Aliens .......?

StudentDad · 02-05-2012 01:59AM

Jimdagym wrote: »

Pushtrak wrote: »

Ha, thats a good one. Would you reckon they have noses like ours too? To better support glasses? :pac:

Just in case your post wasn't a joke, or alternatively for the benefit of people who take this perspective seriously, how life evolves doesn't happen in a way approximating how one would go window shopping. Life adapts. If we weren't bipeds you would find our technology would reflect that. And this idea extends beyond technology to all aspects of life.

Nah.

Yes there probably are lifeforms out there, but, if they are at the same tech level we are at, its fairly moot. If there are highly tech advanced races they may well be studying us the way anthropologists study apes.

SD

Battered Mars Bar · 02-05-2012 02:03AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

have you seen what sulphuric acid does to sugar ?

sucks the water out it, all the water, you are left with just carbon
bacteria can live in acidic conditions but not at stupidly extreme ones

you are proposing new elements when life here only uses a hand full of them

carbon is rare on earth but life is based on it

Maybe it was arsenic this bacteria lived on? I don't remember really *googles* ah yes, arsenic

http://www.space.com/9631-arsenic-eating-bacteria-opens-possibilities-alien-life.html

In addition to the new elements I'm proposing, I'd like to propose the probabilities of life in the other dimensions but we'll probably never meet them.

1ZRed · 02-05-2012 02:03AM

RichieC wrote: »

I'd be betting a lot of intelligent aliens around the universe would have found a shape similar to us. It is great for running, sitting and walking, and frees up our hands.

I think you're right. There is a perfect 'form' in every ecosystem that is perfectly adapted. This has been seen on earth. Wolfs are canines yet the Tasmanian tiger was a marsupial. They both have the same body form and same rank in the food chain, yet are totally different species.
This is also true in madagascar where the role of the hedgehog is taken over by a type of bush baby. They both have the same spiny body and fill the same gap in the ecosystem but are completely different genetically.
So I think intelligent life does exist but it needs a body form like ours to achieve this technological advancement and intelligence.

A_Sober_Paddy · 02-05-2012 02:04AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

have you seen what sulphuric acid does to sugar ?

sucks the water out it, all the water, you are left with just carbon
bacteria can live in acidic conditions but not at stupidly extreme ones

you are proposing new elements when life here only uses a hand full of them

carbon is rare on earth but life is based on it

Well Lake Mono in the states was the location, where in 2010 Nasa discovered arsenic based bacteria...Before this was discovered, people thought such lifeforms were impossible on earth.

Believe there is an episode of Discovery's "Through The Wormhole" about it

krudler · 02-05-2012 02:08AM

its almost a certainty that some planet somewhere either in the known universe or somewhere man will never see or know about contains life, this picture:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Hubble_ultra_deep_field.jpg

is the hubble ultra deep field, its approx 10,000 galaxys, each containing their own number of stars, ours contains something like 400 billion stars, then multiply that by 10,000, some galaxies can contain a trillion stars. thats mind boggling when you start to think about it.
if there were no other intelligent life out there, it'd be an awful waste of space.

Battered Mars Bar · 02-05-2012 02:14AM

krudler wrote: »

is the hubble ultra deep field, its approx 10,000 galaxys, each containing their own number of stars, ours contains something like 400 billion stars, then multiply that by 10,000, some galaxies can contain a trillion stars. thats mind boggling when you start to think about it.
if there were no other intelligent life out there, it'd be an awful waste of space.

Ya I like to think that life itself is very easy to "begin" and will do given the right conditions which I also like to think exists frequently throughout the universe. Just the sheer scale of the thing makes it impossible to find.

