Real-Life search: Inhabited planets outside our solar system

[Disembodied]

Hmm ... given that governments don't seem to be able to cover up the fiddling of their own expenses, I'm not sure how capable they would be when it comes to concealing something as big as contact with an alien race.

It's important to remember that governments, like armies and big organisations everywhere, are just collections of lots and lots of individual people – all of whom have their own personal feelings, motives and agendas and many of whom are not the sharpest knives in the box. Most governments couldn't organise a convivial evening in a brewery, let alone a globe-spanning conspiracy of awesome proportions.

[Greyman]

Hmm ... given that governments don't seem to be able to cover up the fiddling of their own expenses, I'm not sure how capable they would be when it comes to concealing something as big as contact with an alien race.

I really have to agree with you on that. Take a good look at some people in the German government and everybody should see you're right, Disembodied.

[Chrisfs]

I heard on BBC radio that something like 40% of stars are thought to have planets (or perhaps 40% of Sun like stars, it was a few days ago)

I will be controversial, and say that given that many planets and that physics/chemistry/biology works the same throughout the universe,
if we were the only life in existence, then we should start to reconsider the validity of creation myths and that divine intervention did indeed have a hand in our existence. It's not something that could be proven outright, but if we are such a long shot, it is indeed amazing.

[Cmdr James]

There has of course been plenty of thought about the existence, and distribution of life, see for example the Drake equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

I dont really see how this relates to creation myths. I dont see that finding, or not finding algae on Mars would seriously impact the rational discussion of for example the garden of eden, or whether the universe was created by a big sneeze (Hitchhiker's Guide).

[SubV]

It is quite possible we're alone in universe...

Read this: Rare Earth hypothesis

[LittleBear]

Personally i've always found the most compelling argument against the drake equation is time rather than numbers. Planets may be common, including earth type planets. But if you consider Earth (the only example we have), for 80% of Earth's existance the only life was bacteria. And its only in the last 100 years that life with radio technology has existed. Not long out of over 4 billion years of life on earth. Humans have been around for 100,000 years or so, but few spieces on Earth last more than a million years. So even when an intelligence spacefaring lifeform arrises, the odds of it arrising in the same time frame that we exist are pretty small, when you bear in mind that earth is a middle aged planet. I personally think that life is probabley quite common, but multi-cellular life much more uncommon, intelligent life rarer still. But we only have one case to speculate on, so who knows really. Definatley worth having a look!

[Cmd. Cheyd]

I'm with LittleBear on Time being the limiting factor, but only for communication possibilities with other intelligent life.

However, I fully believe (and it is belief) that there are other intelligent lifeforms in the universe at this very moment, some in states behind and some in states ahead of our own. Even with the Rare Earth hypothesis, let's say there's a 0.00000000000000001% chance of Human-like intelligence forming.

When dealing with an INFINITE sized universe, that percentage chance becomes effectively immaterial. The "Cosmic dice" will eventually roll the right way and you'll have life elsewhere. And since the universe is infinite, there are an infinite number of opportunities to "roll the perfect combination" again. And again. And again, ad infinitum.

When one side of an equation has infinity, a percentage on the other side is meaningless. IMHO.

[Cmdr James]

There are a number of differnt ideas here.

How likely is it that there is other life, and of that intelligent life.

How likely is it to be detectable.

How likely is it to be spacefaring, and potentially widespread.

I think the main problem with the Drake equation is that no one really knows how these factors may interact. It is possible that the universe is swarming with intelligent life, but for whatever reason we do not know how to detect their comms -- any suficiently good compression ought to be pretty much indistinguishable from random noise.

There is of course the pragmatic argument, which simply looks at the distances involved, laws of relativity, and the fact little green men are not around in abundance, and to conclude that either alien life does not exist, or the true state of affairs is functionally equivalent to them not existing, that they are too far away to detect, communicate with or anything else.

I dont know where my beliefs fit, I guess that as Cheyd said, the numbers are suffuciently large that it seems reasonable to assume we not alone, but that the othewr guys are not likely to come over tomorrow night.

[Chrisfs]

I grant the issues of time and the question of intelligent spacefaring life, I am simply saying that similar conditions should produce similar results and if they don't then something different happened.

[LittleBear]

True, but intelligence alone is not enough to make space travellers; you need the digits to manipulate the world around you. Crows for example are very smart cookies. There's a great scean in the Life of Birds about a particular flock that had leant to use cars to open nuts. They knew however that cars were also rather good at opening up crows. But they also observed that cars stopped at red lights. So they'd wait by a pedestrian crossing untill the lights turned red, land and drop their nuts before flying off. They'd then wait until the lights turned red again to safely collect their opened nuts. Pretty smart, but crows could never become space travellers. Similar difficulties with whales dolphins and squids. All pretty intelligent and you could imagine super smart aquatic creatures working out the laws of physics. But without fire, however smart a spiecies it could never become a spacefarer. Intelligence is one evolutionary survival stratergey, but its not neccessarily a particularly good one. Horseshoe crabs ain't too smart but they've been going a lot longer than us.

[Chrisfs]

Intelligence is one evolutionary survival stratergey, but its not neccessarily a particularly good one. Horseshoe crabs ain't too smart but they've been going a lot longer than us.

For the lazy, or sedentary, you really can't beat being a tree. You sit in one space all day and 'food' is all around you, composed of air and sunlight.

Though it sucks when the local dog comes by.
Trees, if they could think, would need to take a very zen attitude towards things.

[DaddyHoggy]

True, but intelligence alone is not enough to make space travellers; you need the digits to manipulate the world around you. Crows for example are very smart cookies. There's a great scean in the Life of Birds about a particular flock that had leant to use cars to open nuts. They knew however that cars were also rather good at opening up crows. But they also observed that cars stopped at red lights. So they'd wait by a pedestrian crossing untill the lights turned red, land and drop their nuts before flying off. They'd then wait until the lights turned red again to safely collect their opened nuts. Pretty smart, but crows could never become space travellers. Similar difficulties with whales dolphins and squids. All pretty intelligent and you could imagine super smart aquatic creatures working out the laws of physics. But without fire, however smart a spiecies it could never become a spacefarer. Intelligence is one evolutionary survival stratergey, but its not neccessarily a particularly good one. Horseshoe crabs ain't too smart but they've been going a lot longer than us.

I'll think you'll find I'm quite capable of spaceflight, thank-you very much!

My wife said a very interesting thing sometime ago:

Irrespective of Life on other planets, how amazing is it, that on this planet, there is a species capable of appreciating that, possibly uniquely, the fact that our orbiting moon precisely covers our sun to cause a solar eclipse...

And actually, that is pretty amazing.

[Commander McLane]

For the lazy, or sedentary, you really can't beat being a tree. You sit in one space all day and 'food' is all around you, composed of air and sunlight.

I've read somewhere that the real evolutionary winner on this planet is the grass (with its various species).

[Disembodied]

There's another factor: the lifespan of an intelligent species. As LittleBear pointed out, few species last for more than a million years. Intelligence, or technological intelligence at any rate, might not be such a great idea from an evolutionary point of view. It's only of any long-term value if it allows a species to become spacefaring and spread to new environments. Unfortunately, at least in our case, that's involved things like missile technology and nuclear fission and fusion. It's also created an industrialised society that is hoovering its way through both the ecosystem and the available natural resources at a hopelessly unsustainable rate. Human technical savvy – if we use it to moth ourselves, or knock ourselves back to a pre-technical level, where all the easily available natural resources have already been mined out – might be an evolutionary dead-end.