Debate Are we alone?

I was looking up at the stars last night and i was really thinking that in all the space in in the universe are we really the only plant that hold's intelligent life.

I know that some others believe that there is no such thing as alien's and UFO's. But why not, do these people really think that we are the only living things in exsistance since the begining of time.

I don't think we are. I just can't except that we are the only one's in this universe that are here. There must be others somewhere. At least thats my opinion.

 

but if there are other creatures in the universe... how do they stand in the eyes of god? if we are created in his image and we are his favoured children...
might be dealing with a bit of sibling rivalry some ways down the road.

 

Without going to deep into the God thing (again). If god created the universe do you really think that God created all that space just for us
And futher more god didn't just create use in his image. Look at the aniamls aroung us they are not in his image. So what if he did make more then just us in this universe. If he did.
Like i said let's not go to deep into the God issue agan.

 

maybe he was curious. he could have created several lifeforms and spread them across the universe to see what happens. kinda like a lil boy stickin' us in separate shoeboxes and telling both of us we're alone. >_<.

 

but you can't just make an argument here that contradicts what you siad you believe in the god thread..

it says in the bible that god made us in his image.. so if we find an alien race and they are not made in his image. what does that make them? inferior? mistakes?

and yes god didn't create animals in his image, because we were his favoured creation, lord of all the earth blah blah blah

and as for all the space.. the human race has only really come into it's abilities in the past few hundred years, .. we have a LONG way to go yet and just like flying to the other side of the world 400 years ago seemed impossible.. space won't be the barrier it is set out to be

 

I never said this in the other debate. I beleive in god but i don't believe that god created everything. Don't ask me to explain this cause it's just the way i feel. I believe when i die he's there. That's all.

I can't beleive that we are the only living thing's in this universe. It can't be that if God created everything then we are the only one's. It's ludicrus to think otherwise that we are here on this one planet all alone. And what if we do find out that there are other beings on another planet that are not like us. Does this cause your belief in God to faulter? Will this make you believe that there may be more then one God? Maybe on god for each planet there is? And that that god created that planet?

 

the evolution of life on this planet could have been a monstrous fluke, but even if it wasn't and there are other forms of life scattered throughout space.. what is to say they are sentient?

planet upon planet of cows....

and even if there are advanced lives, who's to say they will be more advanced than us? they could be just as bigoted and hateful as ourselves, perhaps even more so. people like to look to alien life as a saviour-figure, with their awesome techology and cures for world hunger and war but if they are out there.. they are going to be just people.

albeit people from a (more than likely) *incredibly* different culture and it will be interesting to see if we as a culture can relate to them at all.

if aliens came tomorrow in their ships and cures for world hunger and said they believe women were second class citizens.. well what then?

the existence of aliens doesn't make us any less alone, we may not be the only ones out there but we are the only ones out here.

 

Possible Reason

There is one theory, which is so miserable it sounds just about right, why there might not be any intelligent life in the universe that could contact us.

There are proven cosmic events known as 'Gamma Bursts' which result from the collapse of certain stars. Essentially instant and pure matter into engery occurs (E=mc2) in seconds. Imagine all of the matter in the sun turned into pure engery at once. The illumination of these Gamma Bursts is so great that they can be hundreds of millions of times greater than any star. Unthinkable amounts of Gamma Raditation is released, which is deadly to life. The estimate is that if such a Gamma Burst occured even 100 lightyears from earth the resultant energy would cause an effect similar to a Hiroshima type bomb exploding on every square mile of the earth.

The theory goes that these bursts sterilise large areas of each galaxy regularly and this is why there may be much less life in the universe than there could be. The life comes to be, evolves, even becomes space-faring or even interstellar but still they are wiped out eventually.

 

lol
that would be just perfect
if that were the true way of things, it would really add to my opinion of the universe and life in general

 

Yeah Mord, like I said its the most awful answer which makes me lean towards being the most likely one.

Here's two random links if anyone is really interested (I've a thing about Gamma Bursts):

http://www.lifeinuniverse.org/noflash/MEotherastro-05-04-02.html

http://www.nature.com/nsu/030922/030922-7.html

 

I've always been fascinated/scared of aliens...had some weird abduction dreams...a bit of a sceptic, though. Whitley Strieber's Communion is a creepy book...the movie is pretty good, too. If there are other advanced life forms out there, they're probably pretty far away.

