What If We ARE Alone?

[rightwinger]

Here are some thoughts about the STATISTICAL likelihood of life existing outside of Earth. It seems to me that we may be looking through the wrong end of a telescope by presuming that because life exists on Earth, it MUST exist elsewhere in the universe. What if it doesn't?

One way to look at this question is through statistical sampling. Let's hypothesize that there are 10 billion data points in the universe. Let's also take a random sample of a billion of these data points in order to determine the probability of life in the universe. A sample of this size is certainly enough to provide a confidence level of near certainty regarding its results. What if no life was detected in this sample? Wouldn't this lead us to conclude that there is no life in the universe?

Another way to look at this question is through probability calculations. A well-known equation is often used to assign probabilities to a finite number of conditions presumed to be necessary for life to exist and then essentially multiply them by infinity to produce a foregone conclusion of life existing elsewhere. However, since infinity is NOT a number, the universe can not contain an infinite number of data points. As a result, these calculations are based on a type of circular logic.

In addition, all of the conditions necessary for the creation of life are not known. But even if they were, the probability of them simultaneously occurring at the same time and place may be extremely small. Even without the time element, if there were 100,000 of these conditions with each having a one in a 100,000 probability of existing, there would be less than a 50% probability of them all occurring more than once.

Maybe we ARE all alone in the universe.

A planet capable of sustaining life is very rare. Environmental conditions must be stable and nearly perfect.
Life itself is very rare and is most probably along the lines of slime or single cell organism.
Intelligent life is extremely, extremely rare in the universe.

 

[Mushroom]

Here are some thoughts about the STATISTICAL likelihood of life existing outside of Earth. It seems to me that we may be looking through the wrong end of a telescope by presuming that because life exists on Earth, it MUST exist elsewhere in the universe. What if it doesn't?

I actually look at it from the other direction.

We know our planet was formed some 4.54 billion years ago. And then the planet was effectively destroyed and rebuilt around 4.5 billion years ago. And that the first signs of life date to only 4.28 billion years ago. The surface had barely cooled to something that would support life, and life appears to have existed already.

But then you have to have a great many other things line up just right for that to happen in the first place. First, you need either a Population I star, or a very late stage Population II star. This is because the building blocks that are needed to create "life" simply are not there otherwise. And the oldest known Population I star is only around 10 billion years old, so no life prior to that.

Then you have to have location, and there we lucked out because our star is in a small backwater fringe of a smaller spiral arm on a bar spiral galaxy. Other areas like the galactic center are not conducive to life at all, and you also can not be too close to other things like the multiple stellar events that emit huge amounts of radiation.

Now just suppose you win the "galactic lottery" like we have on Earth. Well, is your planetary core large enough to maintain a protective magnetic field to keep the solar winds from stripping away the atmosphere? Yes, I believe there was life on Mars, and there likely still is. But only as underground extemophiles, little changed from the bacteria they formed from billions of years ago when their core went cold.

Just remember, it took over 4.5 billion years for life to evolve on the planet to the position we are in now. And our star is now into "middle age", and life on our planet only has another 3 billion years or so to go before it's all wiped out.

 

[citygator]

A planet capable of sustaining life is very rare. Environmental conditions must be stable and nearly perfect.
Life itself is very rare and is most probably along the lines of slime or single cell organism.
Intelligent life is extremely, extremely rare in the universe.

But scientist take those rare possibilities and multiply it time near infinity stars and planets and say there is a lot of life.

I think the vast distances will render that point unprovable. Life on Earth will end before it leaves to go anywhere.

 

[Mushroom]

A planet capable of sustaining life is very rare. Environmental conditions must be stable and nearly perfect.
Life itself is very rare and is most probably along the lines of slime or single cell organism.
Intelligent life is extremely, extremely rare in the universe.

I generally compare what is possible in most cases as rarely evolving beyond pond scum.

