Do You Believe In Extraterrestrial Life?

Do You Believe In Extraterrestrial Life?

  • Yes

    Votes: 31 91.2%
  • No

    Votes: 2 5.9%
  • Why the hell are you asking me?

    Votes: 1 2.9%

  • Total voters
    34
What "planet x hype"? I read New Scientist every week and there's been no mention of any large astronomical body approaching our solar system (and if one were detected you can be assured it would make international headlines), so I presume it's just a fantasy like a lot of other things associated with 2012...
 
Do you believe in Planet X or just our regular visitors?




If there aren't any aliens arriving here from a planet that orbits a dwarf star that's ok, we still have plenty of other visitors from elsewhere.
 
The more you learn about physics the more you realize that even if aliens existed we'll never be able to visit them, much less contact them.
 
I do worry, though, about the number of people who think that Klingons are real...

:o_O:

of course. When the day happens that we do encounter aliens and make contact I wanna see religion buckle in half.

So guys, you were bought!

The Pope, prominent Protestant ministers, and Islam have all said there may be other life and God is God over them all... They are hedging their bets... plus the dozens of 'cooky' religious types who believe space ships are hiding behind comets and such.

The more you learn about physics the more you realize that even if aliens existed we'll never be able to visit them, much less contact them.

The more you learn about physics in the year 2010 the more you realize... Physics in the year 2110 and then 21010 will be far far different then anything we could imagine.
 
Just getting 'life' kick started is an extremely complex process and not quite as random as we may think. As a Scifi author, yes, I do believe in other life forms being somewhere 'out there' or I wouldn't be exploring the options. Whether they will bare any relationship to us is another question entirely.

Human civilisation may be much older than we think. There are drowned structures governments and archeologists refuse to acknowledge lying about 100 feet down on continental shelves in a number of locations. As we know these only from Sonar images, the archeological fraternity, wedded as they are to the "Egypt is the start of human civilisation..." philosophy, refuse to acknowledge these and dismiss them as "natural formations". Having seen some of these on the sonar I would say that they are the first I've ever seen that run across tide and current flows and have right angled corners. I would suspect that Egypt, the Indus valley, Babylonian and Chinese may well have had forerunners that were submerged by the ice melt sea rises which hit around 12000 years ago, probably destroying whole civilisations as the land submerged. (What the AGW/IPCC mob say will happen to us...)

Interestingly life, as we know it, on this planet is possible only because we sit in a very narrow "temperate zone" just the right distance from the sun to be warm enough for our seas and the atmosphere to exist. The electro-magnetic field generated by our molten core acts as a 'shield' against the radiation from the sun (And other sources) and the moon keeps our rather wobbly rotation stable and prevents the seasons from becoming to extreme. Mars is outside the temperate zone and its core has solidified, so its magnetic field/shield is very weak.

Life is still possible on planets without these advantages, but it is probably unlike anything we have yet encountered!
 
I do worry, though, about the number of people who think that Klingons are real...

:o_O:
:ROFLMAO:

Human civilisation may be much older than we think. There are drowned structures governments and archeologists refuse to acknowledge lying about 100 feet down on continental shelves in a number of locations. As we know these only from Sonar images, the archeological fraternity, wedded as they are to the "Egypt is the start of human civilisation..." philosophy, refuse to acknowledge these and dismiss them as "natural formations". Having seen some of these on the sonar I would say that they are the first I've ever seen that run across tide and current flows and have right angled corners. I would suspect that Egypt, the Indus valley, Babylonian and Chinese may well have had forerunners that were submerged by the ice melt sea rises which hit around 12000 years ago, probably destroying whole civilisations as the land submerged. (What the AGW/IPCC mob say will happen to us...)
I also wonder about whether advanced civilizations have also existed, been wiped out, and started anew on our planet but wouldn't we have found more evidence by now other than just sunken formations that may have been walls?
 
:ROFLMAO:

I also wonder about whether advanced civilizations have also existed, been wiped out, and started anew on our planet but wouldn't we have found more evidence by now other than just sunken formations that may have been walls?

I suppose it depends on how you define "advanced". If you mean that they attained an industrial civilisation, then there is strong evidence against, in that they would have mined out the easily accessible coal, oil, metals and other minerals, which is what our ancestors used to get our industrial society going.

Following on from this, if our civilisation ever collapses our successors would have great difficulty in achieving any kind of re-industrialisation because we've used up all such easily accessible minerals.
 
I suppose it depends on how you define "advanced". If you mean that they attained an industrial civilisation, then there is strong evidence against, in that they would have mined out the easily accessible coal, oil, metals and other minerals, which is what our ancestors used to get our industrial society going.