 

there is something more than us in the universe.....
they mighn't be as kawaii as us but they are probably there.
sure - if the universe is endless why waste all the space and planets for only 1 species -and if we are the only organic life
what happens when the sun finally is gone and the earth (something will happen - be it asteroid or the earth exploding)-is gone??
what will be left in our place?????

 

Let's hope there are life forms hiding on Mars, waiting to ambush George Bush's first visit! :anime:

 

To contribute to the discussion in a neutral way, I'll put several "requirements" that Frank Drake, a forerunner in extraterrestrial intelligence research, came up with. They tend to fit where I stand.

- Stars must be born at a reasonable rate to replace those that die.

- The star must have planets for life to exist on.

- A planet of the right size must exist at the right distance from the star, where it is neither too hot or too cold.

- Life needs to emerge on the planet.

- Life on the planet needs to evolve into intelligent life.

- The intelligent life-forms must develop technology to communicate over interstellar distances.

- The life-forms must learn not to destroy themselves with their technology.

- Natural disasters - Comet and asteroid impacts, large volcanic eruptions - must be rare to give intelligence time to evolve.

Okay, a few of those were requirements for us being able to find them, but they still apply.

Life came to be on this planet through luck. The temperature was just warm enough to contain liquid water (which is a very small gap, considering), and we happened to get almost all the water in the solar system. Moreover, the chemicals required for life were not found readily on this planet. Meteorites crashing into the ocean brought those chemicals with them, as well as started electric currents through the atmosphere, allowing the proper compounds to form.

Intelligent life was even more lucky. We were the weaklings of the food chain, all the way back to the first creature with a spinal cord. It was a small worm-like creature that lived in the ocean like everything else. It' however, was not an adept hunter; it was, instead, rather tasty apparently. Then, the first mass extinction came around, and this little guy was one of the few survivors. Now, I'm going to go forward several million years to the most recent mass extinction. We were but rats at the time, while the dinosaurs were the highest creature on the food chain. They died out, giving mammals a chance to evolve more.

I skip ahead another few million years, to a gorge in Africa, where a new species is just beginning. This creature is pathetic. It has very little hair, which meant that it was colder at night. It's flesh was soft, which meant that it was easily eaten. It ran on two legs, making it much slower than most of the other creatures out there trying to hunt it. The only things it had going for it were two appendages that were now more useful and an expanded brainpan. This is our current intelligent life. These events that occurred were million-to-one chances. If there is intelligent life out there, I don't believe we'll have a run-in with it any time soon.

 

Its mathematically imposible that Earth is the only inhabited planet.
But theres pretty much 0% chance of us ever meeting what we call aliens unless we (or they) travell to us by folding the time in space.

 

i think i saw something like that on t.v
walking with mamals and walking with dinosaurs

 

I think we as a race would be very ignorant to say that we were the only beings in this vast universe.

With space exploration still in its infantcy, there is way too much we still haven't even touch upon.

There are lots of tales about people seeing things they just cant explain. Maybe, in my opinion, there are just too many of these stories for everyone to just chalk off as fake.

I think if I were really asked this question, I would have to honestly answer=="I'm not sure."

Maybe someday we will get answers to this puzzling question--until then, it is all good material for some great Sci-Fi.

Victor

 

We are most likely wrong if we assume that we are alone in the universe.
The people of the middle ages thought they were the center of the universe, and boy they were sure wrong.

So don't jump to conclusions too quickly.

We've still got a lot to learn.

Oh!

And life has been discovered on other planets.

They found plantlike bacteria on one of Jupiter's moon's.

We can only hope Hollywood was wrong on aliens wanting to take over Earth. :anime:

 

Bacteria you say? Which one? Europa? They say there's liquid water under the ice. I would say more, but I don't want to start a religious argument. (But the whole topic make great movies on Sci-Fi.)

 

Nasa are indeed planning a probe mission to one of Jupiter's moons...although they may be side-tracked by Mars, leaving other agencies to nip in there and start exploring further!