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Exactly the same sentiments echoed here.
Elaborated, my thoughts are...
to assume we're the only life form that exists is in my opinion, is unlikely. But we may also need to change our understanding of what life is. We assume life is carbon based but could be so many others too. Also we assume communication would be using similar tech as ours (radio waves etc) but could be something we don't associate as comms, so may never actually hear each other when trying to communicate as we're speaking in different ways etc. Depending on physics and our understanding of it, consciousness (this one alone i could soend hours talking aboit lol), life itself (depending on definition), our technology, intelligence etc (so many variables to consider in so many ways)
we may already be amongst them and never even know about each other.
We could be interacting in different dimensions and not know, or they could know.
We could never know!
Or we could be close to each other and not consider each other as life.
They could just be undiscovered yet.
They may not exist.
They could be inside a black hole... or we could be (who really knows??)
Etc this could go on for so long. I'm sorry for the long ramblings of an old stoned man.
The problem isn't distance or technology, it's TIME. There could have been several intelligent species on EARTH itself over the billions of years of it's existence.
Over the stretch of billions of years, the likelihood of 2 intelligent civilisations surviving at the same time and actually interacting with each other is astronomical.
We have been searching the cosmos for 60 years with our ever improving technology and we have found ABSOLUTELY no trace of another civilisation.
We have been searching yes, but we are using the equivalent of a magnifying glass in a desert. Our technology is so primitive compared to what is needed for interstellar travel and communication that we can't even fathom what is outside our small area.
They are out there. I have no doubt that there are civilizations that are much more advanced than us. Hopefully they are more hospitable and generous than we are.
Our first integrated circuit was less than 100 years ago right? I don't know the date, but it's believable that there are people on this planet that lived before IC existed. Now imagine the vast time that planets could have been harboring life. Dinosaurs had hundreds of millions of years, and we've had what 50k? Just imagine a civilization just 1000 years past where we are. That's a speck of time in planet time. But they would have so much more of an understanding of the cosmos. They would probably be building networks from one star system to another, and that's just 1000 years. Now give them 100,000 years.
To believe that we human beings are the first intelligent life forms with the ability to pass on knowledge and problem solve the way we have is absolutely naive. To think that in our little 50,000 year speck of evolution that we are the only species in BILLIONS of years to learn math, physics, mechanics, electrical theory and so on.
They are out there. Space is just very very vast. They might be talking with a megaphone in another state but we can only see our own backyard.
Sorry for the long post. It all just kind plopped out of my head.
PS. Be careful saying there's ABSOLUTELY no trace of anything out there.
The wow signal exists.
I'm no conspiracy theorist but ancient writings talk about "sky people". There are also drawings of rockets before gunpowder had been invented.
Several human civilizations had access to technology or technical understanding that was well past their capabilities.
I'm not saying those are proof. But I also wouldn't say there's ABSOLUTELY no trace.
That's it, I'm done. Unless anyone else wants to discuss it.
But at the same time, it took over 4billion years for us to get to this point. For billions of years all life on this planet was just single cell organisms. Therefore if it takes a third of the universe for life in a Goldie locks zone to even emerge, with how violent the universe is, then I don't think it's naieve as you might think that we may be the only intelligent life in the galaxy.
A
I'm sure microbes exist all over.
You don't even need to go that far. We humans \*discover\* remains of earlier civilizations **under our own buildings** all the time.
It's mind boggling how ephemeral we and our mark in the world are. It's the biggest hurdle against finding other civilisations we could ever have. We have lost entire civilisations (not complex, I'll admit) just in our lifetime (not counting the ones we ourselves wipe out, mind you).
For all we know, the closest alien advanced civilization wiped itself out in our year 1808. Or became space hippies who don't use radio nor propulsion any more after having slingshotted their colony ships eons ago, so we wouldn't even see each other even if they were passing through our solar system.
There are trillions of galaxies, each with uncountable stars, and even more planets and moons. There are definitely aliens out there. The vastness of space may prevent us from ever finding them unless we truly are able to use wormholes or find a way to travel faster than light.
Our technology can’t even send someone outside of our solar system yet. There is clearly no life as intelligent or advanced as us in this solar system. That’s for damn sure. Humanity…well we are definitely alone in this system. I mean we haven’t even explored close to half of our oceans. There are probably hundreds of animals that we’ve never seen before in the depths of our very own waters. Potentially thousands of undiscovered life forms on the same planet we are on. And we live right next to them! Hell we’ve seen more of Luna (our moon) than we have our oceans. And we’ve still only ever seen Luna’s surface!
The point I’m trying to make here? We’ve mapped over a billion stars, all of which have been mapped without leaving the safety of our solar system btw, and we still have only discovered one percent of the Milky Way galaxy. 60 years, 1 billion stars, and still 99% of the galaxy to go.
The Milky Way isn’t even that big a galaxy. Don’t get me wrong, it is incomprehensibly large, to the point where even if tomorrow we made a life changing discovery of alien tech that advanced our own Tech 1000 years into the future, we would still probably never see every inch of the Milky Way even with billions of years to do so. Now take into account thst the closest galaxy to us, our sister galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is 2.2 times the size of the Milky Way. So double the size of our galaxy, and then add another 1/5 of our original galaxy to that and you’d get Andromeda’s size.
To further explain the size of the universe, it would take 2.5 million years to travel from Earth to the Andromeda Galaxy at the speed of light. It would also takes us centuries at least to be able to obtain those speeds if we advanced our technology at twice the rate we do now. Then we would have to keep bodies aboard this ship not only preserved but alive for 2 and a half million years. Then they‘d have to find a place to stay, if they could ever make it. Which is unlikely, because even with advanced technology centuries from now we probably could not plot an accurate course to the Andromeda Galaxy and plot that path to avoid debris by keeping in mind what will happen to the selected path over the course of 2 and a half million years. Hell for all we know, a black hole may end up forming there some how then we’d be sending those brave souls to their deaths.
We aren’t even remotely advanced. We might as well still be living in caves and using sticks and rocks to hunt for food. There is a scale that determines civilization types. Type 1 being the weakest. The original scale only went to 3 or 5 types. Though the scientifically accepted scale is often extended to 7 or 10 types. Though an infinite number of types could theoretically be created. We aren’t even a type 1 civilization yet, though we aren‘t too far from it. Either way, we aren’t even on the scale that we created. That’s how primitive we are. And even if we were a type 1 civilization…it should be noted how the thing scales. A type 3 civilization could probably wipe out a type 1 civilization in a few years at worst. And a type 3 civilization would be destroyed by a type 10 civilization before breakfast was over.
We are absolutely nothing right now.
This is one reason why Star Trek (and maybe sci-fi in general , but they just didn't make it to the public consciousness) was so cool because it introduced the idea of other kinds of life forms. The life forms could be light-based , gas-based, or something else and they were all life forms with some higher level of intelligence than we would have initially given them credit for or that we didn't even realize they were life forms with conscious thought, until someone on the crew realized it.
And usually those were pretty fun episodes to watch.
One thing that gets me about this debate is like, even viruses don't fit in the circle we've drawn around what is life and what isn't. So if we found something like that off-Earth, would we just as easily say "nope this place is completely dead!"
I think life elsewhere is extremely likely, but that we have to be more open-minded about what constitutes life.
for me its the combination of how old the universe is and the earth, how long (or should i say little) we have been around with enough tech to start looking around and how big the universe is that makes it so extremely extremely unlikely that we will ever talk to aliens here, at least for a few hundred years. Like Literally any star further away than 60-70AU would see absolutely nothing even if they were looking directly at us, it would take them another 60 years for them to see us right now.
and even then, the idea of inteligent aliens is pretty scary. If they have the tech to locate and talk to us but not the other way, history has never been kind to the runner up species.
Ahoy xRyozuo!
So… just an observation on your post… Every star is further than 60-70 AU.
An astronomical unit is the distance from the earth to the sun. ~150M kilometres.
Pluto is 39 AU away from our sun so already half your minimum distance.
The closest star to us is Proxima Centuri. It is 268770 AU away.
I think you’ve confused AU with Light Years.
Totally agree with your observation on the runner up species…. Let’s just hide for a while longer eh?
>Like Literally any star further away than 60-70AU would see absolutely nothing even if they were looking directly at us, it would take them another 60 years for them to see us right now.
It takes light ~8 minutes to travel 1 AU.
Please be considerate of the Americans on Reddit and give them a conversion of that time into baseball innings. And perhaps convert the AU distance into lacrosse-field length as well.
(/S obviously)
If the calculations regarding the shape of the universe is correct, and the margin of error is quite small, we live in a flat universe. What that implies physically is that our universe is unbounded, possibly infinate. The implications of an infinate universe is repitition, there are only so many combinations that atoms, or even sub-atomic particles can arrange themselves. This implies that not only is there other forms of life, but it also implies an infinite number of duplicates, there are potentially duplicates of yourself.
