Extraterrestrial Life

[nudge+]

Could make for an interesting discussion, given the recent posts in the other news thread.

Discuss!

[Devil]

100% life out there.

Space is so vast we can't comprehend so why on earth would we think that we are the only planet with life.

Our technology is amazing and improving every decade, what's to say these other beings are a million years ahead of us in development.

Of all the conspiracy theories extraterrestrial life is the one I'm certain exists.

[Stan]

12 minutes ago, Devil said:

100% life out there.

Space is so vast we can't comprehend so why on earth would we think that we are the only planet with life.

Our technology is amazing and improving every decade, what's to say these other beings are a million years ahead of us in development.

Of all the conspiracy theories extraterrestrial life is the one I'm certain exists.

Certain? Based on there being a vast space? Space you can't comprehend but are willing to comprehend there's extraterrestrials occupying it? 

 

I can't get on board with it! 

[Dr. Gonzo]

Yes. Well "Yes, probably" is my answer. @Devil's summed up my reasoning - although I think it's also likely (maybe more likely, but honestly... I have no idea and there's no data for us to work with) that there's intelligent life that's about just as intelligent as us or not.

I think there's just something unlikely about the vastnest of space not having other planets with the conditions for similar sorts of lifeforms like ours to thrive and evolve into something similar to what humans are.

[Tommy]

I am not sure, but I think it is a possibility. I am leaning more towards yes than no though. 

 

On a sidenote, being abducted by Aliens was a real worry I had as a kid. 

[Devil]

23 minutes ago, Stan said:

Certain? Based on there being a vast space? Space you can't comprehend but are willing to comprehend there's extraterrestrials occupying it? 

 

I can't get on board with it! 

No based on the fact we ourselves have life on our planet so why wouldn't there be life on another planet in another galaxy far beyond ours.

Humans have evolved on this planet, why wouldn't you think it was possible for further life to evolve on a further planet. 

Surely you can see the reasoning on that, it's not like I'm claiming the Queen was a lizard. I'm giving you a fact and a reason why it's possible there is further life beyond our planet.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Devil

[Rucksackfranzose]

In my opinion, the earth being the only planet having developed life out of all the planets in myriads of sun systems in myriads of galaxies is more than just not plausible, it's almost a statistical impossibility. Therefore I voted, yes.

[Stan]

20 minutes ago, Devil said:

No based on the fact we ourselves have life on our planet so why wouldn't there be life on another planet in another galaxy far beyond ours.

Humans have evolved on this planet, why wouldn't you think it was possible for further life to evolve on a further planet. 

Surely you can see the reasoning on that, it's not like I'm claiming the Queen was a lizard. I'm giving you a fact and a reason why it's possible there is further life beyond our planet.

So life on our planet must mean there's life on another planet in another galaxy? That's not a fact, just a hypothesis. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

36 minutes ago, Stan said:

Certain? Based on there being a vast space? Space you can't comprehend but are willing to comprehend there's extraterrestrials occupying it? 

 

I can't get on board with it! 

By the same token, how can you be so certain there isn't alien life out there considering how many planets there are out there in the universe? There are planets out there that have been identified as potentially habitable for humans, meaning they've got characteristics that humans and other earth creatures have used to exist and evolve in.

What makes it likely that these planets that we're likely to never reach in our lifetimes have no form of intelligent life? You can't say because they've not contacted us or reached humans... because we're still working out how to explore our solar system, it's not impossible that there's another species out there that's around where we are at in our history as a species that's also similarly working out how to explore it's solar system.

Imo it's less likely that there's no life out there if there's planets out there that have characteristics of what we know is necessary for lifeforms to exist and evolve on. I just have a hard time believing earth is the only planet out of the billions of planets, and however many we know exist of potentially habitable planets, that has life as we know it on it.

I'm not saying it's like films where there's super advanced alien life forms or anything. But there's likely got to be something that could fall under the classification of intelligent life out there.

