What if we're alone?

[espiex]

I have been mulling over the possibility that we are alone in the galaxy, if not the universe.

Many people dismiss the idea, the naïve objection being that there are so many stars in the universe (100 billion billion by some counts) we could not possibly be the only place intelligent life has sprung up. But that’s an argument from personal incredulity, it has no backing with a sample size of precisely one known planet with life on it. We simply have no idea about the chances of intelligent life evolving in general.

Enrico Fermi asked a very good question – “where is everybody?”

The universe is about 13.5 billions years old, which is more than long enough for life to have arisen, expanded and filled the galaxy many times over before humans came on the scene. So where are they? Why do we not hear them or see evidence of their engineering anywhere in space?

I like to think that if humans hold on long enough, we’ll travel to the stars one day. But if we’re destined to do that, why nobody else so far?

Do you think we’re alone? If not, why don’t we see any evidence of them? And does it make a difference to your life whether we're alone or not?

[№1]

First thing we have to do is get over the arrogance that says we're looking for something out there thats just like us, we could be interacting with alien life all day every day and just not know it. I think one reason we haven't found 'life' out there is because we have no idea what we're really looking for.

[Captain Cannabis]

i think the argument against us being alone has gotten stronger lately. if we can find that the planet adjacent to us has conditions that are similar to those that enabled life on earth (yay phoenix lander), how do the odds look now? i am not saying that we found life on mars or anything, but its interesting nonetheless. if 2/2 planets checked had conditions for life, and 1/2 has life, then you don't have to be a statistician to realize the odds of "life" elsewhere given a practically unlimited number of places to look

[Vertigo]

I think if you do not believe there is life out there then you do not believe you exist at all. theres many posibilities, but the thought of being alone makes me feel small, week, alone... maybe its like MIB, the universe is just a small marble in a bag full of hundreds that some higher force's child is playing with before dinner...

[kamikazi89]

i would sway untill we find some, the odds don't really make a big diiference

[The Rev]

The Earth situation is kind of special. It's not just that we have water, or are located near enough to the right kind of star. We also have a satellite (the moon) which is large enough to be a great influence on the conditions on the Earth's surface. Without the moon, we'd pretty much be fucked, as it is responsible for the tides and all the effects that they have on things like ocean currents, etc.

I would imagine that this kind of arrangement is not the odds on favorite in planetary systems, but it might be necessary to create the kind of dynamic system that generates diverse life (diversity which might be necessary for intelligent life to have a place to develop).

This is all speculative, but if I'm right, then only a small number of systems, in spite of the large number of G-class stars, would be able to replicate the conditions found here, and generate similar forms of intelligent life. If it's 1 in 100,000 G-type stars, then the likelihood that the nearest similar system is close enough for contact is very very small, and we would seem to be alone (in spite of Dr. Fermi's consternation).

On the other hand, the Universe could be teeming with intelligent life, and they could just be avoiding us because we're complete fucking psychos. I mean, think about it. Our favorite spiritual symbol is a guy nailed to a cross. How's that for a "Stay Away" sign?



The Rev

[all_toked_up]

but what if there are other forms of life that don't need the same conditions as us to live? therefore when were looking for thinks such as water and breathable air on other planets, we are just looking for things that would support human life! what if the other life forms out there are more advanced than we are are don't need the same conditions for life as we do?

[Home Wrecker]

I think there very well could be life scattered around the universe but it is going to be hard to have any kind of meaningful contact if they are thousands or millions of light years away. Forget visitors, just getting a conversation going would be difficult.

Beyond overcoming the distance you have to keep in mind the timing aspect of it all. Big bang happens ~14 bya, earth was formed ~4 1/2 bya, life begins maybe 3 1/2 bya (hard to say exactly), humans pretty similar in substance to ourselves show up a couple hundred thousand years ago, and now we have been using communication techniques capable of covering large distances since around the start of the 20th century.

I guess my point is basically that we potentially could have missed messages from other societies (if they even bothered to send them). Messages we have sent into space really haven't even had a chance to get very far yet or get answered assuming they happen to be received by a society capable of responding. Even if there were societies capable of answering they could have come and gone in the 14 billion years since the start of our universe.

When you think about the amount of time that has passed in the universe compared to the amount of time humans have had the technology to explore space it seems almost unlikely we would find anything current. And how long do we ourselves have before we run out of resources and things start to degrade?

[Waves]

Originally Posted by espiex

I have been mulling over the possibility that we are alone in the galaxy, if not the universe.

Many people dismiss the idea, the naïve objection being that there are so many stars in the universe (100 billion billion by some counts) we could not possibly be the only place intelligent life has sprung up. But that’s an argument from personal incredulity, it has no backing with a sample size of precisely one known planet with life on it. We simply have no idea about the chances of intelligent life evolving in general.

What about the drake equation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Enrico Fermi asked a very good question – “where is everybody?”

