Is there life out there?

[Purple Light]

I don't want this to veer into a conspiracy theory thread please (very easy to get from one to the other, Area 51 etc etc)...

But, what are your views? We alone or are there others out there?
How do they get here if they have indeed got here?

My view? Anyone who thinks we are alone in the universe needs their head testing. Evidence exists. You just need to look.


Anyway, a nice end of year topic! Please discuss with relish.

[nowayjose]

Evidence exists. You just need to look.

Ok, I'm looking.

Now, where is it?

[silentNate]

It's life Jim....

[eotunun]

There's not even any life in here. We are Eotunun of Goff.

After reading Stuart Kauffman's At Home in the Universe I understood that life is as much a part of the universe as is gravity or tea time.
Since that had influence on my religious feelings I burnt my bible and wear silly shoes now. I hope that means something.

[stufarq]

There may be others but they haven't been here. If they had, we'd know. And I mean really know, all of us. They'd have to be more advanced than we are, which would mean that no-one would be able to cover them up and they wouldn't need to hide. If the evidence really did exist it would be beyond doubt. The supposed evidence that we have can all be explained by other means and I'm pretty sure that discussion's already been had in another thread somewhere (although it might just have been another forum entirely, in which case I apologise).

[6FeetOver]

Anyone who thinks we are alone in the universe needs their head testing. Evidence exists. You just need to look.

I don't need any steeenking evidence. It's simply illogical - not to mention, mighty arrogant (in my book, anyway) - to assume that life doesn't exist elsewhere.

[7anthea7]

I don't need any steeenking evidence. It's simply illogical - not to mention, mighty arrogant (in my book, anyway) - to assume that life doesn't exist elsewhere.

...and typically carbon-centric - who's to say we'd necessarily recognise 'life' from elsewhere?

I'm not as convinced there's intelligence out there, though I sincerely hope so, as it becomes more clear to me every day that as intelligence goes, homo sapiens is doomed...

[eotunun]

Wouldn't that be a big waste of space if we were alone in the universe?

@ Anthea: Bingo! That's what I liked about Star Treck. They sometimes went beyond the idea of putting actors in silly costumes with antennas on the heads for displaying aliens.

Note to Jum: Dig out the link to that doccumentary on the web about the fictionary exploration of a foreign planet as suggested by scientists when you are not supposed to make a salad for a new year's eve party.

[Spigel]

[boudicca]

Anyone who thinks we are alone in the universe needs their head testing. Evidence exists. You just need to look.

I don't need any steeenking evidence. It's simply illogical - not to mention, mighty arrogant (in my book, anyway) - to assume that life doesn't exist elsewhere.

You always need evidence, steenking or not. To claim otherwise is to say a big fcuk you to the scientific method.
And it's not illogical, it's simply improbable that the chemical reactions and the environment needed to produce life (in a form we could recognise as life anyway) haven't occurred somewhere else in this vast universe.

[Silver_Owl]

You always need evidence, steenking or not. To claim otherwise is to say a big fcuk you to the scientific method.

What about that documentary series The X-Files?
They found all sorts of aliens and stuff.

[boudicca]

I stand corrected.

[Purple Light]

Evidence exists. You just need to look.

Ok, I'm looking.

Now, where is it?

Your not looking hard enough.

[markfiend]

Google the Fermi Paradox: In short, if they're out there, why aren't we seeing them?

It seems implausible on the face of it that our planet is home to the only life in our galaxy; after all, evidence suggests that life arose here on Earth pretty quickly.

(In an aside, the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System, particularly the Jovian and Saturnian moons (Europa and Callisto being the most likely candidates for liquid H2O oceans) will, if successful, increase our knowledge vastly. After all, the life we currently know of all descended from a single ancestor.)

That being said, Earth life only got to the point of a space-travelling species after 4 billion years or so, and even then only after a remarkable series of contingencies and chance happenings. For instance, the Toba supervolcano came within a whisker of wiping our species out a mere 80000 years ago.

I would guess that life is common in the universe, but as for space-faring species, if they're common, we should already have detected them.

One slight worry is the following situation: It has been suggested that a good way to explore the galaxy would be to send out a self-replicating robot. Once it reaches the target solar system, it builds copies of itself from raw materials on planets, moons, and asteroids, then sends the copies off to other star systems to do the same. It has been estimated that the whole galaxy could be covered in a million years. (You have to think of the long game ) So what happens if one of these robot spaceships from another star arrives and decides that the Earth is ideal for raw materials, and its programming doesn't recognise its inhabitants as life...

[mh]

And what if it's already happened?

I'm with Duggie Adams on this; any reasonable respectable alien species would keep well away from us, nasty brutish things that we are.

[Pista]

And it's not illogical, it's simply improbable that the chemical reactions and the environment needed to produce life (in a form we could recognise as life anyway) haven't occurred somewhere else in this vast universe.

