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Kasz216 on 01 December 2010
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highwaystar101 said:
Kasz216 said:
highwaystar101 said:
 

I really can't say, one thing I can say though is that we're certainly not on the trail of life.

Sure we can hypothesise about finding life in the oceans of Europa (or something similar), but we have no concrete evidence to point us to where we should be searching. There could be life there, but then again there may not. Right now astrobiologists have a "follow the water" policy, and whilst that may be good indicator it is little more than an educated guess.

In short, it could be within our lifetimes if life exists in our solar system, but I wouldn't count on it Intelligent life on the other hand, I think there's no chance within our lifetime I'm afraid.


Yeah, I gotta agree.  Unless someone comes to see us anyway.  Unless there is some big "space fold" discovery.

Crap, even then, the odds of finding life are VERY unlikely.


I remember either on the Next Generation or a show about it, explaining how crazy and impossible it would be to explore all of the space near us if we did it unguided.

I remember watching a documentary once on what would be the best way to explore the galaxy. The proposal that sounded best to me was self replicating probes. Basically you send a probe to a planet, it makes observations, transmits the data back and then find suitable natural resources to produce ten identical probes. Then each probe goes and finds another planet and makes ten more probes. And so on, and so on, until you have millions of probes exploring the galaxy for you.

The problem is, even in that unguided yet efficient way of exploring the galaxy it would still take a long time to explore even a tiny portion of the galaxy. Exploring the galaxy is a huge task in itself, let alone finding life (which may be common, yet maybe not). We would certainly need some guide if our goal was to find life.

Plus... god knows what kind of damage those probes could do if programmed wrong, or if they encounter some kind of life it doesn't recognize as life, but does recognize as probe making matierals.

I feel like i may have seen that same documentry too oddly.  Cause it sounds awful familiar.

Although not likely, it would be an amusing cosmic joke if alien life didn't exist.