Are we (and have we always been) alone in the universe...is there or was there ever other life, never mind intelligent life?

[bill5]

Saw this discussion elsewhere, dunno if it interests anyone here but:

 

One the one hand, the universe is a really...like really...big place. I read once that scientists estimated that there are 10 times more stars in the universe than there grains of sand on our entire planet. If you stop and think about that, esp if you're at a beach, even a small one and stare at all that sand, then think about all the other beaches and places like the Sahara etc...it's unreal. Surely in all of that, there has to be (or have been) some kind of life, right? Probably even intelligent life?

 

And yet...

 

That life could easily be so far away (big place, remember?) that it wouldn't matter; we'd never know about it. Also by most scientific evidence and estimations, realistically, life is really....again, really....rare at best, never mind intelligent life, for a boatload of reasons. Planets/moons with the right conditions for even a shot at life are extremely rare in the first place, and even for those that are, there's no guarantee life will ever emerge. And if it does, so many things need to happen just right for that life to evolve and last for even the tiniest bit of time (by cosmological standards), never mind sufficiently that it becomes intelligent (sentient) life. Drake's Equation covers a lot of this, though hardly all of it. Think of our own planet: if not for the one in a million Yucatan meteor that blasted dinosaurs out of existance, they may very well still rule the planet and not be any more advanced now than they were then, and we'd be little more than marmosets hiding in the trees. 

 

Even then...if you get past all that, to last long enough to develop technology just to get off the planet a bit, never mind farther, like the nearest stars or even part way across the galaxy? ugh. I therefore doubt any UFOs were aliens (though the idea is intriguing and fun to consider). The odds of a civilization not just lasting long enough to develop the technology but also existing at the same time we do for us to even recognize that hey, that's aliens trying to communicate, which would have been valid for oh 100 years or so now?  100 yrs out of nearly 14 billion that the universe has existed for? Massive reach to say the least. 

 

 

[Notes_Norton]

I think there is life out there somewhere, after all, the basic chemical building blocks of life seem to be everywhere we have looked and even with every interstellar rock that found its way to our planet. But with the great distances, we may never actually find out.

 

Intelligent? That's another story, but I'd say it's likely. It seems odd that with all these galaxies, it only happened once.

 

I think it was Carl Sagan who when asked if there was other life out there answered, “If not, it's an awful waste of space.” (Or something close to that).

 

To detect life with our radio telescopes, the aliens would have to communicate in a manner that these devices are designed to pick up and the timing must be right. If they live a hundred million light years away, they would have had to develop that communication 100 million years ago for us to detect it now. And we'd have to be pointed in the same direction as well.

 

As far as UFOs and space men visiting us – I have no idea.

 

When I was young, my first wife, myself, and two friends were on the beach in Florida. This was when there were no buildings on the beach, before Central Air Conditioning fueled the mass migration to our state.

 

Coming from the south was a bright light, moving very slowly, blimp speed, not airplane speed. It passed over us, probably less than 100 feet above us, following the line where the ocean meets the sand. It made no sound, not a hum, not a buzz, not even the rush of wind. THe night was still, and the ocean calm with little waves gently lapping on the shore.

 

The object was extremely bright, eye squinting bright, and we could see no shape past the light. About a quarter of a mile past us, it made a 90-degree right turn to the east. Not a swerve, bank, or anything like that, an abrupt right turn. And it zipped over the horizon in about a second  (that's about 4 miles away). Aliens? Some top secret government project from Cape Canaveral? Atmospheric inversion or something else I don't understand. To this day we call it the big, motherf-----g UFO.

 

Three of us remember it to that day, and probably the fourth, but we lost touch with him over 40 years ago.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[o0Ampy0o]

If everything is measured by distance and size the odds are against ever crossing paths with a sophisticated system of beings with a general capacity for intelligence like what exists here.

 

We are more likely to encounter an insect or bacterial form of life that can exist in outer space which piggybacks on particles floating aimlessly until they collide with other particles or a satellite temporarily in orbit which reenters Earth's atmosphere bringing it with it. It would need to be exceptionally hearty and capable of surviving extreme conditions, not impossible.

 

There are no rational gentlepersons in control here and the kids (of all ages) are as unruly as ever. If there is a way to access things through portals, folds, wrinkles and the like then we won't be the ones venturing out but we already have monitors here making sure we don't do anything to upset the balance of things by nuking everything or worse.

