We are not alone!!

[Olympic Fan]

According to Jason's article, the source is 95 light years away.

That's absurdly close. The Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across.

Discovering life 95 light years away would be like discovering gold in your backyard.

You are right about the unlikeliness of finding intelligent life that close to us.

But there is another more rational explanation -- the one suggested by Carl Sagan in his 1985 novel "Contact" (and repeated in the Jodie Foster movie based on the book).

In Sagan's story, a distant alien civilization set up a sort of relay station in orbit around a nearby star.

That could explain the source of a signal so close.

FWIW, I have no idea if this story is significant of not, but if anybody is really interested in the idea of first contact with an alien intelligence, I think "Contact" (both Sagan's novel and the film of the same name) is one of the best explorations of the idea. Even the major subplot -- exploring the conflict between science and religion - is thought-provoking.

[budwom]

The signal may or may not be real, but I have it on good authority that Jodie Foster just got in her panic room.

Back in the Sputnik days, my wife's father ran a satellite tracking station in Spain (not many to track, mind you) and Carl Sagan used to
pop over for dinner from time to time...small but tight community of Space Heads back then...

[OldPhiKap]

Back in the Sputnik days, my wife's father ran a satellite tracking station in Spain (not many to track, mind you) and Carl Sagan used to
pop over for dinner from time to time...small but tight community of Space Heads back then...

Only dozens and dozens, according to Carl.

[Udaman]

So, I've thought about the "why can't we find live on other planet" thing, and to me, really, it's a question of simple math. So let's use some assumptions.

In our galaxy, there are about 10 to the 12th power of suns (that's a damn big number, by the way).

Let's assume that within those stars that 1 out of 10,000 of them have a planet rotating around it that could sustain life. I actually think this number might be smaller (it's really hard to see these planets, and we've only documented a few thousand, but most astronomers believe that just about every star has some planets going around it). So that would mean about a billion planets in our solar system that could sustain life. That's a lot.

But...then you have to calculate how long life would be on that planet compared to its overall existence. Our planet will have a lifespan of about 8 billion years...but civilized life has only been around for a few thousand. It takes a while for evolution to occur, and then things happen that slow it down (asteroid impacts, ice ages, etc). So let's be conservative and say that civilized life exists for about a million years on any given life sustaining planet (and I think we will be fortunate to have that much time before we either blow ourselves up, or another asteroid hits, or a comet, or deadly gamma wave). So that means that in the lifetime of a planet, civilized life is on it for about .000125% of it's life. But that's only half of the equation...because that life has to matchup with civilized life on Earth. So if we assume the same ratio (.000125%), that means that right now in our galaxy there are approximately 16 planets where our civilized life matches up to theirs (and this is even more complicated by how far apart these are....anything exactly even with ours we wouldn't see until tens of thousands of years from now, likely...but ignore that for now).

So 16 that matchup evenly. Out of a billion planets where life is possible and 10 to the 12th of all the planets out there. So the odds of us finding one such planet by just examining all of them individually is .000000000001. Very, very, very small. Effectively zero.

Bottom line. I'm 99.999999999999% sure that life exists in our galaxy (and universe) and that it exists in spades. I'm also 99.999999999999% sure that we will never ever see it.

[duke79]

So, I've thought about the "why can't we find live on other planet" thing, and to me, really, it's a question of simple math. So let's use some assumptions.

In our galaxy, there are about 10 to the 12th power of suns (that's a damn big number, by the way).

Let's assume that within those stars that 1 out of 10,000 of them have a planet rotating around it that could sustain life. I actually think this number might be smaller (it's really hard to see these planets, and we've only documented a few thousand, but most astronomers believe that just about every star has some planets going around it). So that would mean about a billion planets in our solar system that could sustain life. That's a lot.

But...then you have to calculate how long life would be on that planet compared to its overall existence. Our planet will have a lifespan of about 8 billion years...but civilized life has only been around for a few thousand. It takes a while for evolution to occur, and then things happen that slow it down (asteroid impacts, ice ages, etc). So let's be conservative and say that civilized life exists for about a million years on any given life sustaining planet (and I think we will be fortunate to have that much time before we either blow ourselves up, or another asteroid hits, or a comet, or deadly gamma wave). So that means that in the lifetime of a planet, civilized life is on it for about .000125% of it's life. But that's only half of the equation...because that life has to matchup with civilized life on Earth. So if we assume the same ratio (.000125%), that means that right now in our galaxy there are approximately 16 planets where our civilized life matches up to theirs (and this is even more complicated by how far apart these are...anything exactly even with ours we wouldn't see until tens of thousands of years from now, likely...but ignore that for now).

