I believe that there definitely can be. I do have any reason to believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe tho. We need a third answer to the poll :p
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JXC
17-4 since 2001
CNN has an article saying there are 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/07/22/stars.survey/
So let's say 1 out of every 1000 stars had a planet (they estimate actually a lot more stars than this have at least one planet, but for this i'll just assume 1 planet to every 1000 stars, just to keep out any doubt about over estimation of the number of planets)
And let's say 1 out of every 1,000,000 of those planets had the ability to have life (again, I think that most would agree more than 1 out of a million would at least have the possibilty of life...I think even Mars and some of the moons of Jupiter have the possibility, and that's just here)
And let's say only 1 out of every 1,000,000 of those planets that could support life actually did. (Again...looking at things, it's likely more than this)
Well then there would be 70,000,000 other planets out there with life...so unless out of 70 million different planet out there not one had what we would call intellegent life on it, then there likely is.
I'm not 100% certain there is other life out there...i'm a man of science...so I am 99.999999999999999% sure there is. The other .000000000000001% is still on the fence.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/07/22/stars.survey/
So let's say 1 out of every 1000 stars had a planet (they estimate actually a lot more stars than this have at least one planet, but for this i'll just assume 1 planet to every 1000 stars, just to keep out any doubt about over estimation of the number of planets)
And let's say 1 out of every 1,000,000 of those planets had the ability to have life (again, I think that most would agree more than 1 out of a million would at least have the possibilty of life...I think even Mars and some of the moons of Jupiter have the possibility, and that's just here)
And let's say only 1 out of every 1,000,000 of those planets that could support life actually did. (Again...looking at things, it's likely more than this)
Well then there would be 70,000,000 other planets out there with life...so unless out of 70 million different planet out there not one had what we would call intellegent life on it, then there likely is.
I'm not 100% certain there is other life out there...i'm a man of science...so I am 99.999999999999999% sure there is. The other .000000000000001% is still on the fence.
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In light of those numbers, I'd be interested in why Bgrad said he decided some 12 years ago that the probability isn't enough to convince him any longer.
Seems to me anyone would have to argue that your estimates are too liberal, that the chances you gave are far too on the side of likely. Maybe they are, and in as much as I already agree that life is out there, I think your breakdown of chance is worth discussion from the other side.
Seems to me anyone would have to argue that your estimates are too liberal, that the chances you gave are far too on the side of likely. Maybe they are, and in as much as I already agree that life is out there, I think your breakdown of chance is worth discussion from the other side.
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DCBuckFan
Fark You
That or find a way to 'shrink' the distance we have to travel. But I agree it is unlikely that we are able to do that within any of our lifetimes, quite likely our children's either.
I without a doubt believe there is some life out there, for me what really matters is will we ever discover/see it in our lifetime. Don't think that will happen unfortunately.
I guess the subquestion to this is do you beleive that intelligent life has visited this planet already?
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Some of that, I would think, is a function of people having less language to articulate phenomina we are familiar with today.. like the Northern Lights, for example. We know what they are. And we know they can, during big sun storms reach a good ways south... but not very often. If they ever reached far enough south where they had not been seen before way back in "biblical times," I'd imagine they description of the event would sound quit magical or as if God was doing something.
But, that said, there were also a lot less mechanical things in the sky (read, none) for Eziekel to spend time describing in such detail if he didn't actually see it.... Or maybe he just had a really good imagination, which is also possible.
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DCBuckFan
Fark You
Right, and most of early religon was simply to explain what the people of that time couldn't explain.
There are so many things that I can't explain though that would fall under this easily... like the Nazca Lines in South America... if I am not confused, I beleive there is even a drawing of a monkey, which weren't present when the lines were made.
Anyways... This stuff has always interested me, wish I had time to really research these occurances.
There are so many things that I can't explain though that would fall under this easily... like the Nazca Lines in South America... if I am not confused, I beleive there is even a drawing of a monkey, which weren't present when the lines were made.
Anyways... This stuff has always interested me, wish I had time to really research these occurances.
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Saw31
High Seas Rogue
I didn't read the whole thread, so some of these discussions may have already taken place...
I used to think "yes, 100% yes", but I have since backed off on that...
My so-called reasoning:
We have been told that space is infinite and that may be true, however, assuming* that this all started with the "Big Bang", it would be true that not all space is occupied by matter and therefore matter is not infinite (as some will claim)...So there are not "infinite possibilities" for life...That conclusion lowers the probabilities obviously...Next, since we know earth has the conditions for life, we having a starting point. What makes earth capable of this? Well, if the earth were just a mere million miles closer to the sun, our life wouldn't exist. Earth would not be capable of sustaining our type of life. The same is true if it were a million miles farther away from the sun...Now, a million miles in the vast scope of space is so small statistically, it would be like hitting the power ball every time you play it...In other words, earth is an astrological bull's eye, astrological perfection...And though other forms of life may have different conditions, they do still have conditions and would also require an astrological bull's eye to support their type of life...The probabilities go down a hell of a lot looking at it that way.
