Thread for discussing the possibilities of other beings out there in the Great Wide Black. Share your beliefs, religious or otherwise, but don't get personal or I'll beat you with oranges.

My personal belief:

Yes, I think there are other lifeforms out there somewhere. Religiously I'm an agnostic/atheist (there's a word that doesn't follow the "i before e" rule...), it stands to reason that, given the sheer size of the universe, if life happened here on Earth, it must have happened elsewhere. I refuse to believe we're a oneshot.

And if God is real, think about this; science has proved the existence of other planets and we have no reason to believe that there aren't trillions of billions other planets out there that we can't see. Why would God create us to be alone in the great wide universe? He made us, got bored, and... what? We're supposed to believe the universe is totally, completely empty? I don't believe that for a second.

This one time, at band camp, I was abducted by aliens, and- ::.Dodges an orange.::


Where's Liz? I thought that, despite the sheer size of the universe, the odds of creating life were still against it. Or is that sentient animal life?


Who said God only created us? To consider just Judaism and Christianity in regards to God, the Bible only bothers to point out our creation because of its relevance to us, but it doesn't elaborate on space beyond stating that God created the stars. Realizing that, "Hey, there are other planets, and some of them might be like ours," is a pretty recent discovery on our part.

My particular branch of theism does explicitly state that there is "other life out there." The experience of "Earth" (not our Earth specifically, but of the "human experience") is a recurring event that's been happening forever and will continue to happen forever.

Ha. So much to say, so little time...

As a scientist potentially interested in xenobiology, I really, REALLY hope there's sentient life out there. Why? 'cause, if we want to just find 'life' in the universe, and if it's no more advanced than basic fauna and flora, it means we'd have to probably manually scour every single planet that we suspect may have life. Considering how narrow our parameters are, we're not likely to find life if we expect to find it in places like Earth, and if we scour every planet, considering how difficult it is for life to just crop up, it'll take forever. At least, if there's other sentient life, it stands a chance of being more technologically advanced than us/have different tech, either making it easier for them to find us, or, at least giving us the advantage of mutual searching.

Honestly, I think that there probably is other life out there. Other sentient life? That's a distinct 'maybe'. A sample size of 1 on which to base our previous stuff is... not good. Yeah.

I agree with Liz on the "probably" I mean, it's pretty possible for other life to exist, but advanced technological societies, I doubt. Other then the Macroscopic beings, we're pretty alone (not really, but Cthulu would be one )

Despite knowing absolutely nothing about space and such, I still think that there's some kind of life out there. Space is too big for us to be alone in. I doubt the other forms of life will be anything interesting, though. No mind reading, green skinned aliens Oh well.

What I'm really interested in is what people think about all those tales of 'alien abductions'

I hate to do this to you guys but I have religious views about life on other planets.

I think that there is life on other planets. Basically because the bible says there is.

When I was younger I was extremely fascinated by Roswell and that whole conspiracy, but over the years I've seen lots of videos and heard lots of accounts of extraterrestrial beings and I don't believe we ever have or ever will come in contact with beings from other planets.

I'd give you all the whole shpeel about religions views on life away from Earth but I'm sure you all know it. If you want me to divulge just ask. I can.

While I'm a firm believer that there is indeed other life out there...



THIS. At least, not within any of our lifetimes.

I find it very interesting that most everyone here believes that there is life out there somewhere. I'm not fundamentally opposed to the idea of alien life... it's certainly possible. But I don't find it probable at all. There are so many complications when it comes to life (at least, carbon-based life, since that's the only life we are familiar with) that I find it very unlikely that two planets in the entire universe would exist that could naturally support life. The biggest problem, of course, is radiation. Solar radiation and galactic radiation both pose huge threats to any kind of life, sentient or otherwise. The earth is protected from the first (mostly) by its magnetic field and its distance from the sun (of course, temperature is always a factor when you're talking about distance from a star) and from the second by the large number of gas giants further out in our solar system (as well as other factors specific to our solar system). I could go into large numbers of other factors that are necessary for any form of macroscopic life, but I think that would be unnecessary. I'm just pointing out the statistical problems with two planets in the universe supporting life.

