Question Aliens...Do you think they exist?

[escapetomsfate]

Either aliens exist or they don't - it's amazing and completely mind-boggling either way.

 

[T.Neo]

Who said it has to be based on that??

Chemistry.

"Alternate biochemistries" are often at a chemical disadvantage to carbon/water based life in many respects.

That doesn't mean that alternate biochemistries are totally impossible though- just that their nature could limit them in certain ways.

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:rofl:​

 

[_Designer_]

:lol:​

As intelligent as he may be....nobody can take him seriously with hair like that. Not to sound like a stereotype: talk about animal house and astronomy :lol:

 

[Goth]

The two 100% certain things are that all UFO sightings are fake and that if aliens exist we will never meet them because of the travel distances. The rest is blah blah.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Look, if aliens do not exist, the we are THE FIRST ONES! :lol:

 

[Goth]

Nope. We will not match the definition of "alien".

 

[T.Neo]

Nope. We will not match the definition of "alien".

We did a few times back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Also, never say never. What travel distance is insurmountable, in 10 000 CE?

 

[fsci123]

I want to debug every myth involving aliens NOW...

they are an exploratory race or a group or exploratory races. Reason being for my theory is if they were hostile and wanted to take is out, they'd have done it by now or have done it before but and do not wanna do it again.

No. No. No. There is no economically viable reason to travel halfway across the galaxy to observe a tiny planet called earth.

If anything, they're researching our personalities, culture and all that possibly to blend in.

Why would they want to blend in? What makes you think they will have the time and patience to examine us. What makes you think that they have to come all the way to earth to do so.

Also I hate the terms "habitable planet," "habitable zone" or anything similar, as there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest that planets have to have this kind of atmosphere, this kind of temperature, these kinds of chemicals etc. to support life, it's a load of utter IMHO.

Well the most abundant elements included in order: Hydrogen, Helium, Oxygen, Carbon, Neon, Iron, Nitrogen, and Silicon. Helium and Neon are inert so... That leaves H,O,C,Fe,N,Si. H and O make water. Water is the best solvent in the universe. C and O make CO2 it is an inert gas. Fe is a metal. Silicon is a metal. Si and O make Silicate and that is what earth is made of. Planets could be made of water, silicate, iron type thing, or hydrogen. So you have everything that would be needed.

Well, there was "Planet-X" back in '98 I forgot the name of the planet though; said to be twice the size of Jupiter and earth atmospheric. However the planet is beyond the kuiper belt and I don't think any probes made it that far back, I know the one that made it to pluto but I don't think it made it or got through the belt.

No no no... Are you talking about hypothetical tyche. Or are you talking GL 876b?

Do aliens exist? Yes.

Have they evolved to being space fairing creatures? Nope.

When we finally go out to the worlds even in our own solar system I have no doubt that we'll find all sorts of weird life on Mars, Europa, Titan, etc but I do believe that we are the first species to evolve to the point of being able to build spacecraft.

We live in a nice quiet part of a very hostile galaxy. We are lucky.

Well we have had 6 billion years of opportunity for life to evolve including intelligence. Most likely any aliens would died off. Degraded. Isolated themselves. Or just got bored.

Based on information that I've read up on such as the excess acetylene in Titans atmosphere, the ALH rock from Mars and subsequent discovery of extremophiles and the signature of organic particles in comets.

On the flip side of that there is absolutely no evidence for intelligent alien life.

Well a few chemicals or lack of them do point out the possibility of life in the universe. But the lack of intelligent life does hint something...

nope. assuming that there was intelligent life all across the galaxy you should expect at least one species to become very technogically advanced. yet we don't see any changes in the stars. Not a single star shows any sign of a dyson ring or other such stellar engineering construct.

Explain to me how one would have the materials to build such a construct. Or keep it running.

True but if you read the article it points out that 75% of G type stars in this galaxy are older than Sol. This means that if aliens exist somewhere there would be evidence be it in the form of a Dyson ring or an interstellar beacon.

Maybe aliens are spread out across solar systems. Or maybe they managed to curve their energy use while till maintaining high technology. What do you mean by interstellar beacon?

 

[Ghostrider]

Nope. We will not match the definition of "alien".

Ever been in a US airport? There are two queues: US citizens and Aliens. Before the security circus came to town, I could land at Atlanta International, get into the Aliens queue, and tell the personnel "I come in peace", and get a hearty laugh for an answer. Now I would probably be pepper-sprayed for making the Vulcan salute.

 

[mojoey]

No. No. No. There is no economically viable reason to travel halfway across the galaxy to observe a tiny planet called earth.

youre thinking in earthly terms. for all we know, they dont have a currency. so right there the arguement is invalid.

*smug face*

 

[T.Neo]

youre thinking in earthly terms. for all we know, they dont have a currency.

Neither do amoebae, but they still don't do stuff that doesn't pay.

 

[Gerdih]

I have thought about that many times and I have arrived at some conclusions about the terms of hostility. I believe that the grade of hostility of a civilization tend to 0 according of his technology and cultural progress.
I think even a advanced civilization would destroy us If they need. ( I am not saying they are typical aliens of films that want earth, and they need to destroy us to conquer the planet)

I am not talking if they can arrive here I am talking only about if they would be hostile or not. The grade of hostility also depends of what they want or need.

