When, and if we ever discover life outside of Earth it is going to be extremely monumental. It will be a turning point in human history, thinking, and most definitely religion. At the moment we have not discovered life outside yet obviously, and has anyone ever thought about the wake up call this is going to bring when we do?
Think about it... whether we find intelligent alien life, or microsopic bacterial, all the worlds religion and faith in those old religions will be questioned. This cannot be denied. And more than likely, new religions and revisions of old ones will surely be created. For example, How else will the christian religion be able to explain itself once life outside Earth is found? Earth is suppose to be special and unique and alone among a sea (heh) of planets and stars devoid of life... according to the bible.
And when, if, we do find life outside Earth... this is going to give humans a new way to view themselves. We will truly see we are just a species thriving and carving our own niche in our own ecosystem and soon, the universal ecosystem. In a new way, humans will bond. Maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but racism and hostility between groups of humans will cease, or atleast be greatly reduced in the event of finding intelligent alien life.
It will be us versus them. The aliens. We are humans. Not blacks, whites, latinos, asians, so on and so forth. Humans goddamnit.
We will be divided in a new way... not by the color of our skin or upbringing, but how we view the approach we take to an intelligent alien species. Do we offer peace? Do we trade technology? Do we try to develop a friendship and mutual understanding? Do we declare war? Do we eliminate them out of fear?
What do you think we would, or should do in the event of discovering alien life?
I personally think we should develop a watch and learn mentality. We should try communicating with them and try opening up a line of understanding between us and them. I am certain that, as long as this intelligent species in question, "speaks" or has a language of some sort, we could possibly trade "rosetta stones" between eachother.
Let me know what you think.
I always laugh when I see people say that the discovery of alien life will be the death-knell of Christianity. It only makes Theism more attractive, not less. You see, while water is integral to life, not all planets with water are habitable. (at least by complex life; bacteria are probably all over the place.) The probability of a planet coming into existence without any outside Intelligence directing it, and being able to support life any more complex than that found in Domain Archaea, is approximately 1/1000000000000000000000000000000000000000. And that's a conservative estimate, by the way. Meaning that it's unlikely enough for it to happen once. That it would happen twice? That is statistically impossible.
And even once we have a habitable planet, there is no guarantee that it will have life! There are a little over two hundred proteins necessary for life in the simplest bacterial cells. Each of these has approximately the complexity of a Rubik's Cube. It has been calculated that it would take a blind man 1.6 trillion years to solve a single Rubik's Cube. So we once again find ourselves faced with the statistical impossibility of the wind and rain solving 200 Rubik's Cubes during the lifetime of a single star. Once again, it is impossible that it happened once. To have happened twice is all the more impossible, barring a directing Intelligence.
Meh, I'm more amused by the distinctions people make on what kind of life we'll find. What does it matter whether we'll find intelligent life or not? It's not as if intelligent life exists on this one...
Unless alien forms do not use carbon and water as a solvent as their base biochemistry, we can assume some similarities between alien life and terrestial life, at least at a cellular level.
Wikipedia has this fascinating article about hypothetical biochemistries, definitely worth a read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry
Assuming of course, you're right about both life on other planets and about religions.
You're being too optimistic here. Very likely, we'll argue about it for a year, send out some radio signals that will take many thousands of years to reach their destination, and then after the novely wears off go back to our regular way of doing things.
And Galileo considered himself a Christian. Roman Catholic. The opposition to him was more church politics than "religion vs science." He didn't become an atheist AFAIK.
It'll likely start with them putting it under a microscope and exhibiting extreme skepticism. Some may end up "shocked," others will simply modify their beliefs. In addition, many may not be affected at all: Not all religions (or even denominations within a religion) take a hard stance against ET life.
Sure it's deniable. One of the best arguments against life is the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, which claims that the probabilities against life appearing are far greater than the probabilities for appearing. Apply one of the cosmological equations, and you get a totally different result.
Problem is, we don't have a way to test any equation for validity. They're just wild guesses. The equation only hold up to logic insofar as it is valid. Unfortunately, there is no way to confirm its soundness.
validity = whether or not it has any contradictions
soundness = whether or not it reflects realiy
Logic may be valid but unsound by having premises that do not reflect reality.
For example, we have no way of knowing what fℓ is in Drake's equation. In fact, that and all of the remaining terms are nothing but wild guesses. If it happens to be an extremely low number, like 10-100, that itself could render life improbable enough to be pretty much impossible.
So right now the idea of alien life is totally outside the reach of science. I'm not saying it's true or false, just that our current science is simply not capable of saying anything about it.
If the aliens are advanced as we are, if they are to launch a rocket today it will take about 18000 years to travel one light year. The nearest star (other than the Sun) is 4.2 light years away. You do the math.
