Do Aliens actually exist ?

[Ban-jani]

I was a student in Brighton in the late 70's and early 80's and Mithras House was a centre of our learning. I never thought anything of it until, a few years ago, I walked the Hadrians Wall Path in Northumberland and beyond, and came accross a small shrine to Mithras.

Apparantly, they killed cattle as an offering to their Gods.

That is all.

Pagan weirdos is all I’ll say ;-)

 

[Bigg Bigg Blue]

I was a student in Brighton in the late 70's and early 80's and Mithras House was a centre of our learning. I never thought anything of it until, a few years ago, I walked the Hadrians Wall Path in Northumberland and beyond, and came accross a small shrine to Mithras.

Apparantly, they killed cattle as an offering to their Gods.

That is all.

They still do that in parts of Oldham.

 

[Dr Jacoby]

Looking at Michael Berryman I’d say yes.

 

[mat]

 

[BlueMoonAcrossThePond]

Do aliens actually exist? - by which the poster seems to ask, does intelligent non-human life exist?
===
IMO - a resounding "Yes" - alien intelligence does exist, and likely within our own galaxy.

The universe is vast - perhaps infinite. Somewhere out there among the stars are sentient beings - perhaps even now skanning their skies and looking, however briefly at our sun, wondering too, "Is there intelligent life out there?"
===
That said, it's amazing that life on earth - let alone intelligent life - evolved.

Correct distance from a "benign" star - large moon to stabilize spin - large enough to form a long-lived protective magnetic field - in a solar system where a single star evolved (most systems have 2 stars) - at an age where enough elements have been created to form life - in an area of the galaxy where elements possibly necessary for life are abundant enough - but also where stars are not dense enough such that radiation does not overwhelm our magnetic field.

And for the potential to become space-faring - a terrestrial intelligence, with the ability to light fires and harness metallurgy seems requisite - intelligent life locked to underwater existence might well never develop advanced technologies - or at least will have a much harder time than land-based intelligence.

Too, life-ending catastrophes - climate change, run-away volcanism, collision with asteroids, comments, or indeed other planets - proximity to stellar novas - and so forth.
===
Intelligent life prima facie must be rare. And indeed, in spite of the vast distance between planets, if intelligent life were common-place, likely some other species in our galaxy would have made contact by now.

Yet, the galaxy is vast - with an estimated 100,000 million stars. And 2 million, million galaxies in the observable universe... numbers so large that they boggle every-day comprehension.

However unlikely intelligent life is, the vast expanse of space swamps such odds - numerous intelligent species must certainly exist.

Moreover, it's very likely that space is infinite - if so, infinitely many intelligent life forms must exist.
===
It's also instructive to consider the case where the universe is infinite. Within an infinite universe, assuming a uniform distribution of mass, there is a finite limit within a 13.8 billion light-year cube of how matter might possibly be arranged. Which means... somewhere out there - so, very, very far away - is another exact copy of earth - with an exact copy of you and me... and even farther away... another copy... and another... and another.
===
It's far more likely, I think, that an infinitely many copies of myself exist in our universe than that mankind is the sole intelligent lifeform.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

Do aliens actually exist? - by which the poster seems to ask, does intelligent non-human life exist?
===
IMO - a resounding "Yes" - alien intelligence does exist, and likely within our own galaxy.

The universe is vast - perhaps infinite. Somewhere out there among the stars are sentient beings - perhaps even now skanning their skies and looking, however briefly at our sun, wondering too, "Is there intelligent life out there?"
===
That said, it's amazing that life on earth - let alone intelligent life - evolved.

Correct distance from a "benign" star - large moon to stabilize spin - large enough to form a long-lived protective magnetic field - in a solar system where a single star evolved (most systems have 2 stars) - at an age where enough elements have been created to form life - in an area of the galaxy where elements possibly necessary for life are abundant enough - but also where stars are not dense enough such that radiation does not overwhelm our magnetic field.

And for the potential to become space-faring - a terrestrial intelligence, with the ability to light fires and harness metallurgy seems requisite - intelligent life locked to underwater existence might well never develop advanced technologies - or at least will have a much harder time than land-based intelligence.

Too, life-ending catastrophes - climate change, run-away volcanism, collision with asteroids, comments, or indeed other planets - proximity to stellar novas - and so forth.
===
Intelligent life prima facie must be rare. And indeed, in spite of the vast distance between planets, if intelligent life were common-place, likely some other species in our galaxy would have made contact by now.

Yet, the galaxy is vast - with an estimated 100,000 million stars. And 2 million, million galaxies in the observable universe... numbers so large that they boggle every-day comprehension.

However unlikely intelligent life is, the vast expanse of space swamps such odds - numerous intelligent species must certainly exist.