And, even if we suppose that there is sentient life out there, it's extremely unlikely that we'll ever run across it. We haven't even managed to get manned crafts to the outskirts of our own system, much less to the closest star, much less to the closest galaxy. Unless and until we get some sort of FTL travel, or at least FTL communication, we're not going to be able to find any life outside of our own solar system.

@futureguy: I would be interested in the Biblical passage that you think say that there is life on other planets. (Less for a desire to argue and more out of interest... I know my way around the Bible pretty well and I haven't seen anything of the sort.)

The universe is big enough, I don't see why there shouldn't be life elsewhere.

btw, What does FTL Travel/Communication mean?

Faster than light. Unless we discover something new it's basically impossible according to physics as we know it.

Not entirely true. Particles (with mass) have been discovered to be able to travel at the speed of light (see: neutrinos). This should not be possible according to the version of relativity that is commonly used now, which means that we're missing or misunderstanding something (unless there's an explanation that I'm unaware of...). Point is, if massive particles can travel at the speed of light (as opposed to massless particles like photons), then it might be possible for massive particles to travel faster than the speed of light.

@Brett: Ok, I did a little digging (i.e. checked Wikipedia ) and came up with the estimate that there are 7x10^22 stars in the universe. If we can make some broad assumptions (i.e. simply the probabilities enough that it doesn't require higher math to understand them) about the situation, all that's required to show that statistically there should only be one star in the universe that has a planet could support life (i.e. Earth) is a set of 11 criteria of life, each with a probability of 1/100 or less. Of course, we also have to consider all the stars with no planets orbiting them and the stars too unstable to support life on a planet long enough for life to develop. The size of the universe is completely offset by the complicated conditions necessary for life to occur.

(Of course, throw a creator into the picture and statistical arguments become irrelevant.)

Allow me to share the information you found off of Wiki: "Astronomers estimate that there are at least 70 sextillion (7×10^22) stars in the observable universe."

It is extremely unlikely that the actual size of the universe is the observable universe. There is a chance that the universe is actually smaller than that, but most likely it is larger. Thank you, wikipedia: "It is likely that the galaxies within our visible universe represent only a minuscule fraction of the galaxies in the universe. According to the theory of cosmic inflation and its founder, Alan Guth, the entire universe could be (at least) 10^23 to 10^26 times as large in volume as the observable universe."

Therefore, even based on a set of 11 criteria for life, each with a low probability of 1/100, it's still easily possible that there is life elsewhere in the universe based on the theory that the actual size of the universe is larger than the observable universe. Intelligent life forms may be extremely difficult to come by, so we may be alone in that regard, but I don't doubt there is a decent chance that there is some kind of life elsewhere in the universe. Research has shown that life can exist in the most extreme conditions on this planet. Why not elsewhere?

The most extreme conditions on Earth are a joke on the galactic scale.

I tried scanning Wikipedia to get any type of statistic on this, but I'm too tired and distracted to think of the proper search terms. The most specific to point out when considering the most extreme conditions of Earth is temperature: unless you're bouncing heat off of the surface of a planet (read: Jupiter or Saturn) to a moon (with the possibility of life), you have an extremely narrow range of distance that a planet can be from a star in order to have the temperature necessary to sustain life (even if you're assuming the extremes of Earth).

Which I'm assuming is one of the 11 criteria Rex mentioned, though I can't seem to find whatever criteria that might be. However, I did find this: "Based on observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, there are at least 125 billion galaxies in the universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all sun-like stars have a system of planets, there are 6.25*10^18 stars with planets orbiting them in the universe. If even a billionth of these stars have planets supporting life, there are some 6.25 billion life-supporting solar systems in the universe."

Again, that's in the observable universe. I'm not trying to make a point that life is common. I'm merely saying that statistically it's quite possible even though the conditions for life are extremely hard to come by.

I know. I'm using wikipedia too much, but I'm too lazy to do real research.

First, your point about the observable universe. All scientific theories and laws are based on what we can observe. Newtonian physics was used for quite some time because it fit most to everything that we could observe. As soon as we could observe enough data to contradict it, relativity and quantum physics emerged as a more perfect picture of the universe and how it works. My point? What we can't observe is irrelevant.

