Alien Life!

[Celethiel]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/nasa-says-alien-life-will-be-discovered-within-20-years-220544489.html

Doesn't it make you so happy we'll find out the age old question, are we alone in the universe within the next 20 years..... maybe

[Bill W]

Although I believe they are initially talking about finding the markers to sustain life or even microbial life, it is still interesting.  I think it will take much longer than that to discover 'intelligent' life on other worlds, but the mathmatical probability alone is staggering.  I would love to see it happen within my lifetime, but I won't hold my breath. 

[Ron]

It's the mention of sapient, or intelligent life, that is missing from the article, as Bill mentions. It is unlikely that anything humans will do that will remotely give us the capability of finding and initiating a first contact with intelligent life. It's also quite possible that no other species with intelligence is capable of interstellar travel, and no one will be contacting us. The biggest drawback to branching out into space and other planets is a lack of a cohesive and inclusive plan involving all the peoples of the earth. Without that, governments are duplicating each other's efforts and wasting money. At the end of the day, we are all earthlings and we have but one home, and we shouldn't lose sight of that through our diversity and squabbles. That's loosely the way I see it.

[Ashi]

Given politicians are still busy contain wars from breaking out within this little planet, do we have the energy or intelligence to deal with an intergallactic diplomacy?

[zaf89]

Given politicians are still busy contain wars from breaking out within this little planet, do we have the energy or intelligence to deal with an intergallactic diplomacy?

Maybe it would finally unite humanity across all social divides à la Independence Day?

[Zombie]

Although I believe they are initially talking about finding the markers to sustain life or even microbial life, it is still interesting.  I think it will take much longer than that to discover 'intelligent' life on other worlds, but the mathmatical probability alone is staggering.  I would love to see it happen within my lifetime, but I won't hold my breath. 

 

Actually the two may go hand in hand. Consider that 20 years ago - OK, 22 - not one single exoplanet had been detected. Now they've detected 100s. Telescope technology is developing rapidly with the huge investment there's been so it's very likely that within much less than 20 years they'll be able to observe exoplanets as they transit their stars, detect absorbtion lines from their atmospheres and look for those that are markers of life as well as industrial activity...

 

If you want to know the likelihood of finding intelligent life you can work it out yourself using the handy Drake equation

 

 

where:

 

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which radio-communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);

R* = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy

fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets

ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets

fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point

fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)

fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space

L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space[8]

 

...which is fine, except we don't actually know most of this stuff

 

 

 

Edited July 17, 2014 by Zombie

[C J]

There are plenty of people who believe aliens are here now.  They're not letting everyone know they're here, so they must be pretty smart.  In Texas they seem to want cow lips and stuff like that.  In Peru they were after gold.  .  They must be making some kind of weird alien jewelry or something.  I think I might have seen some gold plated cow lips in a UFO shop on the history channel.  Who knows, maybe they want the lips for something else.  They take other parts too, so they might have some creepy fetishes going on.  In any case I'm not really anxious to meet any of them, I just want them to admit what they've been doing, and promise to get the cow parts from the slaughter house instead of stealing them off the ranch.  It's impossible under current standards to sell a cow that's missing their lips and other things.

 

 

                                                                                                                    

Edited July 18, 2014 by Ghostboy

[Billy Martin]

Even though the scientific probability of other intelligent life in the universe appears to be high, I rather doubt it. To me, the likelihood that everything necessary to duplicate the circumstances needed for life on earth to form intelligent lifeforms, is remote. Not only did earth have too be not to far from her sun and not too close, but earth needed the giant gas planets at just the right places in the solar system to protect her from destruction.

 

Yes, there are trillions of stars, but how many are in just the right place on the out-skirts of it's galaxy, like our own, to prevent all the nasty things that can happen close to the center of a galaxy from destroying it's planets?

 

I think I would be happy to be wrong, but even if I'm wrong, I'm not sure I really would be happy to know that there were a higher intelligent alien civilization knocking on our door. It didn't go too well for the Native Americans.

 

Just saying...

Edited July 18, 2014 by Billy Martin

[W_L]

I don't doubt that there is life in the universe, nor do I doubt that we have much to learn from these unexplored worlds.

 

However, I doubt how we measure the concept of intelligence or sapient behavior within species, because our sociological and environmental theory has an underlying self-consistency issue that would prevent intelligent life from maintaining itself without interference. I am speaking of Darwinian natural selection and conflict.

 

Species grow in population, develop new skills to make them better survivors, and begin conflicts with other species to garner territory and resources. That line of reasoning has been true for nature (human nature as well despite what humanist want) for eons. Once you reach our level of advancement, nuclear and potentially Anti-matter based weaponry, what is the chances that such a civilization based on conflict would not destroy itself eventually before developing interstellar propulsion or interstellar communication?

 

Can intelligent life develop without that? If measured in human contexts, I highly doubt it is even possible. We will likely destroy ourselves due to the same issues that have brought us our modern world and technologies.

 

Maybe the reason we cannot find others like us in the universe is because our model of development remains too destructive in its nature to support itself over a long period of time.

 

Any type of alien species that have gone past our level of development, would likely have to abandon this model in order to remain effective.

[Zombie]

well all you need do now is tell us how many years we have left and you've got a value for L in the Drake equation