Posted on 09/21/2011 1:09:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I have to agree with the professor that it is unlikely that there is sentient life out there. On the extremely rare occasion that we find life it will most likely be single cell organisms.
We went through this with the Rogue Waves for several centuries. The math says that every now and then it's possible to have a wave higher than average. Within those waves it's possible to have a wave several times higher than average. And, within those waves it's possible to have a wave over 1,000 feet high, or maybe even a mile high.
It has to be the same with life.
Seriously? There are whole galaxies that were created before ours even existed
I am thinking we are too immature to warrant alien visitation often.
It would be like us going to mars every day because we saw live ants there, and trying to interact with them.
After seeing some of the amazing structures built before modern history, and hearing all the ancient stores of ‘star people’ I think we have been visitted before many times.
Just nothing in recent history.
It’s a big universe- they can’t spend ALL their time here.
Oh and I think people who believe in ‘crop circles’ are morons.
***After seeing some of the amazing structures built before modern history, and hearing all the ancient stores of star people I think we have been visitted before many times.***
Those visits are our progeny who have mastered the art of time travel.
bump for later read
All very true. There’s so much more involved with our existence here than the planet being in a “Goldilocks Zone”. Take away our Moon and Plate Tectonics, and we probably wouldn’t be here, yet we’d still be in the magical “Goldilocks Zone”. I’m sure Jupiter has kept us here longer than we otherwise would have been.
I 'believe' there are crop circles. Who or WHAT created them is another issue.
We know there are creatures thought not to exist on the ocean floor, and we have yet to discover all species alive on the surface of the Earth. Why could there not be creatures aloft in the layers of our atmosphere which we know nothing about?
Life is rare. It's rare in the solar system. It's rare even on Earth if something like a mass ratio is used to measure it (a few parts in 10 billion).
On the extremely rare occasion that we find life it will most likely be single cell organisms.
It's possible that life once existed on Mars and Venus. Simple life seems to appear within millions of years given the right conditions.
While there are probably an incredible number of planets in the Universe, the probability for conditions and the sequence of events needed for intelligent life is incredibly small.
We haven't yet risen up out of our ‘likely to nuke ourselves into oblivion any day now’ stage, and may well never reach the ‘the stars are our playground’ stage.
Heck, if the physics don't work out correctly there really isn't a ‘the stars are our playground’ stage.
Imagine also there may be a cosmic ‘booby trap’ waiting in Physics - you are the fist person in your intelligent tool using culture to discover the ‘Ygzog’ principle - unfortunately discovery of this principle released enough energy to reduce your planet to a cinder. Ooops.
Hmmmmmmm.....
Depends on what one means by LIFE.
Look up in the sky on a clear night. Every point of light you see is LIFE. Stars are the source of life. Without them, NO LIFE.
If one wants proof, then imagine what would happen to every form of life on Earth if the SUN were to go cold and dark.
Perhaps the ‘design’ of the Universe is on such a large scale to keep one TYPE of LIFE from encountering another. It is likely, given the huge differences in the FORM, that all we would do is try to destroy each other.
Whomever ‘designed’ the Universe was a pretty smart ‘chap’, and must have known EVERYTHING at the beginning.
I forgot who said it, but the gist was “Either we are alone, or we are not. Either way, it’s pretty amazing”
I don’t get this. Have scientists proven how life began? I think if they have we would not be speculating if there could be life on other planets. Just because a planet has the building blocks of life doesn’t explain how they’ve assembled themselves into life.
I mean if that we the case, wouldn’t houses and computers build themselves if their pieces were scattered about?
Yeah, I thought not.
Things developed the way they did here because of the resources that were available here and the conditions that existed during the ages.
Ample supplies of both water and land, average temp stable enough that the entire planet does not turn into a glacier or a desert, availability of chemicals (i.e. we live on Oxygen but our atmosphere is more than 70% Nitrogen), a moon which controls the tides in a reasonably orderly fashion.
Just because a planet exists which is approximately 93,000,000 miles from a sun like ours does not mean life must exist there. Those are only the first of many, many requirements for life to grow. If you believe in evolution, these were the things that, over millions and billions of years, enabled life to take hold and not die off.
Odds say there is sentient life somewhere else in the universe. Whole civilizaitons could have grown and died off over the billions of years of the universe. Odds also say any such life is so far away from us that we may never find them.
Looking for an Earth sized planet around a Sol sized sun is a good start but it’s no guarantee of success.
Unfortunately, because they were formed so early in the history of the universe, they lack the heavy elements that have to be formed by supernovas. Only the later starts (and planets) contain those heavy elements, as a result of the self-destruction of earlier stars. Without those heavier elements, it appears that life isn't possible.
Our sun appears to be a 4th-generation star, meaning that it benefits from heavy element creation in three prior generations of stars.
Could also be that our Jovial father has been trying to kill us all this time by slinging bullets from the Oort Cloud at our heads.
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