Do you believe aliens exist?

[jamor]

The question isn't do aliens or life exist on other planets/solar systems because that is an obvious yes.

The question is where do they exist? They are out there. We just have to find them.

But probably won't happen in our lifetime everything is just so damn far away

 

[droidtaku]

I would say that it is possible but possible does not equal probable.

As far as the superiority debate is concerned I would say that if they visited us already then they are the superior race. Even within our own history it has always been (AFAIK) the more advanced civilization that 'discovered' the less advanced ones. Man's doesn't venture out very far from his own level of understanding. Even our journeys into the unknown have been based on what data we have collected on the known or by the technology we have at hand. Religion can limit you to a group of people and technology+science can limit you to a town, country, planet, solar system or whatever.

I think we will have more conclusive answers around the time we figure out the mystery of the pyramids

 

[Outlaw71]

I know some of you have read the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' series. I think one of the funniest, and actually most thought provolking episodes in that trilogy was the bit where it went on about two races of aliens who got into a spat of sorts, so the one race dispatched a huge war machine to go conquere the other race. Only once they arrived, it turned out they were so small compared to their enemy, that a dog (if I remember correctly) of the alien race that was to be conquered, accidentally inhaled the entire fleet of military ships upon its arrival.

This is something that not very many people seem to ever give much thought to. Why is it that every alien movie, or alleged 'encounter' story illustrates a visiting alien race to be around the same size as we are, give or take a few feet? It's not that it isn't possible, but it's just as concievable that they would be the size of an ant, or even so big that when standing on the ground their head might bump into the moon. I mean just watch that video that shows the size of our sun in comparison to some of the other stars that are out there. If there is that much disparity amoungst the stars, then it's just as likely that there are planets much bigger/smaller than ours that would produce life forms thousands of times bigger/smaller than we are.

The chances that one of these life forms traveling to earth being almost exactly the same hight and build as we are I think would be staggeringly low (ha, as if them coming here at all wasn't unlikely enough!).

 

[Btros]

^^^ Outlaw, I agree -- since our atmosphere is conducive to carbon-based lifeforms, maybe other planets that have carbon-based lifeforms would look somewhat similar to what we know as "life" - but other planets or universes might have nitrogen-based lifeforms or phosphorus-based lifeforms that would look completely different than what we can even imagine.

 

[Btros]

I believe there are aliens but probably not in the way other people think of them, as "us" and "them." I believe that at our most basic form we are all energy waves, condensed into a slow vibration as matter. Our consciousness affects and alters energy as it flows into our dimension from other dimensions (I'm not making that last part up, that is part of theoretical cosmology: that our universe is expanding as matter and virtual particles flow into our universe from adjacent dimensions) and I think we are all part of the same living matrix of energy. So all life is interconnected and there really is no "us" and "them."

 

[bigbadwulff]

Ahhhh............huh?

 

[Outlaw71]

I believe there are aliens but probably not in the way other people think of them, as "us" and "them." I believe that at our most basic form we are all energy waves, condensed into a slow vibration as matter. Our consciousness affects and alters energy as it flows into our dimension from other dimensions (I'm not making that last part up, that is part of theoretical cosmology: that our universe is expanding as matter and virtual particles flow into our universe from adjacent dimensions) and I think we are all part of the same living matrix of energy. So all life is interconnected and there really is no "us" and "them."

Uhhh.... does this mean other races can see me spankin the monkey??

 

[Btros]

@bigbadwulff - lol, I get that reaction a lot.
@Outlaw - Never thought about it like that...ummm if that turns you on, then go with it

 

[bigbadwulff]

Outlaw: Or more likely, considering the theory.............. feel you spanking the monkey? EEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.

 

[Outlaw71]

Well lucky them! Guess I should start charging.

 

[Frisco]

But probably won't happen in our lifetime everything is just so damn far away

Good point, and one which Carl Sagan used to often emphasize.

Not to mention the "distance" of time.

The universe is around 15 billion years old, so civilizations could have come and gone many many times before we were around.

Heck, our planet has only existed for around 4 billion years, leaving 9 billion years before us for smart beings to arise and decline for all the reasons and more that we've discovered living things have become extinct right here on Earth.

 

[bigbadwulff]

OK with the "size" thing(and not Outlaws monkey).

I wrote a paper in school once that detailed a story about traveling thru space. They traveled and traveled and came to a "hole in space"(this was before black hole stuff). They went thru the hole and came out of a knot hole in a tree in another universe/dimension/whatever.
I guess I had the thought of being smaller then.
Or that our universe is really just a molecule in a desk or something in another larger universe.

 

[Outlaw71]

Good point, and one which Carl Sagan used to often emphasize.

Not to mention the "distance" of time.

The universe is around 15 billion years old, so civilizations could have come and gone many many times before we were around.

Heck, our planet has only existed for around 4 billion years, leaving 9 billion years before us for smart beings to arise and decline for all the reasons and more that we've discovered living things have become extinct right here on Earth.

Right, and considering it only took us a few million years to evolve, that leaves a LOT of time for others to have done the same.

 

[Btros]

Or that our universe is really just a molecule in a desk or something in another larger universe.

According to the theory I explained, there are likely infinite dimensions stacked on top of one another, which would make our universe a tiny atom in a larger web.

 

[bigbadwulff]

Oh crap! Now I'm thinking like Btros.

 

[Btros]

This sh*t is true man! Read "The Universe in a Nutshell" by Stephen Hawking or "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. These are smart guys coming up with this stuff, not me

edit: When I say "true" I mean theoretically true. No one really knows anything for sure, it's all just theories that try to get as close as they can to what is really going on.

 

[Frisco]

Right, and considering it only took us a few million years to evolve, that leaves a LOT of time for others to have done the same.

.. and gone.

 

[Outlaw71]

.. and gone.

And came back again.

 

[Outlaw71]

OK with the "size" thing(and not Outlaws monkey).

I wrote a paper in school once that detailed a story about traveling thru space. They traveled and traveled and came to a "hole in space"(this was before black hole stuff). They went thru the hole and came out of a knot hole in a tree in another universe/dimension/whatever.
I guess I had the thought of being smaller then.
Or that our universe is really just a molecule in a desk or something in another larger universe.

Yeah, long before they ended the first 'Men In Black' movie with a similar theory, I had sort of developed my own theory in science class back in high school. Having learned about atoms and how they were tiny little protons and electrons circling around the neutron, it seemed to me that it sounded awefully similar to the way our solar system was.

Then it occured to me that we could just be a bunch of atoms in an even bigger universe. And our universe is the byproduct of either a match being struck, or a gun going off or something, and that's where the 'big bang' came from. Some guy cocked his gun, fired it, and BANG... we are the remnants of the fire and smoke created by the firing pin hiting the bullet.

Hey, it's just as possible as anything else out there.

 

[Char_in_md]

yes, my one son-in-law is an alien/pod person

 

[baillou2]

There's a better chance than one would at first think that life on Earth originated on Mars and was subsequently carried to Earth on a floating bit of debris blown off the planet by a large impactor. I've read that about 1,000 lbs of Mars rock hits the earth every year, and vice versa. And that bacterial life indeed can survive the trip. So cross-contamination might have occurred many times over since the dawn of life in our little solar system billions of years ago.

So we might all be aliens, or to be more precise, we might all be Martians.

 

[Outlaw71]

Oh I know I'm an alien... I have the green card to prove it!

 

[Epicurean]

The question is does alien life exist? Some people answered by saying "probably". You are incorrect, as there is insufficient info to make a probability assertion.

There is the possibility that alien life exists. But saying it does or does not exist is an act of pure faith without a basis in reasonable evaluation of factual data.

Without that basis in evidence saying "I believe alien life must" is like saying "I believe wizards must exist". There's no evidence.

Some of the oldest rocks in our solar system are actually older than the Earth itself. And guess what they found in them? If you were thinking of amino acids (the building blocks of all life as we know it), then you are correct.

Allende meteorite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meteorites Facts

This would lend credence to the theory that amino acids are abundant within the universe and that all life needs is a nice Goldilocks planet for them to land on.

 

[Epicurean]

To digress a bit.

I think there would be a big difference in people that believe LIFE exists somewhere in the universe vs. believes aliens(beings that visit Earth) exist. But maybe that is just an obvious statement.

Rock on...

This is actually a pretty good point. It is easy enough to conjecture whether life exists elsewhere within the universe. But to suppose that intelligent life has constructed some sort of interstallar spacecraft, visited our Earth, and left no evidence of it is pretty far out.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan

 

[Epicurean]

We've been lucky enough to have enjoyed our evolution without any huge meteors slamming into us, or an ice age creeping up on us and the like. And I'm sure those same conditions have been present on trillions of other inhabitable planets around our universe. Given all the statistics, how could there not have been?

Actually, we almost got wiped out ~70,000 years ago during a volcano event that spread ash 6 inches deep throughout the entire habitable zone of homo sapiens. Only several thousand of us survived - the really smart (and lucky!) ones.

Toba catastrophe theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia