Is there other life out there

[Lee Bartholomew]

Just been reading an artical about UFO sightings and explinations and stuff.

Got me thinking about it all. Personally, with there being so much out there in space I find it hard to belive that Earth is the only place with lifeforms.

What do you think?

[Lee Bartholomew]

Mods, can you make public. Im an idiot and always do that with polls.

Thanks.

[Daisy Chain]

Well, obviously. There are The Clangers for a start.

Daisy

(A Facetious Little FLower)

[Mezzosoprano]

It would be presumptuous and rude to assume that we are the only "intelligent" - and I use that word very loosely - lifeforms. So, yes there is.... and hopefully when the little green men arrive they will note that I said they existed and spare me from vapourisation or experimentation.....

[Beowulf]

I hope aliens visit us.. I mean, how else am I to get a lift home?

BTW Many of us have seen UFO's .. if it's flying and you can't identify it then it's a UFO.. Of course, UFO is not nessesarily the same as an Alien Spacecraft.

I'm sure there's life out there somewhere that may be totally alien (scuse the pun) to us. To Quote Star Trek

"It's life Jim but not as we know it !"

[straycat]

Mods - any chance of a 'This poll was created by aliens' option?

[Dreadful Scathe]

theres certainly intelligent life somewhere , possibly even on this planet

Everyone has seen a UFO: if it was flying and you didnt know what it was...its a UFO, simple

[straycat]

Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe

theres certainly intelligent life somewhere , possibly even on this planet

Are you sure? Have you ever encountered it?

Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe

Everyone has seen a UFO: if it was flying and you didnt know what it was...its a UFO, simple

So ... if you see a flying object, and correctly identify it as an alien spaceship piloted by extra-terrestrial beings, does that mean it's no longer a UFO?

[Dreadful Scathe]

Originally Posted by straycat264

Are you sure? Have you ever encountered it?



So ... if you see a flying object, and correctly identify it as an alien spaceship piloted by extra-terrestrial beings, does that mean it's no longer a UFO?

indeed - everything gets mundane after its been in the tabloids for a week. Watch out for the "BBC Alien" Channel

[Dreadful Scathe]

a bit of history for you all here

[ducasi]

This is worth reading.

[Missy D]

Seems I can only click on one so I am not playing!

[Caz]

Have seen what i think was a UFO a few years ago.. Driving my now ex-boyfriend home across the country lanes when a low flying war like plane was above us. seemed to be coming down quite quickly so pulled over to have a look.. needing to know as i do .. got out of car and the plane was there, very low, but no noise at all.... then it disappeared.... not sure if this was some form of ghost plane, UFO or ???? apparently other people saw it too so not just me high on chocolate or sugar either

[Caz]

I do truly believe that "we are not alone".... Love anything to do with aliens / UFO's etc.. A massive fan of Steven Spielberg on TV like Taken - did anyone see that???

We can't possibly be alone can we? In fact I think aliens work in my office.. or maybe that is me....

[Jhutch]

Scientific thinking seems to be that life exists pretty much wherever it can. Since our solar system is nothing out of the ordinary it seems reasonable to suppose that there will be other worlds out there with similar conditions to earth and, therefore, that there will be life in a lot of places. Whether intelligent life exists or not is a harder question. The earth has seen some cometary/asteroidal impacts in the past. These have caused widespread extinctions but some developed life has continued. Has it just been a fluke that none of these has been big enough to completely destroy life? For instance, if the comet that supposedly killed off the dinosaurs had been bigger then it could have killed off all developed life and we would have been back to the amoeba level.

The same goes for climate change. Some other planets may be subject to forces that rapidly change climate and thereby kill life off. Indeed, i have wondered if the recent series of ice ages had been more extreme then maybe life would have been killed off completely. However, by the same token, maybe a changing environment can actually help intelligent development as it is the most adaptable that can cope best? After a volcanic eruption 70,000 years ago the human population is thought to have dropped to between 1000 and 10,000 individuals - a planet with stronger volcanoes producing more violent swings in climate may well have had no humans left.

Toba catastrophe theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also, any civilisation that gets going will have the moment from which it could kill itself off through weaponry such as nuclear warheads. Maybe this threat is not as big as may be thought though - what is the likelihood of a species evolving that would quite happily kill itself? Most of a species will want to survive - although mad people who don't seem to fear death are always a problem

Then there is how advanced would another civilisation be? The universe is reckoned to be about 15 billion years old (?) and the earth about 4.5 billion years. Although it may have taken some time for the conditions to be right for life, some lifeforms could have had billions of years start on us. Considering how far we have advanced in recent centuries, i would have thought that intelligent life would be very advanced (although it is possible that development way beyond our current level is not possible).

Sometimes, i think i overanalyse things

[Barry Shnikov]

Originally Posted by ducasi

This is worth reading.

Oh, delights! Candidate for best headline of all time: "I saw aliens at Roswell, claims dead PR man"

Made my day.

[stewart38]

Originally Posted by Jhutch

Then there is how advanced would another civilisation be? The universe is reckoned to be about 15 billion years old (?) and the earth about 4.5 billion years. Although it may have taken some time for the conditions to be right for life, some lifeforms could have had billions of years start on us. Considering how far we have advanced in recent centuries, i would have thought that intelligent life would be very advanced (although it is possible that development way beyond our current level is not possible).

Sometimes, i think i overanalyse things

Interesting

There was some article that was written cira 1600 that concluded man and his inventions had gone as far as they could

Maybe intelligence creature have looked at the earth and said na nothing interesting happening move on ?

how many of us have studied ant hills ?

[straycat]

Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov

Oh, delights! Candidate for best headline of all time: "I saw aliens at Roswell, claims dead PR man"

Made my day.

I still think "Southampton Sceptic Abducted by Aliens" would be a better one

[Barry Shnikov]

No suitable option for me.

I believe that there are probably intelligent life forms elswhere in the universe.

Whether we are in their 'information bubble' though is extremely, extremely unlikely.

Our own information bubble - created by the 'shock wave' of the first radio broadcasts, which are still (weakly) radiating outward from the earth at the speed of light, only encompasses a dozen or so stars - after over a century. There are an estimage 400 billion stars in the milky way, of which a substantial portion is in the galactic hub where life is probably impossible due to the intensity of harmful radiation. But if there were 1,000 stars with intelligent life, on average the distance between them would be hundreds of light years. (The volume of the milky way is approximately 1,500 million million light years.)

Even if we could travel at 'Warp 9' (9x 'c', as per the Enterprise) it would still take an enormous amount of time to travel 100 light years - nearly 11 years. And if we can't travel faster than light, which seems likely, it would take 200 years.

[Barry Shnikov]

Originally Posted by straycat264

I still think "Southampton Sceptic Abducted by Aliens" would be a better one

It doesn't have that cachet, but I realise you would find it amusing.