Are humans the most intelligent life in the universe?

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I used to think, well of course there is other intelligent life in the universe, because the universe is so huge, how can we be the only ones. Now I'm not so sure.

(1) if there was a more intelligent life form out there, chances are it would have discovered us by now, and there's no credible evidence that's happened.

(2) there's no conclusive evidence of ANY life outside the earth, let alone intelligent life

(3) earth is the on,y known planet that can support life, and even on earth, life has only emerged ONCE in the earth's 4.6 billion year history. If the emergence of life is such an anomaly even on a planet so ideally suited for it, what hope is there for life on other planets.

(4) even if life did evolve on other planets, what are the odds of anything more intelligent than us evolving? Out of the astronomical number of species that evolved on earth, humans are the only highly intelligent ones to emerge, and the only semi-intelligent ones are related to humans (i.e. Chimps). Clearly it takes hundreds of millions of years of constant trial and error for an organ as complex as the human brain to evolve, so even if there's another rarer planet that had life, odds are that life would have been killed by an asteroids long before it evolved to the point of being intelligent.

So obviously intelligent life is stratospherically rare. Does that mean we are the only ones? It's hard to answer that question intelligently because humans are the only known intelligent life, so how does one calculate how frequently (intelligent) life can be expected to occur statistically, but even if we could guess that intelligent life occurs once per x gaziilion planets, that statistic would be meaningless unless we knew how many planets exist. Some people think the universe is finite; others believe the known universe is part of an infinite multiverse, in which case, not only does intelligent life exist elsewhere, but virtually everything you can possibly imagine exists.

unanswerable questions,

number 3 though is wrong, some to do with framing,

europa is a moon and it is technically from everything we can tell from here, habitable, that however is only because it seems there is a liquid ocean, on earth we have found extremophiles that would quite probably thrive there.

so what is actually meant by habitable?

if we look at extremophiles then in essence an almot barren rock with just the right ammount of water somewhere, could harbor life, there is life that exists inside several hundred degree hot water, thriving even.

then comes the time frame, who says it only sparked once?
it could have sparked several times over before it sparked at just the right place at just the right time to take hold.
even odds like these are small though when compared to trillions of stars, and that is only in the local group.

in the context of intelligent life it is extremely hard to say what actually constitutes habitable enough.

- What makes you think we are so special a more intelligent race of beings would make it known to us that we've been discovered? I mean it is possible we've been discovered many times and disregarded as not worth the time of those who discovered us.

-Also though what would you see as 'credible' evidence?.......because its debatable that there is no evidence of outsiders discovering us. There is evidence just nothing that directly proves that we've been visited by any alien races and depending on what you see as credible maybe none of that sort of evidence is to you.

-I think they actually have found traces of life outside of earth....and its also been theorized that there might be forms of life we would not even recognize as such.

-Its not as though us humans have explored many planets outside of this one.......I mean as far as I know we cant even get to mars yet, let alone the rest of the solar system or beyond so yeah the fact we have not found any more planets that would support life(that is the sort of life we have on earth) does not really convince me that its unlikely there would be life elsewhere

-What are the odds of something more intelligent not evolving? I mean there is a gigantic universe out there so yeah its pretty easy to fathom that there could be more intelligent life forms since people live on earth which is one tiny little spec compared to the entire universe which by the way probably has no ending or beginning. And to assume life can only exist on a planet like earth is ridiculous to me sure life we have here could only exist on such a planet but what about other forms of life. I don't think all life forms would be based on the life forms that exist here.

And I really have to question the notion that humans are the only intelligent life on this planet...as I find other beings intelligent as well. I mean for one cats and dogs can communicate things to humans just as humans can communicate things to cats and dogs. If animals weren't intelligent at all I doubt there would be service animals for disabled people or cases of animals going more or less against their instincts to save people.........since there is nothing in wild animal instincts that recommends saving humans. Yet dogs have, dolphins have I think I've even heard of sea turtles helping people get back to land if they're caught out in the ocean after a ship accident or something. I could go on and on about examples of animals showing intelligence but I think I will stop with the primates I read about that sharpen sticks to make spears and have attacked humans.

(1) If faster than light travel is impossible and I am guessing it is then the little green men would have to have a reason to come here. I don't think they do. We would also have to recognize them as intelligent.
see Fiasco and Solaris by Lem. Starmakers by Stapledon.
(2) point given
(3) three times.
(4) it is a bit of a monkeys writing Shakespeare problem if the universe is big enough we are prolly of average intelligence.

Ok now we're getting somewhere. Let's say humans have discovered about 800 planets (for the sake of simplicity, we'll think of moons as part of the planet they orbit), Of those 800 planets, only 2 (earth and Europa) are believed to be life supportable. And for the sake if simplicity let's assume that at least some primitive life has emerged at least in the past on Europa. So life occurs twice per 800 planets, or 1 out of 400 planets.

