Aliens and Religion

Pinkus · Post by **Pinkus** » 22 May 2008 11:39

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080513/ap_ ... can_aliens

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24598508/

Now is this just a random thought that came into the Pope's head one day? or is he trying to prepare us (and the stability of Christianity) for the fact that aliens do exist, and that we have proof? This really makes me wonder.

Does anyone think we'll hear more news of aliens in the next 10 years?

QuantumBalance · Post by **QuantumBalance** » 24 May 2008 04:52

maybe

crazylegs32 · Post by **crazylegs32** » 15 Jun 2008 22:50

The pope sounds smart.

TheLast · Post by **TheLast** » 17 Jun 2008 16:01

maybe in 100 years

DonC · Post by **DonC** » 16 Jul 2008 17:32

blasphemy

habitat · Post by **habitat** » 18 Jul 2008 13:44

Why would you ever listen to the pope for anything? The Vatican's "chief astronomer" said it's ok to believe in aliens? Haha, religious scientist, what a joke. It's ok to use science for everything except trying to understand our origin as a species. Then you are going to hell because it was god. End of story.

Fuck the pope and everything he stands for. He must be an alien. A nazi alien.

james · Post by **james** » 19 Jul 2008 00:49

if i was an alien i would destroy this planet

if only for the fact that this thread even exists

jrstubs · Post by **jrstubs** » 19 Jul 2008 05:51

Scientology?

professor · Post by **professor** » 24 Jul 2008 11:07

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/s ... 21,00.html

You're gonna want to look at this....

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 24 Jul 2008 11:48

I find this all pretty interesting.

I hope someday soon we finally have that big revelation where we all get to know they are real.

Perhaps they ('they' being the aliens and whatever US superpower people have connected with them) are waiting until times of stability for anything like this to happen.

If aliens suddenly showed up it would be the craziest thing that has happened in human history, so you can't take it lightly.

Anyways, I'd say that at this point in my life I am 90% sure we have been visited and that there are ongoing connections. Beyond that, I am 100% sure that other intelligent life exists just because I understand that the numbers involved in anything space related are just too massive for it to be otherwise.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 24 Jul 2008 16:29

I'm tending to lean more and more towards the idea that intelligent extraterrestrial life does not exist, or that it if it does, it will most likely be impossible for us to find. I think the argument of Ernst Mayr is fairly convincing.

If you look at Frank Drake's calculations about the chance of intelligent life existing in the universe, there is a massive assumption that changes the odds completely.

The equation is basically working out how many planets exist in the solar system with the right conditions for life. The massive assumption is that if life evolved eventually intelligent life would evolve (intelligent enough for us to be able to communicate with - ie. able to use electromagnetic radiation to communicate). Yet when we look at Earth we see that it is exceedingly unlikely that intelligent life would ever evolve. The number of species of life that have existed is 100s of millions. The number of species that have developed enough intelligence to communicate interplanetary is 1. Not only that, but of all the civilisations of Homo sapians to exist, it's only really 1 that managed to develop the ability for that kind of communication.

So if we had 1 billion planets with the right conditions for life, given that we only have 1 example, we couldn't even really say that it was at all probable that one of those planets would have developed intelligent life.

Now are there 1 billion planets with the right conditions for life that are close enough to Earth that we could actually receive a message from?

The Drake Equation predicts somewhere around 10,000 planets in our galaxy with life (and 100 of which would have the ability to send us a message). If we take into account the chances of life evolving to our level of intelligence we end up with more like a 1 in 10 million chance that there is intelligent life in our galaxy.

The nearest galaxy to us is 42,000 light years away, and we'd need to find another 10 million galaxies before we have a likelihood of 1 for finding intelligent life (assuming all galaxies are the same size). When you start talking about the 10th million galaxy closest to ours, you're talking about billions of light years away - so if we were to ever get a message from them, they'd have had to have sent it a billion years ago, and if they ever get our messages it will be in a billion years time.

So basically I think it's probable that there is intelligent life in the universe, but exceedingly unlikely that we'll ever find it.

max · Post by **max** » 25 Jul 2008 04:49

I believe other theories exist regarding information transfer, notably teleportation (which has been successfully for small particles done in lab experiments) and worm-holes possibly allowing "shortcuts" in space-time.

Still slightly on-topic, recently an American astronaut claimed that aliens do in fact exist and that they have visited earth several times:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24 ... 62,00.html

Pinkus · Post by **Pinkus** » 21 Dec 2008 18:43

Jeremy wrote:The number of species of life that have existed is 100s of millions. The number of species that have developed enough intelligence to communicate interplanetary is 1. Not only that, but of all the civilisations of Homo sapians to exist, it's only really 1 that managed to develop the ability for that kind of communication.

i don't necessarily think that out of 100 million life-forms existing, only 1 will develop intelligence like what Earth history would suggest. it's more complicated than that. i believe that whatever species is on top mentally, will evolve (mentally) much faster than every other species, simply because they have no competition other than competing with their own quality of life.

this means that if a planet had only 500 species, the most intelligent species of those 500 will start to evolve exponentially faster than the rest. this would tend to increase the chance of intelligent life appearing on any planet that holds life.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 21 Dec 2008 19:19

You're theory is wrong. If it were correct than every isolated ecosystem on Earth would have evolved intelligent life. That hasn't happened at all. There are also plenty of species that could be described as "on top mentally" in their ecosystems and don't appear to be evolving at a rapid rate.

