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pi woman
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15 Feb 2017, 12:38 pm

Another new discovery of Goldilocks-zone planets:
"Mankind is one step closer to possibly discovering life outside Earth. A group of astronomers have discovered 60 new extrasolar planets near the Solar System, with some of them having the likelihood to sustain life".

How likely do you think are we to discover alien life within our lifetimes? Some scientists suspect we'll find at least amino acids (biochemical building blocks) in our own solar system.



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15 Feb 2017, 9:09 pm

Even if an earth-like planet with liquid water is within the "goldilocks zone" of its sun, it does not prove that life exists on that planet. All it shows is that life is possible (by our reckoning) on that planet.


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15 Feb 2017, 10:08 pm

It's most likely that we'll never find intelligent life, but it's not that there isn't intelligent life out there at any given point in time:

The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, many of which are billions of years older than Earth. With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets and if the Earth is typical, some might develop intelligent life. Some of these civilizations might develop interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now. Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

According to this line of reasoning, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial aliens. So where is everybody?" The most likely explanation to this is civilizations, no matter how advanced simply do not overlap each other in time, so in other words when any given civilization is listen/looking for someone else there is no one else at that given point I time. Sad, but it's most likely true. :(


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15 Feb 2017, 10:45 pm

bb400guy wrote:
It's most likely that we'll never find intelligent life, but it's not that there isn't intelligent life out there at any given point in time:

The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, many of which are billions of years older than Earth. With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets and if the Earth is typical, some might develop intelligent life. Some of these civilizations might develop interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now. Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

According to this line of reasoning, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial aliens. So where is everybody?" The most likely explanation to this is civilizations, no matter how advanced simply do not overlap each other in time, so in other words when any given civilization is listen/looking for someone else there is no one else at that given point I time. Sad, but it's most likely true. :(


Most likely true based on what though? Why would there only be one planet with intelligent life in the entire universe curious about if there is other life out there at one time. I'd think it is more likely there is just so much distance between planets and galaxies there is no guarantee of running into aliens even if there are some.

Also though what is to say this planet has never been visited by extraterrestrials, they wouldn't necessarily have to make their presence known if they did...


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15 Feb 2017, 10:55 pm

I discover it everytime I walk out the door.



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15 Feb 2017, 11:48 pm

As have been said in the OP, basic building blocks for organic life as we understand it could be found within our lifetime. Or maybe even microbiological life, fossilised or alive. However the question is usually understood as discovering complex alien lifeforms and more narrow life capable of abstract thought and reasoning.

The problem is how to we find evidence of their presence. One way is if our telescopes are powerful enough to discover their presence on planets we look at. Either by seeing the presence of those lifeforms or their constructions. But unless a cover-up is going on our present telescopes are either powerful enough or have not found any.

Now lets take communication done by species with intelligence that is on average at least on the level of human intelligence. Now here comes in SETI that is based on the presumption to we can catch radio broadcast from these hypothetical aliens. Problem here is that it first presumes that these aliens make use of radio waves for communication, or that they make use of it during a period of time that those waves could be picked up by SETI and not have already passed us. Lets say, that during the entire lifetime of the Roman Empire the radio-waves produced by some alien specie was passing Earth, but then stopped because after a certain timespan they stopped using technology that produces such waves. SETI would of course not have picked up those signals.

Now for alien visitors. This presumes that these hypothetical aliens a drive to explore what is out there. That they can be compared with Faustian man. Lets say if those aliens can be more compared in motivation with the 'explorers' from Ancient China that where only interested in showing the rest of the world how the Middle Kingdom is. In such a case there might be no impulse for the expenditure for an interstellar expedition. Even more so if one can only travel at sub-light speeds and there no possibility of generating short cuts.

Of course there are those that claim that aliens have visited us (ancient astronauts) and/or visiting us today.Of course one of them, [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_Däniken#Criticism]von Danicken[/url], has been exposed as forging said evidence. So, unless a cover up is going on, there has be no reliable proof for such a claim.



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16 Feb 2017, 12:09 am

How do we know that all life here originated on this plant?

Archaea are different enough from bacteria and both are very different from Eukaryotes that it is unclear if they are related.

Slimemolds are so weird that no one knows what to do with them and some slimemolds are not even closely related to other, even whem they look similar.



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16 Feb 2017, 12:59 am

Sweetleaf wrote:
bb400guy wrote:
It's most likely that we'll never find intelligent life, but it's not that there isn't intelligent life out there at any given point in time:

The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, many of which are billions of years older than Earth. With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets and if the Earth is typical, some might develop intelligent life. Some of these civilizations might develop interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now. Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

According to this line of reasoning, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial aliens. So where is everybody?" The most likely explanation to this is civilizations, no matter how advanced simply do not overlap each other in time, so in other words when any given civilization is listen/looking for someone else there is no one else at that given point I time. Sad, but it's most likely true. :(


Most likely true based on what though? Why would there only be one planet with intelligent life in the entire universe curious about if there is other life out there at one time. I'd think it is more likely there is just so much distance between planets and galaxies there is no guarantee of running into aliens even if there are some.