I think (TBH) "illogical" is prolly better replaced by "impossible"
Possibility & probability are wonderful things that usually come & bite our erses at some point.

So it is possible, but probability (as we know it) suggests otherwise.
But it only does so as we simply don't fecking know.

[eotunun]

And it's not illogical, it's simply improbable that the chemical reactions and the environment needed to produce life (in a form we could recognise as life anyway) haven't occurred somewhere else in this vast universe.

I think (TBH) "illogical" is prolly better replaced by "impossible"
Possibility & probability are wonderful things that usually come & bite our erses at some point.

So it is possible, but probability (as we know it) suggests otherwise.
But it only does so as we simply don't fecking know.

In the first chapter of At Home in the Universe Stuart Kauffmann shows that if the beginning of life and the entire evolution was based on mere coincidence life would very unlikey have happened so far on earth.
In the rest of the book he uses chaos theory a explain how he understands the very quick development of organic chemical substances to the complex biochemical processes we call life.
The book mainly shows that probabillity has little to do with it, rather chaos theory and pools of mud with a lot of chemicals in it at the right temperature will almost innevitably produve life. As the matter of the right temperature is a question of what chemical elements are in the pool I understand that the water/carbonium based organisms we know merely are one of a vast variety of options.
I once read a science fiction book by James Blish (I can't even remember its german title.. ) that consisted of several stories about human like beings in various environments. I can remember his idea for a being that lived in a world at ~100° K, with bones of methane ice and so on.
It's science fiction, but it's an idea that would match Stuart Kauffmann's idea. Suggest a world that's full of various acids, metals and water: You'll encounter a vast variety of salts in that world. A salty or maybe even metal based life form might develope. Just one example.
I bet the world is much stranger than we can even remotely imagine.
Life and even conciousness may be much more normal occurences in the universe than we imagine.
Life and conciousness could be as normal as gravity or tea time.

[EvilBastard]

I reckon the problem is that the boffins are labouring under the misconception that "life" means "life as we recognise it" - carbon-based, oxygen-dependent, all that mullarkey. I'm relatively certain that we are on our tods in this solar system, but if life exists here then it almost certainly exists in other systems as well. There's probably a bunch of [x]lings sitting in a pub somewhere in another galaxy going "Arrgin flooptie xanthak'm phleedlphlod?" (trans. "So, John, you reckon there's other forms of life out there?"). The reason they've not come to visit us is probably the same reason we've not gone to visit them - they're too busy beating the crap out of people in other countries, just like us. "Well, you know, we'd like to build a star-voyager, and we've got the plans and stuff, but the government wants to spend another 300 billion klinglefarts on some fancy new weapon that will destroy everything but the fillings in their teeth. Guess we'll just have to wait until next year."
Endowing extra-terrestrials with some super-intelligence is wishful thinking - you know that when we do get around to visiting other galaxies we're going to find them peopled by the cosmological equivalent of chavs on sink-estates, all wearing hoodies and twoccing the neighbours' hover-scooters. The problem is that then they'll have our address, and before you know it your quiet cul-de-sac will be a battle-zone filled with 23-armed radioactive ASBOs throwing beercans at the cat and lowering the house prices. Better, surely, to spend a little more time exploring our own hunk of rock - who knows, with a little application and thought we might get around to working out how to feed and clothe the hungry people, prevent the widespread destruction of species and habitats, and...

...oh, sorry - wrong meeting.

[eotunun]

[stufarq]

Probability is pretty meaningless anyway. You can use statistics to mean whatever you like and the same stats are frequently used to support entirely opposite viewpoints. If there's a 99% chance of something happening then there's also a 1% chance of it not happening. But, taken in isolation without attaching our theories of probability to it, either outcome is equally possible simply because both could happen. So the probability of life out there is meaningless but the possibility exists. Either it's there or it's not and without evidence we just don't know.

[psichonaut]

we aren't alone in this infinite universe, but i think they miss the technology to come and visit us....or maybe they have been here.
watched a doumentary these days about a weird skull found don't remeber correctly where and analyzed by great scientists....i think someone else lives out of this asshole

[nowayjose]

watched a doumentary these days about a weird skull found don't remeber correctly where and analyzed by great scientists....

That's a hoax: http://www.si.edu/opa/insideresearch/ar ... kulls.html

[Purple Light]

EvilBastard, loved your post mate!

Don't have enough space to state my beliefs regarding this subject really. Actually, that's a lie, space is no problem. I just can't be arsed writing so much & putting so many links.

[markfiend]

(Europa and Callisto being the most likely candidates for liquid H2O oceans)

getting my moons muxed ip. Europa and Enceladus...

[psichonaut]

watched a doumentary these days about a weird skull found don't remeber correctly where and analyzed by great scientists....

That's a hoax: http://www.si.edu/opa/insideresearch/ar ... kulls.html

not that one but it was similar to this face