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alien life possibility is pathetic

Bruto, for the scientists who say there are 1000's of civilizations in the galaxy, we should have seen them.

Again, unpacking your strained grammar, I think you're saying we should have seen evidence of ET intelligence if they exist (as opposed to saying we should have seen the scientists).

Again, says who? That just doesn't logically follow. The Fermi Paradox depends on some huge assumptions. That near-lightspeed is possible to attain; that a technological civilization will last long enough to reach that technology; that they'd be willing and economically able to send out probes on one-way flights; that at some point in time these probes would be virtually ubiquitous; and that that point in time happened before we reached a level to spot these probes.

Really, about all the Fermi Paradox tells us is that either ET intelligences aren't THAT common, or at least one of these many assumptions is wrong.

It most definitely does not prove that no other intelligences (or complex life forms) exist in the galaxy.
 
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The drake equation is at best pseudoscience. Hes to nice to go in depth and add 200 needed factors that someone trained, like Peter Ward, would accept
I think you need to review the difference between early less specific science and pseudoscience. You don't seem to know the difference here.
 
Aliens, assuming they exist, had more then enough time to evolve and develop technology, but it seems that earth is all alone in the galaxy. What a waste of space

Assume for the moment that 1 out of 10 solar systems in our galaxy has actually developed intelligent life along with television (oxymoron?). Suppose these civilizations each use this technology for 10,000 years before self-destructing. Suppose further that each one takes anywhere from three to four billion years to develop this technology. Assume further that those TV broadcasts have a 100% chance of being detected by us.

How man civilizations would there be in the galaxy?

How many would we have detected?

Please show your work.
 
Aliens, assuming they exist, had more then enough time to evolve and develop technology, but it seems that earth is all alone in the galaxy. What a waste of space

No, they haven't had enough time to do this.

Bruto, for the scientists who say there are 1000's of civilizations in the galaxy, we should have seen them. I also dont buy ufo's, because if they were aliens, their ships would be traveling SLIGHTLY faster than ours, they would light years faster!

No, we shouldn't have seen them.

Certaintly complex life must be incredibly rare, if not non-existent, in our galaxy. Scientists would agree

No they wouldn't.




Hey, this arguing by random assertion is easy! I can see why you do it so much.
 
Makaya325, besides lack of evidence and out-and-out assumptions, the other thing that is not helping you is that you are jumping around your statements continuously.

You titled the thread "alien life possibility is pathetic" which is a fair, though not verifiable statement. The title doesn't say "alien life possibility is non-existent". However, your first posting you pretty much come out and say that there is no possible way any form of life can exist.

Then throughout the thread, you bounce to sentient life can't exist, then intelligent life can't exist. (And I'm pointing out the difference between sentient life and intelligent life. To me, the term "intelligent life" is not only sentient but implies a higher level of technology such as computers and the like).

What I'm asking is this: Have you rescinded the basic statement in your original posting, from saying that no life in any possible way could exist to now saying that microscopic life could exist, complex life could exist, perhaps sentient life could exist but no way could intelligent life exist?

I'm sorry, I'm seriously asking because your point-of-view seems to be jumping around a lot.
 
If we had not developed hands or feet, would we be considered less Intelligent.
Or would we just have a lack of self-made tools to play with?
Though our Brain's may have been the "key" to our survival here.
Were we less Intelligent a thousand Years ago? Or just different.
Having the knowledge of different things, and how we had to deal with the
reality of our society at the time.
Just a thought when I consider life in the Universe sometimes.
 
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I also dont buy ufo's, because if they were aliens, their ships would be traveling SLIGHTLY faster than ours, they would light years faster!

I buy UFOs perfectly well. UFO just means "Unidentified Flying Object". If you see an object that's flying/in the air, and you don't identify it, it's a UFO.

Are you saying you don't buy flying saucers here on Earth? That's fine; there's not really good evidence for such a thing. (Well, the same evidence that there's bigfoot, that is..)

You're also saying that alien species would necessarily be traveling light years faster. Yet, the ability to travel such a speed is, quite frankly, a pipe dream espoused by the very hopeful, or the very fictional (a la Star Trek). Real life isn't Star Trek, bub.

The facts are, the ability to travel light years, if even possible, would be extremely difficult, requiring so much energy, that it would be inefficient to use that energy to make a little romp into some tiny planet that may or may not support life.
 