 

UFO's / UAP's as a topic have come and gone many times. Those weather / spy balloons spotted in the past year helped make it trendy again. There have been many ex-military people who have claimed there is a cover-up. It isn't new. It is only new if you are not old enough to have seen it all of the previous times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Anderton]

To paraphrase Pogo...some folks say there are other beings out there, like us. Other folks say we're alone in the universe. Either way...it's a might sobering thought

 

33 minutes ago, o0Ampy0o said:

UFO's / UAP's as a topic have come and gone many times. Those weather / spy balloons spotted in the past year helped make it trendy again. There have been many ex-military people who have claimed there is a cover-up. It isn't new. It is only new if you are not old enough to have seen it all of the previous times.

 

We're a tourist attraction and a pit stop. Remember too that galactically speaking, we're really out in the sticks. We may be the equivalent of the Vince Lombardi service center on the nothernmost part of the New Jersey turnpike. Maybe earth is the last chance to get plenty of water, and all the heavy metals and such in the oceans, before heading into intergalactic space. And maybe like the Vince Lombardi service area, it's best if the tourists do not interact with the native lifeforms.

 

We know it's possible for matter to zip through space at nearly the speed of light, because that's what neutrinos do. Whether neutrinos can be "assembled" into something, or matter can be deconstructed into neutrinos and then reconstructed...who knows?

 

The "lights in the sky" sightings don't interest me that much, it's the hardware ones where objects are distinctly visible. However, even if we're dealing with natural phenomena, that's of interest as well.

 

I still think people who thought they were abducted by aliens may have had an as-yet-unclassified seizure disorder similar to epilepsy. Losing consciousness, waking up hours later with no idea of where the time went, and a body that's a little the worse for wear are familiar seizure symptoms. 

 

I have zero doubt some "UFOs" are indeed military devices. There was a famous rash of UFO sightings years ago (don't remember the details) but if you drew a line of the sightings, they followed pretty much a straight line from Vandenberg AFB to the northeast part of China. It also doesn't seem overly preposterous to me that there were advanced civilizations prior to ours. We're about to lose ours soon, and wipeout-level disasters have happened before. Maybe there are beings who adapted to living in the ocean, and still live there. It's been said we know more about the moon than the oceans.

 

UFOs have been around for centuries, and more like millennia. There's enough unexplained stuff (like the controversies about the Dogon tribe's alleged knowledge of stars that can't be seen with the naked eye) and WTF stuff like the Easter Island statues that all I can say is "I dunno." As a species we're pretty ignorant, so it wouldn't surprise me if we're pretty much clueless by galactic standards.

 

 

 

 

[harmonizer]

We have detected evidence of many planets orbiting far-off stars that would seem to be a distance away from their star such that life could develop there. I would consider it much more likely than not, that many such planets have the chemistry needed to allow life to start.

 

Not trying to make this thread about religion, but if you believe a supreme being (I'm not trying to be disrespectful with my wording, just trying keep this generic here) created our human race, and if that supreme being is all-powerful, why would they care only about our planet, and not do something similar elsewhere - in our galaxy, or even in other galaxies?

 

Either way, I would expect there to be life out there, and expect it to be intelligent life at least in some places. It's still a really big universe, so there could be many places having intelligent life but where they are so far remote from us that having them and us detect of each other becomes unlikely. Consider that we don't know how long our own species can survive without destroying itself via advanced weapons technology - what happens if nuclear bomb technology becomes simple enough so that small individual groups can make a weapon powerful enough to destroy all human life on that planet?  This would be a much scarier situation than what we have now, where a number of nations have atomic bomb capability, but it's not as accessible as buying a house. If such weapons were to become available about one hundred years from now, and some small group of fanatics use one to wipe us out, this would only be about 200 years after the first radio transmissions of any type were made by humans on our planet. And what if similar things happen with intelligent life on other planets? This would really narrow down the window for advanced life forms on different remote planets being able to find each other.

 

Sorry for the depressing perspective behind this.

[BluMunk]

Like Bill and others have suggested, it seems incredibly likely that there is life elsewhere, and also incredibly likely that we will never interact with it or even know it's out there due to the vastness of space and time.

 

I grew up on Star Trek and Heinlein and Asimov and a lot of that mid-century imagination and optimism about space. I'd love to believe that there's some future where we are interacting with similarly-technologied beings, but despite the odds seeming very high that there are (or has been or will be) other planets with life out there, the odds seem overwhelmingly low we will ever meet them.

