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Medium of Death wrote:Perhaps Aliens are aware of us but, as we are so far behind technologically, they choose to ignore us.

Maybe we are the Pleebs of the Milky Way.

I for one embrace our Alien superiors, wherever they may be.

Melissia wrote: "grey-skinned invaders with anal probes and flying saucers"

Sounds like quite the party.

Damnit Jamees I was about to say that!

Once you go Alien you never go back?

Until your DCM status eexpirees.

It's not pleebs!

It's Plebs!

PLEBS I TELL YOU!

It's a conspiracy, the Aliens are already here and their adding e's indiscriminately!

Quickly, take your suicide pills!

No wee areen't.

Whoa whoa whoa......stay the gel tablets for a moment. Its my spellcheckers fault, it didnt red line anything


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Damn MoD

Joey wrote:No.
The universe is a finite place and the maths says it's pretty unlikely.
You may as well say "well there's all these grains of sand, one of them must be a completely accurate map of Chipping Norton".

No, because the point is not just saying 'there's lots of something, therefore there every unlikely thing must out there once'.

The point is to actually study and come to understand the scale of the first number (which is actually bigger than the number of grains of sand on Earth) and the second (which is dependant on repeating processes, and not at all like the randomness of parts of a grain of sand just happening to fall into line to resemble something).


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biccat wrote:1 in a billion is likely too small.

That's you just making stuff up.

The usefulness of the Drake Equation is that it gives an idea of the appropriate variables. In order to have life on a planet you have to have a habitable planet. In order to have a habitable planet you have to have the right mix of chemicals. In order to have life on that planet you have to have some other chemical mix.

The uselessness of the Drake Equation is that it's essentially a SWAG. And therefore doesn't actually give any useful information, except for the user's bias.

Except of course, people know stuff. They even know stuff that people on Dakka don't know. It's incredible, I know, but it really is true. They use that knowledge to make reasoned estimates of things. They can even use it make reasoned estimates of what is out there in the universe.

The estimates on the commonality of planets in the life zone, and the existance of various chemicals aren't just made up numbers.

I'm of the opinion that it doesn't matter whether there's life out there or not, it will never have an impact on our planet.

I agree with you there.


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Pacific wrote:You could also point out Greg Bear's (the SF writers) slightly pessimistic theory - that the nature of life is struggle, and any complex and intelligent forms of life that have come into being (and unable to separate themselves from that fundamental character) have ultimately destroyed themselves when they have eventually created weapons capable of doing so. Perhaps there are a million burning balls in the galaxy, life blasted or poisoned out of existence.

I think it's an idea that had a lot of intuitive appeal in the Cold War, and possibly also late 2001, early 2002.

Grakmar wrote:...As for the aliens question, Fermi's Paradox is a very real issue. It boils down to the following:
If life was even super rare (like 1 in a billion), we'd certainly see a few cases of it in our galaxy as there is billions and billions of planets in our galaxy. And, as the universe is incredibly old and the Earth is relatively young, at least one of those alien life forms would be billions of years ahead of us, developmentally. Even at speeds much slower than the speed of light and pausing for centuries at each new planet, they would have colonized the entire galaxy by the time dinosaurs were first evolving. Since we haven't seen them, it must mean that life is even rarer than that estimate...

Here is the issue, I see, with that statement, regarding the Fermi's Paradox. Think about our own species. If a species reached a Type II in the Kardashev scale for technological advancement, which means the civilization can harnest energy from it's parent star, who's to say there is some economic fluxuation that once a civilization reaches a certain point that it would collapse on itself? There could be millions of ancient civilzations across just our arm of the Milky Way Galaxy and we would not be able to see them because they have died off.

Life occurs everywhere it can.

NASA discovered arsenic based lifeforms somewhere near Houston, this was thought impossible.
There is a whole ecosystem based around underwater mineral volcanoes, and the sun's energy has nothing to do with it. This was thought impossible.
There are microbes found in underground gas pockets, once thought impossible.
And viruses come from space.

There is life out there...And if there isn't, and we are all that there is then the universe is fethed.