I didn't give specific criteria. I can, of course, but the problem is that in order for the probability model that I presented to work correctly, the conditions would have to be independent, which they likely aren't. (For instance a planet needs to be in the habitable zone of a star, and it also needs liquid water on its surface in order to sustain life. These criteria are both undoubtedly dependent, and thus couldn't simply be multiplied together.) I presented the argument not as a statistical proof (because any proof I could present would be widely flawed, and any correct proof would probably be beyond the grasp of most anyone here, including myself) but simply to demonstrate how easy and likely it is that other life does not exist in the universe. It's not something to be discounted simply because "the universe is big."

Final note: one billionth is 1/10^9, which is simply nine criteria with a 1/10 probability and much less than the estimation I was making.

Too many stars, too much we don't know. Plus, that's ignoring any possible for a non carbon based lifeform, or something that can be adapted to live on a planet more extreme than ours. Given that we haven't even traveled outside the solar system, I think it's a bit early to rule out things that we can't really directly examine.

I wonder how long it will be before we can build better spaceships with new improved engines and whatnot.

Or when aliens visit us. For me, it's not about whether they exist or not. If they are there, they are there and that's fine with me... As long as they don't destroy our planet.

We currently have a sample size of 1 to study, to figure out what and where life can exist. There simply isn't enough data to say that the universe is uninhabitable elsewhere. For a moment let's ignore the possibility of life in our own solar system - there's a chance that whatever we may find on Mars is from the same stock as what we already have on earth due to reasons my SURF mentor explained, and then I promptly forgot. It made sense at the time, though.

We simply don't know if a foreign "lifeform" needs liquid water, or liquid ammonia, or carbon, or silicon, or to be close or far from it's sun to live. Defining life as a series of self-perpetuating chemical reactions, you need a source of energy and a source of building material. Granted, I'd be hesitant to start looking at a planet in tidal lock (being that close to the sun proooobably isn't so good) or a planet out and lonely as neptune, but, stating any sort of statistics or probabilities is hideously ego-centric, as a species.

tl;dr, not enough data, can't state much of anything.

If direct examination is necessary, then you can go have fun with your Newtonian physics. In fact, I don't even think you can reach Newtonian physics if direct observation is necessary. After all, the law of universal gravitation has been observed only in our solar system. How do we know it still applies elsewhere? Furthermore, yes, I will choose to ignore the possibility of life based on something other than carbon until I have some shred of evidence that such life is possible beyond the speculations of science fiction writers (not that I have anything against science fiction writers ).

@Liz: Saying the sample size is one is misleading. After all, we can examine places on earth where life/most life cannot exist and extrapolate from there the conditions necessary for life. The fact is, according to what we know now, the chances of other life existing in the universe is very close to zero. Of course, there are mountain of things that we don't know, but that can be said in any scientific area. We'll never be able to prove that life does not exist somewhere in the universe, but that's why the scientific method is to assume that everything that hasn't been proven is false, and why all scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable. Then we test the hypothesis over and over and over again. The current hypothesis is that there is not other life int he universe (easily falsifiable, simply find life elsewhere in the universe). So far, we haven't found life, and the evidence that we have suggests that there are no further planets which can support life.

In short, the ignorance of humanity is not a reasonable argument. I'm not saying that you can't believe that there are aliens out there somewhere. I'm simply supporting a reasonable base for disbelief.

I just don't see why... we, one planet, happen to be the only planet.

And why, if this is the only planet, were we born?

I don't understand what you're trying to convey in your first sentence. As for your question, that really gets into a philosophical/theological discussion, something this thread is not. Any discussion of that nature should probably be redirected to the Debate and Serious Discussion forum.

If we were to find an alien species, do you think it would be smarter or stupider than us.

I'd go by the hypothesis of that.. if they find us, they're smarter or have been around the universe longer.

If we find them, we're smarter or have been around longer.

I don't really have time to read every person's post, so I'm just going to say what I have to say.

