I don't believe anything we're told about space, I think their budget needs justifying, so they make it all up.
Do extra terrestrials exist? If so...
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I don't believe anything we're told about space, I think their budget needs justifying, so they make it all up.
So for example Satellites the job they do in space are just pieces of junk and no value to anyone.
Silly answer that mate,what is your job.
So for example Satellites the job they do in space are just pieces of junk and no value to anyone.
Silly answer that mate,what is your job.
I work for Nasa, shhhhh.
Satellites, fair enough. Not really what I meant though.
How do we know what the planets are made of, what gasses etc. Really, can we possibly know what they're made of, really ????
Also, we're bound by restrictions to our species, they're could be much more that we know, the periodic table of elements etc are all things found on earth, maybe other planets are things we don't know of, but we have to best guess them.
(I don't really know what I'm on about, but I do think we're simply told things sometimes, and we can't question it).
(Responsible job BTW)
Things like that I mean.
What are you on about?
We can know roughly what planets are made from by firing radiation at them and analysing the reflection. We've been able to manipulate this technology for well into 50 years now. It's using the same principle as the radars that stop you getting bombed by Russians while you're in bed at night.
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I think the body shape of alien intelligent life would definitely be similar in appearance to us. Dolphins and elephants are considered to be pretty intelligent but their bodies don't allow them to progress further. With our opposable thumbs, this allowed the development of tools. In order for an intelligent species to evolve, I think their bodies have to evolve also. If the hands are not right, then no tools are going to be made.
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Along with that, if convergent evolution is correct. Then life would look very similar.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution
Fair enough mate. However I do think that the finding of life (not as we knew it on Earth) raises the prospect that similar life could exist on planets without the Earth's benevolent atmosphere. Assumptions and guestimates aside, it is asumed we will have the answer to this within the next 12 to 15 years.
True, although it might just mean that life on Earth is versatile and changeable.
Why is that assumed? We're very unlikely to be significantly closer to being able to survey other stellar systems in 12-15 years. At most, we might get a closer look at Mars.
If life is found on Mars, that'll answer some questions but not others. Something common to two planets next to each other that have had some transference of material doesn't necessarily answer questions about planets elsewhere.
If life isn't found on Mars, that doesn't really answer any questions. Maybe the survey of a tiny part of Mars missed it. Maybe there isn't any on Mars but there is elsewhere.
I think we'll probably have a very small part of some of the answers in that time frame. We'll probably have more questions too, which will continue to keep things interesting.
Although maybe, just maybe, we'll get a definitely artificial signal from a relatively nearby civilisation that has detected our artificial emissions. Pen pals with a couple of dozen years to deliver each "letter", maybe. Might happen.
Extra terrestrial life? Almost certainly. Intelligent life? very hard to tell the probabilities but most likely a couple atleast in our galaxy. Aliens visiting Earth? Very small percentage chance but not impossible iven our current knowledge of the laws of physics.
Rubbish.
I am not ignorant of the tiny amount of stuff that humans know about this issue. I seem to be less ignorant than you, given that your estimate differs from the most educated estimates by about 4 orders of magnitude.
What I, and many others, do not share with you is your faith. Yes, it is faith. You believe something to definitely be true without evidence to support that belief and you ridicule others who don't believe the same thing - a clear case of faith.
Only to the ignorant. It's credible to people who've educated themselves.
People in the past were the same as us. Equally intelligent, equally capable, equally everything. Their technology was primitive, but they weren't.
For classical civilisations, we know quite a lot quite directly. For example, we have copies of ancient Roman books on building. We know they had advanced knowledge of maths and architecture. We know that they understood the principles needed for building work on a large scale, such as leverage. We know that they had advanced materials such as concrete and how they made it. We know the tools they had developed, e.g. the groma. We know they were very organised. We know that they had a sizeable class of very well educated people who specialised in various aspects of building. We know how they built the things they built. Roman building work was amazing, imposing and hugely impressive, but it wasn't incredible.
For prehistoric building work, we can gain some knowledge from archaeology and more from modern experiments. For example, we know, absolutely know for a certainty, that it is possible to build Stonehenge from scratch using only tools known to have existed in prehistoric Britain - wood, stone, antlers, animal hides, etc. We know this with such certainty because people in modern times have proven it by experiment. They have cut that type of stone with those tools. They have moved that weight of stone overland with wood and hide ropes. Etc.
Imagine that you are a stone age Briton. You are looking at a block of stone weighing too much to measure, more than all the people in a village. It must be moved overland 20 miles and raised more than twice the height of a tall man. No person could do that. But you're not a person alone. You are a member of your tribe. Many of them are alongside you on the ropes. Others move ahead of the sledge the stone is on, ensuring that its path is smooth and lubricated. Others bring food and water to those on the ropes. The elders walk beside you, praising and encouraging you and telling you stories of how in their youth they were on ropes like these, dragging stones like these. Moving the stone is hard, hard work and it will take many days, but it is no torment. It is an honour for you, for your tribe, for your ancestors and for the gods. You sing with joy! Eventually, you reach the site. Raising the stone to the required height is impossible...so your tribe has raised the Earth to the required height instead. People can build a hill of hard-packed earth with very gentle slopes, using only stone age tools. It's not difficult. It's just very labour intensive. After the stones have been dragged up the hill into position, people can dig the hill away with stone age tools.
