Quick poll. Do you believe in life outside of our solar system?

[Gingerbread Demon]

Just a quick snap poll.. And post your thoughts.

Do you think or believe that life does exist in some form, not necessarily intelligent, but life, any kind of life outside of our solar system on other planets.

Poll will close in 14 days.

 

[Relayer1]

Yes, there is, has been or will be.

Whether it's intelligent or not we don't know, but I sincerely doubt we'll ever meet.

Even if the statistics are correct, and they are massively in favour of life elsewhere, the sheer unimaginable amount of deep time that they could evolve in means it is unlikely that we coexist with them at the same moment.

Oh, and they're quite a long way away too...

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Yes, there is, has been or will be.

Whether it's intelligent or not we don't know, but I sincerely doubt we'll ever meet.

Even if the statistics are correct, and they are massively in favour of life elsewhere, the sheer unimaginable amount of deep time that they could evolve in means it is unlikely that we coexist with them at the same moment.

Oh, and they're quite a long way away too...

Yes but life need not be intelligent life or anything like us. Planets could have evolved with vast flora and fauna and be devoid of any kind of civilization. I'd like to think there are whole worlds with just nothing but nature and wild critters.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I think prokaryotic-type life will be ubiquitous but that analogues of eukaryotic life will be rare. The steps to go from the former to the latter appear to require many improbable steps. Evolution from single to multicellular eukaryotic lifeforms is probably relatively simple. So there's likely lots of pond scum out there. I'm not saying this is definitely the case but it might explain the Fermi Paradox if the Great Filter is the development of complex cells.

 

[Silvercrest]

So there's likely lots of pond scum out there.

So, politicians really are universal?

Maybe the Great Filter is the capability of evolving beyond a two-party system.

 

[Santaman]

I voted maybe, like @Relayer1 I think the whole size and timespan of the universe is such that even if there's intelligent life in the universe they might be too far away to ever detect them or they haven't reached our level of technology or they already have gone extinct.
Could well be that we'll wind up extinct and some other civilisation is asking this same question.

 

[Relayer1]

I saw a documentary on exoplanets earlier and the data collected over the last two decades indicates that sun type stars have Earth type planets (rocky and in the "Goldilocks zone") about 20% of the time.

These planets, which should have liquid water and theoretically be hospitable to life, total around 11 billion.

And that's just in the Milky Way.

 

[Santaman]

I can only guess that even with a planet in the right orbit around the right type of star might not have the needed biochemical elements needed to start life which maybe is a reason that it might be a lot less common.

 

[StarCruiser]

There was a recent article that made the suggestion that simple life is probably fairly common but, complex life - let alone Sapient life - is probably very rare.

Basically, what "Chestnuts Roasting" suggested is probably the case.

We could very well be the only 'intelligent' (and that's got to be qualified in 2020!) life in this galaxy, at least, at the moment.

In a way, that makes getting out there all the more important since we may be it...

 

[NCC-73515]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Life on Earth appears to be very reliant on the element phosphorus, which is required for the "backbone" of nucleic acids, ATP and similar molecules used in metabolic processes, and phospholipid cell membranes. I'm wondering if the solar system was blessed with more of that element than usually occurs in the galaxy or even the cosmos.

Life's first taste of phosphorus (phys.org)

 

[StarCruiser]

Yep - when you think about it, the universe (or at least, this one) is around 13-14 billion years old and Earth is around 4.5-5 billion years old.

~8 billion years of star formation and novae occurred before the Earth even formed into a lump of rocks.

I would have to suspect that this particular region may have had a little more luck than most.

 

[publiusr]

I’m a bit more skeptical of even protists...but I’m bleak that way

 

[StarCruiser]

Dude... That's like grim-dark or something...

 

[BillJ]

Maybe? Enough information simply doesn't exist to guess either way.

 

[XCV330]

I think simple life is probably fairly common, but we're probably the only sentient species we'll ever encounter, apart from signs another one may have existed in the past, before we ourselves are done. Or at least, we might be among the first, if we reach a level of development that includes interstellar travel.

In this observable universe, anyway.

In a multiversal sense, I think sentient life is fairly common, but if those repeating universes occupy Hubble-sphere scale immensities across an unbelievably infinite cosmos where the cosmological principle suggests repeated copies with variance of essentially the same thing, at those scales, including our own "universe" So, if Earth is one of those rare paradises that make great conditions for multicellular sentient life thanks to Theia smacking Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

 

[BK613]

I went with maybe but that is an as-close-as-you-can-get-to-yes-and-not-be-yes maybe. Odds are in favor of there being life elsewhere but as yet, we have no proof. It's like the similar question about planets prior to the discovery of the first exoplanet; it seems reasonable that would be other planets but one could not say for certain.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I voted yes, but the real answer is 'Probably'.

But I think odds are strongly against interacting with them directly. Just because I think it's very likely you can't actually break the light barrier, so even if the aliens could solve all the logistical and health problems of that kind of trip, they still would have trouble finding anyone willing to make the trip or invest in them making it.

Of course if we're wrong about the light barrier and you actually can build a warp drive, the odds go way up.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I did like that a few of you picked "maybe" that seemed like a wise answer

 

[Silvercrest]

Not because I'm wise; only because I can't back up a strong "yes" or "no".

It's true elsewhere in my life too. After you've shot yourself in the foot enough times, all you can do is sit on the fence.