I took Astronomy in my senior year of high school, and my teacher made a very good point. (Or what I consider to be a very good point, anyway.) The fact that Earth exists with any form of life on it is absolutely amazing because of one, simple reason: the minute chances of a planet being able to sustain life in the first place. There are specific things needed, required you could say, for there to be life such as ours on a planet. Now, I don't know what all of the requirements are (the position of the planet in relation to its sun, as well as the planet's ability to fend off solar rays and other matter in the universe are a few) but I do know that those requirements only happen under certain circumstances, and those certain circumstances happening is like one in a billion (or some other huge number). So, what I'm pretty much saying is that for every one billion planets in the solar system, there is one planet that has life that could be similar to ours in even the slightest way. This is what my Astronomy teacher told me, anyway. I believe that there is a possibility of there being other life out there, but the chances are very slim.

This topic made me remember a funny theory my best friend and I came up with. We were talking about the fact that humans are so different from other animals on Earth and why it is we are so different. Some people believe its evolution. Other people believe that we were created by God. The theory my friend and I came up with is this: We are different from other animals on the planet because we are aliens. That's our theory in a nutshell. The rest of it is that our alien ancestors got stranded on Earth and could not contact their home world, so they got stranded on the planet and just had to make do. This could possibly explain why we are so mentally advanced compared to other animals on Earth. But, of course, our discussion was really just for fun. But it does give one something to think about.

Crocodiles have been around far longer than human beings. And we're still 'smarter' than them by any metric we use. Part of society development depends on natural inclinations - are you (as a species) inclined to compete or cooperate? Are you inclined to strike first and hard, or, plan? Part of it also has to do with generation time. If a generation is too 'short', you simply don't have much learning time - you can't accomplish much because to learn what you need to learn, you need more time (granted, this relies also on cognitive ability). At the same time, if a generation is too long, the society can stagnate as older members simply refuse to move forward. But I'd imagine a too short lifespan would be a bigger issue.

Note that some of the animals which are considered the 'smartest' are also some of the longer living, higher on the food chain, and larger species. Gorillas, whales, elephants, are all large, relatively high on the ladder, long lived mammals with a good span between generations and relatively social habits.

Being too high on the food chain stifles competition and makes animals evolve slower. Crocodiles, sharks, etc. They've had no natural threats in their home environments for a very, very long time, and so they've stopped evolving in any major way. I'm thinking the ideal spot for an animal to be to evolve would be near to the top, so they're not running and fighting for their life all the time, but not at the top so they have some competition forcing them to evolve.

After seeing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I started thinking more about aliens and the theory that my best friend and I came up with.

I think I've come up with an alternative to our theory. We're still descended from aliens in this version. The only thing that is different is that we didn't get stuck on this planet...we moved here!

I remembered hearing/seeing news about more evidence on Mars of it having water and whatnot. That got me thinking that maybe what happened is that we lived on Mars but something we did was destroying the planet, so we decided we had to pick up and move. The best place to move? Planet Earth!

My boyfriend (who I was talking to about this new version of the theory) asked why there wasn't anything in history about that. My answer was that it happened so long ago that anything about it has been forgotten....sort of lost in our history.

LoL. Who knows if that's true or not? It's just a theory.

Odds of that happening without leaving any trace at all...?

Very slim I'd say.

I don't think we've even set foot on Mars yet, in any case; had we moved from Mars to Earth, I can't see us losing the technology to be able to move back.

We've sent rovers up there, and, that's about it. Especially with China looking to make it to the moon, alla' NASA's funding is about to go towards another man-on-the-moon thing. -_-;

@Digital - part of that comes from all the 'blue moon' fanatics, where every channel is a river, and every large flat plane is a lakebed (phenomena which could've been caused by lava just as easily). Yes, there is water frozen in the polar icecaps, but, we're not even sure if Mars was ever remotely hospitable, on it's surface, well, ever.

And alla' that aside, both coming here without leaving a trace of it, and leaving no traces on Mars? At all? We're having a hard enough time not totally trashing our own planet. I find that a completely impossible scenario, to be honest.

Eh, well. It's just a theory. My friend is still very convinced we're aliens from somewhere else, though. LoL.

I believe that there are "aliens" out there. but they look similar to us. they function similar to us. and we'll never make contact with them.

