Do you believe in aliens?

[Axe]

No, I don't.
With all the science fiction on TV, and in the books, a lot of people do not realize how unique and ideal situation here on Earth is.

We still don't even know how life was created. That alone was probably one in a billion chance situation.
Then we have a star that was so stable that didn't bother life for 4 billion years and that increased heat slightly as planet cooled down.
Then we are so far from galaxy core that we don't have any galactic disasters like black holes or neighboring supernovas bothering us.
Then we have a planet that is very dense and full of heavy elements.
Then we have a huge gas giants in outer space to protect us from meteors, comets and other planets.
Then we take all the extinctions that Earth have been through and how they reshaped the life here. That was pure freaking luck.
Ozon layer, Eart's magnetic field, mild tectonic and seismic activity, etc. all the crap that protect us from things like radiation might not be very common out there.

End even after all that played in our favour, it took almost 4 billion years of evolution and god damn millions of instances of pure luck to get intelligent life on Earth.
I really fear that chances of intelligent life on a planet might be one in few trillions or even lower and the nearest one might be in the other galaxies, and not even in the neightboring ones, which is the same as if it didn't exist, because there is pretty much no way we can travel to other galaxies ever.

Why are you not using your main dup Stephonit anymore

[bladefd]

No, I don't.
With all the science fiction on TV, and in the books, a lot of people do not realize how unique and ideal situation here on Earth is.

We still don't even know how life was created. That alone was probably one in a billion chance situation.
Then we have a star that was so stable that didn't bother life for 4 billion years and that increased heat slightly as planet cooled down.
Then we are so far from galaxy core that we don't have any galactic disasters like black holes or neighboring supernovas bothering us.
Then we have a planet that is very dense and full of heavy elements.
Then we have a huge gas giants in outer space to protect us from meteors, comets and other planets.
Then we take all the extinctions that Earth have been through and how they reshaped the life here. That was pure freaking luck.
Ozon layer, Eart's magnetic field, mild tectonic and seismic activity, etc. all the crap that protect us from things like radiation might not be very common out there.

End even after all that played in our favour, it took almost 4 billion years of evolution and god damn millions of instances of pure luck to get intelligent life on Earth.
I really fear that chances of intelligent life on a planet might be one in few trillions or even lower and the nearest one might be in the other galaxies, and not even in the neightboring ones, which is the same as if it didn't exist, because there is pretty much no way we can travel to other galaxies ever.

40 quintillion contains 13 million of 3 trillions in it. So you are saying 13 million planets harbor advanced life across the universe?

How could 13 million = "No, I don't believe advanced life exists outside of our Earth"??

Also keep in mind that 40 quintillion excludes 99% of all planets in habitable zone. So further accounting in your estimate on top of that, we are already in rare territory excluding something like 99.99% of all planets. It still leaves us with 13 million planets. I bet you probability is quite a bit higher than that. The problem is the vast distances unfortunately. Nobody has 200 years to wait to send a short message reply to a message that traveled for 200 years. That civilization might already have moved on or killed itself off..

[Sulico]

40 quintillion contains 13 million of 3 trillions in it. So you are saying 13 million planets harbor advanced life across the universe?

How could 13 million = "No, I don't believe advanced life exists outside of our Earth"??

First of all, it might be much lower than that. It might be higher also, but we don't know and I'm a pessimist.

Second of all, the question was "do you believe in aliens?" "Aliens" implies that we will at least have evidence of their existence in our species lifetime or even have a contact with them. Which I don't believe will ever happen.
The solid mathematic probability that intelligent life exist somewhere is irrelevant if we'll never have the evidence of that before humans inevitably die out.

[Phoenix]

Most likely exist but don’t want anything to do with us

If they ever came across this forum I can't say I blame them. And if that doesn't do the trick, watching 2020 unfold certainly would.

In all seriousness, I have a hard time believing we're the only sentient beings in the universe. Maybe we're the ones isolated from a much larger collective of sentient beings, but human arrogance makes us think we're more special than we probably really are in the big picture. I mean ultimately, for whatever forces led to our existence why would those forces concentrate those efforts solely into what is in essence a speck of dust( the size of earth relative to the universe). There are things out there we are way too primitive to comprehend based on current technology and science.

