Poll: Do you believe in aliens?

[Greatjusticeman]

If we do find aliens that are intelligent, I believe they will look and act like nothing we have ever imagined.

Like, something really weird. Something very hard for us to comprehend. As much as I love the Mass Effect universe, I don't think aliens will all be like that - bi-pedal, think in terms of a united government and such.

Have you read Solaris by Stanislaw Lem? I highly recommend it (neither movie does it justice), it's really all about the idea that aliens we might meet would probably be a lot more well... alien than most people realize. To the point where communication might be hopelessly hampered.

No, I havent. I have read that Old Man's War series by John Scalzi, though. They aren't the best written books, but they are entertaining. And provides interesting sight on how relations might end up being between aliens and humans.

Though he didn't give much description into their appearances, they usually had pretty different cultures compared to everyone else.

 

[StormShaun]

I think yes, the universe is way too big for us to be the only life forms ever...quite impossible to be the only ones here.

 

[Eisenfaust]

i... accept the possibility, i'm not sure if it's really something to "believe" in, but anyway

 

[fenrizz]

Mathematically, it's quite unlikely that we are the only intelligent life - let alone the only life - in this universe. So I can say that yes, I am convinced that "we are not alone".
Our galaxy, the milky way, alone has up to 300 billion stars. That's 300,000,000,000. Now if only every tenth star has planets, that's still 30,000,000,000 (30 billion). Now if one in every thousand solar systems would have life, that would still be 30,000,000 (30 million) systems. Now if one of every thousand systems with a planet with life sports intelligent life, that would still be 30,000 (30 thousand) systems and thus civilizations.

And that's in our galaxy alone. At the moment 50 billion (50,000,000,000) galaxies are observable from earth, each with several billions of stars in them...
Heck, even if only every millionth galaxy had one single planet bearing intelligent life, it would still amount to 50 thousand civilizations.

On the other hand, I don't believe in the "grays" visiting us and cover up conspirations. As any life form would have to adhere to the same physics as we do, it's just not feasable that they would travel here, or even have remote contact.

Quoted for truth.

The universe is simply to damn large for us to be the only form of life.

 

[Nickompoop]

Of course. If the Universe is infinite, then there are definitely intelligent aliens out there somewhere.
I'd even be willing to bet a significant amount of money that there's sentient alien life in our galaxy. Besides us humans, of course. However, we'll never encounter them unless we develop faster than light travel.

 

[shadowsoul222]

So I realize that my wording was a bit both vague and misleading. What I meant is do you think that it is likely that we will ever discover intelligent life, if it exists? Though there seems to be a surprising number of people who say that they are almost sure that it does exist. And by intelligent life I mean comparable to our intelligence.

 

[Aurgelmir]

Pretty self-explanatory, do you think that aliens (non-human/non earthlings) exist? if so what do you think they will be like? and do you think that we will discover them or they discover us?

Personally...I'm not really sure. I never used to but recently after playing through Mass Effect I want to believe in them haha.

The Question should really be "Do you believe that Aliens exist?"

Your question just makes it sound like Aliens and Jesus sit around together being entity that needs belief and worship

I personally do believe Aliens exist, due to the statistical improbability that we are the only ones in the Universe. Based on how many galaxies there are in the universe, and how many solar systems there is in those galaxies, and how many planets that make up... how can there NOT be life on those planets?

 

[Feylynn]

I have to side with other people when I refer to the universe being unimaginably huge.

If our planet was represented by a grain of sand, and the rest of the solar system was built to scale around that I imagine it would be at least 20 feet across.
Imagine that solar system as the grain of sand and our galaxy built to scale would probably be the size of a city.
If you made our galaxy a grain of sand then picked a one foot square patch of our sky to recreate on the same scale we would probably have more sand than exists on our entire planet and a model twice the size of our world.

You take all of that and make it one grain of sand and build the rest, it would likely be bigger than our galaxy and have more grains of sand than atoms on our world.

Spoiler: Disclaimer

No math here, just words to give scope. Go talk to sciencey people if you want real scales.

Even with that visual, it isn't possible a human mind can begin to understand numbers that big.
Even more so when I imagine what I described is far to small.

I can't imagine any way in hell there isn't another occurrence of life with that much probability.

 

[ColeusRattus]

As a reply to some of those who quoted me, regarding the discovery and technological or differences:

Well, I don't believe in classical conspiracies, so I think ETs visitung us is like time travelling: if it were possible, it would've already happened, AND would would be a commonly known fact.

But even if alien races were capable of travelling interstellar or even intergalactic in reasonable time (so no "generations-ships" that travel for several hundreds or thousands of years), they'd first have to locate us. Which would be quite a feat, since every signal we've sent out there knowingly and unknowingly, only travels at the speed of light, and loses quality and discernability from the background noise in the universe with every lightyear it travels...

So even if our universe is sprawling with live, in most cases, those signals, which started to get sent out of our world about a century ago, would take millenia to reach planets with intelligent life, would have to be recognized as signals from intellligent life, and then those life form woul've to pinpoint our locations (try pinpointing a sepcific grain of sand on a beach for a similar difficulty), and then would have to mount an expedition, which again, would take, at least by our standard of knowledge, at best the exact amount of time to reach us the sign als took to reach them... highly unlikely.

Additionally, simple differences in communicational media would make detecting another life form quite hard:

XKCD - The Search [http://xkcd.com/638/]

 

[kayisking]

Do aliens exist? Yes.

Did they visit Earth? No.

And that's just based on probability... Universe being infinitely big and that sort of stuff.

I am siding with probability that somewhere there has to exist another life form of sorts.

Technically, aliens have visited Earth since the first living beings on Earth probably crash landed here on a meteorite.

Ps. Please excuse my poor English, I am not a native speaker.

 

[Drejer43]

we live in such a huge universe and have only discovered a tini tiny bit, yeah I think the odds a pretty good for that aliens exist, now if we ever meet them? That's another question.

 

[4RM3D]

Technically, aliens have visited Earth since the first living beings on Earth probably crash landed here on a meteorite.

It depends on what you define as an alien. And it depends on if an alien can evolve into something else.

 

[jack583]

i can't say no, because we haven't searched every inch of SPACE.
but i doubt that we will ever meet them, and there is a good chance none are above slugs

 

[kasperbbs]

Sure, There must be some other life form on some planet somewhere, but do i believe that they are abducting people and probing cows here on earth? No.

 

[Shio]

Better question: do they believe in us?

 

[bificommander]

The odds that there are no other forms of life anywhere in the universe are extremely low.

The chance of any of that life having spacecraft that fly to earth to make crop circles: even lower.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Of course they do! How pointless would the Universe be with only ONE species?

Pro-tip: Pretty pointless.

 

[Mad1Cow]

Didn't we recently find the nearest planet that could possibly harbor life? Quite frankly though I just want a bet between me and a friend to end. Something about there being space cruises that are pretty much like boat cruises only they orbit the Earth before we die. He said no, I said yes...well, only 60 years to find out...well unless he starts sending assassin's after me...

 

[kayisking]

Technically, aliens have visited Earth since the first living beings on Earth probably crash landed here on a meteorite.

It depends on what you define as an alien. And it depends on if an alien can evolve into something else.

What do you mean? Why would an alien not be able to evolve?

 

[mionic]

It´s hard to say they are not there, thinking about the size of the universe.
But i do not think there are anything more then bacteria and such close to us, or will be in any near future. And if we did have visitors, i think we would know...