Is there anyone out there?!

[JakeMD 107]

There definitely is. Why would we be the only ones in a universe that is infinitely big? With Billions of Galaxies and hundreds of billions of solar systems? They may not be intelligent enough to come to our planet and abduct us, but they definitely are advanced as us, and possibly have found better sources of energy, and recourses.

[hym 358]

Personally, I don't think we'll ever find anything more than possibly microbial life.

Something to think about courtesy of Stephen Hawking.

EDIT:  Found the link, so I'll let everyone read it for themselves instead of what I wrote about it.

[Meg 368]

Maybe, just maybe, they are more intelligent than we are.   It's not like it would be that difficult.

[hym 358]

This is going to sound odd, but the hope that they might be more intelligent than us is what convinces me to believe they don't exist.

[coolotter88 2]

so if we find intelligent extraterrestrial life, god will be disproved?

YES!

although we might end up wiping them out so god can still exist...that might be hard to explain to them.

[Meg 368]

Originally posted by: hym

This is going to sound odd, but the hope that they might be more intelligent than us is what convinces me to believe they don't exist.quote>

okay . . . how does that work?

Why are you convinced that this planet has the most intelligent beings around?

Originally posted by: coolotter88

so if we find intelligent extraterrestrial life, god will be disproved?

YES! quote>

um. . . why?   What does one have to do with the other?

although we might end up wiping them out so god can still exist...that might be hard to explain to them.quote>

yeah, it might 

[jjune4991 1]

ok...i think that there could be life out there. i have always speculated about it even before i became a christian. but i dont think it would be intelligent. there are so many different references that i could use, but i dont know all of them (but that stephen hawkings one was good). and i kinda go along with wi3rd, but i would say that God made us (humans) in his image. And thats not to say that we are the most intelligent of all life (cause you know some people can be out smarted by some animals ), but he made us so that we could be the most "dominant" species. If there was other life, then i dont believe that they would be as intelligent or advanced as us...the end!

o and coolotter88: huh? that doesn't make sense...at all...

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: SkiGeek

Originally posted by: hym

This is going to sound odd, but the hope that they might be more intelligent than us is what convinces me to believe they don't exist.quote>

okay . . . how does that work?

Why are you convinced that this planet has the most intelligent beings around?quote>

IMHO, modern society's view of what aliens can/might be like is a reflection of what society knows it is not.  Look at the following examples and notice the pattern that emerges. (I've made a chart just for the sake of easy formatting.)

Human Characteristics vs. Alien Characteristics

Humans	Aliens
Cancer is a real threat, one we haven't solved.	They've found the cure.
Disease in general is a part of life no one has solved.	No one gets sick anymore.
War is still a plague on the world.	They've found a way to end war.
Human beings are generally stupid (we all can think of quotes about human stupidity).	They're more intelligent than us, potentially vastly so.
Humans experience sadness.	We get alien technology and everyone is happy (yes, I have heard this one).
We want to explore space, but lack the technology.	They have the technology to travel distances we can't.
Earth is a crummy place to live (pollution, disease, war, etc.).	They've created utopia.

If you look at the differences, we want to believe that they have solved all our problems.  We want to believe that they have succeeded where we have failed.  We want them to be our quasi-saviors from the mess we've created.  IMHO, those characteristics don't describe what intelligent life is probably like on another planet; they describe how we know we've failed and are clinging to a hope that there might be redemption.

[Meg 368]

Originally posted by: hym

If you look at the differences, we want to believe that they have solved all our problems.  We want to believe that they have succeeded where we have failed.  We want them to be our quasi-saviors from the mess we've created.  IMHO, those characteristics don't describe what intelligent life is probably like on another planet; they describe how we know we've failed and are clinging to a hope that there might be redemption.quote>

I agree that those characteristics describe how we have failed (or how we have not yet succeeded) and, yes, some people like to cling to hope that there might be redemption.  

