Extraterrestrial life

indykid said:

The Hubble Space Telescope (and others) has photographed what scientists consider billions of galaxies. Each galaxy is said to contain over a billion stars. And that is what is visible. To say that only one planet has life given the number of stars in the known universe being a number larger than can be comprehended seems to be very closed minded.

Now defining life as "life as we know it" is also closed minded considering what life has been found right here on our planet that defies logic. (Boy is that statement open to some fun!)

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You're of by at least two orders of magnitude - There's one study that claims there's two trillion galaxies.

But it's not closed minded to say we're missing a huge part of the the equation and as such, it can't be determined with any level of confidence.

Which is why SETI is a total waste of money so far.


PS that other thread has some good stuff in it; especial from members on sabbatical.

Expat said:

Scientists Find Evidence of Ancient Microbial Life on Mars – NASA Mars Exploration

An international team of researchers has discovered compelling evidence that the magnetite crystals in the martian meteorite ALH84001 are of biological origin.

mars.nasa.gov

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Thanks for the link!

Still seems a far stretch to call this any more than an indication. Our knowledge of the universe out there barely scratches the surface, and going from "these crystals wouldn't hold together like this if left on their own" to "there must have been life forms that made them" still seems like quite a bit of a stretch. That may be the most logical explanation, but I have a hard time believing it's the only one, and certainly a far cry from being compelling evidence. It would also be interesting to know if they ever found any of these crystals on Mars itself, or just on a meteorite they're pretty sure came form Mars. Also, the article seems a bit unclear on whether or not there's examples of the same crystal chains in life on earth. It seems to say there are, but then later says that the scientists only studied individual crystals, and not crystal chains, so I'm not sure what that means exactly.

It's a bit over my head though, so, I'm really just going off of gut feeling here...

Mathematical certainty.

The odds of life arising is 1. It already happened. What we are discussing is the odds of it happening >1.

With over 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe (2x10^12)(and an unknown number outside of our ability to observe), and something close to a billion stars in our own galaxy (give or take = 1x10^9), that is on the order of 2 x 10^21 stars. Some number of these have planets, and some number of those have the right ingredients for life.

The Drake Equation dealt with this math a bit:
https://www.seti.org/drake-equation-index

But, no one said it has to be "intelligent". We have already found water and simple amino acids outside of Earth. We have surveyed essentially zero percent of the known universe.

Will we ever document life elsewhere? Maybe? IMHO, Europa is our best chance locally. After that, we have to look pretty darned far.

Will we ever find "intelligent" life? Not likely at all, IMHO. Again, distances and time are so vast, whole species can come and go in the blink of an eye. Just because we are here, now, and looking, does not mean that anyone else was out there, however millions of years ago, doing something we could see.

My semi-educated opinion:
- is there life out there? Yes.
- is it intelligent? Reasonable odds.
- Will we find it? Not likely.
- Do extra-terrestrials visit Earth? No, they do not.

Note to add: we humans have only been engaged in "detectable" activities for 126 years or so (invention of radio). On the scale of the universe (some 13.7 billion years +/-) that does not even register. We essentially do not exist at that scale.

If they show up around here I'm going to do the international sign of the donut.

eldirector said:

- Do extra-terrestrials visit Earth? No, they do not.

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Then how do you explain that one time when I someone woke up with a headache and sore bum?

JettaKnight said:

Then how do you explain that one time when I someone woke up with a headache and sore bum?

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Bill Cosby?

Yes.

Because I know.

phylodog said:

I also think they'll be making an appearance soon and that the Covid vaccine(s) were actually meat tenderizers. Some of ya'll will be the first to go...
View attachment 193362

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FAKE!


Everybody knows that a young Jane Seymour would fit this picture better.


















Hell who am I kidding? A contemporary Jane Seymour would work there as well!

eldirector said:

- Do extra-terrestrials visit Earth? No, they do not.

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and you know that, how?

The biggest problem is physics. Since the speed of light is the limit of travel, and it is not possible to move mass at that speed, for me that settles it.

snowwalker said:

The biggest problem is physics. (as we know it) Since the speed of light is the limit of travel, and it is not possible to move mass at that speed, for me that settles it.

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FIFY... If other civilizations have developed "time folding" or "time travel" technologies then who knows? Remember a lot of stuff that only existed in science fiction has now come to fruition.

snowwalker said:

The biggest problem is physics. Since the speed of light is the limit of travel, and it is not possible to move mass at that speed, for me that settles it.

