Do You BELIEVE there is life outside Earth?

[juvilado]

Hi folks, tonight i feel pesimist and i found that although i would love that life would exist outwards Earth, im starting to think there might not be the case.

Things like the Fermi Paradox and Mars and Venus environements, and the rare conditions of Earth (with the moon, tectonics, magnetosphere, etc...) are starting to give me a bad feeling about this.

Let's hope Clipper Probe and others change my mind!

Regards

[regex]

Life, somewhere out there in the billions of galaxies and countless stars that exist in our universe? Yes, absolutely, probability almost demands it. Intelligent life? Probably. Life capable of starflight? Maybe. Life capable of faster-than-light travel? No.

The Fermi Paradox has tons of solutions. Hell, we might just be one of the younger races in the universe.

[mikegarrison]

Honestly, I don't really care.

I think it is more than a little egocentric for people to obsess over whether there are others like us somewhere else. Whether you draw the line at "life" or "intelligence" or whatever, it comes down to valuing things that are in our category as more important/interesting than the rest of the universe.

[Ten Key]

Yes. As Regex says it's almost a statistical certainty.

I also think it's likely that the universe is so vast, we'll never find it. 

[juvilado]

18 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Honestly, I don't really care.

I think it is more than a little egocentric for people to obsess over whether there are others like us somewhere else. Whether you draw the line at "life" or "intelligence" or whatever, it comes down to valuing things that are in our category as more important/interesting than the rest of the universe.

I respect your point of view, but for me, the search for extraterrestrial life is one most important objetives for humanity. 

I don't think thats egocentric at all, i think it is the contrary: we are trying to find we are not unique!

And if you ask me why i find that so important, i must admit i don't have a clear explanation. Maybe I, as an atheist, want to see more greatness in this universe with more lifeforms inhabitting it...

Of course my love for space exploration has something to do with that...

Also, i can't believe someone interested in playing KSP doesn't care about extraterrestrial life chances!

Edited November 1, 2017 by juvilado

[HebaruSan]

They're out there, but they also haven't been able to come up with a way to make money from frequent spaceflight.

[cubinator]

Probably. 

[James Kerman]

I hope so.  It is my belief that bacterial life will eventually be found deep underground on Mars because of what we have found on earth.

https://www.universetoday.com/851/bacteria-found-deep-underground/

Quote

Princeton researchers have discovered a colony of bacteria that lives more than 3 km (2 miles) underground. This bacteria lives completely cut off from the biosphere on the surface of the Earth, and derives its energy from the radioactive decay of rocks underground. By finding life in these extreme conditions, scientists are expanding their understanding of what kinds of habits can support life.

There is also the panspermia theory and its variants to consider.

[Just Jim]

Absolutely!

The more evidence they find it may exist in our own solar system in places like Europa and Enceladus, combined with how monstrously huge the universe is... not to mention there may be parallel universes... In my mind the numbers are just so staggering, I don't see how life, in some form or another, couldn't be out there... somewhere.

Problem is finding it.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Just Jim

[juvilado]

5 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Absolutely!

The more evidence they find it may exist in our own solar system in places like Europa and Enceladus, combined with how monstrously huge the universe is... not to mention there may be parallel universes... In my mind the numbers are just so staggering, I don't see how life, in some form or another, couldn't be out there... somewhere.

Problem is finding it.

Much evidence... no confirmation... and, don't you have the feeling that none of the probes we send go specifically for life search? For god sake, arm Curiosity with a microscope!!

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, juvilado said:

Also, i can't believe someone interested in playing KSP doesn't care about extraterrestrial life chances!

Care? Sure.

Want to discuss the same old arguments over and over ad nauseam? No thank you

[juvilado]

10 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Care? Sure.

Want to discuss the same old arguments over and over ad nauseam? No thank you

Ok, regards

[SuperFastJellyfish]

According to the Big Bang theory, everything exploded from a singularity(or as close as reality gets to a singularity).  Looking at the oldest known existence of light, the cosmic microwave background(~400,000 years after the big bang), you can see how uniform the universe was back then.  From this you can extrapolate that everything coalesced from the same general material across the universe.  To think that we are the only corner of the universe to develop the self-reproducing chemistry called life seems completely impossible to me.

[PB666]

I think the question is poorly phrased.

Examples of Life outside earth.

1. There is life, in fact trillions of living things on the International Space station. From what I understand right now is about 300 to 600 miles above the earth's surface.
2. There is almost certainly microbes in a state of permanent stasis on the three landers we placed on the moon, not to mention the gobs of life inside the lander module that were sent in orbit around the sun.
3. THere are probably a few dried microbes on the oldest things we sent to Mars.
4. Of course since the scientist that built the Voyager and Mariner programs were probably not as sensitive to the xenobiology issue, you will probably find some dehydrated bacteria on these vessels, the last two which are now in interstellar space. IOW no longer in the extended atmosphere of our Sun. While they are still in the suns gravitation sphere of influence their radial velocity is such that its trivial.
 

I don't think life is as common as many here want it to be, and sentient life is very uncommon. Those that have set their hopes in the next earth-like planet are more often than not disappointed. THeres alot that goes into making our planet tick, a long check list of things that need to just so to have sentient life. I think asking the question whether there are other sentients in the Universe is a bit like asking what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole or when one travels faster than the speed of light. The profound distances involved in Intergalactic spaces makes it unlikely whether we will ever know. That creates a false argument because then we have to ask 'well what about other sentient life within our galaxy (start checking of a large number of creatures on earth)' we are expanding our list of sentient creatures at home, or redefining the word . . . . . . . .