But wishful thinking on humanity's part doesn't mean that the aliens are like that and it doesn't mean they don't exist.  And it doesn't mean that all people think of aliens in that way.

We get alien technology and everyone is happy (yes, I have heard this one).quote>

Of course you have heard that one.  The Roswell crash gave us the microchip, didn't it? 

[Easy Bakes 253]

Have they actulay discounted the Centuri system as not having any planets at all?

I know the ones they have found are much much further away then Centuri.

You would think the closest one would be checked 1st.

[hummer0328 6]

Originally posted by: Duke87

The other logistical problem is the distances involved, though. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and as a result discovering life in another star system would be a tall order since the closest star is over 4 light years away- meaning any signal we send would take over 4 years to get there, and while a spaceship could in theory get there almost as fast, the technology for such things simply does not exist at this point in time, nor will it likely exist at any point in the forseeable future since the amount of energy required to make something of significant size go that far that fast is of a magnitude which we have only so far seen from an atomic bomb. Oh, and one of those still wouldn't be enough. It would take many of them. There was a study being done a few decades ago about the possibility of a spaceship which propelled itself by periodically discharging a nuke out the back and then detonating it, riding the explosion forward. Never got past any drawing boards for simple practicality reasons: you can't be launching ships with nuclear explosions (anyone nearby that launch would be in trouble), and the radiation would build up from successive launches and make the area uninhabitable- not to mention that protecting anyone inside the ship from the radiation would be problematic as well.

And, at the end of all that, most stars are several orders of magnitude further away. That star in the Andomeda galaxy (which, by the way, is our closest neighboring galaxy) that may have life on a planet orbiting it? If we send them a clear message now we can expect to hear back from them in, oh, about five million years. Yeah, that's not going to work. quote>

There are ways in theory to get around the speed of light barrier:

Alcubierre drive(warp drive):  In this theory the fabric of space is stretched in such a way that space is contracted ahead of the ship and expanded behind it.  Negative energy is used to create a space/time bubble that essentially exists outside of the fabric of space/time connected only by a thin string of energy.  This bubble (or anything inside of it) would not actually be moving.  Only the space around the bubble would be moving.  Because of this there would be no acceleration forces experienced and no time dilation. 

Current problems with such a drive would be that negative energy (from negative mass) is still only theorietical.  Negative mass does work in general relativity though and bends space/time in the opposite direction that traditional matter does.  Gravity from negative mass would repel and time dilation would be opposite (causing time to go faster)  Another problem is the how to generate enough energy to power such a drive.  There just isn't enough matter in the universe to generate the energy needed.  However, there have been experiments proving certain effects (such as the casimir effect) that similar energy requirements.  The same could prove true for a warp drive.

Wormholes: By connecting 2 different pieces of space/time you create a wormhole.  The distance through the wormhole would be far shorter than the distance through normal space.  However, for wormholes to be transverable it would require the existence of negative energy.

Personally, I believe without any doubt that there is intelligent life out there.  Now whether our government has actually made contact is debatable.  I wouldn't be surprised if we have though.  I just don't think it's like popular culture suggests.  Who is to say they are cell based.  Why would they look so much like humans.  I can see them maybe being similar but the resemblance often suggested is just way to unlikely.  Feet, legs (same number of joints)

[belfastuniguy 18]

The arguments regarding travel and distance.

We have based those opinions on the physics that humans have developed and researched. That's not to say those are the only laws of physics. There could easily be life out there which has a different view and has been able to 'break the earth developed rules'

The laws that humans on earth have made in no way apply to every other life form in the entire universe. I know some people on this planet would like to believe otherwise and believe we are the centre of the universe. Then again those people are just deluded.

