Alien intelligence

[Bobby]

Some interesting points from Magpie, the sheer size of the universe might suggest that advanced civilizations could be hundreds if not thousands of light years apart making contact impossible ever, however, the law of averages suggest that in taking the sheer age of the universe 13 billion years plus, verses the earth age 5 billion years, there might well have been countless civilizations flourishing at any given point in time, the famous 'Drakes equation' suggest this.....as to why contact has never been made?.....my two pennies are as follows....reason 1: as said earlier, the sheer distance involved makes contact improbable....reason 2: advanced intelligence on our planet capable of interpreting an alien contact has only been around for less than a billionth of the planet's history.....reason 3...to an alien civilization, our planet may be as unimportant to paraphrase Jodie Foster in the film 'contact' 'as a microbe on an ant hill in africa is to us'.....reason 4....once an alien civilization reaches certain advancements in technology, they self destruct, such as war, scientific experiement gone wrong etc.......personally reason 4 is the one that springs to mind for me, how close has the human race come, in its incredibly short time span, to destroy its self with war?......scary thinking!....and also the human race and indeed our planet could be on the brink of destruction with these so called particle accelerator scientific experiments as reports suggest that these scientists are playing with forces that should be left well alone!! (black holes & 'exotic particle' creation such as 'stranglets')

All those points are true if alien life does exist out there, but that is assuming it does exist. My reasoning though is that we just don't know how life started on Earth, so if we have no evidence suggesting it, like radio signals from them etc, what reason is there to believe in it? I think if we knew how life started, and it was a fairly simple process, I would say that there is definitely loads of civilizations out there. Until we know what that spark was that started life though, we are still in the dark.

[A.J]

All those points are true if alien life does exist out there, but that is assuming it does exist. My reasoning though is that we just don't know how life started on Earth, so if we have no evidence suggesting it, like radio signals from them etc, what reason is there to believe in it? I think if we knew how life started, and it was a fairly simple process, I would say that there is definitely loads of civilizations out there. Until we know what that spark was that started life though, we are still in the dark.

very true, but (and there's always a but...lol) another view (and a very compelling one) is that life itself came from outer space, in the form of amino acids & bacteria from comet /asteroid impacts in earth's early history....if thats the case, aren't we the very aliens that we're looking for??!!

[Bobby]

very true, but (and there's always a but...lol) another view (and a very compelling one) is that life itself came from outer space, in the form of amino acids & bacteria from comet /asteroid impacts in earth's early history....if thats the case, aren't we the very aliens that we're looking for??!!

That's possible but then there is still the question of how life came about in the first place.

[A.J]

Well, its quite possible that the universe we see all comes from a tiny quantum jitter leading to a rapid inflation of spacetime etc due to repulsive gravity, the anomaly weighing no more than 20kg. In the split moments after the inflation, the law of gravity changed, and gravity became attractive only as the mechanics went from quantum sizes to larger. If 20kg is all it took, it does cause some concern I guess as to what they are smashing and playing with in these atom smashers etc. But, I would say to produce such a large inflation anomaly in a quantum field a far larger amount of energy and far higher temperatures than we can obtain on earth would be needed, even at quantum levels. Who knows. Maybe human meddling will be our undoing.

Interesting theory, I'm presuming that in 'repulsive gravity' you are referring to 'dark energy' the hypothetical 'all powerful' form of energy..A similar theory is that our universe is part of a 'multiverse' (an infinite number of universes) and that gravity being a weak form of energy compared with say magnetism, actually leaked from another universe having different laws of physics into our own, but having simply 'trickled' into our own 'space-time' is only a fraction of its true force....This is what worries me, as particle accelerators are designed to re-create the conditions immediatley after the big bang, what are we on the brink of unleashing?.....i read an interesting article on the bbc website that back in 2005, an experiment in the long island accelerator created a plasma ball which had all the physical characteristics of a black hole, it then evaporated in a fraction of a second!....All i can say is thank god it didnt become stable, otherwise we wouldnt be here debating extra-terrestrial life!!!

