Your help please.

I couldn't think of an appropriate heading to announce the area in which I would like your help - sorry about that.

Basically, it's about Intelligent Life elsewhere in the Universe.

Now I know this subject has been broached a few times on MSE and I gather that the majority of you believe that there is, or highly likely to be, Intelligent Life elsewhere in the Universe.

I have made no bones about it, on such Threads, that I subscribe to the 'Rare Earth' hypothesis that reasons that Intelligent Life is probably extremely improbable so, at the behest of a friend, I have decided to collate and outline my ideas in a book.

This is where you lot come in - if you so wish - I would like to hear your REASONS why you believe that there is, or isn't, Intelligent Life elsewhere in the Universe.

Please!

Let's not get into a debate about what constitutes Intelligent Life - let's just say a species that is comparable to us as we are, or have been throughout any stage in our 'Intelligent' existence.


Thanks in advance.



Jason.

With regard to the title, I think the only change you might make would be to insert a comma after 'help'.

Thoughts about whether there may be - not 'is' - intelligent life elsewhere will arrive on the next meteorite.

Course there is. There's bloody loads and loads of galaxies, each having billions of planets. Stephen Hawking has said the odds are brilliant for many civilisations in the universe. Problem with the universe is that it's just so frickin BIG!

Not long finished watching Mission To Mars so am feeling good about ET!

I thought for one moment the O/P was talking about intelligent life on MSE. lol... I'll leave that one!

Basically yes I do strongly believe in intelligent life beyond our own for these simple reasons:

It is mathmatically impossible given the size of the universe that we are alone.

Explain why governments are so desporate to cover up ET activity if it's all moo poo.

Explain why so many intelligent and rational people with no connection to each other have claimed to have seen ET/UFO persona/machine and are consistant in their description.

Whilst I agree most UFO sightings can be explained and many are not related to ET's, and an awfull lot of so-called filmed evidence is crap, there is no smoke without fire.

there's a few odd life forms living in planet MSE!

As an self proclaimed ameteur scientist, surely even you wouldn't dismiss the possibilty of there being intelligent life in the universe, considering mankinds knowledge (to date) has only covered approx 10% of our known universe.

I put it to you...Prove there isn't rather than dismiss the fact there might be... OK, a planet needs to be 'just' the right distance from a heat source for life to evolve + contain water of some type (ice or fresh), but given the fact we know so little about our universe, who's to say somewhere out there, maybe in another galaxy or parallel universe there isn't an Earth like planet, we haven't OR indeed might not ever find considering...

Quote:

There are 100,000,000,000 stars in a galaxy (average).
There are 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe (scientifical estimation).

So we can conclude that there are an estimated 1.21 GOOGOL* stars in the universe (100 bn x 100 bn).

Some of the stars will have planets around them. So lets imagine that there is an average of 1 planet per star. That makes 1.21 GOOGOL* planets in the universe (if my math is correct) It could be double or half the correct number, there is no way of knowing exactly how many planets there are in the universe.

* A googol is the large number the digit 1 followed by 100 zeros.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol

OK, for the sake of argument what would you define as 'Intelligent'?...waits for MSE cracks.
What is there to say that if, and I say if there was 'Intelligent life', what's to say whether they are or are not looking for it also? What if they have seen earth and dismissed it?

If you had been asking about intelliegent life in M-in-the-M I would have had to say
" Not a chance " ... that'll get someone going !

As for the universe I would say they were more intelligent than us ..
they know we're here but that don't want to contact us !




Chris.

I think we all get the idea that intelligent life are well more advanced than us. What if their technology is on par with ours or below? I often have thoughts about a civilisation which are an unreachable million light years away having movies and music but not having great means of space flight. The mind boggles.

I think given the size of the universe there is a high probability of intelligent life on other planets.

Considers Skoolies point as more then likely and possibly they are now worshiping our Begal 2 space probe as a God.

"let's just say a species that is comparable to us as we are, or have been throughout any stage in our 'Intelligent' existence."

I think it is highly unlikely that there is a truly comparable kind of life form to mankind.

We evolved in ways to suit our environment. Other planets with entirely different environments could very well support intelligent life in different forms. Maybe not as one headed, four limbed beings but as something that is way beyond our wildest imagination.

They may be far more intelligent than us and know what's 'out there', or they may be sitting on their little rock, in their little universe, 15 billion light years away having exactly the same discussion as this.

Who knows?