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That's assuming that travel through space is only possible by accelerating an object.

What about making the distances radically shorter?

snowwalker said:

The biggest problem is physics. Since the speed of light is the limit of travel, and it is not possible to move mass at that speed, for me that settles it.

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Physics as WE understand it perhaps.

I got a buddy who's wife I swear is an alien...

As Fermi said, "But where is everybody?"

My Logic classes are many many years and bottles in the past, so I don't recall the type of fallacy present in the assumptions here, but boiled down it goes something like...

There is life on Earth.
Earth is a planet.
There are many planets.
Therefore there is life on other planets.

And considering science *still* can't explain critical steps in the development of life, like abiogenesis itself but also eukariotic cells, the Providential alignment of chance occurrences detailed in the Rare Earth hypothesis not to mention man and intelligence/free will, it seems that any attempt at a calculation for extraterrestrial life - especially intelligent life - is best summed up in one of my all time favorite cartoons, the S. Harris classic:



This of course doesn't rule out the possibility, but based on the arguments I've read (and certainly the arguments in this thread) they so far sound like sci-fi fantasy... of which I am quite a fan, being a member of the Star Wars generation. I'd say the most logical response so far, and what I'd agree with, has been:

HoughMade said:

I have no information from which to draw a rational conclusion, therefore I have no position.

As for "odds", no one has enough information to calculate those either.

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I find it humorous those who will refute the possible existence of extraterrestrial life by citing an equally unquantifiable being as their baseline or standard.

I think actaeon277 offers the most insightful response with his link to Fermi's Paradox. If you're not familiar with it, I strongly encourage a read through. It boils down to three possibilities and three reasonings for at least one of the possibilities. The question is why given the Drake Equation's (eldirector kindly provided that link) suggestion that the universe should be teaming with life by sheer statistics, why haven't we confirmed it yet?

- We're unique: this is the common tack religious folks. God didn't mention any other extraterrestrial species therefore there must not BE any other species.

- We're first: a more evolutionary perspective implying there's some barrier to life consistently evolving to the level of current human intelligence and somehow we overcame the odds.

- We're f-ed: we're NOT unique and we're NOT alone yet we keep broadcasting ourselves out into the unknown recklessly. This is the most frightening of the three possibilities because it implies 3 most likely reasons:

1. We're too far away or too primitive to be detected by other intelligent species. Sometimes also called the Zoo Hypothesis, we're basically not evolved enough to be acknowledged by other species so we're kept at a distance, isolated in our own little wildlife sanctuary. We can only hope this is the reason!

2. We're ahead of the rest so they can't detect us or acknowledge us. This kind of goes in hand with "We're first" because if someone out there had tried to 'call' us little more than 100 years ago we would have neither detected them or had the means to respond.

3. Everyone else knows it's unwise to broadcast one's self into the unknown. Let's face it, if there is another lifeform out there, intelligent or otherwise, that has the capacity to detect us and the means to track our signal back to the source, this will be probably the worst case scenario for earth and humanity. Stephen Hawking was very outspoken about the folly of broadcasting into space because any response, especially an in-person one, is highly unlikely to end well for humans.

So Fermi I think had it right that our lack of findings isn't in itself proof we're alone and/or unique.

"Life" Interesting thought when you really think about it. "Life" can be defined by many but at some time we need to agree on what it means. What it they found one living cell on another planet....WOW, talk about headline news a all the high fives in the science department. WOW....and yet, one living cell made at conception is not "life". I can just imagine how delicately we would handle that one cell, how protected it would be; and yet....we're legally supported to kill a baby in the womb. Not one cell, but millions and millions.

I'll get off my soapbox to say this. I do not believe there is life "out there". Do not need a reason, just don't.

Think about this. We just affirmed a US Supreme Justice into a lifelong office and this person does not know what a woman is; yet she was affirmed.

We do not deserve to know if there is other life out there; not until we know what life it down here.

BTW, God is; period.

We haven't even explored our oceans properly and we don't even know what is in the deep.

Why rush to the stars when we need to explore here yet.

Why hasn't intelligent life from outer space not made contact or taken over? Probably because they are no farther along than we are.

Who knows if God created life in other solar systems, or other galaxies.
The Bible is about us on earth nothing else. We are the fallen from grace race maybe the others if there are others created did not fall from grace, and avoid our sin filled planet like the plague. I wouldn't blame them for staying away.

I'm not concerned about intelligent life on other planets. It's a waste of time, money, and energy imo.