Funny thing about this debate is, we'll probably never know because in our lifetimes I doubt we get answers about what's going on in space very very far away from us.

[Tommy]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Funny thing about this debate is, we'll probably never know 

Certainly not when the Americans keep shooting them down! 

[Dr. Gonzo]

Just now, Tommy said:

Certainly not when the Americans keep shooting them down! 

If aliens are trying to reach us with balloons right after the US just shot down a Chinese baloon that China did in fact confirm was theirs... but sending their balloons to the US... then I'm going to assume that unintelligent life is out there seeking humans as other unintelligent life so we can pal around and do unintelligent shit together.

[Tommy]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

If aliens are trying to reach us with balloons right after the US just shot down a Chinese baloon that China did in fact confirm was theirs... but sending their balloons to the US... then I'm going to assume that unintelligent life is out there seeking humans as other unintelligent life so we can pal around and do unintelligent shit together.

They thought for years about landing vehicles that would look harmless and peaceful to us, so they came up with balloons. That the Chinese got in the way was just very unlucky for the Aliens. 

[Rucksackfranzose]

15 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

By the same token, how can you be so certain there isn't alien life out there considering how many planets there are out there in the universe? There are planets out there that have been identified as potentially habitable for humans, meaning they've got characteristics that humans and other earth creatures have used to exist and evolve in.

What makes it likely that these planets that we're likely to never reach in our lifetimes have no form of intelligent life? You can't say because they've not contacted us or reached humans... because we're still working out how to explore our solar system, it's not impossible that there's another species out there that's around where we are at in our history as a species that's also similarly working out how to explore it's solar system.

Imo it's less likely that there's no life out there if there's planets out there that have characteristics of what we know is necessary for lifeforms to exist and evolve on. I just have a hard time believing earth is the only planet out of the billions of planets, and however many we know exist of potentially habitable planets, that has life as we know it on it.

I'm not saying it's like films where there's super advanced alien life forms or anything. But there's likely got to be something that could fall under the classification of intelligent life out there.

Funny thing about this debate is, we'll probably never know because in our lifetimes I doubt we get answers about what's going on in space very very far away from us.

That's what's making this debate interesting in a philosophical way, like the questions whether there's some divine entity or entities or not, or what would the world look like if the axis powers won WWI. Why debatting things we all know the answer?

Edited February 13, 2023 by Rucksackfranzose

[Dr. Gonzo]

21 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

If aliens are trying to reach us with balloons right after the US just shot down a Chinese baloon that China did in fact confirm was theirs... but sending their balloons to the US... then I'm going to assume that unintelligent life is out there seeking humans as other unintelligent life so we can pal around and do unintelligent shit together.

Nena told us of the balloon wars in her prophecies in 1983, but the world thought it was just a catchy pop song.

[CaaC (John)+]

Yes for me and I have thought that from a very early age, the universe is vast and you cannot convince me that we are the only living species around, no way.

As we live on a planet now that we more or less know all about there are things that are being discovered here on planet earth today, tribes that live in the deepest forests, etc that still use medieval tools and look at us as aliens from another world.

I know some books by Erich von Däniken about aliens he created a bit of fiction in them but mostly what he wrote made you scratch your head and think he could be right, I have read a few of his books and they are intriguing. 

'Einstein's Planet': New Alien World Revealed by Relativity

 

[Toinho]

Most likely there’s a form of life out there. Could be similar to ours, could be a bacteria, could this life look like what we often see depicted in media? Probably not? But also why not? Haha. 
 

I don’t think we will ever know though, as in certainly not our generation or the next fair few…

[Spike]

More than likely yes, bacteria on Mars has been found and that’s the closest planet. In the insurmountable size of the universe there has to life, however it cannot be proved so talking about it gets nowhere.

[Stan]

8 hours ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

By the same token, how can you be so certain there isn't alien life out there considering how many planets there are out there in the universe? There are planets out there that have been identified as potentially habitable for humans, meaning they've got characteristics that humans and other earth creatures have used to exist and evolve in.

