity live in tandem with us without either parties aware?
Personally, I take the same stance with aliens as I do with god. I don't believe until there's real, scientific proof.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2xzIgdD_XA&feature=g-pop]Joe Rogan - What Is Reality - YouTube[/ame] Theres a whole lot of stuff we dont understand
for all we know there are billions of other life forms on planets we will never even be able to see, ever. we know nothing, and by nothing i mean we understand about 1% of the universe
earth venus and mars have the same composition, and mercury is probly close. ever wonder why all the outer planets are gas giants? density! you may not have thought about this, but, when the solar system was just a cloud of gas, it followed the same laws as any matter. heavier stuff migrated towards the center where the sun eventually re-formed (i say this because the theory is that a supernova created the cloud we exist in, and thus the sun probly replaced a bigger star.) anyhow, yea, iron and all the heavy elements would have migrated and settled in the inner planets, and the lighter elements, hydrogen and helium, were less dense, and thus formed jupiter, and the gas giants the suns core probly has a lot of super heavy elements. in any case there is no reason to believe other systems dont look similar. there is probly a start, some rocky planets in the middle, and some gassy planets on the edge (depending on the age of the system) the elements should be consistant throughout the universe. there are either supernova remnants, or systems of only light elements
Awesome post. But here's what gets me about scientists: We use spectrology to tell what stars and planets are made up of. But don't they put into account that there may be chemical elements that we just don't have here in this galaxy or even solar system? How many chemical elements are there really? And to the poster who said there's a .00000000001% chance blah blah blah - ok, so maybe that is the case. Regardless, even if one planet for every trillion has life, that still means the universe is teeming with life because it's just so fucking big. And we're not even talking about the other possible universes. So, there is NO WAY we are alone. Call that a fact. We just haven't discovered it yet. And maybe since we are so far from one another (distance between stars), maybe we will never make contact with another civilization. Unless they find a way to travel FTL or punch an Einstein-Rosenbridge. Whewww.......
thats not how it works each element emits a specific light spectrum. the spectrum is always the same, and is unique to each element. if an unknown element existed in other galaxies, we should get fingerprints that we dont recognize
Damn... Ok, so, apparently, since we can study many of the stars in our own galaxy, I see we got that pinned, then. But can we use spectrology on other galaxies? Can we indeed see inside them, yet? I like to think I am well versed in Astronomy, but I always learn new shit every day.
Hypothetical life on other planets, definitely a must watch for those interested in the universe's phenomena: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6lkmK3kEEE&feature=related]Alien Planet Full Episode - YouTube[/ame] Edit: It might be harder than ever to find intelligent life or be reached by it because the universe is expanding continuously, which means that galaxies and all the planets that might harbor life inside them are going in the opposite direction of earth, getting farther and farther away every second. We are basically becoming isolated in the vastness of our universe.
Without going too far off on this subject. Few quick thoughts. First off i am familiar with Einstein's theory of relativity, light speed, time travel etc. Also we do understand how big we humans believe the Universe to be. We know the odds. There should be life out there. Finding it or visiting it, that's another story. So either or. As the teacher said if its all BS. We are then alone in space, in the Universe. Well then its either there is a very complex plan at work by a god like being. Or we are just that damn lucky that our planets and alignment with our Sun is all that just perfect luck. Hmmmm.
if we can see it, what we are seeing is light, and if that is the case, we can analize the atomic makup. that is not to say however, that these distant systems do not harber strange things, it is more like saying, hydrogen is really common everywhere, but super rare element bla bla bla only exists in conditions such and such. trace ammounts of elementa blablabla would undetectable by our spectrometry. though we are sure about 99% if the makup, (1% of a galaxy is still fucking big)
the beautiful thing about teleportation, is that the expansion of space is irrelevent. in order to even spread to other stars, we need ftl. even if you could get ftl, you need like 100's-1000's of time the speed of light, to make those distances reasonable. so if intergalactic culter were to survive, teleportation would be a must
we are expanding, however, galaxies collide (which is more like merging since none of the planets actually hit each other when galaxies collide) black holes also merge... there are super massive black holes at the center of every galaxy and when two galaxies collide their super massive black holes also merge... so... we are expanding but the "stuff" in the universe is merging. Now whether or not we would survive the ramifications of merging with another galaxy to meet our alien brethren well... who knows evolution has pulled off a few feats
Life is too adaptable to be only here on earth. The odds of there being life very similar to ours would probably be closer to impossible considering there would have to be identical conditions on that planet to ours. Not saying its impossible, but the likeliness of that is close to zero. Life may be difficult to find though, The Milky Way is one of the oldest galaxies in the universe so it has had time to develop complex life, or even life at all. Life ON EARTH requires water and carbon but that doesn't mean life can not evolve without it. How do we know there aren't other types of life besides carbon-base life forms. Life on another planet would adapt to conditions it was formed in.