[Bobby]

Interesting theory, I'm presuming that in 'repulsive gravity' you are referring to 'dark energy' the hypothetical 'all powerful' form of energy..A similar theory is that our universe is part of a 'multiverse' (an infinite number of universes) and that gravity being a weak form of energy compared with say magnetism, actually leaked from another universe having different laws of physics into our own, but having simply 'trickled' into our own 'space-time' is only a fraction of its true force....This is what worries me, as particle accelerators are designed to re-create the conditions immediatley after the big bang, what are we on the brink of unleashing?.....i read an interesting article on the bbc website that back in 2005, an experiment in the long island accelerator created a plasma ball which had all the physical characteristics of a black hole, it then evaporated in a fraction of a second!....All i can say is thank god it didnt become stable, otherwise we wouldnt be here debating extra-terrestrial life!!!

Yes, there is still a lot about physics, particularly quantum physics, that we just don't know enough about. Perhaps one of these experiments will go very wrong and the entire planet will be sucked into a black hole or something. Not saying we shouldn't do these experiments, but it's definitely a possibility. One can't rule it out as we don't know exactly everything about how it all works.

[Gray-Wolf]

Yes, there is still a lot about physics, particularly quantum physics, that we just don't know enough about.

So it's all a little 'blind men meeting the elephant' then. We are accurate in mapping/describing our bit of the universe (that which our equipment,knowledge,senses allows us access too) but maybe , in a multiverse, there are many other ways of percieving it and all of them right. Only when every perception from every bit of the multiverse is assembled do we stand a chance of truely understanding it. As such alien life may be occupying the exact same space that you are ,just phase shifted a little.....

[parmenides3]

Hello. This is an interesting subject.

Some thoughts.

Is it possible for some form of intelligent life to exist on planets other than ours? We are pretty certain that planets exist around other stars which have a chemical/atmospheric composition which could sustain some form of life - we've even, speculatively, identified one. With billions of stars in billions of galaxies with billions of planets around them, what are the odds, really, of there not being at least one other planet which could sustain life? It seems reasonable to conclude that there are likely to be many such - possibly millions.

If this were the case, it would also be reasonable to conclude that, amongst all the planets where life could exist, in at least some cases, it does. This is absolutely unprovable, until and unless...

It also seems reasonable to conclude that, in at least some of the cases where life might exist, it has, as on our planet, evolved; therefore, given a suitable passage of time, intelligent life is more or less certain to come into being.

What about the converse? If we accept the first premise - that life-supporting planets do, indeed, exist - and we have some evidence for this - what are the odds that no intelligent life form has developed on any of them? This is also unanswerable, so we have to go with some kind of intuition, perhaps inspired by observation of our own planet. Given the vast array of life forms which exist on earth, the assumption of life forms in other places does not seem unreasonable.

The we get to some more knobbly problems. Even if all the above is accepted as given, and therefore that intelligent life probably does exist elsewhere in the universe, how will we ever find out?

We know that to travel to Proxima Centauri, our nearest star, at best current or near future technology, would take about 60,000 years. Ranging outwards in all directions to explore all star systems with probable life-sustaining planets within, say, 100 light years of Earth, might take several thousands of thousands of years, unless we develop the technology to overcome the physical restraints of space-time. Looking outwards, then, the time when we might be able to explore the stars well enough to find other life is still a distant prospect. So the best odds of finding out whether intelligent life exists out there is for it to come to us.

This is based on the assumption that somewhere - probably necessarily in our own galaxy - intelligent life has evolved and developed further than ours. Then we start to wonder, if I was part of a more advanced, more able, more developed society/civilisation, why would I want to come to earth? Why would I want to make contact with earth? How could I do it?

Suggested reading: Doris Lessing, the 'space' series - James Blish; 'A Case of Conscience' - Olaf Stapledon; 'Last and First Men'.

:)P

[Bobby]

But... even if every star has multiple Earth like planets, and thus there are billions / trillions of Earth like planets with water, a good tempeature range etc, it is still possible that there is no life out there, because we have no idea whatosever how life started. Why should we assume just because life started here, it would start somewhere else. We only have 1 example. Just 1. You can't take a trend out of that and extrapolate it so to say that life is common.

Do you agree that there's the possibility that life was some complete freak event, maybe some kind of quantum event, that just happened to happen here on Earth? Just once? An event of such freakishness that it has never happened anywhere else and will never happen. Until / if we find out how life evolved, using Occam's razor, the simplest logical explaination is that until evidence suggests otherwise, the stance to take is that we are alone.

