Alien Life

[Jones]

Is it a given?

 

The Universe is so big that it seems hard to argue to the contrary?

 

Reason I ask is just looking at the Drake equation which seems to suggest the contrary. What do you guys think?

 

And more importantly(and the motivation behind making this topic), it got me to thinking, do you reckon (evidently super advanced)life is capable of living for the amount of time it would take to get here? Apparently Voyager 1 has been hurtling out of our solar system at 38000mph for 35 years, yet it would need to travel for 73600 years before it reaches the nearest star in our galaxy. Incidently, it would take 14000 years at current velocity to travel one light year. Do you reckon there's life out there that could live that long, minimum?

 

I definitely believe in aliens, I just don't think we'll ever get to meet them!

 

Thought this was quite cool also:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1

 

Each Voyager space probe carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that either spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life-forms from other planetary systems. The discs carry photos of the Earth and its lifeforms, a range of scientific information, spoken greetings from people (e.g. the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the United States, and the children of the Planet Earth) and a medley, "Sounds of Earth", that includes the sounds of whales, a baby crying, waves breaking on a shore, and a collection of Earth music, including works by Mozart and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode".

[The Boofon]

Is it a given?

 

The Universe is so big that it seems hard to argue to the contrary?

 

Reason I ask is just looking at the Drake equation which seems to suggest the contrary. What do you guys think?

 

And more importantly(and the motivation behind making this topic), it got me to thinking, do you reckon (evidently super advanced)life is capable of living for the amount of time it would take to get here? Apparently Voyager 1 has been hurtling out of our solar system at 38000mph for 35 years, yet it would need to travel for 73600 years before it reaches the nearest star in our galaxy. Incidently, it would take 14000 years at current velocity to travel one light year. Do you reckon there's life out there that could live that long, minimum?

 

I definitely believe in aliens, I just don't think we'll ever get to meet them!

 

Thought this was quite cool also:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1

 

Each Voyager space probe carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that either spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life-forms from other planetary systems. The discs carry photos of the Earth and its lifeforms, a range of scientific information, spoken greetings from people (e.g. the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the United States, and the children of the Planet Earth) and a medley, "Sounds of Earth", that includes the sounds of whales, a baby crying, waves breaking on a shore, and a collection of Earth music, including works by Mozart and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode".

 

The disc will be the wrong region.

 

"Error. Disc not recognised."

 

It's ludicrous to say there isn't other forms of life somewhere out there but the chances of meeting any other form of life is way too small.

[Ke1t]

To say there's no life anywhere else in the Universe.. because we haven't found any yet... is beyond ludicrous.

 

We haven't even fully explored the planet we live on, our investigations of other planets amount to a couple of rock samples, some photographs and a couple of orbital satellites, all within the confines of our own Solar Sysytem.

 

Our own Galaxy contains around 4,000,000,000 stars. Our Universe contains perhaps upwards of 2,000,000,000 galaxies.

 

Each star may contain multiple planets... our own unremarkable star contains 8.

 

So out of all those potential worlds, we've explored less than one.

 

Yet people will, quite confidently, proclaim that there's no life anywhere else in the entirety of the universe based upon the almost non-existent peering through low powered telescopes at the 7 other planets in our own little Solar System, perched way out on the fringe of our own galaxy.

 

That's hubris that would put even a Hun to shame.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcBV-cXVWFw

[Jones]

lol well we are nothing if not hubristic!

 

A couple of (imo) interesting links suggesting differently...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

 

5-50 million years to colonise a universe.... What do you reckon, within our reach? I guess we'd need to abandon chemical propulsion and silicon processing?

[Ke1t]

lol well we are nothing if not hubristic!

 

A couple of (imo) interesting links suggesting differently...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

 

5-50 million years to colonise a universe.... What do you reckon, within our reach? I guess we'd need to abandon chemical propulsion and silicon processing?

 

The problem with any theory that suggests life is unlikely, if not outright impossible, is that we can prove life exists regardless of those theories.

 

For the species to survive we need to colonise outside this Solar System, because at some point the Sun is going nova and we're going to end up inside the expanding star. Life, boffins reckon, could exist on Titan or Europa for a million or so years, before conditions became intolerable there too.

