Could there be other life in space?

[card986]

I think theres a high chance of life on other planets because with this vast universe its almost impossible that we're the only planet with the perfect conditions to give off life. and possibly we don't need these conditions and life forms from other planets adapt to the state there planet is in and make life out of that. just an idea.

 

[Divine Retribution]

Also, scientists found traces of bacterium in an ice core sample from one of Mars' ice caps. Evolutionists insist that we were once bacterium too, billions of years ago. If a planet so close to us has some potential early lifeforms, then why wouldn't there be planets, light years away, with more evolved and mature life?

 

[houndourm]

When did they find the bacteria and couldn't it have been on the shuttle already, brought from earth?

 

[GhostAnime]

Just do the calculations. Every star you see out there could be an individual galaxy or solar system. That number probably won't stop going up anytime soon either. There is an extremely low chance that the only life in en entire universe is randomly found on one planet out of an infinite number.

 

[PokeJustice]

Just do the calculations. Every star you see out there could be an individual galaxy or solar system. That number probably won't stop going up anytime soon either. There is an extremely low chance that the only life in en entire universe is randomly found on one planet out of an infinite number.

But this isn't really an argument based on evidence.

 

[Korusan]

Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" puts everything into such perspective where I absolutely can't believe life existing elsewhere is impossible.

Furthermore, the current project to find out if there's an entirely isolated ecosystem in an ocean under Antarctica will help decide whether or not extraterrestrial life is present in our own solar system; if life indeed exists down there, there's no reason it couldn't in one of Europa's hypothetical underground oceans.

 

[GhostAnime]

But this isn't really an argument based on evidence.

The evidence is in the math.

Is there any reason our process couldn't be duplicated elsewhere if there's a 99% chance (maybe even HIGHER than that) that it has somewhere considering the billions of stars out there?

I mean, there's a high chance I could walk off a cliff outside of my house. What evidence would I have? I didn't look outside yet.. yet, I can be pretty near 100% convinced that I'm not going to fall without needing to look outside for evidence.

 

[PokeJustice]

But these odds are just contrived and are difficult to quantify.

Whatever happened to skepticism?

You would probably agree that the only reasonable attitude for a fallible and errant human being to have on the realm of the supernatural is one of doubt. I am merely extending the principle to the realm of extraterrestrial life.

 

[Korusan]

This may change your mind.

 

[PokeJustice]

No. This is meaningless. No evidence of life on any of these planets.

Do you have any idea how diverse extrasolar systems are? And how particular one must be for any possibility of life to exist?

I don't listen to fascists anyway. Just a policy of mine.

 

[Deku_Link]

Because the first is based on common sense whilst the second is faith/religion/whatever you want to call it, and the two are very different.

I've never seen anyone prove or disprove God, true enough, but I've certainly seen it proved that a rarity is more likely to appear in larger numbers given a larger sample.

Not really. You have to have a lot of faith to believe an argument to be common sense when there is no empirical evidence for it. It sounds too much like creationists talking about the "extremely low probability" that life forms evolved the way they did, and that's no good!

I'm really just DAing here since I tend to side with Stephen Hawking on the issue of life existing elsewhere, but how many of you guys talking about probability can cite an actual number you can back up? I'll even accept a confidence interval!

 

[ebilly99]

Lets do the math. If 1 out of ten stars have planets (Perhaps more) and one out of 8 are in the goldilock zone. (here is is 2/8 our 1/4) and of these planets ? have the water. (I belive that the lowest would be 1 in a hundred) and of these planets 1/5 have some form of life. of these 3/1 have potential for sentiance. (APE DOLPHINE AND PIG) 1/3 become sentiant. 1/50 reach industrial revolution.

 

[Sabonea_Masukippa]

Well, Kemplar has in four months observed 1/400th of the sky and found around 1235 candidate exoplanets. It has, so far, had about a 80% accuracy rate in predicting planets correctly, so perhaps 988 of those will be confirmed as real planets.

Of those 1235, 68 are believed to be Earth sized or smaller, and there are 54 in the posited 'habitable zone' where liquid water is predicted to be able to exist for some of the time on the planets surface (which varies by star intensity, size etc). 5 are Earth sized and in the habitable zone. The four month study was of 156,000 thousand stars.

Bear in mind that Keplar is unable to detect certain types of planets due to the orbits of some planets not aligning with the sun in a manner it can observe.

That's only stars from the Milky Way Galaxy, by the way, just one of thousands of observed galaxies.

While I'm not making a positive claim for extra-terrestrial life, those are impressive figures for four months worth of observations and put us in a good position to further research into extra-terrestrial life.

 

[~-Overheat-~]

More and more planets are being discovered, each of them having the potential to withhold life. I actually, think, in our lifetime, we might be able to hear the confirmation of the existence of aliens. They might be plants, or even microscopic bacteria, but aliens are aliens!

 

[GhostAnime]

But these odds are just contrived and are difficult to quantify.

Whatever happened to skepticism?

You would probably agree that the only reasonable attitude for a fallible and errant human being to have on the realm of the supernatural is one of doubt. I am merely extending the principle to the realm of extraterrestrial life.

The difference between a god and extraterrestrial life is that one can be calculated. I can't even begin to calculate the possibility of a god (or at least one that is related to our beginnings).

I used to have the exact numbers but I didn't really save them. I just remember them being based on the stars we see outside having a certain possibility of a solar system; something very similar to above.

 

[Raddaya]

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

We think life needs water, oxygen or something. Why? There are about a billion ways life could be made. Life could be there on the "coldest" planet, or the "very hot" planet. Also, another quote, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

 

[Neo Duality]

A fluke is too blunt an instrument to craft life. Or, without all the emotionally charged lingo, life is relative. Existence of life may differ in forms from planet to planet. Biological life may "ascend" into a higher form, as proposed by the 8-circuit-model. (and implications of such)

 

[ebilly99]

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

We think life needs water, oxygen or something. Why? There are about a billion ways life could be made. Life could be there on the "coldest" planet, or the "very hot" planet. Also, another quote, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Good point. As we dicover the universe we may discover that our diffenetion of life is terrible.

 

[GhostAnime]

There are about a billion ways life could be made

First, let me say that I admit that there isn't conclusive evidence that water is necessary for life.

At the same time, we can't assume that there are tons of ways without first displaying a hint of a possibility. Otherwise, anything could be called life and we'd be done with it.

 

[PokeJustice]

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

No, but absence of evidence is exactly that: absence of evidence.

It is impossible to infer anything from a lack of information.