The Cosmos

[OLD GREGG (im back baby)]

So after going back a year through this section of the forum I was surprised to find Zero threads of this nature.

Mathematically, the odds are that somewhere out there other intelligent life exists.

IMO, I think it is the very pinnacle of human arrogance to think that it is the only sentient life form in such a vast universe.

With that being said, what say you Smogon?

Do you think you are the only life form that is able to feel and perceive things in an objective manner? Is there other intelligence out there and if so do you think they have contacted us or have tried to?

 

[Relados]

how does one even calculates the odds for intelligent life appearing anyway

like seriously, we're the only planet known that has met the myriad requirements for basic life, let alone developed intelligent beings, we've found no others that have done this, yet somehow we can calculate the probability of other intelligent life out there

not saying other sentient life is impossible but i think the drake equation is full of shit

 

[Codraroll]

Well... keep in mind that while space is very big, so is time.

The speed of light has some interesting consequences when it comes to what we can observe - or how others would observe us. From 5000 light years away, humanity appears to be a largely insignificant species of primates, only distinguishing themselves from the surrounding wildlife by some simple tool use. Only the last century or so has human impact on the planet been visible from space, so observers would have to be within 100-150 light years to see lights from cities at night, for instance. Radio signals have only travelled half that far. 5000 light years is still only five percent of the diameter of our own galaxy. Intelligent life doesn't have to be that rare for the signals of various civilizations to miss each other.

Also keep in mind the possibility of intelligent life evolving, creating technology, and somehow ruining their civilization (through nuclear war, for instance). It took only ten thousand years or so from humanity to go from the "insignificant primate" stage to developing that capability (or a billion years of evolution, if you like to see it that way). Other civilizations might have gone through the same journey, only for things to go sour, and met their end millions or even billions of years ago. On the cosmic timeline, we have barely made a blip so far, and only time will tell how long it is going to last. For contact to be made between civilizations, they need to overlap not only in space, but also in time. We might be millions of years too late (or too early) to see a galactic empire form, fragment and fall.

It's not only a matter of "are there anybody out there?" as much as "are there anybody out there right now?"

Even disregarding travel times, it still makes the Drake Equation a whole lot more complicated.

 

[OLD GREGG (im back baby)]

how does one even calculates the odds for intelligent life appearing anyway

like seriously, we're the only planet known that has met the myriad requirements for basic life, let alone developed intelligent beings, we've found no others that have done this, yet somehow we can calculate the probability of other intelligent life out there

not saying other sentient life is impossible but i think the drake equation is full of shit

Fermi beat you to this conclusion, yet the high probability remains.

Hypothetically speaking, with the sheer amount of stars and planets held within the known universe there is a probability that another planet somewhere would, at some point, be fit for "intelligent" life to evolve.
I use the term intelligent loosely because Humans have not done anything particularly brilliant as a species. We have made pretty stupid choices and more recently may have doomed the future generations of this species with the depletion and destruction of our Biosphere.

As far as visitation goes, I personally do not think it has happened recently. Maybe in the distant past, but this is just speculation. I say maybe because humans have not been proven to have evolved from anything. We have close relatives but science still searches for the "missing link" between man and monkey.

I agree that it is kind of crazy to try to prove the existence of anything as grandiose as this with a simple equation. The actual size of the universe is unfathomable so I'd say there is a possibility.

 

[mattj]

If someone wants to have faith that life exists elsewhere in the universe, I think that's not a completely unreasonable belief. But it's not based on any, single piece of evidence. There is nothing that anyone can hold in their hand and say, "Look here. This is why there must be life elsewhere in the universe." It's based solely on ideas, and, honestly, hopes. Nothing more. Everywhere we've looked in the past 50 years we've found absolutely zero evidence of life. That, in itself, nearly convinces me that life doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe.

Just don't act like it's based on anything that could convince anyone who isn't already into the idea. It's baseless science fiction.

 

[macle]

why are we looking for intelligent life when we haven't found any life?

 

[OLD GREGG (im back baby)]

Intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is a hard pill to swallow.

This was just a thread to gauge how many here are optimistic about the probability.

Macle, I agree that we shouldn't be looking because as Hawking said I can see it being akin to humans being the native Americans when Columbus "discovered" America. I think if we were to make contact, what is stopping those other beings from utterly raping and pillaging our entire planet?

I find it ironic that we have such a large space budget when the majority of our oceans are unexplored.

 

[Lee]

If someone wants to have faith that life exists elsewhere in the universe, I think that's not a completely unreasonable belief. But it's not based on any, single piece of evidence. There is nothing that anyone can hold in their hand and say, "Look here. This is why there must be life elsewhere in the universe." It's based solely on ideas, and, honestly, hopes. Nothing more. Everywhere we've looked in the past 50 years we've found absolutely zero evidence of life. That, in itself, nearly convinces me that life doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe.