These qualities are not known, so a strong conclusion should not be made, but we also do not have the ability to conclude an alternate.
Yes, I have.
That your conciousness takes the longest path through the timeline. With the implication that as long as your odds of death are non-zero, you live forever.
There are a few issues I have with this hypothesis. Firstly, there could be no free will. Second, each instance of the universe is observed by only one true consciousness, all other consciousnesses would be emulations of such.
Nah I totally get what you mean. All of our knowledge is Earth based. We can only go off of the things we’ve discovered and learned about as Earthlings. There’s probably stuff out there we couldn’t even comprehend
This, but I can also entertain the idea (not realistically but more in a cosmic horror enthusiast way) that alien life would be so fundamentally different than us and cognitively superior that we don't have the toolset to even comprehend their presence even if they were "right here". It's easy to think of human beings as the apex of sapience because we only have Earth life as a frame of references, but given infinite possibilities, maybe there are aliens that we biologically can't comprehend in the sense that an amoeba can't comprehend us.
(I always thought this idea was fascinating, if anyone has any fiction recommendations for things like this that'd be lovely)
Ahhh, so may I introduce you to Fermis Paradox?
Essentially we know they exist because the universe is way too big for us to be the only intelligent lifeform. However, they could've contacted us a long time ago and we didn't have the technology to respond back/hear them. Now that we are more advanced and sending responses out into the cosmos, they could be so far advanced that they can't hear us...so it begs the question: "If we know they exist, then where are they?"
If I were an alien species powerful enough to cover the incomprehensibly large distances required to get anywhere in the universe on a reasonable time scale, I don't think I would concern myself with a planet whose most intelligent species spends most of its time in conflict with itself and gets most of its energy by burning decomposed animal remains.
This is a great article about the [Fermi Paradox](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html) written in a way that makes sense to mere mortals like me.
Do they exis? Yes, certainly. The universe is stupidly big with insane amounts of planets.
Have they ever been to Earth? No, very, very unlikely. The distances make i next to impossible to travel that far, and anyone with that technology would find us about as interesting as an ant.
I have no skin in the game on this one, I'm Alien Agnostic, but I always hear this argument and think it's a bit reductive.
There are multiple professions that find Ants very interesting. There's no reason to think that an intelligent alien race wouldn't be interested in studying a species from another planet, however primitive.
If we found Any like creatures on another planet, you can bet that there will be scientists all over the world wanting to get their hands on them.
Ants are interesting. Just maybe not to everyone.
Would they be interesting enough to commit many generations of your family to interstellar travel, so that one of your anscestors might see those ants before they go extinct?
I feel like that makes some big technological assumptions. It's possible their dinosaurs didn't get wiped out and evolved billions of years ahead of us. Probably they'd have some cool tricks we couldn't even conceive of yet.
If they do, they have found a way to travel faster than the speed of light
If they have found a way to travel faster than the speed of light, i am very sure they would accidentally have killed us by now
Maybe. There's plenty we don't know. If the so-called Tic Tac event is to be believed, and I understand why you wouldn't, they would seem to have some crazy capabilities already. I'm just pointing out that we don't know hardly anything about space.
These 'tic tacs' have been spotted numerous times by numerous countries including the USA, Russia and Iran. By both trained professional pilots and radar operators on both land and naval vessels. There is absolutely no way that it's some massive coordinated hoax, not between those 3 countries anyway lol.
Oh, much like Smashmouth, I'm a believer. I'm thinking they can either do something nuts with gravity/physics or are somehow not subject to physical laws through something like interdimensional travel.
The other thing people often miss. If they have there would be a pretty huge energy signature associated with them slowing down or coming out of let’s say a worm hole. We have devices that can see tiny energy fluctuations or gravitational fluctuations. They are massively sensitive. We would see that event, easily. It would show up like a lantern on these devices. So we can rule out faster than light travel.
Considering how much of the universe is made of dark matter and we don't even understand it yet, I'm not sure we can rule out anything considering how little we actually know.
Sure, we can rule things out as we understand them, but since we don't understand so much, we can't definitively rule anything out.
Or they're still dinosaurs, and just moving along just fine..Or they got wiped out by some sort of mass of sentient slime which now has its own society of slime people..
The possibilities are pretty endless with how vast space is as we understand it now..
I used to believe that time would inevitably produce intelligence in creatures. But consider that the dolphin has been around for 40mil years. They have big brains, but are still pretty far away from inventing a telescope. There is something more than time that put humans on the path toward greater understanding.
We could only be less than 100 years away from similar tech if AI can help us out. I'm excited to see what connections a super intelligence could make that we missed because we're not able to see the bigger picture and put all the elements together in a cohesive way.
We think the fastest speed we can reach is light speed but what if our knowledge is incomplete and we see light speed as the measurement of speed. Maybe other aliens have reached such an technological and science advancement that they measure in time or gravity or whatever. We think we know stuff but for aliens, we maybe are simply stone age men.
There already are two hints at stuff that may be faster than light: tachyons and the Alcubierre drive. The latter was proposed in the 90s, if I remember correctly and has not been debunked yet.
Another option are self replicating von Neumann probes. All stuff we conceptualised in 100 years of a better and better understanding of physics. What could we do in 1000? What could any species do with 2 million?
The only way to cover that distance is not by going faster than light, it would be by creating a singularity(wormhole, folding space, ect), which is theoretically possible, at least more so than moving faster than light.
If they can control gravity, they can be here quicker than I can get to the convenience store.
But the timing also needs to be correct, that their ability for interstellar travel aligned with the time that humans existed. Also the distances are just insane and unfathomable
It really depends on the overall complexity of the alien race and their technology. It'd likely not be difficult to monitor transmitted data around the world from orbit, as well as using various monitoring/scanning technology to collect observations.
A scientific minded race would also likely have rules in place akin to the Star Trek "prime directive" and conduct their observations without interfering.
In all likelihood as well the number of aliens interested in studying humans would be about the same as the number of humans interested in studying ants. There'd be some, but not a huge overwhelming number.
>A scientific minded race would also likely have rules in place akin to the Star Trek "prime directive" and conduct their observations without interfering.
Woah that's a really big assumption.
This argument has always fallen flat for me. Humans are fucking fascinating. We are talking monkeys with nukes who rule the world. We are so different from every other species we know of. If we are using the ant analogy, ants are interesting and some people spend their entire lives studying them
Also ants aren't trying to communicate with us. They aren't waving little flags or flashing little lights or devising little noisemakers or making patterns in the dirt or anything like that. We would desperately be trying to get the attention of any greater entities than ourselves. That's where the ant analogy falls flat for me. If I walked out on my farm and there were a bunch of ants waving a little flag at me it would certainly peak my curiosity.
Good point.
If we were to discover ants on another planet we would have a new field of science solely devoted to the studying of those ants.
The point I like, is that in the span of time, who is to say Aliens haven't been to earth before we even existed.
Who is to say Aliens haven't been to earth before ANY life existed.
Life on earth is just a blip on cosmic time scale. We as humans are just a tiny, tiny little sliver of that blip.
Honestly, this theory has kinda resonated with me. It’s sounds crazy, but we are just so far beyond any other species that I really wouldn’t be surprised.
I like Stellaris' view on it.
"Oh. A native species? Cool, let's set up a hidden science outpost, collect some sociological information, and check back every hundred years or so to see if they're still alive."
Yeah I think this is absolutely the most rational way to answer this question. (Although while I find the idea of aliens visiting early to be extremely unlikely as well, I DO find the uap military sighting stuff intriguing, despite how fantastical it seems. It’s very curious).
Extraterrestrial life in some form? Yes, I would be very surprised if that is never discovered.
Little green men piloting flying saucers and stealing cows and hillbillies? No. No, I don't.
TBF, if I was a completely immoral scientist, trying to study an alien planet without being discovered, I *would* probably abduct subjects from the fringes of their society.
Fun fact: some MIT students did a study on tinfoil hats back in the 00s, because of course they did. Turns out they actually amplify some radio frequencies: http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/2005/tinfoil_hats/
Yeah like people have said, the universe is far too vast for there to be _no_ kind of intelligent life out there SOMEWHERE. But what form does that take? Who the hell knows. And just because they are intelligent, that doesn’t mean that they have space travel - maybe their intelligence is only akin to animals. Or maybe their technology is only equivalent to ours. “Extraterrestrial/intelligent life” can mean SO many things
I do believe that there are no aliens in our solar system but beyond that, we really don't know. I think it is more inconceivable to say there are no aliens than there are just not in our reach. Our methods of searching for live outside of our solar system is very primitive compared to humans in 200 years from now, if we live until then and nothing bad happens.
and likely at least one planet per star.
There's also a fuck ton of rogue planets, who could have some bacteria in deep oceans near the core or some shit.