[Kblaze8855]

The numbers are just too insane to say we are it. The people who use" We would have found it by now." are out of their minds. If you get dropped some places on earth you could not see another person for months with 7 billion of of us running around. But we are supposed to have found life on one of trillions and trillions of planets when the speed of light wouldnt even get us far(relatively speaking) in a lifetime if we did have warp drives. Our galaxy is 50,000 years across if you had a light speed ship. If the cavemen had a warp drive....they wouldnt have crossed one galaxy. And there are more galaxies than we can even imagine. We may be alone in our corner. We arent alone.

[Sulico]

The numbers are just too insane to say we are it. The people who use" We would have found it by now." are out of their minds. If you get dropped some places on earth you could not see another person for months with 7 billion of of us running around. But we are supposed to have found life on one of trillions and trillions of planets when the speed of light wouldnt even get us far(relatively speaking) in a lifetime if we did have warp drives. Our galaxy is 50,000 years across if you had a light speed ship. If the cavemen had a warp drive....they wouldnt have crossed one galaxy. And there are more galaxies than we can even imagine. We may be alone in our corner. We arent alone.

What is the difference between being alone, and not being alone but not be able to find out and prove that we are not alone in, let's say, half a billion years that humans left to live?

So maybe nearest sentient life somewhere in the Shapley supercluster. And they sent amazingly strong greeting signal right about now to all other sentient life. The signal will be here in about 650 million years. If Humans are extinct by then, how is it not the same as being alone?

[msbutthurt]

The numbers are just too insane to say we are it. The people who use" We would have found it by now." are out of their minds. If you get dropped some places on earth you could not see another person for months with 7 billion of of us running around. But we are supposed to have found life on one of trillions and trillions of planets when the speed of light wouldnt even get us far(relatively speaking) in a lifetime if we did have warp drives. Our galaxy is 50,000 years across if you had a light speed ship. If the cavemen had a warp drive....they wouldnt have crossed one galaxy. And there are more galaxies than we can even imagine. We may be alone in our corner. We arent alone.

[Rolando]

How is it that we have existed for 200k years but have only made significant progress in the last 120 years?

That's not necessarily true. All you have to do is take a look at those enormous, purely geometric, pyramids in Egypt. There are a number of people who believe that there was a fairly advanced version of human civilization in North Africa that got wiped out through some kind of comet strike / climate catastrophe about 13,000 years ago. The Sahara used to be green. There were huge lakes and rivers there and, an absolutely thriving human presence.

The people who came before us were masters of certain arts having to do with stonework which have been lost to history.

And, yes, of course aliens exist.

[FKAri]

The numbers are just too insane to say we are it. The people who use" We would have found it by now." are out of their minds. If you get dropped some places on earth you could not see another person for months with 7 billion of of us running around. But we are supposed to have found life on one of trillions and trillions of planets when the speed of light wouldnt even get us far(relatively speaking) in a lifetime if we did have warp drives. Our galaxy is 50,000 years across if you had a light speed ship. If the cavemen had a warp drive....they wouldnt have crossed one galaxy. And there are more galaxies than we can even imagine. We may be alone in our corner. We arent alone.

You could cross light years in fractions of a second for you if you are traveling close enough to the speed of light.

[rawimpact]

You could cross light years in fractions of a second for you if you are traveling close enough to the speed of light.

lol what?

A light year is a measure of distance that it takes for light to travel over a period of a year.

So to say if you travel at the speed of light, you can travel a light year in seconds is absolutely false

[rufuspaul]

The aliens gave us COVID-19

[n00bie]

The aliens gave us COVID-19

Makes sense that the Chinese are aliens. They are smarter than the rest of the world and eat weird things.

[FKAri]

lol what?

A light year is a measure of distance that it takes for light to travel over a period of a year.

So to say if you travel at the speed of light, you can travel a light year in seconds is absolutely false

It's true.

[Lebron23]

Yes i believe in extra terestials.

[Sulico]

You could cross light years in fractions of a second for you if you are traveling close enough to the speed of light.

Impossible for any object with a mass. So you should remove "you" out of equation.