- Member Introductions & Journals
- BookTalk News & Development
- Religion, Philosophy & the Arts
- Politics, Current Events & History
- Science, Nature & Technology
- General Discussion & Miscellaneous Topics
- Book Suggestions, Polls, & Reviews
- Additional Book Discussions
- Godless in America: Conversations With an Atheist - by George A. Ricker
- Interventions - by Noam Chomsky
- Religious Expression and the American Constitution - by Franklyn S. Haiman
- Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future - by Bill McKibben
- The God Delusion - by Richard Dawkins
- The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal - by Jared Diamond
- The Woman in the Dunes - by Abe Kobo
- Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction - by Eugenie Scott
- The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - by Michael Pollan
- I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B.C., Murdered and Deified A.D. 54 - by Robert Graves
- Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon - by Daniel Dennett
- A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East - by David Fromkin
- The Time Traveler's Wife - by Audrey Niffenegger
- The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason - by Sam Harris
- Ender's Game - by Orson Scott Card
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - by Mark Haddon
- Value & Virtue in a Godless Universe - by Erik J. Wielenberg
- The March: A Novel - by E.L. Doctorow
- The Ethical Brain - by Michael Gazzaniga
- Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism - by Susan Jacoby
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - by Jared Diamond
- The Battle for God - by Karen Armstrong
- The Future of Life - by Edward O. Wilson
- What is Good? The Search for the Best Way to Live - by A.C. Grayling
- Civilization and It's Enemies: The Next Stage of History - by Lee Harris
- Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space - by Carl Sagan
- How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God - by Michael Shermer
- Looking For Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain - by Antonio Damasio
- Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right - by Al Franken
- The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - by Matt Ridley
- The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - by Stephen Pinker
- Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder - by Richard Dawkins
- Atheism: A Reader - edited by S. T. Joshi
- Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century - by Howard Bloom
- The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History - by Howard Bloom
- Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies - by Jared Diamond
- Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark - by Carl Sagan
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West - by Dee Alexander Brown
- Future Shock - by Alvin Toffler
Do you believe life exists on other planets?
| Author | Comment | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Chris OConnor |
Do you believe life exists on other planets? |
Lead | ||
|
Indisputable BookTalk Master
Posts: 9511 10/16/05 01:57:01 BookTalk Owner |
Do you believe life exists on other planets?
|
|||
|
|
||||
murraygraham |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #1 | ||
|
Posts: 96 10/16/05 08:11:28 Contemplative |
Some sort of life on other planets, absolutely...I've seen articles that convincingly argue that it is a near certainty. Intelligent life? Perhaps, but not neccessarily life that is on the same level or time scale as ourselves, or possesses any interest in contact or exploration.
Regards, M. Graham Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books.
For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger. -- Gordon R.Dickson |
|||
|
|
||||
misterpessimistic |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #2 | ||
|
Indisputable BookTalk Master
Posts: 4113 10/17/05 08:06:37 Indisputable BookTalk Master |
Quote: But there very well may be life that is on a higher level than ourselves, no? Anything is possible. Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.
The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets" I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper |
|||
|
|
||||
murraygraham |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #3 | ||
|
Posts: 96 10/17/05 08:32:20 Contemplative |
Didn't mean to imply otherwise. But given how long the time scale is, and the uncertainty of sustaining technology, it makes you wonder how lucky we'd need to be to hit someone cabable or interested in contact...
Regrds, M. Graham Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books.
For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger. -- Gordon R.Dickson |
|||
|
|
||||
Keith and Company |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #4 | ||
|
Posts: 126 10/17/05 11:15:33 |
But that analysis depends on an even distribution of intelligent species through space and time.
Reality ain't so. Ever do the 'birthday' survey in math class? Find out how hard it is to find 365 people with no birthdays in common? We may be isolated, or we may be just about to get radio signals from a fairly equal race just next door. |
|||
|
|
||||
Izdaari |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #5 | ||
|
Posts: 168 10/22/05 01:48:49 Intern |
I don't have information to do more than guess, but if I have to guess yes or no, I'll say yes, there probably is at least some form of life on other planets.
|
|||
|
|
||||
Niall001 |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #6 | ||
|
Posts: 897 01/07/06 11:29:57 Smarty Pants |
Ok, well I'd say probably. Life probably exists on other planets, but where it exists, it is probably simple.