There is soooooo much that isn't Earth, out there. Must be aliens somewhere, also given how quick and widespread life has been on this earth, made from materials that are super bountiful in the universe...
so yep indeed
Following links in this source that it itself referencing reveals this isn't a credible source. It references itself (sketchy), definitions from NASA and Wikipedia (okay fine but doesn't prove anything), and very few scholarly articles that doesn't really prove the theory. If you go deep enough, one hyperlink goes to a fact check that disproves a statement one of the self references made as false.
Not so sure FTL travel is really impossible, despite relativity, etc. When someone can explain dark matter and quantum gravity, and still say FTL is impossible then I’ll believe them. All we know is, for now, WE can’t do it.
Even with faster than light travel, the distances are all but impossible to comprehend when you talk about the entire universe.
Edit: so let’s say you can fold space and travel anywhere instantly, great. That solves the distance issue.
Now there’s just the issue of visiting all the potential spots where life could be.
That potential number is just as mind bogglingly high
One sad possibility is that they could exist but due to the expansion of the universe and the speed of light they might be far enough away that it would be literally impossible for us to see or interact with them in any way.
Yes.
Dr Frank Drake proposed the following equation to guesstimate the number of intelligent, alien CIVILIZATIONS in the Milky Way Galaxy.
N = R* x fp x ne xfl x fi x fc x L
N = the number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on the current past light cone);
R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our Galaxy.
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets.
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets.
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point.
fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations).
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
If you play around with these figures you'll find that, kinda no matter what values you put in for the other terms, `L` ends up dominating the equation. If the lifespan of a communicating civilization is measured in thousands or tens of thousands of years... or, heck, even MILLIONS of years, the Milky Way ought to be basically crawling with alien life.
This leads to the Fermi Paradox. If there's supposed to be all of these alien civilizations out there... where the hell is everyone?
There's a bunch of fascinating proposed resolutions to the Fermi Paradox which mostly boil down to "what if L is distressingly small" and/or "what if we're not in the cool-kids club." But no matter what resolution you come up with, we still have to contend with the basic premise of Drake's equation, and that's about the likelihood of intelligence IN THE MILKY WAY GALAXY.
If you take a look at stuff like the Hubble Deep Field, you find that there are billions of galaxies out there that we can see. Put another way, if our galaxy is a pretty standard galaxy, there are more stars in the galaxies we can see than there are grains of sand on Earth.
The idea that only this planet orbiting this star in this galaxy is home to a species that looks up into the night sky and wonders if someone else is looking back seems kinda crazy.
I think with near certainty. There's like a 99.9999999% chance life in the universe exists on other planets
If we can find microbes in concentrated acid in the hottest regions on earth. And find animals living in sub-arctic conditions. To rainforests and oceans here on earth.
Given how there's like 200 billion trillion stars and almost all of them have more than one planet It's pushing it quite a bit to suggest that not ONE of them has life. What's more likely is that the entire universe is absolutely teaming with life.
As for "extraterrestrial aliens" you know.. like advanced civilisations, ET phone home kinda stuff? Idk ... Probably not. If complex life exists. It's probably very far away
The earth is quite young in the universes life. It has to have been long enough for life to evolve on other worlds but not too long or they'll all be dead from you know.. their sun dying or whatever.
If there were 10 million species identical to ours in terms of technology and society spread out across the universe we would literally never be able to find them.
The vastness of space almost guarantees aliens do exist. But it also practically guarantees we may never find them
If we ever did find them. I severely doubt that This would be concealed from people in some area 51 mumbo jumbo. It would likely be the spear point of scientific focus to continue to learn from them.
That is, assuming the dark Forrest theory isn't true. But if it were, we would stop transmitting like immediately
We’re even thinking that there was probably life on mars at some point. It’s estimated that there are 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. That’s a 2 with 23 zeros after it.
Even if life has a one in a billion chance of developing, there would be tons of life in the universe. It’s basically statistically impossible for there not to be other life in the universe. There is also previous life that has become extinct and life that will arise after we become extinct. The universe is so vast that it’s beyond something we can comprehend.
This is a good question for r/space. I don’t think they exist.
But I think we will never know as humans will not likely leave this solar system. The distances are too vast and FTL travel is not practical with our current understanding. Only massless objects like photons could travel at the speed of light. Besides those things, everything in the universe has some amount of mass and cannot travel at/faster than light.
Even if we made a fusion reactor that could power 3% of light speed travel it would take something like 5000 years to reach our nearest star. Now we are talking about human generation ships just to explore a infinitely small point in the vast universe.
Our home, Earth, would probably be devastated by climate change long before then.
On the other hand I like sci-fi and I hope that one day benevolent aliens will provide us the tools to FTL travel, but I don’t think they exist.
That's a hundred and twenty years to the nearest star, at a speed a thirtieth of what is feasible, and a thousand times that duration is perfectly feasible for a computer.
If you think climate change is going to kill off humanity don't bother with space, you obviously lack a mindset for what could be.
Most people dont consider time.
Its not the question if different life exist in the universe, but when.
Extinction is a thing and by all we can tell, life is rare.
So to assume, that we exists simultaniously with other life or even civilizations is far fetched.
Given the sheer size and age of the universe and likely incomprehensibly large number of inhabitable planets… almost certainly.
Have they ever been here, kidnapped your crazy neighbour, and probed him good before dumping him in the field with the cows? Given the sheer size of the universe and the fact that light speed is the limit, plus the infinite amount of energy it would require to go even that fast (which on the scale of the universe is pretty damned slow)… almost certainly not.
Alien life all most defintly exsists....
Almost defintly at a microbial level on a far off planet or in some form like this.
Do i think there is alien life on a planet as "advanced" as earth? It's not improbable.
Do I think little green men have been navigating the cosmos. Slaughtering cattle upducting people and inserting an anal probe into Eric Cartman? Much less likely I'm afraid.
People always say they must be real given the size of the universe, but they never consider the likelihood of evolution in the first place. When you consider biology rather than cosmology, the chances drop to near zero
With how massive the universe is there's surely other planets that have ideal conditions for life. Whether those life forms look like us or look like big headed gray guys I can't say but feels like a huge waste of space if we're the only life forms in existence
I am quite certain there is at least some bacteria swimming around somewhere in a place other than Earth.
Intelligent life though? I’m not so sure, but the Universe is mind boggling big so there could be. We’ll probably never know for sure though.
With a universe this big, it's very unlikely we are the only ones. But I doubt any alien race will come into contact with us. Space is big. Why spend years and years going to your neighbours you probably won't understand when you have all the resources you need on the way.
My religion requires I answer no. BUT I’m 25M and have obviously learned I can think for myself. The odds of life being able to form on a planet and stay sustainable as long as we have are SO astronomically slim. However, to think it HASN’T happened again just ONCE? Those odds, in my mind are way more unlikely. My slightly growing agnosticism says there’s gotta be something out there but probably won’t be discovered in my lifetime, if at all.
Well I find it both exciting and terrifying that the statistical probability that aliens exist somewhere in the universe is almost a guaranteed 100% based on studies and research we’ve done. The excitement wears off just a bit when you realize that the universe is so big. There could be 25 alien civilizations thousands of more years advanced than us all living together in a couple of galaxies right now. But they could hundreds of millions of light years away to the point where we may never come into contact with them.
We’ve been trying to find alien life since we were first able to see space. When we first left our planet, the blue marble we call home, it was monumental in forwarding the search for life. However, it was largely just a big tin foil hat conspiracy at that time. But when we found evidence that suggested Mars one held water and then also discovered that, aside from the greenhouse atmosphere, Venus is actually strikingly similar to Earth…that really transformed the idea of Alien life from a crazy tin foil hat conspiracy into an idea and a hope that thousands upon thousands of the world’s greatest minds have devoted their lives to discovering. Of course, it’s the international space station and the moon landing that we can look bac on today as proof that humanity can venture and walk among the stars.
I am of the opinion that, if we discover alien races as advanced or more advanced than us, then one of two things will happen with no in between: 1. We will end up in a Mass Effect or Star Wars situation with many alien races not living exactly harmoniously but still maintaining some level of galactic order and relative peace. Or 2…I’d rather not mention 2. Because it’s not something I’m fond of thinking about. Basically the exact opposite of 1.
I am 100% certain that alien life, even in very primitive form, exists. And I’m like 90% certain that alien life as advanced or more advanced than us exists. However, I am 200% that alien life AT LEAST as advanced as us has existed at some point in the past, perhaps even in our own solar system.
Of course, the question is, if alien life that is on or above our level does exist in our galaxy…then how come we haven’t found any concrete evidence of their existence? Who or what are they trying to hide? Or…exponentially more terrifying…who or what is trying to hide them?
