Alien Life
 

I have to be honest, I do not believe in life beyond this planet. I would like to believe, but I have come to realize that we have no idea how old the Universe really is, or for that matter, how large. It took me years to come to understand that the Universe if infinte, that it really has no end. And because of its massive un-ending size, if there is life other than us out there, we will never ever see it. The distances are too great to pass.

Oh sure eventually our scientist will invent things that will make traveling the stars possible, but not for another 100 or more years.

I once felt that life was out there, and that they had visited Earth. But it has been proven that no one can keep a secret, espeically one as large as finding a UFO. Our planet is so delicate and rare in its make up and formation of atmosphere that a second planet like Earth would be so rare that it can not be calculated by our current mathmatical abilities.

Closed minded, no. Facts are facts. If Earth was not a rarity, then why do we not have other inhabitable worlds in this solor system?

Sorry, I have ran off on a tangent again.

If for some super remarkable event, and Earth is visited by Aliens, would they be friendly or hostile. Keep in mind that we by nature are aggressive, and we dominate this planet, therefore it is entirely possible that the superior life form of another planet would also be aggressive and know that we are as well. Therefore, they would not come as friends, but as conqures knowning full well, that we would, if we could, do the same to them. (Our history speaks for its self in these matters)

Re: Alien Life
 

"I have to be honest, I do not believe in life beyond this planet. I would like to believe, but I have come to realize that we have no idea how old the Universe really is, or for that matter, how large. It took me years to come to understand that the Universe if infinte, that it really has no end. And because of its massive un-ending size, if there is life other than us out there, we will never ever see it. The distances are too great to pass.

Oh sure eventually our scientist will invent things that will make traveling the stars possible, but not for another 100 or more years.

"I once felt that life was out there, and that they had visited Earth. But it has been proven that no one can keep a secret, espeically one as large as finding a UFO. Our planet is so delicate and rare in its make up and formation of atmosphere that a second planet like Earth would be so rare that it can not be calculated by our current mathmatical abilities."

Not exactly. Low chance doesn't mean much considering the *size* of the universe, and it's age.

Let's say that there is, per star, a one billion to one chance of life- ANY life- developing.

The estimated size of the Milky Way- that is, just our galaxy- is around 200 billion stars. That's *200* life-bearing worlds if the statistics are correct. In just one galaxy. And I think this is a bit low myself, though there's only one way to find out. Go look!

"Closed minded, no. Facts are facts. If Earth was not a rarity, then why do we not have other inhabitable worlds in this solor system?"

Perhaps because there are only 9, and of those only one or two are in the liquid-water zone? That and we haven't explored the entirety of our solar system yet. Life pops up in odd places sometimes (hydrothermal vents are the most promising)

Phoenix-D

Re: Alien Life
 

To answer your poll question, let's put yourself in the alien's shoes. If I'm the alien I'd be just as happy to covertly observe and keep out of the way. But then of cause, that is at most only a GUESS, nobody knows ANYTHING about aliens.

Re: Alien Life
 

If the universe is infinite and the probability of another planet like earth is very very small but non-zero, then it is absolutely certain that there are other planets like earth. In fact there would be an infinite number of them. The problem is not with our mathematics, but the assumption of infinite size.

Re: Alien Life
 

the problem is that people assume that life requires conditions like ours to survive. we have found life in vocanos, deep sea vents, deep sea trenches where there is zero sunlight, and inside glaciers. we have even found fossils of bacteria on meteorites.

research continues to point to the abundancy of life, and how common simple lifeforms are. its likely there are simple forms of life MANY places in this solar system, and new photos of mars indicate large patches of what is hypothesized to be organic matter (fungus, or bacterial life, i think it was).

now, inteligent life? thats probably ALOT more rare. and will we ever find any? who knows. it would require vast amounts of energy to travel between stars in a timely fashion, and by the time we have that much energy available, we should be able to manipulate matter danm near any way we want. once we have some form of 'limitless' energy, and technology to manipulate matter on a subatomic level (on a mass scale, unlike how we can do it now on an individual scale) we should be able to take advantage of the matter in the local solar system to create just about anything we want.

the only compelling reason to travel out of the solar system is to satisfy exploratory curiosity, or to avoid a dying sun. and once we have the technology to leave, we should be able to survive anywhere where we can find solid matter to consume. maybe even in deep space.

so the only possible reason aliens would find us, is if they were HIGHLY advanced, far beyond the typical sci-fi depections of aliens, and if they were trying REALY HARD to find us.

