Poll: Where is everyone?

Do you think that life exists elsewhere in the universe?

  • Yes there must be!

    Votes: 561 94.6%
  • Nope, we're all alone.

    Votes: 32 5.4%

  • Total voters
    593
Yeah I know that's because a lot of posters come in and jump to the last page without reading up. I was asked this question and my reply was: Life would be defined in this sense as a self replicating organism with a genetic code to pass on. This would cover all life.

Then absolutely 100%, there has got to be some form of life out there.
I believe life will start wherever it gets the chance but whether it is intelligent I don't know.
 
No point going to Andromeda as it is approaching us. It will reach us in some 4 billion years.

Far better to continue to explore our own Solar System. The moon Europa may be a candidate for life.
 
Then absolutely 100%, there has got to be some form of life out there.
I believe life will start wherever it gets the chance but whether it is intelligent I don't know.

Well life became intelligent here(us) about 200,000 years ago and life had been running for around 3.5 billion years at that point. So intelligent life, life that can create technologies and advance, would seem to be extremely rare.

So my point would be, what are the odds of two technologically advanced civilisations being around at the same time, who could then communicate or even visit each other. I suspect that's a very small number, maybe even 0. :(
 
Far better to continue to explore our own Solar System. The moon Europa may be a candidate for life.

Yeah. Also we have Enceladus, Titan and then of course Mars. Not looking good for Mars though. I think their bet is fossilised microbes, but who knows.
 
Always with the thinking Sliver! I voted yes.

Life in the universe is not equal to 0. There is no evidence it is 2+.

We are lucky to have a single fossil record; it takes certain unusual conditions to get a fossil.

Hawkins thinks there is alien life.

There was a similar thread in past here started by NeilFawcett if you are interested:
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18555167&highlight=GOLDILOCKS
 
Until some evidence turns up to the contrary I'm going to say we're all alone.

Well life became intelligent here(us) about 200,000 years ago and life had been running for around 3.5 billion years at that point. So intelligent life, life that can create technologies and advance, would seem to be extremely rare.

Whats unusual about the Earth is it and its environs have been stable for aeons of time, the Earth and life has been around for a third of the age of the Universe. Thats a hell of a long time.
 
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Always with the thinking Sliver! I voted yes.

Life in the universe is not equal to 0. There is no evidence it is 2+.

We are lucky to have a single fossil record; it takes certain unusual conditions to get a fossil.

Hawkins thinks there is alien life.

There was a similar thread in past here started by NeilFawcett if you are interested:
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18555167&highlight=GOLDILOCKS

Thanks jpod I'll take a quick at that. Nice to see you're still here, I thought you might have left for a while there.
 
Well life became intelligent here(us) about 200,000 years ago and life had been running for around 3.5 billion years at that point. So intelligent life, life that can create technologies and advance, would seem to be extremely rare.

Whats unusual about the Earth is it and its environs have been stable for aeons of time, the Earth and life has been around for a third of the age of the Universe. Thats a hell of a long time.

That's really pessimistic view considering you have more than ample evidence of previous advanced life, very different to ours, on this very planet alone. Entire ranges of species, environments and environmental factors appearing and disappearing from the face of the Earth across millions of years.

It would be awfully shortsighted to reject strong possibility if not certainty that this very planet already had technologically advanced life in the past - long before us. Even within what - 200 years old boundaries of biology and technology that we can define and grasp at the moment, which on its own, is a very narrow set of factors for "intelligent life" or "technologically advanced" considering age of life here, in front of us.
 
That's really pessimistic view considering you have more than ample evidence of previous advanced life, very different to ours, on this very planet alone. Entire ranges of species, environments and environmental factors appearing and disappearing from the face of the Earth across millions of years.

It would be awfully shortsighted to reject strong possibility if not certainty that this very planet already had technologically advanced life in the past - long before us. Even within what - 200 years old boundaries of biology and technology that we can define and grasp at the moment, which on its own, is a very narrow set of factors for "intelligent life" or "technologically advanced" considering age of life here, in front of us.

You're wrong. And I'm going to leave there because I frankly don't care. I'm not being rude to you as a person, it's just that I'm not going to try explain the truth to you because I'm sick of doing it on these forums. Sorry.
 
Is there some history between you two or something? :p

Here's a good video for you if you've never seen it.Fascinating stuff, i love Brian Cox.

 
It always does my noodle to think of whats beyond the observable universe and the knowledge that we will very likely never know (hedging my bets as Ive always assumed its impossible)

Life seems a guarantee but 'life' is a pretty vague word...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
You're wrong. And I'm going to leave there because I frankly don't care. I'm not being rude to you as a person, it's just that I'm not going to try explain the truth to you because I'm sick of doing it on these forums. Sorry.

While I don't necessarily agree with his second statement* the first is pretty accurate. The only reason we are here is because of a combination of disasters affecting the earth. If the six major extinction events hadn't occurred we may not have evolved into what we are now. The last major extinction event (not including the current major extinction event) led to the demise of reptiles being the pinnacle class. This demise game mammals the time and space to evolve into the pinnacle class and subsequently humans to evolve.

His point (or at least what I take from it) is that our "dominance" of the earth did not happen linearly, but in stops and starts, with more luck than "design". On other planets sentient beings (rather than "advanced life", which is a bit of a broad statement) may have evolved a lot quicker, or never at all, even if there were 5-6 billion years of evolution, due to a variation in the formation of the planet and the "chance" events (like asteroid strikes and volcanic eruptions) giving rise to positive environmental changes for life to take new turns and evolution to jump "forward".

