[Renegade 13]

Atrocities said:
All I am saying is there is NO PROOF that any other life exsits out there. None what so ever. Nothing, zip ziltch, nodda......We can speculate all we want, but until they toss a dead alien, a real one mind you, onto the slab in front of multiple news crews and the US Government says its the real McCoy, then I will be a believer. Until then, I choose not to be grouped with those that society has deemed crap pot nut jobs, and full blown weirdo's, not say that any of you are such, but lets face it, society takes a dim view toward those who report having seen UFO's.

That is very true, there's no real direct evidence of other life existing out there. But there is a host of indirect evidence. First, there's the sheer number of extrasolar planets out there. So far we've only had instruments capable of detecting (at the extreme range of the instruments) planets that are at the least 10 times more massive than Earth. When more advanced equipment comes online, for example the James Webb Space Telescope which should be launching somewhere around 2010 or 12, it should be able to directly detect Earth-sized planets. Now just because we can't, at this time, detect those Earth-sized plaents, does that mean they don't exist? We can't see them, but we can't see an electron either, can we? We say it exists, but who of you have seen an electron? And yet we all believe they exist, right?

I know it's a really big leap to go from Earth-sized extrasolar planets existing to life being abundant in the universe, but here's another point. Just look at the diversity of life that has developed (or been created) on this chunk of rock. There's organisms like us, oxygen breathing, likes temperatures around 20-25 degrees. Then you have single celled organisms called thermophiles which live at the bottom of the ocean around vents, who live off of hydrogen sulphide, oxygen is poisonous to them (I believe), and who live in temperatures over 100 degrees! A wide range of possibilities, no? Diversity indicates abundance.

The final point: We, as humans, find it difficult to conceive of life that is different from our own. Sure, we may say that it might exist, but do we really believe it? I think that most people think that intelligent life would be humanoid, and exist in the ranges of temperature, gravity, and atmospheric composition that we ourselves enjoy. That just simply isn't true. There's no reason that I can think of to say that life could not take any form. Why can't the super-hot, close-orbiting Jupiter-like planets that have been detected harbour life? It would not be life as we know it, but is there any reason to think that it could not exist there, and be just as much 'life' as we are?

By the way, everything said above is not intended to offend anyone, it's just me arguing for the "side" of the debate that I believe in. No offense intended in any way.