Re: Alien Life
 

No, No, No...There is no life as we know it out there. There are other dimensions. This dimension is ours to explore, the billions of galaxies, and every other intelligent species has their own dimension. How do you think any life would travel through space anyways...dimensional travel!

Re: Alien Life
 

Life across the universe, I think there is life across this universe and I like to enjoy thinking that life is much more exotic and aline than anything our minds can imagine. I also believe that there is life across many different dimensions and realities (but I do not believe every dimension is a slightly different Version of our own).

I doubt life hasn't formed elsewhere. I suspect the universe is teeming with life.

Also, in a first contact situation, I think humanity would start any war simply from our B-Movie panic attacks at the thought of alien contact.

Besides, here's some food for thought...
Someday, in the future, we'll go out into space and setup colonies. After a few hundred or even thousand years, we'll find those humans aren't really related to us because evolution changed them.

Re: Alien Life
 

Very scary thought now. We eventually make it out to colonizing planets. Imagine how much weaponary,science etc will have advanced? If humans on other colonised planets become more advanced through evoloution, or we become more advanced imagine the ammount of terrorism acts caused by these small enw colonies that will eventually want to break away. Instead of Countries we'd have planets, and thinking about how much technologically superior weapons would be that far down the line i'd probably say we wouldn't Last 10 years in space! like in MIB "A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals!" I don't think that Human life will exist by the time "First Contact" is ever achieved. We'll have blown each other up, and if aliens found artifects of our existance imagine what they'd think of us, they'd probably blow us up just to be safe! Just a few ideas...

Re: Alien Life
 

If everything goes as planned, we might have the definitive answer about existance of alien life in 40-50 years. I refer to the project of building space-based interferometer telescope. It should be able to detect Earth-sized planets around nearby stars and even suuply information about atmosphere composition which should give us some ideas about the presence of life forms.

Re: Alien Life
 

The way I see it, you've got several billion years with no intelligent life on a planet, followed by a couple million years of intelligent life with no more than Stone Age technology, then a few thousand years ramping up to interstellar travel, and the rest of the existence of the universe to explore.

The odds of a starfaring race encountering a race still inside that tiny window of technological development, where we are now, are so low that I think the aliens would see us as an unprecedented opportunity to study how a pre-interstellar society functions and evolves.

Re: Alien Life
 

As someone posted, we don't know anything about intelligent alien life, so we can only speculate. In general, I'd say that despite our fatally selfish and despicable tendencies, it's probably going to be a long long time before we're able to pose any kind of a threat to most aliens that would be in circumstances to visit us, unless they're stranded or something. Imagine you extend the SE4 tech tree to allow research for another thousand turns or so, and 200 billion systems, so expansion and exploration can be constant. Play the game for a thousand turns without meeting any other players. Then you find a player who has just entered the game - a homeworld with no ships or units and essentially zero tech. Do you feel threatened?

As capnq pointed out, the dimension of time and the vast time distance of evolutionary development, combined with the absence of any reason to think we evolved at the same time as another intelligent species, implies that we're unlikely to meet them at anywhere near "the same position on the tech tree". If we do, we'd tend to meet them more like half-way to their homeworld, and not here at home.

Also, it looks like we may be too selfish and short-sighted not to kill ourselves off (directly or through ignorance), so aliens who have not killed themselves off would tend, I would think, to be less selfish and short-sighted.

PvK

Re: Alien Life
 

I voted for "Other" because I don't believe there are aliens out there. I also don't believe in other demintions either. I mean if you think about it earth is a rare planet indeed. It's the only one that can sustain life. If the earth was moved just a fraction of an inch closer to the sun, we'd burn up in under a minute. If we moved a fraction of an inch further way we'd freeze to death in a matter of moments. Scientists have said this themselves. Humans will eventually become space travelers in time, but not for over 100 years. When and IF we develop the technology to colonize planets it'll be tough to do that when you consider the point of the earth being the EXACT right distance from the sun down to the smallest number of measurement. They'd have to build Domes to live in, but even then it'd still be next to impossible. But that's just MHO

Re: Alien Life
 

"f the earth was moved just a fraction of an inch closer to the sun, we'd burn up in under a minute. If we moved a fraction of an inch further way we'd freeze to death in a matter of moments."

heh. Sorry, but this is wrong. Because if this was true we'd all be dead, the Earth's orbit isn't perfectly cirular. It's about 1.7% off.

"In January when we're closest to the Sun (perihelion), the distance is 147.5 million km. This weekend we will be 152.6 million km away--a five million kilometer difference."

from second article.

