are we alone in the universe?

[brianmanahan]

it seems likely but here we are, not aware of any other life in the universe. what you do think?

 

[sandorski]

Maybe, but it seems unlikely.

 

[lxskllr]

Probably not. The universe is huge, and the (imo)multiverse is infinite. Unless you believe in fairy tales, we're pretty bog standard parasites.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I do believe there is life. The way atoms have a tendency to combine to complex molecules is a dead give away. And bacteria and phages have shown to be able to survive extreme environments.
Interior of asteroids moving to open space can support bacterial colonies in dormant state. It is just a matter of time before we find the inevitable but needed proof.
Only thing needed for more complex forms of life to evolve are goldy lock zones. But simple life like bacteria can exist everywhere or go into a dormant dead like state until encountering a solar system that provides enough low level radiation, food and heat to start up the bacteria.

 

[SKORPI0]

We are just a minute dot compared to the vastness of the universe. Our current telescopes can't even see that very very far, and what we see is the distant past.
If there is "intelligent" life out there and they have somehow managed not to destroy their society (war, famine, extinction, etc.) maybe they figured how to cross the galaxies. Finding Earth inhabited by a violent race after visiting it in the past/present, they figured that it in their best interest not to introduce/show themselves. It would do them no good.

 

[Darwin333]

I think that there is absolutely sentient life somewhere out there, probably quite a lot of it. There are something like 2 trillion galaxies in the Universe and our own galaxy has between 100-200 million stars. That is an unfathomable amount of chances for the conditions for life to be perfect in our universes 13.8 billion year existence.

With that said, the same vastness and time make us encountering other intelligent life very low imho. We have been around for less than the blink of an eye in cosmic terms, other intelligent civilizations could have come and gone before we were a twinkle in the eyes of the mammals that survived the end of the Cretaceous period. Then the distance thing, even if right now there are dozens, hundreds, even hundreds of thousands of advanced civilizations out there the distance between us and them is so vast that it's highly unlikely we will ever run into another one. If they are able to make it here we better hope like hell they aren't like us.

 

[judasmachine]

Yes, goodnight.


Seriously though, It's been said before that it's unlikely due to the billions of other worlds out there.

 

[Zeze]

REally. You could've started a thread on ANYTHING.

Why not your ossum possum POMES?

 

[brianmanahan]

REally. You could've started a thread on ANYTHING.

Why not your ossum possum POMES?

wait, did i write a pome about possums once? i don't remember that.

you know i really want to write a pome but for a couple years it has felt like the muse left me

 

[IronWing]

Are we welcome in this universe?

 

[Thebobo]

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”

― Carl Sagan, Contact

 

[brianmanahan]

Are we welcome in this universe?

i have a feeling that if other advanced civs existed, they would kill any ones they discovered just to be safe

a small projectile with a mass of 100000kg, traveling at .2c, would hit a planet with the energy of ~1700 tsar bomba nuke bombs. it would probably be easy for any advanced spacefaring civ to destroy a planet once they know where it's at.

 

[UncleWai]

Are we alone in the universe? No.
Will we come in contact with other intelligent life in the universe? No.

 

[nakedfrog]

I think it's likely that their either has been or will be sentient life elsewhere.

"...and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'cause there's ah heck all down here on Earth."

 

[Paperdoc]

Yes, I believe there is some form (or several) of life elsewhere in the universe. Whether we (or our descendants) will ever encounter it before human life forms become extinct here is debatable. The immense distances (and hence travel times) make this probability small.

There's another factor involving time. I recall a Sci-Fi novel (by Arthur C. Clarke??) in which the postulate was that some supreme being had run experiments in life form development in many places in the universe, and was now collecting specimens from each experimental plant and taking them to a central location so they could be compared. The "hope", apparently, was that these many lifeforms together might interact in a way that combined their individual skills to produce new creative thinking. But one obvious factor was that all these various life forms had developed to different levels. Even given that those experiments that had not developed very far were excluded from this melange, the huge range of skills among them at a single point in time made interactions very difficult.

Corollary: we tend to discuss this issue in terms of whether other life forms elsewhere are available for us to discover and communicate with NOW. The greater likelihood, if those life forms exist, is that they all are at very different levels of development, and OUR current state of development is only a tiny time fraction of the range represented in other life forms.