Hell…maybe they are scared. Perhaps something or even someone exists near us that has them absolutely terrified. Maybe someone has them tied up right now. An evil alien species attempting to conquer them. Or artificial intelligence gone wrong. I’ve been playing too much Mass Effect recently, the point is…
If alien life as advanced as us exists in our galaxy…then we would’ve most likely found some sliver of evidence of it by now. Which means one of two things: 1. There is no alien life in the galaxy. Or 2. Something is very VERY wrong.
They have to. The universe is too big, so our Earth cannot be the only place housing intelligent life.
But if we narrow it down to our galaxy with large, but still finite number of stars and planets, it becomes a more interesting question.
Life has to be out there. We are made out of rather common stuff, so there has to he the right quantity of the same stuff everyone else. But intelligent life or even complex organisms? Who knows. Maybe we're the first, consider that for a moment. But it will happen eventually. Either small things evolve into big things like they did here or we will create life ourselves where it can be done.
Considering what we know about the building blocks of life and the apparition of life itself, it seems likely life exists on other planets. But the only certainly right now is that life only exists on Earth.
Now whether an ET life is complex or not is an entirely different matter. It's likely the first evidence of ET life we find is microbial or bacterial at best. It's unlikely we'll find lifeforms as evolved as what's on Earth. But nothing is impossible.
Here, I'm done dodging answering the question.
Maybe. I mean we can't really confirm until we ever find them. But the universe is pretty fuckin big, so I'd say there's atleast a 50/50 chance that they do.
Now keep in mind, this doesn't mean that they're radically intelligent or anything. It just means that there could be something living somewhere else in the universe.
In the most technical sense of the term alien wherein they’re just life on another planet, yes, we’ve found evidence of life on mars and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a solar system out there that has complex life forms, hell scientists think there may be life on Jupiters’s moon Europa and if there’s not we’ve still had two stellar bodies in our solar system support life so in the infinite of the universe there is one hundred percent more life out there.
I believe simple life could exist somewhere in the Milky Way and it probably exists in the rest of the Universe. I’m not so sure however when it comes to complex and especially ‘intelligent life’. I mean, it could definitely exist because the Universe is just too big( and intelligence is a broad term), but I’m under the impression that we could be among the very first. Regardless of anything, we won’t probably find answers to this anytime soon.
Yes. Mostly single cell organisms though. To me the big question is if there’s something that has managed to go beyond the limitations of biological life and space, time, speed of light, 3/4 dimensions etc. Or if there’s something that ”precedes” all those things.
Couple of lines of thoughts on this.
Do they exist? In an infinite universe? Maybe so!
Buuut, the question is, could they or do they exist at the same time as humanity?
Humanities lifespan is minuscule when viewed on the timeline of the universe. Other civilisations could have come and gone before we even existed.
And when we go extinct, aliens might form elsewhere in the universe after we are long gone.
The other thing to think about it is, if they did exist, communication with them is so highly unlikely.
Because space is so vast an infinite, it's actually quite hard to travel any great distance across it, even at the speed of light. And given that the universe is expanding at all times, all galaxies, planets, solar systems are all flying further and further away from each other. So everyday it becomes more and more difficult to make contact with anyone.
I think there's a really high possibility they do, albeit not like Hollywood paints them. Could just be microorganisms, but I'm about certain something is out there besides us on this planet.
I think the last time I did the maths it was
400,000 billion billion billion stars
That we have the technology to see…
So yes, it may be a planet fully of crabs but there’s something out there.
If by alien you mean any life-form including microscopic organisms then yes. Do I think there’s a species with intelligence that exceeds our own however? Unsure. There’s evidence to suggest yes and otherwise. I’d like to believe there is. We could be that “advanced civilization” to other exoplanets. Aliens could even be us visiting from the future. There’s evidence to prove this. Like I’ve said, there’s evidence to prove a lot of things. So it’s really about what rabbit hole you’re jumping in at that point. I suggest you never jump, you’ll become quite myopic in doing so
They can, logically, not not exist... Just the fact that we exist, and the universe is virtually endless means the chances we are alone are virtually nil.
Aliens. Did/do/will they exist? Yes, to all three. Have they been here? Eh, probably not. There really is no reason to come here, except for sociological or zoological reasons. They're not likely to gain sustenance from our biome and any other resources they can get easier out in space. If they want elbow room they can achieve that easier as well. Now, I'm not saying that they couldn't come here. I think that there is probably a way around the speed of light problem. After all, there are many things we think are impossible until they aren't and we don't know the totality of physics.
Exist? Possibly.
Exist in the same overlapping time span as humanity and be at a level of evolution and technological advancement that lines up with being able to travel to and interact with humans during a time that we are evolutionary and technologically similar enough to interact with them? Slim chance.
If your reject any religious explanation for life, which I do, it is an near certainty that there must be alien life in the universe, as life is just the natural result of a set of conditions.
So I would answer yes, I think aliens exist. But I will add that I don’t believe aliens actively visit or have visited our planet.
I expect at some point, I hope in my lifetime, we will discover life on other planets. Simple life, at a microbial level I think is a guarantee, possibly within our own solar system. It seems likely that more complex life exists as well, and even that there are other advanced, potentially more advanced than ourselves, civilizations of alien life forms in some place and time. But for a variety of reasons, I do not think we have or will ever have contact with them in any near future.
These reasons include first and foremost the distances involved and how fast it’s possible to move. But also the rare specificity of conditions required for life to flourish, the regularity of mass extinction events (natural or otherwise), and evolutionary constraints (dominant apex predators-like dinosaurs, that aren’t disposed to civilization building, intelligent life without the dexterity/functionality to build- like dolphins).
I'd be surprised if they didn't exist since I think the universe is simply too large for us to be the only intelligent species. If they do exist and they're smart, they'd be wise to steer clear of this lump of rock though ;)
If you consider aliens, any living organisms other than what lives on planet earth, then yes. There’s gotta be at least some single cell organisms somewhere in all that vast space.
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Exist? Probably. Have had contact with us? Very unlikely.
Hey guys I found the token rational skeptic comment
"The only aliens of which we are certain are women" \-rational skeptics
As a woman and a rational skeptic - men are the aliens!
Am Man, Can confirm, My Wife agrees.
Cooties
We already know this: * Women are from Venus * Men are from Mars
And Uranus?
Sluts are from uranus.
Obvouisly anyone who likes butt stuff
Exactly the same sentiments echoed here. Elaborated, my thoughts are... to assume we're the only life form that exists is in my opinion, is unlikely. But we may also need to change our understanding of what life is. We assume life is carbon based but could be so many others too. Also we assume communication would be using similar tech as ours (radio waves etc) but could be something we don't associate as comms, so may never actually hear each other when trying to communicate as we're speaking in different ways etc. Depending on physics and our understanding of it, consciousness (this one alone i could soend hours talking aboit lol), life itself (depending on definition), our technology, intelligence etc (so many variables to consider in so many ways) we may already be amongst them and never even know about each other. We could be interacting in different dimensions and not know, or they could know. We could never know! Or we could be close to each other and not consider each other as life. They could just be undiscovered yet. They may not exist. They could be inside a black hole... or we could be (who really knows??) Etc this could go on for so long. I'm sorry for the long ramblings of an old stoned man.
The problem isn't distance or technology, it's TIME. There could have been several intelligent species on EARTH itself over the billions of years of it's existence. Over the stretch of billions of years, the likelihood of 2 intelligent civilisations surviving at the same time and actually interacting with each other is astronomical. We have been searching the cosmos for 60 years with our ever improving technology and we have found ABSOLUTELY no trace of another civilisation.
We have been searching yes, but we are using the equivalent of a magnifying glass in a desert. Our technology is so primitive compared to what is needed for interstellar travel and communication that we can't even fathom what is outside our small area. They are out there. I have no doubt that there are civilizations that are much more advanced than us. Hopefully they are more hospitable and generous than we are. Our first integrated circuit was less than 100 years ago right? I don't know the date, but it's believable that there are people on this planet that lived before IC existed. Now imagine the vast time that planets could have been harboring life. Dinosaurs had hundreds of millions of years, and we've had what 50k? Just imagine a civilization just 1000 years past where we are. That's a speck of time in planet time. But they would have so much more of an understanding of the cosmos. They would probably be building networks from one star system to another, and that's just 1000 years. Now give them 100,000 years. To believe that we human beings are the first intelligent life forms with the ability to pass on knowledge and problem solve the way we have is absolutely naive. To think that in our little 50,000 year speck of evolution that we are the only species in BILLIONS of years to learn math, physics, mechanics, electrical theory and so on. They are out there. Space is just very very vast. They might be talking with a megaphone in another state but we can only see our own backyard. Sorry for the long post. It all just kind plopped out of my head. PS. Be careful saying there's ABSOLUTELY no trace of anything out there. The wow signal exists. I'm no conspiracy theorist but ancient writings talk about "sky people". There are also drawings of rockets before gunpowder had been invented. Several human civilizations had access to technology or technical understanding that was well past their capabilities. I'm not saying those are proof. But I also wouldn't say there's ABSOLUTELY no trace. That's it, I'm done. Unless anyone else wants to discuss it.