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF8/825.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...l_aphelion.htm

Phoenix-D

Re: Alien Life
 

Universe is infinté, maybe. But the volume that contains matter is not infinite.
A good approximation is that the universe is about 12-18 (15) billion light years wide, the number of stars is not infinite but a very big number indeed, when calculating you might just as well think of it as infinite.

With all these stars it would be quite stupid to belive that no life exist.
If humans will encounter intelligent life during humanitys life-span is questionable with the distances involved.

size 1 size 2
age 1
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Re: Alien Life
 

Although Capnag comments are essentiually corect, it takes leap of faith to suggest that we or aliieans in same position will enjoy similar progress in future. After all, it is 30 years since we get to the Moon and to my best knowledge, there've been no major progress in human expansion beyound our Homeworld. And somehow I really doubt that it will ever occur - it is just too costly and has no direct financial and political (like reelection in 4 years) benefits. It is entirely possible that we reaching new sort of technological plateu.
I have no doubt about immense future progress in computer scince and biotecnology but it will only keep us ancored to Earth, ever more dump and playing computer games of galactic conquest instead of actually sucrifice excesses of our hedonistic life in order to actually do it !

Re: Alien Life
 

Even in our own solor system planets posses similar quialty to earth. Mars was once belived to have supported life. Saturn has oxegen in its air, and a mineral soil. Scientist beilve that the only thing keeping it from supporting life is that is is too cold.

As far as there being intellegent life out, there probly is. Two problems exist one is find them or them finding us(mentioned before). The other is languge. We'd have to be able to undertand any transmission they send. And I don't think I have to tell you what problems occur in learning a new languge with no refrence point.

Re: Alien Life
 

Heh yeah, but you never know, they might respond to a good ol' cup of tea and a UN Meeting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I don't like thinking this deep, its too complicated for my puny brain to cope with without caffeine

[ August 11, 2002, 12:35: Message edited by: Raging Deadstar ]

Re: Alien Life
 

Hmmmmm after posting i thought a little deeper into this whole alien life thing (yep all my own!) and i kinda thought about the language barrier. Think about it, we have already met aliens and already managed to make contact with no reference point

Women can be soo hard to understand sometimes! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Alien Life
 

Haven't we had this converstation before?

I would have asked if you believe in life else where rather than if it was hostile or friendly.

I think it would be hostile. If Earth is as rare as you describe, then our world would be priceless. So if Aliens do come calling, I for one would feel that they are here for their own best interests, and our interests would mean nothing to them.

Re: Alien Life
 

What aliens? Heck, what humans? The population of the universe is zero! See, space is infinitely big, right? So it has an infinite number of planets. But not all planets have life, so only a finite number of planets have life. A finite number divided by infinity is zero, so therefore zero percent of the planets in the universe have life. Therefore the population of the universe is zero. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Seriously though, I think that any aliens that visit Earth would probably be friendly - any race developed enough to have interstellar travel would probably not be warlike, or they would have destroyed themselves sooner. On the other hand, we're on the verge of achieving spaceflight, and we're pretty warlike... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Alien Life
 

There is a rather signifcant gap between interstellar flight and spaceflight; especially if FTL travel isn't possible.

Phoenix-D

Re: Alien Life
 

I'm not sure I'd like to have advanced aliens landing here even if they are friendly. Consider what has happened to more primative cultures, right here on Earth, when confronted with a more advanced culture. Usually the more primative culture is damaged or destroyed.
American Indian vs European or the Zulus. Borneo cultures or the amazon cultures in more modern times.
SO I say to any alien culture studying us: Go ahead and study us covertly, but leave us alone to develop to at least interstellar capability.
And this a little OT: to those that say we have a wrecked spaceship at Roswell - SO WHAT? Even if true, it would be like a caveman finding a wrecked automobile. What would he do with it? He certianly couldn't fix it or build a new one! The most he could do, perhaps, would to get the principle of the wheel from it. And even that wouldn't be particually useful to a CAVEMAN! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Alien Life
 

I think that a wheel would help us, though--it's all about the time it takes for development. I remember playing an old Civilization game. It starts out where each turn is decades' worth of time. As you get more sophisticated, more major things are discovered in less time. Essentially, as we get more advanced, so do our tools for analysis. If alien technology is similar enough to our own concepts, we could possibly reverse-engineer it. Of course, whether we can do that without destroying the object in question or ourselves is a whole other debate. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Personally, I don't think we'll achieve Star Trek-like societies for quite a while, if ever. We're too factional as a planet to get our act together and unless we discover the interstellar equivalent of gold, there's no financial gain in it for people. Just look at some of the space programs around the world. Everything from development of future technology to tracking NEOs is afforded a fraction of the funding it would cost for a single military jet. Some bombs we've dropped have cost more than the annual budget of research and development teams. Between that and the fact that close-minded, lazy people breed more than the intelligent/open-minded ones do, and science fiction will most likely remain so.

zen

P.S. Oh yah, [/rant]. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Alien Life
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">wouldn't that be water?

