Are we not far away from discovering alien life

Arazi

Arazi

Arazi

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Just had this as a random thought and i started to think when will we discover alien life as we know it or not.

My three outcomes where, we already know of both, we will discover or see evidence of intelligent alien life within 50 years and within 20 years we will have discovered non intelligent life.

With some of the technology we have these days and the upcoming space missions that are due (James Webb) surely we cannot be to far away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

I would like to see confirmation of intelligent life in my lifetime, im 46, I doubt it though :)
 
I don't think it will happen in any of our lifetimes due to technological constraints. Finding evidence has been happening for years (evidence of water has been found on multiple planets and wherever you find water, you find life or at the least the building blocks for life. Even in the harshest of conditions). But actually finding life will surely require a visit to an extra terrestrial body which I don't think will happen anytime soon.
 
Surely we have only just scratched the surface as we know it.

I do think we will make contact of some form, but expect the distances are so great it won't be till 2100 at the earliest.
 
Arazi said:
My three outcomes where, we already know of both, we will discover or see evidence of intelligent alien life within 50 years and within 20 years we will have discovered non intelligent life.
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That seems rather optimistic don't you think?

We've only been searching for ET for a few decades, it could take a very long time, assuming we find anything at all.

OldCoals said:
Given the sheer amount stars out there I think it is pretty safe to say we are not alone.
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It's safe to say there are a lot of stars and planets, but we only know of 1 planet with life, ours.
 
We are nowhere near finding other forms of life. The evidence we have suggests that life appeared on this planet only once in its 4.5 billion years of history. That suggests its an incredibly rare occurance.
 
All depend how rare life is.
It could be we send a submarine probe to Europa or a few other moons and find life, or the nearest life could be a few thousand light years away. If it's they latter we aren't detecting it anytime soon. Even atmospheric spectroscopy that could suggest a plant has life is anywhere near to being capable art those sorts of distances.

I think it's going to be a fairly desolate part of the galaxy for a very long time to come. Fermi paradox seems to suggest live is very rare indeed.
 
Despite my great desire that it would be so, there are several factors which probably mitigate against it. First any intelligent life which has developed is likely to be on planets very similar to ours and with similar evolution, i.e. the rise of humanoids as the dominant species. Their brain power and development will be similar to ours and the materials available to resource technology will be pretty much the same as ours. That in turn means that even if they were more technically advanced and could overcome how to travel FTL, their physical forms are unlikely to survive the forces of acceleration and extended period in space interstellar travel would require.

That also assumes their evolution has not followed ours with large portions of the population more obsessed with various brands of the sky fairy and killing each other or fighting over territory and money, than advancement of the species.

I do think in the next 20 - 30 years we should come closer to finding if there was life (intelligent or otherwise) on Mars or a moon of one of the outer planets, but pointy eared green blooded Vulcans or encounter suited Vorlons will I think remain the stuff of sci-fi.
 
Longbow said:
It's safe to say there are a lot of stars and planets, but we only know of 1 planet with life, ours.
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Given the estimated number of stars to be 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 I think it is safe to say there is life on another planet.
 
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I don't dispute there is "intelligent life" out there but the only way we're going to see it is if "they" come here.

As we've been bombarding all and sundry out there with RF for the past couple of hundred years they might well be a tad annoyed with us too !
 
OldCoals said:
Given the estimated number of stats to be 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 I think it is safe to say there is life on another planet.
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We have perfect conditions for life on this planet. If the odds are so good how do you explain only 1 form appeared in 4b+ years?
 
Zethor said:
We have perfect conditions for life on this planet. If the odds are so good how do you explain only 1 form appeared in 4b+ years?
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You don't know only 1 form appeared.
For a start what would you be looking for to differentiate. Despite the silicone myths. Chances are all life would look extremely similar based on carbon and the same rna/dna process.
You have no idea if other life was started and out competed.
We don't even know if the life started on earth.

With so many planets yo don't need good odds. Even extremely bad odds would give you millions of planets with life
 
What would life be like, we are only here due to the dinosaurs being killed off by a meteor strike. If early evolution of the human race had to compete with these creatures would we be here now?

So given the 1 in x chance of the human race actually evolving to where we are now. Applying that to the rest of the universe would still leave a large number of possible human like races. Would there not be more chance of reptile like (dino) races if that's what happens naturally from the primordial soup. Taking out one of the factors that allowed the human race to develop, meteor strike killing off the number one spices at the time, wouldn't the be a greater chance of life in other parts of the universe NOT being human like.

There's life Jim but not as we know it.

Many things effect the development of a species, look whats happens to humans in space, bone mass, heart size etc etc. Also the different evolutionary adaptation across the human race. Evolution is not only limited to where the planet is in a solar system, atmosphere, cosmic radiation(goldilocks zone ) but where on the planet it evolves. The basics are the same but expand that over the universe and the diversity should be huge.

The possibility of there being life is great, now to solve the issue of detecting it and making that knowledge public.
 
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I firmly believe we are not alone. I do not know if we've found any evidence, because I feel if we did it would never be made public, for fear of inciting panic and backlash from religious extremists.

I'm also not expecting this to change in my lifetime, sadly..
 
breadturbo said:
Surely we have only just scratched the surface as we know it.

I do think we will make contact of some form, but expect the distances are so great it won't be till 2100 at the earliest.
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It would take 18,000 years to reach the nearest star so don't hold your breath :eek:
 
Maybe someone can explain but why do we presume(?) that life out there would require the same building blocks we do?

Is there not every chance what would be lethal to us could be their building blocks?
 
Usher said:
It would take 18000 years to reach the nearest star so don't hold your breath :eek:
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Well no, we've actually know ways off getting there in more like 40 years. Nuclear test treaty killed of the research. Nuclear pulse technology if you want to look it up. Several competing plans Orion nd Daedalus are the two most common.

I just hope breakthrough starshot works. Be amazing if we found habitable planets in our closest stars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus
 
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