It's very likely that (assuming other life exists) that if we are to be able to discover other aliens, it will not have any immediate effects.
For one thing, there is currently no faster than light communications and/or travel. Which will make it essentially one way communications. They are unlikely to even know we can hear them. And it's likely to stay that way for many thousands of years.
The science behind "faster than light" is pretty grim. Even the best theories are leaning towards "this is probably gonna end up being impossible, even for the most super advanced beings."
. . . and that's just the theoretical "is it even possible?" stuff. If you go from there to "is it feasible?" stuff it gets even worse.
So detection is one thing - but communication and trade are totally different. I think it's extremely unlikely we will be able to establich communication and/or trade soon after detection.
life outside of earth exists, the chances for atleast 1 other lifeform to exist (bacterial or intelligent) is closer to infinite then one can comprehend
just a curious thought:
some peopel insist that they have seen aliens.. some... rare cases even believe they have been abducted by aliens and even more rare cases of people that imply to have a alien husband and children somewhere out there in the universe
(lol)
now i dont wanna spoil the fun of aliens visiting earth... cuase y i to agree that would be something...
but why would an alien species intend to visit earth?
would they spend countless years traveling through space to reach earth.. (which is olmost completely filled with idiots)
would that be, to say hello? to trade with us? perhaps to abduct a few idiots... marry them and have chilren...
no, i strongly doubt that they'd have any reason to come here in the first place,
maybe to destroy us? build mini-deathstars to destroy our planet
our lovely earth dominated by super-evolved monkey's (let's atleast keep SOME pride in that)
why spend resources on destroying something like that?
and we havent even started taking lightspeed in account..... (no im not talking about startrek) im talknig about .. ofc the speed of light the universe is huge, jargantuos and it's expanding... getting even more jarguantuos..os..ish.. like..
how would they even be able to know we existed? if they'd use a giant telescope to look at earth all they'd see is earth milions of years ago (or probably even an empty spot becuase earth wasn't created by the time the light they are looking at reached them)
though jsut to be sure.. what if they found us by accident?
just looking back at our own history
When Europe finaly discoverred the western continent, now known as the Canada,USA, and South America
what happend back there?
they found the native inhabitants there. i have no idea what happened exactly, but i do know that it ended in war, why? Europe's technology was more advanced, it thought itself to be more important, smarter, better
just like the slave-trading in africa, they looked different, apeared primitive compared to themselves and becuase of that they were considered slaves...goods
i sure hope we're never to be discovered by some alien race. not before we have the means to communicate/defend ourselves...
so all together
we're not alone, the chance = just so big for life to be created out there.. somewhere...)
chance of aliens finding us = around nil
chance of aliens visiting us = even smaller....
if aliens would ever visit us in your lifetime, then pray they come in peace, becuase we wouldnt have anything to say about our existance... this compared to human behaviour in the past
I agree with Survivorman. People our handicapped by our definition of 'habitable'. The organism could be a creature that live at the bottom of oceans, in the deepest trenches of their world, or a animal that lives inside volcanos. A world that wouldn't be habitable for us might be extremely habitable for some species. They might not be based off of carbon and oxygen. Perhaps they're based from nitrogon and argon?
I think whether or not we're visited by aliens depends on a few things. A: If they have some form of FTL travel, cryo sleep, or incredibly long lives. B: If they are genocidal and view every other alien race as a threat. C: If they want to observe us until we are ready for some form of contact and D: To see whether or not our world is something they would want. (Obviously, all of the others are contingent of A being true.)
How do we know this? The opponents claim the opposite it true (that the chances are closer to zero than one can comprehend).
Gosh i like this number. It's sooooo evident, it makes scientific notation blow up in smoke.
I'm offering one more opposite opinion to the 2 minimal formula unproven and most probably as near as anyone ever reached for a conclusive hypothesis.
We, today, cannot imagine what the truth is for a number of reasons; our conscience and what senses allow us to perceive or express it. If there is (at least) a second life-form (be it different or smart enough to return the favors from Earth) -- it either WAS out there or WILL be there.
That -- nobody can deny. By replies in a thread or by publishing books.
I dont understand statistically there has to be other intelligent life out there. How could you possible argue that there isn't?
I agree with Survivorman thus far, or atleast his approach.
An alien species would be adapted to its own environment. They may not even have a concept of war, or peace, or trade, or religion, or any one of these or another. They could have have been born unto an extremely docile environment, so years of evolution and growth would/could give them no concept of the "survival of the fittest" or perhaps war. The reverse could also be true as well as many other variations, and concepts that we may have no idea about.
Did you walk up to every planet and ask, "do you have life?"