Well I would say that are not any other life forms at there because I am a Christian and in the bible it says " God created man in the image of himself." So therefore if he created man in His self image he would not create any other type fo life forms that are different from the way He Himself looks. You are free to disaggree with this. It my thoughts not yours.quote>

Boring!!! How incredibly naive to believe that out of trillions of potential planets we are the only intelligent race. I find that utterly absurd and makes me hope that if we do interact with other worlds we do so in a time were people have a more, shall we say informed, outlook. I would hate for alien races to come to earth at the minute and see the ignorance that currently prevails on this planet as well as the other aspects of mankind that hopefully in time will not longer prove a problem.

[north country dude 207]

I'm sorry hym, while the chart is good, the reality is that those are human views of what alien societies would be like.

In truth, alien, that is, extra-solar civilizations could very well be war like, or just consider humans as a threat to their existence to be exterminated without remorse, or even ignore us completely. They may have altogether different views of what happiness is(to them), or possibly, while they may have beat such medical problems as cancer, they may have uncovered totally new problems(like maybe that new stardrive isn't quite as safe as the manufacturer claimed). One thing you can safely bet on though, it will be very, very alien to humans and the way humans think.

Then there is the problem of definitions. Humans would think of star travel as piloting a ship to a nearby star system, whereas an advanced colony of bacteria would consider smearing some of its genetic makeup on a passing asteroid heading to a nearby star as, well, star travel.

As for us finding life on other star systems, consider, that our earliest radio and television broadcasts may be 50 light years from our planet, and that signal degradation works on the inverse square principle, therefore, those 50 year old broadcasts of "I Love Lucy" are completely indistinguishable from the background noise left over from the big bang. A starship cruising nearby our solar system and channel surfing at the same time would hear,...well, nothing.

I liked Terry's explanation on the previous page. Heck, the aliens are certainly not going to be using the same "brand" of receivers and transmitters we use. Which means that we're probably not getting the really "cool" stations either, like "GravityWave RED199" or "Nuetrino Staccato pulse 3.14circle". Think about it. Even the technology would be "alien" and we poor narrow minded humans would never even recognize it as even being "technology".

Also consider, that while we can view stars, galaxies, and even super clusters of galaxies millions of light years away, we are only viewing what was there millions of years ago. We cannot know for certain what is there at this moment.

Also consider, that chemical processes for what we consider life, are hardwired into the structure of the universe, therefore, some sort of life exists on some watery rock, around some habitable zone of a star, somewhere and somewhen, but whether or not it has, or will ever, develop an advanced civilization capable of traveling to other star systems, how would you know?

As far as the speed of light being a limiting factor, well even Einstein said that there's a "loophole" there and it has to do with the structure of space-time itself. Space-Time, or ST, is very, very pliable stuff, with the right amount of energy(or mass, it's the same thing). Even physicists today will tell you that we don't know everything there is to know about our universe, so who's to say that some advanced bacterial hive mind somewhere out there hasn't figured out a way to "melt" ST and throw genetically smeared rocks at any solar system it wants? "If it lives, it lives, if it doesn't, meh, what do we care? We're a hive mind."

What if 100 or even 10,000 years(earth years) was an irrelevant concept to the "alien" mindset? Traveling to nearby star systems in the 10,000 light year range and setting up a 1000 star system empire would be completely feasible, only they wouldn't consider it an "Empire", they'd just call it "home".

As for the mention of God and humans being created in "his image", that statement can be viewed in many different ways. Like what is meant by the term image? When you "image" something, you are imagining how it will look when you are finished creating it. It does not necessarily follow that what is created bears any resemblance to the creator, just that the creator made it in his(or her) mind first.

Secondly, there are many, many

[Meg 368]

Originally posted by: north country dude

Why can't an alien civilization and alien mindsets be another facet of God's creation? I really don't think his imagination was limited to creating hairless apes, naming them "humans", and calling it a "day".

quote>

Yes!   That is what I was trying to say but didn't put it as eloquently.  Thanks.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: SkiGeek

Originally posted by: hym

If you look at the differences, we want to believe that they have solved all our problems.  We want to believe that they have succeeded where we have failed.  We want them to be our quasi-saviors from the mess we've created.  IMHO, those characteristics don't describe what intelligent life is probably like on another planet; they describe how we know we've failed and are clinging to a hope that there might be redemption.quote>

I agree that those characteristics describe how we have failed (or how we have not yet succeeded) and, yes, some people like to cling to hope that there might be redemption.  

