I think people have vastly underestimated this possibility. The universe is random and full of quirks and happenstances, evolution on earth was a fluke. If anything exists out there I don’t think it’s highly probable it is anything like we or popular fiction have imagined it.
shareMaybe intelligent life exists in other parts of the universe, but the other organisms have access to the internet, they read your posts, and now they have no desire to make contact with humanity.
shareI wanted to make a similar comment but you beat me to it.
shareYou’re next level Burroughs. They should pay you to be here.🙂
share
LOL!
😎
Zing!
shareI think it is certainly possible that there is no intelligent extraterrestrial life. I'm open to either possibility.
shareWell if intelligent life is as abundant in the Universe as some people think it does make you wonder sometimes ' Where are they ? '
Stuck on a rock like us?
sharePerhaps. But the Universe is over 13 billion years old " ...and that's a long time Tony ! " So you might speculate that if life is abundant then some species would be very old indeed and so very advanced in terms of technology.
But the universe being so old is also the problem. Space faring human is only around 50 years. We only have the first human in space in 1961. That's nothing in multi-billion year timescale the universe operates in.
It's a possibility that we are truly alone (as in intelligent life form) now in the universe. Maybe there were other intelligent lifeforms somewhere in the universe, but they are millions of years ago. They're probably already extinct now.
Or maybe there will be another intelligent lifeforms somewhere else, but they are millions of years after we have been extinct.
The universe is simply too vast and spanning too long in time.
Well if intelligent life is as abundant in the Universe as some people think it does make you wonder sometimes ' Where are they ? '
What ? are you serious? you want to know why they havent turned up for a coffee and a bagel?
People always confuse the 2 questions:
"Do aliens exist?"
"Do aliens visit earth and probe yokels in fields?"
You seem to recognise the difference between the 2 questions and yet still dont understand why you havent seen one!
The short answer: Space is big. Inconceivably big
Best summed up by the Eric Idle song from "The Meaning of life"
Space is big. Thanks. What would I do without your wisdom to guide me...?
oh you knew that? but did you know how big?
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space
to put some numbers on it, our galaxy is 100,000 light years across.
That means if you had a car that went at the speed of light ( which is pretty speedy for any vehicle) it would take you well over a thousand lifetimes to cross it . at the speed of light.
Thats big!
And how many galaxies are in the whole universe you ask ? 2? 3?
no , best estimate 100 billion.
and There are 9,900,000 light years on average between galaxies (see previous note on how far lighht years are)
oh , and theres 100 thousand million stars in our galaxy alone.
and you wonder why the havent come and visited us on our little planet?
I believe there is but I agree with you it's not likely to be humanoid.
I also think that the technology needed to travel between galaxies would only be available to species far more advanced than us. I mean we've been lumbering around this rock for tens of thousands of years and we've made it what, to the moon? Bra-vo human race lol Point is, I don't expect to see flying saucers close-encountering us anytime soon.
I hope there is some concrete evidence of life out there before I die, but if not it's a wonderful prospect to ponder. I guess that's why sci-fi films are so popular.
There's intelligent life. They are so intelligent, they know to never ever come here to Earth.
sharei believe its reasonable to assume that animal life (which, given time would likely derive intelligence) is quite rare, but microbial life is not nearly as rare.
to consider that we are absolutely unique in the universe is a vanishingly unlikely proposition.
most life would have slightly different biomolecular conventions, but on the whole a similar structure, a similar cellular schema. we see that evolution converges very often - that would likely hold also for the essentials of biology.
what's signficant, what makes animal life so seemingly rare in prospect is that it took 3.5 -billion- years of terran stability to produce a cellular platform suitable for multicellar organisms to arise.
There is definitely life.
Will it be intelligent? ...probably.
Will we recognize it as life, or intelligent life? ...meh, probably not.
It's possible, but highly unlikely given the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe. And some scientists even
postulate alternate universes.
😎