[Stokely]

I used to be more of a sci-fi optimist, being into SETI and all that.

Older I get, I hope nobody out there hears us, because the minute they come to check us out they are liable to stomp us out before we can make it off our own system.  Humans need to work on fixing ourselves and our societies and frankly we seem to be going in the wrong direction.   I see most social media as the our equivalent to the Krell mind machine--letting or Ids run free destroying everything, albeit not physically    The rich get ever richer and the middle class keeps shrinking--not hard to see where that will eventually end up.

Hopefully my pessimism is wrong.   As cynical and sad as it might seem on the surface, the human spaceship in Wall-e would be about the best I'd hope for with current humanity--a nice virtual world to enjoy while sane AI runs things, nobody to discriminate against or blow up.   

[surfergirl]

Reina del Cid & Toni Lindgren, Roswell.

https://youtu.be/iw6ZZG3NVMs

[ElmerJFudd]

I’m not sure what has changed about our society - but we hear fairly regularly now about incidents and sightings of unexplained craft.  We still don’t get answers as to what they are or who the designers may be - which is frustrating for citizens. 
 

Perhaps due to the internet it’s just harder to keep things quiet on this topic than it used to be.  And maybe since our own technology has advanced so much - the idea that there is something, someone out there that is more advanced is less likely to cause hysteria.  
 

It’s also possible that there are just developers on the earth that are ahead of the military industrial complex.  But that seems even harder to believe than aliens or future humans or dimensional jumpers or that were in a simulation and the UFOs are glitches in the matrix. 

[Stokely]

Putting aside the whole "do we deserve to join galactic society"...:)  

Granted, if aliens are here...they are alien.  Their motivations could be completely incomprehensible to us.  But a first question to ask:  why would a species capable of interstellar travel be tooling around our world?  Is it reasonable that someone with tech like that would ever be detectable by glorified cavemen?    Is it like Signs or District 9, these are the low-tech variants, maybe slaves that they carred on-board that took over?  Did they travel for 30 million years in some ancient tech, or tech that now has "fallen", and now are closer to our level?

On the surface of it, UFOs always seemed to be very silly to me.  It really doesn't make a ton of sense, certainly not that some aliens could have the know-how and resources to travel that far and now are spying on a bunch of plains apes with guns, let alone take over our planet.   

Fun to imagine counter-arguments though!

What if they didn't travel interstellar space, but bought or found a dimensional gate or wormhole in their local space?  (Purchasable wormholes, tech far beyond humanity's ability to make themselves, are featured in some hard sci-fi by Stephen Baxter).  You can bet that if humanity found a stargate they'd be off to exploit and try to take over the place it led to (a la the not-exactly-hard-sci-fi movie with Kurt Russell).

[KenElevenShadows]

I feel it's probable that there is life in other places in the universe.

 

I just want to point out that it is also possible that intelligent alien life may be wildly different from what we know about how life exists. If they do visit us, it might be difficult for us to even identify that. Who knows.

 

As for their tech, technology seems like magic for those who don't understand it.

 

As for my viewpoints, I have generally been very optimistic, but feel like I am increasingly aligned to something similar to what Stokely is expressing. Maybe we should erect a giant "DANGER KEEP OUT" sign that orbits our planet.

 

 

 

[bill5]

Good posts all. As for why aliens would visit us, I think that's easy: the same reason we would do the same - to know there are others out there and just plain curiousity, esp given how rare life is in this universe, never mind intelligent life. The only other possible reason might be colonization (survival), which is also the only reason IMO aliens would possibly be hostile. I think the idea of aggressive races like Klingons and Romulans (and really the Star Trek world in general, despite how much fun it is to watch) is absurd, because the more advanced technologically a species is, also the more advanced mentally and emotionally ("wiser") it must also be, or it will in fairly short order destroy itself, as we seem determined to do. An aggressive, violent attitude is not conducive to surviving with advanced technology (with great power comes great responsibility and all that  ).

 

Quote

Not trying to make this thread about religion, but if you believe a supreme being (I'm not trying to be disrespectful with my wording, just trying keep this generic here) created our human race, and if that supreme being is all-powerful, why would they care only about our planet, and not do something similar elsewhere - in our galaxy, or even in other galaxies?

Why not? We can't begin to understand the mindset of such a being, so it's an unanswerable question. 

