Alien Life

Atrocities · #1 August 11th, 2002, 06:57 AM

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)

Phoenix-D · #2 August 11th, 2002, 07:36 AM

"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

CW · #3 August 11th, 2002, 09:13 AM

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.

Rusty_Nail · #4 August 11th, 2002, 10:34 AM

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.

Puke · #5 August 11th, 2002, 11:52 AM

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.

Wizarc · #6 August 11th, 2002, 12:08 PM

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!

disabled · #7 August 11th, 2002, 04:04 PM

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.

Raging Deadstar · #8 August 11th, 2002, 04:43 PM

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...

oleg · #9 August 11th, 2002, 07:06 PM

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.

capnq · #10 August 11th, 2002, 07:47 PM

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.