So far, we have no statistics.
. . . except maybe from SETI. And out of the heaven knows how many stars they've looked at, we're - well we've got a big, fat zero.
Problem with zero is no matter how many times you multiply it, you still get zero.
It's the Fermi paradox. Or, to put it bluntly: If they're really so probable, why haven't we found them?
Science loves to have evidence. Evidence is good, evidence is great. But we've got no evidence.
There are more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches. I dont think you understand the shear amount of planets out there. And there is evidence that planets will form with water inside of the habitable zone quite often.
Im sorry but Earth is not going to be special, were not a fluke. if life formed here it will form there and eventually intelligent life.
That's interesting, but rather meaningless.
sheer.
Problem is, it doesn't matter - as we don't have any idea what fraction of planets have life. It could be an exceedingly small amount. It could even in fact be just us - the issue is not how many planets there are, but the fact that we know nothing about the probablities of life, or even if life was an accidental event at all.
Water is necessary for life, but not sufficient. What you just said is meaningless in this context.
It doesnt matter that we have not detected other life out there. We know about planet formation. We know what elements are available from a star by viewing its light. The planets will have atmospheres that are comprised of the readily avialable elements. All the organic compounds are available where some stars form. So other solar systems will contain similar planets as ours. Experiments show that basic organic compounds will form in variouse types of atmosopheres under the right conditions.
SO ITS ALL ABOUT THE NUMBERS.
There are so many planets out there that earth like planets WILL FORM.
Sure it does. If somebody presents a hypothesis, and the evidence contradicts it, then we need a new hypothesis.
We have guesses about planet formation based on various things we see in telescopes.
We know what elements are in the star at the time. The composition of the planet is AFAIK still not directly observable.
Well, I guess that means Earth's atmosphere is made of mostly Hydrogen and Helium.
Strange. Never heard of organic compounds being discovered in stars.
Do I need to explain the difference between "sufficient" and "necessary" conditions?
Yelling won't make your logic any better.
That wasn't your claim. Your claim was:
I like to think about it like this; 1st, we as in humanity, are enough evidence for alien life. in a universe as large as ours, its impossible for an event such as life to only happen once. 2nd, even with numbers as pointed out by praetor(where exactly did you get that number anyway? seems a little exaggerrated to me), there is more than enough room for more than 1 instance of life. for example, a galaxy as large as ours will form many trillions of planets in its lifetime, that alone is an incredible amount, in addition to the many trilions of galaxies in our 1 arm of the universe(with many other braches to count), leads to a statistical impossibility that life will only form once. 3rd, for those who have faith in the bible, you have already discovered aliens. God, the Devil, Angels, and Demons are not from or of the earth. Nor are they some direct product or relation of humanity. so in that sense, they are very alien. 4th, also for believers, gods said he created angels ccording to the bible. if memory serves then he did not say what specific form they shall take or that they shall only reside in heaven. so once again, on those grounds, the faithful have already discovered alien life.
Whether or not the hypothetical alien species is anything like us at all, it still must obey the laws of physics. Using only one criterion (that there should be no deadly radiation), we can eliminate over 99 % of the stars in the universe. Each successive criterion (and there are many: the recipe for life is much more complex than "just add water") takes away over 90 % of the remaining stars. Further, why do we keep assuming that all stars have planets? To be sure, we have planets, and we know of SOME other stars that have them, but as far as we know, the VAST majority of stars have no planets. Further, we have this odd idea that all habitable planets are inhabited. As I said before, the simplest life has a little over two hundred proteins in it, each of which has approximately the complexity of a Rubik's Cube. A Rubik's Cube could be solved by a blind man in approximately 1.6 trillion years. (If you're wondering, I got those statistics from The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins.) The life-span of your average star is about ten billion years. So we are asking the wind and the rain to solve two hundred Rubik's Cubes in less than ten billion years. This is difficult, to say the least. And further, we must cut down the time allotted to the wind and rain by about four billion years, as that is how long it takes for intelligent life to evolve from the primitve bacteria.
As a side note, I noticed someone above saying that "[these creatures] might not be based off of carbon and oxygen. Perhaps they're based from nitrogon and argon?" Who taught you chemistry? Please let me know, so I can slap them. There are many good reasons why all life must be based on carbon or some other element in column IVa of the periodic table, but even putting all of them aside, argon is a noble gas; it can't react with ANYTHING! Meaning that NO other chemicals are derivative from it!
Are we?
Is it?
It is. The estimates vary wildly depending on who you talk to. But there are some that peg is as pretty much impossible, especially if you are willing to deviate from the path of pure naturalism.