Sindri · 02-05-2012 02:24AM

I would say the possibility of microorganisms existing in our solar system is quite high. But I believe complex life is probably very very rare and I doubt that any are visiting earth unless they happen to be very local within tens of light years which is very unlikely. Complex societies may exist elsewhere, but it is very unlikely they would even know our star exists let alone us. The chances of that are minute.

dominiquecruz · 02-05-2012 04:02AM

Sindri wrote: »

I would say the possibility of microorganisms existing in our solar system is quite high. But I believe complex life is probably very very rare and I doubt that any are visiting earth unless they happen to be very local within tens of light years which is very unlikely. Complex societies may exist elsewhere, but it is very unlikely they would even know our star exists let alone us. The chances of that are minute.

But surely if complex societies exist elsewhere, it could be hypothesised that they are tens of thousands of years ahead of us in terms of technology and quite capable of advanced space travel? Although I guess you could ask then why havent they made contact.. they could be just observing us first *shady eyes*

Sindri · 02-05-2012 04:13AM

dominiquecruz wrote: »

But surely if complex societies exist elsewhere, it could be hypothesised that they are tens of thousands of years ahead of us in terms of technology and quite capable of advanced space travel? Although I guess you could ask then why havent they made contact.. they could be just observing us first *shady eyes*

Yes that is possible but they would have to find us first. Only in the last hundred years have we (civilization) been detectable and that will soon end as well.

NakedNNettles · 02-05-2012 07:40AM

The human race is the most technologically advanced lifeform in the universe, that's a fact!

We are the 'Masters of the Universe'

Anyone disputing, then show me the evidence, there is none.

crazygeryy · 02-05-2012 07:45AM

No.we are alone.we will always be alone doomed to our own existence that we will eventually wipe out anyway.

Tea anyone?

Wibbs · 02-05-2012 08:00AM

Sindri wrote: »

I would say the possibility of microorganisms existing in our solar system is quite high. But I believe complex life is probably very very rare

+1 and intelligent life even rarer still. For most of the history of this planet it was microorganisms that held sway. Complex life was a freak event it seems. Intelligent life? Just the one event. Us. Even earlier humans while being intelligent seemed to lack that X factor we have. I'd reckon intelligent life is gonna be vanishingly rare out there.

Capt'n Midnight · 02-05-2012 09:15AM

Battered Mars Bar wrote: »

Maybe it was arsenic this bacteria lived on? I don't remember really *googles* ah yes, arsenic http://www.space.com/9631-arsenic-eating-bacteria-opens-possibilities-alien-life.html

In addition to the new elements I'm proposing, I'd like to propose the probabilities of life in the other dimensions but we'll probably never meet them.

yeah there's earthworms in the UK who use arsenic too

other poisons like cyanide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide are only toxic to aerobic organisms and IIRC mice can survive because they can release these gases through their skin

stuff strontium gets into bone because it's similar to calcium, but this sort of stuff is more a tolerance than life using it totally in place of the usual ingredients

however, trace elements are likely to be a bigger problem if we met an ET, large parts of the world are unsuitable for cattle because of lack of them and places where there is a small excess might be unsuitable for us

nozzferrahhtoo · 02-05-2012 10:25AM

MidlandsM wrote: »

do you believe in them?

Depends what you mean by "believe in them".

I certainly find it a credible claim if that is what you mean. There is nothing that incredible about life and the constituents of life on which to be that amazed or shocked at its existence and given the size of the universe the likelihood of the existence of more of it than just us seems credible.

That does not change the fact that the evidence that there IS life elsewhere is currently zilch. Highly credible claims do not mean the claims are evidenced.

Take the claim there is a god for example. This is not only unevidenced but also there are no arguments at present establishing it as credible.

The claim there may be life elsewhere however has one clear argument for it's credibility. Us. We exist therefore life exists. This is a good step up in credibility. We have no such evidence or arguments to support the credibility of a god claim however.

Cokeistan · 02-05-2012 10:30AM

There's definitely life out there, I just don't think we'll discover it for hundreds of years. It's a shame, I'd like to be in the generation that discovers any form of alien life on another planet.