So 16 that matchup evenly. Out of a billion planets where life is possible and 10 to the 12th of all the planets out there. So the odds of us finding one such planet by just examining all of them individually is .000000000001. Very, very, very small. Effectively zero.

Bottom line. I'm 99.999999999999% sure that life exists in our galaxy (and universe) and that it exists in spades. I'm also 99.999999999999% sure that we will never ever see it.

Ha !! Don't you watch "Ancient Aliens" on the History Channel?? Aliens have been visiting our planet for thousands of years. Who do you think built the pyramids?

[DukieInKansas]

So, I've thought about the "why can't we find live on other planet" thing, and to me, really, it's a question of simple math. So let's use some assumptions.

In our galaxy, there are about 10 to the 12th power of suns (that's a damn big number, by the way).

Let's assume that within those stars that 1 out of 10,000 of them have a planet rotating around it that could sustain life. I actually think this number might be smaller (it's really hard to see these planets, and we've only documented a few thousand, but most astronomers believe that just about every star has some planets going around it). So that would mean about a billion planets in our solar system that could sustain life. That's a lot.

But...then you have to calculate how long life would be on that planet compared to its overall existence. Our planet will have a lifespan of about 8 billion years...but civilized life has only been around for a few thousand. It takes a while for evolution to occur, and then things happen that slow it down (asteroid impacts, ice ages, etc). So let's be conservative and say that civilized life exists for about a million years on any given life sustaining planet (and I think we will be fortunate to have that much time before we either blow ourselves up, or another asteroid hits, or a comet, or deadly gamma wave). So that means that in the lifetime of a planet, civilized life is on it for about .000125% of it's life. But that's only half of the equation...because that life has to matchup with civilized life on Earth. So if we assume the same ratio (.000125%), that means that right now in our galaxy there are approximately 16 planets where our civilized life matches up to theirs (and this is even more complicated by how far apart these are...anything exactly even with ours we wouldn't see until tens of thousands of years from now, likely...but ignore that for now).

So 16 that matchup evenly. Out of a billion planets where life is possible and 10 to the 12th of all the planets out there. So the odds of us finding one such planet by just examining all of them individually is .000000000001. Very, very, very small. Effectively zero.

Bottom line. I'm 99.999999999999% sure that life exists in our galaxy (and universe) and that it exists in spades. I'm also 99.999999999999% sure that we will never ever see it.

Don't we count as life in our galaxy? If so, I'm sticking with I'm 100% sure there is life in our galaxy. If you meant other life in our galaxy, I have no idea of my % of sureness.

[Wander]

Bottom line. I'm 99.999999999999% sure that life exists in our galaxy (and universe) and that it exists in spades. I'm also 99.999999999999% sure that we will never ever see it.

Forget elsewhere in the universe or even galaxy. I'll give a 50/50 shot that we'll discover solid evidence of life on another planet in our own solar system - Mars, Europa, or Enceladus - within the next 50 years.

[Olympic Fan]

Forget elsewhere in the universe or even galaxy. I'll give a 50/50 shot that we'll discover solid evidence of life on another planet in our own solar system - Mars, Europa, or Enceladus - within the next 50 years.

If you mean cellular life or something similar to algae or lichen, then I agree. I expect to find evidence of such life in the near future. You've named three likely spots, but also Callisto, Ganymede and Titan are candidates. There is even a current theory gaining acceptance that there maybe be life on Venus - not the surface, but in the atmosphere.

But if you mean intelligent life -- even to the level of most earth animals -- then I'll take your bet.

And I also agree with Udaman's analysis ... although his conclusion that we are very, very unlikely to ever encounter intelligent life I would only agree with him if the "we" in "we will never see it" refers to the current readers of this message board -- or even to the current living occupants of this planet.

But I think as we develop and expand outside our solar system (which I expect to happen in the next couple of hundred years), I think there is a reasonable chance that the human race does encounter alien intelligence.

If you buy the theory of panspermia, life might be much more common than we think:

http://www.panspermia-theory.com/

[davekay1971]

Pffft...


Talk to me when all the sheep die in an area bordered by highways 54, 86 and 15-501 about 8-10 miles south of Duke.