But wishful thinking on humanity's part doesn't mean that the aliens are like that and it doesn't mean they don't exist.  And it doesn't mean that all people think of aliens in that way.quote>

I agree with you.  Just because a person believes XYZ doesn't mean it really is XYZ.  Temporarily suspending my own dis-belief in intelligent life in other parts of the universe, if they do exist, I imagine they won't be what society thinks they will be like.  And if they aren't what society wants to believe they are, I wouldn't be surprised if they're as messed up as we are.

We get alien technology and everyone is happy (yes, I have heard this one).quote>

Of course you have heard that one.  The Roswell crash gave us the microchip, didn't it?  quote>

Sorry, but I refuse to accept the notion that my future career path is available because some little green dude couldn't fly.

Originally posted by: belfastuniguy

Well I would say that are not any other life forms at there because I am a Christian and in the bible it says " God created man in the image of himself." So therefore if he created man in His self image he would not create any other type fo life forms that are different from the way He Himself looks. You are free to disaggree with this. It my thoughts not yours.quote>

Boring!!! How incredibly naive to believe that out of trillions of potential planets we are the only intelligent race. I find that utterly absurd and makes me hope that if we do interact with other worlds we do so in a time were people have a more, shall we say informed, outlook. I would hate for alien races to come to earth at the minute and see the ignorance that currently prevails on this planet as well as the other aspects of mankind that hopefully in time will not longer prove a problem.quote>

Well, as I linked to earlier, Stephen Hawking has said that it is unlikely that intelligent life exists on other planets.  Additionally, one of the biggest heads in NASA, B. Gentry Lee, has expressed a similar belief.  Last semester, my university's engineering department sponsored him to come and talk with the engineering students.  We had the privilege of listening to him give a lecture on, among other things, alien life and the quest to find it.  Some things of note that he mentioned:

1. Despite years of claims of visitation by aliens, abductions, and the like, we have no proof.  No one has anything more than potentially fabricated eyewitness accounts, grainy videos, conspiracy theories, and so forth.  However, we do have volumes of debunked claims, theories, and documented records of people lying simply for the sake of publicity.  (H

[teddyrised 1]

I think even if we discovered extraterrestrial life, God will not be disproved. Religion and extraterrestrial life are not completely antagonistic to each other.

There's another theory I've read on Wikipedia regarding the topic (sorry but I cleared my history and couldn't find the url). It might be hard to detect life on other systems because they might be too advanced that they're consuming so much energy - this necessitates them to harvest energy from the star itself, which means snuffing out possible lightrays and transmission from their system.

Intelligent life might be very rare, but there's definitely life out there. Won't be it an awful waste of space if there's only us in the whole universe?

[fukuda 351]

So many things to comment >.<

but he made us so that we could be the most "dominant" species.quote>

Hah, sorry, but that's false, only an anthropocentrist could say that... The most dominant beings by nearly all standards ain't humans, there are beings that can adapt to neary everthing, from highly irradiated terrains, 300

[teddyrised 1]

fukuda said it right. Travelling faster than light (whether is it physically or transmitting electrical signals), if possible, would consume a significant amount of energy, and thus communications will be almost infeasible and unjustifiable.

Physics theories are universal. By examining the light spectrum from distance stars (say, millions of light years away, aka light emmited millions of years ago) shows that they do follow the laws of Physics - thus the laws of Physics is not only spatially (in terms of physical space, region or distance) identical but temporally (in terms of time) identical as well.

[dabadon5 295]

ET life is one thing that has me puzzled. its obviously one of the biggest questions in the world.

here are some of my thoughts about it

1. like what most people say, the universe is huge, there has got to be something out there

2. if ET life does exist, what does this say about religion ?