And that stability is extremely important, which is why binary systems likely would not evolve life. You also need an oversized core, the right age and size of star, in the right stage of it's evolution. Then you get all the other fun things in the "pinball game" that is the universe, like asteroids and comets. We already know that on our own planet those have almost wiped out life multiple times.

Then you simply have to have things happen just right so that life does not kill itself off. That happened on our own planet between around 2 and 2.4 billion years ago. Where almost all life on the planet was anoxygenic, and oxygen was a poisonous waste product. But over time they changed the atmosphere enough that they essentially poisoned themselves and almost all died but for a tiny fraction that had evolved to where oxygen was not a poison but required for it to live.

I bet most planets that could support life will develop life, but be more or less like Mars. Where only after around a billion years of habitability the core went cold and the planet died. And even on our own planet, there was "life" for over 4 billion years, but only in the last million years or so could you identify anything even close to "intelligent beings". From then going back 25 million years, the most intelligent creatures were essentially at the intelligence level of chimps.

 

[Mushroom]

But scientist take those rare possibilities and multiply it time near infinity stars and planets and say there is a lot of life.

And you then have to remove the vast majority off the top that can in no way support life.

The majority of stars are going to be like in our own galaxy, in the galactic center. Remove those automatically, too chaotic and unstable with far too much background radiation for life to ever evolve in.

Then remove all the binary and other similar formations. Same thing, too chaotic. At this point the "infinity" of stars and planets is significantly smaller. And it's going to get even smaller still.

For example, throw out all of the Population II stars, they can't support life. It has nothing to do with the stars themselves, but what they and their planets are made of. Those (and the theoretical Population III stars) simply have few elements beyond carbon and barium. So any potential "life giving" stars have to be Population I, formed in the last 10-13 billion years. And such stars are then only going to have about 5-8 billion years to allow life to evolve and thrive before the star itself puts an end to it all.

And most times, a huge amount of that time is spent a basically "pond scum". On our planet, it appears that life first evolved around 4.2 billion years ago. But only around 2.4 billion years ago did it even start to make the evolutionary jump to being multi-cellular. And I bet 99.999999999% of life never evolved beyond that before it died.

 

[luiza]

Maybe we ARE all alone in the universe.

It will considerably surprise me if Spielberg's film , DIsclosure , does not talk directly to this matter on a "supposedly honest" basis .
Due for release this coming week .

However , he has always been Deep State and it is not in their interest to give more than partial Disclosure , say around 30% if we are lucky . .

For example , I simply do not believe they will talk honestly about their underground bases network where some Aliens have been working alongside us for decades .
But it will be interesting to see what they are prepared to officially admit to --- resulting from pressures exerted by hundreds of Breakaway Civilisation Whistleblowers ,plus the need to develop the Zero Point Energy narrative and slowly bring this matter to the public's better understanding .
Albeit , so they can control the narrative and wealth that will result .

 

[citygator]

And you then have to remove the vast majority off the top that can in no way support life.

The majority of stars are going to be like in our own galaxy, in the galactic center. Remove those automatically, too chaotic and unstable with far too much background radiation for life to ever evolve in.

Then remove all the binary and other similar formations. Same thing, too chaotic. At this point the "infinity" of stars and planets is significantly smaller. And it's going to get even smaller still.

For example, throw out all of the Population II stars, they can't support life. It has nothing to do with the stars themselves, but what they and their planets are made of. Those (and the theoretical Population III stars) simply have few elements beyond carbon and barium. So any potential "life giving" stars have to be Population I, formed in the last 10-13 billion years. And such stars are then only going to have about 5-8 billion years to allow life to evolve and thrive before the star itself puts an end to it all.

And most times, a huge amount of that time is spent a basically "pond scum". On our planet, it appears that life first evolved around 4.2 billion years ago. But only around 2.4 billion years ago did it even start to make the evolutionary jump to being multi-cellular. And I bet 99.999999999% of life never evolved beyond that before it died.