In my astronomy class, my teacher gave us this equation...I looked through my old papers to find it but couldn't locate the handout. Anyway, the equation dealt with the probability of life on other planets. I wish I could remember what it was called. :/

IT's called THe Drake Equation, and... eh. It's really messy in the sense that we have NO idea what the actual parameters are, and it's kind of an equation that solves nothing 'cause it's based on a bunch of variables we don't know, and once we know those variables, we'll be able to do... well, a lot better and other things.

Yeah.

Question. Does the fact that the universe is expanding mean that new planets and stars are constantly being created, or does it just mean that the existing planets and stars are being pulled away from each other (stretching, instead of just expanding)?

I learned in Astronomy that stars, planets, etc are moving away from one another at an accelerating rate. So I suppose it would be the latter, Traj.

Alien talk is my favorite. I love hearing about what people think about alien encounters! My grandparents have this big box of photos dating from back when they were children. (It's really fantastic.) Anyway, I found a picture of some weird blurry lights. Apparently my grandparents witnessed UFO's, as did the whole town! I'll have to go to the library and see if I can dig up any newspaper articles about it.

But yes, I'm a believer in extra-terrestrial life. As far as said extra-terrestrials coming to Earth and making contact with human beings, I'm not entirely convinced. It's a spooky concept but I haven't had my own experiences with UFO's so I can't say much about it. But due to the sheer magnitude of the universe, it's incredibly improbable that Earth alone can and does sustain life.

What gets me though is the similarity between humans and the "greys". Two forward-facing eyes, no prognathism, no rhinarium, hands with opopsable thumbs, tailless, skin (not scales or fur) huge encephilization (with large brain case, presumably) bipedal...basically all of the physiological traits that humans have and set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, the greys have too. So is it that we created them in our image? Or maybe they evolved under similar circumstances? Is this body structure more preferable over others in the journey to becoming sentient? Or maybe they are our distant time-traveling offspring?

This is fun

So, Digit, you believe that we came here rather than being a side-effect of the experiments of the Elder Things?</joke>


"Greys"? What are you referring to?


My grandfather was a pilot for Pan-American Airlines back in its glory days, and from what I recall, he said that he'd seen things in the sky while flying. I'm pretty sure he believed in some degree of a government cover up, but it's too late to ask him for details. It would seem to imply that there are less UFOs today than there were decades ago (or that they only fly at night) given the increase in active planes since then.

These 'similarities' are why I call complete BS on the bulk of alien encounter stories. The chances of a sentient race evolving quite so similar to us is nearly zero. There's no _reason_ to. Nature has plenty of different ways of getting crap done, all equally nice. Look at the book lungs of spiders, as versus our own lungs. Both work very well, both evolved up separately. We get thumbs, elephants get trunks, dolphins get prehensile penises.

If there is some sort of hypersentient race out there abducting our kind, why would they be so obvious about it? Unless, that is, they're a race of trolls. Which, considering /b/, is not... unbelievable that a similar group could've sprung up elsewhere.

As far as the 'expanding' bit, I do believe you're going for 'hubble flow'. Strictly speaking, no new matter/energy is being introduced into the universe. That said, gaseous nebulas and random other crap is constantly coming together and being blown apart - the planets and stars of 'today' most certainly were not of the starting set. Each of these objects has a lifetime, and seeing as some, if they'd existed since the start, shouldn't exist anymore, we're pretty sure crap's being formed all the time. That, and, far-off imagery that's more or less been time-shifted due to the duration of the light's travel shows us stuff like novas blowing up and other super-cool crap.

I read somewhere that should the universe ever stop expanding, night wouldn't be dark any more, because of all the light that's being taken away by the movement of the universe.

It's a term that was coined by Stephen King I think. They're your generic alien. 3-4 feet tall, grey skin, big black eyes, slit nostrils, small mouth, no external ears, etc. Get with the program. Gee whiz.

But anyway. Liz, I agree with you. It's soooo doubtful that anything in the universe would evolve to be quite so similar to us unless they evolved under incredibly similar circumstances.

Well, according to plenty of books, they wouldn't have had to evolve similarly to become intelligent and/or sentient. Just because we breathe oxygen/need water to live doesn't mean aliens do.

