Alien life could be found within 40 years - really?

rossie1977 · 08-09-2012 12:03PM

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

i think its a load of bollox. if they were there we would have found them by now

someone doesn't quite comprehend the size of the milky way galaxy let alone the entire universe

the furthest a human has travelled is the moon about 240,000 miles

at present the furthest a human built object has travelled is 11 billion miles, thats Voyager 1 launched in 1977 travelling at 38,000 mph, even after 35 years travelling at that speed it still hasn't left our solar system at current speed it would take another 17,500 years to complete a light year..........the closest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri approx 4.2 light years away

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RchHyJLRt8o

these are stars only within our own galaxy (there are billions of galaxies)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CubFmoRvwWQ

Duggys Housemate · 08-09-2012 12:04PM

Jaysus if there were that many of them we would point a transmitter anywhere and get the latest on the intergalactic empire.

Logical Fallacy · 08-09-2012 12:14PM

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

i think its a load of bollox. if they were there we would have found them by now

Indeed. I mean we have explored most of space, right??

frozenfrozen · 08-09-2012 12:17PM

It's very unlikely that we're the only living things in the universe. The universe is HUGE. I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

Wibbs · 08-09-2012 01:23PM

Colmustard wrote: »

Its a lot more stable then you think, there was life on earth pretty much from its onset, even when it was a molten mess.

Not quite. It had cooled down for many millions of years before we see any evidence of life.

But multicellular "higher" organisms maybe rare, intelligence rarer again, perhaps we are the only intelligent ones.

Think about it. The Earth has so much going for it to be packed with life as it is and for 4 billion years it had life, yet culture and intelligence only happened once. And that is with us.

I'd agree on that one. Of all the novel adaptations evolution came up with, there's only one example of intelligence as an adaptation and even then the kind we exhibit today only happened to the degree it did with our Homo Sapiens species. If you rolled the dice again it could have turned out very differently and you could have ended up with Neandertals and not us. Given apex predators like us tend to be small in number in the landscape*, chances are good we might have died out. We very nearly did. Modern humans at one point got down to only a few thousand individuals because of natural disaster(Volcano 60,000Yrs ago IIRC?).

Until we find an example of life outside earth we simply can't know if it's out there, nor can we begin to guess at the likely numbers out there. Yes the universe is vast, but in a near infinite universe of near infinite possibilities within the laws of nature "one offs" occur. Unique single events unrepeated elsewhere. Life, certainly intelligent life could well be one of those, or could be ridiculously rare, like one per galaxy. Plus given the huge time factor, you could well live at a point where there's only one every ten galaxies.

Actually if we can find an example of different life here on Earth that would up the odds. So far we haven't. All life today and so far discovered is related and is of the same "type". You, me, a fungus, an amoeba and a giant redwood are all the same type of life. So this suggests either that's the only kind of life possible on a planet of our kind and/or that it's an incredibly rare event.

Then look at the history of our planet and how we ended up here. It was a long list of ingredients required. Right distance from star(unlike Venus), right size to hang onto an atmosphere(unlike Mars), presence of the right sized moon(a biggie), right collection of elements. Big cosmic Hoover in the shape of Jupiter to mop up flying rocks that would otherwise hit us. Even so for the vast majority of the history of life on earth it was unicellular slime and such. It seems we then needed the whole planet to freeze(snowball earth) to really kick off complex life. If that hadn't happened... Then we had various mass extinctions to reset the mechanism and force new adaptations. That's just scratching the surface. You could have a near identical "earth" where the big freeze never happened and complex life remained very rare.

*One reason why human fossils like T rex fossils are so rare.

Sponge25 · 08-09-2012 01:31PM

The truth is, alien life almost certainly exists BUT the distances are so vast that even a race advanced by millions of years ahead of us likely couldn't make the distance between them and Earth, even if they did there are possibly billions of inhabited planets so why choose Earth.

All UFO sightings on Earth are almost certaintly false unless they are some kind of manmade object or natural space objects, they're not alien spaceships!

Nothing can travel faster than light and the time it takes to travel to the nearest starsystem is so vast even at the speed of light would take four years and their's almost certainly not life in that system! Most star systems that MAY have life if not all are EXTREMELY vast distances away, so vast it's difficult to fathom it.