Evidence, really. And weirdly as has been mentioned, I don't think we'll ever know in our lifetimes either way. 

Also, I think it's important to point out what we believe 'aliens' to be. What do you see an 'alien' as? The green characters from The Simpsons? ET? Or just a form of intelligent life, and how intelligent? 

As discussed in the other thread, I think there's an element of microbial life that has lived on other planets or in other galaxies based on probability. But life as we know it for humans, I'm not so sure. 

[Beelzebub]

I was thinking of starting this thread. Yes I'm also sure that there is life (intelligent or not) on another planet. Species go extinct and new ones are found all the time on our planet alone we fully haven't discovered all the life that exists/existed on Earth yet.

[nudge+]

9 hours ago, Spike said:

More than likely yes, bacteria on Mars has been found and that’s the closest planet. In the insurmountable size of the universe there has to life, however it cannot be proved so talking about it gets nowhere.

Are you referring to the Viking LR metabolism experiment results from the 70s? 

[Spike]

33 minutes ago, nudge said:

Are you referring to the Viking LR metabolism experiment results from the 70s? 

I thought subterranean bacteria was found in the 90s?

[Spike]

Sorry, submarrean.

[nudge+]

To answer the question, yes, I do strongly believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe. One part of the reasoning is, as already mentioned by several other posters, the statistical probability of it, which is further supported by the fact that organic compounds and amino acids have been found repeatedly on small interplanetary objects like comets, meteorites and asteroids, and we are discovering new exoplanets with potentially habitable conditions almost daily  - so even if you think of life as only familiarly carbon-based like we know it on Earth, there are no limits to it as there's an abundance of carbon throughout the universe, too. And if you are open to the idea that some other element could be the backbone of life as well, then the opportunities for life arising are pretty much endless in the vast and potentially infinite universe. 

It is much harder to speculate about highly intelligent life forms, as that is by far more complex and depends on many more factors than just the creation of some primordial soup of life. On one hand, I do think it is unlikely that we are the only life form that happened to randomly evolve on a random planet at a random time by chance in a universe of incomprehensible size. On the other hand, I also think that biologically, there is nothing that strongly favours the evolution of high intelligence species able to build civilisations, and it's hard to believe that the conditions somewhere else would have been almost identical to the conditions on Earth throughout the billions of years to produce a life form even remotely similar to us, especially considering how many random accidents it took for us to evolve to what we are now. But then again, intelligent life can also take many different forms, and with so many galaxies, stars, and planets + extremely long periods of time, how could anyone rule out that possibility?

Another idea that I like to ponder about is the possibility of intelligent species evolving and then going extinct over and over again all over the universe. Life is resilient but also fragile; even on Earth, life already went through 5 major extinctions. It is possible that life as such is pretty common, it just struggles to survive and evolve further. 

[nudge+]

3 minutes ago, Spike said:

I thought subterranean bacteria was found in the 90s?

 

3 minutes ago, Spike said:

Sorry, submarrean.

Not that I'm aware of. The only two potential suggestions of evidence I know of are those Viking experiments with inconclusive results, and that meteorite in Antarctica from the 80s that potentially carried Martian fossilized bacteria, but that is also controversial and hasn't been accepted by the scientific community. 

[CaaC (John)+]

We have debates on planet earth and believers and nonbelievers is there such a thing as God, it's the same as saying whether is there life on other planets somewhere in the Universe, then the answer to both debates is yes, no one has seen god, and the only images we see are of men's creation by pen and paper.

Somewhere up there is another life created by another God whatever, you have to believe in something, we die and as they say, we go to heaven or we are reborn in another time, plants like daffodils die and then in spring they come back to life all over again.

There has to be life up there somewhere and I would love to see them before I die and then see my God if there is one, belief is the creation of all mankind.