Are we not far away from discovering alien life

Tephnos said:
We know that it has happened here - that is plenty evidence enough, given how common Earth-like planets turned out to be, and that you have an entire universe out there.

Life definitely exists on other planets. 100%. However, us meeting any of them? Now that's slim to none.
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It is not the proof you claim it is. Your position is one of belief, not fact.

If you look into the claims of "Earth-like" planets, you'll find that they're using a very different definition of "Earth-like". By far the most "Earth-like" planet yet known to exist is Mars, which is very unlike Earth.
 
Angilion said:
No, it isn't.

We know almost nothing about almost all of the factors involved. It's not safe to say anything certain about the subject.

How many stars have potentially inhabitable planets? We have no idea.

What is the chance of life evolving on a potentially inhabitable planet? We have no idea.

How many of those planets (if any exist) have been stable enough for long enough for life to start? We have no idea.

And that's without considering evolution at all, just biogenesis. Nor does it take time into account - the existence of life elsewhere at some point in time isn't the same as the existence of life today. There has been plenty of time for life to exist, evolve and become extinct.
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The maths suggests that intelligent life should exist on other planets.

if even 1% of the planets are in an orbit where life can start and evolve and grow and if the universe really is infinite, then even 1% of that 1% of 1% of the number of planets still equals thousands if not millions of planets with intelligent life. Then even if only 1% of that life managed to conquer space travel that's still hundreds, if not thousands. IMO there is life out there, we (and they) just haven't discovered any other life out there. Yet.

What we should all be worried about is that if Aliens visit our planet they'll likely be either so technologically advanced we wouldn't even know it (undetectable by any of our technology) or they'd take such a dim view of what most of Earth has become they'd likely deem us not worth investigating or contacting. Lord help us if they just happen to pick up a Broadcast of TOWIE or the Kardashian show and think the whole world is like that.
 
MissChief said:
The maths suggests that intelligent life should exist on other planets.

if even 1% of the planets are in an orbit where life can start and evolve and grow and if the universe really is infinite, then even 1% of that 1% of 1% of the number of planets still equals thousands if not millions of planets with intelligent life. Then even if only 1% of that life managed to conquer space travel that's still hundreds, if not thousands. IMO there is life out there, we (and they) just haven't discovered any other life out there. Yet.
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Suggest, maybe. I was replying to people who were saying that it is certain that life exists on other planets.

You take it many steps further. Firstly by referring to intelligent life, then with the word "should", then by making up numbers for your maths and then by adding in space travel.

And it is just making up numbers. You (and all other humans) have no idea of the values of almost all of the factors involved. That's not really maths. It's like taking the equation a = b*c*d*e*f*g and saying that a should be a high number because b is a very high number, when you have absolutely no idea what the values of c,d,e,f and g are. That's being very generous, since it's only refering to 5 unknown terms when in reality there could be dozens or hundreds because we don't even know what all the factors are.

The furthest we can go without making things up is this:

The probability of intelligent life existing is an unknown value but not zero and the universe contains many places.

I would be surprised if we're the only intelligent life in the universe, but that's as far as we can go with the knowledge we have. Anything else is belief, not fact.

What we should all be worried about is that if Aliens visit our planet they'll likely be either so technologically advanced we wouldn't even know it (undetectable by any of our technology) or they'd take such a dim view of what most of Earth has become they'd likely deem us not worth investigating or contacting. Lord help us if they just happen to pick up a Broadcast of TOWIE or the Kardashian show and think the whole world is like that.
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It would be much worse if they were judging humanity on the basis of news broadcasts.
 
Angilion said:
It is not the proof you claim it is. Your position is one of belief, not fact.

If you look into the claims of "Earth-like" planets, you'll find that they're using a very different definition of "Earth-like". By far the most "Earth-like" planet yet known to exist is Mars, which is very unlike Earth.
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You are being very technical to the point of bothersome. Does it matter to you that much? The probability is so high that it would be arrogant not to think it exists and annoying to debunk people by saying it is 'belief, not fact'. Who the hell cares? You can't prove it directly, but the numbers we can't comprehend (and those who do more than any of us say it's pretty much guaranteed) point to only one conclusion.

