Are we alone.... The answer is ''Yes''

flanna01

Ok... Probably one of the oldest questions going around since the evolution of the thinking man.

Let's examine the facts as we know them.. The Universe, Space, The outer limits, what ever we may refer to the heavens as.... it's one big area with very little material in it. I often doubt if the average 'Joe' in the street can really grasp how massive and empty space really is...

Moving on.... The Earth is around 4.5billion years old, mankind has barely existed on Earth in comparison to that time scale...

The blue dirt ball (Earth), has been transmitting radio waves for less than one hundred years, if the constraints of the speed of light are to be followed, we are not even out of the backyard door yet in terms of distance travelled...

So..... If there was any more advanced civilisation out there, they should / could / would be far more advanced than us.... They would have spotted our atmosphere before we were even out of the ponds...

Instead, we have been listening to 'background noise' to no avail... SETI has discovered nothing in all them years.... If the neighbours were transmitting for millions of years before mankind - surely we would have picked up something....?

My opinion is this (And it is only an opinion, and based on pure speculation)... I don't think for one nano second, that Earth is the only planet to harbour life... That would be ridiculous, bordering on the ignorant... But... because the distances between two inteligently evolved planets is so great, it will always be impossible to make contact with each other, let alone be able to decipher each others communications...

Are we alone in the true sense.... Well yes we are.

Do you agree...?

el dude

No.

That's all I've got.

im invisible

well, seeing as i cant imagine a time when we (people, not just unmanned spacecraft) will leave our solar system, i'd kinda have to agree with you, but i do imagine robots finding signs of microbial life on extra-solar planets in the next what, 500(?) 1,000(?) years, i mean, we're already 13 years into this century...

flanna01

flanna01 wrote: »

Instead, we have been listening to 'background noise' to no avail... SETI has discovered nothing in all them years.... If the neighbours were transmitting for millions of years before mankind - surely we would have picked up something....?

What I'd say to that is, who's to say that other intelligent life is using the same distribution methods that we are? If you try to pick up a digital TV signal with an analogue set, you get noise that looks no different to if there were no signal at all.

So if they're using a system that we don't know about, then we couldn't receive or decode it.

Kxiii

SETI did find the WOW signal so not exactly nothing.

flanna01

Guys.... Some of you are getting your panties up in a bunch...

1) I believe that radio signals are the basic communication tool. kinda like 1, 2, 3...etc. Any evolved intelligent civilisation should pick up on it. If these guys can surpass us by even a thousand years.... They must be the able to decipher our radio waves....?

2) The WOW signal was attributed to a passing space craft - Google it, it's all there for all to see..

3) As previously stated... I have not one shred of a doubt that the Universe has life... The chances of us being the only planet to sustain life is absurd. My question is that ... We will neve experience ET communications because of the vast distances between planets... We are alone guys, and we have to accept it!

im invisible

I think we're alone now, doesn't seem to be anyone around...

slade_x

flanna01 wrote: »

Let's examine the facts as we know them.. The Universe, Space, The outer limits, what ever we may refer to the heavens as.... it's one big area with very little material in it. I often doubt if the average 'Joe' in the street can really grasp how massive and empty space really is...

I dont see how thats of any relevance, we exist dont we, so that observation of the universe is of no significance, furthermore Space is not empty, thats matter

flanna01 wrote: »

Moving on.... The Earth is around 4.5billion years old, mankind has barely existed on Earth in comparison to that time scale...

This planet has seen many extinctions, many of which we know very little about. The question of is there or was there other life in the universe is much deeper in implication than just the present moment.

flanna01 wrote: »

The blue dirt ball (Earth), has been transmitting radio waves for less than one hundred years, if the constraints of the speed of light are to be followed, we are not even out of the backyard door yet in terms of distance travelled...

So..... If there was any more advanced civilisation out there, they should / could / would be far more advanced than us.... They would have spotted our atmosphere before we were even out of the ponds...

