[img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img] Wow, that is cool! Shame that they could, at the very most, only be microscopic cells :( . But at least there's a chance that there's life in our solar system: no matter how small [img]smile.gif[/img]

still dubious. life is out there, but i dont think its sharing our solar system. maybe though.

"One lifeform's deadly radiation may be another lifeform's lunch"
-David Grinspoon, South West Research Institute in Colorado


And one lifeform's deadly acid may be another life form's blood.....
http://members.aol.com/alienshive/a2pic6.jpg

YIKES!!!! :D ;)

You know that for certain do you? Do you have proof?

I am agnostic regarding extra terrestrial lifeforms. As a theist, I don't believe we're
"alone" in the universe, so there is no necessity to believe in aliens to stave of lonliness or the like.

Howver you seemed quite certain? I just don't have the faith for that. [img]smile.gif[/img]

in each star/planet system there is a ring around the star wherein a planet may contain life. some planetary systems contain no planets in this ring, others as many as three. while the average of zero and three is 1.5, we'll round out and say the average number of planets in the life ring of a planetary system is 1.

now, there are millions of stars in our galaxy. lets just assume that 1 million of those several have that average 1 planet. this accounts for any stars that dont have planets, and doubly accounts for those that don't have any in the life ring. that makes one million habitable planets in our galaxy alone.

now, we know there are at least a million galaxies out there, and thats just what we've managed to see so far... keeping in mind that we've only recorded a little over 15% of the sky, the rest is hidden by solar polution.

lets assume for a second, though, that some of the galaxies have zero habitable planets, and that the most have 1 million habitable planets... this is fairly reasonable, as our galaxy is a fairly middle sized galaxy. we take then, for an average view, and assuming that there are only 1 million galaxies in the universe, only consideration for 500,000 of these galaxies.

we have now formed a good equation for determining the minimum number of planets capable of supporting multi cellular lifeforms. that is: planets per system * systems per galaxy * galaxies

this works out to be 1*1,000,000*500,000 = 500,000,000,000. even with a 1 in a billion odds that multicellular life will form on any planet, that leaves a strong possibility of 500 planets (minimum) which will have multicelular life. even expanding that number to one in ten billion leaves 50 planets which are going to have life. that is why physicists recognize the fact that we are not alone... its not based on a "feeling of loneliness" as yorick would like to state, but on a statistical probability which shows there is a strong probability.

finally, i note that my estimates are rather low, there are more planets and galaxies than i noted, so these numbers are off on the low side.

Nice probability travel but still no sign of ANY intelligent life form in all of the universe ...

i never insinuated that any life out there would be intelligent... merely that SOME multicellular form of life would exist out there. i just don't think its actually on venus, since venus is outside of the life ring and thats a pretty big factor in the probability.

Well... if there is any balance in the universe, then, to make up for this one, there's gotta be at least one planet with inteligent life forms [img]smile.gif[/img]

What about the Dolphins?