Do Aliens actually exist ?

[snorky]

My cousin is a Buddhist and a lovely person. Of all them I like the tenets of it. It also doesn’t proclaim a god.

That’s the bit I find problematic, apart from the controlling, finger pointing from books that are pardon the expression, god awful.

The three main books are a catalogue of hate, murder, slavery, genocide, led by a psychotic, jealous, mass murdering, infantile, vengeful ****.

Those who have formalised it do it to co from. They are anti scientific, anti logic and prey on superstition and the human fear of death.

I prefer the universe and it’s beauty that doesn’t require a god that there is absolutely not one single piece of evidence for. I feel sorry for those still in it’s grip, feeling guilty for being human. I believe in the fact if evolution and hate how religions adapt to any scientific knowledge that pushes them back into woo woo land by claiming god did it all.

I detest how people praise god when a child is dug out of an earthquake forgetting g that under their belief he caused it.

I hate the discrimination people suffer because a book written by Bronze Age people who literally knew fuck all and whose moral code thought slavery was ok. Jesus himself reinforced this too.

I hate telling children they will burn in Hell. That Satan is real. That demons roam.

That Adam and Eve were real. Most of all I hate the fact that people believe it without a single shred of evidence.

I wouldn’t mind if they kept it to themselves, but they want to make the world vow to urs prejudices. To normalise them.

It’s all made up. An investigation of it clearly shows you need to detach your brain. That’s an insult to the human condition.

If you get anything from all that then good luck to you. For me the day we as a species realise this life is the only one we have and treat each other and all our fellow animals that we are connected to through DNA a bit better and throw all that shit out, the better we will all be.

Top rant there Magic. :)

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Lifeforms certainly exist elsewhere. It has to be impossible for them not to. But it would be very sad if we were the most intelligent lifeform anywhere ever across the universe.

We are intelligent from what we see in our own surroundings but we aren’t special in any other ways. We aren’t the fastest, we aren’t the strongest, we aren’t the biggest, we aren’t the most numerous... we aren’t that special at all. We’re just apes with fairly big brains.

Could you imagine we were the best that all the universe had to offer?..

 

[arfurclue]

Correct aliens coming here taking our jobs. Send em back :)

Lol. Build a wall!!! No, wait....Build a roof - the biggest, bestest roof that ever existed....and make the aliens pay for it.

 

[CityInWashingtonState]

Where did you get this "Likelihood that the universe is infinite" from? I don't think it's likely at all. We just don't know.

But moving past that, what you say is obvious - that the chances of there being intelligent life somewhere in a finite universe are clearly less than the chances of their just being life of some primitive kind.

Latest thinking on the drake equation suggests that we may very well be all alone:

When we take account of realistic uncertainty, replacing point estimates by probability distributions that reflect current scientific understanding, we find no reason to be highly confident that the galaxy (or observable universe) contains other civilizations, and thus no longer find our observations in conflict with our prior probabilities. We found qualitatively similar results through two different methods: using the authors’ assessments of current scientific knowledge bearing on key parameters, and using the divergent estimates of these parameters in the astrobiology literature as a proxy for current scientific uncertainty. When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively).

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf

The universe is likely infinite based on our understanding of science. To our best knowledge and measurements of various types the universe is flat and does not curve back upon itself and thus space is infinite, unless there's some sort of artificial barrier completely out-of-keeping with our understanding of physics beyond which the universe ceases to exist. The vast majority of astrophysicists believe that such a barrier does not exist.

Too, other types of infinite universes exist - more speculatively - but certainly possible.
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Anyhow, yes - we don't know for certain whether or not the universe is infinite and of course we can't be certain that intelligent life outside our planet exists.

As to the paper you cite - let's await the peer review. Labeling the paper as representative of "the latest thinking" - as if it's the consensus opinion among scientists - is either misguided or is intentionally misleading.

I can easily find non-peer-reviewed papers arguing nearly any viewpoint you'd like to advance: that climate change is a hoax, that the earth is 2000 years old, that tobacco smoking doesn't cause cancer, that man did not evolve from apes, etc.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Lifeforms certainly exist elsewhere. It has to be impossible for them not to. But it would be very sad if we were the most intelligent lifeform anywhere ever across the universe.

We are intelligent from what we see in our own surroundings but we aren’t special in any other ways. We aren’t the fastest, we aren’t the strongest, we aren’t the biggest, we aren’t the most numerous... we aren’t that special at all. We’re just apes with fairly big brains.

Could you imagine we were the best that all the universe had to offer?..

I think on balance there probably is life elsewhere in the universe - it's just that I don't rule out there not being any.

It's entirely possible that the combination of circumstances required in order for it to happen are so staggeringly unlikely that we are indeed alone. The "well we exist, so it can't be that unusual" argument, doesn't stand up. It's a bit like someone entering the national lottery for the first time, winning the jackpot, and then concluding that winning the jackpot can't be that unusual.

 

[Chippy_boy]

The universe is likely infinite based on our understanding of science.

This is simply not true. There is no consensus on this.

Labeling the paper as representative of "the latest thinking" - as if it's the consensus opinion among scientists - is either misguided or is intentionally misleading.

If I had done, then you'd have a point. As it is, you don't.

 

[aguerrrroooooooooooo]

I'd guess no, even if they did I doubt we'd ever discover them in our generation at least

 

[CityInWashingtonState]

This is simply not true. There is no consensus on this.

Well, there's no arguing with that!

Do you have some sort of emotional attachment to the idea that the universe isn't infinite? Because honestly, you're now making statements that I disagree with based upon my layman's understanding of this topic, and google searches back up my understanding - not to mention what I've watched in recent Science Channel/Discovery Channel/Nova/etc. episodes.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Well, there's no arguing with that!

Do you have some sort of emotional attachment to the idea that the universe isn't infinite? Because honestly, you're now making statements that I disagree with based upon my layman's understanding of this topic, and google searches back up my understanding - not to mention what I've watched in recent Science Channel/Nova/etc. episodes.

No, I am merely wanting to point out that the question as to whether the universe is infinite or not is not agreed amongst scientists. It may very well be infinite, or it may finite, or it may become infinite at time t = infinity.

I can only assume you are ignoring the google search results which say we don't know.

 

[CityInWashingtonState]

I'd guess no, even if they did I doubt we'd ever discover them in our generation at least

As we learn more and more about our planet, it's becoming ever more obvious just how special the circumstances that led to our existence are. Incredibly fortunate.

Yet, the observable universe is unimaginably large - however unlikely, is it still possible that intelligent life, capable of interstellar travel, evolved somewhere in our observable universe? I think so. And I think that it's probable that we'll detect signs of them in my lifetime - science is expanding exponentially and so too ability to detect advanced life.