Instead, we have been listening to 'background noise' to no avail... SETI has discovered nothing in all them years....

and that is exactly the problem, for us its background noise, if we are truly as isolated in a massive universe, an alien transmission over a vast distance will be almost impossible to distinguish between background noise right now. we are literally bathed in the background radiation of billions of stars and cosmic phenomena and vice versa. all electromagnetic waves are prone to the phenomenon of redshift, light isnt alone in that regard just because it is the most referenced.

Also i dont see why every possible intelligent civilisation has to be more advanced than we are. maybe were the most advanced life technologically due to our location in this galaxy, it has allowed our type of life to evolve and persist relatively unhindered for a very, very, very long time.

flanna01 wrote: »

If the neighbours were transmitting for millions of years before mankind - surely we would have picked up something....?

Thats assuming we havent missed those transmissions already, we havent had radio capabilities for millions of years.

flanna01 wrote: »

My opinion is this (And it is only an opinion, and based on pure speculation)... I don't think for one nano second, that Earth is the only planet to harbour life... That would be ridiculous, bordering on the ignorant... But... because the distances between two inteligently evolved planets is so great, it will always be impossible to make contact with each other, let alone be able to decipher each others communications...

Are we alone in the true sense.... Well yes we are.

Do you agree...?

Absolutely not because in the true sense of the terms of the question if there is other life out there then we are in fact not alone. I think the term isolated would more suit your stance on the matter rather than one of a few dictionary definitions of alone. The only impossibility with regards to communication with another form of life is if there is no other "life" with which to communicate with.

It was impossible for our ancestors to email each other for example, that impossibility for them does not stop us from doing so

Daffodil.d

To get our heads around the vastness of the universe there is a certain amount of imagination required, because we can't see it all and this is the only way to comprehendit. So when we imagine life on other planets we jump straight to advanced beings. Well what if other beings are just at the same point of intelligence as us right now, give or take a few years and what if they've only been trying to communicate as long as us. It is possible.

Doom

Maybe we are the first

Manach

My own opinion coming from a geological POV is that the evolution of intelligent complex life was a very hap-hazard process that involved multiple dependent variables on Earth. So other such life in say this galaxy could exist, but would be both rare and given the brief span of mankind might have already come and gone.

mickmackey1

If we are the only planet with life in the entire universe, then life must have been placed here by an intelligent entity...:eek:

alphabeat

the answer is 200% NO

flanna01

The proof is in the pudding so to speak.....

If a previous race had developed space travel, we would have been like the local toy store - everybody would want to see our planet.

Based on what our closest neighbours are like - Mars, Saturn, Pluto etc... The planet Earth is like Las Vegas in comparison. Can you imagine if we found a similar planet to our own... Full of plants and flowing water... We would explore it, plunder it, and probably set up a base there...

Because the Earth is so rich in organic produce, we would have been targeted a long, long time ago... If there was anyone out there within spitting distance from us (Galatically speaking of course).

I understand that we may not have the tools to intercept / decode communications from a distant civilisation, or that we are only really technically aware for a hundred years or less.... but we still have to accept the reality, that we will live, prosper, and die on this blue dirt ball of ours Alone.

Somebody once said... the ants are an intelligent, structured breed.. yet if you put a cell phone with a operating manual on top of their nest... they would never learn how to use it... Of all the millions of life forms on planet Earth, we have yet to recieve one single text message from a non-human!

I rest my case guys.

As stated previously... I have no doubt, that there are other life forms out there... But they just ain't gonna be knocking on out door anytime soon....

ZeRoY

Depends what you mean by "WE" - other life form in the universe? Hell YES. Other Humans in the universe? I'd say NO

Just Like Heaven

flanna01 wrote: »

As stated previously... I have no doubt, that there are other life forms out there...

In fairness to the posters who 'got their knickers in a twist' your thread title suggests the opposite.

And so what they're not gonna knock on our door? We don't know a lot about any life that might be in the solar system, but I don't think anybody is expecting to find an intelligent super civilisation in our solar system.