 

So plenty time to build some means of escaping our own Solar System, but then we've only got 200 years to start colonising our own Solar System in order to maintain a civilisation capable of some day achieving interstellar flight.

[tainboy]

I've seen alien life.

 

 

 

Went to barrhead shopping once.

[Jones]

the problem here, as with my solid argument re animals possibly being up to something...

 

is we are basing our answers on what we know

 

for all we know, we are as intelligent as a coffee table compared to other planets

 

there could be life on another planet which is capable of travelling in one day, what would take us 100 years

 

we JUST dont know

 

personally, i would LOVE there to be some kind of visit and again, for all we know...there has been already

 

We do know the speed limit though... Unless we're talking wormholes, in which case assuming we survived the trip we still have no way of knowing where we'll re-emerge. I do like the idea of warp speed though.

[Ando]

yeah...OUR speed limit an thats kinda my point!

 

Aye, we'll never get far in this galaxy at 70 mph

[Ke1t]

We do know the speed limit though... Unless we're talking wormholes, in which case assuming we survived the trip we still have no way of knowing where we'll re-emerge. I do like the idea of warp speed though.

 

Thing is that we don't.

 

Pretty much everything a scientist speculates upon relates to known physics. So there's no way of breaking the speed of light... according to those physics.

 

If you'd asked a scientist if humans could fly faster than the speed of sound a couple hundred years ago, when pretty much the best we could muster was a hot air balloon, they'd have said there's no way.

 

In another 200 years the Speed of Light might not even be a physical barrier, either being circumvented altogether or tricked using 23rd Century technology.

[Jones]

yeah...OUR speed limit an thats kinda my point!

 

I know.

 

Interesting wiki...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

[fifered]

There is also a theory that intelligent life will eventually destroy itself by some means and that because the time it spends as life intelligent enough to explore space is tiny in comparison to the time the universe has been and will be around, the chances of two sets of intelligent life developing at the same time in close enough proximity to one another to know they are both there is so small it wont happen. thats doesn't mean other life isn't or hasn't been out there, just that we'll never know. I tend to think that wont be far from the truth. we have been exploring space properly for say 50 years, absolutely miniscule amount of time in the grand scale of things really, it would be an amazing coincidence if in those 50 out of x billion there just happened to be advanced life close by.

[Lencarl]

Thing is that we don't.

 

Pretty much everything a scientist speculates upon relates to known physics. So there's no way of breaking the speed of light... according to those physics.

 

If you'd asked a scientist if humans could fly faster than the speed of sound a couple hundred years ago, when pretty much the best we could muster was a hot air balloon, they'd have said there's no way.

 

In another 200 years the Speed of Light might not even be a physical barrier, either being circumvented altogether or tricked using 23rd Century technology.

 

Albert Einstein stated you can not travel faster than speed of light

 

Einstein's near-mythic fame rests on his theory of relativity, which says that the speed of light in a vacuum, approximately 186,282 miles per second, is the ultimate speed limit. Nothing in the universe can travel faster.

[Coopy100]

hes an arrogant cunt then!

That is fucking brilliant! Einstein is an arrogant cunt!

[Pudgie]

for all we know, we are as intelligent as a coffee table compared to other planets

Some of us are...

 

...

 

...

 

 

hes an arrogant cunt then!

 

 

 

Don't you just love the multiquote function?

[Ke1t]

Albert Einstein stated you can not travel faster than speed of light

 

Einstein's near-mythic fame rests on his theory of relativity, which says that the speed of light in a vacuum, approximately 186,282 miles per second, is the ultimate speed limit. Nothing in the universe can travel faster.

 

I didn't say we would travel faster than light by conventional means.

 

I would agree that if you build a conventional propulsion engine you'll probably never be able to go faster than the speed of light.

 

What I'm saying is that in 200 years time it may be possible to operate outside getting places simply by 'going really fast'. The speed of light may not even factor into how we travel enormous distances, and probably shouldn't be a factor anyway.

[Poodler]

Isn't the LHC recording particles speeding round at like .00000000001 of a second faster than light? Thus beginning to dispel everything we "know"?