Re: Alien Life
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">they wouldn't have to be warlike throughout their entire development, maybe they had time of good leadership and lots of wealth, so that any war can be avoided, then the economy collapses, leader is assasinated, big alien empire on the verge of civil war, evil alien people with big evil mojo weapons come to earth, and think conquering earth and a new batch of slaves will boost their economy

Re: Alien Life
 

Hrumph! Punny hu-man "bags of mostly water"! You know not what universe is like. Hrumph! You only observe 3 dimentions! What you know!

You can't figure how many species are on your own planet - never mind how many planets there are. Next contact we make will instruct you as to where to go to be harvested....


Here's one attempt to calculate how many planets could contain intelligent life - the Drake Equation. Many of you know it already but here it is for those of you who don't.... Drake Equation.

By the way - who determines if life is intelligent or not? ...hopefully NOT my brother-in-law... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Alien Life
 

While on the topic, has anyone read the martian chronicles? As soon as mars was colonized, earth became expendable.....

By not venturing into space, we might be PREVENTING out own extinction..

Re: Alien Life
 

Expendable? How do you gather from the Martian Chronicles that Earth became expendable? Every time there was a war on Earth the various colonies on Mars would become ghost towns as people went home. Not only did they want to help defend their native countries, but there was a good stretch of time when no space ships were even available to make the trip to Mars and the colonies were left to their own barely self-sufficient resources. This was a major plot point in some of the stories, of course. Vast, empty distances, long travel times, etc.

Personally, I think Bradbury is a Short Story writer who just happened to mix some SciFi elements into his works. The 'Mars' of the Martian Chronicles is more like the American West than a new planet.

[ August 13, 2002, 01:36: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Alien Life
 

Friendly Aliens: I voted that they'd be "Aggressive" towards us, not so much because they would consider themselves aggressive, but because we would. Consider the biologist studying Elephants (or any other animal for that matter) in the wild. The biologist means them no harm, but the Elephants don't know this, and will run/charge/attack in an attempt to end contact. And lets face it, a lot of the 'good' things biologists do include shooting, trapping, drugging, radio collaring, banding, blood sampling, other liquids/solids sampled, etc. Now a race that can travel to Earth from another location is going to be a little more advanced in all areas than we are. They'll likely make Vulcans look like school children http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Drake Equation: In My Not Nearly Humble Enough Opinion (IMNNHO? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif ) the Drake Equation is only slightly less "black box" than the original statement by Azmov that there'd be life every thousand stars (I believe he said you needed the correct star type... 1/10, the presence of water... 1/10, and something else... 1/10). Now Azmov was shooting from the hip in the interview but the stuff you see in the press (like Discover, Sci. American, even Science and Nature) is just about that simple still!

I'll look through a few books at home and blather more tomorrow...

Cheers

[ August 13, 2002, 01:45: Message edited by: jimbob ]

Re: Alien Life
 

You have to realize, humanity still had limited information on mars beyond observation.

I gathered earth was expendable from the usage of nukes. Also, pay attention to the chapter with the empty house.

Re: Alien Life
 

Odds are that an encounter with an alien race would be effectively "hostile". Between miscommunication, culture clash, human/alien paranoia, economic pressures, matters of racial supremacy, etc. things would probably end up quite nasty even if the original intentions of both sides were good. Not that such an encounter is particularly likely...

Re: Alien Life
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">that Last bit reminds me of an Outer Limits episode, where an alien race wants to peacefully live in our ocean, and lands there, but we can't understand their msg, so we think they are invading us, and lauch all the nukes we have at them, they don't even get hurt and start attacking all the big cities.