Of course it's entirely possible that the creation of life is relatively straight forward process and it is common throughout the universe, but until we disover that exact process, there isn't any reason to believe that there is life out there. There is reason to postulate that it's a possibility, as I believe, but no reason to say "there is life out there".

The origin of life is such a fascinating subject. I believe that should we discover how life came to be, it would be the greatest discovery in the history of mankind, and if it were a relatively simple process, I would definitely say that we are not alone. Would be silly to say otherwise.

[Pickles]

How do we actually know what an alien life form looks like? If it is unknown to us then what do we look for? if they are an invisible being, you may have one on the chair next to you without you even knowing.

As Snow Raven said, we only went into space 40ish years ago (and even when we did that and walked on the moon people said that it was a hoax), plus we are finding new species of animals and plants all the time which shows that we haven't really found out about our own planet fully yet so why do people assume we have found everything outside of our own atmosphere.

Perhaps aliens a put off by coming to this planet because if they landed in England the first communication would be "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH"

[Bobby]

How do we actually know what an alien life form looks like? If it is unknown to us then what do we look for? if they are an invisible being, you may have one on the chair next to you without you even knowing.

As Snow Raven said, we only went into space 40ish years ago (and even when we did that and walked on the moon people said that it was a hoax), plus we are finding new species of animals and plants all the time which shows that we haven't really found out about our own planet fully yet so why do people assume we have found everything outside of our own atmosphere.

Perhaps aliens a put off by coming to this planet because if they landed in England the first communication would be "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH"

I would imagine an an alien being would be very similar to us in fact. They wouldn't be invisbile, not naturally anyway. Not even we can do that.

An intelligent civilised alien would likely be land based as starting civlizations under water in impractical for various reasons. It's difficult to build things in the oceans due to the pressure, as well as the great difficulty in finding things like iron which is usually found on land. It would also be impossible to start fires underwater so they wouldn't be able to smelt tools. I also doubt farming is possible, and farming is the precursor to civilization.

They are also likely to be large, as they need large brains - so they won't be the size of flies. As walking is the most efficient way of moving on land, (all large land based creatures walk), they will need legs of some sort. They'd also need some kind of appendage or appendages to manuiplate objects, to create technology. So it's a good possibility they will have legs and arms of some sort.

It also makes sense to have a head where all the sensory organs are close to each other and the brain. Having your ears or eyes a long way from the brain means that response times to any danger would be slow, it is why nearly everything on Earth has a head where all sensory organs are close to the brain. Another thing is that they will need bones of some sort to support themselves upright on land. They couldn't have a shell like spiders or insects because physically such shells rapidly lose their strength and mobilty when they become large, that's why all inverterbrates are quite small.

There's also a good chance they will have 2 legs and arms like us - having more than 4 limbs is superflous. All large animals have 4 limbs, either 4 legs or in the case of us, 2 legs and 2 arms. Birds also have 2 legs and 2 "arms". More limbs would require more brain to coordinate them all, meaning less space for advanced thought brain areas.

So any advanced alien is likely to have 2 "arms" (a tentacle of some sort is also possible) to manuipulate objects so they can create technology and 2 legs to get around. They are likely to have a head with the eyes, ears, mouth and tounge close to the brain. They will also have a boney inner skeleton. They will also need similar organs to us, to process their food, digest it, excrete it etc. They'd need teeth of some sort to chew it up.

In otherwords, they would be remarkably like us.

[SnowBear]

I don't think we can really apply Occam's Razor to this particular subject, especially in this day and age of quantum mechanics etc which is more to do with probability than rules being in their simplest forms. Probability says that out of the 100,000,000,000,000 galaxies out there in the observable universe, and the countless billions and trillions in the non observable universe beyond, (the universe according to inflation theory and string theory is trillions of times larger than previously thought), each with all its billions of stars, then somewhere out there probably supports life, either lower forms than on earth, or higher, depending on the evolution on those planets. The reason we do not see them is the sheer distances involved, and also, maybe the evolution of the universe is only now becoming conducive for life. The figures, distances and sizes involved are beyond our comprehension, and could fool us into thinking we are alone, that we are special, I doubt we are, just as it was found that we are not the centre of the universe because all seems to be zooming away from us just because it appears that all is zooming away from us, the simplest explanation was not the correct one. If we have only just seen life appear on our planet at this time in the universes evolution, then life may only be appearing on countless other planets in the universe, but to say there is no life at all, just because we cannot see it is not right in my opinion, it is an unknown factor, and should be left as such, a maybe.