 

I think it is likely there is some form of life out there. And it's a lovely thought. But if they come here, we're fucked.

[spamspamspam]

We'll find proof of life on other planets/moons when we go to Titan.

 

A water filled moon with great geological pressures caused by the gravitational pull of Saturn. Under the ice their will be plenty of water, that water will be heated by the pull of Saturn and there will be part of it habitable for life.

 

Life survives in much harsher climates on earth. They've found plenty of examples now over the years of life that doesn't need sunlight to grow...

 

When we get to Titan and find life it will give the next generation the push it needs to then explore further.

 

The Chinese are already dreaming up ways of getting the the Kuiper belt to mine for minerals, stopping off on Titan for water will be an obvious way of replenishing supplies.

 

Not sure if we'll get there in my lifetime but we will get there.

[Bluto10]

That is fucking brilliant! Einstein is an arrogant cunt!

 

he was a brainly lad in his day. however, he hasnt moved with the times, i now know as a much as he does. does that make me a genius. i guess it does.

[StandFree1982]

the problem here, as with my solid argument re animals possibly being up to something...

 

is we are basing our answers on what we know

 

for all we know, we are as intelligent as a coffee table compared to other planets

 

there could be life on another planet which is capable of travelling in one day, what would take us 100 years

 

we JUST dont know

 

personally, i would LOVE there to be some kind of visit and again, for all we know...there has been already

I wasn't a believer of Alien life until I seen a few of your pictures MT. That chin is definitely not human.

[Chrisyboy81]

haha!

 

there are numerous parts of me that are not human

 

 

my palm for example, is almost perfectly square...whats that all about?

 

 

or the fact i was on the beach, standing there for literally less than 5 mins...and my hair had somehow become an absolute magnet for the sand?!

Your lugs seem to have had quite an effect on the sand too.

[StandFree1982]

Frolicking in the sand MT?

 

Sand in the japs eye....oucha.

[Karl Fletcher]

There is definitely Alien life out there.

 

And I believe the powers that be know this.

 

However, the human race as a collective canna cope with such info so it's all been kept hush for years and probably will be for a good while yet.

 

Pity.

[StandFree1982]

The fact we're still turning up new creatures on our own planet would suggest we know know the square root of fuck all about life on other planets. So to say "There aren't any" is ignorant to the extreme. It's those backwards minded people who created a fictional god because they don't have a clue.

[Ke1t]

come on son, be nice

 

 

 

for the record...we're both in agreement...yes?

 

I believe we're 100% in agreement, because we understand that technology isn't a static thing. In 200 years time we'll have computers doing pretty much all our scientific thinking for us, and the speed at which human technology advances, spectacular in the last couple of hundred years, will blow away everything we've previously known, understood or discovered.

 

If we can stumble on for the next 2 centuries without completely fucking everything up then I'm absolutely certain mankind will reach the Stars.

 

And it won't be done using anything we currently have, or speculate, as a means of propulsion.

[Jones]

If we can stumble on for the next 2 centuries without completely fucking everything up

 

 

Perhaps here-in lies the problem!

 

I'm just glad there are people out there far cleverer than me actually taking the time to think shit up....

[tommo1903]

Reason I ask is just looking at the Drake equation which seems to suggest the contrary. What do you guys think?

 

 

I think that the Drake equation is:

 

The square root of 69 is 8 something.

[Ke1t]

I think that the Drake equation is:

 

The square root of 69 is 8 something.

 

Yeah... the Drake equation seems fairly straightforward...

 

 

...I look at shit like this and drool like a hungry retard in a pie factory.

[Dandyesque]

The speed of light is practically an irrelevance when it comes to intergalactical travel.

 

Once you understand string theory, that is.

 

Then, it is a matter of only seconds to "travel" from any part of the "universe" to another.

[tommo1903]

Yeah... the Drake equation seems fairly straightforward...

 

 

...I look at shit like this and drool like a hungry retard in a pie factory.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0CGsw6h60k&ob=av2e

[Jones]

The speed of light is practically an irrelevance when it comes to intergalactical travel.

 

Once you understand string theory, that is.

 

Then, it is a matter of only seconds to "travel" from any part of the "universe" to another.

 

Quantum teleportation?