Now earth has had about 200 million species and we're the only intelligent ones, so let's crudely estimate that high intelligence evolves once per 200 million species.

So the odds of intelligent life should be the odds of life (1 in 400) multiplied by the odds of that life being intelligent (1 in 200 million). So intelligent life should occur once per 80 billion planets.

So we're probably the most intelligent in this galaxy, but there are far more intelligent creatures in neighboring galaxies.

What data is their about the chemistry of Europa's ocean? It may be possible that extremophiles from Earth could live there but it's highly unlikely that life ever evolved there due to the lack of sunlight(down there).

How do you arrive at that assessment of probability? Given the distances involved, the impossibility of travel faster than light, and the vast amounts of energy to get life off-planet, let alone across the galaxy, it seems to me far more likely that intelligent life will be largely confined to the environment in which it has arisen for almost the totality of its existence.



Define "evidence." If you are limiting yourself to direct evidence, then you are certainly correct. But remember, we can only see a finite part of the universe--what lies beyond the Hubble Radius is permanently excluded from our inspection. But the indirect evidence strongly suggests that organic chemistry will arise independently in every envrionment in which there is sufficient hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, and it needs only the right environmental conditions to take the fairly short step to carbon based biochemistries from there.

The elemental composition of the universe strongly suggests that there are amino acids linking up into peptide chains in any part of the universe in which the envrionmental conditions allow for it. There is even the suggestion that these molecules could predate planet formation, and arise in accretion discs.



Well, you can look at this a couple of ways. There is nothing, after all, to suggest that bacteria, plants and animals arose from a single primordial ancestor--there could have been multiple emergences, from which animals achieved dominance through the processes of natural selection. But even if the emergence of life is a singular event, one can take the perspective that life arose only once because life only had to arise once, and no event since that time has been of sufficient impact to displace life from the biosphere. This view suggests that once life has taken hold, it is near as dammit impossible to displace.



What are the odds that we are the end product of the evolution of intelligence on this planet? Who's to say that after the next extinction level event that we won't be supplanted by some other lifeform outevolving us? After all, human history is a drop in the bucket, and the leap from Australopithicus to Homo sapiens sapiens took only a couple of million years. The sun and the earth have plenty of time to see some other species do the same.



In a universe this size, the term "stratospherically rare," is meaningless. When you multiply an incredibly small likelihood of life emerging by an incredibly large number of environments in which it could occur, you may just as easily be left with a result that suggests that life is an inevitable result of environmental factors.

There is no way of knowing the answer to this at the current time, but it would certainly kick ass if it did turn out to be so.

Life has been known to exist without sunlight on the earth. Eg. Deep oceans, caves, etc.

The chances of SETI finding civilization is very small. SETI is based on the idea that a civilization wants to be found and has spent resources trying to be found. That they are building a giant transmitter and intentionally broadcasting much more powerful signals than we could. And even then they are guessing at the frequency and methods that such a civilization would use. It's beyond a needle in a haystack even if there are other civilizations. If a civiliation were like ours, we wouldnt detect it at long ranges.

To draw conclusions now is like a cave man walking up to the ocean's shoreline, seeing nothing, and going, "pfft".

Yes.

This depends entirely on how far away such civilizations are, and also how long they've been transmitting for. A civilization that is 26,000 light years away and has had electricity and radio transmission technology for 1100 years is not going to be detectable from earth for another 24,900 years. I've always believed that we are far more likely to encounter their spacecraft(INCLUDING robotic probes)than pick up radio transmissions from their home planet.

Why do you say chances are it would have discovered us? We are intelligent beings and we have barely scratched the surface of exploring every star and its planets to detect life. We have been able to make judgements about the planets in our own solar system because we are close enough to get "enough" information about them ("enough" is in inverted commas because we are still finding new information, such as Pluto not being a planet at all), but there are other planets that are much much much further away which we will never know anything more about other than their existence. And others even further away again which we will never know exist.

My point is that if there is a life form significantly more intelligent than us, it should be as far above us in technology as we are above chimps, and thus solving the problem of intergalactic space travel should be child's play to them.

And if the problem is merely unsolvable?

Technology isn't magic. "Impossible" still exists. Even light takes forever to get anywhere.

Scientists widely believe all life on earth has a single common ancestor, although some scientists question this consensus:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/ ... ee-of-life


And I don't see why the existence of life prevents life from starting again. Just as new species appear all the time in earth's history and co-exist, why can't entirely new trees of life repeatedly appear and co-exist.

If in fact life only appeared once on a planet as life friendly as Earth, it suggests life is something incredibly rare in the universe.