Post subject: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:14 am
Interweb Celebrity
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
yes or no. or, i guess, pitch whatever you think.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:21 am
Menace to Dogciety
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:54 pm Posts: 12287 Location: Manguetown Gender: Male
Yes, at least in a unicelular level.
_________________ There's just no mercy in your eyes There ain't no time to set things right And I'm afraid I've lost the fight I'm just a painful reminder Another day you leave behind
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:22 am
Spaceman
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:03 am Posts: 24177 Location: Australia
don't have enough information to have a truly defendable position one way or the other. i think it's probable there is some form of life at there, like bacteria under a rock type life. however i think it improbable there is intelligent, sophisticated life like humans out there. i don't say that to be narcissistic, i say it because of how unlikely it is that there are suitable conditions out there, like those on earth, in many locations.
_________________ Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear, Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer. The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:40 am
Unthought Known
Joined: Sat Dec 04, 2004 7:46 am Posts: 6099
it would be quite egotistical of us to think we were the only intelligent thinking organisms in our universe. I'm willing to bet there are civilizations millions of years more advanced than we are.
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:42 am
Unthought Known
Joined: Sat Dec 04, 2004 7:46 am Posts: 6099
vacatetheword wrote:
don't have enough information to have a truly defendable position one way or the other. i think it's probable there is some form of life at there, like bacteria under a rock type life. however i think it improbable there is intelligent, sophisticated life like humans out there. i don't say that to be narcissistic, i say it because of how unlikely it is that there are suitable conditions out there, like those on earth, in many locations.
who says life like humans aren't adapting to something we never heard about before? Who says it has to be a certain measure away from a light source with lots of water etc
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:51 am
Spaceman
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:03 am Posts: 24177 Location: Australia
I Hail Randy Moss wrote:
vacatetheword wrote:
don't have enough information to have a truly defendable position one way or the other. i think it's probable there is some form of life at there, like bacteria under a rock type life. however i think it improbable there is intelligent, sophisticated life like humans out there. i don't say that to be narcissistic, i say it because of how unlikely it is that there are suitable conditions out there, like those on earth, in many locations.
who says life like humans aren't adapting to something we never heard about before? Who says it has to be a certain measure away from a light source with lots of water etc
could be, but even so, it's unlikely to be on a barren gassy rock. it still has certain requirements which are likely to be very specific, even if they differ from ours. i really doubt there's life out there that isn't based on carbon or at least silicon, though.
_________________ Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear, Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer. The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:27 am
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:51 am Posts: 17078 Location: TX
Considering that there are thousands of trillions of stars in the universe, and a good percentage of them have planets, the chance that there is not intelligent life elsewhere is ridiculously small and equally hard to believe. In fact, statistically speaking, it probably makes a lot more sense to assume that there are billions of planets out there with life, and thousands to millions with intelligent life.
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:31 am
Supersonic
Joined: Sat Apr 02, 2005 2:48 am Posts: 11400 Location: VA via Chicago Gender: Female
Sure. I'd like to say no, but there is a whole lot more going on out there that we haven't even touched on yet. Maybe I've watched Contact too many times...
_________________ Frank
you're in my soul now. you've got to waste away with me.
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:35 am
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:51 am Posts: 17078 Location: TX
Make that 70 sextillion (7 x 10^22) stars in the universe. OLO
Which means that if 1 out of every trillion stars has a planet with life (keep in mind this means less than 1 per galaxy), that leaves 70 billion planets with life in our universe. If 1 out of every million planets with life have intelligent life, that is 70,000 planets with intelligent life.
Considering that the frequency of life, and intelligent life, is probably way higher than that, it seems pretty silly to play against those odds.
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:41 am
Of Counsel
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 1:14 am Posts: 37778 Location: OmaGOD!!! Gender: Male
vacatetheword wrote:
I Hail Randy Moss wrote:
vacatetheword wrote:
don't have enough information to have a truly defendable position one way or the other. i think it's probable there is some form of life at there, like bacteria under a rock type life. however i think it improbable there is intelligent, sophisticated life like humans out there. i don't say that to be narcissistic, i say it because of how unlikely it is that there are suitable conditions out there, like those on earth, in many locations.
who says life like humans aren't adapting to something we never heard about before? Who says it has to be a certain measure away from a light source with lots of water etc
could be, but even so, it's unlikely to be on a barren gassy rock. it still has certain requirements which are likely to be very specific, even if they differ from ours. i really doubt there's life out there that isn't based on carbon or at least silicon, though.
Even if intelligent life like humans could only exist on a planet of just the right mass, just teh right distance from just the right type of star, with just the right chemical composition, in such a state for just the right amount of time for advanced life to develop, I think it's highly unlikely that doesn't exist SOMEWHERE else in the universe, and I'd bet it occurs many times in our own galaxy.
I believe that given the proper conditions, intelligent life WILL occur, and it will tend to develop in many of the same ways that humans have.
_________________ Unfortunately, at the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the Flower Children jerked off and went back to sleep.
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:48 am
Interweb Celebrity
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
punkdavid wrote:
I think it's highly unlikely that doesn't exist SOMEWHERE else in the universe, and I'd bet it occurs many times in our own galaxy.
what do you make of this?
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
The Drake equation is closely related to the Fermi paradox in that Drake suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations (the Fermi paradox) suggests that technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves rather quickly.
wiki has a good entry on the rare earth hypothesis:
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 5:30 am
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:51 am Posts: 17078 Location: TX
Keep in mind, at least two unknowns in the Drake equation disappear if you are only asking the question if life exists in the universe. Basically you eliminate fi and fc, which are both below 1, and increase R to account for the universe, not the galaxy. So the result becomes much, much larger. Somewhere around the area of ten trillion times larger, actually. 1x10^9 bigger to account for each galaxy in the universe, and 1x10^4 bigger for getting rid of the .01 and .01 multipliers.
Post subject: Re: do you believe life exists somewhere else in this universe?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:18 pm
Interweb Celebrity
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
i forgot about this part of the god delusion, an excerpt of which i just grabbed from wiki:
Quote:
There are very many planets. This inevitably will include some Earth-like planets.
(….)The anthropic alternative to the design hypothesis is statistical. Scientists invoke the magic of large numbers. It has been estimated that there are between 100 billion and 300 billion planets in our galaxy, and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Knocking a few noughts off for reasons of ordinary prudence, a billion billion is a conservative estimate of the number of available planets in the universe. Now suppose the origin of life, the spontaneous arising of something equivalent to DNA, really was quite a staggeringly improbable event. Suppose it was so improbable as to occur on only one in a billion planets. (….) But here we are talking about odds of one in a billion. And yet … even with such absurdly long odds, life will still have arisen on a billion planets – of which Earth of course, is one. The conclusion is so surprising I’ll say it again. If the odds of life originating spontaneously on a planet were a billion to one against, nevertheless that stupefying improbable event would still happen on a billion planets. The chance of finding any one of those billion life-bearing planets recalls the proverbial needle in a haystack. But we don’t have to go out of our way to find a needle because (back to the anthropic principle) any beings capable of looking must necessarily be sitting on one of these prodigiously rare needles before they even start the search.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
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