The evolution of human intelligence probably started with our use of tools, which pushed the evolution of our intellect in a time when we were challenged by the environment. Humans are by far the most intelligent animals in the world, but also have by far the most dexterous fingers (or appendages in general) of any animal. It is almost certain that there is a direct link between those two features. This increase in intelligence led us suddenly having many more options available to us and many more things to use our intelligence for.

In many ways you could view it as just luck that a species came along that had a survival advantage in radically improving their co-ordination of their fingers.

In one sense evolution is always driven by interspecies competition. Competition between species can change numbers of species, but it's the individuals within a population that adapt to the competition best that drive evolution.

It's also important to remember that evolution only occurs when a particular trait gives animals a different likelihood of reproducing over generations. When you look at humans now for example; intelligence is not a trait that correlates with higher birth rates or higher number of children reaching a reproductive age. Hence it appears we don't have significant pressure on intelligence and shouldn't expect humans to become more intelligent (although it's important to distinguish between genetic intelligence and environmental factors like socio-economic status and education).

There are lots of good books worth reading on the subject. I'd recommend "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast" by Lewis Wolpert and "Consilience" by E. O. Wilson, that I'm reading now (also probably his book "On Human Nature" which won a Pulitzer prize - but I haven't read that yet).

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 22 Dec 2008 04:58

Jeremy wrote:In many ways you could view it as just luck that a species came along that had a survival advantage in radically improving their co-ordination of their fingers.

[emo]Or just extremely unlucky?[/emo]

james · Post by **james** » 23 Dec 2008 14:47

UGGGGGHhh

NUBS

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 23 Dec 2008 16:05

Care to elaborate?

Jack Stutler · Post by **Jack Stutler** » 24 Dec 2008 12:55

habitat wrote:Haha, religious scientist, what a joke.

Actually, no. Lemaitre was a Preacher, and the scientist who put forth the Big Bang theory, which is still regarded by most scientists, but more imporntaly, the church, as how our universe started.

Jeremy wrote:The equation is basically working out how many planets exist in the solar system with the right conditions for life.

What are these conditions for life? What are you basing those conditions on? I assume you mean conditions for life as life as evolved on the planet we call Earth, any others? How can you so clearly determine what conditions life on a general base needs to start and survive and evolve?

The real problem to finding other life, is not that it's potentially hard to find because space is so huge, is that light can only go so fast. So say we hear a alien transmission from planet X, the thing is, planet X is clear on the other side of the galaxy 100,000 Light years away.

So even if we send them a message back saying to "Keep off the damn grass!", it'll be another 100,000 years before they even get the message. It'd be even longer if we sent people, inless we develop faster then light travel, which I imagine we can do, once we figure out gravity and space-time and how they work together. After that it's simply a matter of generating enough gravity to fold space time... ah, but it's going to be some time before we get our science to that point.

Jack Stutler · Post by **Jack Stutler** » 24 Dec 2008 12:57

argh, why is there no edit button, could a mod maybe come by and fix these?

sorry all

Fixed. -Ben

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 25 Dec 2008 04:46

Jack Stutler wrote:
habitat wrote:
What are these conditions for life? What are you basing those conditions on? I assume you mean conditions for life as life as evolved on the planet we call Earth, any others? How can you so clearly determine what conditions life on a general base needs to start and survive and evolve?

The Drake equation is largely speculative, as were the figures I gave. They are rough ideas at working out the chances of intelligent life developing more than once in the universe based on very limited evidence and not "clearly determined" at all. Nobody claims it is perfect, and in fact even the strongest proponents of the theory accept it's major limitations in giving accurate answers. Therefore I can't answer your questions except to say it is based on what scientists think the requirements for life are based on the observational empirical evidence of life on Earth.

It should be said that the "right conditions for life" are being extended constantly. A few years ago you could have said something along the lines of temperatures between 0 and 100 degrees, but these days you can add another hundred or so degrees either side of that range (in C). Carbon and light would have thought to be conditions, but no longer are, although liquid water is still a requirement as far as we can see (water at very high pressures remains liquid outside of 0-100C). I would absolutely agree with proponents of the Drake equation that it's basically a certainty that life exists outside of Earth and is probably even relatively common in our universe. Where I disagree is with the assumption the equation makes that eventually any planet with life on it will evolve intelligent enough life to be able to communicate with us in some way.