I wouldn't knock Beagle 2 that much. After all NASA soon shut the British press up with their praise of it. We've got some of the best scientists in the world... the lead scientist has also worked for NASA... but the problem is we are too quick to pour scorn over a less successful mission from which incidentally a lot of research and development was done that has been used in successful missions and many other appliances. Perhaps 'Intelligent life' will be the ones to first acknowledge that... Now that would be egg on our face :o)

Jeez Tai Chi, like Beagle 2 has gone that far! Please people, wikipedia Universe, Galaxy and light years and be astounded!

Bris - if they're that intelligent can we have it back please lol lol...

It is believed that the worlds governments do want to tell the people of the existance of ET's and our connections with them but feel we are not ready.

There are many believe that moves were made to get the people ready for the big disclosure and this partly involved the film Close Encounters of the third kind . No one knows or is admitting why this was scotched but it seems power companies are getting blamed for it.

Needle and haystack are words that come to mind when even managing to get it to Mars in the first place... quite an achievement in it's own right :o)

Just to address some of the points that you have raised – which is what my proposed book will be all about,only in far greater detail:

By “intelligent life comparable to us” I mean a species that can alter it's environment as we have shown that we can do, and are able to develop a multitude of tools to solve many problems, and can demonstrate that we have a heightened self-awareness – I am not necessarily referring to species that LOOK like us – that's why I purposely used the phrase “Intelligent Life”.

Many, if not all of you are basing your beliefs or assertions on mathematical probability – that would probably work well if we were discussing the incidence of 'Life' in the Universe but it could very well be a faux-friend when trying to assess the occurrence of Intelligent Life – the problem with the “Probability” reasoning is it only works when you know that something does exist but you can't use it to decide whether something exists – for instance:

If I shuffled a standard deck of playing cards (minus the Jokers) and asked you to work out the odds of you selecting The Ace of Spades you'd probably guess it correctly as a 1 in 52 chance of selecting it – but that is only because you know that there is an Ace of Spades in the pack – but supposing I handed you a pack which had had the Ace of Spades replaced by a joker and you didn't know that – you're guess at the odds would be highly inaccurate.

Still on the subject of reasoning by “The Odds” - have any of you, who have based their reasoning on this strategy, considered all the 'events' that took place here on Earth that resulted in our existence? For example – the first great Mass Extinction which took place about 250 million years ago – known as the “Great Dying” - when 90% or more of the then known species were obliterated from the face of the Earth – one of those extinct species could have been our ancestor – and such events would seem to be common to a Planet's development. There have been many other such incidents throughout the history of the planets – could that have been replicated to such a degree on other developing Earth-like planets?

There was a programme on BBC 4 last night - “Survivors” - which hinted at how lucky we probably are that we are here now to discuss it.

Just a few thoughts for you to mull over (I've got a wealth more of them if you're interested!).


Jason.

Did you start this thread just for an excuse to be pretentious and look superior Jase?

" the “Probability” reasoning is it only works when you know that something does exist but you can't use it to decide whether something exists – for instance. "

Errr...We exist in the Universe, so what's to say there aren't other Earth's out there (somewhere) in the cosmos ?

From a scientific point of view there must be enough potential for SETI to still be sponsored. However, from a statistical point of view it's a bit like Schrodinger's Cat :o)

Definitely not! Skoolie.

I knew that "The Odds" would be the most favoured reason that people believe there's Intelligent Life elsewhere in the Universe but I was also hoping that some of the respondents would come up with other reasons too - just so that I know I'll have as many 'bases' covered as possible should the book ever come to fruition.

I also guessed that some would 'challenge' my stance which would give me an opportunity to broach some of the rationales to support my reasoning and to gauge how people would respond to them.

What you probably see as 'pretentious and superior' is the product of a lot of research and thinking that tends to a conclusion that not a lot agree with - I can't help that but finding out why people don't agree with it is part of the ongoing research too.



Jason.

i reckon they were here before us ...they moved on to other planets ..that would explain the spacemen drawings in some caves ..that have been found ..

Stoo,

"Errr...We exist in the Universe, so what's to say there aren't other Earth's out there (somewhere) in the cosmos ?"


That's the problem Stoo - if we "assume" that we are not unique (or if we knew of at least one other occurrence of Intelligent Life) then we can play the 'odds game' to assess the potential for other 'Earths' BUT we don't know whether we are unique or not so the 'odds game' is completely meaningless - that's the paradox.




Jason.

I remember watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos in the early 80's and that series got me interested in Astronomy. The first episode Shores of the Cosmic Universe told how we had merely dangled our toes into the edge of this vast cosmic ocean. To me, its scarier to think we are the only intelligent species out there... far scarier than the universe teeming with life. I bought this series on VHS but id imagine its out on DVD. A brilliant series and worth watching.