We haven't even heard radio communications yet which we would certainly here before we saw them, or some other communication or evidence of their existence!

Mickeroo · 08-09-2012 01:33PM

There's also the idea that a civilisation advanced as ours needs the billions of years to come about and therefor it would be impossible for there to be more advanced civilisations out there which could mean never making contact with anything. Thats not a particularly water tight hypothesis though of course.

re the make up of life, they have found organisms that are very different to everything else: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101202/full/news.2010.645.html

ArtSmart · 08-09-2012 01:33PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Not quite. It had cooled down for many millions of years before we see any evidence of life.

I'd agree on that one. Of all the novel adaptations evolution came up with, there's only one example of intelligence as an adaptation and even then the kind we exhibit today only happened to the degree it did with our Homo Sapiens species. If you rolled the dice again it could have turned out very differently and you could have ended up with Neandertals and not us. Given apex predators like us tend to be small in number in the landscape*, chances are good we might have died out. We very nearly did. Modern humans at one point got down to only a few thousand individuals because of natural disaster(Volcano 60,000Yrs ago IIRC?).

Until we find an example of life outside earth we simply can't know if it's out there, nor can we begin to guess at the likely numbers out there. Yes the universe is vast, but in a near infinite universe of near infinite possibilities within the laws of nature "one offs" occur. Unique single events unrepeated elsewhere. Life, certainly intelligent life could well be one of those, or could be ridiculously rare, like one per galaxy. Plus given the huge time factor, you could well live at a point where there's only one every ten galaxies.

Actually if we can find an example of different life here on Earth that would up the odds. So far we haven't. All life today and so far discovered is related and is of the same "type". You, me, a fungus, an amoeba and a giant redwood are all the same type of life. So this suggests either that's the only kind of life possible on a planet of our kind and/or that it's an incredibly rare event.

Then look at the history of our planet and how we ended up here. It was a long list of ingredients required. Right distance from star(unlike Venus), right size to hang onto an atmosphere(unlike Mars), presence of the right sized moon(a biggie), right collection of elements. Big cosmic Hoover in the shape of Jupiter to mop up flying rocks that would otherwise hit us. Even so for the vast majority of the history of life on earth it was unicellular slime and such. It seems we then needed the whole planet to freeze(snowball earth) to really kick off complex life. If that hadn't happened... Then we had various mass extinctions to reset the mechanism and force new adaptations. That's just scratching the surface. You could have a near identical "earth" where the big freeze never happened and complex life remained very rare.

*One reason why human fossils like T rex fossils are so rare.

i regard the series of 'exceptional circumstances' a little too similar to the intelligent design argument.

when there are enough actions, probability becomes moot.

and the amt of possible actions out there are well, essentially infinite.

in that context life very similar to our is quite possible and indeed likely.

other forms of 'life' may well be outside or visible spectrum, but that's a different conversation.

Sponge25 · 08-09-2012 01:36PM

Mickeroo wrote: »

There's also the idea that a civilisation advanced as ours needs the billions of years to come about and therefor it would be impossible for there to be more advanced civilisations out there which could mean never making contact with anything. Thats not a particularly water tight hypothesis though of course.

re the make up of life, they have found organisms that are very different to everything else: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101202/full/news.2010.645.html

For all we know, life could be viable in methane in a different planet! Unlikely but it wouldn't surprise me haha!

Duggys Housemate · 08-09-2012 01:50PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Then look at the history of our planet and how we ended up here. It was a long list of ingredients required. Right distance from star(unlike Venus), right size to hang onto an atmosphere(unlike Mars), presence of the right sized moon(a biggie), right collection of elements. Big cosmic Hoover in the shape of Jupiter to mop up flying rocks that would otherwise hit us. Even so for the vast majority of the history of life on earth it was unicellular slime and such. It seems we then needed the whole planet to freeze(snowball earth) to really kick off complex life. If that hadn't happened... Then we had various mass extinctions to reset the mechanism and force new adaptations. That's just scratching the surface. You could have a near identical "earth" where the big freeze never happened and complex life remained very rare.

*One reason why human fossils like T rex fossils are so rare.

