This all reminds me of the long search for the Kingdom of Prester John.
People wanted badly to believe it existed. Supposedly mariners reported glimpses of towers rising over distant horizons. But it was all myth.
There is no evidence at all of extraterrestrial life. But people think it just has to be there, because we can't be special, after all.
Myself, I doubt that anything of the sort will ever be found.
There is an extraordinary amount of circumstantial evidence that would augur in favor of their being extraterrestrial life. For it not to exist would be mathematically extraordinary and would force an existential reevaluation of what our Universe actually is.
At 22 Light years away, maybe we will some day. (Gliese 667 )Beam me up Scotty.
Let's do some exploring!
There is an extraordinary amount of circumstantial evidence that would augur in favor of their being extraterrestrial life. For it not to exist would be mathematically extraordinary and would force an existential reevaluation of what our Universe actually is.
Since we really don't know why there's life here, we really have no way of making a serious prediction about whether it exists elsewhere. Besides, just about every complex thing that ever happens is mathematically extraordinary. Think of a oxygen molecule in your room right now. Now imagine trying to predict with mathematical certainty where it will be a year from now.
Again though there is no evidence for extraterrestrial life. It very well may exist. If i take the stance that it probably doesn't though, all of the empirical support accrues to me.
Since we really don't know why there's life here, we really have no way of making a serious prediction about whether it exists elsewhere. Besides, just about every complex thing that ever happens is mathematically extraordinary. Think of a oxygen molecule in your room right now. Now imagine trying to predict with mathematical certainty where it will be a year from now.
Again though there is no evidence for extraterrestrial life. It very well may exist. If i take the stance that it probably doesn't though, all of the empirical support accrues to me.
Since we really don't know why there's life here, we really have no way of making a serious prediction about whether it exists elsewhere. Besides, just about every complex thing that ever happens is mathematically extraordinary. Think of a oxygen molecule in your room right now. Now imagine trying to predict with mathematical certainty where it will be a year from now.
Again though there is no evidence for extraterrestrial life. It very well may exist. If i take the stance that it probably doesn't though, all of the empirical support accrues to me.
Since we really don't know why there's life here, we really have no way of making a serious prediction about whether it exists elsewhere. Besides, just about every complex thing that ever happens is mathematically extraordinary. Think of a oxygen molecule in your room right now. Now imagine trying to predict with mathematical certainty where it will be a year from now.
Again though there is no evidence for extraterrestrial life. It very well may exist. If i take the stance that it probably doesn't though, all of the empirical support accrues to me.
My personal answer to the where are they question is: give it time. Even if you assume that civilizations have developed as yet undiscovered methods for safely and easily approaching travel at the speed of light and/or that they have perfected generational travel or perhaps defeated biological death...you are still talking about a gargantuan amount of space to explore. Even if you could travel FTL (somehow) you are still talking about an inexpressibly large amount of space to explore. For all we known several thousand civilizations have had probes blink into our solar system only to blink out again after a few weeks or months or years and how would we know? Until a few thousand years ago we weren't even really around to 'make contact'. I believe life is extremely abundant in the Universe but our tools for detecting it are primitive (we only learned how to discover planets by light shifts within the past decade or so).
I think if there is cellular life in our solar system we will discover it before this century is out.
Yes, and we are a minor solar system in a minor galaxy. A lot more to explore over the centuries. Even then, distance may defeat us.
Yes, and we are a minor solar system in a minor galaxy. A lot more to explore over the centuries. Even then, distance may defeat us.
I wish I was able to stick around long enough to see how exactly we tackle the problem of intergalactic travel. That has always seemed such an insurmountable obstacle, the grandness of achieving that would indeed be something to behold.
Yes, and we are a minor solar system in a minor galaxy. A lot more to explore over the centuries. Even then, distance may defeat us.
I'd further add that we use the term "life" to describe too many things. Vegetable life may be chemically not too different from the life of a lizard, but even a lizards's awareness makes if a vastly different thing that a tree.The empirical evidence can pretty safely say life is here because it was an inevitability. The particulars of how the first few building blocks arrived remain a bit of a mystery but that is an important distinction.
Another important point to be made here is that while you are correct in saying that life sprouting up at any given moment at any given point in the galaxy is mathematically insignificant, keep in mind just how large the galaxy is. Also keep in mind that life, once it arrives, is pretty darn difficult to get rid of, giving us a large window of time to locate it. Add in the fact that we are on an average if slightly small rocky planet orbiting a fairly common G-type main sequence star. And the inevitability of life elsewhere begins to look pretty certain. Like a previous poster said, at this point, if it were to turn out that life isn't out there it would shake the foundations of our current knowledge. That isn't to say it couldn't happen, wild things happen in the world of science, it is just tremendously unlikely.
Now as for intelligent life well there we still have some major questions, not the least of which is Fermi's Paradox: If life is as likely as it seems to be then it should be fairly common. If life is so common than even if the chances of life becoming intelligent is very small, it would stand to reason that there are other space-faring civilizations. If that is the is the case, WHERE ARE THEY?
Hypothesis are often based upon circumstantial evidence and empirical measurements from different but related models. We have come to some fairly good conclusions about what is necessary for the formation of life and we've made great strides in attempting to deconstruct abiogenesis and the like. Extrapolating from this it becomes easier to form circumstantial evidence for their being life in the Universe, in fact it becomes virtually impossible that it doesn't exist. People consistently fail to grasp how large our Solar System is let alone our Galaxy, stellar cluster, or the Universe. It isn't about making predictions of what a particular molecule will 'do' it's the probalistics behind quadrillions of planets and environments over billions of years spread across billions of star systems.
You can bet we have high gain receivers aimed there to see if there are any radio emissions that have modulation.
I'd further add that we use the term "life" to describe too many things. Vegetable life may be chemically not too different from the life of a lizard, but even a lizards's awareness makes if a vastly different thing that a tree.
Imagine a time in the future when we could examine thousands of planets in detail. what would it mean is we found teaming life with no awareness, and never another example of higher animal life?
I also suspect that in coming decades a deeper understanding of quantum physics is going to further complicate our understanding of life. We are treated to an increasing number of very surprising instances in which minute particles behave radically different when observed, and when not observed. This at least hints at a conception of the Universe in which rudimentary awareness is not an emergent property, but a fundamental one. It may be that in some way we can't begin to grasp yet, everything is alive.
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