Alien Life

[CW]

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]

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]

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]

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!

[Ruatha]

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.

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[evader]

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.

[Raging Deadstar]

Heh yeah, but you never know, they might respond to a good ol' cup of tea and a UN Meeting 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 ]