I must spread some love before sporking you again. Just know, in my heart, I'm sporking you over my Goose Island IPA

[Udaman]

I think one day some intelligent life on Earth will discover the existence of some intelligent life somewhere else...in the next million years or so. But seeing or meeting them...not a chance. The universe is just too big. It takes too long to travel any kind of distance. And as Stephen Hawking once said if there is the kind of life out there that can get to us...we don't want to meet them, because odds are they will be coming to conquer us (or build an interstellar highway) and their technology would be hundreds of thousands of years ahead of ours.

[Wander]

If you mean cellular life or something similar to algae or lichen, then I agree. I expect to find evidence of such life in the near future. You've named three likely spots, but also Callisto, Ganymede and Titan are candidates. There is even a current theory gaining acceptance that there maybe be life on Venus - not the surface, but in the atmosphere.

But if you mean intelligent life -- even to the level of most earth animals -- then I'll take your bet.

Yeah I agree, I mean cellular life. If life exists on Callisto or Ganymede (which is probably less likely than the other places, but as you say shouldn't be discounted), we won't discover it for a long, long time. But Mars and Europa are going to be the main targets in the solar system in the next two decades. I'd give Enceladus and Titan about equal probability of having a mission selected in the coming decades, but an Enceladus mission is more likely to explicitly be an astrobiology mission.

Panspermia is why I think life probably exists elsewhere in the solar system (technically, we already know this is true - we try and clean things as best we can, but the Mars rovers undoubtedly had some microbial life on them, so they can be considered panspermia).

[aimo]

This thread makes me want to re-read the entire Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[JasonEvans]

This thread makes me want to re-read the entire Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Yes, READ, not watch. The book is wonderful... the movie is a total mess.



-Jason "in fairness, I think the book is borderline unfilmable" Evans

[BLPOG]

And I also agree with Udaman's analysis ... although his conclusion that we are very, very unlikely to ever encounter intelligent life I would only agree with him if the "we" in "we will never see it" refers to the current readers of this message board -- or even to the current living occupants of this planet.

I find that it's usually a minority opinion on this topic, but I agree with Udaman - the chances we'll ever encounter intelligent life outside our solar system are essentially nil. When I say "we" I do mean humans generally, and I mean on an ecological timescale, not current humans' lifetimes. In fact, I'll go farther than that. I don't think we'll ever encounter alien life at all, intelligent or not.

The reasoning behind my belief is pretty straightforward - if the speed of light is the maximum rate of travel for information (and there are no indications otherwise), it's just not plausible that we will be able to travel the distances required to make contact. It's not just a matter of the time commitment, but of the cost in energy and physical material. It is plausible that we will eventually make it to nearby star systems even without exceeding the speed of light, but there is no reason to believe that life is so common that we will find it nearby.

What's more is that if life does exist in other star systems (and I'd guess it does), we should probably expect it to already be sufficiently advanced to have cracked the problem of faster-than-light, if it can be cracked at all. The reasoning behind that is that the progression of life on Earth from a single cell to humans, while spanning an enormous time, spans just a fraction of the age of the universe. We should probably expect the eventual evolution of intelligence where there exists life at all, and so a good portion of extra-terrestrial life should not only be intelligent, but far more advanced than humans. If that alien life has figured out FTL, we'd expect them to expand across a good portion of space with that tech, and to have been doing it for long enough that we would be able to detect it (there is of course the possibility that we're just missing it, but it would be fairly reasonable to expect more direct contact rather than just long-range traces, IMO). If they haven't figured out FTL, it's probably because FTL isn't possible.

In case that got convoluted, my basic argument is:
If life exists elsewhere, a good fraction* is probably intelligent. (*by which I mean of worlds holding life, a good fraction would have at least one intelligent species)
If life elsewhere is intelligent, it has probably already encountered the FTL problem.
If life elsewhere has solved the FTL problem, we should probably know already. If it hasn't, it's most likely because it can't be done.

Which implies one of the following:
1. We're number 1! The most technologically advanced life in the galaxy, or near enough to make no difference.
OR 2. There is no intelligent life outside of Earth, and probably no life at all
OR 3. We won't ever encounter other life because we can't exceed light-speed.

My money is on #3.

[Wander]

If life exists elsewhere, a good fraction* is probably intelligent. (*by which I mean of worlds holding life, a good fraction would have at least one intelligent species)

I think your argument is well-reasoned, but this is the part I think might be wrong. I think it's possible that microscopic life is very common in the universe, including multiple locations in our own solar system, but intelligent life capable of doing things like building spaceships is exceedingly rare. I'll note this is consistent with our single known case - on Earth, life in general has existed 20000 times longer than human life.

