Are We Alone in the Universe?

[Arrqh]

Thing is, I certainly believe that there is other life out there... I just think it's important to keep in mind that from a purely scientific point of view, there just isn't sufficient evidence or understanding to make it anything more then just a belief. So far, anyway

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I firmly agree with the theory behind the Drake equation. It's statistically very highly improbably that we're alone in the universe. We're probably just in a remote area that hasn't been explored yet.

Or we are the most advanced species so far.

For those of us who are science fiction fans, the idea that we might be ahead of the curve is a depressing thought.

However, when you take into consideration some of the advantages we have, like Jupiter catching and throwing out large objects, and the moon churning around our oceans, it definitely seems like a possibility. Life might exist on other planets, but it seems pretty likely that the evolution of sentient life on ours was sped up by these factors.

How long would it take on a planet within a star's habitable zone without these advantages? We can't really be sure.

 

[TerriO]

Thing is, I certainly believe that there is other life out there... I just think it's important to keep in mind that from a purely scientific point of view, there just isn't sufficient evidence or understanding to make it anything more then just a belief. So far, anyway

Lack of evidence does not automatically assume lack of proof. I mean, think about how many crimes go without prosecution thanks to a lack of enough evidence to convict. The same could easily be happening here. We don't have enough evidence to commit one way or the other yet. I know it's circumstantial, but the numbers alone suggest that there have got to be other life-supporting planets out there. Even if a small percentage of them actually had life evolve, then we're not alone in the universe. Even if it's just microbial life, it's proof of a second Genesis.

Hell, if we manage to find fossils on Mars (again, even if it's just a fossilized microbe), that's going to throw a lot of scientific theories for a loop.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Thirty years ago we were bleeding more and more TV and radio noise into the Universe...then came cable communications and so forth and we may be going somewhat silent as a result. It's been suggested recently that the length of time in which a technical civilization actually transmits evidence of its existence as a matter of happenstance may be limited to a few decades.

 

[Arrqh]

We don't have enough evidence to commit one way or the other yet.

I thought that's what I said?

 

[Trekker4747]

100 Billion Stars in our galaxy.
Millions upon Millions of galaxies.

And out of all of that we're the only miserable ball of mud and iron that has life? Right

There IS life out there. They're not flying over to us, kidnapping us in our sleep, and shoving probes up our ass. But they're out there.

 

[-Brett-]

^ what else would they do?

Secretly abduct educated people and orally probe them?

 

[RandyS]

^ what else would they do?

Buy them beer?

 

[RandyS]

100 Billion Stars in our galaxy.
There IS life out there.

Yes, but the differnce between life here, and life on other plantes, is that life on other planets is intelligent.

And they smell better.

 

[Lieut. Arex]

I firmly agree with the theory behind the Drake equation. It's statistically very highly improbably that we're alone in the universe. We're probably just in a remote area that hasn't been explored yet.

Or we are the most advanced species so far.

Or we're the only technological species in the galaxy at this time. At OmegaCon a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Les Johnson sat in for Seth Shostak on the SETI panel. He recounted his experience walking around the huge globe of the Earth at the Hayden Planetarium with the entire geologic timeline laid out around it and how tiny a slice human existence occupies. The chance that our sliver of history overlaps that of another civilization close enough and long enough for any contact to occur, he suggested, is vanishingly small. The Drake Equation can't factor in when all those thousands of possible civilizations might arise, when intelligence as a survival trait might win through in the evolutionary roulette game. Consider how long it took on Earth. Dinosaurs held sway for millions of years and never needed big brains to be tremendously successful.

Even if an intelligent species arises on a nearby world, there's no guarantee they'd develop a technological civilization anything like ours. Look at human history. There are examples where advanced technologies have been lost, abandoned (primitive Greek steam "engines", the Chinese treasure fleet), or never considered. The Aztecs could work metals but didn't use them for weapons until after the Spanish arrived. There were no cultural pressures for them or any New World peoples to develop those technologies in the nearly 20,000 years they lived in the Americas. Had there been, the Spanish might have been met not by men in cloth armor wielding wooden clubs and obsidian blades, but mechanized infantry.

The same scientific community which stubbornly refuses to acknowledge some very clear indications of life on Mars turned up by the Voyager experiments of the 1970’s is nevertheless cautiously optimistic about finding it elsewhere.

Viking, not Voyager. And while the results of the Labeled Release experiment are interesting, they hardly constitute "clear indications of life", merely a result which deserves a thorough follow-up.