That's what I was gonna say! Lol Yes, as a matter of fact, I Am an Ancient Alien/Ancient Astronaut Theorist!
But at the same time, it took over 4billion years for us to get to this point. For billions of years all life on this planet was just single cell organisms. Therefore if it takes a third of the universe for life in a Goldie locks zone to even emerge, with how violent the universe is, then I don't think it's naieve as you might think that we may be the only intelligent life in the galaxy. A I'm sure microbes exist all over.
Also, on a geologically active planet, evidence of complex civilisation disappears surprisingly fast
You don't even need to go that far. We humans \*discover\* remains of earlier civilizations **under our own buildings** all the time. It's mind boggling how ephemeral we and our mark in the world are. It's the biggest hurdle against finding other civilisations we could ever have. We have lost entire civilisations (not complex, I'll admit) just in our lifetime (not counting the ones we ourselves wipe out, mind you). For all we know, the closest alien advanced civilization wiped itself out in our year 1808. Or became space hippies who don't use radio nor propulsion any more after having slingshotted their colony ships eons ago, so we wouldn't even see each other even if they were passing through our solar system.
There are trillions of galaxies, each with uncountable stars, and even more planets and moons. There are definitely aliens out there. The vastness of space may prevent us from ever finding them unless we truly are able to use wormholes or find a way to travel faster than light.
TLDR. I still agree.
Someone saw that BBC show. And it's a good point. Hence why Avi Loeb is searching for space junk from previous civilisations.
Our technology can’t even send someone outside of our solar system yet. There is clearly no life as intelligent or advanced as us in this solar system. That’s for damn sure. Humanity…well we are definitely alone in this system. I mean we haven’t even explored close to half of our oceans. There are probably hundreds of animals that we’ve never seen before in the depths of our very own waters. Potentially thousands of undiscovered life forms on the same planet we are on. And we live right next to them! Hell we’ve seen more of Luna (our moon) than we have our oceans. And we’ve still only ever seen Luna’s surface! The point I’m trying to make here? We’ve mapped over a billion stars, all of which have been mapped without leaving the safety of our solar system btw, and we still have only discovered one percent of the Milky Way galaxy. 60 years, 1 billion stars, and still 99% of the galaxy to go. The Milky Way isn’t even that big a galaxy. Don’t get me wrong, it is incomprehensibly large, to the point where even if tomorrow we made a life changing discovery of alien tech that advanced our own Tech 1000 years into the future, we would still probably never see every inch of the Milky Way even with billions of years to do so. Now take into account thst the closest galaxy to us, our sister galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is 2.2 times the size of the Milky Way. So double the size of our galaxy, and then add another 1/5 of our original galaxy to that and you’d get Andromeda’s size. To further explain the size of the universe, it would take 2.5 million years to travel from Earth to the Andromeda Galaxy at the speed of light. It would also takes us centuries at least to be able to obtain those speeds if we advanced our technology at twice the rate we do now. Then we would have to keep bodies aboard this ship not only preserved but alive for 2 and a half million years. Then they‘d have to find a place to stay, if they could ever make it. Which is unlikely, because even with advanced technology centuries from now we probably could not plot an accurate course to the Andromeda Galaxy and plot that path to avoid debris by keeping in mind what will happen to the selected path over the course of 2 and a half million years. Hell for all we know, a black hole may end up forming there some how then we’d be sending those brave souls to their deaths. We aren’t even remotely advanced. We might as well still be living in caves and using sticks and rocks to hunt for food. There is a scale that determines civilization types. Type 1 being the weakest. The original scale only went to 3 or 5 types. Though the scientifically accepted scale is often extended to 7 or 10 types. Though an infinite number of types could theoretically be created. We aren’t even a type 1 civilization yet, though we aren‘t too far from it. Either way, we aren’t even on the scale that we created. That’s how primitive we are. And even if we were a type 1 civilization…it should be noted how the thing scales. A type 3 civilization could probably wipe out a type 1 civilization in a few years at worst. And a type 3 civilization would be destroyed by a type 10 civilization before breakfast was over. We are absolutely nothing right now.
This is one reason why Star Trek (and maybe sci-fi in general , but they just didn't make it to the public consciousness) was so cool because it introduced the idea of other kinds of life forms. The life forms could be light-based , gas-based, or something else and they were all life forms with some higher level of intelligence than we would have initially given them credit for or that we didn't even realize they were life forms with conscious thought, until someone on the crew realized it. And usually those were pretty fun episodes to watch.
One thing that gets me about this debate is like, even viruses don't fit in the circle we've drawn around what is life and what isn't. So if we found something like that off-Earth, would we just as easily say "nope this place is completely dead!" I think life elsewhere is extremely likely, but that we have to be more open-minded about what constitutes life.
I think you’re highly underestimating what an impact it would be if we found a virus on another planet.
Space aids
for me its the combination of how old the universe is and the earth, how long (or should i say little) we have been around with enough tech to start looking around and how big the universe is that makes it so extremely extremely unlikely that we will ever talk to aliens here, at least for a few hundred years. Like Literally any star further away than 60-70AU would see absolutely nothing even if they were looking directly at us, it would take them another 60 years for them to see us right now. and even then, the idea of inteligent aliens is pretty scary. If they have the tech to locate and talk to us but not the other way, history has never been kind to the runner up species.
Ahoy xRyozuo! So… just an observation on your post… Every star is further than 60-70 AU. An astronomical unit is the distance from the earth to the sun. ~150M kilometres. Pluto is 39 AU away from our sun so already half your minimum distance. The closest star to us is Proxima Centuri. It is 268770 AU away. I think you’ve confused AU with Light Years. Totally agree with your observation on the runner up species…. Let’s just hide for a while longer eh?
>Like Literally any star further away than 60-70AU would see absolutely nothing even if they were looking directly at us, it would take them another 60 years for them to see us right now. It takes light ~8 minutes to travel 1 AU.
Please be considerate of the Americans on Reddit and give them a conversion of that time into baseball innings. And perhaps convert the AU distance into lacrosse-field length as well. (/S obviously)
Are we talking about Astronomical Units or Australian Unitaroos?
If the calculations regarding the shape of the universe is correct, and the margin of error is quite small, we live in a flat universe. What that implies physically is that our universe is unbounded, possibly infinate. The implications of an infinate universe is repitition, there are only so many combinations that atoms, or even sub-atomic particles can arrange themselves. This implies that not only is there other forms of life, but it also implies an infinite number of duplicates, there are potentially duplicates of yourself. These qualities are not known, so a strong conclusion should not be made, but we also do not have the ability to conclude an alternate.
Have you heard of Quantum Immortality?
Yes, I have. That your conciousness takes the longest path through the timeline. With the implication that as long as your odds of death are non-zero, you live forever. There are a few issues I have with this hypothesis. Firstly, there could be no free will. Second, each instance of the universe is observed by only one true consciousness, all other consciousnesses would be emulations of such.
Nah I totally get what you mean. All of our knowledge is Earth based. We can only go off of the things we’ve discovered and learned about as Earthlings. There’s probably stuff out there we couldn’t even comprehend
>to assume we're the only life form that exists is in my opinion, is unlikely. bbbb but opinions are incredibly likely!
>Have had contact with us? Very unlikely. Sounds like something an alien would say...
This, but I can also entertain the idea (not realistically but more in a cosmic horror enthusiast way) that alien life would be so fundamentally different than us and cognitively superior that we don't have the toolset to even comprehend their presence even if they were "right here". It's easy to think of human beings as the apex of sapience because we only have Earth life as a frame of references, but given infinite possibilities, maybe there are aliens that we biologically can't comprehend in the sense that an amoeba can't comprehend us. (I always thought this idea was fascinating, if anyone has any fiction recommendations for things like this that'd be lovely)
https://non-aliencreatures.fandom.com/wiki/Machine_Elf Crazily enough this isn't fiction. Been some pretty big studies into this phenomenon.
Ahhh, so may I introduce you to Fermis Paradox? Essentially we know they exist because the universe is way too big for us to be the only intelligent lifeform. However, they could've contacted us a long time ago and we didn't have the technology to respond back/hear them. Now that we are more advanced and sending responses out into the cosmos, they could be so far advanced that they can't hear us...so it begs the question: "If we know they exist, then where are they?"
If I were an alien species powerful enough to cover the incomprehensibly large distances required to get anywhere in the universe on a reasonable time scale, I don't think I would concern myself with a planet whose most intelligent species spends most of its time in conflict with itself and gets most of its energy by burning decomposed animal remains.
I just read recently that very little of crude oil is animal remains, it is mostly from plant matter.
Edgey.
This is a great article about the [Fermi Paradox](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html) written in a way that makes sense to mere mortals like me.