ThatDrGuy

There are other factors to consider. Thermodynamics for one. The complexity of a society is proportional to the energy availability to that civilsation. Roman empire was solar powered - could not increase complexity due to that limitation. Modern industrial civilisation exists largely thanks to fossil fuels. This fossilised energy allows (briefly) an enormously complex society to develop and engage in things like space exploration and SETI. Without fossil fuels most of us would be employed in primary industry : Agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining etc. We would not be free to specialise in complex and diverse fields that allows technical and industrial complexity. Fossil fuels developed during quite a unique phase in earths development under certain conditions of geography and ecology. Other planets, even if well endowed organically may not have fossilised energy reserves thereby putting a hard limit on their development. Other civilisations, might well do what ours is doing and use up millions of years of fossilised energy ever year on, well everything - polluting their planet and exhausting their energy reserves to the point they collapse. We have only had radio capability for a hundred years, it is increasingly doubtful we will have much of anything in a hundred more. These conditions do not bode well for communication across galactic time lines and distances.

Taylor365

These questions can never be answered.

Our forms of communication or sense of it may be totally different to any other lifeforms communication methods.

For instance, they might sniff they're way around the galaxy. Radio waves would be useless then.

Myrddin

flanna01 wrote: »

yet if you put a cell phone with a operating manual on top of their nest... they would never learn how to use it... Of all the millions of life forms on planet Earth, we have yet to recieve one single text message from a non-human!

I rest my case guys

Yet we know some Apes can learn rudimentary sign language...
Yet we know Dolphins have their own method of communication...

Who's to say the nearest civilization out there isn't at the same technological era we're at & their radio traffic is still light years away? Or they're behind us technically? Or if they're more advanced, its not by millions of years? Maybe a million year old civilization stopped using radio waves to communicate a thousand years ago & we simply don't pick up their communications now? Maybe we'll receive a signal tomorrow thats been travelling to us from ten thousand light years away? Maybe we've already received it & our deity worshipping leaders are afraid of the implications & its been covered up? Maybe there's nobody out there? Maybe your right? Maybe your wrong?

The truth is, at the moment its like someone standing on the coast of Galway & trying to listen out for other people...not hearing anything & concluding that because we don't hear anything from that direction...America must be uninhabited. We have nowhere near enough information to conclude whats going on out there

Myrddin

Taylor365 wrote: »

These questions can never be answered.

Our forms of communication or sense of it may be totally different to any other lifeforms communication methods.

But yet we went from communicating by two cups connected via a string, to a global wireless communication net in less than a century. In five hundred years fir example, assuming we stay outta trouble...so you think we'll still be using the same communication methods & protocols of today?

Taylor365

EnterNow wrote: »

But yet we went from communicating by two cups connected via a string, to a global wireless communication net in less than a century. In five hundred years fir example, assuming we stay outta trouble...so you think we'll still be using the same communication methods & protocols of today?

You don't see it?

Its the exact same method, it hasn't changed one bit - communication through our senses (sight, speech, hearing).

Who's to say any other life form found has to abide by the same logic or rules as we do?

Our existence is what it is because we perceive it that way.

ciaranmac

This is all interesting but really no more useful than a discussion of theology. We know of only one planet that holds intelligent life, i.e. Earth. There is no way to logically prove that intelligent life exists elsewhere, except by finding it. As for proving that intelligent life does not exist elsewhere, we could look forever, find nothing and still not have proven a case.

Myrddin

Taylor365 wrote: »

You don't see it?

Its the exact same method, it hasn't changed one bit - communication through our senses (sight, speech, hearing).

Who's to say any other life form found has to abide by the same logic or rules as we do?

Our existence is what it is because we perceive it that way.

I do see it, as I said Dolphins communicate in a way we never can...yet its believed in five to ten years, we'll be able to understand the things they are 'saying' to each other & communicate with them in a two way fashion.

Communication is communication...its all about finding common ground.

Maximus Alexander

flanna01 wrote: »

If the neighbours were transmitting for millions of years before mankind - surely we would have picked up something....?

That you Enrico Fermi?

docmol

Originally Posted by flanna01
If the neighbours were transmitting for millions of years before mankind - surely we would have picked up something....?

I read somewhere that the total man made radio energy that has left our solar system since we've had radio tech, is equivalent to the energy from a 40w bulb. Pretty difficult to see from anywhere else.