Aliens wouldn't even need to be carbon based, which would throw a decent chunk of our biological reasoning out the window in terms of what other habitable planets could look like. Right now we're only looking for Earth similar planets, while lifeforms could evolve completely differently on another planet that would kill humans

-Waves Methane Alliance flags-

Yeah. Which is why the amount of international attention dedicated to looking for earth-similar life on mars bugs me. If it's that similar to us, it's likely that it is related to us. 'cause sometimes crap does get sent flying in that direction (or vise-versa).

Really, the only good reason to having earth-similar beings in Sci-FI is for P&P RPGs, as it saves a lot of time and headache with this. Beyond that... most of the sci-fi I read is decent, but still a lot of the aliens are humanoid and it _bugs me so much_. That said, it's harder to follow a protagonist who is essentially a large piece of coral, or a shapeshifting slimelike creature. >.>

People don't have the mind to understand someone completely different than us. We just can't think that way

Personally I believe there is someone out there doing the same stuff we are in some odd way O_o;

Heck there was test done by schools to see what they would come up with..ya know send out radio waves..i think one school got something back O_o;

..saddly we will never be able to know much more cause we cannot leave our solar system do to the gravity pull and we'd have to go faster then light to by pass that..

I doubt they got anything significant back or it would have been all over the news.

Lots of places have sent out lots of patterned signals (mainly radio waves). And lots of places listen for patterned radiation as a sign of another civilization somewhere in space. And all of those places should be getting something back: background radiation. Unless the radiation has some kind of pattern to it (progressive or repetitious), it's likely caused by natural sources. I'm pretty sure there's been no sign of radiation pattern received (either that, or someone's doing an absolutely epic cover-up job).

Not quite right. We can easily leave our solar system with the technology we have now. After all, if we can break the earth's gravitational pull, we can easily break the pull of the sun and other planets (much further away). The problem is, we can't get anywhere. The closest star to our solar system is far enough away that, by the time any craft we could build would get there, all the inhabitants of it would be dead.

@Exile: That's quite a claim there. Aliens wouldn't need to be carbon-based? Why not? Do you have any evidence that any life, on Earth or otherwise, can be based on something other than carbon? As far as I (and the rest of modern science) knows, all lifeforms are carbon-based. Period. Now, of course, we could be wrong. But we have no evidence to even vaguely indicate that non-carbon-based life can exist.

Ah, I was having an interesting discussion on this topic recently, and...

At least modeling off of human societies, you have an issue. When we first got the whole radio, and then basic television thing, we were shoving analog signals in, well, every direction we could. Including out. The nifty thing about analog signals is that you don't need to have anything more than a basic receiver to hear 'em. If we're lucky, those signals will hit someone else eventually, they'll pick it up whether they like it or not, and hear something 'patterned'.

But then we got satellites and digital, and are sending less and less in a direction away from the planet (even if only incidentally, whereas satellites are far more directional), and it's all encoded. Without the right technology, if anyone up and out there is listening, it'll still sound like random background gibberish. They don't have our software and algorithms and the like, even if they have their own.

Just strikes me as a touch... awkward.

We don't have any evidence that life exists outside of Earth either. It makes sense that life that evolves on a completely different planet might not follow the same biological rules as life does on earth. We have a very limited survey sample for life existing outside of one planet (zero), we means we have absolutely no rules or theories on how that life could work, since it evolved in a way that had no relation to us or our manner of thinking/type of life.

Yes. Yes. Ye--wait, what? Let's look at that again...


Ok, let's dissect this. I agree with you until the second comma. Then... what the heck? First, your last clause somehow suddenly assumes that there is life outside of earth (which you just said in your first sentence that we don't have evidence for). Second, actually, we have no rules or theories about it because we have no evidence to base such on, not because we have no idea how such life could have possibly evolved. Third, we don't know if evolving a "different way" (what do you even mean by that? not through Natural Selection? not through mutation?) would create life completely and utterly different from our own on the atomic level. Fourth, we don't know if evolution in environments "different" enough to cause lifeforms based on a different element.

In short, science is not on your side because there is no evidence. You can believe in or talk about non-carbon-based lifeforms all you want, yes. However, there is no evidence beyond what our imagination can conjure up in support of any of this.

@Liz: I know there are facilities dedicated to sending out signals and watching incoming radiation to see if any might actually be a signal.