Occam's Razor is not the be all and end all rule, especially in cosmology and evolution where things can turn out to be far more complex than first thought.

We have to factor in probability now, not just what is the simplest form or law and go with it.

In my view is life has started on earth, and so, probability and the maths says that its in no way impossible elsewhere, purely because it has happened here.

Unknown, quite likely, but ask again some time in the future.

[parmenides3]

But... even if every star has multiple Earth like planets, and thus there are billions / trillions of Earth like planets with water, a good tempeature range etc, it is still possible that there is no life out there, because we have no idea whatosever how life started. Why should we assume just because life started here, it would start somewhere else. We only have 1 example. Just 1. You can't take a trend out of that and extrapolate it so to say that life is common.

Do you agree that there's the possibility that life was some complete freak event, maybe some kind of quantum event, that just happened to happen here on Earth? Just once? An event of such freakishness that it has never happened anywhere else and will never happen. Until / if we find out how life evolved, using Occam's razor, the simplest logical explaination is that until evidence suggests otherwise, the stance to take is that we are alone.

Of course it's entirely possible that the creation of life is relatively straight forward process and it is common throughout the universe, but until we disover that exact process, there isn't any reason to believe that there is life out there. There is reason to postulate that it's a possibility, as I believe, but no reason to say "there is life out there".

The origin of life is such a fascinating subject. I believe that should we discover how life came to be, it would be the greatest discovery in the history of mankind, and if it were a relatively simple process, I would definitely say that we are not alone. Would be silly to say otherwise.

Hi Mags. I don't disagree that we don't, and can't, know whether there is any life 'out there', but I don't follow your argument. Just because we don't know how something works doesn't mean that it can't work. Why would we assume that, if life started on this planet, it wouldn't start on a similar planet with similar conditions - surely, the odds are that, on at least some of these planets, if the process which has led to their current state is broadly similar, then the processes which lead to life would also be. the fact that we have even one example is evidence that such an occurence is possible. I'm not suggesting we should assume that life must have started elsewhere, but wouldn't it be strange if, in replicating an experiment, the results were different? This is why I am suggesting that it is more reasonable to assume that there is intelligent life somewhere, than it is to assume that there isn't. This isn't a strong claim, but in the absence of evidence, we have to apply reason and principle.

The fact that we have only one example is a function of our ignorance, not of the apparent laws of the universe. Of course it is entirely possible that life on earth is unique and never repeated anywhere, and was a freak event. But even then, why would we believe that such a freak event would be unique; if it is possible at all, then it must be possible. As far as knowing the exact process - by which, in our case, I am assuming you mean the combination of circumstances which led to the existence of DNA - when you think about how incredibly complex these molecules are, then the idea of replication becomes considerably less likely, but not impossible.

Occam's razor is not the right tool to use in this argument, because we are not and cannot speak in terms of physical entities or evidence; the whole debate must necessarily be purely speculative. It's also not really a proper use of the argument; Occam's razor is not the principle that, if we don't know the truth of a statement, we should assume its falsity. It's more like a principle; that simple explanations are generally more reliable than complicated ones.

I have no idea what the answer to the question 'how did DNA come to be?' might be. I have no idea even how to start addressing the question. What is true is that DNA has come into existence, and thereby we have life (as we understand it). Is it reasonable to assume that it only came into existence in one place at one time? Or is it reasonable to assume that, given that the existence of DNA is possible anywhere, then it is possible everywhere, where conditions are right. Going beyond this question, we can ask whether there is the possibility of a 'life form', or 'intelligence' developing in the absence of DNA. Why should there only be one 'formula' for life?

Of course I also agree that it is not logical to claim that there 'is' life out there, or that there 'must be'; this is an untenable position. Unfortunately, so is the converse, that there isn't, or that there cannot be. Neither claim can be verified or falsified, so they are equally meaningless.

Which leaves us with what? Basically, we can choose between personal prejudice, intuition, guesswork, probability and reason. We can agree that it is both possible that there is life out there, and that its possible that there isn't. Measuring a genuine probability is more than likely impossible; we don't have enough facts. If we want to avoid simple opinion or prejudice, all that is left to us is reason. There are reasonable argument for suggesting that life elsewhere is unlikely, but also reasonable arguments for the case that, even so, it is even less unlikely that , if the conditions exist elsewhere, then the circumstance would not have occurred as it did here.

