Poll: Do you believe in aliens?

[thiosk]

UFOs yes

Aliens piloting them NO

So who's piloting UFOs?

who knows, thats why they are Unknown Flying Object.

How are they flying without a pilot, or anything telling it what to do?

Asteroids, comets, swamp gas, the planet venus, or any of dozens of other explanations that have been given over the years.

UFOs are just things some wacko saw and didn't\couldn't identify it.

Also irrefutable proof that dennis kucinich is a wacko.

 

[xanith02100]

I'd like to think that there is other life in the universe, otherwise it would seem like a colossal waste of space.

I don't however think some super intelligent species is watching us and trying to contact us. I'm sure if they were super intelligent and had the technology required to contact us from whenever in space they are that we have not seen them, they wouldn't bother to as we have nothing of importance or value to offer them.

 

[[Insert Evil Laugh Here]]

We've already found the traces of life on Mars. The chances of there NOT bring any other life in this staggering vast universe are incredibly small.

 

[chaser[phoenix]]

I believe they're out there somewhere.
I could have sworn I learned that we're but a galaxy of millions; billions of other galaxies in the universe so to say there isn't life on at least one of the billions and billions of other planets out there is naive.

Unless I'm wrong, since honestly I don't remember.

 

[ManiacalZManiac]

All I want to say is that I don't think we are the only beings in this universe. My theory, since mars apparently had frozen water on it, during the millions of billions of years, it was actually where the Earth is today, and possibly had the same atmosphere to support life. And as time went by, the planets were getting pushes out, new planets were getting caught in the sun's gravitational pull, and now Mars is where it is now and same with our Planet Earth.

GO MARS

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

Yes, and you'd have to be truly ignorant to believe that we are the only intelligent life out there.

Why? The probability of life evolving from nothing is very low, and the universe is large but finite. So, it could go either way.

Well given the proper conditions: compounds, elements, gravity, and temperature, it is probably fairly high. Projections for life evolving out of essentially nothing range everywhere from 20 to 40 billion years yet on earth it took 3/3.5 billion.

It is all about the what if, though.

 

[letsnoobtehpwns]

It would be scary if we turn out to be the only planet with life.

 

[Therumancer]

Well I acknowlege the possibility, but I have my doubts as to whether aliens have been visiting earth to perform anal probes and mutilate cattle. Granted I can come up with fairly logical reasons for both of those things to an extent, but when you look at the overall situation becomes absurd.

We'll have to see what happens in the long term, perhaps we'll have a first contact situation before I die.

 

[linchowlewy]

Yes. The chances of us being the only intelligent life are so small it's not funny. not to mention the sheer arrogance of it all.

However they haven't come to earth. They could fly saucers through because to me, that seems like an extremely functional design.

I've also been watching piles of star trek recently so i'd readily say yes to this.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

Yes. The chances of us being the only intelligent life are so small it's not funny. not to mention the sheer arrogance of it all.

And how do you calculate those chances?

 

[Dragonnights]

If they are real i think they think the same as us.

 

[Vanilla Gorilla]

The Universe is so big and so old that the odds of there not being some other kind of intelligent life out there are very slim indeed. Our Galaxy has over fifty billion stars in it. Just our galaxy. Think of how many stars there are that could potentially support life.
The chances of us making contact with these aliens, however, is probably very unlikely unless we somehow make Faster-Than-Light spacecraft.

Laws of physics, time differences and lengths of survival for any given species would all make it really unlikely that we'll ever encounter aliens, but the chances of them not existing either in the past or future of the Universe are slim.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

The Universe is so big and so old that the odds of there not being some other kind of intelligent life out there are very slim indeed. Our Galaxy has over fifty billion stars in it. Just our galaxy. Think of how many stars there are that could potentially support life.
The chances of us making contact with these aliens, however, is probably very unlikely unless we somehow make Faster-Than-Light spacecraft.

Laws of physics, time differences and lengths of survival for any given species would all make it really unlikely that we'll ever encounter aliens, but the chances of them not existing either in the past or future of the Universe are slim.

