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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 said:
SlayerRondo said:
Currently i have seen no evidence for the existence of aliens but the existence of water on other planets/moons in our solar system it would seem to indicate that life could exist on other planets.

And given the size of the Galaxy, it seems very probable life exist outside of earth.

Currently I don't believe in the existence of aliens and am not certain in that belief.


So do you believe that all of the supposed Alien reports and encounters were all lies and a big hoax?

To be honest I do believe that none of the claims of alien life visiting earth have supplied sufficient evidence for me to believe them true.

So yes i believe the claims are either lies, a hoax or delusions.



This is the Game of Thrones

Where you either win

or you DIE

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HigHurtenflurst said:

Well I got started on a little bit of it, but a lot of it comes down to time constraints... As I (and some others) have mentioned, life on this planet has spent more time in unicellular form alone than not, and the good conditions for complex life such as ourselves will degrade in another billion(ish) years. (more simple life can probably last another 2-3 billion before the effects of the dying Sun render this planet uninhabitable)

So on Earth simple life has so far been around ~4 billion years, and could last another 3 billion. Complex life has existed for less than a billion years, and probably doesn't have much more than a billion years left (though some forms may be able to continue existence in deep oceans).

Sol isn't a particularly special star, stars with more mass than the Sun go through life quicker and would allow even less time for life to evolve past the simplest stages... and stars with significantly more mass might even be too violent to form a decent planetary system in the first place.

There are so many factors to take into account to allow for life (at least life as we know it)... for life in general lots of planets will go through stages of being adequate for simple life to form, but the universe is ever changing, and the time most planets will spend in even an "adequate" (rather than ideal) stage is limited.

More complex life needs more time and more ideal circumstances than most planets will be able to give.

That's what we assume from our experience. Maybe in other systems it doesn't need this much time to evolve more complex life. Perhaps because Earth is so stable and protected it got stuck in a local maximum of boring bacterial life for billions of years. We could simply be in a boring low density part of the galaxy where no one would expect complex life to show up, hence no one is checking us out. As far as we've come scientifically, the feeling that we must be special is still tainting our conclusions.

We can only start to make generalizations about how life develops after we have examined more star systems, a sample size of 1 is pretty poor. All we know for now is that life manages to survive everywhere on the planet where we least expect it and organic material can hitch a ride on asteroids between planets. At least simple life should be very common in the universe.



Lafiel said:
SvennoJ said:

It could also be that we're in a relatively uninteresting part of our local galaxy, on the outskirts of the milky way system. If we develop ftl where would you go first. Besides even if alien species were able to observe the entire night sky, we've only been transmitting signals into space for less then a hundred years.

There is also the hypotheses that everything we send into space becomes indistinguishable from white noise within just 2 light years, which is not even half way to proxima centauri, the closest star to our solar system.


True there's that. We're just beginning to be able to detect planets ourselves. Picking up their radio or tv communications seems a bit far fetched.
We're sending focussed targeted messages into space now though, they should be able to get hundreds of light years out before dissipating. You can send one right now to Gliese526 to arrive there in 17.6 years. http://www.lonesignal.com/

Yet what are the chances that even if someone is out there, that they have a powerful radio telescope pointed at earth to pick up our signals.



enditall727 said:

We are 3 Dimensional/3rd Density beings, correct? Well supposedly, a being will not be able to fully understand the dimensions below it and over it. So a 2 Dimensional being cannot and will never fully understand the 3 Dimensional plane until it gets there.

 

A 2 Dimensional Being that fully transitions to the 3 Dimensional plane will not be able to understand how it was able to even fathom living in the 2 Dimensional/2nd Density plane.

 

 

Now lets look at us, and our 3 Dimensional selfs. We cannot fathom the thought of even living in a 2 Dimensional/ 2nd Density Plane. We also cannot fully understand the 4 Dimensional/4th Density plane.

 

 

When i was looking up some Alien type info, i came across something that was very interesting. A guy who was describing his supposed encounter with a UFO. He was basically going on about how weird it was. He commented on the weirdness of how it was able to move and bend. He was going on about it and how he just couldn't "UNDERSTAND" it and how it was almost as if it wasn't of this "DIMENSION"

 

 

Which rises the question " Could these supposed unexplainable, extraterrestrial beings/encounters be from another dimension?"

 

We can fathom living in a 2 dimensional space.  Edward Abbott wrote about the possibilities of the whole experience in his novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.  He talks about flat landers having no stomachs since it would divide the being in half. 