 

Carl Sagan famously said (when asked why he thought there was life elsewhere) something like "if not, it's a great waste of space." But why? Who's to say that all that space has to have a purpose at all, never mind that purpose be life? 

[o0Ampy0o]

8 hours ago, bill5 said:

Carl Sagan famously said (when asked why he thought there was life elsewhere) something like "if not, it's a great waste of space." But why? Who's to say that all that space has to have a purpose at all, never mind that purpose be life? 

 

To your question:

"But why? Who's to say that all that space has to have a purpose at all, never mind that purpose be life?" 

 

Carl Sagan was rhetorically making the point that there is so much out there that if life did not exist and have a chance to evolve it would be absurd.

(Rhetorically with reference to a question with the aim of producing an effect or making a statement rather than eliciting information.)

 

 

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” ~from the book Contact by Carl Sagan

 

It is usually more tasteful to state it as "There was a famous quote by Carl Sagan that went something like..." People love famous quotes. Stating it as "Carl Sagan famously said..." makes it gossip because the attention is on Carl Sagan said something.  What matters is what he said and even more so what he meant. Once the content is appreciated it then is time to credit who wrote or said it. Wording it this way places the importance where is belongs. "There was a famous quote by Carl Sagan that went something like..." Or, you could just Google "Carl Sagan waste of space" and post “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” ~from the book Contact by Carl Sagan

 

 

Warning! rant to follow:

 

On the list of things you never have to say:

• "famously" ...if it was famously said everyone would know it and you would not need to tell people it was famously. Rather than informing people saying famously is an attempt to juice it / make something more than it was. There are exceptions but it is commonly used as gossip these days. Gossip as in tabloid journalism and especially news articles written by and for people aged 20-35.
• "same" when preceded by exact as in "exact same" ....it is redundant.
• "vast" when followed by majority as in "vast majority" ...simply saying "majority" makes the point. Using "vast majority" is usually hyperbole. In most cases the majority is all you need to say unless it is by a slim margin when you would make that point. If you need to emphasize the significant proportion use overwhelming majority because vast is too frequently used as hyperbole. There are also a lot of people who throw vast in because they think it sounds stronger. But it weakens the statement when it is there to dress up a turd.

[Notes_Norton]

20 hours ago, Stokely said:

But a first question to ask:  why would a species capable of interstellar travel be tooling around our world?  Is it reasonable that someone with tech like that would ever be detectable by glorified cavemen?

It would be like me going to the most run down, most dangerous, most polluted city in the world, and visiting the wrong side of town.

 

We're making a mess of our planet, and hating others is growing like windfire.

 

Plerhaps we need Klattu and Gort to visit us.

 

(For the unaware, watch “The Day The Earth Stood Still”)

 

Notes ♫

[Stokely]

Oh definitely a kind helpful guiding alien hand would be welcome.   Would humanity actually be willing to learn anything from them?  Or would we promptly get back on Facebook and Youtube and start watching "influencers" saying what we want to hear, facts and evidence need not apply (politically, medically, every which -ly).   If a flat earth movement gained steam it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest--it's far less batty than qAnon, and we have proud government representatives part of that...group.

My concern would be more evolved aliens that takes a look and says "better nip this in the bud before it spreads off planet"   Hence maybe it's better to keep a low profile until we evolve mentally to match our destructive toys.  Not super optimistic there, we are still basically tribal plains apes killing each other over mates and food and dominance, it's just that our sticks are better.

Then of course you have the non-hostile, but not exactly wonderful (well, depends on your outlook) outcome from Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke.  I found that book very disturbing and if you've read it you know it's not any kind of violent alien invasion.

[ProfD]

I've always gotten a chuckle out of human beings concerned with alien life forms when they haven't figured out how to coexist with themselves. 

 

The thought of UFOs and aliens visiting us is hilarious too. 

 

As previously mentioned, there's no reason for a technologically advanced life form to whiz around the Earth without landing their ship and stopping to visit Disneyland or sightsee the many attractions on Earth.

 

Then, there are the human beings who claim to have either seen aliens and/or been abducted by them and subjected to full body cavity searches. California isn't the only land of fruits and nuts.

 

Interestingly, as our technology has gotten better, there seems to be less UFO sightings.  I'll go with what was thought to be alien-spacecraft was really US military testing.  Those stealth fighter jets and other aircraft are real.

 

Considering the number of high-powered telescopes and satellites floating around, if there was anything flying through space or within the Earth's atmosphere at any given time, it should be detected like Girls on Film.