Other thing: If they know we are here. Assuming they want to know other intelligent aliens and they search planets like earth. I would say they know about earth but currently they can't know If we are here or not.

 

[Scruce]

No. No. No. There is no economically viable reason to travel halfway across the galaxy to observe a tiny planet called earth.

Well, lets see if it were the exact opposite?

If you lived on Earth and discovered a habitable planet sitting 4-100LY away from you. Of course there are reasons to go:

- A new world, with the possibility of new elements, materials or compounds.

- A "backup Earth". Humanity (or any Alien race) cannot survive on its own plannet forever, eventually a disaster scenario such as a comet or a solar flare will destroy any species home planet.

It's expand or die, mate.

If there is no reason to go like you say, why does the Kepler telescope exist?

Well we have had 6 billion years of opportunity for life to evolve including intelligence. Most likely any aliens would died off. Degraded. Isolated themselves. Or just got bored.

What, any aliens would have died off? Where is your evidence for that?

Other life in the universe as a timeline would not necessarily evolve at the same timeline as it does on Earth. Who knows, maybe the alience that will dominate the future, are still in the "green jelly" part of evolution.

 

[Urwumpe]

I have no problem believing in aliens, but not in ancient astronauts. That contains too many what-ifs and logical fallacies for me. I know a lot of ancient stuff, that is very advanced, even more advanced as the technology that ancient astronaut fans attribute to alien influence, but still, done by very human beings. For example mechanical astronomic computers, that possibly aided in navigation. Or had been just toys for rich nobles.

The brain that we have today, did not change much in the past 90,000 years. Still we are just more advanced today, because we learned to work scientifically and build on the knowledge of the past, instead of it getting forgotten if the teacher dies too soon.

 

[fsci123]

Well, lets see if it were the exact opposite?

If you lived on Earth and discovered a habitable planet sitting 4-100LY away from you. Of course there are reasons to go:

- A new world, with the possibility of new elements, materials or compounds.

- A "backup Earth". Humanity (or any Alien race) cannot survive on its own plannet forever, eventually a disaster scenario such as a comet or a solar flare will destroy any species home planet.

It's expand or die, mate.

If there is no reason to go like you say, why does the Kepler telescope exist?




What, any aliens would have died off? Where is your evidence for that?

Other life in the universe as a timeline would not necessarily evolve at the same timeline as it does on Earth. Who knows, maybe the alience that will dominate the future, are still in the "green jelly" part of evolution.

Yeah but assuming the nearest species is 750ly away they wouldn't even get interested incoming here. Most liekly they would colonize their homeworld(s) then they would colonize the moons and planets of their home system. Then they would finally set their sites on the nearest star sytems.


I also mentioned that they could degenerate which means that they could stagnate or loose their technology through dissease, mass infertility, war, and ressourfe depletion. They could isolate themselves from the outside universe via some non mechanical mechanism. They could kill eachother off. Who knows?

I say the biggest evdience for aliens is their absense. Just sayin...

 

[Scruce]

Most liekly they would colonize their homeworld(s) then they would colonize the moons and planets of their home system. Then they would finally set their sites on the nearest star sytems.

Dont forget, not all of the moons and planets of their home system are colonisable. I'll admit, there is a (small) possibility that all the bodies in the system are habitable, but is is extremely unlikely.

I say the biggest evdience for aliens is their absense. Just sayin...

So, you're saying the biggest evidence of life is... no life? :blink:

That's like saying I have a cat, because there is no cat in 200 miles, how does that work out? :huh:

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Well the most abundant elements included in order: Hydrogen, Helium, Oxygen, Carbon, Neon, Iron, Nitrogen, and Silicon. Helium and Neon are inert so... That leaves H,O,C,Fe,N,Si. H and O make water. Water is the best solvent in the universe. C and O make CO2 it is an inert gas. Fe is a metal. Silicon is a metal. Si and O make Silicate and that is what earth is made of. Planets could be made of water, silicate, iron type thing, or hydrogen. So you have everything that would be needed.

I think you've completely missed the point of what I'm trying to say. Who can say that there isn't life on Titan that lives on Methane rather than Oxygen and Water, how can you prove that life can't live on Methane?

 

[T.Neo]

how can you prove that life can't live on Methane?

If you had a good enough knowledge of chemistry and good enough ideas of alternate biochemistries, you might be able to rule out something like "methane based life".

Or determine how it might work.

For example (and I am not saying this makes 'methane life' impossible), methane's boiling and freezing points are only 26 degrees apart, compared to water's 90-100 degrees... which means a ecology based off of it could be more 'finicky'.

 

[Urwumpe]

An more important problem is: The lower the temperatures, the lower the chemical reaction rate. Life at lower temperatures would be far more slow.

Next problem: you need to find a valid replacement for carbon based organic chemistry, which is VERY complex. I somewhere have posters of the chemistry of the human digestion system: Hundreds of different molecules with very complex shapes and functions.

You could maybe do it with less - but then, our human digestion system is already pretty minimal. There is no molecule that has no important function, and dual use molecules are hard to find.

 

[Star Voyager]

Not sure if this has been posted, but here is a quote from one of my many movie heroes, Jack Burton:

"Well, ya see, I'm not saying that I've been everywhere and I've done everything, but I do know it's a pretty amazing planet we live on here, and a man would have to be some kind of FOOL to think we're alone in THIS universe."

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090728/quotes