I believe Aliens exist.

There is a hell of a lot of Stars and Galaxies out there that I'm almost certain Alien lifeforms exist.

I find it interesting that New Zealand and the French Goverment have publicly released thier UFO files which seems strange they would have actaul investigation into such things.

So perhaps some Aliens have come to Earth.

UAF are real. Its just the US gov will not acknowledge it.

Maybe we can't detect them because they went digital. Analogue signals are fairly easy for us to detect compared to digital ones that require a key and the right frequency.

Our communications technology has already changed from indescriminate blasting of the airwaves to discrete targetted transmissions mainly aimed downward from satellites. Our radio signature in the galaxy has bloomed and dimmed in less than 60 years; a mere blip in time.

Zyllos wrote:

Grakmar wrote:...As for the aliens question, Fermi's Paradox is a very real issue. It boils down to the following:
If life was even super rare (like 1 in a billion), we'd certainly see a few cases of it in our galaxy as there is billions and billions of planets in our galaxy. And, as the universe is incredibly old and the Earth is relatively young, at least one of those alien life forms would be billions of years ahead of us, developmentally. Even at speeds much slower than the speed of light and pausing for centuries at each new planet, they would have colonized the entire galaxy by the time dinosaurs were first evolving. Since we haven't seen them, it must mean that life is even rarer than that estimate...

Here is the issue, I see, with that statement, regarding the Fermi's Paradox. Think about our own species. If a species reached a Type II in the Kardashev scale for technological advancement, which means the civilization can harnest energy from it's parent star, who's to say there is some economic fluxuation that once a civilization reaches a certain point that it would collapse on itself? There could be millions of ancient civilzations across just our arm of the Milky Way Galaxy and we would not be able to see them because they have died off.

It takes 2-3 generations of stars; a reasonably settled mature solar system with a planet in the hbitable zone that has been bombarded by cometary matter so that there is enough water and organic chenicals on the surface to form life. Hell life may even require a magnetic field. I think that we can assume that there wouldn't be much if any intelligent life with Billions of years on us.
We must also take into account that although a species may develop intellingence and self awareness as a survival trait, it is not necessarily linked to an ability to create tools or an interest in astronomy.
On earth there are have been many oportunities for intelligence to emerge. We should think ourselves lucky that the rise of communal insects did not occur at the time when atmospheric oxygen levels were high enough to support insects the size of small dogs. I doubt self aware insect colonies would be much interested in looking up.

Yes I think aliens exist. I just don't think they are interested in meeting us.

As an aside I believe that Grey aliens are an expression of the template our mind has for what constitutes a human form. The eyes are around here; the mouth and nose are centered there; the head is shaped vaguely like this and the body is of lower priority but shaped like this.

I used to see these when I was little. They were always peeking round doors in the dark. I am old enough that the grey alien stories had not been spread, I am also mildly schizophrenic.

My Brain Slug says yes....

UAF are real. Its just the US gov will not acknowledge it.

Until there is evidence, it doesn't exist. All that exists is bacterial life in space. Nothing higher.

This is why people shouldn't listen to clowns like this.

DeadlySquirrel wrote:
And viruses come from space.

Huh.

Gorskar.da.Lost wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Joey wrote:No.
The universe is a finite place and the maths says it's pretty unlikely.
You may as well say "well there's all these grains of sand, one of them must be a completely accurate map of Chipping Norton".

Exactly which maths state that the area set in the universe is finite? Also which maths state that it's pretty unlikely? Most proofs for this kind of thing tend to state that there is almost certainty in the existence of extraterrestrial lifeforms.

When you said maths, did you mean "my head"?


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Gorskar.da.Lost wrote:

Joey wrote:No.
The universe is a finite place and the maths says it's pretty unlikely.
You may as well say "well there's all these grains of sand, one of them must be a completely accurate map of Chipping Norton".

A finite place so utterly huge that the unlikeliness is offset by it's size.
Hell, the universe is so large that it's actually incomprehensible to us just how big it is.
Now, if that had been an answer to "Is there other sentient life out there?" then my answer might have been slightly different, but not by much. After all, sentient life takes multiple forms right here on Earth.