None of it is incredible. Hugely impressive. Monumentally labour-intensive and time-consuming. Beautiful and imposing. But not incredible.
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It's statistical probability more than 'faith'
It's not faith it's probability...
We are here to ask the question so we know there is 100% chance of intelligent life in the universe (us), we know for a fact the thing we live on and the thing it orbits are nothing special and there are billions more in the universe....
It's probable there is and even more probable there will be or has already been intelligent life...
Faith would indicate no proof or scientific reasoning...
With knowledge and by observing their effect on other things. So, for example, it's possible to measure the size of a planet, calculate its mass from the effect its gravitational field has on other things and thus calculate its average density. That'll give you a very good idea of what type of stuff it's made of - a gas planet will have a much lower density than a solid one.
For more details - we've sent probes to some planets to make direct physical measurements. Indirect measurements can be made by observing what is reflected and by how much. For example, methane in the atmosphere absorbs visible light at the lower end of the spectrum much more than at the upper end of the spectrum, so full-spectrum visible light (e.g. sunlight) will be "de-redded" when reflected off of a planet with methane in its atmosphere - the planet will appear blue. Some things can be ruled out because of what we know about how materials behave and interact under certain circumstances, e.g. a planet with an atmospheric temperature of -100C is not going to have water vapour in its atmosphere.
The periodic table of elements is all things everywhere. All elements, to be precise. There could, theoretically, be elements with atomic numbers higher than any found on Earth, but the highest ones found on Earth only exist because humans make them in test facilities. They don't exist in nature. There can't possibly be any elements not on the periodic table because of how it's defined. It's essentially a count of the number of protons in an atomic nucleus and that has to be an integer for any element.
But we can question it, and some people do. I'm far from alone in understanding enough of the basics to be able to answer your questions. There are millions of people who could do that.
Well, you could do it with tentacles instead of arms and divisions of those tentacles instead of fingers and hands. You could have more eyes, two heads, more limbs...there are viable configurations that aren't similar in appearance to humans. But I think that an upright shape with some limbs specialised for movement, some limbs specialised for manipulating things rather than movement and an armoured head containing primary sensors at the top of the body (to get the best view) is most likely. As you say, it's a good setup for a tool-using species.
There's evidence of water on Mars, but it's not conclusive. It's pictures of things that appear to be mud that has moved. It's pictures of things that appear to have been made by moving water in the past. It's a possibility in Martian summer with salty water - it would be just warm enough for it to be a liquid.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14408928
It's not "faith" it's just the fact that it would be quite ignorant to solidly believe that we are it, given the grand scale of it all.
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To quote the film "Contact"
I'm not adverse to the idea that there are other intelligent beings out there. However, the universe is such an unfathomably massive place that it's just impossible to even begin to imagine what might be out there. Furthermore, it could be that some worlds are just starting out, and are going through their own evolution. I don't think we will make contact for 100k+ years if there are indeed other intelligent life forms out there.... if ever.
It makes it more important to appreciate what we have on this earth and embrace the life that we have been given.
I'm not adverse to the idea that there are other intelligent beings out there. However, the universe is such an unfathomably massive place that it's just impossible to even begin to imagine what might be out there. Furthermore, it could be that some worlds are just starting out, and are going through their own evolution. I don't think we will make contact for 100k+ years if there are indeed other intelligent life forms out there.... if ever.
It makes it more important to appreciate what we have on this earth and embrace the life that we have been given.
I think about this quite a lot.
It puts my brain into a spin when I think of everything that could be out there, and the fact that we are even here, on this big rock, floating through space, it's almost unfathomable.
I'm not surprised that some people try and explain this all with religion.
Just think, somewhere out there are vast natural wonders that we will never know, there could even be vast civilisations and cities stretching as far as the eye could see..
It puts my brain into a spin when I think of everything that could be out there, and the fact that we are even here, on this big rock, floating through space, it's almost unfathomable.
I'm not surprised that some people try and explain this all with religion.
Just think, somewhere out there are vast natural wonders that we will never know, there could even be vast civilisations and cities stretching as far as the eye could see..
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It's probability when it's stated as probability.
When it's stated as absolute fact and insults and derision are heaped on anyone who doesn't agree that it's absolute fact ("crazy", "ignorance"), then it's faith.
I was replying to the latter.
Could be. There could be a dozen major interstellar empires in this galaxy alone and we wouldn't know.
An empire spanning a thousand star systems would be an immense empire...and it would cover maybe 0.000001% of the galaxy. So the chances are that none of it would be anywhere near us.
Or there might be no life at all anywhere else, or only simple life such as algae, or only life up to maybe dog level of intelligence...we just don't have enough information to go on. We don't know the origin of life. We don't know why intelligence evolved - numerous other animals thrive without it. So we can't really say how likely either thing is. Maybe it really is a 1 in ~10^22 freak combination. I'd be very surprised if it was, but it could be.