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Extraterrestrial Life

Arcanine Lover

Arcanine Lover

*facepalm* Please. No more.
Well? Do you think it exists, and if so, do you think that there's also intelligent life in our universe?

I, personally, think that there is a huge amount of life in the universe. Life has been proven to be able to exist in extreme conditions on our own planet Earth. Simple life forms have been found in caves hundreds of metres beneath the surface of our planet, and there are also microbes teeming in Antarctica. Life is so adaptable, and so flexible.

When you also consider how many galaxies are in the universe, and how many stars with planets must be in those galaxies, life becomes almost inevitable. I also believe intelligent life exists, although I don't believe they've ever visited us. The distances between stars are simply too great.

So, debate I guess.
 
As one person said on the old forums (forget who):

"I am not entirely convinced that there is intelligent life on Earth"
 
It depends on what you mean by "intelligent life." If it's like the green aliens we always see in movies and things, I don't think there are things like that. However, I'm pretty sure there's some intelligent life out there, other than us. Maybe there's even a clone of Earth or something. O_O
But yes, I'm absolutely positive there is other life on other planets in our galaxy. It's so big, there has to be something other than Earth with life.
 
Indeed. The chances of something even remotely humanoid is highly unlikely. There may be anything from piles of super-intelligent, self-manipulating slime to huge hulking insectoid-style things that feed on fish.

Because there will probably be fish wherever there is water, and they will probably look very similar to ours, because fish get that shape from water pressure and stuff.

In other words, most definitely yes, but not as we know it.
 
The thing is scientists may be looking in the wrong places. They're trying to find planets that have the things we need to survive, without considering that there may be life out there that doesn't need what we need, or need completely different things.

With that said, I do believe there is life somewhere out there.
 
The thing is scientists may be looking in the wrong places. They're trying to find planets that have the things we need to survive, without considering that there may be life out there that doesn't need what we need, or need completely different things.
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Well, yes, but we KNOW life can arise on planets with conditions similar to Earth's so it makes more sense to search for those than to guess at what else might work for life.
 
To put it in other words: the evolutionary conditions on Earth are more favorable to the appearance of life than the conditions on other planets. It's just harder to keep a body working at pressures of 100 bar and 900 K, y'know?
 
It took millions and millions of years for Earth's life to develop into what it is now. Some planets may be further than we are, others will still be in the stage where only micro-organisms exist, making it easy to overlook them.

Basically, yes I do think there is life out there. Lots of it, in fact.
 
The problem is that most chemical reactions need similar physical conditions to earth to provide the right amount of energy for reactions. You don't want reactions running at high temperatures like on the sun or even on Venus. The rates of reaction and the energy expense is just too high for any form of life to exist at that rate. Similarly, Pluto is unlikely to harbour life, with its almost nonexistent atmosphere and temperatures near absolute zero. Life completely stalls there. Enzymes are very, very specific in their workings and earth's biochemical systems and pathways are so complex they require very very specialised circumstances to work.

There might be life out there, and they might use different energy sources (hell, there are many organisms on earth that don't use glucose as their primary energy source, but other substances such as ethanol), but if you do the biochemical calculations, you'll find that these are inefficient with regards to their biochemistry. They would need much higher temperatures and pressures and concentrations to disrupt, which would in turn have all sorts of other effects on how you want a body to look, and if you did it that way, I'm betting the effects would make any organisms rather minuscule to minimise energy losses.

I doubt you really guys all know what y'all are talking about here. There are so many conditions that govern life that for something as simple as a microbe to exist, it already requires very narrow physical conditions to operate. And that's not even taking into account the fact that microbes have adapted to far more hostile situations than any human being has ever managed to do. And even they need pretty regulated environments that are stable and don't change too much.
 
Of course there's life out there somewhere. It's very unlikely that we're alone in the universe simply because of the sheer number of other planets. The likelihood is that some form of life exists out there, anyway.
 
It doesn't matter if the odds of life actually being formed negatively eclipse that of the amount of space available to harbor life, Harlequin. In that case, the odds of life actually being formed would prevail as they are closer to zero.

And then it matters where you draw the line of things being likely. 50% chance? 1% chance? 0.01% chance? Ten to the power of minus six percent chance? What kind of odds are you calculating, how are you doing it, and how do you arrive at the conclusion that it is actually likely that life has to exist?
 
Actually, there are probably thousands of species of intelligent life, but the probability of them being within even our galaxy is low, and us contacting them is low, especially since we can't really go anywhere near lightspeed yet.
 
Yes. Why are scientists so worried about homes for us when they could be looking for other life forms? Why I bet they could be using the time it took to write this reply to accually get something done, like a super powerful, big teliscope. Or start on one.*shotshotshot*
 
I find it highly unlikely that there isn't anymore life out there.

The thing is, no matter how long we search space we'll never find any evidence to disprove the existence of alien life. We'll probably never be able to explore it all.
 
Altmer said:
It doesn't matter if the odds of life actually being formed negatively eclipse that of the amount of space available to harbor life, Harlequin. In that case, the odds of life actually being formed would prevail as they are closer to zero.

And then it matters where you draw the line of things being likely. 50% chance? 1% chance? 0.01% chance? Ten to the power of minus six percent chance? What kind of odds are you calculating, how are you doing it, and how do you arrive at the conclusion that it is actually likely that life has to exist?
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True, but you do have to admit that it's likely there's some form of life out there even if the chance of it happening is rather low. It happened once, after all, so it could happen again, and when we're dealing with a timescale as large as that of the universe... well, there's a lot of time for something to happen.
 
Empoleon said:
Actually, there are probably thousands of species of intelligent life, but the probability of them being within even our galaxy is low, and us contacting them is low, especially since we can't really go anywhere near lightspeed yet.
Click to expand...

how did you calculate this
 
You clearly know what you're talking about Altmer, but with billions of galaxies each containing thousands of stars, and more planets out there than grains of sand, surely the likelihood is that one of those complicated processes that led to life on Earth would be happening elsewhere too?

Am I right in thinking they discovered some sort of micro-organism on Mars, or was that just a rumour? If it is true, that opens up a lot of possibility.
 
No, they didn't discover a micro-organism on Mars. If they did, it'd be all over the news.

It might happen elsewhere. We don't know. What I'm talking about is that the odds of it happening aren't as big and as likely as you guys all think. What I'm pointing out is that even though there is a chance, probabilistically speaking, that life exists elsewhere, that I doubt it's grey men looking down on us. Of course there could be life somewhere. But do you know of a place near enough for us humans to visit? I don't really think it's relevant whether life out there exists until we find a way to actually, y'know, get there, and then, 99.99999% of stars and planets don't have the right physical conditions for life to prosper. You'd need a star about the size of our sun, you'd need proper distances: go find galaxies and calculate the probability that there is an exoplanet where conditions have even 1/100th of a similarity to that of Earth. Just try and do that.

I bet you that's tough because we don't even know about many exoplanets, as they're ridiculously hard to find and any traces we have of them are indirect. And I doubt you're gonna find life on a star that is burning hydrogen at temperatures of 6000 K or more (and 6000K is more of a low estimate.)

I don't mind people thinking that there is life out there. I just want you guys all to get a perspective of the scope you're dealing with. That's all.
 
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