Poll: You believe in life beyond Earth?

[KaiRai]

Well....sure, there has to be life somewhere else right? If the universe is infinite, then surely there has to be life elsewhere. I just don't think we'll find it because the universe is so vast we're not likely to be within spitting distance of each other. Would be cool to find alternate life though in fairness.

 

[Gudrests]

It's quite possible for life to exist on Titan or Pluto. Just because it isn't Earth-like doesn't mean it can't sustain life;evolution works like that!

Actually, there are requirements for life. Water is the most important, no water; no life. Second of all the planet cant be too close to the sun or all life will burn up and all water will evaporate. But it cant bee too far away either since life requires LIQUID water, frozen water is as useless as no water.
There is a "comfort" zone around most stars where scientists believe life can exist, and Titan and pluto is not within ours.

That is only for life that we know of. What if there is life elsewhere that does not need water. We THOUGHT that all life had 6 basic components....we were wrong and proved wrong like a year ago that found a completly diffrent component replacing one that we thought was needed. Its evolution and what not.

 

[captaincabbage]

I remember someone describing the universe as this to me once, I think it was some professor who visited out school.

If you can imagine a 20c piece (or a quarter or whatever) as our known universe, our planet at the direct pinpoint centre of it. all of the coin is the known universe. This includes the galaxies that we can barely see and even the ones we can only pick up via a method other than infrared.
Now, if you put that coin on the ground, the rest of the earth in all it's mass is the theoretical size of the rest of the universe.

Think about that for a second. if our planet and, by extension, out galaxy are in the centre of that tiny coin, surrounded by every galaxy we can see, what else could be out there?


As for me, I reckon it's an absolute certainty that there is other live in the universe, definitely intelligent life, whatever stage of intelligence they may be at, and that's only counting for the life we know for a fact can exist. What about silicon based lifeforms and such?

 

[Hristo Tzonkov]

The universe is huge...I'm sure what happened on earth could be recreated somewhere else.

 

[Velvo]

Considering the number of Earth-like planets that Kepler has already found in it's rather short search of the galaxy, I am optimistic about complex life on other planets.

I mean, since there's organic matter just floating out there in the cosmos in absolutely staggering amounts like, for instance, that massive cloud of drinking alcohol which would last earthlings for billions of years, wouldn't it be a shame if no-one but us could get tanked on it?

Perhaps we won't find that UFOs are aliens (they're time travelers, I'm sure of it!) and perhaps the only life we find under the ice of Enceladus will be the lonely bug in the submersible we send, but if it's possible, and we know it is (vis a vis, Earth), it has to exist somewhere else too. Or maybe we are just ABSURDLY unlucky. That would be one hell of a torment, to be the ONLY life ANYWHERE. Chances are low on that, methinks.

I think you're not optimistic enough. You're assuming that life can only exist on earth-like planets.
I have always heavily disagreed with that notion. Most of all the possible lifeforms that we know off can only live on earth. But who is to say that there aren't many other possible lifeforms? Life wants to be, we see this everywhere on earth. Even in the most impossible conditions we can find some bizare kind of life. Most people tend to forget that when talking about allien life.
I know nothing lives on Mars, but I'm also convinced that somewhere there is a lifeform that could perfectly survive on Mars.

Perhaps so, and I'm perfectly aware of the possibilities for strange life forms living all sorts of places (Jupiter even! Imagine the blimp creatures!), it's just hard to imagine life getting started in a place without liquid water. It's such a useful component to life as we know it.

Sure, there may be life completely different from that as we know it, biologically and perhaps even in other ways (... electrically?) but it's probably best to start looking in the easy places. It will probably give us better odds of finding something neat. And liquid water can only exist in the "Goldilocks zone" around any given star where the temperature allows it. And then we need a gravity strong enough to capture an atmosphere, but not powerful enough to crush everything larger than a mouse to a pancake and leave a molten geography.

Basically, it's cool to see the set of planets that it wouldn't be a prohibitive risk to look for life on has grown.

 

[hannan4mitch]

Well, it is actually statistically improbable that we are the only sentient beings in the universe, because the universe is so innumerably immense, and there are literally billions of billions of planets in billions of galaxies, that there will be sentient life other than us, but we probably won't ever make contact.

Which sucks, because they could have technology that will seem impossible to present day engineers, which could set us upon the path to becoming an interplanetary (even intergalactic) species.

 

[9Darksoul6]

The whole question depends on two variables that science won't be (for a long time, maybe never) able to determine with objectivity, which are: the [probability of 'life' creating itself]/[space] ratio, and the size of the universe.
Ergo, people who say it's statistically impossible to be alone in this universe don't really know what they're talking about.

As far as the concept of "alien" go, I think it's pretty obvious that it was created by our 'need' to believe we are not alone, and/or our unexplicable 'need' to believe that there might be a superior entites out there in the skies; just like the concept of "God"; the atheist movement killed "God", and this was what we came up with.

 

[Omega500]

More then likely there is.

I just hope im alive to see it, when they or we go visit, then we could hook up to there internet that would be awesome

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

I'd almost be willing to bet that it's out there. But while I'd like to believe that we'll find it in my lifetime, I've got my doubts that we'll even find it in this species's lifetime.

 

[ezeroast]

Sometimes, I think that the largest bit of proof that there is intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has contacted us.

calvin and hobbes?

Umm the poll seems the wrong way around to me

 

[Wyes]

I just had this nice big, huge explanation for why I expect life to exist outside of Earth... then I accidentally closed the window and lost it all. It took me about an hour to write up. Dammit.

But for the cliffs notes version;

In our Solar System alone, there are four potential places life might form or have formed. They are Earth, Mars (where we have found evidence for water in the past, and subsurface water presently), Titan (one of the moons of Titan), and Europa (one of the moons of Jupiter, we have much evidence to suggest it has a sub-surface ocean with enough free energy to form microscopic life). Now, our Solar System is about 0.8 light years in radius (note; this is from the Sun to the hypothesised Oort Cloud, out at 50,000 AU). 1 light year is equal to 9,461,000,000,000 kilometers or 5,879,000,000,000 miles. Now consider that to date, we have detected over 400 exo-planets (and this is only in a very small area), of which we're reasonably certain a few of which have liquid water on the surface (which is important for life, in our Earth-centric models).

Working by scale alone, we can see that it is statistically unlikely that there is no other life in the Universe, or indeed even in our own Galaxy. Intelligent life on the other hand is a bit trickier, and far less likely than other forms of life.

Now, the odds of finding intelligent life are extremely slim. The galaxy is simply too big. But microscopic life? I'd say we'll find direct evidence in the next few decades. Macroscopic life? Well, that might take a while. Intelligent life? Probably not going to happen, and if it does, not for many centuries to come.


Also, this [http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2011/02/15/beautiful-life-looks-for-life-the-sagan-series/] is definitely worth checking out. It's beautiful.