I get it.. but it’s the law of giant numbers. 0.000000001% times stars in the visible universe would be 4 trillion.

 

[sealybobo]

And a significant number of people believe in neither.

I have long believed that life not only exists elsewhere, but will typically evolve wherever conditions allow for it to happen. We are finding evidence every few years that pushes back the time that life started on Earth back farther and farther. Now at more than 4 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the planet was formed.

But I do not believe that anything much beyond "pond scum" exists in the vast majority of cases. Yes, I absolutely believe there was once life on Mars. I also absolutely believe that it never got much more evolved than primitive eukaryotes.

The fact is, the universe is extremely hostile to "life". We can even see this in the multiple extinction events just on our own planet. Where even life itself was the cause of the largest mass-extinction in the history of the planet.

I think we agree completely.

Half of the stars in the Milky Way are binary systems. Or more. So 2 or more stars swirling around your planet. Good luck finding the goldilocks zone in that condition.

I just think how nuts people are believing that aliens have visited. No proof. Everything they've shown us, does not impress me.

Or the people who think with all the stars, planets and moons out there that we are the only life. Yes, it takes the perfect conditions to get life like we got here on earth and no we don't see any other planets like ours, but that means nothing. Our planet might be 1 in a billion.

There are one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or (10 to the 18th degree) billions in a sextillion. There are sextillions of planets. Can't even wrap my brain around that. More than all grains of sand on our oceans.

Why would God not have at least 2 planets with life on them?

 

[Mushroom]

Half of the stars in the Milky Way are binary systems. Or more. So 2 or more stars swirling around your planet. Good luck finding the goldilocks zone in that condition.

And not just that, imagine the tidal forces on a planet that has two suns pulling on it. And in addition to the age which I talked about, you have stellar classification. It is believed that Class G and K are the most likely to be able to support life on planets. They are the most stable stars, and have larger habitable zones. And those two combined make up less than 20% of the stellar population.

Huge numbers of stars can be immediately discarded. Such as the roughly 76% of the stellar population that is composed of Class M stars. Most of which are red dwarfs. Low radiation outputs, which means the planets would have to be extremely close to their star. Which then has the effect of drastically increasing tidal forces on the planet.

And with the requirement to be Population I stars, that means that any stars older than around 13 billion years are simply too old. Too poor in metals that are required for life.

I just think how nuts people are believing that aliens have visited.

People believe a lot of crazy things. I find it insane that so many believe that. Why in the hell would some super-advanced beings travel huge interstellar distances only to mutilate cattle and anal probe random rednecks?

 

[sealybobo]

And not just that, imagine the tidal forces on a planet that has two suns pulling on it. And in addition to the age which I talked about, you have stellar classification. It is believed that Class G and K are the most likely to be able to support life on planets. They are the most stable stars, and have larger habitable zones. And those two combined make up less than 20% of the stellar population.

Huge numbers of stars can be immediately discarded. Such as the roughly 76% of the stellar population that is composed of Class M stars. Most of which are red dwarfs. Low radiation outputs, which means the planets would have to be extremely close to their star. Which then has the effect of drastically increasing tidal forces on the planet.

And with the requirement to be Population I stars, that means that any stars older than around 13 billion years are simply too old. Too poor in metals that are required for life.



People believe a lot of crazy things. I find it insane that so many believe that. Why in the hell would some super-advanced beings travel huge interstellar distances only to mutilate cattle and anal probe random rednecks?

My buddy says “did you hear Obama just admitted aliens exist”? So I look up what he said. He said he’s sure life exists elsewhere. Just based on the number of stars. He did not admi that he knows aliens exist or that they have visited.

Then they say trump and Obama don’t even know. It’s need to know and they don’t need to know. So now we’re talking shadow government shit.

 

[Mushroom]

My buddy says “did you hear Obama just admitted aliens exist”? So I look up what he said. He said he’s sure life exists elsewhere. Just based on the number of stars. He did not admi that he knows aliens exist or that they have visited.