You can argue that until you're blue in the face but you're just coming off as extremely pedantic.
 
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If you believe in the technological singularity then we are pretty close to knowing if there is extraterrestrial life. I would say a matter of decades. If we can crack general artificial intelligence then a lot of technical challenges will be overcome and space exploration will explode. Our concept of time will completely change.
 
Mynight said:
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?
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carbon is the only element that enables complex molecules - ignore all the other sci-fi nonsense like silicon life forms or energy life forms, its impossible.

I don't buy that other life would have dna though - there are plenty of other possibilities.
 
I am sure there is life out there. It will be a long time until we can find them and visit. They could come here at any time imo.

Imagine if they ere friendly and gave us loads of cool stuff.
 
Qitarah said:
Nothing is going to be picking up any radio signals for a very long time, that is for sure.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...stance-radio-broadcasts-aliens-travelled.html


Alien life? Maybe, probably. I dont think we want to find out though.
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Did you notice the glaring error lower on the page :D How can you have an EARTHquake on another planet, must be Marsquake then


Quote: And, given recent evidence of a possible earthquake on the Red Planet that indicate life there, perhaps all we are waiting for is for Martians to invent a radio set
 
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Tephnos said:
You are being very technical to the point of bothersome.
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He's being correct.

Tephnos said:
The probability is so high
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Probability of life? If so where are you getting the numbers from?

We can make educated assumptions as to how many galaxies there are, how many stars there are, how many planets there are, how many habitable planets there are. These assumptions can all be extrapolated from what we have observed so far. What we don't know and have no clue about, is life.

You can throw around this 1% number all you want, but it's completely baseless. It could be 10%, or 1%, or maybe 0.1^-100%, who knows. It's all wild guesses.
 
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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The most accepted hypothesis is life was created on earthed numerous times independently, not just once. And there is certainly no evidence it occurred only once.
 
I think if live exists out there it may not necessary be close enough or at the same period of time as us to ever come across. Which is quite a sad thought and if the speed of light is the maximum velocity we may never meet our neighbours even if we did know where they were.
 
It will be out there, but finding it will be like spotting a single quantum dot in a giant haystack using a microscope.
 
MooMoo444 said:
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.
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This is a huge myth.
If life was found elsewhere it would play into the hands of religious nutters that God/Allah is everywhere.
The Roman Catholics even made a statement about this and got their head Astronomist talking about it.

I don't think Alien life has ever been here but I'm confident that life will find a way everywhere it can in the Universe.
 
There's a few possibilities, and the consequences of these assertions to bear in mind.

1. Life and the planetary conditions to support our level of evolution are so rare and fleeting we are completely alone right now, a very frightening thought, we are in considerable danger of being wiped out by a stray comet, supernovae, mega CME / solar event, and intelligent life as we know it would be gone forever.

2. Same as above, but only to the point where we happen to of got "lucky" and the sheer unimaginable potential of life has some how overcome the barrier of the huge distances involved and we are of great interest to one or more super advanced alien life-forms who keep themselves well hidden from the public eye, someone is looking after us, or even manipulating our species for their own benefit.

3. Life is everywhere, in nearly every stable solar system, it's just quite rare it ever gets the chance to become as intelligent as we have. We are the superior beings in our area and owe a great responsibility to better ourselves and focus on securing our survival from random acts of aforementioned cosmic catastrophe before it's back to square one on the evolutionary journey again.

I think the consequences of 1 & 3 are often lost on humanity; the greater purpose we should serve rather than our petty economic games to conquer each other and "win the rat race", and point 2 is obviously reserved for the conspiracy gargling loons, but in such a vast and unrealised existence, none of these should be discounted fully.
 
Ace Modder said:
There has already been evidence of none intelligent like on other rocks in our solar system already. We have bacteria not from earth already.
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do we (genuine question) ? I thought we had found what were essentially fossils that "may" have been due to life, but have never actually found something that was definitely a living organism.

It'll happen one day - and I hope its intelligent life as the impact on society will be truly massive. Maybe we'll actually develop some respect for each other and stop blowing each other up when it's proved that we're not as special as we think we are, and that other civilisations have advanced to the point where they put us completely to shame!
 
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