Augmerson · 02-05-2012 10:55AM

Watched Signs last night before bed on DVD. Just for an interesting factoid there. Anyway, I think Stephen Hawking has said before that we shouldn't be too eager in trying to find Alien civilizations out there in the stars. Our own history shows that, when a more advanced group comes across a less advanced one, the result is usually the less advanced one being wiped out or exploited.

I believe there is the possibility that Alien life exists, but it may be totally at odds with our concept of life. This documentary is well worth a look

Immaculate Pasta · 02-05-2012 11:03AM

As posters have already said. Yes I believe in aliens. I think the sheer size of the universe means there must be some sort of other life form out there.

If we discover warp speed we might get into the Intergalactic community as long as we remember not to hoard all the space cash after we kill Baby Fark McGee-zax. :cool:

FutureGuy · 02-05-2012 11:04AM

Do I believe that aliens (i.e intelligent lifeforms) exist. Absolutely.

Do I believe that aliens are here abducting people and mutilating cows. No.

Life is probably very common in the universe, and is probably in a few other planets/satellites in our own solar system. Enceledus (a moon of Saturn) could very well have life on it (or more specifically in the oceans underneath the ice) and there are a number of moons of Jupiter that could have life (Europa, Io).

If you see some of the fcuked up places where life not only exists, but thrives, on our own planet, you begin to wonder how much life is actually out there.

Pushtrak · 02-05-2012 12:43PM

dominiquecruz wrote: »

But surely if complex societies exist elsewhere, it could be hypothesised that they are tens of thousands of years ahead of us in terms of technology and quite capable of advanced space travel? Although I guess you could ask then why havent they made contact.. they could be just observing us first *shady eyes*

If you are talking about light speed travel, even at that it would take a long time to get anywhere on a cosmic scale. Anyway, time for some stuff I've posted on another forum...

http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/cosmic/nearest_star_info.html (

Worth checking it all, but a pertinent bit in particular:

Why Can't We Travel Faster Than the Speed Of Light?

According to Special Relativity the mass of an object increases as its speed increases, and approaches infinity as the object's speed approaches the speed of light. This means that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object to the speed of light.
There's no fundamental reason why we can't get as close to the speed of light as we like, provided we have enough energy. But this is probably far in the future.

http://nfo.edu/astro/size.htm

When we leave our solar system, distances get very large. The nearest star, named Proxima Centauri, is over 4 light-years away. Or, for example, if the Sun were a large grapefruit in Washington D.C., Proxima Centauri would be a cherry in California. On this same scale, the Earth would be smaller than the top of a pin, and only 50 feet from the grapefruit sun.

The center of our galaxy is about 27,000 light years from us. Our sister galaxy, called M31, is two million light years away! It is part of the 'local group' of galaxies. The Magellenic Clouds, which are seen only from the Southern Hemisphere, are the closest galaxies of the local group.
From the above, the center of our galaxy is 27,000 light years away. Obviously, any intelligent life on another planet would have to be significantly closer than that. Unless one wants to make an assertion that their proposed intelligence would have something akin to folding space as you would find in Dune. Interesting concept, but such assertions posed without evidence can be dismissed by the same.

Eggy Baby! · 02-05-2012 02:30PM

krudler wrote: »

its almost a certainty that some planet somewhere either in the known universe or somewhere man will never see or know about contains life, this picture:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Hubble_ultra_deep_field.jpg

is the hubble ultra deep field, its approx 10,000 galaxys, each containing their own number of stars, ours contains something like 400 billion stars, then multiply that by 10,000, some galaxies can contain a trillion stars. thats mind boggling when you start to think about it.
if there were no other intelligent life out there, it'd be an awful waste of space.