The universe is about 13.5 billions years old, which is more than long enough for life to have arisen, expanded and filled the galaxy many times over before humans came on the scene. So where are they? Why do we not hear them or see evidence of their engineering anywhere in space?

maybe they just havent wanted to talk to us yet? i mean look at our species. mostly we just blow each other up and steal each others shit. maybe if there are intelligent species out there, they are waiting for us to evolve ourselves to their level before stepping in and attempting to play god with our species. if i was an alien, i would take one look at our species and jet the fuck out of here before any human could see me and blow me up.

Do you think we’re alone? If not, why don’t we see any evidence of them? And does it make a difference to your life whether we're alone or not?

to me it makes no difference. i think we will see evidence as time goes on, maybe it will be revealed that our world governments already have evidence. we just dont know. we are the lowly masses, we get to find shit out last.

[Waves]

Originally Posted by Home Wrecker

When you think about the amount of time that has passed in the universe compared to the amount of time humans have had the technology to explore space it seems almost unlikely we would find anything current.

and thats another thing. if there is intelligent life out there whos to assume that they are vastly superior to us in technology? maybe they are still in what would look to us like tribal stages of development. maybe they are at OUR stage of development and in the future when our respective technologies evolve we will contact each other. who knows?

[Captain Cannabis]

Originally Posted by kamikazi89

i would sway untill we find some, the odds don't really make a big diiference

until we've looked everywhere there's no point in saying that there definitely isn't life. the odds do make a difference if we have barely ventured off our own planet and not even out of our solar system to seek it. you might feel alone, but its similar to a forest. you are really not that far from a lot of insects in the forest, if you know what to look for. if you don't look for them then you might feel alone because you might not see any.

saying definitely no to the question "are we alone?" sounds pretty illogical considering the circumstances. is there life exactly as it is on earth? the odds of that are extremely low. when searching for life scientists only know how to test for DNA based life. there could be all kinds of RNA based life we don't know about here on earth. life on other planets could mean something totally different than here.

[Ego Tripping]

Originally Posted by №1

First thing we have to do is get over the arrogance that says we're looking for something out there thats just like us, we could be interacting with alien life all day every day and just not know it. I think one reason we haven't found 'life' out there is because we have no idea what we're really looking for.

Yup.

What's funny is that we're still looking for something physical that we can perceive with one of our 5 senses. We're just too narrow minded and arrogant as a species to find life outside Earth yet, but we're rapidly approaching the day when we end up finding that life was everywhere we were looking...we just needed to take our blinders off to see them.

[fluids]

it's extremely egotistical to think that we are alone. how can anyone think that we are the only species special enough to achieve a "higher plane" of thinking...

[Home Wrecker]

Originally Posted by fluids

it's extremely egotistical to think that we are alone. how can anyone think that we are the only species special enough to achieve a "higher plane" of thinking...

Your open-minded enlightenment is an inspiration to us all.

[kamikazi89]

Originally Posted by Captain Cannabis

until we've looked everywhere there's no point in saying that there definitely isn't life. the odds do make a difference if we have barely ventured off our own planet and not even out of our solar system to seek it. you might feel alone, but its similar to a forest. you are really not that far from a lot of insects in the forest, if you know what to look for. if you don't look for them then you might feel alone because you might not see any.

saying definitely no to the question "are we alone?" sounds pretty illogical considering the circumstances. is there life exactly as it is on earth? the odds of that are extremely low. when searching for life scientists only know how to test for DNA based life. there could be all kinds of RNA based life we don't know about here on earth. life on other planets could mean something totally different than here.

i didn't say there wasn't, just that the odds are irrelevant

p.s. douglas adams is awesome ..

[verklingen]

being able to perceive alien civilizations isn't very valuable much in terms of survival: the thing upon which our entire capacity for perception is based. everything we perceive in the cosmos is only perceived as it relates to our own planet and the evolution thereof. our sense of time, size, etc is so hopelessly biased that to think an alien civilization which developed from within similar senses of these concepts would also have developed within detectable proximity is almost laughable imo.

to my eyes, we don't even fully understand the life on our own planet. we have "alien" intelligence in our own backyard in the form of cetaceans. maybe we should try contacting them first? you know, get our feet wet. whatever it is, alien contact is surely not something we should just plunge into. dolphins and whales can probably make more sense of this anyway:

[badgoalie85]

Originally Posted by Waves

What about the drake equation?

Drake equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

that equation breaks down, imho, when it assumes that the number of planets per star capable of supporting life is equal to two. there is NO way of having an accurate estimation of this figure to my knowledge. take our solar system, for instance. we have 1 planet that can support life, and another that we think possibly at one time could have supported life. what exactly are the criteria for being able to support life? It further breaks down when it assumes .01 for everything. that's just taking a stab in the dark imo and has no real statistical merit (not that most statistics have much statistical merit anyway). i just think before we start trying to calculate the chances of contacting an alien race maybe we should have some data to work with first.

edit: from the wiki article it appears that drake himself didn't really think the equation had any statistical merit, but rather was a way to order the factors involved with such a calculation.