Just don't act like it's based on anything that could convince anyone who isn't already into the idea. It's baseless science fiction.

With a very small amount of word substitution, one could easily turn that post into a rudimentary argument against religion. And in many ways, the concept of aliens has a lot in common with religion. It is a natural part of man's character to want to believe that there is something bigger and more meaningful than himself out there. For some people it's gods, for others it's little green men that stick probes up people's butts.

But isn't it amusing that most people who believe in a god will laugh at the possibility of aliens, whereas the people who believe in aliens are always the first to belittle religion? They're basically the same freaking thing.

 

[whistle]

With a very small amount of word substitution, one could easily turn that post into a rudimentary argument against religion. And in many ways, the concept of aliens has a lot in common with religion. It is a natural part of man's character to want to believe that there is something bigger and more meaningful than himself out there. For some people it's gods, for others it's little green men that stick probes up people's butts.

But isn't it amusing that most people who believe in a god will laugh at the possibility of aliens, whereas the people who believe in aliens are always the first to belittle religion? They're basically the same freaking thing.

I thought that was a satirical critique of religion before I read the username :\

 

[internet]

Out of the 10+ space rocks we've actually checked thus far, one has life on it, and we're not sure about the absence of life on the others in this group.

We live in a universe with an unfathomably large amount of planets in it.

 

[X5Dragon]

I think there a few intelligent life forms out there, but they must be so far flung and away from one another I don't think we can realistically hope to interact with them in any meaningful way, except for maybe capture their signals and stuff.

Best to hope for right now is to ensure our near time survival, we our gonna crowd our little rock in little as 100 years from now.

 

[OLD GREGG (im back baby)]

With a very small amount of word substitution, one could easily turn that post into a rudimentary argument against religion. And in many ways, the concept of aliens has a lot in common with religion. It is a natural part of man's character to want to believe that there is something bigger and more meaningful than himself out there. For some people it's gods, for others it's little green men that stick probes up people's butts.

But isn't it amusing that most people who believe in a god will laugh at the possibility of aliens, whereas the people who believe in aliens are always the first to belittle religion? They're basically the same freaking thing.

Do you really think that holding the belief that other planets might hold life, in a universe larger than you can imagine, is really "basically the same freaking thing" as believing in an invisible sky daddy?

 

[Lee]

You place your faith in an idea even though there is no concrete evidence to back it up. You've decided that this entity existing is easier to accept and more probable than this entity not existing. And on some level, these feelings are probably influenced by a desire to better understand your own place in the universe.

So yeah, who's your sky daddy?

 

[Kinneas]

With a very small amount of word substitution, one could easily turn that post into a rudimentary argument against religion. And in many ways, the concept of aliens has a lot in common with religion. It is a natural part of man's character to want to believe that there is something bigger and more meaningful than himself out there. For some people it's gods, for others it's little green men that stick probes up people's butts.

But isn't it amusing that most people who believe in a god will laugh at the possibility of aliens, whereas the people who believe in aliens are always the first to belittle religion? They're basically the same freaking thing.

Lee :D

This word "believe" keeps cropping up and I think it's making answering this question a lot more confusing that it actually is. I had this debate with someone yesterday who was trying to compare believing in aliens to believing in ghosts. Thing is, what most people are really saying when they're asked if they believe in aliens is: "It seems probable that there is life out there other than us based on what we know about the conditions for life as we know it and other areas of the universe that could support a similar lifeform." This is completely different from believing in something. Science isn't really picking a team on this. It's not pro-alien or anti-alien, it's "maybe-alien, we'll let you know if we find anything".

Galileo thought it was highly probable, based on what he knew about the motions of the stars, that Aristotle was wrong about the planets all rotating around a big crystal sphere in the heavens. He couldn't prove it, so he made a better telescope and had a look for himself. That's exactly what we're doing at the moment with regard to the search for life out there in the universe. No, there isn't any solid evidence yet, but give it some time, we haven't even been looking seriously for more than a decade.

I don't know how you're equating this to religion when there's people doing work to try and disprove their own theories as much as they are trying to prove them.

 

[Chou Toshio]

With a very small amount of word substitution, one could easily turn that post into a rudimentary argument against religion. And in many ways, the concept of aliens has a lot in common with religion. It is a natural part of man's character to want to believe that there is something bigger and more meaningful than himself out there. For some people it's gods, for others it's little green men that stick probes up people's butts.

But isn't it amusing that most people who believe in a god will laugh at the possibility of aliens, whereas the people who believe in aliens are always the first to belittle religion? They're basically the same freaking thing.

