Is there anybody out there?

Frenzal · Post by **Frenzal** » 30 Nov 2004 20:23

Does extra terrestrial life exist, do you think?

ShredPirate · Post by **ShredPirate** » 30 Nov 2004 20:32

is alien life possible? of course.
is there alien life? nobody on Earth knows.

B_Man · Post by **B_Man** » 30 Nov 2004 22:20

What Chris said

To be honest, I am scared shitless of aliens

Remember the movie Signs? Or Fire in the Sky?

*shudders*

The last one is based on a true story too.

sPinko-Mania · Post by **sPinko-Mania** » 30 Nov 2004 23:29

"We are either alone in the universe or we are not. Both ideas are overwhelming." - Arthur C. Clarke

The concept of having so much space 'wasted' and devoid of any life would be staggering, but the idea of other (especially intelligent) life out there is also really, really amazing. Conclusion: the universe is pretty cool.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 30 Nov 2004 23:59

Haven`t we found bacteria in ice from Mars or asteroids? Lately scientists have been discovering more and more non-gas based planets, and the possibility of life existing on moons of gas-giants is also possible.

Does extra terrestrial life exist? I would bet yes, if you mean single-celled organisms, or possibly even plant life. As for intelligent ET life... not so sure about that one.

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 01 Dec 2004 00:35

Mars has lots of signs of intelligent life

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 01 Dec 2004 00:42

Alright, here is my basic understanding of it.

Space is really really big as it turns out. Now, space dimensions are ridiculous and impossible to imagine. you can't imagine how far 400 million light yers is, you can't imagine how far a light minute is.

The crazy thing about that is that there is alot of 'space' for different crazy things to exist.

In order for a planet to harbor beings that can achieve high intelligence several factors must be met first.

1) environmental
- the planet must be big enough to have sufficient self-gravity
- the planet can't be too big
0 the planet needs to have an atmosphere in order to enduce the greenhouse effect (good in this case) which gives life to alot of stuff
- the atmosphere cannot be too thick or you get a run away greenhouse effect and it just boils and bubbles and is entriely impossible to inhabit by any means (like Venus)

2) Once life is actually happening (we have still not found much conclusive evidence of 'life' elsewhere beyond trace organisms in rocks.) on the planet it needs to have SO many factors and chance things fall into place in order to develop the skills (think of how long it must have taken to elvolve our EYES! think about it! evolution made these supremely high-tech machines we can't come close to matching)
Also, even with booming life, if we are right now at a stage where we can have space travel, what if the closest star also happens to have a solar system similar to ours and one of those planets has smart 'people' like us if they were the exact same as us but 70 years in the past they wouldnt be in space yet.

3) Ok, now the discouraging part. The closest star, as in the very closest first possible neighbor to us is four point something LIGHT YEARS away. awww maaannnnn...

Oh well, it would still be really amazing if somehow some aliens DID figure out a way to travel huge distances, scientists are constantly having good ideas.

Frenzal · Post by **Frenzal** » 01 Dec 2004 00:43

There's stil alot of debate about whether the asteroid from mars showed conclusively that there had been bacterial life on mars, i like to believe there was at one time.

Also some probes i can't remember the name of have recorded large (probably really very small but in proportion to earlier hypotheses large) amounts of the complex molecules that would help spark life.

I believe that one day our world will again become smaller in our perspective as it did when we realised it wasn't the centre of the universe, or the solar system or anything very much really except our existance. When our existance nolonger seems so unique we wil have to reevaluate again.