[duke79]

I find that it's usually a minority opinion on this topic, but I agree with Udaman - the chances we'll ever encounter intelligent life outside our solar system are essentially nil. When I say "we" I do mean humans generally, and I mean on an ecological timescale, not current humans' lifetimes. In fact, I'll go farther than that. I don't think we'll ever encounter alien life at all, intelligent or not.

The reasoning behind my belief is pretty straightforward - if the speed of light is the maximum rate of travel for information (and there are no indications otherwise), it's just not plausible that we will be able to travel the distances required to make contact. It's not just a matter of the time commitment, but of the cost in energy and physical material. It is plausible that we will eventually make it to nearby star systems even without exceeding the speed of light, but there is no reason to believe that life is so common that we will find it nearby.

What's more is that if life does exist in other star systems (and I'd guess it does), we should probably expect it to already be sufficiently advanced to have cracked the problem of faster-than-light, if it can be cracked at all. The reasoning behind that is that the progression of life on Earth from a single cell to humans, while spanning an enormous time, spans just a fraction of the age of the universe. We should probably expect the eventual evolution of intelligence where there exists life at all, and so a good portion of extra-terrestrial life should not only be intelligent, but far more advanced than humans. If that alien life has figured out FTL, we'd expect them to expand across a good portion of space with that tech, and to have been doing it for long enough that we would be able to detect it (there is of course the possibility that we're just missing it, but it would be fairly reasonable to expect more direct contact rather than just long-range traces, IMO). If they haven't figured out FTL, it's probably because FTL isn't possible.

In case that got convoluted, my basic argument is:
If life exists elsewhere, a good fraction* is probably intelligent. (*by which I mean of worlds holding life, a good fraction would have at least one intelligent species)
If life elsewhere is intelligent, it has probably already encountered the FTL problem.
If life elsewhere has solved the FTL problem, we should probably know already. If it hasn't, it's most likely because it can't be done.

Which implies one of the following:
1. We're number 1! The most technologically advanced life in the galaxy, or near enough to make no difference.
OR 2. There is no intelligent life outside of Earth, and probably no life at all
OR 3. We won't ever encounter other life because we can't exceed light-speed.

My money is on #3.

So you completely discount all of the "alien abduction" stories and other UFO sightings, including Roswell?

[BLPOG]

I think your argument is well-reasoned, but this is the part I think might be wrong. I think it's possible that microscopic life is very common in the universe, including multiple locations in our own solar system, but intelligent life capable of doing things like building spaceships is exceedingly rare. I'll note this is consistent with our single known case - on Earth, life in general has existed 20000 times longer than human life.

I agree it's the weak point. The problem is that with our n=1 we don't really have a good way to estimate the rate of evolution in non-Earth environments, or the possibility that other environments just don't allow the amount of biological diversity to support the expectation of intelligent life.

So you completely discount all of the "alien abduction" stories and other UFO sightings, including Roswell?

It's 2016. We all carry high-resolution cameras in our pockets.

[Indoor66]

As much as I like and respect duke79,I am crushed to learn that all that Hollywood has taught me is fake. 79, are you sure?😠

[mr. synellinden]

If you mean cellular life or something similar to algae or lichen, then I agree. I expect to find evidence of such life in the near future. You've named three likely spots, but also Callisto, Ganymede and Titan are candidates. There is even a current theory gaining acceptance that there maybe be life on Venus - not the surface, but in the atmosphere.

But if you mean intelligent life -- even to the level of most earth animals -- then I'll take your bet.

And I also agree with Udaman's analysis ... although his conclusion that we are very, very unlikely to ever encounter intelligent life I would only agree with him if the "we" in "we will never see it" refers to the current readers of this message board -- or even to the current living occupants of this planet.

But I think as we develop and expand outside our solar system (which I expect to happen in the next couple of hundred years), I think there is a reasonable chance that the human race does encounter alien intelligence.

If you buy the theory of panspermia, life might be much more common than we think:

http://www.panspermia-theory.com/

This seemed like a good place to post this story about a fossil discovery that strongly suggests life existed on earth about 200 million years earlier than was previously believed.

[duke79]

As much as I like and respect duke79,I am crushed to learn that all that Hollywood has taught me is fake. 79, are you sure?😠

LOL, ALWAYS keep an open mind !!

http://exopolitics.org/first-man-on-...f-what-he-saw/