I doubt that there is (currently), what we call, intelligent life in other parts of the universe simply because the series of unlikely events that lead to our development are seriously unlikely to occur on another planet. Now, it might be that other intelligent life forms will develop in the future, and it might be that other intelligent life forms existed in the past, but the chances that our existence would intersect with the existence of another intelligent life form seems insignificant. Let us agree, there is no one single reality. Not upon this stage, not in this world, all is in the mind... imagination is the only truth. Because it cannot be contradicted except by other imaginations - Richard Matheson
There are no conclusive indications by which waking life can be distinguished from sleep - Rene Descartes |
|||
|
|
||||
Chris OConnor |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #7 | ||
|
Indisputable BookTalk Master
Posts: 9511 01/07/06 22:11:25 BookTalk Owner |
Yes, intelligent life existing on another planet is extremely unlikely.
But.... Fortunately, this universe is so damn massive that this extremely unlikely event is bound to happen frequently. Think about it this way. What are the chances of winning the lottery? Let's say 1:14,000,000. Pretty unlikely, eh? But what if you bought 637,847,422,542,245 tickets? You'd win MILLIONS of times. |
|||
|
|
||||
Niall001 |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #8 | ||
|
Posts: 897 01/08/06 11:45:30 Smarty Pants |
Yes, but I think you underestimate just how unlikely our development was.
We've been here for 0.0001 per cent of the earth's history. The fact that humans even developed was largely down to dumb luck and we've been near enough extinction plenty of times. Had dinosaurs not died out in freak circumstances, mamals would never have developed in the way they did. Then there are the unique factors of earth, not just in relation to our distance from the sun etc. but things like our molten core, how many planets have a molten core? When we look around us at all the millions of other species, all the different forms of life, we are seeing only a fraction of the ways in which life could potentially develop (100 million is an estimate on the number of species that exist today). The many millions of lifeforms that exist on earth today are only a fraction of all that have ever been and we, humans, are only one of an infinite number of species that primitive life could develop into. So there are three major factors. A planet like our own would be hard to find because our type of solar system is rather rare. Second, the chances that you'd find a planet just the right distance away from a star to support life is tiny. The second factor would be whether or not primitive life would arise and, importantly, survive. This is also unlikely. The third factor is that intelligent life is just so unlikely to develop because complex life is so unlikely to develop and survive. Now given that we've only been here for 0.001% of our planet's history, which is so say nothing of the history of other planets and that any species has a very short lifespan, if in the unlikely case, intelligent life were to arise in another part of the galaxy, it would probably be before or after we existed. Let us agree, there is no one single reality. Not upon this stage, not in this world, all is in the mind... imagination is the only truth. Because it cannot be contradicted except by other imaginations - Richard Matheson
There are no conclusive indications by which waking life can be distinguished from sleep - Rene Descartes |
|||
|
|
||||
Greg Neuman |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #9 | ||
|
Posts: 44 01/13/06 12:28:51 Hooked on Phonics |
I generally agree with you, Niall, that complex life (and hense intelligent life) is very rare in the universe. For a planet to be habitable at all is unlikely enough ... for it to also possess the stunning number of stabilizing factors that the Earth does will probably proove to be several orders of magnitude rarer. The universe is an inherently hostile and indifferent place as far as life is concerned.
However, I think your agrument leans dangerously close to anthropocentrism. Just because the emergence of homo sapiens as a sentient species is fantasically unlikely doesn't mean that the emergence of any sentient species is equally so. Suppose, for example, that the dinosaurs had not died out. You are correct that their decendents would now dominate the Earth instead of humans ... but they might have well evolved a sentient species, and perhaps done so millions of years sooner than mammals did. Several "raptor" forms were well on their way to developing big brains at the end of the cretaceous; there is no reason that they couldn't have evolved towards intelligence. You can go back even further: The permian extinction gave vertabrates a leg up on the arthropods, who had dominated the planet for millions of years. Without that event, it is unlikely that our ancestors would have ever developed beyond the level of fish. But the arthopods might well have produced a sentient species. And if you find it hard to imagine an intelligent being without a spinal cord, go to your local aquarium and ask them if they have any good octopus stories. Chances are they do, and you will be amazed. My position is that we will find simple life - microbes and alge and such - to be fairly common; where a sizable planet exists in a water orbit, there will be icky bluish-green stuff growing on it. But complex organisims will be very, very rare. Perhaps one in a thousand habitable planets will be habitable enough for critters like plants and animals. But I also think that where complex life develops, it will evolve towards intelligence. Being smart is just too huge of an evolutionary advantage for it not to. Yes, it takes a long time; the energy requirements of a large brain are severe and random chance assures there will always be pitfalls. But once it gets going, intelligence is the mother of all survival traits. Every other species is doomed to adapt to its environment over generations, but intelligent ones adapt the environment to better suit themselves. Barring disaster, a species that can achieve the level of using even the simplest tools has it made. One unarmed cro-magnon was a joke to the mastadon, an ice-age survival machine if there ever was one. But tribes of cro-magnons with spears and fire hunted those woolly bastards into extinction in just a few thousand years. Intelligence wins ... game, set, and match. Ultimately it's all a mental exercise until we can build starships, or SETI successfully tunes in to the Zeta Reticulan version of Jeopardy! (I'll take "Delicious Human Recipies" for 1000, Kodos!"). But it's a darn intersting topic, isn't it? A+ for this thread. G |
|||
|
|
||||
Niall001 |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #10 | ||
|
Posts: 897 01/13/06 19:13:43 Smarty Pants |
Greg, would intelligence akin to our own be not only a blessing but a curse? We are so close to making ourselves (and much of the life on our planet) extinct, through war, pollution etc.