 

[Feneant2]

When I ask myself this question, I go read the fermi paradox...

I think finding life would be more probable if we had an infinite lifespan, not to mention if we had the capacity to send out colony ships. But even so, chances are once we do find intelligent life that they'll either enslave us or or wipe us out.

 

[DigDog]

i do not "believe". i either can make a guess based on facts, or i do not know.

 

[WelshBloke]

Didn't vote.

There probably is (or has been, or will be) intelligent life elsewhere in the universe but we are never going to meet it.

So my answer is that we are alone in the universe but that there is sentient life elsewhere in the universe.

 

[Charmonium]

Let's start with the fact that we have no idea what 97% of the universe is made of. It's easy to forget that. I don't remember the exact numbers but I think roughly 2/3 is dark energy and 1/3 is dark matter with the rounding error being the matter and energy that we actually know something about.

So we have no idea whatsoever about what's possible in terms of traveling across space. Quantum mechanics is non-local so in theory, something on one side of the universe can affect something on the other side instantaneously - what Einstein called spooky action at a distance. And again, remember, QM only describes that 3% of the universe we know something about.

So . . . either the other 97% of the universe holds no interesting mysteries to solve and will give us no new technological abilities we can exploit like negative energy to build an Alcubierrie warp drive or something even more advanced, or it does and maybe hopping between stars and galaxies is no more difficult than a trip to the store.

In which case, if intelligent life is common in the universe, then there's no reasonable explanation for why we haven't found it. Or rather, why it hasn't found us. The standard Star Trek, prime directive argument is bs. That's a rank anthropomorphizing of alien life. They wouldn't be anything like us and certainly wouldn't have the same cultural values. At least some of those civilizations would have no problem knocking on our door either to say hi or to kill us.

So either advanced sentient life doesn't exist at all or it's extremely rare. Either that or the laws of the universe, the vast majority of which we don't even know of yet, prohibit faster than light travel.

The only other explanation I can think of is that because of the incalculable number of world in the universe and the terminally slow speed of light relative to its size, it's only been about a billion years or so since the earth has looked interesting enough to visit from an alien perspective. That means that light from our planet has only reached a fraction of the rest of the universe. So if advanced civilizations are relatively rare, they may not yet be aware of us.

 

[lxskllr]

Yes, I believe there is some form (or several) of life elsewhere in the universe. Whether we (or our descendants) will ever encounter it before human life forms become extinct here is debatable. The immense distances (and hence travel times) make this probability small.

To get anywhere will require a physics trick I think. There may be a yet undiscovered hack that would allow us to cover huge distances, but if things are as they appear now, I think you're right.

 

[Ken g6]

i have a feeling that if other advanced civs existed, they would kill any ones they discovered just to be safe

a small projectile with a mass of 100000kg, traveling at .2c, would hit a planet with the energy of ~1700 tsar bomba nuke bombs. it would probably be easy for any advanced spacefaring civ to destroy a planet once they know where it's at.

Yeah, it seems like if any advanced civilization were nearby, they would have either slammed us or spammed us.

"Stimulate your orifices with this cream! Radio here to cure cancer! Mine GalactaCoin to pay for it!"

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Yeah, it seems like if any advanced civilization were nearby, they would have either slammed us or spammed us.

"Stimulate your orifices with this cream! Radio here to cure cancer! Mine GalactaCoin to pay for it!"

Any advanced civilization would most definitely kill us and loot the corpses. If the alien overlords witnessed Trump V. Clinton they would know that any galaxy with us in it will never be safe or classy.

Yes, sentient life is out there, some probably a long way behind us and some way way way more advanced. And it's probably for the best that we'll never meet them.

 

[soulcougher73]

I hope not. But the universe is larger than anyone can fathom so the changes are small that we are alone.

 

[IronWing]

I hope not. But the universe is larger than anyone can fathom so the changes are small that we are alone.

The universe may be expanding too fast for any of us to find each other.

 

[luv2liv]

people like to think they are special. remember that time people think earth is flat while everything in the sky is circular/round? actually, some still think earth is flat...
anyway, we cant possibly be that special to be the only "intelligent" life in the universe.