And of course the dinosaur extinction, another fluke, necessary for us. Why was snowball earth so impotent.

aidan24326 · 08-09-2012 02:04PM

Sponge25 wrote: »

The truth is, alien life almost certainly exists BUT the distances are so vast that even a race advanced by millions of years ahead of us likely couldn't make the distance between them and Earth, even if they did there are possibly billions of inhabited planets so why choose Earth.!

But we can't say that alien life almost certainly exists as we really have no idea. As Wibbs alluded to there is a possibility, however crazy it may seem, that life on earth is a bizarre fluke. A one-in-a-zillion very very unlikely accident.

Another possibility is that advanced aliens are already aware of us but have no particular interest in trying to contact us, maybe as we're too primitive (by comparison) to be of much interest to them. I doubt that's the case but it's possible.

My own guess is that there probably is intelligent life out there somewhere but they're just so far away that contact is not feasible. Our own galaxy is about 4.5 X 10^17 miles from end to end. Even the voyager probe, travelling at about 35,000 miles per hour, would take millions of years to travel that distance. And that's just one galaxy out of billions.

Wibbs · 08-09-2012 02:04PM

Mickeroo wrote: »

There's also the idea that a civilisation advanced as ours needs the billions of years to come about and therefor it would be impossible for there to be more advanced civilisations out there which could mean never making contact with anything. Thats not a particularly water tight hypothesis though of course.

Possibly, though imagine an earth where the dinosaurs never died out. There were small predator dinosaurs with grasping hands and forward looking eyes and big brains(for dinos, but they're essentially birds and birds can be very smart so..). One of them might have started to evolve in the direction of intelligence. If that happened you might have have had dino sapiens 60 million years ago.

re the make up of life, they have found organisms that are very different to everything else: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101202/full/news.2010.645.html

Well they're not really M.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/02/nasa-could-announce-arsenic-eating-bacteria_n_790954.html
Yea they substitute one element for another to survive(and don't do as well on it, which shows it as an adaptation after the fact), they've got DNA etc. They're just another "bug" albeit an interesting one.

Sponge25 wrote: »

Nothing can travel faster than light

Well theoretically at least you can get around that limitation(wormholes, space "warps").

We haven't even heard radio communications yet which we would certainly here before we saw them, or some other communication or evidence of their existence!

We've only been using radio for a bout a century. Increasingly we use the microwave type stuff which doesn't travel so well. In another century we could well be as radio "silent" as the 10th century even if another planet was listening to us. There may be only a brief window when a planet is showing up on the radio waves. Plus they may use other forms of communication. If you went back to the 10th century and there was a radio civilisation on Venus, you couldn't have heard it.

ArtSmart wrote: »

i regard the series of 'exceptional circumstances' a little too similar to the intelligent design argument.

when there are enough actions, probability becomes moot.

and the amt of possible actions out there are well, essentially infinite.

Well no they're not infinite. The universe is effing huuuuuuge and essentially infinite in size looking at it from within, however the possibilities are not. All possibilities are restricted by the laws of physics and probabilities within them and this likely includes unique events and/or impossibly rare events. All we can currently state for sure on life in the universe is that it happened here and happened it seems just the once. Ditto for intelligent life. Until we find evidence, any evidence at all that life no matter how mundane happened elsewhere that's all she wrote.

Mickeroo · 08-09-2012 02:06PM

Sponge25 wrote: »

For all we know, life could be viable in methane in a different planet! Unlikely but it wouldn't surprise me haha!

It would surprise me, particularly since Titan should be teeming with it if that were the case

Mickeroo · 08-09-2012 02:10PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Possibly, though imagine an earth where the dinosaurs never died out. There were small predator dinosaurs with grasping hands and forward looking eyes and big brains(for dinos, but they're essentially birds and birds can be very smart so..). One of them might have started to evolve in the direction of intelligence. If that happened you might have have had dino sapiens 60 million years ago.

Well they're not really M.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/02/nasa-could-announce-arsenic-eating-bacteria_n_790954.html
Yea they substitute one element for another to survive(and don't do as well on it, which shows it as an adaptation after the fact), they've got DNA etc. They're just another "bug" albeit an interesting one.

Ah i see, I took it as a given they didn't use Phosphorous at all rather than just adapted to be able to substitute it.

Duggys Housemate · 08-09-2012 02:19PM

ArtSmart wrote: »

in that context life very similar to our is quite possible and indeed likely.

other forms of 'life' may well be outside or visible spectrum, but that's a different conversation.