 

Yet, the lower forms of life seem to be perfectly content with their lack of evolution and doing the same sh8t over thousands of years. 

 

My favorite animal is the lion.  They have a social order.  They reproduce, hunt, eat, sleep and play and always seem to be chillin' with no worries.

 

Supposedly, human beings only use a fraction of their brains. Seems kinda silly to use the little bit of sense we do have wondering or worried about things we'll never know. 

 

But, as a species, human beings could start doing a better job of taking care of each other yesterday. 😎

[JohnG11]

I find it interesting to do the arithmetic, after all, it isn't too difficult.

The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about four and a quarter light years away. Now, just how far is a light year?

Well, the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second if Wiki is correct.

So, a light minute is 60 x 186,000 = 11,160,000 miles; a light hour is 60 x that = 669,600,000 miles; a light day is 24 x that = 16,070,400,000 miles.

So a light year is 365.25 x that = 5,869,713,600,000 miles. Which means Proxima Centauri is 4.25 x that away from us = 24,946,282,800,000 miles.

 

Assuming we can accelerate a space craft to 50,000 miles an hour, which we manage when we send things to explore Jupiter & Saturn,

By my caculation that means we can travel 1,200,000 miles in a day; so 438,300,000 miles in a year.

Lastly, divide 24,946,282,800,000 by 438,300,000 = 56,916 years.

 

So, if my arithmetic is correct (please feel free to check it) it would take us nearly 60 thousand years to get to the nearest star ... assuming that life exists there.

Hmmm! "The chances of anything coming from Proxima are a million to one he said!" ... sorry, where did that come from?

The chances of alien visitors from outer space suddenly diminishes to microscopic proportions. (IMHO) ... OR ... What d'ya reckon?

Comments welcme.

[KenElevenShadows]

3 hours ago, ProfD said:

 

 

Then, there are the human beings who claim to have either seen aliens and/or been abducted by them and subjected to full body cavity searches. California isn't the only land of fruits and nuts.

 

I'm gonna go off in the weeds here while remaining on topic. It'll be fun!

 

1.) California does have the most. But considering that approximately one of eight people live in this state, it's not too surprising.

2.) Most of California are a bunch of hard-working people who are facing heavy cost-of-living, brush fires, drought, and other effects from climate change. You can focus on the "fruits and nuts", but most of the people are people working hard and just trying to earn a living.

 

Now on to which states see UFOs most:

 

"Using data from the National UFO Reporting Center Database, the poll conducted by MyVision.org, also finds that more and more people think the aliens are already here! Going back to 1974, California has been the historical hotspot for UFO sightings. There have been twice the number of sightings in that state than anywhere else across America (15,401).

 

However, maybe this has more to do with the fact that there are simply more people around looking up at the sky. During that same period, Florida (7,749), Washington (6,866), Texas (5,786), and New York (5,590) rounded out the top five states making UFO reports."

 

 

 

https://studyfinds.org/ufo-sightings-usa-most-reports/

[KenElevenShadows]

12 hours ago, o0Ampy0o said:

 

• "same" when preceded by exact as in "exact same" ....it is redundant.
• "vast" when followed by majority as in "vast majority" ...simply saying "majority" makes the point. Using "vast majority" is usually hyperbole. In most cases the majority is all you need to say unless it is by a slim margin when you would make that point. If you need to emphasize the significant proportion use overwhelming majority because vast is too frequently used as hyperbole. There are also a lot of people who throw vast in because they think it sounds stronger. But it weakens the statement when it is there to dress up a turd.

 

Since we're going into semantics....

 

You are right. These can be used as hyperbole. But they can also be part of every day speech. You'll have to decide what bill5 meant.

 

 

At any rate:

 

- I think people say "more or less the same" to mean that it is very close, and that "exact same" is the precise counterpart to that. 

 

- A majority can mean more than 50%. I think that "vast majority" can indicate that the number is significantly over 50%.

[KenElevenShadows]

1 hour ago, JohnG11 said:

 

So, if my arithmetic is correct (please feel free to check it) it would take us nearly 60 thousand years to get to the nearest star ... assuming that life exists there.

Hmmm! "The chances of anything coming from Proxima are a million to one he said!" ... sorry, where did that come from?

The chances of alien visitors from outer space suddenly diminishes to microscopic proportions. (IMHO) ... OR ... What d'ya reckon?

