Poll do you think there is life out there

[bujin]

If we're alone, it's an awful lot of wasted space.

Only if you assume that the "purpose" of a universe is to cultivate life.

 

[Lucy]

I like this thread. Some very nice theories here.

I am somewhat tired from a recent trip home from Saturn that took all night (nightclub or orbiter, you decide ) so I will say only this:

I agree with Ijuin on the electrcity/EM front. It stands to reason that if there was such a civilisation on such a planet similar enough to Earth that such things would happen in the same way, we'd have picked that up. But we are talking about extra-terrestrial stuff here. It's pretty much the last thing we have that we expect to be strange and different to us. It's even the word that we use to describe it: Alien = different, foreign, not-like-us...

A friend of mine argued that if there was intelligent life out there somewhere with interstellar travel capacity, they'd likely have found Earth via the same means and come to say hello. My response was something along the lines of "Why are we that important?" - ya know, a tiny blue-green planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy, trillions of miles from nowhere... somewhat insignificant, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps.

Unless the entire multiverse was created especially for us to play in by some god or God or whatever. If that's the case, I think he/she/it would be pretty disappointed in our current priorities re: space travel.

 

[willy88]

Also remember that advanced civilizations may not resemble us in any way, think of energy beings living inside stars, feeding off the reactions... kind of what SiberianTiger was saying.

 

[garyw]

life - only in the form of single celled organisms. Nothing more than that.

 

[Lucy]

People say this a lot and I always wonder why. I mean, we exist.

What always amuses me is the thought that somewhere in the vast inky blackness there could be a whole other civilisation, an entire living breathing planet, upon which the dominant species meet and hold scientific counsel once every half solar rotation to prove categorically why there is nothing but their species and microscopic bacteria in the whole multiverse.

I don't get the logic behind that viewpoint.

 

[agentgonzo]

Sometimes I wonder whether there is intelligent life down here...

 

[SiberianTiger]

Also remember that advanced civilizations may not resemble us in any way, think of energy beings living inside stars, feeding off the reactions... kind of what SiberianTiger was saying.

I mean that traveling between stars on a large scale would highly possibly require wielding stellar energies and living cosmic lifetimes. Whatever life form might be capable of that, it's unlikely they would still dependent on planets and their biospheres as the only fitting places to live inside. On other hand, if they ultimately grew from a terrestrial civilization like our own, they might still preserve a bond to their homeworld, holding it intact as a precious reserve of genetics diversity. But at this point, I'm afraid, my speculation is simply running wild...

 

[Space Dragon]

Interesting thread, I dont know either way, I would like to think there is life out there in whatever shape or form, but for us to think or believe we are the only life in the universe make us very primative and arrogant.

 

[T.Neo]

I think it is almost certain that life in microbial form exists beyond the Earth.
Such reactions, even though they are highly improbable, started relatively early on in the history of the Earth.
As for multicellular life, the outlook is more unsure- but I don't see how it is an impossibility on other planets. Life tends to evolve towards more complex forms, one evolutionary path explored multiple times on Earth is multicellularity.
Even though complex multicellular life has only really been dominant for the last 500 million years, there is evidence for it existing much longer then that- perhaps a billion years or more. It’s just that animals without shells or bones rarely fossilise.
Perhaps Earth's frequent ice ages, bolide impacts and other extinction events have stunted the evolution of complex life. Perhaps Jupiter's influence on incoming comets and the asteroid belt has had a negative outcome on the Earth, not a positive one.

Long story short is that we cannot make such assumptions with data from only one system (and incomplete data at that). Denying the possibility of complex life elsewhere in the universe to me reeks of Copernican anthropocentric conservatism.

As for what any such life may look like, that is up to the imagination, within reason of course.

 

[willy88]

I mean that traveling between stars on a large scale would highly possibly require wielding stellar energies and living cosmic lifetimes. Whatever life form might be capable of that, it's unlikely they would still dependent on planets and their biospheres as the only fitting places to live inside. On other hand, if they ultimately grew from a terrestrial civilization like our own, they might still preserve a bond to their homeworld, holding it intact as a precious reserve of genetics diversity. But at this point, I'm afraid, my speculation is simply running wild...