Certaintly complex life must be incredibly rare, if not non-existent, in our galaxy. Scientists would agree
As an astrophysicist (That would be a scientist, specializing in the very area you're pontificating on) I'd have to disagree with you. Not that I'm saying that complex life definitely exists in our Galaxy, but your statement that it "Certainly complex life must be incredibly rare, if not non-existenet in our Galaxy". And I'm not the only one, as well you know, since you keep pointing out that astronomers are looking for other planets, and potential life harbouring planets.

As someone famous once said (paraphrased), "Doubt is uncomfortable, but certainty is ridiculous."
 
Godless, yes, a galaxy is combination of stars, dust and clouds. The universe holds these galaxies, all 100 empty billion of them

All 100 empty billion of them?

So let me get this straight. You want us to buy the Rare Earth hypothesis (wherein it states that life must necessarily be rare, which is rather relative in terms of the universe).

Then you want us to buy that all 100 billion galaxies are empty.

Now, you go back to this:

Certaintly complex life must be incredibly rare, if not non-existent, in our galaxy. Scientists would agree

In which you state that "maybe" it's non-existent.

Do you know what dishonesty means, Makaya?
 
As an astrophysicist (That would be a scientist, specializing in the very area you're pontificating on) I'd have to disagree with you. Not that I'm saying that complex life definitely exists in our Galaxy, but your statement that it "Certainly complex life must be incredibly rare, if not non-existenet in our Galaxy". And I'm not the only one, as well you know, since you keep pointing out that astronomers are looking for other planets, and potential life harbouring planets.

As someone famous once said (paraphrased), "Doubt is uncomfortable, but certainty is ridiculous."

Hey, you're an astrophysicist?

I was interested in becoming one, but people convinced me that getting up to that level would be incredibly hard, especially for someone that has to catch up on a lot of math. So now I'm settling for a history major with an astronomy minor at UTSA, and use my desire to be an author for the rest.
 
Hey, you're an astrophysicist?

I was interested in becoming one, but people convinced me that getting up to that level would be incredibly hard, especially for someone that has to catch up on a lot of math. So now I'm settling for a history major with an astronomy minor at UTSA, and use my desire to be an author for the rest.
Getting there required a lot of maths, staying there, not so much, as I'm now a pure observer.

Still need to use the maths occasionally, but nothing too complex.
 
Well, either way, just knowing astrophysicists is cool.

Mind if I hit you for some astronomy-related questions later, for my various story ideas?
 
Our Milky Way Galaxy is unusual in that it is one of the most massive galaxies in the nearby universe.

What does that have to do with anything ?

Our Solar System also seems to have qualities that make it rather unique.

Unique ? Explain. It's not as if we know of a lot of other solar systems, so I'm curious as to how you reached that conclusion.
 
However, complex life is out of the question-too complex

Well you should tell all those stupid scientists at SETI.

Joe, arent the building blocks of life quite rare?

Nope.

Rare compared to what, anyway ?

That time wont fly on other planets, due to the fact solar flares, asteroids, super novas would cause damage way more than once in a billion years

How the hell would you know ? Where's this special knowledge come from ?
 
Certaintly complex life must be incredibly rare, if not non-existent, in our galaxy. Scientists would agree

See Makaya, it's statements like this that lead people to call you a troll. It's not just making stupid, self-evidently incorrect statements that's the problem. It's not even making such statements in direct contradiction to previous statements you've made that's the problem. It's making the same ones over and over again without ever even pretending to show any evidence of acknowledge that you've read, let alone actually understood anything anyone else has said.

Let's look at this latest one in a little more detail shall we? Starting from the end:
"Scientists would agree."

OK, first problem is that this is the exact opposite of what you've claimed previously. You've referred repeatedly to how scientists are being stupid for claiming that extra-terrestrial life could exist, yet now you are claiming that actually scientists agree with you. Secondly, you haven't even tried to show any evidence to support this. You did once almost try, on the first page of the thread, where it was conclusively shown that your huge list of four people consisted of at least two scientists who don't agree with you and one person who isn't a scientist who doesn't agree with you. Since then I'm not aware of you trying again. Both in science and in debate it's considered bad form not to provide evidence, and even worse form to continue to make assertions when your evidence has been shown not just to be lacking, but to not exist at all. Finally, it's completely wrong. A great many scientists think that ET life is probably quite common, and there are large projects set up to try to find it, and even to broadcast our location and information about ourselves to them. Of course, those scientists may be wrong, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

"Certaintly"

Very little can ever be known for certain. When it comes to something like life, that very little becomes even less. There is a huge amount we don't understand about Earth life, a huge amount we don't know about the Earth itself, and even more that we don't know about the history of the two. As for other planets, we barely know anything about the ones just in this solar system. We've seen a few rocks from the Moon and we've taken a few pictures of the surfaces of the closer ones. We can speculate and make educated guesses about the probabilities of things, but no scientist would ever claim to be absolutely certain of anything about this subject.