Following on from this, if our civilisation ever collapses our successors would have great difficulty in achieving any kind of re-industrialisation because we've used up all such easily accessible minerals.
If we forgo "advanced" as a criteria, I mean a civilization that even reached the level of ancient Egypt (during their pyramid building times) or Rome.

I just think that if there were any type of civilized humanity prior to the current age of man then there would be some type remnants to be found.
 
History tends to be cyclic with cultures and 'civilisations' rising and falling in roughly 500 year cycles. Technology however, is cumulative and linear, so each 'new' civilisation starts with a small advantage. Rome collapsed and the impression is usually given that the ability to build and maintain the stuff they had was lost, this isn't true, the skills moved East with the craftsmen and then came back as things stabilised and the Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Franks and so on settled and realised there was a better way of living than in mud huts...

Ironically it took the Normans to bring this technology back to Britain where our tribal instincts seemed to be very resistant to developing a unified approach and any desire to make best use of the Roamn legacy. London stood abandoned from roughly 450 until Alfred refounded it in 889 - one wonders whether this was a good move!

The point here, and in any debate about 'advanced' civilisations, is that any future civilisation will have the foundation of the present technology with which to begin. This is also the only way to explain how the Egyptians went from mud huts and small tribal agricultural efforts to pyramid building in just over 100 years if the Egyptologists are correct in their dating.

Will we ever have FTL travel? It's a question of physics. As we understand the 'laws' at present, there are some insuperable problems - like acceleration and the power required - but that is not to say that something in Einsteinian relativity will reveal a 'wormhole' that changes that understanding. There are a lot of things out there we do not understand and cannot explain in terms of our present understanding of physics - despite all sorts of theories including 'dark matter' and 'multiverses.'

I'm inclined to believe that the physics we have in 2100 or even 2200 may well be very different to what we have now. But then, I also believe that the next men to walk on the moon will be Chinese and possibly they, or the Russians will be the first to land men on Mars.
 
I believe there is alien life out there (intelligent and non intelligent), it would be a bit strange that we are the only ones in whole Galaxy (I'm not even going to say in the Universe because it's to big :D).

I read through the thread and saw some posts saying that they evidence to believe that there is extraterrestrial life and as someone also said that science is mathematical. Well then if you want evidence try to estimate the amount of stars in the sky and then figure out the probability that there is no life around those stars or better, look up Drake's Equation.
 
Science is full of unknowns. Scientists come out with theories all the time that are later cancelled out by new theories by other scientists (sometimes by the same scientist that had the original idea, check out Hawkins theory on black holes). However when it comes to extraterrestrial life even if we reject Drake's equation common sense tells that if we can find bacterial life in volcanos in one of the most hostile environments on Earth or at the bottom of the ocean where pressure can crush most submarines then there's a good possiblity that there is life out there.

I still don't understand the confusion about if there is extraterrestrial life, our Galaxy had trillions of solar systems and to think that only our system has life among all those stars is a bit egocentric. It's a bit like saying that Earth is the centre of the Universe just because it has life.
 
I don't disagree with any of that, as my article should make clear.

However, as I said there are vast gulfs between the following steps:

1. Unicellular life - probably very common

2. Multicellular life - probably a lot less common

3. Large animals - probably much less common still

4. Intelligent animals - again, far less common

5. Intelligent animals which have developed a technological civilisation - probably very rare, and possibly short-lived.
 
I can see this thread has shaken out the "yes" from the "maybe" and "no" camps! As Anthony G Williams has pointed out, the steps between unicellular and "intelligent" technology using life are so vast that the latter are probably extremely rare. This goes back to my earlier comment regarding the "temperate zone" positioning of planets.

Science is about mathematics and developing "predictive" models founded on maths. I have a great deal of skepticism on the reliability of such models because there are any number of variables and some interesting "constants" involved - many of them attempting to "model" processes and events that are far too complex for our technology and understanding at present. I am always aware of the fact that in my own "day job" profession, great reliance is placed on a "model" which is supposed to "predict" fire growth and spread and the smoke volumes produced. Many slavishly believe it to be 100% accurate, but the accuracy rate is in reality, about 25%. Why? Simply that the model relies on data from perhpas twenty out of several thousand variables... In addition, one of the key formula uses a "constant" to make it work. The constant in question is a number calculated by several researchers in the 1960s which makes the formula work - no one knows why, or what it relates too, or even why the formula won't work without it...

Asimov, a scientist himself, took a swipe at this dependence on mathematical models in his Foundation series, the attempt to control and direct human development and history by Mathematics - which fails because of the variablility of humans ...