Comments welcme.

 

This is assuming that extraterrestrial visitors live where we think they do, have the same technology we do, or are otherwise inhibited by the Speed of Light.

[Stokely]

Very true.  Besides alien motivations, they might have very alien tech.  Dimensional rifts or some other way to zip around.

Our tech is far, far away from ever sending humans over interstellar distances.   

I reckon the more feasible way to send "you" a long way is to not send meatbags in air-filled habitats (even if asleep somehow).  Send DNA and nanobot/AI artificers in a tiny ship that can withstand a ton more Gs that we ever could.  Send a ton of them out there, see where they land, and they can use their instructions to build new humans and their places to live.  Of course, will they really be "us" ?  And how can we have a pointless war with them over such distances, that's no fun!   Extra bonus points if you can build those humans to be adaptable to the destination; heavy gravity, high radiation, water world?  No problem!

One of my favorite alien races (well, in a horrible way) are the "wolves" of Alistair Reynolds' novels.   They are a machine race left over from a huge prior war that have one purpose--to eradicate intelligent life, because it's impure   They don't have time or numbers to sit around in every developing system, so they set up honeypots all over the place--weird alien artifacts that emit signals, calling anyone with the required tech to get there to come investigate.  Once they do, if they have the intelligence to break into the thing, it then calls out to the wolves, and they come in force to take care of the situation   I read that and thought, might want to dial back on the SETI transmissions...it's possible not everyone listening would care about our friendly intentions!  Same with the bad guys from the (awesome) Bob-o-verse novels...they finally responded to humanity's communication requests with a response to "food"--anyone not them is "food"--that included this great line, something like this from memory:  "The scurrying of food as it tries futilely to hide from us is the closest thing we have to art."  Real party animals, those guys!

[EscapeRocks]

I see a lot of reliance on the excellent sci-fi movies and tv shows in many of these posts.

While it may be nice to romanticize the idea that other intelligent life in the universe all sit around singing kum-bah-yah together, that's just us projecting.

 

Who's to say other possible worlds don't "suffer" the same foibles as humans?

 

Movies like, 'The day the Earth stood still,"  were metaphors for the times, which, granted, many of which do still apply.

Conversely, what if other life in the unknown are like the Kanamits, and simply want to harvest us to eat?

 

Going farther down this philosophical and theoretical rabbit hole:

 

Pretty much every species that we've identified on earth and in the oceans operate on the survival of the fittest.  Species have been killing for their own gain since the earth cooled.

Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick played it out in the terrific opening part of 2001:Space Odyssey, where the different sub species of apes would fight, with one dominating the other, until the "other" discovered using weapons (bones of dead animals) to beat to a pulp the others.

 

Again, who's to say some other developed life way out there doesn't or hasn't experienced the same evolution, so to speak, as we mere humans.

 

All this to say; when it comes to the "is something out there" question, I do not view it thru a jaundiced eye of defeatism, projecting any doom and gloom about us.

 

My personal feeling is any so called intelligent life, that has developed the ability to explore the galaxies, must have gained that thru imagination and curiosity.  That would be the driving factor to visit us.

 

Yeah, at 60 years old, I am still that kid who sat and watched with wonder when Neil stepped on the moon 54 years ago.    I get excited when I see the MARS exploratory rovers moving across hat desolate planet.  That's the stuff of dreams to me.

I've had the privilege to go down to Florida and watch a Space X rocket return to the launch pad.

 

So yeah, I do think there's something out there.  Whether we find out in what's left of my lifetime, I have no idea.

My curiosity and enthusiasm for the answer will not diminish.

 

 

[bill5]

  

15 hours ago, o0Ampy0o said:

 

To your question:

"But why? Who's to say that all that space has to have a purpose at all, never mind that purpose be life?" 

 

Carl Sagan was rhetorically making the point that there is so much out there that if life did not exist and have a chance to evolve it would be absurd.

(Rhetorically with reference to a question with the aim of producing an effect or making a statement rather than eliciting information.)