3. If we do find ET life, what would we do if they are hostile to us ?

4. Perhaps we have found ET life but the Government hides it from us, for an example the Roswell incident.

5. how would the world react ? people go crazy over small differences we humans have with each other, imagine if they find out ET life exist !

6. would finding ET life be worth it ? it could cause unwanted troubles, or substantial benefit, tough call.

those are some of my thoughts.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: dabadon5 ET life is one thing that has me puzzled. its obviously one of the biggest questions in the world.

here are some of my thoughts about it

1. like what most people say, the universe is huge, there has got to be something out there

2. if ET life does exist, what does this say about religion ?

3. If we do find ET life, what would we do if they are hostile to us ?

4. Perhaps we have found ET life but the Government hides it from us, for an example the Roswell incident.

5. how would the world react ? people go crazy over small differences we humans have with each other, imagine if they find out ET life exist !

6. would finding ET life be worth it ? it could cause unwanted troubles, or substantial benefit, tough call.

those are some of my thoughts.

quote>

 

I think  most people could deal with it today, 50 years ago probably not.

[teddyrised 1]

ET life is one thing that has me puzzled. its obviously one of the biggest questions in the world.

here are some of my thoughts about it

1. like what most people say, the universe is huge, there has got to be something out there

2. if ET life does exist, what does this say about religion ?

3. If we do find ET life, what would we do if they are hostile to us ?

4. Perhaps we have found ET life but the Government hides it from us, for an example the Roswell incident.

5. how would the world react ? people go crazy over small differences we humans have with each other, imagine if they find out ET life exist !

6. would finding ET life be worth it ? it could cause unwanted troubles, or substantial benefit, tough call.

those are some of my thoughts.quote>

Although I highly believe that extraterrestrial life does exist, I don't hold so much faith for intelligent ones. The development of intelligence might just be coincidental like us, or it's possible through evolution, but through a very slim probability.

The greatest threat extraterrestrial life pose for us is not of it's hostility, but more of its invasiveness. Perhaps the most advanced extraterrestrial life is in a similar form to bacteria and viruses, they might infect us humans who have yet to develop any immunity to them in case of accidental physical contact. Or they might have evolved in a different atmosphere and planet that they are completely not viable on Earth.

I suspect that even if human did discover extraterrestrial life, the government and related agencies are the ones to know of it first, and then they'll do some coverup until something happens (like a discovery by normal civilians or a leaked report, etc - remember the Roswell incident?). There are still many secrets that governmental organisations are hiding behind their backs - we'll never know what they actually know.

Finding ET life would be quite futile since it is proven that our TV signals do not spread beyond one light year. Even if ET life did eject some high energy electrical beam or something, it's highly unlikely that we'll be aiming at that specific part of the sky for that moment. It's better if they come and find us, heheh, IF and ONLY IF intelligent life does exist.

[jjune4991 1]

Originally posted by: fukuda So many things to comment

but he made us so that we could be the most "dominant" species.quote>

Hah, sorry, but that's false, only an anthropocentrist could say that... The most dominant beings by nearly all standards ain't humans, there are beings that can adapt to neary everthing, from highly irradiated terrains, 300 ºC thermal sources, antarctic continent and even survive in space, they are everywhere even inside our bodies, even inside our own cells (I'm talking about mithocondria), kill you with no problem, they always finish eating you, can live millions of years (Recently found spores) can interchange genetic information quickly within them and adapt in a really short time, they have survived all extinction and will probably survive next ones, yes I'm talking about bacteria that are the most populous, successful and dominant order on (and even under) earth, and seem the ones really gifted by God.quote>

 

ok, i dont know what anthropocentrist means, and it wasnt on wikipedia. but,  i did not mean that we were the most dominant as in survival. and plus, quotations mean that you can't put it literally. i just meant that we are the ones who adapt to life, and advance our means of living. we are the only ones who do not try and live our "natural instinct". and i dont mean that no other organism is inferior. you are right, there are so many complex and mutating organism that adapt better and could possibly kill (and do kill) us. and i think God did a great job when he made them.