______________________________________
Patrick G Cox
Author
Their Lordships Request
Out of Time
The Enemy is Within
 
5. Intelligent animals which have developed a technological civilisation - probably very rare, and possibly short-lived.

If by intelligent animals you mean our level of intelligence then I don't agree because they would be in exactly the same situation as us, i.e: they can't contact life in other solar systems, they can't travel to other solar systems, etc. However if you mean by intelligent that they have interstellar space flight then I agree up to a certain point. In the vasteness of our Galaxy a civilization that has interstellar flight could be able to travel to other solar systems but how long would it take, maybe they haven't reached us yet, even if we take into consideration that we have sent radio messages to other planets in hope that someone will respond. That might happen in a few thousand years (if we're lucky)

Of course everything that has been said in this thread is only opinions and theories we'll only get proof when we make the 1st contact. Having said this the probability that there is intelligent life in our Galaxy may not be as rare as it seems.
 
If by intelligent animals you mean our level of intelligence then I don't agree because they would be in exactly the same situation as us, i.e: they can't contact life in other solar systems, they can't travel to other solar systems, etc. However if you mean by intelligent that they have interstellar space flight then I agree up to a certain point. In the vasteness of our Galaxy a civilization that has interstellar flight could be able to travel to other solar systems but how long would it take, maybe they haven't reached us yet, even if we take into consideration that we have sent radio messages to other planets in hope that someone will respond. That might happen in a few thousand years (if we're lucky)

Of course everything that has been said in this thread is only opinions and theories we'll only get proof when we make the 1st contact. Having said this the probability that there is intelligent life in our Galaxy may not be as rare as it seems.

These issues are all discussed in the article I referenced earlier: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/Fermi.htm
 
These issues are all discussed in the article I referenced earlier: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/Fermi.htm

Sorry if I hadn't read your article before but with a new member of the family at home it has been a bit dificult to arrange time to dedicate myself fully to some things.

I can see your point of view and in part I agree with it, the only diference that I can point out from my point of view is that the possibility of a technological advanced civilisation being rare may be misleading, even considering the natural catastrophies there are probably enough planets to go around for a civilisation to develop up to our technological position.

For some reason this thread has been reminding that 500 years ago humanity thought the world was flat until a crazy adventurer decided to try and circumnavigate the globe to prove everyone wrong only to discover a new continent. The possiblity of extraterrestrial life is basically along the same line of thought. Some are against it others are in favour but we will really only know when we land in their backyard or vice versa.

I will agree that the possiblity that an alien race having the technology for interstellar travel is rare but as for an alien race with our level of technology probably isn't as rare as we may think.
 
Wolfrunner, this may be off topic, but I have often wondered at this assertion, usually directed at Christianity, that people thought the world was flat. This seems to be based on the 18th and 19th Century misrepresentation of artefacts such as the Mappa Mundi which were 'Spiritual Representations' of the world of faith, and never intended as representations of the "world." It even says so on the Mappa Mundi!

Christianity's scholars and philosophers followed Aristotle, Plato and Ptolemy and believed it to be a sphere, Copenicus argued that Aristotle was wrong in placing us at the centre of the universe and Galileo initially got into trouble for contradicting what Copernicus had actually proved, not for heresy as is commonly believed and misrepresented. The evidence is there - for those who want to see it - in the form of documents in monastic libraries across Northern Europe - until the 'enlightened' French destroyed many of them. John Cabot even wrote that his voyage to Nova Scotia was simply following in the wake of fishermen who regularly fished the Grand Banks and sometimes over wintered in America and Columbus was well aware of similar voyages.

Simple peasants may have believed the world flat, but no man of intelligence did, and it was never the 'doctrine' of mainstream Christianity, 'Enlightenment Propaganda' notwithstanding!

Rant over, the likelihood of intelligent life is, I believe not as remote as some make it out to be. It may well be that we are already in contact but simply do not have either the means to communicate, or there is no point in doing so as our life forms are so different that interaction is at best going to be extremely limited.
 
I believe there is alien life out there, perhaps even advanced civilizations compared to our way of life or political systems.

I also believe that we have been through repetitive civilizations at differing level of advancement but do to man's vanity to control has been destroyed and replaced by new ones over and over again.

How many times does it take for man to get it right and live with nature with technologies that help nature rather than destroy it? Why do you think man has been here and done this before?

There is proof if one wants to dig in the sands of time under the crevice of the past. Archeologist's can find and all can know within the restrictions of knowledge available before man is ready. Do you think man in his self conceived state of glory would know truth presented? Only man humbled in truth will find and learn the truth both from civilizations past and advanced or intelligent life elsewhere. Nothing is given man until man is ready.
 
I guess I sort of answered this in the thread with UFO films. I definitely believe they should exist! It's only logical. However, whether we've been visited or not I don't want to guess.
I've always thought it's silly to use whether a species has interstellar travel as a measure of advancemnt. They could be very intelligent and advanced but have no interest in travelling to other planets. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be contacted by someone who does travel, and share cultures and technology (if they want).
 
Back
Top