Maximus Alexander

docmol wrote: »

I read somewhere that the total man made radio energy that has left our solar system since we've had radio tech, is equivalent to the energy from a 40w bulb. Pretty difficult to see from anywhere else.

Nail on the head. People seem to think that ET would be blindly transmitting in every direction, expending mammoth amounts of energy for no reason, when we don't do it ourselves.

We're already moving away from radio, it has an exceedingly brief lifetime of about 100 years before better, more efficient methods of communication take over. If a civilisation is one million years old, how could we possibly imagine the manner in which they would communicate? It would likely look like either magic or a natural phenomenon.

Not to mention that if ET exists and is relatively close by, they might not want to be found. If that's the case it would be very easy for them to hide.

Curly Judge

If these civilisations are really far advanced perhaps they are already here?
They could be moving among us unobserved because of their Prime Directive.
They could be coming here in student groups as part of their study of primitive cultures on the strict understanding that they were not to upset the locals?
Come to think of it, I had a strange feeling in the toilet this morning, that I was not alone..... and that a spectre like being was taking notes. Dear God!

Roger_007

If we are alone, what is the rest of the universe for? Is it Gods ghost estate?

flanna01

I have enjoyed reading some of these posts... I was lisyening to a radio show several years ago now... It was some top astronomy guy explaining what it would take to navigate your way though space... He churned up some thought provoking questions..

Space travellers need a constant source of fuel.

How would space travellers adapt to space conditions (Assuming it would take several human lifetimes to travel to a new planet).

The effort vs reward in travelling to Earth is questionable - What is the gain?

Can an alien race with stand out bacteria / virus & airborn bugs

Maybe we should just stay on the rock we'er born on....

Myrddin

Roger_007 wrote: »

If we are alone, what is the rest of the universe for? Is it Gods ghost estate?

Which God...there's quite a few being worshipped at the mo Maybe thats why the Universe is so big...give all the Gods some real estate

Dotsie~tmp

I think our fossil record might be a good clue. Extinction events are regular (on geological timescales) and sometimes massive. The universe mght just be incedibly hostile to complex intelligent life at this point and in the past. We may be the first iteration intelligent life on earth but that doesnt mean we will be the last. Maybe we are the first traunch of cvilisation doomed not to make it.

Maybe every soloar system has 10,000 10km rocks to throw at planets, maybe a few 50km ones to reset life back to square one. Its depressing to think in these terms. Looks like we will need a very major leap to avoid these things.

Curly Judge

Dotsie~tmp wrote: »

I think our fossil record might be a good clue. Extinction events are regular (on geological timescales) and sometimes massive. The universe mght just be incedibly hostile to complex intelligent life at this point and in the past. We may be the first iteration intelligent life on earth but that doesnt mean we will be the last. Maybe we are the first traunch of cvilisation doomed not to make it.

Maybe every soloar system has 10,000 10km rocks to throw at planets, maybe a few 50km ones to reset life back to square one. Its depressing to think in these terms. Looks like we will need a very major leap to avoid these things.

I remember reading somewhere once that the inhabitants of any planet within a 50 light year radius of a gamma ray burst would be fried into a fine dust.
Perhaps gamma ray bursts are the Domestos of the universe and keep vermin like us humans under control?:D

Tzetze

An interesting recent paper on the Drake equation and Fermi paradox...
http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6411

In summary, it appears that although radio-communications constitute a natural means for SETI for civilizations younger than a few millennia, older civilizations should rather develop extensive programs of interstellar colonization, because this is the only way to achieve undisputable evidence (either for or against the existence of ETI) within their lifetime L. In those conditions, the Fermi paradox appears all the more paradoxical: if, as the SETI proponents claim, there are literary thousands of such advanced civilizations wishing to establish contact, “where are they?”
Today the “Plurality of worlds”, as the field was known in the Antiquity, is more controversial than ever. Arguments on both sides (``It is unlikely that we are alone, in view of the Copernican principle and of such a large number of stars in the Galaxy'' and ``If there are so many of them, where are they?'') are of statistical kind. They are consequently of little import, for statistics cannot be based on the single case provided by life on Earth. Detection of life signatures on another planet would be a powerful reason to undertake interstellar travel, at first by sending unmanned probes. Detection of some extraterrestrial civilization would undoubtedly be one of the major landmarks in the history of mankind. On the other hand, non-detection of ETI signals, even after millennia of research, would never prove that there were no extraterrestrial civilizations. But it would be reason to prepare ourselves for a life of cosmic solitude.

dorkacle

Roger_007 wrote: »

If we are alone, what is the rest of the universe for? Is it Gods ghost estate?