Where are you guys getting this "finite" business from?

Hm, actually looking it up, there seems to be no actual indicative size for the universe; indeed, it might actually be infinite.
If so, I think my mind just blew up, because that would be amazing.

Im just going to say that after watching several documenaries on other possibilities besides the big bang they all said that the universe is near infinite and scientists claiming it is infinite are using it as an easy way out of calculations.
Also i dont believe in aliens becase to believe in something implies there is no solid proof of said object of belief (see religion, miracles) and there is proof that alien life exists and has existed. This proof comes in the form of fossilised microbes found on mars and also at least 1 earth like planet that has life sustaining elements, foliage and correct temperatures.
So to sum up, i dont believe in aliens for i know with evidence backng me up that they exist.

The_mini_painter wrote:[Im just going to say that after watching several documenaries on other possibilities besides the big bang they all said that the universe is near infinite and scientists claiming it is infinite are using it as an easy way out of calculations.

Meanwhile at NASA:-

Scientist 1:' He's onto us! All of our hard years of avoiding doing work is ruined!'
Scientist 2:- 'Tell me about it! All these years, I've been puttting doing those troublesome calculations off....'
Scientist 1:- 'Blame it on Global Warming. That's all we can do now...'

I believe in the possibility of alien life, to think that life couldn't exist somewhere else out there in the big big universe is massively arrogant.

Krellnus wrote:I believe in the possibility of alien life, to think that life couldn't exist somewhere else out there in the big big universe is massively arrogant.

To be fair, no-one is saying life couldn't exist.

Some people are saying 'given a rough estimation of what's needed for life to form, and the sheer number of stars in the universe life must exist out there' and other people are responding 'it isn't so much a rough estimation as a complete guess so really the answer is we can't know if there's life out there'.

It isn't a complete guess.

There are billions of planets in this galaxy. There are billions of galaxies in the universe, many smaller and many quite a bit larger than this one. It is statistically improbable that there is only one planet in the entire universe which has intelligent life.

But it's also statistically improbable that we'll ever find them in our lifetimes specifically because of the vastness of space. And even if we do, they could be so far away that by the time we find them they're already extinct, as light just didn't travel fast enough.

Melissia wrote:It isn't a complete guess.

There are billions of planets in this galaxy. There are billions of galaxies in the universe, many smaller and many quite a bit larger than this one. It is statistically improbable that there is only one planet in the entire universe which has intelligent life.

But it's also statistically improbable that we'll ever find them in our lifetimes specifically because of the vastness of space. And even if we do, they could be so far away that by the time we find them they're already extinct, as light just didn't travel fast enough.

Yeah, I agree with you on that. I’m just saying what the two sides were actually claiming, compared to what Krellnus had characterised the argument as.

They're probably out there. The universe has been around for a while, and if there's life here I don't see why it couldn't be somewhere else.

sebster wrote:

Krellnus wrote:I believe in the possibility of alien life, to think that life couldn't exist somewhere else out there in the big big universe is massively arrogant.

To be fair, no-one is saying life couldn't exist.

Some people are saying 'given a rough estimation of what's needed for life to form, and the sheer number of stars in the universe life must exist out there' and other people are responding 'it isn't so much a rough estimation as a complete guess so really the answer is we can't know if there's life out there'.

Fair enough, I was more directing it straight at the question/OP, maybe I should have made that a bit clearer.

I wouldn't be surprised if it also looked nothing like us or what we're used to.
And lets face it, if there is intelligent life, would you really want to sat "Hi!"?
We suck. We can't be civil in just about anything. We're probably like the smelly
kids with lice of the universe.

I thought we were "Mostly Harmless."

Monster Rain wrote:I thought we were "Mostly Harmless."

Wasn't the smelly kid with lice? Seriously, other than spreading bugs, they were harmless too.
Harmless to them, probably. We're deadly to each other.

if they look like this, I'll gladly let them invade us.