Guessing wild forms of life - outside the visible spectrum - is designed to be unfalsifable. We should reject that.

aidan24326 · 08-09-2012 02:34PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Possibly, though imagine an earth where the dinosaurs never died out. There were small predator dinosaurs with grasping hands and forward looking eyes and big brains(for dinos, but they're essentially birds and birds can be very smart so..). One of them might have started to evolve in the direction of intelligence. If that happened you might have have had dino sapiens 60 million years ago.

The only problem with that is that dinosaurs had already roamed (and largely ruled) the earth for a very long time without ever evolving in that direction.

Sponge25 · 08-09-2012 02:45PM

Good points Wibbs;

Maybe there's even forms of communication we don't yet understand and have no means to recieve and decode said technology! Even if we did recieve definite alien communcations how would we decode it?

Imagine coming across a remote Island never before discovered where a people developed language independantly from the rest of the world; We wouldn't even understand them, let alone aliens from a different planet who possibly speak in frequencies the human ear can't hear!

Wibbs · 08-09-2012 02:46PM

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

Why was snowball earth so impotent.

Well before it life was very basic, with about the most complex creatures being sponges and their ilk. After it there was an explosion of novel forms of complex life. It was about the biggest explosion in diversity life's history on this planet. They even call it the Cambrian explosion. So given how there was a before and after of such a massive scale it seems the snowball earth really put the foot down on the throttle of evolution and diversity. Without it life may have kept going along as it had for the previous near billion years, pretty dull and narrow in scope. Or it might have delayed the inevitable as some think. Personally I'd feel the periods of super ice ages likely pressured more changes than not.

Duggys Housemate · 08-09-2012 02:46PM

Sponge25 wrote: »

Good points Wibbs;

Maybe there's even forms of communication we don't yet understand and have no means to recieve and decode said technology! Even if we did recieve definite alien communcations how would we decode it?

Imagine coming across a remote Island never before discovered where a people developed language independantly from the rest of the world; We wouldn't even understand them, let alone aliens from a different planet who possibly speak in frequencies the human ear can't hear!

Thats more of the "we can never know" hypothesis, designed to be unprovable. we are not trying to understand a language, at any rate, but just find some communication. As for not using radio - that terms means anything which can be carried on an electromagnetic frequency - and nothing can go faster than light.

Duggys Housemate · 08-09-2012 02:49PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Well before it life was very basic, with about the most complex creatures being sponges and their ilk. After it there was an explosion of novel forms of complex life. It was about the biggest explosion in diversity life's history on this planet. They even call it the Cambrian explosion. So given how there was a before and after of such a massive scale it seems the snowball earth really put the foot down on the throttle of evolution and diversity. Without it life may have kept going along as it had for the previous near billion years, pretty dull and narrow in scope. Or it might have delayed the inevitable as some think. Personally I'd feel the periods of super ice ages likely pressured more changes than not.

ok, well wiki tells me the jury is out on snowball earth, but intersting topic.

Mickeroo · 08-09-2012 02:52PM

Sponge25 wrote: »

Imagine coming across a remote Island never before discovered where a people developed language independantly from the rest of the world; We wouldn't even understand them, let alone aliens from a different planet who possibly speak in frequencies the human ear can't hear!

This has actually happened, there's still tribes in the Amazon that haven't been contacted.

EDIT: Highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Sleep-There-are-Snakes/dp/1846680409/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347116123&sr=8-1

Wibbs · 08-09-2012 02:53PM

aidan24326 wrote: »

The only problem with that is that dinosaurs had already roamed (and largely ruled) the earth for a very long time without ever evolving in that direction.

Aye but so had mammals. Mammals were happily "dumb" for 60 million years. Actually if you consider our type of brains, the creative, technical civilisation building brains, that's only 50,000 years old, more like around 12,000 if you make civilisation a cut off point*.

Earlier humans do seem to show some hints of this abstract thinking but it's isolated and rare.

KenSwee · 08-09-2012 02:57PM

karma_ wrote: »

Not really. It's statistically probably there are other life forms that inhabit the universe. Is it not a tad self-centred to believe we are all there is?

The universe is big, really big.