Moreover, it's very likely that space is infinite - if so, infinitely many intelligent life forms must exist.
===
It's also instructive to consider the case where the universe is infinite. Within an infinite universe, assuming a uniform distribution of mass, there is a finite limit within a 13.8 billion light-year cube of how matter might possibly be arranged. Which means... somewhere out there - so, very, very far away - is another exact copy of earth - with an exact copy of you and me... and even farther away... another copy... and another... and another.
===
It's far more likely, I think, that an infinitely many copies of myself exist in our universe than that mankind is the sole intelligent lifeform.

And yet despite all that the universe you talk of and know, the baryonic universe, constitutes less than 5% of the matter and energy that exists.
Most of the universe is completely undetectable by us at the moment, made up of dark matter and energy.
Maybe what you consider to be the “universe” is an aberration.

 

[BlueMoonAcrossThePond]

And yet despite all that the universe you talk of and know, the baryonic universe, constitutes less than 5% of the matter and energy that exists.
Most of the universe is completely undetectable by us at the moment, made up of dark matter and energy.
Maybe what you consider to be the “universe” is an aberration.

The baryonic universe is indeed a small proportion of the universe - granted.

I very much fail to see how this at all impacts any of the observations I made in my post. Hell, even if baryonic matter constituted 0.00000000000000001% of observable matter - or at the other extreme - 100% - my arguments still stand.

That is, we can estimate the number of stars in our universe regardless- and too, the "shape of the universe" appears to be flat - that is, it appears to be infinite - and moreover astonishingly homogeneous.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

Trouble with your “observations” is that are just faith statements not arguments.
There is absolutely no evidence that there is even single called life anywhere else than earth.
You seem to think numbers matter but in the context of a universe, which is not infinite if you accept a beginning and expansion, no matter how large the numbers they are they become insignificant. The zeros might blow our minds, but cosmologically they mean nothing. There is no evidence the universe is flat indeed current thought is that it has a probability of 99% of being curved, no one knows how much of the universe is unobservable and indeed as universal acceleration increases the observable number of stars will decrease until eventually no stars will be observable apart from the sun.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Do aliens actually exist? - by which the poster seems to ask, does intelligent non-human life exist?
===
IMO - a resounding "Yes" - alien intelligence does exist, and likely within our own galaxy.

The universe is vast - perhaps infinite. Somewhere out there among the stars are sentient beings - perhaps even now skanning their skies and looking, however briefly at our sun, wondering too, "Is there intelligent life out there?"
===
That said, it's amazing that life on earth - let alone intelligent life - evolved.

Correct distance from a "benign" star - large moon to stabilize spin - large enough to form a long-lived protective magnetic field - in a solar system where a single star evolved (most systems have 2 stars) - at an age where enough elements have been created to form life - in an area of the galaxy where elements possibly necessary for life are abundant enough - but also where stars are not dense enough such that radiation does not overwhelm our magnetic field.

And for the potential to become space-faring - a terrestrial intelligence, with the ability to light fires and harness metallurgy seems requisite - intelligent life locked to underwater existence might well never develop advanced technologies - or at least will have a much harder time than land-based intelligence.

Too, life-ending catastrophes - climate change, run-away volcanism, collision with asteroids, comments, or indeed other planets - proximity to stellar novas - and so forth.
===
Intelligent life prima facie must be rare. And indeed, in spite of the vast distance between planets, if intelligent life were common-place, likely some other species in our galaxy would have made contact by now.

Yet, the galaxy is vast - with an estimated 100,000 million stars. And 2 million, million galaxies in the observable universe... numbers so large that they boggle every-day comprehension.

However unlikely intelligent life is, the vast expanse of space swamps such odds - numerous intelligent species must certainly exist.

Moreover, it's very likely that space is infinite - if so, infinitely many intelligent life forms must exist.
===
It's also instructive to consider the case where the universe is infinite. Within an infinite universe, assuming a uniform distribution of mass, there is a finite limit within a 13.8 billion light-year cube of how matter might possibly be arranged. Which means... somewhere out there - so, very, very far away - is another exact copy of earth - with an exact copy of you and me... and even farther away... another copy... and another... and another.
===
It's far more likely, I think, that an infinitely many copies of myself exist in our universe than that mankind is the sole intelligent lifeform.

It's not very likely that space is infinite, BTW. It's a possibility, that is all. The reality is we have no idea.

 

[BlueMoonAcrossThePond]

It's true that we do not know for certain. But all of our measurements to date suggest that the universe is in fact infinite. The logical alternative is that the universe curves back in upon itself. This second alternative is proving less and less likely as more and more measurements with increasing accuracy occur.

The final alternate is that the universe is flat but somehow comes up against a hard edge - is possible. But it's entire against anything we've observed and is rejected as likely by cosmologists.