That'll do for now.

:)P

[Spongebob]

Wow what a fascinating discussion ..

Just to add my pennies worth

Are we alone in the vastness .. probably not it's just far too big the odds must be in favor of some form of life ... but the question has to be will it be intelligent life as we know it, the depths of the Pacific ocean show that life can cling on ( <_< Klingon) in the harshest of places .. IMHO the first signs of life will be microorganisms on one of the many moons in our own solar system feeding off methane or something, then we will come along and as usual have a total disregard and will either exploit it or destroy it in a quest for knowledge.

But what really intrigues me is when we were dragging lumps of stone from Wales to the South of England and stacking them up elsewhere (Egypt/S.America)they were building huge complex mathematical structures that if we are led to believe were as accurate as we could do some 2000 years later. It does really make you think how they could design such complex structures without 'external' help. Some of the ancient images of chariots in the sky's and people with helmets are really fascinating.

Finally for the techies amongst us .. I was at a Cisco training event a few years ago and the Cisco training guy made a passing comment which has stuck with me ... " When the Starship Enterprise meets a new race for the first time ... how come the protocols used for the comms link are the same ?" <_<

KjF

[Pickles]

I would imagine an an alien being would be very similar to us in fact. They wouldn't be invisbile, not naturally anyway. Not even we can do that.

An intelligent civilised alien would likely be land based as starting civlizations under water in impractical for various reasons. It's difficult to build things in the oceans due to the pressure, as well as the great difficulty in finding things like iron which is usually found on land. It would also be impossible to start fires underwater so they wouldn't be able to smelt tools. I also doubt farming is possible, and farming is the precursor to civilization.

They are also likely to be large, as they need large brains - so they won't be the size of flies. As walking is the most efficient way of moving on land, (all large land based creatures walk), they will need legs of some sort. They'd also need some kind of appendage or appendages to manuiplate objects, to create technology. So it's a good possibility they will have legs and arms of some sort.

It also makes sense to have a head where all the sensory organs are close to each other and the brain. Having your ears or eyes a long way from the brain means that response times to any danger would be slow, it is why nearly everything on Earth has a head where all sensory organs are close to the brain. Another thing is that they will need bones of some sort to support themselves upright on land. They couldn't have a shell like spiders or insects because physically such shells rapidly lose their strength and mobilty when they become large, that's why all inverterbrates are quite small.

There's also a good chance they will have 2 legs and arms like us - having more than 4 limbs is superflous. All large animals have 4 limbs, either 4 legs or in the case of us, 2 legs and 2 arms. Birds also have 2 legs and 2 "arms". More limbs would require more brain to coordinate them all, meaning less space for advanced thought brain areas.

So any advanced alien is likely to have 2 "arms" (a tentacle of some sort is also possible) to manuipulate objects so they can create technology and 2 legs to get around. They are likely to have a head with the eyes, ears, mouth and tounge close to the brain. They will also have a boney inner skeleton. They will also need similar organs to us, to process their food, digest it, excrete it etc. They'd need teeth of some sort to chew it up.

In otherwords, they would be remarkably like us.

But how do you know this?

Science fiction films have 99.9% of the time got in them exactly what you have described in your post. however science fiction is exactly what it is called, fiction.

An alien presence would have to be much much further advanced than ourselves in terms of technology, because they would have been able to travel further than we can even see/hear with things like radio telescopes. Computers are far more intelligent than most humans when it comes down to speed of thinking and being able to calculate imputed commands, and technology is advancing on earth and without a doubt, computers will be thinking for themselves widespread in the foreseeable future, and they are getting smaller and smaller. what is to say human brains won't do the same in thousands of years, due to technology?

What I am trying to say is, we all have this vision of how creatures from outer space will look like, but isn't that just stereotyping them. When we look at other planets outside our solar system, we look for the things we know, because we don't know about the things that we have not yet discovered to be on this planet, and certainly not on other planets or in other galaxies, therefore, we know a planet may have had water on it because we know what water is and what the signs are. Referring to P3's post, before we knew what DNA was, nobody went looking for it, because nobody knew it existed, so why should people look for other matter when they don't actually know it exists?