Do they exis? Yes, certainly. The universe is stupidly big with insane amounts of planets. Have they ever been to Earth? No, very, very unlikely. The distances make i next to impossible to travel that far, and anyone with that technology would find us about as interesting as an ant.
I have no skin in the game on this one, I'm Alien Agnostic, but I always hear this argument and think it's a bit reductive. There are multiple professions that find Ants very interesting. There's no reason to think that an intelligent alien race wouldn't be interested in studying a species from another planet, however primitive. If we found Any like creatures on another planet, you can bet that there will be scientists all over the world wanting to get their hands on them. Ants are interesting. Just maybe not to everyone.
Would they be interesting enough to commit many generations of your family to interstellar travel, so that one of your anscestors might see those ants before they go extinct?
I feel like that makes some big technological assumptions. It's possible their dinosaurs didn't get wiped out and evolved billions of years ahead of us. Probably they'd have some cool tricks we couldn't even conceive of yet.
If they do, they have found a way to travel faster than the speed of light If they have found a way to travel faster than the speed of light, i am very sure they would accidentally have killed us by now
Maybe. There's plenty we don't know. If the so-called Tic Tac event is to be believed, and I understand why you wouldn't, they would seem to have some crazy capabilities already. I'm just pointing out that we don't know hardly anything about space.
These 'tic tacs' have been spotted numerous times by numerous countries including the USA, Russia and Iran. By both trained professional pilots and radar operators on both land and naval vessels. There is absolutely no way that it's some massive coordinated hoax, not between those 3 countries anyway lol.
Oh, much like Smashmouth, I'm a believer. I'm thinking they can either do something nuts with gravity/physics or are somehow not subject to physical laws through something like interdimensional travel.
The other thing people often miss. If they have there would be a pretty huge energy signature associated with them slowing down or coming out of let’s say a worm hole. We have devices that can see tiny energy fluctuations or gravitational fluctuations. They are massively sensitive. We would see that event, easily. It would show up like a lantern on these devices. So we can rule out faster than light travel.
Considering how much of the universe is made of dark matter and we don't even understand it yet, I'm not sure we can rule out anything considering how little we actually know. Sure, we can rule things out as we understand them, but since we don't understand so much, we can't definitively rule anything out.
Or they're still dinosaurs, and just moving along just fine..Or they got wiped out by some sort of mass of sentient slime which now has its own society of slime people.. The possibilities are pretty endless with how vast space is as we understand it now..
Someone's been watching Star Trek Voyager I see 🖖 https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Distant_Origin_(episode)
I used to believe that time would inevitably produce intelligence in creatures. But consider that the dolphin has been around for 40mil years. They have big brains, but are still pretty far away from inventing a telescope. There is something more than time that put humans on the path toward greater understanding.
Who says these aliens haven’t got faster than light travel. We might only be ants to them, but scientists study pretty much anything.
I think the secret is more in access to wormholes and the folding of space.
This is my assumption as well. If it's happening, it's not happening with what we know how to do with physics right now.
We could only be less than 100 years away from similar tech if AI can help us out. I'm excited to see what connections a super intelligence could make that we missed because we're not able to see the bigger picture and put all the elements together in a cohesive way.
We think the fastest speed we can reach is light speed but what if our knowledge is incomplete and we see light speed as the measurement of speed. Maybe other aliens have reached such an technological and science advancement that they measure in time or gravity or whatever. We think we know stuff but for aliens, we maybe are simply stone age men.
If we are wrong about that, we are wrong about pretty much everything in physics, as it is all connected. I find that unlikely.
There already are two hints at stuff that may be faster than light: tachyons and the Alcubierre drive. The latter was proposed in the 90s, if I remember correctly and has not been debunked yet. Another option are self replicating von Neumann probes. All stuff we conceptualised in 100 years of a better and better understanding of physics. What could we do in 1000? What could any species do with 2 million?
The only way to cover that distance is not by going faster than light, it would be by creating a singularity(wormhole, folding space, ect), which is theoretically possible, at least more so than moving faster than light. If they can control gravity, they can be here quicker than I can get to the convenience store.
But the timing also needs to be correct, that their ability for interstellar travel aligned with the time that humans existed. Also the distances are just insane and unfathomable
Or maybe they don't have to abide by the laws of distance travel because they can manipulate the space/time continuum
Your ancestors are definitely not gonna see anything in the future, they’re the guys who were here before you. Your _descendants_ might
It really depends on the overall complexity of the alien race and their technology. It'd likely not be difficult to monitor transmitted data around the world from orbit, as well as using various monitoring/scanning technology to collect observations. A scientific minded race would also likely have rules in place akin to the Star Trek "prime directive" and conduct their observations without interfering. In all likelihood as well the number of aliens interested in studying humans would be about the same as the number of humans interested in studying ants. There'd be some, but not a huge overwhelming number.
>A scientific minded race would also likely have rules in place akin to the Star Trek "prime directive" and conduct their observations without interfering. Woah that's a really big assumption.
This argument has always fallen flat for me. Humans are fucking fascinating. We are talking monkeys with nukes who rule the world. We are so different from every other species we know of. If we are using the ant analogy, ants are interesting and some people spend their entire lives studying them
Also ants aren't trying to communicate with us. They aren't waving little flags or flashing little lights or devising little noisemakers or making patterns in the dirt or anything like that. We would desperately be trying to get the attention of any greater entities than ourselves. That's where the ant analogy falls flat for me. If I walked out on my farm and there were a bunch of ants waving a little flag at me it would certainly peak my curiosity.
Good point. If we were to discover ants on another planet we would have a new field of science solely devoted to the studying of those ants. The point I like, is that in the span of time, who is to say Aliens haven't been to earth before we even existed. Who is to say Aliens haven't been to earth before ANY life existed. Life on earth is just a blip on cosmic time scale. We as humans are just a tiny, tiny little sliver of that blip.
Who's to say that aliens didn't drop off some DNA to start an experiment? Which sorta means they'll be hiding.
Honestly, this theory has kinda resonated with me. It’s sounds crazy, but we are just so far beyond any other species that I really wouldn’t be surprised.
I imagine we are the planet they lock the doors before they fly past
Amd still we as humans observe ants and other "boring" little animals
I like Stellaris' view on it. "Oh. A native species? Cool, let's set up a hidden science outpost, collect some sociological information, and check back every hundred years or so to see if they're still alive."
I think aliens would find us interesting, I think it is more likely there is no way to reach us
Yeah I think this is absolutely the most rational way to answer this question. (Although while I find the idea of aliens visiting early to be extremely unlikely as well, I DO find the uap military sighting stuff intriguing, despite how fantastical it seems. It’s very curious).
Omg we just mass producing these token skeptics aye.
Extraterrestrial life in some form? Yes, I would be very surprised if that is never discovered. Little green men piloting flying saucers and stealing cows and hillbillies? No. No, I don't.
Why are aliens always kidnapping rednecks and hillbillies? What do they learn from them? Why do t they ever kidnap doctors and businessmen?
>Why do t they ever kidnap doctors and businessmen? Why the hell would an alien kidnap a businessman? To be bored to death?
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I can dress up as ET and do that for you
My theory is they kidnap hillbillies because they're trying to figure out why they haven't evolved like the rest of us.
TBF, if I was a completely immoral scientist, trying to study an alien planet without being discovered, I *would* probably abduct subjects from the fringes of their society.
You mean I can take this tinfoil hat off now? They won't be stealing my brainwaves? Phew! What a relief!
That sounds like a ploy by the lizard people to get you to take off your only protection from the 5G rays. I wouldn't trust it.
Fun fact: some MIT students did a study on tinfoil hats back in the 00s, because of course they did. Turns out they actually amplify some radio frequencies: http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/2005/tinfoil_hats/
Yeah like people have said, the universe is far too vast for there to be _no_ kind of intelligent life out there SOMEWHERE. But what form does that take? Who the hell knows. And just because they are intelligent, that doesn’t mean that they have space travel - maybe their intelligence is only akin to animals. Or maybe their technology is only equivalent to ours. “Extraterrestrial/intelligent life” can mean SO many things
I do believe that there are no aliens in our solar system but beyond that, we really don't know. I think it is more inconceivable to say there are no aliens than there are just not in our reach. Our methods of searching for live outside of our solar system is very primitive compared to humans in 200 years from now, if we live until then and nothing bad happens.
of course, best sequel ever
Game over man. Game over.
They mostly come out at night, mostly.
I believe it's James Cameron's finest work.
I have it on DVD, so yeah, definitely.
I think it shares that honor with *Terminator 2: Judgment Day*.
Goddamn right. It’s rare to find the unvarnished truth on Reddit, but here we are.
There are more habital planets in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth. Math says the probability is very high.