Krellnus wrote:Fair enough, I was more directing it straight at the question/OP, maybe I should have made that a bit clearer.

Is cool.


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alarmingrick wrote:I wouldn't be surprised if it also looked nothing like us or what we're used to.
And lets face it, if there is intelligent life, would you really want to sat "Hi!"?

Looks aside, there’s also the issue of what we’d talk to it about. There’s an old line about a lion, even if it were gifted perfect English, could never talk to us, because our frames of reference are so different, and therefore our ways of thinking are so different.

And that’s just for a creature that lives on the same planet.

There's every chance that we'd find their thought processes unintelligible, and they'd think the same of us.

I'm not so sure. A lion is not sapient, and does not have an understanding of the functions of the world around it. We do, although no doubt in a vastly more simply manner than an alien race that could span the distance between stars, there is the fundamental understanding of mathematics and physics that could be a common ground between us.

While I don't believe in a 'superior power' in the way the Abrahamic religions talk about such a term, I sometimes wonder if the Universe has a certain vanity to it. Like it knows it is amazing, and we (and perhaps others) have come about and are in a position to gaze upon and comprehend its intricacies.

Anyway, I'll grab me coat..

remilia scarlet wrote:if they look like this, I'll gladly let them invade us.

I read a sci-fi novel some time ago (sadly I can't remember the name or writer!), humans are using teleportation wormholes to travel across the galaxy, but the process uses a massive amount of energy, and after a set time they are sling-shot back to Earth again.

In it there is the first encounter of intelligent alien life - they are tall, with claws and terrifying to look at (like something from a Horror movie). When they get the chance, they attack the astronauts they are dealing with. In the end and some time later they finally converse with the aliens, and discover that the aliens themselves had no way to know how to communicate with the humans, to find out what was normal etc. So, they read the mind of one of the astronauts and made themselves look and behave like he expected them to.

So, Remilia, if you are the first human that aliens meet, perhaps that is how they will look?

I would say that based on the size of the universe it's probably that life exists elsewhere. Experiments on Earth seem to increasingly show that the odds of various stages in the creation of life occurring naturally are not actually too improbable, especially when considering the time scales and size of the world's oceans, etc.

But there are a few issues than make it difficult for us to contact alien life, assuming we even develop a star drive that means that distance to other worlds is little problem. Firstly, I would imagine that complex life is much less common than simple life, the idea that we will find worlds with animals running around is far more optimistic than finding bacteria, which while scientifically fascinating is not what people hope for when 'meeting' alien life.

Secondly, the odds are that even if intelligent life does occur elsewhere, we will miss the opportunity to meet it. The universe is 9 billion years old, the earth 4.5 billion, we orbit an ordinary middle aged star. While complex life has been around for hundreds of millions of years, intelligent life in the form of humanity only set on its course out of Africa about 5 million years ago and Homo sapiens has only appeared in the last 200,000 years , and of that we've only had meaningful civilisation in the last 10-20,000 at a stretch. And of most of that time, we simply were too immature as a species to understand many scientific concepts. Now we are technologically advanced and have accelerated rapidly in the last 200 years from steam power to putting a man on the moon. We are risking annihilation through atomic weapons and climate change.

So in summation, if other aliens are like us, to have any meaningful dialogue with them we'll have to meet them in a very small window of opportunity, very very small, a matter of a few thousands of years in millions or billions. We are more likely to meet people who are primatives, the archaeological remains of dead species or species who are so far more advanced than us that to whom we are the ones that appear little more than ants.

We don't know what form life will take. Unlike most SF shows, we probably won't be able to breed with alien life because we have no shared origin, unless you accept that life on Earth was seeded from space in the first place, in which case many worlds could share a common origin, but that's fairly fantastic. DNA is vital for life because it's the only self-replicating molecule we have that does what it can, but the complexities are such that there could be other molecules that do the same thing we just don't know what they could be. Far from aliens having a DNA tripex or other SF sounding nonsense, they could have a chemical composition utterly unlike our own. As they say, 'It's life Jim, but not as we know it'.