Do you believe extraterrestrial life exists?

[Phoenix EX]

Who here besides me believes in Extraterrestrial life?
And if you don't, why not?
What makes you think there isn't any other life out there besides us humans?

 

[omahanime]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

There almost has to be "Extraterrestrial life".
The important questions are

Is it evolved?
Is it intelligent?
Does it have technology?
Has it visited us?

 

[Luckyfire]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

I don't exactly believe in extraterrestrial life, but I do believe the theory that it can exist.
Also, to omahanime's questions:

-Is it evolved? Depending on the year that life was born in a planet, it might be possible. But then again, a year is 365 Earth days, which means 24 hours, within it 60 minutes; and that varies greatly among species or even individuals. Whereas one's day goes very fast in its perspective, another's can be very slow. So the question needed to answer this is: If a hospitable planet was born in Earth year x, how fast would it and the inhabitants grow, and how fast does a day pass by?

-Is it intelligent? The little living beings out there that ever live are certainly smart enough to avoid the most dangerous people on Earth: us, the human race.

-Does it have technology? What we would call technology, they would call it another thing that even we couldn't understand.

-Has it visited us? There have been evidence of UFO crashes all over the world, but sadly, I don't think these were made by something or someone. No one has visited Earth, let alone be able to ever leave this place in the vast universe forever. Without returning alive.

 

[dBlue]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

It's likely but not proven, and if it does exist we know nothing about it.
'nuff said.

 

[Flys Gone 2071]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

OMG. I love astronomy. It exists imo. I am not sure on evolved but microbial is real for me. I don't believe in aliens visiting us. Intelligent I would say it would be very far from us.

 

[Elite Stride]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

Those with religious convictions would say that there is, and that they are evolved and intelligent but nobody can really say for certain. All of these UFO/alien shows and "sightings" on earth are obviously a hoax. Some of the shows often display the same videos and the same images of tiny lights flying in the sky and fields a' glowing, but anyone without a superstitious inclination knows that they are just airplanes or stars.

On another note, I think Extraterrestrial life wouldn't have the widely known appearance of a slimy alien or something. An alien is just something foreign to us, and so we depict them as basically monsters that couldn't possibly have any resemblance to humans.

 

[dBlue]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

Those with religious convictions would say that there is, and that they are evolved and intelligent but nobody can really say for certain. All of these UFO/alien shows and "sightings" on earth are obviously a hoax. Some of the shows often display the same videos and the same images of tiny lights flying in the sky and fields a' glowing, but anyone without a superstitious inclination knows that they are just airplanes or stars.

Everybody who is religious believes in alien life? I'd say the opposite: most religious probably wouldn't believe in alien life because, depending on what the life is, it could conflict with their religious beliefs. In addition, it seems weird to say that the religious would also say that the aliens evolved, some religions hold evolution to be false.

 

[Elite Stride]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

I didn't say everybody, but I can see how you would be mistaken by my poor choice of words. We can narrow it down to Christians, and as you alluded to, other religions depending on their belief system. I'll leave it at that so we don't change topics here.

 

[Incinermyn]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

Extraterrestrial life, yes. Intelligent life, maybe. I think we may discover developed animal-like lifeforms someday, but I have doubts about advanced lifeforms unless we just so happen to make first contact with a race like the Vulcans from Star Trek sometime in the foreseeable future.

 

[Flys Gone 2071]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

I believe we can find animal-like alien close to Earth (like 50 light-years away or closer).

 

[Slowbro]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

TBH, it's mathematically certain that aliens exist. Now, they may be billions of light years away, but since the universe is endless, they have to exist. Even if at any given point in space in this universe, there is a 0.00000000000000000000000(insert any amount of zeros here)00001% chance that there is life at that spot, the mathematical equation is 0.00(lots of zeros)0001/infinity=infinity. Anything multiplied by infinity is infinity, so there is life somewhere out there. Of course, they could be so different from us that we can't even fathom the possibility, but that doesn't mean they're not out there. Of course, here's a scary thought to think about. If the universe is endless, that means that there is an infinite number of alien species out there. That means any number of them are advanced enough to be watching us right now. *shudders*

 

[omahanime]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

That means any number of them are advanced enough to be watching us right now.

he sees you when you're sleeping
he knows when you're awake
he knows if you've been bad or good
so be good for goodness sake


OMG... Santa Claus is an alien.