Also though what is to say this planet has never been visited by extraterrestrials, they wouldn't necessarily have to make their presence known if they did...


Maybe I didn't say that right or explain it well enough - there's a dispersion factor too. Consider only our own Milky Way galaxy. It's about 100,000 light years across and should have a huge proportion of planets capable of supporting civilization/intelligent life, but the probability of all of them doing that at the same time is almost nil. Galactic time is too great for our human/species timeline or any potential other species to congruously span.

But say of that nil amount there is some civilized/intelligent life out there. The next factor which basically eliminates all chances of finding them or them finding us is that any civilization traveling from star to star searching for life would have to last long enough to make the trip - none would as the distances are just too great. They'd use up their resources/die off (even if some futuristic ship could carry a large amount of us/resources).

So basically the net effect of this is that there is no other intelligent civilizations out there for us to contact.


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16 Feb 2017, 7:43 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
bb400guy wrote:
It's most likely that we'll never find intelligent life, but it's not that there isn't intelligent life out there at any given point in time:

The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, many of which are billions of years older than Earth. With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets and if the Earth is typical, some might develop intelligent life. Some of these civilizations might develop interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now. Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

According to this line of reasoning, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial aliens. So where is everybody?" The most likely explanation to this is civilizations, no matter how advanced simply do not overlap each other in time, so in other words when any given civilization is listen/looking for someone else there is no one else at that given point I time. Sad, but it's most likely true. :(


Most likely true based on what though? Why would there only be one planet with intelligent life in the entire universe curious about if there is other life out there at one time. I'd think it is more likely there is just so much distance between planets and galaxies there is no guarantee of running into aliens even if there are some.

Also though what is to say this planet has never been visited by extraterrestrials, they wouldn't necessarily have to make their presence known if they did...


Even if there were a billion earth like planets with carbon and water life they would be so far from each other that there would be little chance of any encounters. Aliens have the same constraint we do. They cannot travel at the speed of light in a vessel with rest mass greater than zero.


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16 Feb 2017, 8:38 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
bb400guy wrote:
It's most likely that we'll never find intelligent life, but it's not that there isn't intelligent life out there at any given point in time:

The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, many of which are billions of years older than Earth. With high probability, some of these stars will have Earth-like planets and if the Earth is typical, some might develop intelligent life. Some of these civilizations might develop interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now. Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

According to this line of reasoning, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial aliens. So where is everybody?" The most likely explanation to this is civilizations, no matter how advanced simply do not overlap each other in time, so in other words when any given civilization is listen/looking for someone else there is no one else at that given point I time. Sad, but it's most likely true. :(


Most likely true based on what though? Why would there only be one planet with intelligent life in the entire universe curious about if there is other life out there at one time. I'd think it is more likely there is just so much distance between planets and galaxies there is no guarantee of running into aliens even if there are some.

Also though what is to say this planet has never been visited by extraterrestrials, they wouldn't necessarily have to make their presence known if they did...


I agree with both of you.

The problem is overlap in both time, and in proximity in space.

The LGM's ( "little green men" as radio astronomers refer to them) would have to be contemporary with us, and be close enough in space for us (and them) to be aware of each other's presence.



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10 Mar 2017, 11:24 am

pi woman wrote:
Another new discovery of Goldilocks-zone planets:
"Mankind is one step closer to possibly discovering life outside Earth. A group of astronomers have discovered 60 new extrasolar planets near the Solar System, with some of them having the likelihood to sustain life".

How likely do you think are we to discover alien life within our lifetimes? Some scientists suspect we'll find at least amino acids (biochemical building blocks) in our own solar system.


I think this question is way out of science his/her league. Nobody has proof for how life came into existence, so I don't think people should try to point what conditions there need to be met in order for life to be sustained. The only reference we have is our planet so for now we can only conclude that earth can sustain life. And why can earth sustain life, nobody knows. Because instead of needing oxygen to breathe it might aswell have been carbon dioxide or nitrogen. You feel me? But nonetheless it can be quitte fun to fantasize bout it



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14 Mar 2017, 1:28 am

I've seen two crafts I will profess raucously to the day that I delightfully perish were UFO's. I am more inclined to believe they were government sponsored vehicles as opposed to alien-dwelling propositions but there's tales both are in collusion. The first one was around five hundred feet above my bedroom window and it was a proper 'classical' saucer observed from below, multi coloured rows of lights studding the outer edges, silvery and sleekly obnoxious, I seem to get the impresson it was humming but no way I could actually discern this fact lol. It was moving at such a snail's pace it was surely creeping, prowling along the hushed sky not too far from the mysterious hills that it may have originated from... easy to go through several stages of analysis, rejection, wonder, adrenaline-soaked apprehension, grief and perplexity... no chance I conjured it up from within. The second was seen by several of us but it was a mere capering dot so open to possibilities other than ET/Black project testing. Moved from one side of the sky to the other in a few seconds several times in the space of twenty or so minutes, doing weird ass flight patterns etc that left all of us rather disturbed. Anyway yeah, I am unsure as to whether I've been abducted, I have recurrent dreams of being carted off to be probed, prodded and interrogated and since that first ufo encounter have been fascinated by aliens peering over the edge of surfaces :alien: