h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Don't knock the fundamentalists. They may have a point. But then, life in the rest of the universe is *not* a dead no-no, even on the evidence of the Bible, as I mentioned before. I personally doubt *intelligent* life, if humans are created in God's image then it is doubtfulanything else would be. Unless humans existed elsewhere. But do they have to have decended from Adam and Eve? Or what would Jesus' death mean to people on some distant planet? (Only God could have given them the news which is possible but who can tell?) ALll possible complications for the Christian.
Un-intelligent life (hence unable to communicate tho'), as seems apparent possibly from Martian meteorites, is something I guess one might find. Anyway, God can't have created this vast universe for nothing, can He? (Except to show His glory on its own).

"There's nothing more certain to heal the rifts in humanties infighting than aliens. Once we have found aliens, you can be sure that white, brown, black, yellow and red will all gang up on green."

Who says they'll be green, *if* they do exist?

.....strange but one of those names from 1999 looks quite alien, Aoibheil56832, and wasn't there a TV space series called 1999, or something similar?

Oh deary me... seeing a thread which begins with someone calling religious people idiots in the same paragraph as saying that there is overwhelming evidence for extra terrestrial life has really made my day.

Are you guys familiar with the Fermi Paradox? The basic idea of it is that if there was life in the universe, you would expect it to be very obvious.
The universe is a big place, but our galaxy is not that big. Only about a 100.00 light years across. If an intelligent civilization was to arose, there is no real reason why it should happen right now. It could have happpened at any time during, say, the last 65 million years.
Now as far as we know now, faster-than-light travel is not possible, but let us say you made a craft that could travel at a tenth of that speed. It would only take a million years to cross the galaxy. If a intelligent species had arisen sometime in the past, they should have had plenty of time to colonize the galaxy several times.
We should be seeing big galactic freeways and engineering projects when we look out. But there is nothing which seems artificial out there. Perhaps this means life has not arisen anywhere else.

It could just be that we don't take enough interest in local affairs...

I would guess the effort required to actually do interstellar travel would be too great. Look at the sort of problems one might encounter having to even go to another planet-say Mars. The effects of low gravity on the body, radiation, other things (maybe food supply?) present obvious hurdles, which might be overcome, although we haven't got there yet. There's still some people who believe the moon landings were a hoax, remember, given things like radiation being lethal outside the Earth's magnetic field etc. (though this may well be rubbish!) When one considers, even a short hop to Alpha Centauri would (unless one were to travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light) take thousands of years, and assuming the nearest likely solar system with potentially life supporting planets (not including Alpha Centauri as it is a multiple star system making stable planetary orbits difficult/impossible) are maybe hundreds or thousands of light-years away (not sure here), then imagine how difficult it would be to sustain life support for a crew, or even power a machine (they've already turned Pioneer 10 off) for that length of time. Of course, there's time dilation to reduce these effects, but that assumes relitavistic speeds and some means of propelling craft to those speeds (requires a lot of energy). Not impossible, but very difficult. The chances of life developing twice in the same galaxy I dare say are extremely low, and I dare say the chances of life developing technological sophistication to the level of space travel (only one species has yet managed it on Earth- Homo sapiens, or us) is low given that. In an infinite universe I dare say it could have happened somewhere, in some other galaxy, but (I say this as a Christian) God would have had to want to create it first, and He's not letting on.

But do you know how many stars actually are in one galaxy? Coupled with the fact that we seem to find extra solar planets in so many places. And that life on earth started so early. Although I'm with you on the developing technology, that does seem rather unlikely. Even multicellular life might be a bit much to hope for.

I'm not sure of the exact figure, but I think it's at least of the order of hundreds of millions or billions. But considering the sort of criteria for a planet harbouring life as we know it, and expecially life reaching intelligence on our level (BTW I don't say 'forming' life as I came across a very interesting article in the New Scientist which seems to support panspermia- i.e. life having formed outside the Earth) such as: magnetic field strong enough to block harmful radiation, liquid media such as water (the best in terms of generating the sort of climate and weathr like on the Earth, and as I am aware is god for hydrogen bonding and dissovving ionic materials) for chemical reactions to take place (consider that a planet must be at the right distance from a star, and have the right atmospheric pressure, for it not to boil or freeze, and not so hot that enzymes de-nature), and a star long-lived enough (if we condider the Sun to be medium-sized, larger stars are too short lived, small stars very long lived but as I am aware not hot enough for a large habitable zone) for life to evolve (unless the young-earth creationists are right!) to a high enough level for anything remotely intelligent to form.Atmospheric issues also reduce the probability of life occurring- e.g. Venus, thogh the same size as Earth and possibly within the Earth's habitable zone, has a thick, mostly carbon-dioxide atmosphere and is thickly clouded (sulphuric acid clouds?) which creates a runaway greenhouse effect, making it too hot for life. One must admit the existence on Earth of extremophiles, but these tend to be simple organisms (like bacteria), non water-based life (maybe this could occur on somewhere like Titan?), life which does not need oxygen for respiration etc but one seems to have to rule out very complex life.

Please note I am not an expert on this but have gained most of my knowledge on the above from the odd lecture (yea, brethren, even on a physics course), school science lessons, reading around and watching the TV.

Are you familiar with the Drake Equation?

Yes, and it has already been mentioned on this thread. My point is, in terms of the Drake Equation, that whilst we have a good idea of what the parameters might be, we don't know exactly what their values are- it's anyone's guess.

I thought we'd already found positive evidence of alien life...

I mean, didn't that spaceship crash into Big Ben and then later those bone-faced guys came down who made everyone with A+ blood get ready to jump off high buildings?

Aliens recently abducted me. It felt like I was gone for only moments, but years had passed by...

The aliens were nice enough.

But it is nice to be home.

Apparently SETI are running out of funds.

Running out of funds... Or just not being funded?

It seems a planet has now been found in the habitable zone of it's sun. That means liquid water could be present. The planet orbits a star about 41 light years away in a constellation called Puppis. It seems to be a rock planet in a stable orbit, about 10 to 18 times the mass of Earth. This is the first one of it's kind.

WELL DONE! I completely agree with you abopu there being an all controlling god and all that religious rubbish that i dont believe. I think that there is every possibility of life on other planets, just not the stereotypical aliens

I would just like to re-iterate Post 44.

Is post no. 44 actually meant to be literal or is it sarcastic?

Both.