Question Aliens...Do you think they exist?

[PennyBlack]

Nature has alreay created something that is impressive and extraordinary, a phenomenon and that's us. I hopeing Urwumpe, that our infinite imagination and our kinetic energy will achieve way beyond the impossible. Who knows.

 

[Urwumpe]

Nature has alreay created something that is impressive and extraordinary, a phenomenon and that's us. I hopeing Urwumpe, that our infinite imagination and our kinetic energy will achieve way beyond the impossible. Who knows.

I think rating us as "mostly harmless" was more accurate.

 

[PennyBlack]

That may have been true when we had muskets and iron cannon balls...

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba"]Tsar Bomba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

Maybe aliens may have renewed that classification, if they are aware of us.

 

[ggrof]

I don´t believe in aliens. The life that we search for in universe is rather like a kind of "western scientific developed man". In whole history, we always had our "aliens" (like indians or abyssal beings), but the nowadays alien is a extraterrestrial-one. This combination of hidrogen and carbon, mixed with another stuff, is not the most secure way to determine life and we are searching for something that we will never find out.

 

[Codz]

I don´t believe in aliens. The life that we search for in universe is rather like a kind of "western scientific developed man". In whole history, we always had our "aliens" (like indians or abyssal beings), but the nowadays alien is a extraterrestrial-one. This combination of hidrogen and carbon, mixed with another stuff, is not the most secure way to determine life and we are searching for something that we will never find out.

Huh?

 

[Pyromaniac605]

I just wanted to add a bit to what I said earlier. I do believe that other life exists somewhere in the universe, and I don't think it is right to pass a planet off as lifeless just because of it's available chemicals and other conditions. I believe that there is plenty of simple life, and quite a lot of advanced life, quite a lot of them are likely far more advanced then us. But I don't believe that any extraterrestrial life is currently on, or has ever visited Earth.

But then again, there could be the slim chance that we are in fact the first planet to ever have life and may be alone in the universe for the time being, but I'd say that the chance of this being the case is almost 0.

 

[baw]

I think they are here.

Many years ago in central desert western Australia on a bright sunny day. I saw a Qantas jet fly overhead about 5000 feet. It was surrounded in a fireball that dissipated.
The nearest dirt airfield 160km away including our own dirt airfield was too small an airfield for this jet.
The plane flew into the distance until I couldn't see it. But I noticed a light beside where the plane was last visible. The light flew slow at first at a great distance changed direction a few times and got closer and started to move straight at me. I yelled out to other people that saw the jet that walked away "LOOK AT THAT!". As I yelled the light change direction quickly flew very fast up and diagonal to horizon, then straight up, I saw this strange effect, as it went upward I saw it fly through the blue sky, like the blue sky was a cloud, it punched a hole in the blue sky and I could see black space through the hole.
I think they are here.

 

[jedidia]

It will not be an experiment in creating surplus energy, they already know how to do that.

How so if it's never been done succesfully? They think it should work, but until they build it, there's no real proof of that assumption. ITER is an experiment that attempts to prove that you can build a fusion reactor with surplus energy the way they think it could be built. Don't get me wrong, I have high hopes for it, but I won't believe that this is it before I see it work.

And it is very mutch so a construction project as well:

In terms of scope, sure. What I meant is that the attitude behind it is "We have to build this thing to see if it works and what it can do", and not "we build this thing to work and do such and such". If ITER turns out to work as advertised, I'm sure bringing the price down will not take too long. Technology gets cheaper once it becomes widely used. If it doesn't work, it was just one hell of an expensive experiment (or, in the best case, a solid workbed for further experimentation). It still would be worth it, I think, since knowing how not to do something is already a progress.

I disagree, though that depends on the definition of "much closer"...

It probably would be a step toward a feasible interstellar probe, but it will still take decades to centuries for it to reach its destination, and be veeeery expensive... Interesting for a one-off, but I don't think it could be used for broad exploration (note, I'm not even thinking manned exploration here, only probes).

 

[Sky Captain]

IIRC theoretically fusion rocket engine could reach ISP of 30 000 km/s so a fusion powered ship that could reach ~10 % c is theoretically possible, although it would require nearly godlike engineering to actualy build one that could carry manned colonization mission to nearest stars, but it is possible in a way that it don't break our known laws of physics.

 

[T.Neo]

would require nearly godlike engineering

I don't think so- but then again, I would classify "nearly godlike engineering" as "planet splitting". :hmm:

The Daedalus project did not just have "vague undefined magical engine", it actually had a design set out, with many details addressed. Of course, the problem with getting that theoretical design into reality, is solving all the unresolved issues and problems that the theoretical design assumes are solved...

 

[_Designer_]

you want something planet splitting, why not create the planet cracker from deadspace.

 

[Polaris]

To quote Jay Leno: "If there were any aliens out there, we'd have borrowed money from them."

 

[HAL9001]

Sure they do - astromers already have discovered lots of small exoplanets in a short time - everyone can calculate the probability that somewhere else in th universe is lfe - and iz has to be high...

 

[Yoda]

No brainer; of course they do exist.
With the exoplanet count beeing up to 1230 by now ( only looking at a tiny fragment of the starts out there) how can there not be ?
You'd have to be pretty ignorant to think we are all alone.......

 

[Jarvitä]

No brainer; of course they do exist.
With the exoplanet count beeing up to 1230 by now ( only looking at a tiny fragment of the starts out there) how can there not be ?
You'd have to be pretty ignorant to think we are all alone.......

Actually, I think the correlation between the number of known exoplanets and the probability of extraterrestrial life should be pretty low. The majority of currently known exoplanets were discovered by the Kepler probe, which only samples a tiny region of the sky. We simply have no idea whether that sample is representative, at all.

So, the correct answer is: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

 

[Yoda]

True, but common sense would be in favor of the presence of extraterrestrial life given the small sample size of Keppler and the amount of exo-plantes found.

 

[Jarvitä]

True, but common sense would be in favor of the presence of extraterrestrial life given the small sample size of Keppler and the amount of exo-plantes found.

If your common sense suggests that, than I strongly suspect you've zero training in statistics and probability theory, and suffer heavily from confirmation bias.

Also, keep in mind that all we've found so far is balls of lava, balls of ice, and balls of gas. Nothing even remotely habitable by terrestrial standards. So even if you want to jump to conclusions from the probably non-representative sample from Kepler, the obvious conclusion to jump to would be that yes, we are in fact alone.

 

[Yoda]

If your common sense suggests that, than I strongly suspect you've zero training in statistics and probability theory, and suffer heavily from confirmation bias.

Also, keep in mind that all we've found so far is balls of lava, balls of ice, and balls of gas. Nothing even remotely habitable by terrestrial standards. So even if you want to jump to conclusions from the probably non-representative sample from Kepler, the obvious conclusion to jump to would be that yes, we are in fact alone.

Theoretically your correct although whether or not some of these planets are habitable is mostly unknown; some of them are actually in the habitable zone of their host star and we are still unsure of their actual surface structure ( gas, solid etc).

Like I said before to simply disregard the possibilty of life elsewhere is ignorant.

Furthermore it is likewise unwise to simply "jump to a conclusion" when dealing with a complex matter like this.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Look at our system:
Mercury: Ball of rock, no atmosphere, high solar radiaton, no known water. DEAD
Venus: Ball of rock, thick CO2/sulfuric acid atmosphere, high temperatures, high pressures, no known water. DEAD
Mars: Ball of rock, thin CO2 atmosphere, low temperatures, high radiation, but known water ice. Possible life-supporter
Jupiter: Ball of Gas. DEAD
Saturn: Ball of Gas. DEAD
Uranus: Ball of gas. DEAD
Neptune: Ball of gas. DEAD

Earth: Ball of rock, thick atmosphere, magnetic field, liquid water, active tectonic cycle, etc. Life supporting
1/8th of all the planets in this system can support life. We've only "seen" a few planets in ideal conditions, and many of them are simply detected through doppler shifts from their parent star. Life-supporting planets or moons are out there. We just need to find them.
:2cents:

 

[T.Neo]

Just because the dataset has gaps does not mean it is worthless... even if we only see a few planets, or a few types of planet, or that our detection equipment has limitations, does not stop this knowledge from adding to the picture of planetology in general.

But our detection methods are biased, particularly towards large planets close in to their stars.

Also, keep in mind that all we've found so far is balls of lava, balls of ice, and balls of gas. Nothing even remotely habitable by terrestrial standards.

That's not true. Those are extremes, we've found other planets that fall in the middle. We've found planets that, while they are hardly Earth-analogues, don't fit those stereotypes.

And our detection methods have large biases. There are likely many 'genres' of planet out there that we aren't able to detect yet, or detect usefully.

One thing that our solar system has taught us though, is that there are many ways to be a planet and not be much like Earth at all.

So even if you want to jump to conclusions from the probably non-representative sample from Kepler, the obvious conclusion to jump to would be that yes, we are in fact alone.

If you want to call "I wish and hope that aliens do not exist" "jumping to conclusions", then yes, that would be a good conclusion to jump to.

Currently the only conclusion I personally can 'jump' to, is that the most likely biased, and incomplete sample presents some results that people didn't quite think about before, that could be the result of interesting phenomena that could teach us more about the bigger picture.