Also, there are too many "t"s in that word. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out how many there should be.

"complex life must be incredibly rare"

There's that "must" again. When engaging in debate, it's generally accepted that it's best to be brief. You might run the risk of repeating yourself if you repeat the same words or implications because you run the risk of repeating yourself. Having said "certainly" already, the word "must" is completely extraneous and merely serves to make the sentence unnecessarily long-winded.

Grammar aside, you are making an assertion. Regardless of whether you view this as an exercise in debate or a discussion about science, you need to both define your terms and support your assertions. I've already dealt with supporting your claims, so here I'll just stick with the former. The problem here is with "rare" and "incredibly". As already noted several times, the word "rare" is relative. Winning the lottery is rare, yet it happens several times every week. Impacts from asteroids greater than a mile in diameter are rare, but fortunately they happen rather less often that someone winning the lottery. You can't just say "rare", you have to say what you actually mean. As for "incredibly", that's even more fuzzy. Is it a qualifier to rare, changing it from, say, 1/1000 to 1/10000? Is it just an expression of personal incredulity? Or something else entirely?

Despite the absolute certainty you've expressed here, you haven't actually said anything meaningful at all.

"if not non-existent, in our galaxy."

And here's where it reaches the "stupid, self-evidently incorrect" part. Unless there have been some changes made to the internet that I haven't been informed of yet, we are all posting to this forum from within this galaxy. The fact that you refer to it as "our" galaxy suggests that you realise this, yet you still claim it's possible that we don't actually exist. Now, you could certainly argue that the only life in this galaxy is on Earth, but it's just plain stupid to argue that life doesn't exist at all. Despite your apparent certainty in your beliefes, when it comes to discussions about life in the universe the only thing we can say with absolute certainty is that life is definitely possible in this galaxy, and we have the "we" to prove it.


The question now becomes, are those calling you a troll justified? There are 12 pages in this thread so far, so things don't look good for you. However, you could take these points on board and actually try making some real arguments, supported by real evidence, and then when you are proven wrong (as you will be, it happens to us all at some point) you actually accept that and go on to change your opinions and arguments. If you do that, people will no longer call you a troll (most of the time) and you can have an enjoyable time engaging in sensible conversations and learning things. Alternatively, you can ignore all this, carry on making ridiculously wrong claims, be forever labeled a troll and you can have an enjoyable time provoking sensible conversations while failing to learn anything.
 
Lone, we should have found an alien species by now. Why would they stay home? Dont give the bs excuses such as: we are their pets, we are to unimportant, long distance, etc. all excuses for the absense of evidence

What in the blue hell are you talking about ? You forget the following:

- Unintelligent aliens
- Aliens without space technology
- Millions of light-year distances.

Yeah, assuming we can't find a way around relativity, the speed of light is the speed limit in the universe. How do you expect them to come here ?

In fact, WHY would you expect them to come here ? They'd have to know where to look.
 
I buy UFOs perfectly well. UFO just means "Unidentified Flying Object". If you see an object that's flying/in the air, and you don't identify it, it's a UFO.
Two minor nitpicks.
First of all, it's easy enough to tell from context when people are using the term UFO to mean a sighting of space aliens.

Secondly, if we're going to get strict about the meaning of UFOs--most of them are not in fact "flying objects". The Moon and Venus are objects commonly reported as UFOs--and they are not "flying objects". Often it's just an optical illusion and the light is not an object at all. So saying something is a UFO doesn't necessarily mean it is an "unidentified flying object" either. From context, it's usually obvious what is meant.
____

On another note: on the other thread where we're discussing a similar issue, we got to talking about the physical makeup of galaxies, and it put me in mind of the Galaxy Zoo project. I'd strongly recommend for anyone (but Makaya in particular) to sign up, do the tutorial and test, and then put in some hours on this distributed project. Even after 30 minutes or so of classifying photos of galaxies, you will develop a much more instinctive sense of how freaking many of them there are!
 

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