That's incredible. To think that that orange-yellow galaxy in the corner is one like ours and we haven't even explored ours yet(we haven't even fully understood our own solar system yet, we still think there are sneaky aliens on Europa) and then you see the thousands of others, some are specks, containing millions if not billions of stars containing trillions of planets and moons....fcuking hell

Capt'n Midnight · 09-05-2012 12:13PM

Cokeistan wrote: »

There's definitely life out there, I just don't think we'll discover it for hundreds of years. It's a shame, I'd like to be in the generation that discovers any form of alien life on another planet.

Unless we have something to sell them our economic system will collapse.

Think about it patents and industrial process become worthless as the aliens are bound to have better stuff. People will be too worried about the future to invest in stuff.

nozzferrahhtoo · 09-05-2012 01:01PM

Given the success and fetish there has been for "Alien Porn" one can probably expect inter species prostitution to be one of the first viable industries of trade. If one imagines that such an alien species is as prone to fetish as we are one can probably assume some of them would want their own sexual organs manipulated in pleasurable ways in much the same way as some of our species might find themselves seeking such outlets.

Morbidly enough I am not even sure myself how firmly my tongue is pressed to my cheek as I write this.

i57dwun4yb1pt8 · 09-05-2012 01:23PM

Pushtrak wrote: »

it Hell, if the reset button was pressed on this planet, and some event that drastically changed things here hasn't happened, say the extinction of the dinosaurs hadn't happened, or any number of other things, life on this planet would look nothing like it does now. view

agreed ,
youd have upright walking intelligent Dinosaurs , like Alice Cooper or ..
hey wait a minute ....

cartell_best · 09-05-2012 01:32PM

We watch the news everyday and we see nothing but violence, war, basically bad news being transmitted through satelites etc... (granted there are some good things being sent out on the air waves but I think even in "ET" terms they probably just notice the bad).

When we see whats going on in war torn countries and basically people kicking the shoite out of each other and its being beamed around the planet, we don't (well, I don't) want to visit these places. Aliens? if they're seeing a planet that seems to dwell on destruction, do you wonder why they haven't knocked on our door yet? If I'm going out on the pisss and going from pub to pub and just come to one particular pub and from what it seems outside that everyone is just kicking the crap out of each other, would I go in???? nope! thats just me, each to their own though...

wendell borton · 09-05-2012 01:36PM

If the universe is infinite then any thing is possible.

Capt'n Midnight · 10-05-2012 03:15AM

wendell borton wrote: »

If the universe is infinite then any thing is possible.

That's like saying all literature is non-fiction because in an infinite universe everything has happened.

Problem is that the speed of light is finite, which means there is an event horizon that we can't see past. So the universe is for all intents and purposes finite.

We are still on course to be the first civilisation to populate our galaxy.
Voyager 1 will travel the distance to a star in 42,000 years
and stars move too,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars#Future_and_past
we could send generation ships when stars get closer, could gravity sling shot too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation will tell you when to leave

Taking a journey to Barnard's Star, six light years away, as an example, Kennedy shows that with a world mean annual economic growth rate of 1.4% and a corresponding growth in the velocity of travel, the quickest human civilization might get to the star is in 1,110 years from the year 2007.

But you have to take into account that Barnard's Star will be a little closer by then - it will only be 3.74 light years away in 9,800 years time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Longshot 100 years to the nearest star using existing technology

ToddyDoody · 10-05-2012 03:37AM

One thinker thinks that other life is statistically a certainty.. But that we'll never be able to prove it in reality as the universe is so vaste. This thinker thinks that thinker is a tinker who shouldnt tinker.

LH Pathe · 10-05-2012 04:00AM

wendell borton wrote: »

If the universe is infinite then any thing is possible.

and if the universe is finite then anything is impossible?

..and yet i'm discontent with only half a glass. tehyre taxing my brain, now!!

Sindri · 10-05-2012 04:01AM

As a species, it's more likely that we are ourselves would be the extra terrestrials.

LH Pathe · 10-05-2012 04:06AM

They're farming our asses. directing our thoughts. processing our.. procedures. You didn't wanna do that; they made you think you had to

Aliens .......?

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