Do you think Aliens Exist?
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Multiple answers are needed. The basic question in the poll, whether aliens exist, is also not too specific. Alien life, highly probable, given all we know so far about how life may have started here on Earth, and how many other chances there seem to be out there. Intelligent life, still probable, but we don't know the many parameters that might be needed for that to happen. Might be rare, might be commonplace where life springs up.
Second question is a difficult one. Easier question would be, have they visited? There's no good evidence that anyone has. Whether a space faring civilization can get to other stars is something we don't know yet...right now it looks like using the only propulsion we know of, action-reaction, star travel is a very, very long trip.
Second question is a difficult one. Easier question would be, have they visited? There's no good evidence that anyone has. Whether a space faring civilization can get to other stars is something we don't know yet...right now it looks like using the only propulsion we know of, action-reaction, star travel is a very, very long trip.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Do I think that aliens exist? A strong definite... 'maybe'.
I don't have any way of knowing what's out there in the universe, so I have no way of knowing. My belief, pretty strongly held, is that we aren't the only intelligent beings. If things like us can arise once in nature, it can happen many times in many places, and it probably has.
My suspicion is that the fine biological details of earth life are awfully fortuitous, the result of how life happened to initially form and of how it subsequently evolved. I don't believe that we will encounter precisely the same kind of biochemistries elsewhere. We almost certainly won't be encountering the humanoids of popular mythology.
So what we probably aren't fully grasping today is how... alien... aliens will turn out to be if we ever encounter them. We are going to be surprised and kind of shocked. They will be far more alien than octopi or social insects. We might not even initially recognize them as alive.
(Our definition of 'life' will have to expand dramatically, I suspect.)
I don't really expect that we will be able to communicate with them, except in the most basic ways. Our human ability to process language is largely innate, hard-wired in. Aliens will doubtless communicate with one another, but the system will likely be entirely different. They might communicate chemically with phermones, or by computer-style data-dumps into each other's brains. (If they have brains.)
What they will share with us is some kind of functional equivalence. They will be organisms that perform similar functions to those we perform -- reproduction, locomotion, information processing -- but they may have some very novel and unexpectedly different ways of doing it.
I don't anticipate our being able to eat the same foods that they eat. So they are unlikely to have any desire to eat us (or vice versa). We would probably poison each other. Our planet is very inviting to us, but aliens may prefer cold methane atmospheres or something and would find our wonderful earth hellish.
There's almost zero chance that we could interbreed, form hybrids, or any of the stuff of popular belief. They probably will have something analogous to a genetic code, but its unlikely to be the same nucleic acid code that we use.
Have aliens already visited the earth? I have no way of knowing, but I've never seen any evidence of it. Are they visiting now? I don't think so.
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To the animals that have lived on this planet for millions of years like the alligator, humans are "aliens" to them. So in a matter of speaking we are all aliens and therefore aliens do exist here, there and everywhere, they just haven't been found as yet.
Probably. It would be disappointing if there weren't.
Unlikely given the technology required.
Easily yes.
Why would you say that?
HOw does one go about calculating that liklihood? or even estimating?
To answer I would have to feel confident about how commonly sentient life arises, how long ago examples arose, rates of technological advancement - and how this may vary between sentient species, in a sense what pieces/breakthroughs we are missing that allow some of what seems insurmountable or at least incredibly hard, and perhaps some other factors - hm, if there is a technological way to find other sentient species over long distances - iow greater distances then the exanding shell of tv and radio broadcasts - and at what stage sentient species tend to get this technology.
I really don't know how to get into even a comfortable guess.
I mean imagine what just 150 years has done with us - and perhaps primates are really slow advancers in the Universe.
Imagine the person in 1870 being told there was an alien race who could fly through the air across the world, fly to the moon and walk around on it, speak into little boxes to people in China, make an explosion hotter than the sun and so on. And then tell them it's actually his species.
So how can I make a guess about what a meager 1000 years would accomplish. And once we are talking in galactic terms, 1000 years may be at least a couple o orders of magnitude off the oldest sentient civilizations.
Who knows?
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I say it because of Fractals. Earth is a whole bunch of repeating patterns. Then you look out, and moons are repeating, and you look out, and suns are repeating, and you look out, and Jupiters are repeating. And you look out, and black holes are repeating, and you look out, and Galaxies are repeating. It's not totally random, or lucky, or chaotic. Particles stack in certain ways, and it increases the likelihood of repetition.
my personal belief, and not at all scientific, is that slime life may be fairly common. however intelligent life is rare and if one considers the infinite nature of the universe this rarity makes it as good as non-existent as far as we are concerned. so as to whether it has visited earth i would be on the no side.
but it sure would be interesting if we were visited by some aliens in my lifetime.
but it sure would be interesting if we were visited by some aliens in my lifetime.
I think life might be rare and intelligent life would obviously be rarer, but I have to think that it wouldn't be a lot rarer. If any life was to arise on a planet it would be advantageous for that life to develop into a more intelligent lifeform.
All comets and supernovae aside of course. That'd sort the men from the slime.
All comets and supernovae aside of course. That'd sort the men from the slime.
If it happened here I don't see why it can't happen elsewhere.
Due to the size of the universe I'd say that it's highly improbable.
The distances involved are, well, astronomical.indeed
visitations can only occur from the furthest imaginable point.
We've been transmitting signals that another civilization could intercept for less than 100 years.
How many light years away is the closest planet?
What are the odds it has intelligent life?
I'll stick with highly improbable.