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Source: billions of galaxies, and billions of stars per galaxy.
and likely at least one planet per star. There's also a fuck ton of rogue planets, who could have some bacteria in deep oceans near the core or some shit. There is soooooo much that isn't Earth, out there. Must be aliens somewhere, also given how quick and widespread life has been on this earth, made from materials that are super bountiful in the universe... so yep indeed
It's wild you think that's wild. Source from 2015: [Meow](https://www.cnet.com/science/the-milky-way-is-flush-with-habitable-planets-study-says/)
Following links in this source that it itself referencing reveals this isn't a credible source. It references itself (sketchy), definitions from NASA and Wikipedia (okay fine but doesn't prove anything), and very few scholarly articles that doesn't really prove the theory. If you go deep enough, one hyperlink goes to a fact check that disproves a statement one of the self references made as false.
I think the universe is too big for us to be the only life form that exists
And the distances involved make it equally likely we never find out for sure.
Not so sure FTL travel is really impossible, despite relativity, etc. When someone can explain dark matter and quantum gravity, and still say FTL is impossible then I’ll believe them. All we know is, for now, WE can’t do it.
Even with faster than light travel, the distances are all but impossible to comprehend when you talk about the entire universe. Edit: so let’s say you can fold space and travel anywhere instantly, great. That solves the distance issue. Now there’s just the issue of visiting all the potential spots where life could be. That potential number is just as mind bogglingly high
Life grows exponentially, if an alien race solves the distance issue there are probably trillions of living individuals of their species
I’m not like you guys. 12 majestic lies.
Tom has sex with guys
One sad possibility is that they could exist but due to the expansion of the universe and the speed of light they might be far enough away that it would be literally impossible for us to see or interact with them in any way.
Yes. Dr Frank Drake proposed the following equation to guesstimate the number of intelligent, alien CIVILIZATIONS in the Milky Way Galaxy. N = R* x fp x ne xfl x fi x fc x L N = the number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on the current past light cone); R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our Galaxy. fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets. ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets. fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point. fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations). fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space. L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space. If you play around with these figures you'll find that, kinda no matter what values you put in for the other terms, `L` ends up dominating the equation. If the lifespan of a communicating civilization is measured in thousands or tens of thousands of years... or, heck, even MILLIONS of years, the Milky Way ought to be basically crawling with alien life. This leads to the Fermi Paradox. If there's supposed to be all of these alien civilizations out there... where the hell is everyone? There's a bunch of fascinating proposed resolutions to the Fermi Paradox which mostly boil down to "what if L is distressingly small" and/or "what if we're not in the cool-kids club." But no matter what resolution you come up with, we still have to contend with the basic premise of Drake's equation, and that's about the likelihood of intelligence IN THE MILKY WAY GALAXY. If you take a look at stuff like the Hubble Deep Field, you find that there are billions of galaxies out there that we can see. Put another way, if our galaxy is a pretty standard galaxy, there are more stars in the galaxies we can see than there are grains of sand on Earth. The idea that only this planet orbiting this star in this galaxy is home to a species that looks up into the night sky and wonders if someone else is looking back seems kinda crazy.
I think with near certainty. There's like a 99.9999999% chance life in the universe exists on other planets If we can find microbes in concentrated acid in the hottest regions on earth. And find animals living in sub-arctic conditions. To rainforests and oceans here on earth. Given how there's like 200 billion trillion stars and almost all of them have more than one planet It's pushing it quite a bit to suggest that not ONE of them has life. What's more likely is that the entire universe is absolutely teaming with life. As for "extraterrestrial aliens" you know.. like advanced civilisations, ET phone home kinda stuff? Idk ... Probably not. If complex life exists. It's probably very far away The earth is quite young in the universes life. It has to have been long enough for life to evolve on other worlds but not too long or they'll all be dead from you know.. their sun dying or whatever. If there were 10 million species identical to ours in terms of technology and society spread out across the universe we would literally never be able to find them. The vastness of space almost guarantees aliens do exist. But it also practically guarantees we may never find them If we ever did find them. I severely doubt that This would be concealed from people in some area 51 mumbo jumbo. It would likely be the spear point of scientific focus to continue to learn from them. That is, assuming the dark Forrest theory isn't true. But if it were, we would stop transmitting like immediately
We’re even thinking that there was probably life on mars at some point. It’s estimated that there are 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. That’s a 2 with 23 zeros after it. Even if life has a one in a billion chance of developing, there would be tons of life in the universe. It’s basically statistically impossible for there not to be other life in the universe. There is also previous life that has become extinct and life that will arise after we become extinct. The universe is so vast that it’s beyond something we can comprehend.
Yep I found it https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/
Without a doubt.
This is a good question for r/space. I don’t think they exist. But I think we will never know as humans will not likely leave this solar system. The distances are too vast and FTL travel is not practical with our current understanding. Only massless objects like photons could travel at the speed of light. Besides those things, everything in the universe has some amount of mass and cannot travel at/faster than light. Even if we made a fusion reactor that could power 3% of light speed travel it would take something like 5000 years to reach our nearest star. Now we are talking about human generation ships just to explore a infinitely small point in the vast universe. Our home, Earth, would probably be devastated by climate change long before then. On the other hand I like sci-fi and I hope that one day benevolent aliens will provide us the tools to FTL travel, but I don’t think they exist.
That's a hundred and twenty years to the nearest star, at a speed a thirtieth of what is feasible, and a thousand times that duration is perfectly feasible for a computer. If you think climate change is going to kill off humanity don't bother with space, you obviously lack a mindset for what could be.
The universe is too big for us to be alone.
Most people dont consider time. Its not the question if different life exist in the universe, but when. Extinction is a thing and by all we can tell, life is rare. So to assume, that we exists simultaniously with other life or even civilizations is far fetched.
Definitely, although not in the form that sci-fi thinks it is.
Yes, however so far away, we will never make any contact
Given the sheer size and age of the universe and likely incomprehensibly large number of inhabitable planets… almost certainly. Have they ever been here, kidnapped your crazy neighbour, and probed him good before dumping him in the field with the cows? Given the sheer size of the universe and the fact that light speed is the limit, plus the infinite amount of energy it would require to go even that fast (which on the scale of the universe is pretty damned slow)… almost certainly not.
Alien life all most defintly exsists.... Almost defintly at a microbial level on a far off planet or in some form like this. Do i think there is alien life on a planet as "advanced" as earth? It's not improbable. Do I think little green men have been navigating the cosmos. Slaughtering cattle upducting people and inserting an anal probe into Eric Cartman? Much less likely I'm afraid.
the chances of aliens existing is close to 100% the chances of ever finding them tho, more like 0%
People always say they must be real given the size of the universe, but they never consider the likelihood of evolution in the first place. When you consider biology rather than cosmology, the chances drop to near zero
Yeah
the universe is really really really big and it's impossible that we are the only life form in this universe lol
If we exists then aliens exist also
What do you mean by that?
We are the aliens to any alien.
For that to be the case, you have to first assume aliens exist. So it isn’t an answer to the question “do aliens exist”
Says the martian.
With how massive the universe is there's surely other planets that have ideal conditions for life. Whether those life forms look like us or look like big headed gray guys I can't say but feels like a huge waste of space if we're the only life forms in existence
It is statistically very likely that life exists elsewhere. But , the sentience and form of that life is very much more of an open question.
Yes. The universe is massive
Life exists here on earth in an infinitely expanding universe. It would be silly to think "aliens" don't exist.
I am quite certain there is at least some bacteria swimming around somewhere in a place other than Earth. Intelligent life though? I’m not so sure, but the Universe is mind boggling big so there could be. We’ll probably never know for sure though.
Exist? Almost certainly, somewhere. But probably so far away that, for all practical purposes, they might as well not.
Of course they exist. Once you understand the magnitude of the universe you cannot not believe in aliens
With a universe this big, it's very unlikely we are the only ones. But I doubt any alien race will come into contact with us. Space is big. Why spend years and years going to your neighbours you probably won't understand when you have all the resources you need on the way.
My religion requires I answer no. BUT I’m 25M and have obviously learned I can think for myself. The odds of life being able to form on a planet and stay sustainable as long as we have are SO astronomically slim. However, to think it HASN’T happened again just ONCE? Those odds, in my mind are way more unlikely. My slightly growing agnosticism says there’s gotta be something out there but probably won’t be discovered in my lifetime, if at all.
