Is there life in the Universe?

[Timewalker]

As the quote from Contact goes, "If there isn't life out there, seems like an awful waste of space". - To paraphrase, I can't be bothered to lookup the exact quote.

Ellie Arroway: [to a group of children] I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/quotes

I'd be surprised to find we are the only examples of life in the universe.

I'd be surprised to find that we are the only examples of life in our solar system.

In the original Cosmos, Carl Sagan speculated on the possibility of life in Jupiter's atmosphere, huge balloon-like lifeforms that ride the air currents and feed on "organic molecules" shed by other lifeforms he speculated could exist on a Jupiter-like planet. Of course there's not a shred of evidence and Sagan acknowledged that - but it's interesting to think about.

 

[GalaxyX]

I like Arthur C. Clarke's quote on the matter:

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

The assumption is that life will be either: primitive bacterias in primordial soups, or advanced lifeforms with humanoid forms but with extremely advanced technology.

What if life out there is far more powerful minds than our own?

Could they care about us, or would be be like ants to them?

 

[Spider]

We know that organic chemistry occurs in space, and we've proven in the laboratory how easy it is for non-living chemical processes involving water, rock, atmospheric gasses, and pressure to create organic molecular chains necessary for life to exist. What we haven't done yet is to document the actual process by which these molecular chains combine to form self replicating cell structures. There are plenty of well documented methods to have your planet receive or create organic chemistry compounds required by carbon based life as we know it.

To have life evolve to intelligent self awareness took 3.8 billion years on Earth. The universe is (I forget the exact number) about three times older than Earth. That gives the universe plenty of time to develop life that far exceeds us.

 

[sojourner]

The assumption is that life will be either: primitive bacterias in primordial soups, or advanced lifeforms with humanoid forms but with extremely advanced technology.

Wait, what??? who made that assumption? why humanoid lifeforms?

 

[FPAlpha]

Personally i believe there's tons of life out there at various stages of development much like our earth went through various stages of lifeforms.

We developed fairly recently in the grand scheme of things and we already have took the first baby step into outer space. If we don't destroy earth and ourselves in the next hundred years or so imagine what we may discover by then.

Given the vast scope of the universe i fully expect life to spring up as it has on earth though it may have taken a totally different path, it may not even be carbon based so who knows what the "end product" will look like and if they even have any interest in us given our current state of development.

They may be only about a 1000 years ahead in the development curve but given the exponential growth in knowledge the difference may be so great in technology that we can't even detect them if they don't want to.

So i wouldn't put much stock in SETI not having found any evidence yet. Astronomers are discovering earth like planets now at a rapid pace though most of them are still way outside our comfortable zone (something like 2g and extreme temperature swings is currently the best i heard about) and with ever developing technology we will be able to probe further and get better pictures.

So yeah, i am convinced that life is out there in various stages of development.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I'm still at Fermi's paradox: if there's life in the universe, where is everyone?

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I'm still at Fermi's paradox: if there's life in the universe, where is everyone?

In Andromeda. That would postpone any contact or discovery for a good 4 billion years.

If it is in the next cluster of galaxies, no contact will ever be made, which makes the existence of aliens very difficult to know. Much worse, at such distance any signs of life and civilization might be indistinguishable from natural processes, so you could imagine two identical universes, one with aliens and one without, that would from Earth POV be completely identical, with us having this same conversation and reaching the same conclusions in both.

 

[varek]

I was reading that only carbon, boron and silicon could be expected to form the basis for lifeforms. This author said that boron is too rare, while silicon can only support a few-hundred molecules, so carbon is the most viable basis for life.
This would restrict the kinds of lifeforms that could exist, although the variety could be considerable.

 

[RoJoHen]

The assumption is that life will be either: primitive bacterias in primordial soups, or advanced lifeforms with humanoid forms but with extremely advanced technology.

Wait, what??? who made that assumption? why humanoid lifeforms?

Because it's easier on the costume department.

 

[Into Darkness]

It's only recently that as a species we've managed to progress socially and technologically. For a long period of time we were stuck at the same general tech level.
The universe therefore could be teeming with intelligent life but they're stuck using bow and arrows and never discovered electricity because they never grew up and got over their primitive natures. We could be unbelievably lucky that we came out of the dark ages.

 

[Spider]

It's only recently that as a species we've managed to progress socially and technologically. For a long period of time we were stuck at the same general tech level.
The universe therefore could be teeming with intelligent life but they're stuck using bow and arrows and never discovered electricity because they never grew up and got over their primitive natures. We could be unbelievably lucky that we came out of the dark ages.

And if somehow intelligence (of some sort) developed underwater, they wouldn't have access to many forms of technology requiring fire unless they somehow managed to use magma flows or under water heat vents.

 

[GalaxyX]

The assumption is that life will be either: primitive bacterias in primordial soups, or advanced lifeforms with humanoid forms but with extremely advanced technology.

Wait, what??? who made that assumption? why humanoid lifeforms?

Because it's easier on the costume department.

Well even when a science fiction show or movie has the budget, most of the time alien lifeforms are shown to be some variation of earth animal, or energy being of light.

They are always shown to be mentally on the same level as us, with the only difference that their knowledge of science is far greater than us.

Occasionally they are shown to have direct superior mental abilities, but always able to understand us and communicate at our level.

Would the reality be anywhere close to that?

 

[thestrangequark]

My favorite first contact story is Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone. The aliens in that story are very unlike humans, they don't even experience time in the same way as we do, but they tell us that in all their travels we're the most similar life to them they could find.

Anyway, it's a stunningly beautiful story, and people really should read it.

 

[Spider]

I’m taking a couple of courses right now on the emergence of life and separately on how solar systems and planets form. I’ve noticed an intriguing similarity between the problems these two subjects have in modeling behavior.

For instance in emergence of life we can show how all the building blocks of life are created with geochemistry and cosmology. Amino acids and all kinds of organic chemistry goes on in star dust winding up in comets, meteors and planets. Processes on land and in water that create these same organic molecules can be duplicated in a lab. We know that lipids can form microscopic molecular nodules that can hold water and other biochemicals inside keeping water out. Certain molecular proteins can act as portals to let matter pass through these lipid modules. Clay and quartz can also help organize organic molecules. Getting from that to a self-replicating cell is where things fall apart. Once you have a cell, the study of biology and evolution will tell you the rest of the story.

Likewise in planetary formation we know how dust particles in space use static electricity to attract and combine to make bigger dust particles. This happens until what you have is a rock about a yard in circumference. At this point dust particles rarely stick to the rock and it doesn’t have enough gravity to pull in anything. When the rocks collide they mostly tend to break apart in small pieces, not stick together. So we can correctly model making rocks, and we can correctly model what happens when you have enough mass so that you can attract objects with gravity. But we can’t seem to get from a rock to a planetoid with gravity.

I just thought it was interesting that we’ve figured out the beginnings and endings of these two processes, but we’re stuck at an early point in both making the two ends meet.