There's a flash movie that explains what you're pointing at.  Planes from dimensions 1 to 10, perhaps even an 11th dimension.  It's real cool stuff to try to wrap your brain on. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjsgoXvnStY

As for answering the OP... I can't.  Simply, I would suggest to be open minded and skeptical at the same time.  We humans are proof in itself that life exist.  There's no way I can prove the same elsewhere in the universe, but the chances of other civilizations elsewhere is not 0%.  To believe that we are the only living beings with intellectual thought is sort of sad.  The possibilities, the kinship we can share in understanding that we're not simply life forms clinging onto a small dirt clod. 

Here's to all of us.



SvennoJ said:
HigHurtenflurst said:
 

Well I got started on a little bit of it, but a lot of it comes down to time constraints... As I (and some others) have mentioned, life on this planet has spent more time in unicellular form alone than not, and the good conditions for complex life such as ourselves will degrade in another billion(ish) years. (more simple life can probably last another 2-3 billion before the effects of the dying Sun render this planet uninhabitable)

So on Earth simple life has so far been around ~4 billion years, and could last another 3 billion. Complex life has existed for less than a billion years, and probably doesn't have much more than a billion years left (though some forms may be able to continue existence in deep oceans).

Sol isn't a particularly special star, stars with more mass than the Sun go through life quicker and would allow even less time for life to evolve past the simplest stages... and stars with significantly more mass might even be too violent to form a decent planetary system in the first place.

There are so many factors to take into account to allow for life (at least life as we know it)... for life in general lots of planets will go through stages of being adequate for simple life to form, but the universe is ever changing, and the time most planets will spend in even an "adequate" (rather than ideal) stage is limited.

More complex life needs more time and more ideal circumstances than most planets will be able to give.

That's what we assume from our experience. Maybe in other systems it doesn't need this much time to evolve more complex life. Perhaps because Earth is so stable and protected it got stuck in a local maximum of boring bacterial life for billions of years. We could simply be in a boring low density part of the galaxy where no one would expect complex life to show up, hence no one is checking us out. As far as we've come scientifically, the feeling that we must be special is still tainting our conclusions.

We can only start to make generalizations about how life develops after we have examined more star systems, a sample size of 1 is pretty poor. All we know for now is that life manages to survive everywhere on the planet where we least expect it and organic material can hitch a ride on asteroids between planets. At least simple life should be very common in the universe.

Indeed that is possible. (though I personally think a planet being in a stable well protected environment would be a catalyst to more evolved forms rather than a stagnating effect... yes adversity often breeds diversity, but in a microbial world spreading across the face of a planet would help things along)

In terms of time constraints, red dwarf stars (which I believe make up 60-70% of our galaxy in terms of number of stars) are more likely to have planets in favourable conditions for billions of years, though I am unsure whether the decreased energy output of the star is likely to slow down or aid any kind of evolution.

Of course you are correct that I am basing this on how life may have developed here, with amino acids forming DNA etc... if life is ultimately information storage (like DNA) then I imagine there are other better ways for life to form too. All we have are loose theories.



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HigHurtenflurst said:

Indeed that is possible. (though I personally think a planet being in a stable well protected environment would be a catalyst to more evolved forms rather than a stagnating effect... yes adversity often breeds diversity, but in a microbial world spreading across the face of a planet would help things along)

In terms of time constraints, red dwarf stars (which I believe make up 60-70% of our galaxy in terms of number of stars) are more likely to have planets in favourable conditions for billions of years, though I am unsure whether the decreased energy output of the star is likely to slow down or aid any kind of evolution.

Of course you are correct that I am basing this on how life may have developed here, with amino acids forming DNA etc... if life is ultimately information storage (like DNA) then I imagine there are other better ways for life to form too. All we have are loose theories.

True for life as we know it you do need quite a long stable period for oxygen levels to build up, with a decent energetic output from the star to support photosynthesis. (photsynthesis is still possible around red dwarfs, yet likely a slower process)
We've also found life that doesn't depend on oxygen and can survive deep under water near geothermal vents through chemosynthesis. It doesn't sound like a likely place for intelligent life as we know it, fire has been an essential tool for our own development after all. Yet an atmosphere of a entirely different chemical composition might eb able to support life too.

There is an estimate of about 60 billion habitable red dwarf star planets in our Galaxy, with Red dwarfs able to last for trillions of years. Seems likely that some life may have come out of that. It could be that intelligent life developed around a red dwarf may view our sun as too dangerous, with too much radiation flooding it's planets.

So much to discover, we know nothing :) Why does it all have to be so far away.
There's still plenty to discover on our own planet anyway. The bottom of the ocean and the center of the earth seem further away then mars.