Exactly. And may I add that it is probably just that bit too big for us to be in contact with any type of lifeforms outside of Earth. The distances between stars are so wide, and it doesn't even bear thinking about with regard to the distances between galaxies.

There is a slim possibility that there may be some form of life existing on other planets and moons in our solar system but it would probably be less developed then ourselves or maybe even as intelligent as us but not in a way that we can understand.

Will we encounter other life within 40 years? Maybe. But the variables are so wide that it's always going to be a maybe until the very last second of the day that is 40 years from now.

Will we eventually discover life in the future? Now that's a far more interesting question because it may take so long for us to actually discover any form of life that we may be extinct before we get the chance to do so.

But right now the sexy science is actually understanding how the universe works. If we can figure out all the variables and inner workings of the universe, then we can actually calculate quite accurately, that life can exist, where we can find it and how advanced it will be. That's the real exciting bit.

thomasj · 08-09-2012 03:00PM

Meh! You could be forgiven for thinking that that article was recycled from previous times. Researchers must be looking for funding!

You could also be forgiven for thinking aliens already live amongst us. Just listen to some of the folk in places like athlone, mullingar etc.

Other than that we must be overdue a relaunch refresh of the film et

Duggys Housemate · 08-09-2012 03:02PM

Is it time for Fermis paradox yet?

One thing I would say is that in these debates people are good on numerators - the number of stars in a Galaxy - but not so much on denominators - the chances of all the ducks in a row leading to a technological society we can discover.

The numerator is the number of stars in a Galaxy - lets stick with that. Denominators are the multification of these probablities.

1) Solar System has Earth like planet
2) Earth like planet in proper orbit.
3) Solar System has large Gas Planets to hover up debris.
4) Earth planet has similar sized moon.
5) Life begins on Earth Type planet.
6) Multicellular life begins on planet.
7) Life moves out of the sea
8) Intelligent life emerges - for most of Earths history that was unlikely to happen, the dinosaurs ruled the roost.
9) Intelligent life developes scientific society.

My purely arbitary guesss are

1/10 * 1/100 * 1/10 * 1/1000 * 1/100000 * 1/100000 * 1/100000 * 1/100000 * 1/100

= 10 ^ -29.

shadowcomplex · 08-09-2012 03:07PM

Colmustard wrote: »

Alien life yeah

But not intelligent life.

They are probably saying the same thing about us:rolleyes:

FutureGuy · 08-09-2012 03:11PM

The only thing stopping us from finding life is our ability to detect said life. I believe life is absolutely everwhere.

We have found life here on Earth in the most inhospitable places imaginable. Places that would make Mars look like a holiday camp. We have found life that went against everything that we thought was required for the existance of life. Not only does it exist, it thrives.

There are so many places even in our own solar system that could right now have life. Many of Jupiters and Saturns moon scream "life could be here".

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/et-life/

Regarding the dinosaurs, one particular species showed signs of brain folds before the extinction event. We are about a hundred years aways from possibly becoming a Type I civilization...imagine what those species could have gone onto achieve had they sufficient time.

Duggys Housemate · 08-09-2012 03:12PM

FutureGuy wrote: »

Regarding the dinosaurs, one particular species showed signs of brain folds before the extinction event. We are about a hundred years aways from possibly becoming a Type I civilization...imagine what those species could have gone onto achieve had they sufficient time.

So, where are they? /fermi

Strawberry Fields · 08-09-2012 03:16PM

FutureGuy wrote: »

Regarding the dinosaurs, one particular species showed signs of brain folds before the extinction event. We are about a hundred years aways from possibly becoming a Type I civilization...imagine what those species could have gone onto achieve had they sufficient time.

They were on earth for 165 million years

Depending on your definition of human we've been here 1/2 million.

Seriously how much time do they need?

crazy cabbage · 08-09-2012 03:20PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Aye but so had mammals. Mammals were happily "dumb" for 60 million years. Actually if you consider our type of brains, the creative, technical civilisation building brains, that's only 50,000 years old, more like around 12,000 if you make civilisation a cut off point*.

Earlier humans do seem to show some hints of this abstract thinking but it's isolated and rare.

Anyone ever hear of terence mckenna's stoned ape theory.... Anyone at all.....

ok i will leave now

Alien life could be found within 40 years - really?

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