I think it was Stephen Hawking that said, "if we are alone in the universe, then it is a pretty big waste of space."

I'd like to think we are not alone, but whether or not we can or will ever communicate with other 'beings' is a different question.

We are looking at things from our perspective and our limitations, which may or may not be applicable to ET

ThatDrGuy

Another way of thinking about it:

What is out in space? Very little of anything at all. Light speed barrier makes space travel a near impossibility. Instead of exploring outer space it makes much more sense for advanced civilisations to spend their time in inner space: virtual reality and simulations instead. Their imprint on the universe might substantially decline as their gratification could come from virtual goods and services instead of actual ones. This conservation of resources would also prevent the catastrophic effect of over population. Could have all the AI aliens you want and all the interesting worlds etc without the messy business of trying to cross stars.

Roger_007

Suppose we think about it this way: The universe on one gigantic organism...a living thing. We are like almost insignificant micro-organisms living in a remote part of the being that is the universe. It's a bit like fleas on a dogs bollix wondering if their dog is the only one in the universe that supports life.

mickmackey1

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

Instead of exploring outer space it makes much more sense for advanced civilisations to spend their time in inner space: virtual reality and simulations instead.

Except that this leaves them wide open to the possibility of an attack from an aggressive species which doesn't obey these rules. At the end of the day, the most logical form of self-defence is to control other planets before they can control you...

ThatDrGuy

mickmackey1 wrote: »

Except that this leaves them wide open to the possibility of an attack from an aggressive species which doesn't obey these rules. At the end of the day, the most logical form of self-defence is to control other planets before they can control you...

Not really. Light speed barrier means moving anything from one star to another takes forever and has to be very small. Conducting an attack would be logistically insane - it would require hundreds of generations and would likely be easily destroyed by anti metiorite defences the other crew would probably have. Space is so big to utterly preclude agression, also agressive species (like ours) would not survive long enough without destroying themselves to be any danger.

Nerro

Interesting thread and interesting points made over here.
I would actually rephrase the OP question.Are we alone in our galaxy and are we alone in the universe.
Our galaxy contains roughly 200 billion stars.lets say there is only 0.1% of stars that have planets which can support life that would give us 200 million stars...and another 0.1% of those stars tha actually would have intelligent life forms on those planets, so it would be 200000 intelligent civilizacions....numbers are big no???And thats only 0.1 percent of 0.1 percent...
Now lets have a look at the bigger picture.There is 100 billion galaxies in observable universe.each of them containing hundreds of million stars.Now you do the maths for probability of life....but dont forget we are talking about observable universe...
Now if the numbers are so big why they didnt contacted us?Maybe they did?Someone mentioned that we are transmiting radio signals into space for hundred years so other civilizacions should do that aswell.Well yes, but the distances are so vast that the signal gets lost in the background noise.Another thing to look at at our own civilizacion.Lets say you would travel 10 years back, and would pull out iphone 5 out of your pocket...i can bet the witch hunting would be resurrected again.And thats only in past 10 years in our Civilizacion.The possibilities are endless.

Zubeneschamali

Nerro wrote: »

numbers are big no???And thats only 0.1 percent of 0.1 percent...

You can't just pick 0.1% and say that's kind of small so it must be a reasonable lower limit. Real numbers get much smaller than that, maybe so small that we would not expect to find another intelligent species in the whole observable Universe.

We don't know. The only term in Drakes original equation we know more about now than in 1961 is the fraction of other stars that have planets, since no such planets were known back then.

