The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsIs there intelligent life on other planets?
What's the deal with this? We can't possibly be the only planet with all this life that we have.
Why has it not been discovered?
Thoughts?
qazplm135
(7,447 posts)We've been looking for like a second.
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)Ptah
(33,057 posts)NRaleighLiberal
(60,036 posts)Clash City Rocker
(3,402 posts)My favorite theory is that any race so advanced to travel to us has destroyed itself before then. Given our current leadership, that isnt hard to believe.
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)I will pass on reading all of it. I did browse though.
hlthe2b
(102,525 posts)inhabited by INTELLIGENT life. It is all relative, after all.
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)We also have beauty.
Snackshack
(2,541 posts)That there is life on other planets.
There are a number of very good reasons why we have not found it. Look up the Fermi Paradox for reasons why. IMO opinion it is the distances involved and the small amount of time we have been able to search/listen.
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)So, there are other planets and beings "here" with us. We just are not aware using our ordinary awareness.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,985 posts)dweller
(23,702 posts)so that does it mean it must be elsewhere ?
🤔
✌🏼️
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)Delmette2.0
(4,177 posts)Humans just can't be the most intelligent live in this universe.
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)Atticus
(15,124 posts)mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)Eko
(7,422 posts)The universe is 13.772 billion years old, our sun is only 4.603 billion years old. Homo sapiens are only about 200,000 years old. How much longer do you think we will be here? Another 100,000 years? Lets say 500,000 total, of that only 300,000 years we would even be able to search for life on other planets. That means we would only be able to search for life for .002% of the life of the galaxy so far. Add to that the size of the universe as have been previously said.
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)Eko
(7,422 posts)mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)It is over my head.
Fun though!
Eko
(7,422 posts)Updated previous post also.
irresistable
(989 posts)and we could easily destroy ourselves. This capability window could be very small indeed.
akraven
(1,975 posts)brush
(53,977 posts)and many more planets around many of those stars. Space is huge. We're on a small planet on a remote part of a spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
IMO it's exceedingly earth-centric to think that we are so special. The number of planets in the habitable zone (for carbon-based life forms) around the billions of other planets is astronomically high, so of course life has evolved elsewhere as the chemicals needed for life are rife in the universeand then there may be life forms that have evolved that aren't carbon-based.
We can't even imagine what's out there.
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Generic Brad
(14,276 posts)Perhaps our perception of intelligence and consciousness is narrowly defined. I suspect there is higher intelligence in existence beyond our ability to comprehend.
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)But seriously, I get what you are saying.
Generic Brad
(14,276 posts)Today is that day.
dlk
(11,601 posts)First Speaker
(4,858 posts)...it is all speculation. Medieval, how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin stuff. There is *zero* empirical evidence. I've spent fifty years reading about this, both SF and "scientific" works. I've talked to some Big Names in both the SF field, and the scientific field, about the matter. And my *guess* is--and that's all anyone's opinion can be--is that there's something we're not getting about all this, that there's some very basic fact we aren't grokking about it. And unless we do--or unless some actual empirical data emerges--it's all medieval theologizing.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)First Speaker
(4,858 posts)...it's like alternate-universe SF novels. Fun to speculate about, but don't "believe" any of it. And some of it--like, say, John Keel's "Mothman Prophecies"--is a great deal of fun, in a berserker, Gonzo-like way...
rickford66
(5,532 posts)Science is improving methods of discovering and observing planets. We could know withing the next dozen years or so.
mysteryowl
(7,443 posts)PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,929 posts)is currently getting a PhD and does research on exo-planets.
I talk about this stuff with him all the time, and I just love it.
Anon-C
(3,430 posts)MLAA
(17,370 posts)PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,929 posts)let alone the entire Universe.
I can think of lots of reasons to explain why we haven't yet found evidence of another intelligent, meaning technological species as yet. Probably the most important is that at any given time there may be only one such in our galaxy. Other galaxies are so far away that to expect to find intelligent life there isn't going to happen.
It could also be that an intelligent species doesn't become technological, not in the way we have.
Maybe they just aren't motivated to reach out and contact other species.
Or an intelligent species might evolve in conditions (think Europa) where they don't get a look at anything outside their planet. Or well within the thick atmosphere of a gas giant, and again never get to see that there's a lot of stuff out there. Or they see, hear, and do everything on very different wave-lengths than we do, and so even if they're broadcasting, we might not know it.
Also, any species has a finite life span. Maybe a million years or so. Eventually a species dies out. Even if it doesn't kill itself off prematurely.
Here's another thought. My Son the Astronomer tells me that actually, the Universe is young enough that we may be one of the very first intelligent species to have evolved. Give it another few billion years -- we'll be long gone by then -- and maybe it will be teeming with many intelligent species.
Here's something else I find quite bizarre. SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, is listening to a frequency that is not at all the same one that we broadcast on ourselves. Why they're looking that way completely perplexes me.
So to me, it's really not that much of a mystery.
hunter
(38,350 posts)Perhaps human thoughts will be weighty enough someday to matter.
InAbLuEsTaTe
(24,125 posts)Talitha
(6,639 posts)Maybe life on earth developed from microbes that hitchhiked here in/on asteroids. Earth is in the 'goldilocks zone' of our solar system. Not to hot, not too cold. Not too dry, not too wet. Nicely habitable.
If we got our start via asteroids, who's to say it's not happening all over the universe? Distance and bad timing are probably the reason we've never found anyone else yet. We're still infants, though. Maybe some day our descendants will meet their cosmic neighbors. That is, if we don't kill ourselves first - or puke this beautiful planet we were given.