Can we handle not being alone?

[Nightwing]

Wouldn't it be possible for life to develope outside those peramiters? Wouldn't evelution make this happen so life can exist in exstreme temperatures?

[Ziroc]

For those that actually believe that we are the only planet with life in the universe... well, I just cannot understand that thinking. It's extremely naieve and kinda arrogant IMO.

If you knew the numbers of stars up there, and galaxies... I've read many scientific books on these subjects, and the chances in our galaxy ALONE are very high that higher evolved life forms exist. (Type 1 and even type 2 civilizations)

Send us some girls from Venus! [img]smile.gif[/img]

And would society handle contact? Maybe....

[ 09-02-2004, 12:17 PM: Message edited by: Ziroc ]

[Timber Loftis]

Can we handle being alone? I think not.

Whether or not there is other sentient life out there, we need desperately to get a foothold somewhere off this rock. Even if we don't destroy our own planet, it is only a matter of time before another asteroid like the one that killed the dinosaurs or the earlier one that split the moon off will come around. Or the sun will go out.

If we are out for long-term existence, we've got to explore and establish civilization in the universe.

Now, if we meet other cultures along the way, whether or not we can handle being alone will be determined, mostly, by who has the better ray gun. As it always is.

[frudi_x]

Originally posted by Nightwing: Wouldn't it be possible for life to develope outside those peramiters? Wouldn't evelution make this happen so life can exist in exstreme temperatures?

sure, life can exist even in very extreem environments. even here on Earth you can find bacteria living in highly acidic surroundings, in almost boiling water or under sheets of ice and even in rocks several miles below the surface. but it's hard to imagine evolution going much further from single cell organisms in such environments.

and Timber, don't worry... we should be able to defend ourselves from future asteroid or comet impacts in a couple of decades.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Grojlach: I wonder... If I were to start a topic about the economical benefits of equipping bananas with zippers, how long would it take before it's derailed into yet another topic about religion?

With comments like that not long. Comments like "we don't want your 'mine is better than yours crap'" doesn't help either.

This is offtopic and potentially derailing Grojl. Shame on you [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Yorick]

I think we can't know one way or the other.

It is foolish to assume that there IS life on other planets simply because there is life here. There is no necessity at play. That's just faulty logic.

There are a unique set of minutely detailed circumstances that need not be replicated anywhere else.

Especially if it is all chance and there is no designer.

I think the odds of there being life on other planets increase supersubstancially with the addition of a cogniscant creator intending life. There is no reason why every solar system couldn't have life on it if that were the case. No reason why none of the Sol System gas giants couldn't have life we can't detect either.

But with that idea comes the idea that we're not alone in any case. If you believe in a creator, you believe we're not alone.

So... remove the creator, and I think you heighten the odds of us being all there is.

But... all that said, all you can accurately say is what you have experienced, not that something you haven't experienced doesn't exist. You simply haven't experienced it.

So, no I don't believe in life on other planets as I haven't experienced them, but I don't declare no life to exist, because how would I know.

I reside in a happy state of unknowing. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Ahhhhhh.

[ 09-02-2004, 02:33 PM: Message edited by: Yorick ]

[Mouse]

And just to stretch your brains a bit more on this, I give you The Fermi Paradox

[Timber Loftis]

So... remove the creator, and I think you heighten the odds of us being all there is.

Not necessarily. If the universe is infinite. . .

[Nightwing]

Very good info Mouse. It just boggles my mind, which isn't hard to do, to try and comprehend how vast the universe is. It can't fit into an equation because there is no boundries. To think that nothing else could be out there. Well it's just hard to believe.

[frudi_x]

Especially if it is all chance and there is no designer.

ah, but there is a designer - the laws of physics and chemistry. even lab tests that try to recreate the conditions on the primordial Earth, show that complex organic compounds, including aminoacids, form within days. if you have a lab the size of a planet and hundreds of millions of years at your disposal, self-replicating molecules will eventually form - the first step towards the emergance of life.
life actually probably formed on earth several times, just to be wiped out by impacts powerful enough to sterilize the planet for hundreds or more years. after the period of the great bombardment ended, life as we know it today formed within a hundred million years, the first common ancestor with it's ~200 genes eventually giving rise to all the diversity of plant and animal species we see today.

basicly, we now have a pretty good understanding of how life first came about on the primordial earth and it seems that emergance of life is inevitable given the right conditions for a sufficient amount of time. since the ingredients for life are pretty commonplace in the universe, it is actually quite ignorant to assume earth is the only planet anywhere to harbor life.

[ 09-02-2004, 07:11 PM: Message edited by: frudi_x ]