Personally, I've always imagined that the single greatest enemy that any human will be micro-organisms, where intelligence is of limited use. Just look at neanderthals. I suppose more than anything, I think my point would be that we will probably never meet another intelligent species. Let us agree, there is no one single reality. Not upon this stage, not in this world, all is in the mind... imagination is the only truth. Because it cannot be contradicted except by other imaginations - Richard Matheson
There are no conclusive indications by which waking life can be distinguished from sleep - Rene Descartes |
|||
|
|
||||
ADO15 |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #11 | ||
|
Masters
Posts: 192 01/13/06 19:16:25 Graduate |
Is there life on other planets? Almost certainly yes.
Would we recognise it? Probably not. _________________________________________________________ Il Sotto Seme La Neva |
|||
|
|
||||
Greg Neuman |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #12 | ||
|
Posts: 44 01/13/06 21:02:54 Hooked on Phonics |
Quote: Undoubtedly. But nonintelligence is more curse and less blessing (to use your terms). Remember that the dinosaurs weren't wiped out because an asteroid hit the Earth; they were wiped out because an asteroid hit the Earth and they were too dumb to do anything about it. Intelligence and technology could have saved them, but they didn't possess it. As I said before, the universe is an inherently hostile place. Asteroids are only one danger; dieases - as you mention - are another. So are radical climate change and famine and drought. Hell, eventually the sun will go nova and then any species without some damn good spacecraft technology is utterly doomed. Sentience is the only advantage living things can have over such events. Extinction is the eventual prize for any species unable to effectively manipulate its environment. War and pollution are terrible things (though sometimes necessary, I would argue). They may well do us in. But the alternative is to definately be done in by something sooner or later. Intelligence has indeed created problems for us, but it has also provided us the means to overcome those problems, as well as a whole host of others thrown at us by the stupid hostility of the universe in general. And I wouldn't trade wonders like the Sistine Chapel or the Apollo Program for all the blissfull ignorance in the universe. Even disregarding its usefullness vis a vis survivability, intelligence is by far the most powerfully fascinating and deeply moving trait any living thing could possibly possess. Quote: I agree. But "limited use" is better than being able to do nothing at all. Just ask the smallpox virus. Quote: Most anthropologists nowadays agree that the neanderthals were wiped out by a smarter and more adaptable species. Us. Moral implications aside, it is perfectly natural for less able species to be suplanted by their more able neighbors. Homo Sapiens Neanderthalus and Homo Sapiens Sapiens are no execption; evolution doesn't care about nice, it cares about successful. Understanding this fact, and all of its implications, will go a long way towards ensuring our long-term survival. Quote: I think this is simply unknowable right now. The laws of probablility, even with a fairly optimistic assessment regarding the frequency of intelligent life, are on your side. Then again, random chance could have placed another civilization on a planet orbiting 61 Ursae Majoris or Beta Hydri, stars easily within communication range of our present-day radio telescopes. Or a civilization could be farther away, but possess a million year-old technology that will allow them to communicate with us. As I said, I think this falls firmly into the realm of "things we just don't know". Always good talking to you, Niall. G |
|||
|
|
||||
Chris OConnor |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #13 | ||
|
Indisputable BookTalk Master
Posts: 9511 06/15/06 20:04:21 BookTalk Owner |
I'm really happy to see that 16 members have stated they believe life probably exists elsewhere in the universe. To me this is the sign of quality thinkers.
|
|||
|
|
||||
MikeHouston |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #14 | ||
|
Posts: 8 06/22/06 05:43:37 Still pretty green... |
I think it is statistically quite unlikely that life has not at any time developed anywhere but here.