An alien may come in a different form than an animal, who knows? We haven't seen one yet, as far as we know

[Bobby]

Hi Mags.

The thing is though, it is possible that life is normally just unable to occur. It just doesn't happen - it's impossible, against the laws of normal physics. But perhaps here on Earth, billions of years ago, there was a freak event, perhaps a quantum event where some atoms just happened to arrange themselves into that first spark from which life emerged and then grew. It sounds crazy but it's entirely possible using quantum mechanics. Things can just rearrange themselves, I could just vanish right now and appear in China. The odds are almost infinitely small, but possible.

This isn't a way I am using to disprove the possibility of life elsewhere, as I said before, perhaps the reason we haven't heard from them yet is because they are too far away, or they aren't interested or not bothered etc. But as of now, as we don't know how life originated and we have had no contact at all from any potential alien life, this would be a possible explaination as to why we haven't heard of them yet. It's entirely feasible until we get an idea of how life started or we make contact. If we are alone, perhaps this is why.

Pickles

I don't know it, it's just logical. The laws of physics and the laws of evolution would apply exactly the same on an alien world. Things like legs, eyes, ears and so on have evolved here on Earth independently several times. Several times we have also seen the same pattern of a head, eyes and ears together too, evolving all completely independently many many times. It's just logical, why would it be any different on an alien planet? OK, there may be slight variations due to slightly different gravity, air pressure etc, but the basic pattern for a large land based moving organism would be basically the same.

It's not stereotyping, it's just trying to figure out logically how an alien species would look like, and there's little to suggest things would be different on another alien planet.

Just because it's a planet billions of light years away in another galaxy, an alien planet may be remarkably similar to Earth. It'll have a sun, a cycle of day and night, it'll have an atmosphere with gases we have here on Earth. It'll likely have oceans because as far as we know, life needs water. It'll likely have wind, clouds, weather, low pressure systems, fronts, rain, snow etc. It'll likely also be a similar size as all solid planets as far as we know are pretty small. Life will likely follow a similar evolutionary path in this similar environment.

Some things are universal and fundamental and apply everywhere.

[SP1986]

Magpie, what you say about the laws of physics and legs, arms, ears etc I believe to be true. If one was to assume the universe is all made out of the same thing, afterall its the same 'big bang' that supposedly caused it - so therefore if there is any other species in outer space chances are it would be made of the same stuff as most animals on this Earth, give or take a few eyes, legs, flippers etc.

[Lightning Hunter]

I think that life in our universe would generally follow the same pattern, as the laws of physics are the same across the board. There are examples of independent evolution on earth to back up this theory.

Anyway, we don't even know a definition for 'reality' yet, so all this could be meaningless.

The more you think about the subject, the more dead-ends you come across - it's fascinating.

[noggin]

Some things are universal and fundamental and apply everywhere.

This reminds me of a "plaque" that was sent up in a spacecraft that was going to our moon or Mars or somewhere and the "picture" on the plaque was of a naked man and a naked woman and there was other stuff regarding Earth life including things that were "universal" to life on Earth (these things shown by mathematical means).

It was said that if there were life forms elsewhere, then they would recognise these "universal" life requirement signs. But my immediate thought was that this was somewhat blinkered insofar as there could be lifeforms on other planets which are so far removed from any lifeforms on Earth as to be unrecognisible as such (to us) and which are ideally suited to their particular planet and conditions.........conditions which would not support "Earthlings".

I'm wittering, but I hope my meaning comes across!

[kold weather]

The thing is though, it is possible that life is normally just unable to occur. It just doesn't happen - it's impossible, against the laws of normal physics. But perhaps here on Earth, billions of years ago, there was a freak event, perhaps a quantum event where some atoms just happened to arrange themselves into that first spark from which life emerged and then grew. It sounds crazy but it's entirely possible using quantum mechanics. Things can just rearrange themselves, I could just vanish right now and appear in China. The odds are almost infinitely small, but possible.

Then who is to say that those freak events haven't occured elsewhere?

You have to think that out of all the tens of thousands of trillions of planets that must be out there, there really should be life out there and to assume life is just from this planet is extrmely narrow minded, heck there could well have been life just a planet away from us!

Afterall if life is "impossible" then why are we here...the fact we are herre makes that idea null and void.