The problem is calculating chance is something that you can do with mathematics using known variables. For instance, the UK lottery has X numbers, of which you get to pick Y. If you pick all 6 you win. So the chances of winning are...

(x/y-y) = ? (that is wrong, I don't know how to write it properly, get Teleos!)

Fortunately, we know that X=49 and that y=6, so we can say that...

(49/6).(48/5)/(47/4).(46/3).(45/2).(44/1) = Teh Answer!!!

This is calculable only because we know the variables to fire into the calculator. In the absense of those we can't really determine the chances. The answer in this case is further complicated by the fact the result is either 0 (no life) or 1 (is life). We can't even make an educated guess, having zero information on how life starts.

 

[GothmogII]

Possibly. But of course can't say for certain. And, on the off chance that they did make it here, we'd most likely never know. I mean, most of the time we imagine advanced aliens to at least make some sense to our human sensibilities and senses. We give them humanoid forms, or forms that while still strange to us, liquid or energy or insectoid, we can still comprehend. We assume that like us, they must make use of monolith spacecraft, in wholly human geometries.

Then again, who's to say they aren't us? Billions and billions of lightyears away is another earth, completely unawares of us, and we of them? Of course that's a little pre-deterministic for my liking, but it's all a toss up in the end. Anything is possible when you don't have all the information. Or indeed none as Mr.Cuddly above posits.

 

[GiantRedButton]

Yes. Because of mathmatics.
The chance for a planet that would be inhabitable by the few lifeforms of the myriads that are possible are already pretty high.
Then consider that you have pretty much infinite chances for the event with the finite propability that life creates itself to occur, there should be a whole lot of different ones.
And i bet that almost none of them look humanoid, like 99% of the aliens in fiction.
I mean, really? Aliens that have less of a difference from humans than humans from dogs?
This has always been bothering me, consider what creatures survive on earth:
http://www.geekologie.com/2007/05/22/dumbo-octopus.jpg

How would life look if it had to adopt to a different situation?
Every creature living here is carbon based, creatures could be iron based on a planet with a 100 degree higher temperature etc.
Human imagination seems rather limited when it comes to scify, with few exeptions.

http://www.monstersinmotion.com/catalog/images/predator/alien18neca.jpg

Head, teeth, ribs, hands, legs (two of them), skin, even the same joints as a human.

 

[Vanilla Gorilla]

The problem is calculating chance is something that you can do with mathematics using known variables. For instance, the UK lottery has X numbers, of which you get to pick Y. If you pick all 6 you win. So the chances of winning are...

(x/y-y) = ? (that is wrong, I don't know how to write it properly, get Teleos!)

Fortunately, we know that X=49 and that y=6, so we can say that...

(49/6).(48/5)/(47/4).(46/3).(45/2).(44/1) = Teh Answer!!!

This is calculable only because we know the variables to fire into the calculator. In the absence of those we can't really determine the chances. The answer in this case is further complicated by the fact the result is either 0 (no life) or 1 (is life). We can't even make an educated guess, having zero information on how life starts.

The Drake equation allows for some educated guesses, there are a lot of variables which we don't know the answers to but even with a fairly pessimistic view on these the chance for life of some form (not necessarily anything intelligent, microorganisms etc) seems high.

Of course yes, we still don't understand the majority of the Universe so any conversation of this nature will have to involve some amount of conjecture.

http://www.astro-tom.com/technical_data/alien_life.htm

 

[The Ovlar]

I once read that earth isn't perfectly suited to life, life is perfectly suited to earth. Meaning that a "different" kind of life can evolve anywhere given the chance. Just look at those microbes living inside volcanoes. Heck, if we look close enough we may even find life in the depths of Saturn (which apparently has a liquid core), or on one of Jupiter's moons (One of those guys is covered in water. WATER! anything can evolve there). Probably very simple life but life none the less.

 

[LewsTherin]

Could very well be, but until they actively involve themselves with our goings-on here I really don't care.