Are We Alone in the Universe?

[Atreyu]

This question has been nagging at the psyche of mankind for millenia, and various theories have been formulated, many efforts made to find out a possible answer. There have been myriad attempts to explain it, but the Fermi Paradox, I think, clarifies the issue quite a bit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but- ... 89415.html

Above is a very interesting article on the paradox itself. Read and comment below if you are an intellectually honest and curious person; try not to troll, complain, or say idiotic non sequiturs such as "this is too complicated", "that was too long" etc.

In other words: post if you read and actually care.

As a natural cynic, I have low expectations, but I am interested in seeing the thoughts and opinions of those in the community.

[Defaulter]

I believe it is impossible for there NOT to be other forms of life. One interesting question though, is are we very early on the scene? and possibly just the first few budding signs of life, or so late on the scene that entire empires have fallen before we first left the caves.

As far as trying to narrow down the search to earth like planets, makes sense to try and find life similar to ours, though I believe that other life forms may be so vastly different to life on earth that we would have trouble even recognizing it as intelligent life at all.

The reason why I think that other life is so likely is due to nature of the universe as we understand it, an infinite number of possibilities, quantum physics has show us that anything can happen at any time, for no reason.

So taking an infinite number of possibilities over such a length of time since the big bang....and well...it's pretty hard to believe that just one tiny planet in one system, in one galaxy was able to produce life.

That and I believe that the entire idea of "we are the only life forms here" is due to religions vast influence over the years, teaching us that we are special because we were made by god, and the idea that other life could exist as abhorrent.

Going to the extremes here, our sentience is simply electrical pulses between connections in the brain. So surely anything that can make an electrical charge between a sufficient number of points could also be sentient? I have no idea if there is any scientific basis for that, just a funny thought. That giant planet covered entirely with electrical storms could be a thinking being xD

[Astrocat]

I believe it is impossible for there NOT to be other forms of life. One interesting question though, is are we very early on the scene? and possibly just the first few budding signs of life, or so late on the scene that entire empires have fallen before we first left the caves.

^This
Also, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan are right. We should stop sending signals out just in case there is a "superpredator". If they have the ability to come to our world, their tech is waaaaaaaaay ahead of ours and could end up killing us.

[CommieBuffalo]

I believe that, for all practical purposes, we are alone. There surely are other life forms around, but the massive distances separating them from us makes it likely that we will never see them in humanity's lifetime. Any attempt at comunication would be plagued by distances and would be nearly impossible after a certain distance, and physical contact can be ruled out, again, by the cheer distances between stars with likely inhabited planets.
I like the phrase used by Jared Diamond for this topic: "We are alone in an overpopulated Universe". His views on the subject are extremely interesting, and I would recommend reading one of the final chapters of The Third Chimpanzee(you should be able to find a .pdf pretty easily, his books are relatively well-known, and I found the one in the link in some two minutes of searching on google), where he elaborates on it and explains why he thinks that.

EDIT: Actually, the chapter is more towards the middle of the book, in page 184.

[MR.BadAiming]

A very though provoking article my opinion is that there are many other intelligent life forms out there in our galaxy but I reckon they would seem so alien to us that we wouldn't be able to understand them people think that the intelligent life forms will look like humans or the typical green alien. Also once a planet evolves intelligent life forms it is only a matter of time before a species goes extinct take our planet as a example humans have been around for about 200000 years and the earths atmosphere and habitat is being quickly destroyed and all the important resources like fuel iron etc isn't going to last forever and what happens once there is no fuel or iron and our ozone layer is depleting how long before the earth turns to hot to sustain life so it be highly unlikely for a intelligent life form to last for millions of years as they suggest in the article

[Fyunix]

As we don't know what life is, I think it can take like every possible form so the planet where it exists doesn't matter. That said, I think there have to be other life forms and like everyone here and the article says: there are just too many reasons for why we haven't found any or for why they haven't found us.

The article talks about the Great Filter, I guess I can see what they want to say with it, but it just doesn't make sense to me. Explanation group 1 says we are already behind it. I gues that would mean monkeys couldn't get past it?

Group 1 of group 1: We're rare.
-Their possibility 1 says the Filter is at the beginning, but that would take the whole idea of evolution away, because then fish wouldn't have evolved just as much as we did or they should be just as smart as we are.
-Their second possibility gets ruled out by the same reason.

Group 2 of group 1:We're the first
-If we're the first, other species simply can't have gotten to us, then it's more likely we get to them.