Re: Alien Life
 

The August 2002 issue of Scientific American has a short article on the Drake Equation (the Skeptic column, page 33). The main point of the article is calculating the variable "L", which (in the Drake equation) is the lifetime of a communicating civilization. The article also mentions that, out of the 7 variables in the equation, we only have significant data on 1 variable: the rate of formation of "suitable stars". Of course, the entire equation is based on the idea that Earth-like planets are the only ones capable of sustaining intelligent life. Depending on your definition of intelligent life, that may be accurate, i.e. if "intelligent" is defined as "able to effectively communicate with humans". If "intelligent" is defined in a more philosophical context, there may be many intelligent races in the universe, but we'll never know because we (and they) can't communicate well enough to make that determination.

Just my 2 cents...

Re: Alien Life
 

Unless you are of the belief that life is unique to Earth, the sheer numbers of stars makes it almost a mathematical certainty that there is life elsewhere in the galaxy, let alone the universe as a whole. It really doesn't matter what number you plug into the other variables in the Drake equation, as long as they aren't zero the result is going to be a fairly large number.

The real question is assuming there is life and intelligent life, is there any possible way we could make contact with them considering the vast distances involved.

EDIT:I should say "meaningful contact". We could beam radio message back and forth, but a 50+ year message lag would be a real pain. It's bad enough in the game waiting two turns for a response. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ August 15, 2002, 16:29: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Alien Life
 

that outer limits episdoe, wasn't the aliens talking in english, but since the lived in an aquatic enviroment the message was nearly unreadable until they adjusted for the water content.

Of course, it was too late by then...

Re: Alien Life
 

Face it, we are the only life in the universe. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif If we happen to come acrossed other life, well then, its food. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Alien Life
 

I'm sure that's what those colonists in Aliens thought, too... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

zen

Re: Alien Life
 

I voted "other," in agreement with those who lean toward... well... irrelevant.

The existence of Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a veritable miniscule fraction of a drop in the vast ocean of time. As stated, other life probably would have no idea we're around, or even care, even if our timelines were congruent.

I often think of how aliens are most oft depicted in movies... humanoid, bipedal, single point of consciousness (our active conscious minds can engage only one thing at a time). Who's to say single-cell organisms would not split off and mutate in radically different ways? Life may be something we can't even recognise.

Re: Alien Life
 

I'm with Geo on this one. Given the vastness of the Universe, and the absurdity of the assumption that life must necessarily involve oxygen, water, rock planets, etc., I think it's pretty much a given that other life has existed, exists, or will exist. Seriously now, this may sound really corny and stupid, but for a long time now I have been fully and completely convinced of this. You wouldn't surprise me by proving it to me; I judge it as truth already. It seems so obvious...I even find myself taking it for granted in conversations with others (which is a little embarrassing, as you can imagine). The idea that we could be the only intelligent life in this Universe is incomprehensible to me.

That being a given, the real question, and point of contention, is this: is there other intelligent life out there right now? As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, we as a species have only been "sentient" and "aware" (if, indeed, we are) for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second, from the Universe's perspective. I think it is granted that there is/was/will be intelligent life out there...but I think that it is perfectly possible that we are the only intelligent life at this point in time.

For me, this creates a scenario of haunting sadness. Imagine dozens, maybe hundreds, of intelligent civilizations rising, expanding, and dying out, all without ever having contacted one another, existing alone in time, always wondering if there is anybody else out there. It makes me feel very lonely.

Re: Alien Life
 

Singollo, that's quite a deep thought. I suppose that it is entirely possible we are the only intelligent life right now. That would depend on the 'life span' of intelligent species. One of those Drake variables we have no concrete data on.

It reminds me of a story I once read. The theory goes that the universe is expanding, and that eventually it will stop expanding and collapse back into a single point, and then blow up into a new big bang and form a new universe. This race had developed very late in the life of the universe during this contraction phase. It had interesting parallels like they had discoveries of blue shifts instead of red shifts, and so on. IIRC for them the big bang was harder to conceptualize becasue all there evidence told them the universe was contracting and always had. They didn't like the fact that there exsistance was going to end "early" just because they had the bad luck to come along so late, so they were trying to figure out a way to leave a message for the next universe. Just a "Hello, we were here" kind of thing.

I would expect the desire to make contact is quite strong with most if not all intelligent creatures. It would be a sad irony indeed if the vast distances made it impossible to do so.

Geoschmo

Re: Alien Life
 

Wow, that sounds like an awesome premise for a story. How cool. That would indeed be a cruel joke, to be stuck at the end of the universe, near to the Big Crunch. IIRC, the most recent evidence points to an unending expansion of the universe, though, although the Big Crunch scenario cannot be completely ruled out. (Yeah, as if we can completely rule anything out as far as this stuff is concerned.)

