Do Aliens actually exist ?

[Andy Dale]

What gets me is , that all the people who say they have seen or been abducted by aliens , always describe them as similar in form to us.
Why would they look anything like us ?
The chances of life on another planet is about 1 billion to 1.
Times that by the chances of it being intelligent life. . .about 1 billion to 1.
Times that by the chances that they could travel the vast distances across the cosmos. . about 1 billion to 1.
Times that by the chances that they would have evolved to look just like us with 2 arms , 2 legs , 2 eyes and mouth all in a remarkably similar place to us. . 10 billion to 1.
Those are the odds we are looking at.
If we are not alone , what an amazing thing that will be.
It will be equally amazing if it turns out that we are alone.

 

[mancityvstoke]

Go to Stoke

 

[Pigeonho]

What gets me is , that all the people who say they have seen or been abducted by aliens , always describe them as similar in form to us.
Why would they look anything like us ?
The chances of life on another planet is about 1 billion to 1.
Times that by the chances of it being intelligent life. . .about 1 billion to 1.
Times that by the chances that they could travel the vast distances across the cosmos. . about 1 billion to 1.
Times that by the chances that they would have evolved to look just like us with 2 arms , 2 legs , 2 eyes and mouth all in a remarkably similar place to us. . 10 billion to 1.
Those are the odds we are looking at.
If we are not alone , what an amazing thing that will be.
It will be equally amazing if it turns out that we are alone.

I think we are descendants of the greys.

 

[kevin horlocks wand]

I'd say it's unlikely, but you cannot rule it out.

You're essentially taking an EXTREMELY low likelihood of something happening and trying it an EXTREMELY large number of times (numbers or stars, planets and billions of years) and trying to deduce whether it happens or not.

Like 0.0000000000000000000000000000000046545417% chance x 1,372,473,389,267,238,528,287,276,247,458,871.634

And hoping the answer is more than 0.5

And we don't know what the digits are!

For intelligent life to exist, it depends upon not only DNA-like constructs which allow division and replication, but critically it also needs very precisely broken DNA-like constructs. If the replication is near perfect, then evolution doesn't happen. And if it's just a tiny bit too imperfect, then every generation is so mutated that it just dies... and then evolution doesn't happen.

For life on earth to exist is a truly STAGGERINGLY unlikely circumstance. But then the universe is very old and there's a staggeringly large number of stars (and therefore presumably planets).

So what wins? The number of times the dice is thrown or the fact that the dice has trillions upon trillions of sides and only one correct answer?

You are applying earth science to the chance of there being alien life. It’s Like saying humans we need water to exist, ergo in order for life to exist we need to find water on a planet

Who knows what alien life form needs to exist, dna, water???Nobody knows.

There’s life jim, but not as we know it

 

[CityInWashingtonState]

It's virtually inconceivable that life exists solely on Earth - and by extension that we're the lone intelligent life in the universe. It may well be that the universe is infinite - in several different, interesting ways. If so, perhaps intelligent life is simply unlikely, and it's the size of the universe and travel speed constrained by the speed of light that's prevented us from contact.

I rather think that we'll discover life on other planets - perhaps even in our own solar system. Intelligent life capable of interstellar transport probably requires many more variables to align - perhaps we're alone in intelligent species able to leave their own planet in our speed-of-light observable universe (seems unlikely to me though) - or, more likely, whatever intelligent life exists within observable range is extremely scarce and thus difficult to contact.

 

[Chippy_boy]

You are applying earth science to the chance of there being alien life. It’s Like saying humans we need water to exist, ergo in order for life to exist we need to find water on a planet

Who knows what alien life form needs to exist, dna, water???Nobody knows.

There’s life jim, but not as we know it

No, I'm not actually. Atoms is atoms, molecules are molecules. Physics is constant throughout the universe. RNA is RNA and that's just a bunch of molecules. I am not saying it has to be the same RNA, but life must start with a bunch of molecules that can replicate. It's a fundamental construct.

Have a google about the Drake Equation, the Great Filter, the Fermi Paradox, Black Swan theory etc. It's interesting stuff, and the honest answer about whether life exists is, no-one knows.

 

[Uptop]

Most likely yes but at the same time, the universe was already billions of years old before we came to be and we see no sign of anything (Maybe we cant even conceive other life as it is too abstract).

In theory based on how long it took us to for us to evolve, any life formed during the billions of years prior to us should be everywhere based on our current level of technological advances as they have potentially had billions of years to advance and spread.

So maybe life can only progress so far before it hits a limit (not always being intelligent for example), maybe life ends up self destructing before it can reach the stars or maybe we are among the first intelligent life and it simply took until now for the universe to be stable enough for intelligent life to form.

 

[snorky]

8 pages of this pure conjecture and I am still waiting for the definitive from @hodge

 

[Chippy_boy]

Most likely yes but at the same time, the universe was already billions of years old before we came to be and we see no sign of anything (Maybe we cant even conceive other life as it is too abstract).

In theory based on how long it took us to for us to evolve, any life formed during the billions of years prior to us should be everywhere based on our current level of technological advances as they have potentially had billions of years to advance and spread.

So maybe life can only progress so far before it hits a limit (not always being intelligent for example), maybe life ends up self destructing before it can reach the stars or maybe we are among the first intelligent life and it simply took until now for the universe to be stable enough for intelligent life to form.

aka the Great Filter

 

[Chippy_boy]

It's virtually inconceivable that life exists solely on Earth - and by extension that we're the lone intelligent life in the universe. It may well be that the universe is infinite - in several different, interesting ways.

I disagree with your opening salvo, but yes, and infinite universe (or multiverse) means 100% certainty of life existing elsewhere. But also 100% certainty that another earth exists with another Premier League and everything else that we experience, down to every last atom being the same. And then there's another solar system which is also indentical, but where 1 hydrogen atom moved slightly to the left. And another one, with another different hydrogen atom. in essence a near-infinite number of Earths, imperceptibly different from our own.

So when we start talking about infinite, the situation soon gets very silly indeed (if not mathematically possible).