Putting about ball-park figures, if we say our galaxy has 10^11 stars and there are an approximately equal number of galaxies averaging a similar number of stars, that leaves us 10^22 possible systems. If we assume that only 1 in a million of these systems can actually support life and only one in a million of those actually does give rise to life at some point that would still leave us 10 billion places where life exists/has existed at some point. Even if we assumed that only 1 in a million of those evolved life intelligent enough to have a civilization, that would still leave us with 10,000 intelligent species which had evolved at some point. I'd say intelligent life is probably very sparse but I would be surprised if we were the only ones. |
|||
|
|
||||
Saint Gasoline |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #15 | ||
|
Posts: 220 09/14/06 09:08:54 Ph.D. |
I do not believe that life exists on other planets. I will believe this when I have some reason to.
I believe it is a likely possibility that there may be life somewhere in our massive universe other than that present on Earth, but this isn't quite the same thing as believing there actually is life. |
|||
|
|
||||
Chris OConnor |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #16 | ||
|
Indisputable BookTalk Master
Posts: 9511 10/08/06 23:14:11 BookTalk Owner |
I think there is such a high probability that life exists on other planets that I would readily gamble my life on it. I would literally not think twice about gambling my life this very minute that life exists on thousands and thousands of other planets, and that many of these life forms have evolved far beyond us. It seems statistically impossible or extreeeemly improbable that life originated here on Earth and ONLY here on Earth. There are BILLIONS of planets with similar conditions throughout the cosmos.
|
|||
|
|
||||
phiend |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #17 | ||
|
Posts: 42 10/09/06 10:10:41 Well established |
I believe that there is other life in the universe, however that is a belief. My belief is based solely on the fact that to me it seems less probable that only one star, in a galaxy of 10^11 stars in a universe of 10^12 galaxies produced life, than the alternative. I would also like to point out that we don't know how unlikely the emergence of life is. We only have one data point out of the vast number of stars in our universe; this is not enough for any type of guessing. We know that conditions have to be just right for Carbon/Water based lifeforms to emerge, however we don't know that this is the only way life can emerge.
|
|||
|
|
||||
Chris OConnor |
Re: Do you believe life exists on other planets? | #18 | ||
|
Indisputable BookTalk Master
Posts: 9511 10/09/06 12:36:40 BookTalk Owner |
Agreed. I know my belief in ET life is just a belief. But I think that belief is based on sound inferential reasoning.
|
|||
|
|
||||
- Member Introductions & Journals
- BookTalk News & Development
- Religion, Philosophy & the Arts
- Politics, Current Events & History
- Science, Nature & Technology
- General Discussion & Miscellaneous Topics
- Book Suggestions, Polls, & Reviews
- Additional Book Discussions
- Godless in America: Conversations With an Atheist - by George A. Ricker
- Interventions - by Noam Chomsky
- Religious Expression and the American Constitution - by Franklyn S. Haiman
- Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future - by Bill McKibben
- The God Delusion - by Richard Dawkins
- The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal - by Jared Diamond
- The Woman in the Dunes - by Abe Kobo
- Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction - by Eugenie Scott
- The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - by Michael Pollan
- I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B.C., Murdered and Deified A.D. 54 - by Robert Graves
- Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon - by Daniel Dennett
- A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East - by David Fromkin
- The Time Traveler's Wife - by Audrey Niffenegger
- The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason - by Sam Harris
- Ender's Game - by Orson Scott Card
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - by Mark Haddon
- Value & Virtue in a Godless Universe - by Erik J. Wielenberg
- The March: A Novel - by E.L. Doctorow
- The Ethical Brain - by Michael Gazzaniga
- Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism - by Susan Jacoby
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - by Jared Diamond
- The Battle for God - by Karen Armstrong
- The Future of Life - by Edward O. Wilson
- What is Good? The Search for the Best Way to Live - by A.C. Grayling
- Civilization and It's Enemies: The Next Stage of History - by Lee Harris
- Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space - by Carl Sagan
- How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God - by Michael Shermer
- Looking For Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain - by Antonio Damasio
- Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right - by Al Franken
- The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - by Matt Ridley
- The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - by Stephen Pinker
- Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder - by Richard Dawkins
- Atheism: A Reader - edited by S. T. Joshi
- Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century - by Howard Bloom
- The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History - by Howard Bloom
- Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies - by Jared Diamond
- Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark - by Carl Sagan
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West - by Dee Alexander Brown
- Future Shock - by Alvin Toffler

