Music Banter - View Single Post - The possibility of life on other planets.. Aliens...

joyboyo53 · 03-24-2009, 12:27 PM

alright the first thing that you have to understand to answer this question is how you define life. for instance, wikipedia states that although there is no universal definition for life it defines like as '...a characteristic of organisms that exhibit certain biological processes such as chemical reactions or other events that results in a transformation. Living organisms are capable of growth and reproduction, some can communicate and many can adapt to their environment through changes originating internally.'

so if we are talking about the kind of life that you and me are most familiar with, bacteria, fungus, mammals, fish, plants, etc than there are some hypothetical solutions to the situation. now there is really 3 different conclusions you can come up with.

1) aliens do not exist, we are a fluke - this seems plausible, though our existence seems counter-intuitive because we exist and thus life forming is possible. there are literally billions of solar systems in our galaxy, and billions of galaxies in our universe. so even if the chances of finding similiar conditions to our planet are 'one in a million', there is tens of billions of unique cases of life evolving elsewhere in the universe.

2) aliens do exist, and they observe us (for the most part without us knowing) - this seems... unlikely. i know people have 'real footage', but like big foot the proof is in the pudding. there is no REAL evidence to prove they have been observing us. yet, assuming they knew how the hell to get out here, one might think they could easily evade our best attempts to notice them.

3) aliens do exist, and they (like us) are all alone - this explination is by far the most probable. we know life can exist, therefore we shouldnt go on thinking we are some special fluke. from a statistical standpoint we are the 50th percentile, meaning that we arent the first\last nor the smartest\dumbest. from our current understanding of science, even if we could somehow shut off our bodies for extended periods of time, there is not enough energy stored in all the chemical bonds of the ocean to transport a small spacecraft that far into space (relatively speaking). so even though life most certainly exist and evolves all around the universe, it is highly unlikely any of us will ever meet.

i mean really think about it. think back 250 years, the train was the marvel of man. since then we have developed a nuclear weapon that could destroy all of humanity, launched ourselves into space, figured out how the universe started, and are beginning to fully understand the fundemental elements of the universe. that was 250 years. now assuming we are the 50th percentile, there has been (many) alien civilizations millions of years in the past. what is more likely, that in the last million years they havent devised a method of letting other life know they exist, or that there is ultimately a limit to how far we can reach?

some scientist are beginning to speculate that asteroids\comets (cant remember which) could have alien bacteria on them and transfer into earths atmosphere when they pass by closely. i believe one of their reasonings is that certain pandemics in history spread all over the world (even to remote isolated civilizations) in a very very short amount of time, when world travel was restricted to a much slower pace. recently an indian baloon sent into the high atmosphere found 4 strains of bacteria that resembled nothing they could distinguish. i think we will confirm foriegn life exist in our lifetimes, but it wont be anything near as spectacular as we all grew up believing it would be.

03-24-2009, 12:27 PM	#52 (permalink)
joyboyo53 down the rabbit hole Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: the mountain called monkey Posts: 764	alright the first thing that you have to understand to answer this question is how you define life. for instance, wikipedia states that although there is no universal definition for life it defines like as '...a characteristic of organisms that exhibit certain biological processes such as chemical reactions or other events that results in a transformation. Living organisms are capable of growth and reproduction, some can communicate and many can adapt to their environment through changes originating internally.' so if we are talking about the kind of life that you and me are most familiar with, bacteria, fungus, mammals, fish, plants, etc than there are some hypothetical solutions to the situation. now there is really 3 different conclusions you can come up with. 1) aliens do not exist, we are a fluke - this seems plausible, though our existence seems counter-intuitive because we exist and thus life forming is possible. there are literally billions of solar systems in our galaxy, and billions of galaxies in our universe. so even if the chances of finding similiar conditions to our planet are 'one in a million', there is tens of billions of unique cases of life evolving elsewhere in the universe. 2) aliens do exist, and they observe us (for the most part without us knowing) - this seems... unlikely. i know people have 'real footage', but like big foot the proof is in the pudding. there is no REAL evidence to prove they have been observing us. yet, assuming they knew how the hell to get out here, one might think they could easily evade our best attempts to notice them. 3) aliens do exist, and they (like us) are all alone - this explination is by far the most probable. we know life can exist, therefore we shouldnt go on thinking we are some special fluke. from a statistical standpoint we are the 50th percentile, meaning that we arent the first\last nor the smartest\dumbest. from our current understanding of science, even if we could somehow shut off our bodies for extended periods of time, there is not enough energy stored in all the chemical bonds of the ocean to transport a small spacecraft that far into space (relatively speaking). so even though life most certainly exist and evolves all around the universe, it is highly unlikely any of us will ever meet. i mean really think about it. think back 250 years, the train was the marvel of man. since then we have developed a nuclear weapon that could destroy all of humanity, launched ourselves into space, figured out how the universe started, and are beginning to fully understand the fundemental elements of the universe. that was 250 years. now assuming we are the 50th percentile, there has been (many) alien civilizations millions of years in the past. what is more likely, that in the last million years they havent devised a method of letting other life know they exist, or that there is ultimately a limit to how far we can reach? some scientist are beginning to speculate that asteroids\comets (cant remember which) could have alien bacteria on them and transfer into earths atmosphere when they pass by closely. i believe one of their reasonings is that certain pandemics in history spread all over the world (even to remote isolated civilizations) in a very very short amount of time, when world travel was restricted to a much slower pace. recently an indian baloon sent into the high atmosphere found 4 strains of bacteria that resembled nothing they could distinguish. i think we will confirm foriegn life exist in our lifetimes, but it wont be anything near as spectacular as we all grew up believing it would be.