I think he intended that

 

[mattj]

Galileo thought it was highly probable, based on what he knew about the motions of the stars, that Aristotle was wrong about the planets all rotating around a big crystal sphere in the heavens. He couldn't prove it, so he made a better telescope and had a look for himself. That's exactly what we're doing at the moment with regard to the search for life out there in the universe. No, there isn't any solid evidence yet, but give it some time, we haven't even been looking seriously for more than a decade.

I don't know how you're equating this to religion when there's people doing work to try and disprove their own theories as much as they are trying to prove them.

Seeing as I'm repeating Galileo's lunar observations with my daughter this month, I thought I'd touch on this analogy. Galileo looked at Jupiter's moons and actually saw something. He saw tiny, faint bright dots in a perfect line that would appear two on this side of Jupiter, then three on that side, then one on this side and two on that, and so on. Then Galileo started making hypotheses. People who believe in extraterrestrial life make up baseless hypotheses, then look in their telescopes year after year after year and see nothing. Then they make more baseless hypotheses. Then they look in their telescopes again and again see nothing. It's not comparable to what Galileo did. That was real science. People who believe in extraterrestrial life is science fiction, not science.

 

[OLD GREGG (im back baby)]

Seeing as I'm repeating Galileo's lunar observations with my daughter this month, I thought I'd touch on this analogy. Galileo looked at Jupiter's moons and actually saw something. He saw tiny, faint bright dots in a perfect line that would appear two on this side of Jupiter, then three on that side, then one on this side and two on that, and so on. Then Galileo started making hypotheses. People who believe in extraterrestrial life make up baseless hypotheses, then look in their telescopes year after year after year and see nothing. Then they make more baseless hypotheses. Then they look in their telescopes again and again see nothing. It's not comparabe
to what Galileo did. That was real science. People who believe in extraterrestrial life is science fiction, not science.

A lot of people base that assumption of other life on the Fact that water is everywhere in the universe, as well as water being very essential to the development of life as we know it. Earth is not an exceptional planet nor does it have exceptional resources or positioning to the star it circles. In fact, science makes it pretty clear that the necessary variables that were present on Earth when life emerged are not limited to Earth with a very high probability.

 

[Kinneas]

Seeing as I'm repeating Galileo's lunar observations with my daughter this month, I thought I'd touch on this analogy. Galileo looked at Jupiter's moons and actually saw something. He saw tiny, faint bright dots in a perfect line that would appear two on this side of Jupiter, then three on that side, then one on this side and two on that, and so on. Then Galileo started making hypotheses. People who believe in extraterrestrial life make up baseless hypotheses, then look in their telescopes year after year after year and see nothing. Then they make more baseless hypotheses. Then they look in their telescopes again and again see nothing. It's not comparable to what Galileo did. That was real science. People who believe in extraterrestrial life is science fiction, not science.

We're actually completely in agreement then. I'm not arguing for people who believe in extraterrestrials, I'm saying it's good science to be looking instead of making a baseless assumption either way. I'm defending the right to inquire without being thrown in with the loonies before I've taken my telescope out of the box. Based on how other areas of science and history panned out, I think that's a pretty important thing to defend. Galileo is a shining example.

There's real science being done, Matt. Don't be so quick to make a decision that you're then forced to defend. It's okay to just say "I don't know."

 

[OLD GREGG (im back baby)]

We're actually completely in agreement then. I'm not arguing for people who believe in extraterrestrials, I'm saying it's good science to be looking instead of making a baseless assumption either way. I'm defending the right to inquire without being thrown in with the loonies before I've taken my telescope out of the box. Based on how other areas of science and history panned out, I think that's a pretty important thing to defend. Galileo is a shining example.

There's real science being done, Matt. Don't be so quick to make a decision that you're then forced to defend. It's okay to just say "I don't know."

I'm not trying to convince anybody of the existence of anything, when I'm not even convinced. I am pretty positive about one thing though, the assumption that we are alone in a universe with so many stars and so many planets is pure arrogance.

 

[macle]

http://www.papermag.com/2015/02/tom_delonge_ufo_interview.php

 

[OLD GREGG (im back baby)]

Yep....

http://au.ibtimes.com/scientists-may-have-found-proof-aliens-creating-life-earth-report-1423011

 

[Gammafire]

It is most certain that there is other life in the universe. If there is none now, than there will be, as the universe is constantly expanding, and with the shear size of our galaxy alone, I would be shocked that there were no other forms of life in the universe outside of Earth.

 

[PumpedAaron]

I think Gammafire and I share similar ideas. Its quite quite likely that there is other life out there in the cosmos that is simply too far away, whether spatially or temporally to be seen. With such vastness at the universe's disposal, why do you suppose absolutely all of it is empty of life?

Hmm, after writing this though, it really got me thinking of more reliable methods to determine what is life in the first place...