Also, from your first post life on other planets does not necessarily need oxygen to survive. At the moment (on earth) the only molecule that is known to be needed for all life is water. Gaseous oxygen is not needed by some life on this planet. http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/multicellular-life-found-that-doesn-10-04-09/

*Regarding that, when you consider the huge gaps in the geological record we can't say for certain there was not another technologically advanced life on this planet prior to us. The species we know existed are the equivalent of small pools in a huge rainforest. We only know of a few percent of the life that has existed on this planet, and much of that life is only known from patchy single specimens or a small number of individuals. That said it also depends on what definition of "intelligent" and "technologically advanced" he is using. The likelihood of a space faring species is pretty minimal, but a species that evolved to use fairly basic tools several hundred million years ago isn't particularly out of the question. Even if there were several million in that species we could quite easily miss them in the fossil record.
 
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Conversely though we're fortunate enough to live in a time where we live on Earth and can go see wonders of nature, Space travel would probably be incredibly boring for the most part. Even travelling at close to Light speed you'd be looking at spending years on a Spacecraft to travel between Stars. In the future entire generations might be born, live and die aboard generation ships.

Travelling near the speed of light, special relativity kicks in resulting in time dilation, you could reach the nearest solar system in only a few minutes.
 
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*Regarding that, when you consider the huge gaps in the geological record we can't say for certain there was not another technologically advanced life on this planet prior to us..

technologically advanced can be certainly ruled out for earth.

the would be some form of evidence of that as artificial things tend to last far longer than natural things.

anything "advanced" to the point of say metal working would leave markers that would last nearly foever
 
technologically advanced can be certainly ruled out for earth.

the would be some form of evidence of that as artificial things tend to last far longer than natural things.

anything "advanced" to the point of say metal working would leave markers that would last nearly foever

Again, that's where the definition of "advanced" needs to come into it. Making basic metal tools may well not leave enough of a regional/global mark to be seen in the geological record (or it may be visible, we just don't realise what it is yet). That could especially be the case if the species doing it were settled in areas that have either now been subjected/destroyed or even on parts of continental shelf now submerged.

On the other hand if there were advanced life to the point of producing enough atmospheric/subaqueous material to be visible in a regional/global sense then we would almost certainly see it. Things like the nuclear age and lead in fuel are clear markers today and will be clear markers globally for millions/billions of years - modern day GSSP's. A species of a few hundred thousand/million individuals making primitive tools out of metal probably wouldn't leave that mark, but a species able to do space travel almost certainly would.

All that said, we may well see the results of an advanced species in regional/global geology, say in the form of a horizon with greater radioactivity or isotope count, but we may not recognise it for what it is. There are plenty of local, regional and global markers that have unknown origin in the geological record. And all this is making the assumption that the "advanced" civilisation's scientific/technological evolution was the same as ours.

The latter point can also be said about any alien life as well. A species starting at a different point in time, space and/or environment may end up with a totally different technological chain of events to ourselves*, in the same way a planet may end up with a totally different chain of evolution, evolutionary events (atmosphere changes, volcanoes, asteroids etc) and evolutionary jumps (our evolutionary advance on Earth was NOT linear) - perhaps life never left the seas, but evolved into an advanced life form able to build cities and transport, but never having evolved to use fire or similar heat sources. That's one of the issues with the whole SETI program - do we even know what we are looking for, and if an alien civilisation is trying to contact others, will it even be using the same methods.**

All that said, I am arguing devils advocate a little here. I think it is very unlikely there was another advanced (non primitive tool making) species on this planet prior to us, and it is extremely unlikely that a species as/more technologically advanced than us evolved before us. HOWEVER, just because we haven't seen it in the geological record does not mean it isn't there, so there is always a chance, and dismissing it out of hand is probably a bit foolish.

*And may not look anything like we understand - rather than little grey/green men with two arms, two legs and a head they could be tentacled, fish like, or even some kind of shape shifting creature - who knows?

**We make assumptions based on what we understand, such as Brian Cox' example of an interstellar matter/anti matter drive for space travel. That doesn't mean that would be the technology another species would use however.
 
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Also, from your first post life on other planets does not necessarily need oxygen to survive. At the moment (on earth) the only molecule that is known to be needed for all life is water. Gaseous oxygen is not needed by some life on this planet.

You need to read what I (I know you were talking to Tefal but this post is a response to his and mine) said in context to the conversation being said at the time. Oxygen is vital for life on this planet once you realise that by life we are talking about life that feeds on plants. In Earths early history the life to appear on land were plant like microbes that used photosynthesis to survive and in doing so produced oxygen. Millions of years of evolution later, and the land was covered in forested plant life which was so prolific it actually altered the chemistry of the atmosphere, making way for animal life to move out of the oceans and onto land.

So it's a step by step process. First abiogenesis, then photosynthesising microbes, then land based plant life, then land based animal life.
 
Voted yes - inconceivable there is no life of any kind elsewhere in the universe.

Perhaps this discovery will focus the minds at JPL etc. to actually start designing a propulsion system which, even if we accept FTL travel is impossible at our level of understanding and with the fuels available, could convey a probe to this area in (say) eight years - which would mean the findings come back in twelve years. I might just be around to see that day!
 
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