Also as its one of those questions you can't answer, its perfectly logical to also say life came from another planet, esp given the amount of hits the earth had from outer space in the past. Simple life really boils down to amino acids becoming a complex chain added in with some enzymes. Since we don't know what happened anything is possible but using Occam's Razor you'd have to think that the idea of life coming from another planet is more simple then some sort of freak of physics which couldn't be explained even if tried. However that still leads t othe question of how life formed I suppose. Who knows, maybe some extreme heat allowed some sort of chemical process to be spakred into life, maybe it as just the way the long chain molecules developed or maybe something else, until we create new life ourselves we will never know.

Life probably won't be all that different to life here on earth as others have stated, tohugh they they may have evolved different under different gravity and also events on the planet may have altered the way life has gone but generally on a micro level they'll be similar i'd guess.

Edited August 30, 2007 by kold weather

[Stu_London]

Sorry if this has been covered previously in the thread (haven't got time to read it all) but a metoer landed in india a few years ago with covered in living organisms - Scientists tested and it did not have DNA, so was therefore declared extra terrestrial.

Not intelligent life, I know, but pretty good proof that life exists off the planet. There is a strong train of thought that alien invasion of the type described above has happened several times before and might even be the explanation to the gaps in Darwin's evolution theory.

[SnowBear]

If you get the chance, watch Alien Planet on Discovery. It addresses the "life out there" question, the possibilities, the chemistries, effects of differing environmental elements such as lower gravity, or higher, more acidic rainfall, more wind etc.

I watched some of them, not all as I missed the first ones, and am hoping to catch the series again, those I did see were fascinating.

http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/alienpla...ory/index.shtml

[Bobby]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/20...e.ap/index.html

This an interesting article. I am very sceptical about this company though, I'd imagine if we do create artificial life, it will be a proper scientific organisation, and then it won't be in 10 years. Interesting nonetheless. Here's an interesting quote I found in relation to this thread:

One of the answers to the Fermi Paradox that is often thrown around is the idea that intelligent life tends to destroy itself after a short amount of time. Normally, people think this means huge wars, but I actually have pondered a different theory. As technology advances, more and more power is put into the hands of relatively small groups, and then ultimately to individuals.

I've wondered if perhaps there was some sort of energy-conversion technology that we don't know about yet (such as an easy way to create antimatter), but once discovered, it puts too much power available too easily. Basically, a single nutcase then creates a doomsday bomb, and that's it. If that were possible, and assuming it was relatively undetectable, it would be inevitable that life would be destroyed. You simply can't stop determined crazy people.

On the other hand, things like this make me wonder about biological weapons. As this technology matures, it will get easier and easier, and be available cheaper and cheaper to create artificial lifeforms. You see it on the Internet... script kiddies have an immense amount of power to destroy property. Once biolife is cheap and easy, and you get a human-hating nut who *wants* to destroy humanity, how can you stop it?

It won't be war that kills everyone, it'll be the lone Unibomber type.

Very interesting and insightful I think.

Edited August 31, 2007 by Magpie

[Gray-Wolf]

The Fermi Paradox has already played out on earth a few times already and I think it has more to do with Darwinian style 'specialisation' than wars. The further a society moves away from 'self sustainability' (single family units with the land/means to provide for their own material needs) and into 'social specialisation' (Farmers,blacksmiths priests,soldiers,bureaucrats etc.) then the more positioned it is for catastrophic collapse through natural/man made disasters (climate 'wobbles', volcanic eruptions,wars etc.). The fact that folk 'need' others to service their basic daily needs leaves them vulnerable if those services are withdrawn and the individual is left to 'fend for themselves'.

The move from single family units into agglomerations of social units (towns and cities) means that many of the population live in an unsustainable environment (the land they occupy cannot feed/water them all) so collapse is also far more likely to arise.

I do think that the 'Fermi paradox' has an upper limit where society (which may have suffered many collapses) finally arrives at a place where it can manipulate the environment to service its needs on an individual basis (nanobots creating foodstuffs from molecules) and each social 'unit' can have the means to service its own 'needs' again without depending upon the wider social pool and it's individual skills, merely the 'elite' who keep the 'bots' running.

Edited August 31, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[ratty77]

i recon it is very possible to have

life on another plannet

Ratty77

[saint]

i recon it is very possible to have

life on another plannet

Ratty77

yeh it is possible

saint