Curly Judge

Perhaps instead of trying to detect radio signals we should be looking out for one of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
Now that we can not only detect proto-planets but are starting to analyse their
atmospheres, these - if they exist - should be coming within range of our technology.

ps200306

Dotsie~tmp wrote: »

I think our fossil record might be a good clue. Extinction events are regular (on geological timescales) and sometimes massive. The universe mght just be incedibly hostile to complex intelligent life at this point and in the past. We may be the first iteration intelligent life on earth but that doesnt mean we will be the last. Maybe we are the first traunch of cvilisation doomed not to make it.

Maybe every soloar system has 10,000 10km rocks to throw at planets, maybe a few 50km ones to reset life back to square one. Its depressing to think in these terms. Looks like we will need a very major leap to avoid these things.

That's an interesting one. The asteroid belt exists because of gravitational resonances involving Jupiter, which prevents a planet forming in the gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It wouldn't necessarily be a feature of all planetary systems. On the other hand, the one or two million asteroids pale into insignificance compared to the possible one hundred trillion comets in the Oort cloud. While their excursions into the inner solar system are rare, those that get perturbed into shorter period orbits quickly get cleaned out by Jupiter, which is a major bonus to us. So the fate of more evolved life forms in other planetary systems might hinge on the particular configuration of the system, and whether they have "good" or "bad" Jupiters.

Nerro

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

You can't just pick 0.1% and say that's kind of small so it must be a reasonable lower limit. Real numbers get much smaller than that, maybe so small that we would not expect to find another intelligent species in the whole observable Universe.

We don't know. The only term in Drakes original equation we know more about now than in 1961 is the fraction of other stars that have planets, since no such planets were known back then.

Well you are right to ask these questions.BUT i am picking 0.1% as a comparison.They are actually bigger.Thanks to Kepler telescope the number of habitable planets have risen to 5%.If you will blindly believe in data collected so far it found 1500 canditate planets, 50 of which are in goldilocs zone.They are canditate as they are not yet confirmed.The number can go up or down but i recon by not much.
I am not a big fan of Drakes equation.its been presented in 1961 and ALOT have changed since then.We changed our understanding about habitable zone for starts.
And it doesnt take into equation two rather important things,cosmological developmental phases and time.It still takes into account that universe is uniform and never changing,when we know it isnt.

Zubeneschamali

Nerro wrote: »

I am not a big fan of Drakes equation.its been presented in 1961 and ALOT have changed since then.

The only thing that has changed since then is that he guessed 0.2 to 0.5 for the number of stars with planets, but we had no actual data. Now we do.

But other terms, like the fraction of suitable planets which will develop life and then intelligent life, we just don't know. 0.1 % is just a number, there is no reason why it is a better number than 10E -57.

Nerro

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

But other terms, like the fraction of suitable planets which will develop life and then intelligent life, we just don't know.

Well thats the whole argument isnt it?Like i mentioned before there is some factors missing.And i am going to quote here :
"The Drake Equation does not take into consideration such factors as the age of the Galaxy, when intelligence first emerged, or the presence of physio-chemical variables such as the presence of metals necessary for the presence of life and the formation of planets.
It does not tell us where advanced ETI’s may be dwelling or what they’re up to (are they outside the Galaxy? Do they live inside Jupiter Brains? Do they phase shift outside of what we regard as habitable space?"
In other words more factors....
From where i stand all signs point that there should be life.We are carbon based life forms made mostly from water.All of those elements are abundant in the universe.And giving the amount of chances (planets in habitable zone) i do not believe that mother nature will screw it up so many times with the most active element in the periodic table.Hence the 0.1%.
Plus all the factors are more of in what the persons believe in rather then real scientific data, as we do not have such,and probably never will to make it work, as you said its just a number.Even if we will find ET,s on one ocasion, there are so many variables that you will never get a number out of it whats really going on in the universe.

ps200306

Nerro wrote: »

From where i stand all signs point that there should be life.We are carbon based life forms made mostly from water.All of those elements are abundant in the universe.And giving the amount of chances (planets in habitable zone) i do not believe that mother nature will screw it up so many times with the most active element in the periodic table.Hence the 0.1%.

Why did it apparently only happen once on earth, then?