[fern244 1]

I believe there is life in the universe, but small alive cells. Nothing big like aliens, very small micro cells.

[Meg 368]

Originally posted by: hym

Sorry, but I refuse to accept the notion that my future career path is available because some little green dude couldn't fly.   quote>

Gray, not green.  but that's beside the point. 

 

Originally posted by: jjune4991

ok, i dont know what anthropocentrist means, and it wasnt on wikipedia. quote>

Taking the word apart, it would appear to be a combination of "anthropoid" and "centrist".   According to dictionary.com, "anthropoid" means "resembling humans".

When used as the ending of a word, "centrist" means focused on, centered on whatever the first part of the word is; regarding it as the center of everything.

(For example:  An "eurocentrist" is someone who is focused on Europe, especially in relation to historical or cultural influence.  An "ecocentrist" is someone who is focused on the ecosphere.  An "egocentrist" is someone who regards the self or the individual as the center of all things.)

So I would take "anthropocentrist" to mean someone who is focused on humans as center of things.

[hym 358]

Anthropocentrism on Wikipedia

[jjune4991 1]

thanks SkiGeek! i did not know. i forgot that most words are constructed like that.

well, fukuda, i dont think that!

[mancoolman 3]

Personally i think that if life does exist it's not necessarily in another solar system we've only explored one planet, our own. And on earth there is infinite amount of different life forms. We still haven't discovered all life forms on land. We're still not even close to discovering all life in the oceans, and who knows if there is life inside the earth. And if life could (and im not saying it does) exist in the magma of our own planet, who's to say it can't survive on Venus of Mercury or even the Sun.

Another thought a little far fetched but i like it. Mars was once like earth. This is proven by the ice on the polar caps and the old dried up river beds. Now something must have happened there to make it like it is. What if a race of something similar to use slowly destroyed it similar to what we are currently doing to our own planet. Because as far as we know planets don't just die. An what if the intervened in our own evolution portraying themselves as shepherds (or guidance counselors). And when they just suddenly disappeared one day we where left in the state we currently are in. Left to our own devices.

Another theory i like is (and i can't remember where i heard this) if there are advanced forms of life what makes them want to get involved with us. Human beings are the only spices on our planet who exterminates entire spices and fights it's self in mass wars and commits genocide regularly. If there are intelligent aliens why would they want to get involved with us. If they do NEED us one day they will probably make us fight some war for them because thats what we're good at after all. This theology is a little grim i know but it makes sense to me because you don't hang around the schoolyard bully if you can help it.

[His Divine Hand 244]

Actually, Mancoolman, scientist already have a pretty good idea what happened to Mars. Simply put, it's too small. First thing is that the core cooled faster due to it's smaller size. This makes it so that Mars does not have a strong planetary magnetic field (but, there is evidence that there once was). This combined with lighter gravity allows the solar wind to blow the atmosphere off the planet, making it colder due to the lack of global warming. But, that doesn't mean there isn't life still, there are still places which demonstrate some geothermal warming, which could allow for life to have held on, single cell, but still life.

[Kevin 101]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if within my lifetime we find life within our own solar system. I don't expect it to amount to much besides a few single-celled organisms, but it would prove that life does exist outside of Earth.

I also believe that there is intelligent life out there, and indeed somewhere in the universe (or maybe in one of the other ones...) there is probably a civilization very much like ours that one day, countless generations in the future, we'll make contact with.

[SIMplMn9 0]

I will just say this because someone was waiting for it..

Of course there is life out there.. they are currently looking for more artifacts... give us about 500 more years well make contact..

(Cue Halo music)

I'll actually put in my two cents (actually 5 due to inflation, and when comparing the dollor to other currently, I need to double it to make up the differece..)

Ok, I'll put my 20 cents in later..