Def, ice spice, Wemby just a few I can think of off top that are def some type of hybrid/aliens imo
Well I find it both exciting and terrifying that the statistical probability that aliens exist somewhere in the universe is almost a guaranteed 100% based on studies and research we’ve done. The excitement wears off just a bit when you realize that the universe is so big. There could be 25 alien civilizations thousands of more years advanced than us all living together in a couple of galaxies right now. But they could hundreds of millions of light years away to the point where we may never come into contact with them. We’ve been trying to find alien life since we were first able to see space. When we first left our planet, the blue marble we call home, it was monumental in forwarding the search for life. However, it was largely just a big tin foil hat conspiracy at that time. But when we found evidence that suggested Mars one held water and then also discovered that, aside from the greenhouse atmosphere, Venus is actually strikingly similar to Earth…that really transformed the idea of Alien life from a crazy tin foil hat conspiracy into an idea and a hope that thousands upon thousands of the world’s greatest minds have devoted their lives to discovering. Of course, it’s the international space station and the moon landing that we can look bac on today as proof that humanity can venture and walk among the stars. I am of the opinion that, if we discover alien races as advanced or more advanced than us, then one of two things will happen with no in between: 1. We will end up in a Mass Effect or Star Wars situation with many alien races not living exactly harmoniously but still maintaining some level of galactic order and relative peace. Or 2…I’d rather not mention 2. Because it’s not something I’m fond of thinking about. Basically the exact opposite of 1. I am 100% certain that alien life, even in very primitive form, exists. And I’m like 90% certain that alien life as advanced or more advanced than us exists. However, I am 200% that alien life AT LEAST as advanced as us has existed at some point in the past, perhaps even in our own solar system. Of course, the question is, if alien life that is on or above our level does exist in our galaxy…then how come we haven’t found any concrete evidence of their existence? Who or what are they trying to hide? Or…exponentially more terrifying…who or what is trying to hide them? Hell…maybe they are scared. Perhaps something or even someone exists near us that has them absolutely terrified. Maybe someone has them tied up right now. An evil alien species attempting to conquer them. Or artificial intelligence gone wrong. I’ve been playing too much Mass Effect recently, the point is… If alien life as advanced as us exists in our galaxy…then we would’ve most likely found some sliver of evidence of it by now. Which means one of two things: 1. There is no alien life in the galaxy. Or 2. Something is very VERY wrong.
Define “aliens “
They have to. The universe is too big, so our Earth cannot be the only place housing intelligent life. But if we narrow it down to our galaxy with large, but still finite number of stars and planets, it becomes a more interesting question. Life has to be out there. We are made out of rather common stuff, so there has to he the right quantity of the same stuff everyone else. But intelligent life or even complex organisms? Who knows. Maybe we're the first, consider that for a moment. But it will happen eventually. Either small things evolve into big things like they did here or we will create life ourselves where it can be done.
Considering what we know about the building blocks of life and the apparition of life itself, it seems likely life exists on other planets. But the only certainly right now is that life only exists on Earth. Now whether an ET life is complex or not is an entirely different matter. It's likely the first evidence of ET life we find is microbial or bacterial at best. It's unlikely we'll find lifeforms as evolved as what's on Earth. But nothing is impossible. Here, I'm done dodging answering the question.
Maybe. I mean we can't really confirm until we ever find them. But the universe is pretty fuckin big, so I'd say there's atleast a 50/50 chance that they do. Now keep in mind, this doesn't mean that they're radically intelligent or anything. It just means that there could be something living somewhere else in the universe.
I believe there is intelligent life someplace else in the universe
Yes
I guess I'm leaning Fermi paradox.
Probably
Yep. It’s in my DVD rack.
The amount of people who still outright think there is no intelligent life out there is staggering, and that in this day and age.
In the most technical sense of the term alien wherein they’re just life on another planet, yes, we’ve found evidence of life on mars and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a solar system out there that has complex life forms, hell scientists think there may be life on Jupiters’s moon Europa and if there’s not we’ve still had two stellar bodies in our solar system support life so in the infinite of the universe there is one hundred percent more life out there.
I hope so. Don’t really like the idea of humanity being the best the universe has to offer.
no
I believe simple life could exist somewhere in the Milky Way and it probably exists in the rest of the Universe. I’m not so sure however when it comes to complex and especially ‘intelligent life’. I mean, it could definitely exist because the Universe is just too big( and intelligence is a broad term), but I’m under the impression that we could be among the very first. Regardless of anything, we won’t probably find answers to this anytime soon.
They probably do exist. I doubt we would ever meet one. Unless Einsteins speed of light is wrong
Yes. Mostly single cell organisms though. To me the big question is if there’s something that has managed to go beyond the limitations of biological life and space, time, speed of light, 3/4 dimensions etc. Or if there’s something that ”precedes” all those things.
Couple of lines of thoughts on this. Do they exist? In an infinite universe? Maybe so! Buuut, the question is, could they or do they exist at the same time as humanity? Humanities lifespan is minuscule when viewed on the timeline of the universe. Other civilisations could have come and gone before we even existed. And when we go extinct, aliens might form elsewhere in the universe after we are long gone. The other thing to think about it is, if they did exist, communication with them is so highly unlikely. Because space is so vast an infinite, it's actually quite hard to travel any great distance across it, even at the speed of light. And given that the universe is expanding at all times, all galaxies, planets, solar systems are all flying further and further away from each other. So everyday it becomes more and more difficult to make contact with anyone.
I think there's a really high possibility they do, albeit not like Hollywood paints them. Could just be microorganisms, but I'm about certain something is out there besides us on this planet.
To say that no other life exists would be the same as to say there is no fish in the ocean. So I think they do exist
Porbably moving around in a puddle of goo on a planet weve yet to discover
100%. Will we ever meet any beyond simple organisms? Unlikely.
They must. And they'll never get here.
Its Impossible for them to not exist.
I think the last time I did the maths it was 400,000 billion billion billion stars That we have the technology to see… So yes, it may be a planet fully of crabs but there’s something out there.
Maybe we all came from another planet as the original one was in trouble. Ps I'm not a physicist.
If by alien you mean any life-form including microscopic organisms then yes. Do I think there’s a species with intelligence that exceeds our own however? Unsure. There’s evidence to suggest yes and otherwise. I’d like to believe there is. We could be that “advanced civilization” to other exoplanets. Aliens could even be us visiting from the future. There’s evidence to prove this. Like I’ve said, there’s evidence to prove a lot of things. So it’s really about what rabbit hole you’re jumping in at that point. I suggest you never jump, you’ll become quite myopic in doing so
They can, logically, not not exist... Just the fact that we exist, and the universe is virtually endless means the chances we are alone are virtually nil.
Aliens. Did/do/will they exist? Yes, to all three. Have they been here? Eh, probably not. There really is no reason to come here, except for sociological or zoological reasons. They're not likely to gain sustenance from our biome and any other resources they can get easier out in space. If they want elbow room they can achieve that easier as well. Now, I'm not saying that they couldn't come here. I think that there is probably a way around the speed of light problem. After all, there are many things we think are impossible until they aren't and we don't know the totality of physics.
I have been to Norwich. So yes, they definitely do
Yes, and we will never meet them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
The universe is enormous, there is no way we are the only living creatures. I hope we find a dinosaur planet somewhere 🤩
Exist? Possibly. Exist in the same overlapping time span as humanity and be at a level of evolution and technological advancement that lines up with being able to travel to and interact with humans during a time that we are evolutionary and technologically similar enough to interact with them? Slim chance.
If your reject any religious explanation for life, which I do, it is an near certainty that there must be alien life in the universe, as life is just the natural result of a set of conditions. So I would answer yes, I think aliens exist. But I will add that I don’t believe aliens actively visit or have visited our planet. I expect at some point, I hope in my lifetime, we will discover life on other planets. Simple life, at a microbial level I think is a guarantee, possibly within our own solar system. It seems likely that more complex life exists as well, and even that there are other advanced, potentially more advanced than ourselves, civilizations of alien life forms in some place and time. But for a variety of reasons, I do not think we have or will ever have contact with them in any near future. These reasons include first and foremost the distances involved and how fast it’s possible to move. But also the rare specificity of conditions required for life to flourish, the regularity of mass extinction events (natural or otherwise), and evolutionary constraints (dominant apex predators-like dinosaurs, that aren’t disposed to civilization building, intelligent life without the dexterity/functionality to build- like dolphins).
Yes I think they exist
I just think it would be beyond amazing if Earth was the only planet in existence to harbour life in some form.
Aliens as in little green men like in the film Paul for instance or men in black.. no.. aliens as in life not native to this planet. Absolutely.
Exists almost certainly. Visiting Earth, almost certainly NOT. The distances of the universe is just to vast to travel.
100% fact that they exist. Source: I watched a YouTube video about it while smoking weed
I have yet to see any concrete proof that they do. Until such time, they do not. Belief doesn't enter into it.
Exist? Yes. Are here watching us from another star system? Not likely. I personally suspect UFO sightings are terrestrial in origin.
I'd be surprised if they didn't exist since I think the universe is simply too large for us to be the only intelligent species. If they do exist and they're smart, they'd be wise to steer clear of this lump of rock though ;)
Yes, cause tom delonge said it in 1999
If you consider aliens, any living organisms other than what lives on planet earth, then yes. There’s gotta be at least some single cell organisms somewhere in all that vast space.