Re: Alien Life
 

Yeah, the numbers change by the day, but it is currently Vogue to say eternal expansion, but with a limit approaching zero (stasis that's never quite reached?).

I've also read from some physicists that the big crunch would be more like the big smoosh (something to do with the laws of thermodynamics and the force of gravity, but I'm just a biologist here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ), and that the result would be more a big ball of moosh than a point-singularity like the thing that jump-started the big bang. Not surprisingly their position is that repeated big-bangs for each universe won't happen.

Re: Alien Life
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yup, the idea of a "flat universe", as opposed to an open one (endless expansion) or a closed one (Big Crunch...er, Smoosh). It's impossible to tell for sure, of course, because things like dark matter and dark energy make calculations difficult, as does the mysterious repelling force that seems to be accelerating galaxies apart from one another. The flat universe idea is the romantic view, because it requires a complete balance between everything, which would signify (to some folks' minds) some grand plan or controlling factor behind the scenes. The data, as it is now, is amazingly close to the flat balance.

Re: Alien Life
 

All this discussion of alien life has reminded me of an old Arthur C Clarke book: "The Songs of Distant Earth". What if we are the aliens?

The book takes into account the improbabilities of travel to other stars. Our sun is discovered to go supernova in 800 years. Mankind is doomed. Unable to physically travel, instead, we build ships that contain libraries of DNA of humans, plants, and animals. Hundreds of computer controlled ships drift in the vastness of space, looking for suitable planets to settle, then experiment using local resources to recreate human life.

Eventually we do discover quantum drives and can travel at about 10-20% spead of light. One million humans in suspended animation leave and arrive on a planet colonized hundreds of years earlier. How would our descendants receive us?

Good reading for any interested.

Personally, I believe there is life out there, but we are so hopelessly separated by the vastness of space and time to ever meet each other. I think if we are ever to meet, it will be by targetting worlds suspected to contain life by radio or laser transmissions. These worlds will be detected by interferomety. Of course, that is assuming such life is oxygen/water based. Then if we can overcome our language barriers, we can share libraries of information, realizing that it may take hundreds of years to transmit and receive. We will talk, but never actually meet them.

Re: Alien Life
 

I would have voted/posted earlier, but I seemed to have developed a bug in Internet Exploder... no new windows can be created (well, they are created, just not with anything inside...

Anyway, my view would be like Geo's. I think that intelligent life -- other than us -- already has existed, exists currently, and will continue to be formed throughout time. The vast size of the universe is more than the human mind can begin to comprehend (but we still try to understand anyway). Just in our own galaxy, by the most conservative of estimates, using the criteria for life like us to exist, there are millions of suitable places. In this galaxy. There are millions of galaxies. So if only one in a million produces intelligent life, there are still millions.

Now as for us ever meeting any other intelligent life... I doubt it will happen. AFAIK, there isn't even a theory on how FTL travel can occur, at least for something having mass. Tachyons are theorized, but nobody has confirmed their existance. And even at near light travel, it would take a very long time to reach any other civilization. I very much doubt humans would want to travel to aliens, since there is no real short-term benefit, just a single long term goal. And if they came to us... well, they most probably would have developed nothing like we did. Their entire basis of thought would be completely different. So I have no idea what they would be thinking if/when they show up here.

Re: Alien Life
 

Keep in mind that someone has to be first! It could be us. I don't think it is, but 15 billion years is not really that long. Our star has a lifespan of about 10 billion years and we are about half way through that. The first stars had only hydrogen and helium to work with; only a miniscule amount of heavier elements. The next generation had more heavier elements but was there enough to organize into planets and complex molecules? Our star's (and system's) generation may be the first to have sufficient complexity for life, let alone intelligent life.

We just may be the first!

Kim

[ August 17, 2002, 16:37: Message edited by: Grandpakim ]

Re: Alien Life
 

I think this about sums up alien life if it does indeed exsisit.

"I am mysterious, you do not know me, be afraid."

Nuff said. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

(Thank Nicholas Meyers

He says that in his commentary of Star Trek II. He says it while your looking at Kahn. Its kinda funny how it plays out. One thing is for certain though; Nicholas Meyers is narcissistic as all get out. Listen to the commentary, especially his end comments. Very self absorbed BS.)

Re: Alien Life
 

I was reading something recently were scientist has taken particles of light and accellerated them to a few hundred times to speed of light.

For all intents in purposes, this would suit the communications technologies best for the simple speed of transmissions.

If applied to interstellar communications, than this would speed communications up.