That just typical conspiracy theory type of nonsense.

I have a very strong dislike for people who quote things out of context. That is a huge reason why I do not participate in political conversations in here.

 

[Anarchy666]

The conundrum is we're looking for life on other planets, when we SHOULD be looking at life that may have existed ON EARTH before the modern form of life evolved

 

[Lockback]

The conundrum is we're looking for life on other planets, when we SHOULD be looking at life that may have existed ON EARTH before the modern form of life evolved

That's an interesting point.
I suspect far advanced civilization existed long before this current one. There's quite a bit of evidence of it.
Having said that, I think we're capable of multi-tasking. Looking elsewhere is fascinating too.

 

[Cassandro]

There are one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or (10 to the 18th degree) billions in a sextillion. There are sextillions of planets. Can't even wrap my brain around that. More than all grains of sand on our oceans.

Why would God not have at least 2 planets with life on them?

If one believes in a single point of creation, then there was a finite amount of energy/matter in the universe. Creating a number to mimic infinity does not make it so.

 

[GLASNOST]

What If We ARE Alone? Here are some thoughts about the STATISTICAL likelihood of life existing outside of Earth. It seems to me that we may be looking through the wrong end of a telescope by presuming that because life exists on Earth, it MUST exist elsewhere in the universe. What if it doesn't?​

Two Questions for us all:
1). What if we are alone?
2). What is the meaning of life?

There are no answers forthcoming. We may discover the answer to the first question in a life-time but the second question will never be and what we call "religion" only leads us astray.

 

[ChemEngineer]

Two Questions for us all:
1). What if we are alone?
2). What is the meaning of life?

There are no answers forthcoming. We may discover the answer to the first question in a life-time but the second question will never be and what we call "religion" only leads us astray.

Speak for yourself. "This is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." The Brilliant Creator's Scriptures and abundant works lead every one of His followers to truth and hope. The meaning of life is thoroughly explained in Scriptures. Your problem is that you reject Them. Large numbers of stars and planets are trivial compared with the insuperable statistics of original polypeptide synthesis. I explain it here: Mathematical Proof of Nature's God

 

[Carl in Michigan]

Oh, this is complete nonsense. The "climate" on our planet has changed from an average global temperature of over 40c (100f), to times where the planet was almost completely covered by ice.

Yet life survived

What other planet in our solar system has a temperature range from 0 to 120?

Maybe not in your world, but in the known universe that's a pretty stable temperature fluctuation

 

[LuckyDuck01!]

It will considerably surprise me if Spielberg's film , DIsclosure , does not talk directly to this matter on a "supposedly honest" basis .
Due for release this coming week .

However , he has always been Deep State and it is not in their interest to give more than partial Disclosure , say around 30% if we are lucky . .

For example , I simply do not believe they will talk honestly about their underground bases network where some Aliens have been working alongside us for decades .
But it will be interesting to see what they are prepared to officially admit to --- resulting from pressures exerted by hundreds of Breakaway Civilisation Whistleblowers ,plus the need to develop the Zero Point Energy narrative and slowly bring this matter to the public's better understanding .
Albeit , so they can control the narrative and wealth that will result .

On the subject of "aliens" being here on Earth and people anxiously awaiting any significant reveal by the government on "aliens.gov." or war.gov uap. will be disappointed. The government recently met with scientists to discuss any protocol, should we encounter actual aliens from another planet. That meeting is very telling in that it shows there are no aliens on our planet and none of the UAP's logged are part of a terrestrial government experimental program.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

For sure, life has formed elsewhere.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

A planet capable of sustaining life is very rare.

You need to be more specific. What kind of life? People? Cyanobacteria?

There are probably more planets that can sustain simple life than there are planets where it can form in the first place. Which is probably a trillion trillion. And that is being conservative.