The next thing to look at is time...Is time infinite? Well, assuming* the "Big Bang" again, time is not infinite going backwards in the past. There was a "beginning", somewhere...So, after the "Big Bang", does matter infinitely move away from the center to fill the vastness of space? There are many scientists who believe "no", matter will at some point contract back on itself because of gravity, creating another "Big Bang" and starting all over again...Therefore, time, at least in the sense of life creating possibilities, may not be infinite either...Once again the probabilities for life go down significantly. If all this is true (and I believe it is true from what I've seen), there are limited chances for success...Now here we have several ways of looking at this. Has time been long enough to allow for life? Well, of course, but has it been long enough for life elsewhere? Or, by the same token, has time maybe been too long for life elsewhere to exist at the same point in time as us? Taking into consideration that life would have to be able to, at some point, exist away from any particular planet or else face the threat of extinction from exploding stars, collisions with comets and asteroids, planetary disruptions (earthquakes, volcanoes), "man-made" disaster, etc. etc...There would need to be enough time to make all this happen, along with the proper conditions, the requisite amount of luck and so on and so forth...Taking all this into account, I think the chances for life elsewhere, right now, are low, but certainly not impossible. I do however believe that time has been long enough that life has existed elsewhere in the past and will exist elsewhere in the future...But our paths may have never or will never cross...
This is all just a fancy way of me saying, "I have no fucking idea", but at least I have a decent reason for saying I have no idea...
For this poll, I would be more likely to vote "no", but with the understanding that I may be completely wrong...I just think that the chances are much lower then what the popular belief is. I think many of the popular assumptions are faulty, specifically the "infinite possibilities" assumption. If it were true that there are "infinite possibilities", then there is not only infinite forms of life out there, but also infinite life forms who are exactly like us, down to infinite copies of Saw31's replying to infinite copies of this thread on infinite copies of BP...Plus, there would be infinite copies of me living different stages of my life, exactly the same, and exactly different and everything in between...When dealing with "infinities", everything is not just probable, but it "IS", an "infinite" number of times...Wrap you brain around that for a minute... We would already know if all this were true IMO...I don't think the "truth" could hide from us if this were the case, because assuming that other intelligent life is always more intelligent than us would also be a faulty assumption IMO...
*As you can see, so much of this depends on assumptions that we have no way of proving...Unfortunately, I think it will be generations and generations before we (humans) know any of these answers, if there is enough time of course...You and me will almost certainly never know...
I used to think "yes, 100% yes", but I have since backed off on that...
My so-called reasoning:
We have been told that space is infinite and that may be true, however, assuming* that this all started with the "Big Bang", it would be true that not all space is occupied by matter and therefore matter is not infinite (as some will claim)...So there are not "infinite possibilities" for life...That conclusion lowers the probabilities obviously...Next, since we know earth has the conditions for life, we having a starting point. What makes earth capable of this? Well, if the earth were just a mere million miles closer to the sun, our life wouldn't exist. Earth would not be capable of sustaining our type of life. The same is true if it were a million miles farther away from the sun...Now, a million miles in the vast scope of space is so small statistically, it would be like hitting the power ball every time you play it...In other words, earth is an astrological bull's eye, astrological perfection...And though other forms of life may have different conditions, they do still have conditions and would also require an astrological bull's eye to support their type of life...The probabilities go down a hell of a lot looking at it that way.
The next thing to look at is time...Is time infinite? Well, assuming* the "Big Bang" again, time is not infinite going backwards in the past. There was a "beginning", somewhere...So, after the "Big Bang", does matter infinitely move away from the center to fill the vastness of space? There are many scientists who believe "no", matter will at some point contract back on itself because of gravity, creating another "Big Bang" and starting all over again...Therefore, time, at least in the sense of life creating possibilities, may not be infinite either...Once again the probabilities for life go down significantly. If all this is true (and I believe it is true from what I've seen), there are limited chances for success...Now here we have several ways of looking at this. Has time been long enough to allow for life? Well, of course, but has it been long enough for life elsewhere? Or, by the same token, has time maybe been too long for life elsewhere to exist at the same point in time as us? Taking into consideration that life would have to be able to, at some point, exist away from any particular planet or else face the threat of extinction from exploding stars, collisions with comets and asteroids, planetary disruptions (earthquakes, volcanoes), "man-made" disaster, etc. etc...There would need to be enough time to make all this happen, along with the proper conditions, the requisite amount of luck and so on and so forth...Taking all this into account, I think the chances for life elsewhere, right now, are low, but certainly not impossible. I do however believe that time has been long enough that life has existed elsewhere in the past and will exist elsewhere in the future...But our paths may have never or will never cross...
This is all just a fancy way of me saying, "I have no fucking idea", but at least I have a decent reason for saying I have no idea...
