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Forums - General Discussion - Are We Alone In The Universe?

 

Are We Alone?

Yes, I believe that we ar... 31 16.40%
 
No, I believe that we are... 158 83.60%
 
Total:189
enditall727 on 26 October 2013
Zekkyou said:
enditall727 said:

What about the countless reports of alien abductions? 

If one believed that we were not alone, wouldn't the abduction reports confirm that Extraterrestrial/Aliens are pretty close by?

If they have the technology to build and maintain a ship capable of interstellar travel, you'd also think they'd also have the technology to hide themselves from a species that, comparatively, is likely not much more intelligent than a mouse nibbling on some cheese. The "reports" don't mean shit without hard evidence. We live on a planet of 7 billion people, you can find countless eye witness reports of almost anything. Heck, there are loads of eye witness reports for the loch ness monster :P

To answer your question though, no, i do not believe we are alone. I think it's highly unlikely we will ever directly meat another intelligent species, but i think it's plausible for us to one day find signs of them. The time scale of the universe compared to that of life is too large, and the space between stars is even greater, and still growing. The chances of two species ever being in the right place at the right time and at least 1 with the technology for to find and travel to the other is not particularly high :/

The universe is cruel D:

Oh you mean like a cloaking device? I thought that this was the case in some situations? Isn't it usually said that they see it and then it either flies off very quickly or it phases out/dissappears(cloaks itself) right before their eyes.

 

I'm guessing that you believe that the existance of Aliens as we currently know it and its reports have all been a hoax?

 

Also, why do you think it's unlikely that we will ever directly meet another intelligent species? and what do you mean by "signs"?



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enditall727 on 26 October 2013
HigHurtenflurst said:
enditall727 said:
happydolphin said:
I've been watching Star Trek and the fantasy of space travel and inter-stellar, inter-galactic exploration makes the idea more imaginable, but I remind myself that really, none of it will ever be possible.

Also, as much as I would love for it to be true, I don't believe there is sentient life outside of earth. But it's definitely a fun idea, much like fairies and dragons and all sorts of fantastic things the human mind was created to imagine.

Why do you think that it would never be possible?

Also, why do you think there is no Sentient life outside of earth? If there is Sentient life here then why wouldn't it be outside?

What makes us so special?

The distances involved are ridiculous.

The middle point I disagree with happydolphin so I can't answer for what he might say.... though I guess it could depend on how sentience is measured, I suspect that anything developing similar intelligence to us is an incredible rarity compared to life in general, so in that sense:

Yes we are probably pretty special, but again compared to the distances involved it doesn't mean much... for example if 10% of star systems develop life, maybe only 0.01% of those develop complex life (it took 2.5 billion years from simple to multi-cellular life developed on Earth), and 0.01% of those develop any kind of sentience, and 0.01% of those become self-aware to higher mammal-like level... we are already down to a few dozen star systems in our galaxy and while i'll admit I am pulling figures out of my ass, I believe I am underestimating the difficulty life can have in advancing to more complex stages... probably particularly the change to multicellular.


But what exactly do we have to know what the "distance" would be? You pretty much need 2 points to have distance. All we have is earth. It's not like we know where an Alien hive is =P

 

We are special because we have the intelligence that we have. The real question is.. are we the "only" forms of intelligent life.



cbarroso09 on 26 October 2013

alone in the universe?
haven't u heard about the geathjerks?



irstupid on 26 October 2013

I would say no.

The universe is too freaking big to not have something else out there.

Will we ever see the something else? doubtful. It's hard to imagine us being the smartest beings in the universe, and then that begs the question of "how come these other smarter beings haven't contacted us in some way yet?"



DJEVOLVE on 26 October 2013

The numbers are in favor of life other then our own. Our Galaxy has around 400,000,000 stars, we are just one galaxy out of 100's of billions of galaxies. with billions of stars in each one of them.