 

 

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” ~from the book Contact by Carl Sagan

 

It is usually more tasteful to state it as "There was a famous quote by Carl Sagan that went something like..." People love famous quotes. Stating it as "Carl Sagan famously said..." makes it gossip because the attention is on Carl Sagan said something.  What matters is what he said and even more so what he meant. Once the content is appreciated it then is time to credit who wrote or said it. Wording it this way places the importance where is belongs. "There was a famous quote by Carl Sagan that went something like..." Or, you could just Google "Carl Sagan waste of space" and post “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” ~from the book Contact by Carl Sagan

 

 

Warning! rant to follow:

 

On the list of things you never have to say:

• "famously" ...if it was famously said everyone would know it and you would not need to tell people it was famously. Rather than informing people saying mously is an attempt to juice it / make something more than it was. There are exceptions but it is commonly used as gossip these days. Gossip as in tabloid journalism and especially news articles written by and for people aged 20-35.
• "same" when preceded by exact as in "exact same" ....it is redundant.
• "vast" when followed by majority as in "vast majority" ...simply saying "majority" makes the point. Using "vast majority" is usually hyperbole. In most cases the majority is all you need to say unless it is by a slim margin when you would make that point. If you need to emphasize the significant proportion use overwhelming majority because vast is too frequently used as hyperbole. There are also a lot of people who throw vast in because they think it sounds stronger. But it weakens the statement when it is there to dress up a turd.

Good grief dude...you're seriously splitting hairs at best (PS: none of your rants are correct, but I've no interest in debating it) and waaay over-analyzing what I said. Well wait, I take that back; you aren't analyzing what I said at all, but rather the semantics of how I said it for reasons I can't imagine. I think it's clear what I meant. Further, my point remains. If there's no other life, it isn't necessarily a "waste of space" or "absurd." If a supreme being did indeed create this universe with no other life, clearly He disagrees. The universe doesn't necessarily have to have a purpose or reason to be the way it is, or a reason to exist at all...nor does life or the absence of life. I get that many people would feel that way, because we're alive and life is so important to us, and the idea that in all the universe we are it can be unsettling. But there doesn't "have" to be other life. 

 

And really this is sidetracking into philosophical if not religious talk, so I'd rather go back to focusing on the likelihood of there being (or ever has been) life, even intelligent life, and if so, the odds we might ever find each other before our species dies out. There are just so many factors working against us I think it's unlikely in the extreme, but it would be cool to be proven wrong. If we do find even the most primitive of life elsewhere, it finally answers perhaps the most profound question mankind has ever asked and kicks the door open for all kinds of other possibilities.

 

 

[bill5]

That all said.....my guess is that there is other life out there, and probably lots of it. I won't speculate even a ballpark number, but even if there's only life on one planet per galaxy, that's billions of planets with life. And I say that because about as soon as conditions were right for life to begin on Earth, it did. Surely there are numerous planets similar to ours due to the sheer number of total stars and planets. Of course this is assuming life would start right up similarly on such planets, which is a huge assumption. And even in the 1 per galaxy idea, they're all so far away, they would probably never know about each other's existence, even if both made it to be far more advanced than we are.

 

Most if not all of it however will not be intelligent life, and again too far away for us to know about it any time soon, if ever, unless we make some quantum leap in tech/communication abilities. If there is intelligent life, it will therefore be on them to reach out to us, and more likely by a message vs direct visitation. Of course something like wormholes or inter-dimensional travel or something else far beyond our comprehension notwithstanding, either we or the other species or both could be long gone by the time it gets here. 

[o0Ampy0o]

1 hour ago, bill5 said:

  

Good grief dude...you're seriously splitting hairs at best (PS: none of your rants are correct, but I've no interest in debating it) and waaay over-analyzing what I said. Well wait, I take that back; you aren't analyzing what I said at all, but rather the semantics of how I said it for reasons I can't imagine. I think it's clear what I meant. Further, my point remains. If there's no other life, it isn't necessarily a "waste of space" or "absurd." If a supreme being did indeed create this universe with no other life, clearly He disagrees. The universe doesn't necessarily have to have a purpose or reason to be the way it is, or a reason to exist at all...nor does life or the absence of life. I get that many people would feel that way, because we're alive and life is so important to us, and the idea that in all the universe we are it can be unsettling. But there doesn't "have" to be other life. 

 

And really this is sidetracking into philosophical if not religious talk, so I'd rather go back to focusing on the likelihood of there being (or ever has been) life, even intelligent life, and if so, the odds we might ever find each other before our species dies out. There are just so many factors working against us I think it's unlikely in the extreme, but it would be cool to be proven wrong. If we do find even the most primitive of life elsewhere, it finally answers perhaps the most profound question mankind has ever asked and kicks the door open for all kinds of other possibilities.