I guess you mean that highly advanced civilizations won't have any real need for masses of particles arranged in certain orders.

 

[SiberianTiger]

I guess you mean that highly advanced civilizations won't have any real need for masses of particles arranged in certain orders.

I'm just hoping that we as a civilization will last long enough to find this out.

 

[Kozak]

Life - yes. Saucers - no.

 

[the.punk]

Yes. I think there is other life out there.
But I don't know if we ever will meet other life. Because the distances are so big. The relativistiv effects are very big for interstellar travel.
And I don't believe in aliens who want to kill all of earth with laser cannons. Other life means not saucers and green alien with lasers.

 

[jedidia]

One the other end of things is the Fermi Paradox.

The problem with the Fermi paradox seems to me that, actually, our species seems to be pretty early in the galactic history. Our Sun is only 3rd Gen, and we can say with some certainty that earth-like planets cannot form about a 1.gen star, and the chances at a 2.gen star are much smaller, because of less abundance of heavy elements. It could thus be hypothesized that carbon-based live is very improbable to evolve around any 2.Gen star , and impossible at any 1.gen, and is therewith a relatively young apearance in the galaxy.
Maybe some other forms of life might have evolved, but they would not be interested in earth. However, if they had any curiosity at all, they should still have made some sort of contact. Then again, If they would not want to be discovered, they would not be, because they would simply stay away from earth when they notice that our technology gets far advanced to detect them.

But again, it is questionable if a civilisation that evolved at a 2.gen star might ever make it to space, because they might not have the neccessary resources at their planet. It might be that only life at 3rd gen stars has all the neccessary prerequisites and resources to become a spacefairing race. If that would be the case, we would be well in the race as one of the first species. This is of course VERY hypothetical, but it might be worth looking into.

 

[Artlav]

What if there is something obvious at some point, something that make it obvious to others that there is no point in contacting the mankind so far? For all we know, there might be extraterrestrial intelligence walking among us.

Think about ants. They are intelligent in the own right. They have "technology" to build things much larger than their own size. They fight wars, they have racism, they have castes and queens, they have work brigades and "kindergartens".

Can we make "contact" with ants?
No. From one side, noone among us cares to try.
On the other side, ant's don't care. They can't even notice us properly.

We are a blind force of nature to them, a solid hurricane that kick their colonies, a stomp-hail that kills their people, the firestorms that wipe entire domains.

Swap the places now. Where are the aliens among us?

 

[MAraujo]

If you count the last 20,000 years as the period of "intelligent" life on earth.....then life on Earth has been "intelligent" for 0.0005% of its history. That's a pretty lucky shot for anyone who might stumble on our civilization.

The question for little green men comes down to whether intelligence is an inevitable consequence of life or just another tool for survival in an evolving arsenal. It would be pretty conceded, not to mention unfounded to assume we are the pinnacle of evolution. We are certainly not the most successful organism to have lived on earth.

 

[T.Neo]

We are certainly not the most successful organism to have lived on earth.

Present an example of a single animal species that has been as or more successful then Homo Sapiens.

If humans are not the most successful animal species ever to have existed on Earth, we are certainly among the most successful.

But any intelligent species will not resemble the monsters of science fiction at all.
The idea of a "humanoid" creature is utter nonsense considering how evolution and biology will differ on other planets.

 

[Moonwalker]

Our planet is the vivid evidence that life is not impossible. But our planet also is a rarity. There is obviously not a lot within lightyears of distance around our solar system, that is comparable to the Earth. And when I look how long it took until there was humans on our planet, and when I also look to the requirements for the existence of life and what we found out there for now, the chances of a comparable planet are shrinking almost dramatically.

I do not rule out that there might be organisms on another planet out there. But by each look, and each new technology that enables us to look farther and more precisely into the universe without discovering a second Earth, it becomes quite obvious that our planet and its life is a rarity. We might discover another such a planet in future. But I'm sure it will be that far away that we'll never even know its current state.

 

[jinglesassy]

some pretty interesting stuff being discussed here and i dont think alien intelligent life as in little green people with lasers and death rays i think of well i really dont know what they would look like so i guess its just my imagination but i know they arent little green people.

 

[ar81]

Life has:
-Metabolism
-Evolution
-Reproduction
Snow cristals are alive...