ThatDrGuy

Nerro wrote: »

Well thats the whole argument isnt it?Like i mentioned before there is some factors missing.And i am going to quote here :
"The Drake Equation does not take into consideration such factors as the age of the Galaxy, when intelligence first emerged, or the presence of physio-chemical variables such as the presence of metals necessary for the presence of life and the formation of planets.
It does not tell us where advanced ETI’s may be dwelling or what they’re up to (are they outside the Galaxy? Do they live inside Jupiter Brains? Do they phase shift outside of what we regard as habitable space?"
In other words more factors....
From where i stand all signs point that there should be life.We are carbon based life forms made mostly from water.All of those elements are abundant in the universe.And giving the amount of chances (planets in habitable zone) i do not believe that mother nature will screw it up so many times with the most active element in the periodic table.Hence the 0.1%.
Plus all the factors are more of in what the persons believe in rather then real scientific data, as we do not have such,and probably never will to make it work, as you said its just a number.Even if we will find ET,s on one ocasion, there are so many variables that you will never get a number out of it whats really going on in the universe.

There are huge numbers of things not included in the Drake "equation".
Just to spout a few:

Needs to be away from sterilising radiation
Needs to be on a galactic orbit that keeps it away from sterlisiing radiation
Has to be a second generation star forming post super nova to have heavy elements
Has to have some sort of shield against meteorities ( as pointed out earlier)
Has to have an orbit stabliser ( our giant moon)
Has to be a rocky world in goldilocks zone ( most rocky worlds are on outer parts of solar system and gas giants inner from what i have read but that could be observer bias)
Has to have magnetic shield ( molten roting core ) to shield simple organic compunds from ionising radiaition
Needs to be geologically active but not too geologically active

You could argue these points all day but without them your chances of advanced life are negligible. Data from keppler does not tell you diddly about habitable worlds, at most it tells you that if water existed on a body and that body had enough gravity to keep it and it wasn't super geologically active and it wasn't overally huge, there might be liquid water, possibly. Thats a million miles away from habitable. On the plus side, of all the planets we have detailed information on there is 12.5% habitality rate!

Maximus Alexander

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

There are huge numbers of things not included in the Drake "equation".
Just to spout a few:

Needs to be away from sterilising radiation
Needs to be on a galactic orbit that keeps it away from sterlisiing radiation
Has to be a second generation star forming post super nova to have heavy elements
Has to have some sort of shield against meteorities ( as pointed out earlier)
Has to have an orbit stabliser ( our giant moon)
Has to be a rocky world in goldilocks zone ( most rocky worlds are on outer parts of solar system and gas giants inner from what i have read but that could be observer bias)
Has to have magnetic shield ( molten roting core ) to shield simple organic compunds from ionising radiaition
Needs to be geologically active but not too geologically active

All of these are covered by the Drake Equation under the following two terms:

ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point

Zubeneschamali

ps200306 wrote: »

Why did it apparently only happen once on earth, then?

Firstly, we don't know that it only happened once - maybe it happened several times and the current instance of life ate all previous life.

Secondly, maybe it can only happen once: maybe the current instance of life on earth changed the conditions by gobbling up all the precursor chemicals in the primordial soup.

ThatDrGuy

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

All of these are covered by the Drake Equation under the following two terms:

ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point

If you approach it from a kind of inflatio ad absurdum pov, yes. You could also use the equation n= ( amount of intelligent life in our vicinity actively trying to communicate with us at this time) * 1 but it wouldnt be very helpful. What I was getting at is the issue of what conditions are required to support life have layers and layers of probabilistic multipliers themselves and as such could very well be miniscule numbers. Drake equation is quite useless all things considered.

the_syco

flanna01 wrote: »

So..... If there was any more advanced civilisation out there, they should / could / would be far more advanced than us.... They would have spotted our atmosphere before we were even out of the ponds...

We nuked each other, bomb each other, kill each other over the most stupid of differences, kill anything new so we can put it under a microscope, and are proud if we catch something.


So no, I would avoid earth if I was an alien, as over the last 70 years we've become good at killing each other with the simple weapons we have now. No need to give us better weapons and space travel so that we could bring our wars to other worlds.