Another lump of coal in my stocking again. Rats.

 

[theducktamer]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

I believe that microbial life exists outside of the Earth. But as far as other intelligent life goes...I'm not sure. I suppose it's possible, but I'm sure it's not anything we'll discover in my lifetime!

 

[omahanime]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

There almost has to be "Extraterrestrial life".
The important questions are

Is it evolved?
Is it intelligent?
Does it have technology?
Has it visited us?

Oops one more question.
Should I care?

 

[antidakoda]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

I think that if humanity is the epitome of perfection, then existence is doomed. The earth is poof. Other planets are poofed, when we get the technology. Everything is SoL. I hope that there's something out there that surpasses humanity. Because biologically, and mentally humanity is flawed as hell.

 

[The Pikachu Mafia]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

Of course we're flawed, but I think it's rather impossible that even aliens have no flaws, it's just the way things work...

Aliens are so 3 minuets ago anyways I would rather know if there's such a thing as a multi-verse... just saying...

 

[Slowbro]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

I think that if humanity is the epitome of perfection, then existence is doomed. The earth is poof. Other planets are poofed, when we get the technology. Everything is SoL. I hope that there's something out there that surpasses humanity. Because biologically, and mentally humanity is flawed as hell.

Humans are definitely not perfection. Of course some people might think we are the definition of perfection, but that's bias TBH. Of course humans might think their species is perfect. Eventually, humans will evolve into something better, both physically and mentally. This next species will look at humans (if we're still alive) like we look at bacteria or something of that nature.

 

[Flys Gone 2071]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

Perfection is unreachable and humans will always look for it. How I would like to know aliens these days. Of course we will evolve into something better.

unless this happens

 

[omahanime]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

Extraterrestrial life has contacted us, and said.

 

[bacon]

RE: Extraterrestrial life?

Oops one more question.
Should I care?

If there was one thing that I could do purely for the sake of curiosity, it would be to communicate and exchange ideas with an intelligent, extraterrestrial life form.

The human brain has varying levels of intelligence. We have evolved in such a way that our ability to understand spacial locations and language is excellent. On the other hand, we are comparatively poor with abstract concepts such as mathematics, because skills in these areas haven't held any evolutionary advantage, so we never really bothered to get good at them.

To get a grasp of just how good the human brain is at some things, and how poor it is at other tasks, consider for example how quickly we can pick up on emotional cues from facial and bodily language. Your brain can deduce a person's emotional state in a split second just by how high their eyebrow might be arched, or how they are holding their hands. Or consider how great our memory for faces is. We can remember about 100,000 different faces on average, and easily distinguish between them.

On the other hand, we are terrible with maths. If I ask you what 192 multiplied by 475 is, it will probably take you a while to get the answer. Although this multiplication might seem difficult, recognising a person's emotional state based upon their bodily language is immensely more complex. In the computer world, calculators have been with us for a long, long time. Facial recognition software, on the other hand, is still a blossoming field. A computer program needs to consider about 20,000 different abstract dimensions in order to distinguish between one human face and the next. A simple multiplication takes a few lines of code.

In other words, with some tasks we are geniuses, and in others we are complete morons.

Now, consider our friend, the alien. To get where it is now, the alien has taken an entirely different evolutionary path. Maybe it is a form of life that navigates not with light, but with sonar. Maybe they are not a social species, and developed immense cunning to survive in their isolated world. Perhaps they have a short life span, and must learn the laws of the land incredibly quickly in order to make the most of their short time alive.

Each one of these variables would have a significant impact on how the brain(s) of an alien would evolve over time. It would therefore be left with an understanding of its environment that radically deviates from what we, humans, can understand. Maybe they have brains more naturally suited to mathematics, for example? Or perhaps a heightened capability of spacial awareness has left them with a gift for engineering and architecture? The possibilities are immense. I think that the communication between humans and an intelligent, alien species would yield fruits of knowledge that we can only dream of for now.