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OooSnap on 26 October 2013

The truth about "aliens" https://plus.google.com/communities/100802510538509370761

And if you mean universe by that everything that exists then we are not alone because Jesus Christ, who is God, is in heaven with His angels. Satan and his demons roam the earth and under the earth in the spirit realm according to the Bible.



areason on 26 October 2013

We are not alone, thinking otherwise would be extremely arrogant.



areason on 26 October 2013
OooSnap said:
The truth about "aliens" https://plus.google.com/communities/100802510538509370761

And if you mean universe by that everything that exists then we are not alone because Jesus Christ, who is God, is in heaven with His angels. Satan and his demons roam the earth and under the earth in the spirit realm according to the Bible.


According to the lord of the rings, creatures such as elves and hobbits exist, i agree with you we are not alone. 



Andrespetmonkey on 26 October 2013
DerpSandwich said:
A star can have any number of planets orbiting it, each with any number of moons orbiting those.
A galaxy can have billions and billions of stars.
The universe as currently observable by humans contains millions of billions of galaxies.

If you think that there can't even be a single celestial body in this entire universe that is exposed to just enough heat to maintain liquid water and thus life of some form, then I really don't know what's wrong with you.

Yeah this is why I believe, but then I think of how vast time and distance is between everything in the universe and it just seems like an incredibly unlikely occurrence that two sentient life forms are alive at the same time and find eachother. 



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HigHurtenflurst on 26 October 2013
enditall727 said:
HigHurtenflurst said:
enditall727 said:
happydolphin said:
I've been watching Star Trek and the fantasy of space travel and inter-stellar, inter-galactic exploration makes the idea more imaginable, but I remind myself that really, none of it will ever be possible.

Also, as much as I would love for it to be true, I don't believe there is sentient life outside of earth. But it's definitely a fun idea, much like fairies and dragons and all sorts of fantastic things the human mind was created to imagine.

Why do you think that it would never be possible?

Also, why do you think there is no Sentient life outside of earth? If there is Sentient life here then why wouldn't it be outside?

What makes us so special?

The distances involved are ridiculous.

The middle point I disagree with happydolphin so I can't answer for what he might say.... though I guess it could depend on how sentience is measured, I suspect that anything developing similar intelligence to us is an incredible rarity compared to life in general, so in that sense:

Yes we are probably pretty special, but again compared to the distances involved it doesn't mean much... for example if 10% of star systems develop life, maybe only 0.01% of those develop complex life (it took 2.5 billion years from simple to multi-cellular life developed on Earth), and 0.01% of those develop any kind of sentience, and 0.01% of those become self-aware to higher mammal-like level... we are already down to a few dozen star systems in our galaxy and while i'll admit I am pulling figures out of my ass, I believe I am underestimating the difficulty life can have in advancing to more complex stages... probably particularly the change to multicellular.

But what exactly do we have to know what the "distance" would be? You pretty much need 2 points to have distance. All we have is earth. It's not like we know where an Alien hive is =P

We are special because we have the intelligence that we have. The real question is.. are we the "only" forms of intelligent life.

You need two points to form a straight line... there are other ways to calculate a distance. And the not knowing what direction intelligent life may be in is part of my point... I think it unlikely there is an equivalently intelligent form of life to us in our galaxy, and even if there is then the distances involved just to travel within our galaxy are so ridiculously huge that it means visiting them is highly improbable.

1. Is there life outside of Earth: Almost definitely
2. Is there intelligent life outside of Earth: Very probably
3. Is there intelligent life (beside us) that we will be able to communicate with within our galaxy: Doubtful
4. Is there intelligent life within reach of humankind: Maybe, maybe not... there are so many factors involved it is too hard to say, for all we know there could be a massive gamma ray burst that wipes us out before we have a chance to leave our solar system, or if not wipe us out could make leaving our atmosphere deadly.... Given enough time I believe humans will be able to colonise extra-solar worlds, but i'm thinking tens of thousands of years from now.