I would argue that we are not easy to detect and we should likewise expect other sentients on other planets as difficult to detect. Finding quality planets has proved to be a problem .. . . . .

 

 

 

2 minutes ago, SuperFastJellyfish said:

According to the Big Bang theory, everything exploded from a singularity(or as close as reality gets to a singularity).  Looking at the oldest known existence of light, the cosmic microwave background(~400,000 years after the big bang), you can see how uniform the universe was back then.  From this you can extrapolate that everything coalesced from the same general material across the universe.  To think that we are the only corner of the universe to develop the self-reproducing chemistry called life seems completely impossible to me.

Well thats not exactly true. Within the distances or OUR observably universe we can see euclidian geometry is essentially flat. Or space is buried in the inflation bubble where space expanded relatively uniformly.

In terms of the commonness or rarity. The use of earth as an example creates a potentially severe ascertainment bias. You are from earth, therefore life is familiar to you. You would have to begin an objective sample in a part of the universe that you are unfamiliar with. Statistically speaking if you sample 1, that being earth, your degrees of freedom are zero; therefore life will always be common.  THe way to determine the rate of life per planet is to remove Earth from any consideration and look at the probability of life on all the other planets detected. What happens if they sample billions of stars and planets of stars and find no evidence of life supporting planets?

 

[YNM]

Yes.

 

We send them.

Edited November 1, 2017 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

Fermi Paradox sounds like "Why my neighbours don't make the music loud, rather than me? Are they alive? Do they exist?"

Memes live across the Universe. Bodies are just organic hardware to implement them.

[MrChumley]

I honestly believe that there is much yet to be discovered.

Happy Halloween!

 

I wrote a spooky poem:

Flung out of a vortex of chaos
Into a pit of despair
There I sat in disrepair
I flung out a line into the void
Probably not pleasing, and made some -frankly annoyed-
The beast that I caught that day was great
I fought it yesterday, and tomorrow,
It never got tired but was always abate
Everything made sense, but there was nothing to relate

It pulled me this way and that
Contorting my understanding of the material mat
I was taken out and put back in.
Was that me laughing, or was that the gin?

The world became smoke
I tried to stand, but under my feet there wasn't no land
the beast got away, and I let it go before it got out of hand

But for some reason it came back,
and gave me
a hand
onto land,
and I was able to (under) stand

 

(Ok now read it again, This time pretend that you are reading it from your perceived beasts perception)

[Green Baron]

No. I do not believe that there is life out there because this is not a question of belief.

I keep my mind open to findings, very skeptical towards the huge pile of noise at the fringes of science that roams around.

We will probably never find out because it doesn't shout out loud (meaning it is "only" microbial) or it is too far away to be detected. I see a slight probability for the first and a very high probability for the latter to happen, so speculations will never stop.

@juvilado , we have been through this many times, scan for example the "fermi paradox"-thread to resolve your doubts that we players would not care. We're just a little exhausted ;-)

 

[Scotius]

The very fact that we exist is enough to convince me there is life beyond Earth. Life-friendly conditions on Earth may be rare - but it's a bit ridiculous to think, that in a wastness of space similiar conditions didn't come together somewhere else. It might not be common, it might not be intelligent - but life exists out there. We just need to learn how to detect and identify it.

[Green Baron]

I want to add that assuming life (in whatever form) in the first place as an explanation for astronomical observations is a no-go for a natural scientist. It keeps from searching for natural causes. As any form of belief it limits our ability to find out what really happens around us.

Those [unrefined descriptive expression] that speculated openly about "Megastructures" didn't do astronomy a favour and actually stirred up a few concerns in journals like Science and Nature. Fortunately in the meantime we have several reasonable proposals for what happens at KIC-longinteger and the class of dimming stars and these do not come from the kite flyers.

Here's the link to the Fermi-thread where a few very different views on the thing, from creationist to physicist, are expressed:

p.s.: the deepest of my heart belongs to me !

[Nibb31]

What anyone believes is irrelevant.

[NSEP]

Yeah. I do believe in life beyond Earth, i think all planets and moons that host liquid water and a source of heat can host life. But im not 100% sure. I also think we never met Alien life because they are more diverse than we think.

[p1t1o]

This is not how science works.

***

No. Because I have yet to see evidence of it.

Why would I believe otherwise?

I believe its possible.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

This is not how science works.

***

No. Because I have yet to see evidence of it.

Why would I believe otherwise?

I believe its possible.

Problem with sample size of one   With an larger sample size you can do estimates. 
An telescope who can analyze atmosphere on smaller planets around other stars this will probably be answered. 
As in if life common or rare (yes you can have life without oxygen and its error sources)

Without the telescope we have to do with an sample size of one. It don't look like life is extremely unlikely. It started fast on earth. Getting more advanced life than bacteria looks much harder.
Both based on how long time it took before life and before  eukaryota cells. Larger animals might well mostly be waiting for  oxygen levels and ecosystem size.

The only thing we are sure of is that no aliens spam us with radio messages and dyson spheres don't exist or is very rare. 
No galactic empire either.

[Steel]

2 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Problem with sample size of one   With an larger sample size you can do estimates. 
An telescope who can analyze atmosphere on smaller planets around other stars this will probably be answered. 
As in if life common or rare (yes you can have life without oxygen and its error sources)

Without the telescope we have to do with an sample size of one. It don't look like life is extremely unlikely. It started fast on earth. Getting more advanced life than bacteria looks much harder.
Both based on how long time it took before life and before  eukaryota cells. Larger animals might well mostly be waiting for  oxygen levels and ecosystem size.

You mean like this thing that we can already do with current technology?

http://www.physics.uu.se/research/astronomy-and-space-physics/research/planets/exoplanet-atmospheres/