 

 

 

I addressed your reaction to Sagan's quote separately from everything pertaining to grammar. I don't see that you comprehend Sagan's quote nor what I said in that regard. But as a springboard for the angle you presented it's interesting enough. I thought it needed to be said that your interpretation was not what Sagan was conveying is all.

 

The comments on grammar were just a rant. A rant is not put out there for debate. It is just voicing how one feels about something. 

[RABid]

Only a few years ago scientists believed that two factors governed the likelihood that a planet could support life. Size of the planet and distance from the sun. Every star has a zone and in our solar system the zone stretches from Venus to Mars. But now there are many other factors. A molten core which creates a magnetic shield to protect the planet from radiation. A large, stable moon to keep the planet from shifting on its axis. They have even decided that plate tectonics is important to the survival of life (still being argued). A super planet like Jupiter to clean the the solar system and protect the world from impacts. The list goes on. As for space travel, they now realize that space is much more dangerous than once believed. From extreme levels of radiation to the presence of matter spread between the stars. It is now believed that the solar wind emitting from out sun protects us from several dangers outside of the solar system.

 

For years physicists have believed that nothing can travel faster than light. To even think about traveling the stars they have to put that belief aside and start figuring out possibilities that they currently deny. That is not easy for the science community. Too many believe that what we currently know is how it is. It was not that long ago that science believed that the earth was the center of the universe. It may take a while for physicists to believe that light speed can be exceeded. 

[bill5]

40 minutes ago, o0Ampy0o said:

 

I addressed your reaction to Sagan's quote separately from everything pertaining to grammar. I don't see that you comprehend Sagan's quote nor what I said in that regard. But as a springboard for the angle you presented it's interesting enough. I thought it needed to be said that your interpretation was not what Sagan was conveying is all.

Wrong again but not into going in circles, so not addressing this or you on this matter again FYI.

[David Emm]

First, there's The Gaian Bottleneck, which states that the conditions required for a planet like ours to develop are very narrow. The rest has been touched on by others already.
 
Second, I'm with Harmonizer in the "We'll Nuke Ourselves First" area. Part of the Gaian Bottleneck also refers to a society's potential self-destruction as a sure way to prevent further discovery. Its been a sci-fi trope for years, often echoed by the daily news.

 

Third, its less a matter of an Earth-like planet we'd like to THINK could support us and currently more one of "Good luck getting there intact." I also snort at the wish fulfillment of "Star Trek." If you cram people from 20 different planets into a closed space, the bio-hazards will start popping like corn. People will grow tumors and tails. Never mind magical movie solutions.

 

Technical note: The Moon & Mars are comprised of sharp-edged DUST, which attacks the crap out of every material in sight. Huge issue over time. There is also the problem of radiation. We don't have anything that can filter that as well as the atmosphere does. By the time someone gets to Mars, clomps around taking pictures and gets back, I'd call it Near-Guaranteed Cancer. It all presupposes much more advanced technology that can handle such issues, but we're still launching our satellites on huge plumes of toxic fire. You barely get an attendance ribbon from the Galactic Council at that level.

 

So in conclusion, bah.      

 

https://great-spacing.com/publication/61713/

 

I dreamed that aliens answered Voyager 1 with a single sentence: SEND MORE CHUCK BERRY.

 

[Notes_Norton]

We have life in the deep vents of the sea, which we didn't think was possible not too many years ago.

 

Furthermore, we find organic molecules on just about everything we study, whether it's a comet or Mars. Not that we are finding life, but if they are just about everywhere, if the conditions are right, I can't see it not happening.

 

We keep looking for planets like ours, but, why should they be? If the conditions are different on another planet, life might evolve to exploit the resources of that planet.

 

It's a question that probably won't be answered in my lifetime. So anybody's guess is as good as any other.

 

Notes ♫

[KenElevenShadows]

1 hour ago, David Emm said:

 

 

I also snort at the wish fulfillment of "Star Trek." If you cram people from 20 different planets into a closed space, the bio-hazards will start popping like corn. People will grow tumors and tails. Never mind magical movie solutions.

 

 

 

I just wanted you to know that all of us in Starfleet use transporter biofilters. These scan and remove disease and virus organisms from incoming individuals. The biofilter is only effective against known organisms that it is programmed to recognize, of course, but it prevents that very thing. Y'know, standard containment and eradication protocols. The viral organisms isolates them, and if necessary, we can study them or of course purge them. 

 

Just remember, I'm here to help.