Group 3 of group 1: We're fucked
-Maybe it's me, but I can't see why we are doomed to a natural occurence. Just like it says it's natural and there is almost no way to avoid it, but I think we are almost at the point where we can at least survive one. Technology is going pretty fast as far as I know.
-Destroying ourselves? Maybe, although it's not in human's nature to kill itself unless something is really wrong, don't get me wrong here. Technology reaching a level where it can't be handled? As I said, unless something is wrong someone won't try using such technology and otherwise there are safety thingies and technology is then at the point where we can get away with it.

“Since evolution does not strive for a goal but just happens, it uses the adaptation most useful for a given ecological niche, and the fact that, on Earth, this led to technological intelligence only once so far may suggest that this outcome of natural selection is rare and hence by no means a certain development of the evolution of a tree of life.”

I believe there isn't a Great Filter, just like Pinker says here, I think it just takes alot of time to get to higher intelligence and species can be slower or faster at getting to higher stages.

Explanation group 2: countless reasons why there are high intelligent civilizations, but why we haven't seen them.
As it says countless reasons, I let them be, I don't care about those reasons.
I only think it's a bit pessimistic to think of possibilities like 2, 4, 5 and 10.

A very though provoking article my opinion is that there are many other intelligent life forms out there in our galaxy but I reckon they would seem so alien to us that we wouldn't be able to understand them people think that the intelligent life forms will look like humans or the typical green alien. Also once a planet evolves intelligent life forms it is only a matter of time before a species goes extinct take our planet as a example humans have been around for about 200000 years and the earths atmosphere and habitat is being quickly destroyed and all the important resources like fuel iron etc isn't going to last forever and what happens once there is no fuel or iron and our ozone layer is depleting how long before the earth turns to hot to sustain life so it be highly unlikely for a intelligent life form to last for millions of years as they suggest in the article

That may be true if Earth is how it's everywhere, but Earth is small compared to most planets and the relativity between size of planet and population size of species don't have to be the same as here, say you put Earth's population on Jupiter, we would have alot more time before all that stuff happens, right?

So, uhm, yeah, that's about it of what I think

[CommieBuffalo]

Group 1 of group 1: We're rare.
-Their possibility 1 says the Filter is at the beginning, but that would take the whole idea of evolution away, because then fish wouldn't have evolved just as much as we did or they should be just as smart as we are. That... makes little sense. Every species is equally evolved, but we all evolved in different directions. If you put a fish and a human in a cage 500m under water, the fish would obviously survive much longer. Does that mean humans are less evolved?
-Their second possibility gets ruled out by the same reason. wut

Group 2 of group 1:We're the first
-If we're the first, other species simply can't have gotten to us, then it's more likely we get to them.

So what?

Group 3 of group 1: We're fucked
-Maybe it's me, but I can't see why we are doomed to a natural occurence. Just like it says it's natural and there is almost no way to avoid it, but I think we are almost at the point where we can at least survive one. Technology is going pretty fast as far as I know. You might be underestimating the potency of certain natural disasters to wipe mankind out.
-Destroying ourselves? Maybe, although it's not in human's nature to kill itself unless something is really wrong, don't get me wrong here. Technology reaching a level where it can't be handled? As I said, unless something is wrong someone won't try using such technology and otherwise there are safety thingies and technology is then at the point where we can get away with it. Oh man, you're just so wrong. You could point to the sun and say it is made of bacon and you'd be less wrong. Time and time again multiple societies all over the world have committed ecological suicide over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Want me to list some examples? The ancient greeks, the babylonians, the Anasazi, the Mayas, the people of Easter Island, many, many societies in Polynesian islands, and overall basically every single time a group of people has arrived to a new unpopulated place(the extinctions of Megafauna in Australia and the Americas, the rapid extinction of many species in polynesian islands, etc), has developed a new technology(e.g the rapid extinction of birds in Europe after the invention of rifles), or has a big population in a climatically unstable environment(Mayas, MANY societies in the Middle East, Anasazi, Groenlandish Vikings, etc), things went bad fast.

"That may be true if Earth is how it's everywhere, but Earth is small compared to most planets and the relativity between size of planet and population size of species don't have to be the same as here, say you put Earth's population on Jupiter, we would have alot more time before all that stuff happens, right?

So, uhm, yeah, that's about it of what I think

If our recent demographical history indicates anything, it is that the population would just increase faster, and faster, and faster, to the point that in a couple of centuries even planets larger than Earth would be desperately overpopulated.

[Atreyu]

My sincerest regrets and apologies: I posted the wrong article

The correct one is this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but- ... 89415.html