*sigh* sometimes I don't know why I bother making long posts....
We've just had a big discussion (hint: see page one) about the analysis of the probability of other life supporting planets being out there. And then you just go and shag all over it by going back to square one with the arguments! :D [img]tongue.gif[/img]

*sigh* sometimes I don't know why I bother making long posts....
We've just had a big discussion (hint: see page one) about the analysis of the probability of other life supporting planets being out there. And then you just go and shag all over it by going back to square one with the arguments! :D [img]tongue.gif[/img] </font>[/QUOTE]Maybe people would read your posts and not repost the same thing if yours wasn't so long winded, a scientific observation hmmmm [img]tongue.gif[/img]

<font color=lime>You took the words right out of my keyboard! [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img] </font>

And just a couple hundred years ago, our ancestors thought that earth was flat...

The truth is we don't know what is out there and a lot of scientists are speculating based from the life giving conditions on earth... even that, life still strives in ocean depth that we previously thought impossible.

Given that the universe is billions of years old, stars died and reborn, I would think that one of the planets might have met the condition for life. If one of them is, chances are evolution will take place eventually and even if there isn't any intelligent life YET, there will be.

It doesn't matter that we a re made of the same elements, and there is a possibility that other life forms are not based on the same elements, for simplicity sake we will say that they are carbon based (like us) but that does not mean that they require oxygen, on percieve soundwaves or infared. There are many evoloutionary variations possible. For example absoloute zero degrees is 0 Kelvins (-273.15 Celcius) so what is we assume that they don't require water, that means that 0 C is irrelevent to them or even -100 C.
And take the perspective of another race looking at Earth, we may be out of a similar temperature range also, they may view this planet as unable to support life as it has posinous oxygen in it's atmosphere.
What i'm saying is that we evolved to breath oxygen and "see" infared, "hear" soundwaves etc. it is almost certain that they should be extremly different from us.
Another point what if they are communicating with us but using a different methord, i mean just because we haven't discovered something does it mean it doesn't exist? such as before we could detect the radiation remaining from the big bang (such as the static recieved by an ordinary telivision) does it mean that it did not exist prior to it's discovery.
Personally i am confident there is "inteligent" life out there, i am also confident that if discovered it will be vastly different, at least most of it.

As we approach the speed of light time slows down for the object traveling at this speed, also the distance to travel decreases, thus as we approach the speed of light it becomes possible to travel great distances in a relatively short time, so although we may not be able to go faster that the speed of light there is really no need and although no mass may be accelerated to the speed of light we can still approach it and as an object gets closer the time dialation increases and distance decreases exponentially, thus as long as we can get that fast we can get pretty much anywhere in a very short time.

EDIT: by my above statment i mean it would be pretty fast for the travlers at the speed of light, not particularly for those left on Earth.

[ 01-14-2004, 10:10 AM: Message edited by: Intrepid ]

Unless they destroy the universe by creating a gravity well because of sheer speed. An object travelling at lightspeed must have NO mass, because it's mass would become several million times heavier, and it's gravitational force would become strong enough to knock the galaxy out of it's point of expansive rotation. That'd be pretty fast for us on Earth too. :D
And another thing, the absolute zero doesn't mean water is frozen(it does, but much more), it means that energy is zero at the point of zero temperature, and thus, movement is zero. The force needed to move an object who's movement is zero is infinite, that's why we call it an absolute. In my oppinion, temperature affects lifespan. The lower the temperature, the slower the organism and the metabolism and thus the longer lifespan. If temperature is high, lifespan would be short(er).

If I remember my physics right, an object traveling at the speed of light would weigh infinitely much. Now, that's quite heavy.
You wouldn't have to go that fast, at 90% of the speed of light the weight increase would hardly been noticed, but it wouldn't be a comfortable ride.

As for the vast distances for space travel, most experts thinks that we wont see the actual extra-terrestials in person, rather robots that they sent to explore space as they tend to live longer.

Finding any lifeform out there somewhere is one thing, finding intelligent life is a completely different matter. According to evolution theory, life has existed on planet Earth for approximately 3 billion years while modern man( Homo Sapiens), the only species we know of that are intelligent enough to call themselves intelligent, has only existed for about 150 000-200 000 years. Our time here really is a piss in Mississippi.

[ 01-14-2004, 04:30 PM: Message edited by: Stratos ]

Yes, Vaskez, I mean you can't really expect people to actually think and read a post more than a few sentences long after all! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I'm disappointed that I've seen a few people agree with the 'waste of space' argument since I flagged an issue with it, yet no one has attempted to address the issue. I would really like to know how you can hold that position and not also believe that (a) the universe was created by someone, or (b) the universe was created for a purpose (and indeed, if you hold b and not a, how can that possibly be?). Now I'm not suggesting that either a or b are wrong, but those positing the waste of space theory haven't clarified the theory with either of these positions. So how can it be?

My theory is on the religous side of the spectrum, so I better not post it as not to affend someone. But in short, yeah, I believe there is.