For this poll, I would be more likely to vote "no", but with the understanding that I may be completely wrong...I just think that the chances are much lower then what the popular belief is. I think many of the popular assumptions are faulty, specifically the "infinite possibilities" assumption. If it were true that there are "infinite possibilities", then there is not only infinite forms of life out there, but also infinite life forms who are exactly like us, down to infinite copies of Saw31's replying to infinite copies of this thread on infinite copies of BP...Plus, there would be infinite copies of me living different stages of my life, exactly the same, and exactly different and everything in between...When dealing with "infinities", everything is not just probable, but it "IS", an "infinite" number of times...Wrap you brain around that for a minute... We would already know if all this were true IMO...I don't think the "truth" could hide from us if this were the case, because assuming that other intelligent life is always more intelligent than us would also be a faulty assumption IMO...*As you can see, so much of this depends on assumptions that we have no way of proving...Unfortunately, I think it will be generations and generations before we (humans) know any of these answers, if there is enough time of course...You and me will almost certainly never know...
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First, yeah I can say say "without a doubt" because I see no doubt in light of the overwhelming amount of solar systems.
Two, the materials to make the clay pot are totally different from the spontaneous life materials...mud is not an amino acid.
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Saw - you're limiting infinite possibilities to one universe. Think of an infinite amount of universes, 11 Dimensions of space-time (M-Theory), and the concept of possibility becomes much more grand.
Mathmatically, I might add, it is likely (according to M-Theorists) that other universes exist. Although, I can't concieve of any physical proof that we'll ever be able to muster. (and frankly, I don't understand the math either, so I'm taking it on a large degree of faith that these mathmaticians know what the hell they're talking about)
There was a Scientific American article about "Self Reproducing Universe" back in about 1993 that I read. It's an interesting concept. I did a quick Google and found this footnote to some other discussion:
Andrei Linde, now at Stanford, has proposed a fascinating variation of Guth's inflationary theory, dubbed "chaotic inflation." In Linde's theory, our universe began as a bubble that ballooned out of the spacetime of a pre-existing universe. Timothy Ferris describes it this way: "The maternal spacetime is chaotic in that it contains scalar fields of all possible parameters; one scalar field -- an unlikely but possible one -- emerged as the driving force of the inflationary event that launched the expansion of our universe." The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe(s) Report (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 259. Linde suggests that we "live in a low-energy bubble in an incredibly huge and complicated universe, parts of which are bubbles something like ours, while other parts are only now passing through their big bang baptisms, and still more are continuing to balloon in ghostly vacuum states at velocities far greater than light." [Quoted in Ferris, p. 262.] For Linde, it makes little sense to search for some "original bubble": each bubble owes its birth to another bubble. The "evolution of the universe as a whole has no end, and it may have no beginning," according to Linde. [Quoted in Ferris, p. 263.] The title of Linde's November 1994 article in Scientific American is suggestive: "The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe." See also, Andre Linde, Inflation and Quantum Cosmology (New York: Academic Press, 1990).
It's obviously not the whole work, but it's a start. Oh, and it's 1994, not 93.
Mathmatically, I might add, it is likely (according to M-Theorists) that other universes exist. Although, I can't concieve of any physical proof that we'll ever be able to muster. (and frankly, I don't understand the math either, so I'm taking it on a large degree of faith that these mathmaticians know what the hell they're talking about)
There was a Scientific American article about "Self Reproducing Universe" back in about 1993 that I read. It's an interesting concept. I did a quick Google and found this footnote to some other discussion:
Andrei Linde, now at Stanford, has proposed a fascinating variation of Guth's inflationary theory, dubbed "chaotic inflation." In Linde's theory, our universe began as a bubble that ballooned out of the spacetime of a pre-existing universe. Timothy Ferris describes it this way: "The maternal spacetime is chaotic in that it contains scalar fields of all possible parameters; one scalar field -- an unlikely but possible one -- emerged as the driving force of the inflationary event that launched the expansion of our universe." The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe(s) Report (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 259. Linde suggests that we "live in a low-energy bubble in an incredibly huge and complicated universe, parts of which are bubbles something like ours, while other parts are only now passing through their big bang baptisms, and still more are continuing to balloon in ghostly vacuum states at velocities far greater than light." [Quoted in Ferris, p. 262.] For Linde, it makes little sense to search for some "original bubble": each bubble owes its birth to another bubble. The "evolution of the universe as a whole has no end, and it may have no beginning," according to Linde. [Quoted in Ferris, p. 263.] The title of Linde's November 1994 article in Scientific American is suggestive: "The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe." See also, Andre Linde, Inflation and Quantum Cosmology (New York: Academic Press, 1990).
It's obviously not the whole work, but it's a start. Oh, and it's 1994, not 93.
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Oh... probably.
Lets talk about something more fun... who believes they've been here? (To Earth)
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NightmaresDad
Woody Rules!
I do believe there has to be an almost infinite amount of intelligent life out there - which will never know about any of the other intellignet lifeforms.
What's surprising is how hard it is to find intelligent life on this planet! :)
What's surprising is how hard it is to find intelligent life on this planet! :)
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