Or, for that matter, from or of our universe, according to most forms of Christinity. They are "aliens" in the sense that they are not from Earth, but not "aliens" in the sense of they are from another planet.
Without the survival of the fittest, evolution cannot occur: it is the driving force behind evolution. Therefore, an intelligent being not produced by either survival of the fittest or the from-scratch fabrication of an Intelligence is a contradiction in terms. As for war, war is the natural state of all creatures, and to be intelligent and have no conception of it is, again, quite impossible. Whenever you have multiple individuals in one place, they are inevitably drawn into conflict, "bellum omnes contra omnia" as Thomas Hobbes put it. It is only after intelligence arises that government and law can begin to make peaceful coexistence possible. And even then, war is the natural state of the intelligent species. Indeed, we have not made peace today: there has never been a time in all of human history without conflict!
And really, this approach, while valid, is altogether meaningless. If we assume nothing about these hypothetical aliens we are encountering, we cannot usefully conjecture anything about what will happen if/when we do encounter them. So unless we assume that these creatures are at least somewhat like us, this thread is pointless.
And, as a good many of you want to know where I got the figure from, I got the number 1/1000000000000000000000000000000000000000 from The Privileged Planet, by Guillermo Gonzales, a professor of Astronomy at the University of California at Berkely...
i am under the impression that carbon along with other forms of matter such as silicon and gold, are "base elements". which is partly why life forms are based on carbon as far as we know. but considering the other base elements, would it be so great a leap so say that a creature could not be based on silicon? i am interested to know if any of that was true. anyway, as you said, virtually all stars give off deadly radiation, including our own(it still does btw). But the great part about planets is that they can form massive magnetic fields that act to deflect harmful radiation. earth does this and so does mars(to a far lesser extent). as for the winds and rains arguement, its true that they could take trillions of years to form all the proteins. assuming they try it only once at a time. but even on a small world, there are billions, if not trillions, of instances when the combination could take place in a given minute.(im not quite sure i convayed the concept quite right with that so let me know if your not on the same page) in addition, impacts from other worlds could potetially send the organic compounds to the potential planetary parent. i could also bring up the arguement about the true definition of a planet, & that it could be possible for life to develop on something other than a planet (ive heard that there is atleast 1 mini-planet with a sustainable atmosphere but im unsure of this) but id rather not so ill let it go.
Yeah, it's pretty pointless. I just like to stick around and stir things up .
They are all elements, yes. The standard periodic table in most chemistry books have 102 of them, although there are some heavier ones that we know of.
Carbon is common in life mostly because of how it interacts with itself and Hydrogen and can form interesting shapes that are useful to biological organisms.
Silicon, Geranium, tin, and lead have similar electron shell configurations, but very likely won't work as well. Tin and lead are metals, so they won't work at all. Silicon and Geranium are closer to Carbon, being metalloids. But they still have some metallic properties that may make them poor candidates for organic molecules.
Between its electron configuration and being the only true non-metal in its column in the periodic table, Carbon essentially sits at a "sweet spot" on the periodic table that makes it ideal for organisms. There literally is no element more ideal for this than Carbon.
Well, all kinds of chemical reactions happen all the time between even non-organic molecules. But you need a lot more than that to create life. Life requires that molecules are arranged in specific ways inside the protective cell walls.
I could shake up parts and pieces in a bowl, but only by putting them together purposefully and in very specific arrangements will I be able to make a watch with them. Even with billions of bowls, I do not think they will ever form a watch spontaneously.
I like this. I am going to make a similar case.
Your in a room of unknown size and dimensions. your vision is limited to 1 milameter infront of your eyes. you have no sense of touch, smell, or taste. you can only hear sounds of specific frequencies and wavelenghts. even then you can only hear things that are very loud and very close to you. you position in the room is also unknown.
you search this room for other entities for 30 seconds. while stumbling around with no direction planning, or even knowledge of what your doing or what your looking for, you find nothing. based on your 30 seconds of blundering, you conclude that nothing else exists in this room.
thats the argument you just made. because humans have been looking for possibilities of life in an incrediably clumsy and crude way for what, 30-40 years at best, and since we haven't found anything that lack of evidence means that there is nothing to be found?
here is one more similar case. i am sitting at my computer desk typing this reply for 5 minutes, while typing i am also thinking about how i would almost rather be dead than thinking about this. since i have spent 5 minutes thinking about my on death (Note. a reletivly crude and ineffective way to kill oneself.) and have still not died, i can conclude that i will never infact die.
Although it is not well understood, there is a theory that organic compounds somehow "self-organise" into existance. May not be totally random after all.
Ah, but the others are saying that stuff must exist in the room because you're inside a football stadium. Never mind if there is really anything in the stadium or not, something must exist because it's such a huge room!
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