Poll do you think there is life out there

[jinglesassy]

Hello, i am wondering how many people here think there is life out there somewhere. personally i think there is life out there somewhere becuse of the sheer mass of even our own galaxy.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Yepm and for the same reason. Even if it's a one in a billion chance, well there's 100 billion systems out there...

 

[ryan]

It depends on how you define life, microbial life is more proable but little green men who wants to be taken to our leader, nah.

 

[jinglesassy]

life as in anything living it can be microbial or complex things like a dog or intelligent things like us.

 

[ryan]

or intelligent things like us.

:rofl::rofl:

 

[jinglesassy]

:rofl::rofl:

hey we are more intelligent then dogs!

 

[willy88]

hey we are more intelligent then dogs!

But not dolphins or mice.

 

[jinglesassy]

stop the human bashing you are humans too you know :rofl:

 

[Hielor]

If we're alone, it's an awful lot of wasted space.

 

[jinglesassy]

If we're alone, it's an awful lot of wasted space.

yep thats for sure

 

[Linguofreak]

Yepm and for the same reason. Even if it's a one in a billion chance, well there's 100 billion systems out there...

There's alot more star systems in the universe than that. But we don't know if it is a one in a billion chance. It could be a 1 in 1000 chance, in which case the nearest system with life could be within a few tens of light years. It could be a one in 10^100 chance, in which case we're lucky that even we're around (there aren't even 10^100 atoms in the universe). Or it could be utterly impossible, and we only exist because of divine interference, in which case we don't really know how much life might be out there, since it would depend entirely on divine whim (just as it would if the odds of life forming in a given system were quite high, but divinely suppressed).

In any case, the only good answer to that question, until either we find life out there, or have searched every nook and cranny in the universe is "I don't have a clue."

Maybe this says it best (warning, mild foul language):

http://xkcd.com/384/

 

[jinglesassy]

dont start a flame war here i have a chainsaw :chainsaw:

 

[ijuin]

I'd expect that the majority of planets that have had the right conditions to support life and have maintained these conditions uninterrupted for a couple billion years would have at least something bacteria-like on them, and also that we'll probably find that some subset of those planets have some more advanced life on them (i.e. plant-like and animal-like), but I doubt that we'll encounter another civilization within several hundred light years of ourselves--if there were anybody nearby who was at or above our tech level, then we'd know about them already--even if they don't do high-power radio transmissions, the mere fact that such a civilization would use dozens to thousands of terawatts of electricity on their planet(s) would create regular EM waves that we could detect for a couple hundred light years around.

So, in sum, alien biospheres--yes. Alien cavemen--possibly. Alien star travelers--probably not till we've expanded to hundreds of stars ourselves.

 

[jinglesassy]

ijuin well said

 

[Kaito]

I am 99.99% sure there is life out there, both microbial and intelligent, and probably there are some that are traveling within their own galaxy.

However, I doubt we'll find them any time soon

 

[Artlav]

I think there are, and many.
The world around us show fractal properties on all levels, so it's reasonable to assume that not too far away there will be something quite similar to what we have here.

It works for stars and planets, it works for trees in the forest, it works for atoms, why shouldn't it work for life and civilizations?

 

[jedidia]

First, there is the problem of a lot of unknowns in the drake equation, so we couldn't possibly tell how many intelligent species might have formed. Even if some did, there still remains the Clarkian "Apes or Angels" problem: It would be most unlikely that we'd find any species on a similiar Tech-level, They would either be "apes" (i.e. so far behind that we couldn't use them for much more than playing gods with them), or they would be "angels" (i.e. so far advanced that they couldn't use us for much more than playing gods with us...).
Clarke is however assuming that a transcendental state becomes possible given a far enough advanced technology, which is highly hypothetical. But this is a highly hypothetical discussion after all...
An other assumption might be that there is a "show-stopper" somewhere, that physics put a total stop to technological advance at some point. Depending on where that stopper would be (e.g. if it does allow for any kind of FTL-travel at all), we might find other species at this highest technological level when we reached it ourselves.

IF the second comming doesn't get in between. After all, we're hypothetical here!

 

[V8Li]

Yes, what are the chances there isn't?

 

[ijuin]

I can agree with the "Angels or Apes" notion. Think of how long humans have had any civilization to speak of above small independent villages--ten thousand years or so? Now compare that to the age of the whole galaxy--ten BILLION years or so. Life on Earth has existed for a thousand times longer than anything human has, and a hundred thousand times longer than anything that we would call civilization. That is why I expect that we will find dozens of pre-civilized yet intelligent species for every civilized one that we find (i.e. hunter-gatherers).

One the other end of things is the Fermi Paradox. Even if faster-than-light travel is impossible, and we assume that a colony world is settled for one thousand years before it sends out its own colony missions (compare to 300 years between first settlement of North America and first USA attempts to colonize distant places such as the Philippines), it would still take maybe ten million years to colonize the entire galaxy--only a thousandth of the galaxy's current age. Why, then, has no galactic empire/federation already colonized the whole galaxy? You would have to assume that NOBODY in the whole galaxy is willing to break the Prime Directive and settle Earth even for the billions of years before there were any people around here--and it's pretty certain that there has been no industrial civilization on Earth prior to our own since before the dinosaurs became extinct, or else they would have already mined all those surface veins of minerals that early humans found.

Thus, either there is NO galaxy-spanning civilization that likes to colonize Earth-like planets that have biospheres but no people, OR they have been able to resist the temptation to occupy this nice uninhabited planet for millions or billions of years--or else there is something about the conditions or biology on Earth that makes it undesirable for whatever races have been in control of this part of the galaxy for all this time. The mere notion that aliens could reach Earth but didn't want to exploit it before humans even arose implies that they are either so different from our biology that our biosphere is uninhabitable to them, or else that they have some psychological aversion to settling already-established biospheres that is stronger than their desire to have an additional world to own for even the greediest among them over thousands of generations.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Thus, either there is NO galaxy-spanning civilization that likes to colonize Earth-like planets that have biospheres but no people, OR they have been able to resist the temptation to occupy this nice uninhabited planet for millions or billions of years--or else there is something about the conditions or biology on Earth that makes it undesirable for whatever races have been in control of this part of the galaxy for all this time.

It also can be explained by primitiveness of our own thinking of the ways of space colonization. It's quite possible that an advanced spacefaring civilization won't have a use for Earth-like planets at all. They might be interested in highly energetic environments in vicinity of gigantic stars or core regions of the galaxy with tighter distances between stars, for instance. Perhaps, they don't need the handfuls of mineral dust the small rocks like our Earth can offer, anymore.

Luckily for us.