ShredPirate · Post by **ShredPirate** » 01 Dec 2004 01:45

before the earth had an atmosphere, there was life, but only in the ocean. this life created oxygen as a biproduct of photosynthesis (cause they were mostly, if not all, plant life). after millions of years of photosynthesis, oxygen became a larger and larger percent of the atmosphere, and the ozone was also formed. so life CAN exist with no atmosphere. and water can give life a head start in that. the geography of mars shows that there must have been rivers and stuff because there are eroded canyons on the surface. i'm not sure if they found live bacteria, but remnants have been found. some scientists believe that life on earth may have came from proteins (non-life) attached to an asteroid. and while in space these proteins were dormant, until they hit earth and formed the first cells.

most of that info is from my oceanography class.

sPinko-Mania · Post by **sPinko-Mania** » 01 Dec 2004 04:12

Sort of random, but here is a rad slideshow that goes from space to an atom, it's worth looking at:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java ... index.html

I wish it went further out though

BainbridgeShred · Post by **BainbridgeShred** » 01 Dec 2004 16:03

Hopefully the obvious interest in our surroundings, as shown by this thread, will lead to more space exploration, and thus hopefully the eventual saving grace of mankind.

Dawn Of Freestyle · Post by **Dawn Of Freestyle** » 07 Dec 2004 21:40

Loved the slideshow!!

Senor Grommet · Post by **Senor Grommet** » 07 Dec 2004 22:25

bainbridge, do you feel that you can justify the amount of money spent on space exploration by this government? So far, how has it helped us? What are we gaining from space exploration? Would not this money be better spent to feed starving people or strengthening any one of the US' failing systems?

BainbridgeShred · Post by **BainbridgeShred** » 07 Dec 2004 22:36

bainbridge, do you feel that you can justify the amount of money spent on space exploration by this government? So far, how has it helped us? What are we gaining from space exploration? Would not this money be better spent to feed starving people or strengthening any one of the US' failing systems?

That's like the people of Span asking queen Elizabeth what good has come out of space exploration a day after Colombus sailed. The final survival of our species lies in space, bottom line.

Besides, take 0.111111% off the Pentagon budget and your set for the next three thousand years. Their are better ways of fixing our budget/economy than hurting our entire species.

sampotter · Post by **sampotter** » 07 Dec 2004 23:52

I hate posting in this section of the forum, but...

I found some figures and it looks like NASA is getting (at the moment) ~$16-17bil. which will be cut by 6% for the next fiscal year, 2005. And, from Wikipedia, "As of September 2004, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office reported that total government spending for 2004 was projected to be 2293 billion dollars, or slightly less than 20% of the GDP. Of that, $159 billion was for net interest, $486 billion for defense, $492 billion for Social Security, $473 billion for Medicare and Medicaid, $191 billion for various welfare programs, $136 billion for "retirement and disability" benefits, and $64 billion was projected to be spent elsewhere."

I don't know how valid all of the numbers are, but there you go, anyway. Let discussion ensue. I would cut defense funding before I cut NASA's funding, personally.

sampotter · Post by **sampotter** » 07 Dec 2004 23:56

Oh, as a pseudo-'edit': Dan: In response to your comment about Spain exploring, while I know it wasn't your point in referencing this, a lot of unfortunate shit came about as a result of Spain's exploration. While their personal wealth and knowledge increased, cultures were wiped out in the Americas. A rhetorical: is our culture's exploration potentially just another self-serving, destructive act? Don't be romantic about the idea of space exploration. I believe it will be capitalized - and hastily - once it becomes widespread. How exactly would it be our world's "saving grace"? Mind, I'm not really taking a side, I'm just curious at your thoughts. I don't exactly have an opinion on this issue.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 08 Dec 2004 03:14

Hmm I'm to drunk to comment on what's been said before.

I think it is pretty much undoubtable that some form of what we define as "life" exists somewhere in the universe. "Life" is way to common and prevailant on Earth to imagine that in the entire universe it couldn't start somewhere else. It is virtually impossible to destroy life on Earth - even if we dropped every nuclear bomb on the planet it would be very unlikely that life would be destroyed.

Intelligent life is a completely different matter. I am torn between two views - either because the universe is so big "intelligent" life does exist or it is such a freak that it doesn't exist anywhere but on Earth. I guess the thing is is that inteligence doesn't seem to give that much of an advantage in breeding - and breeding is what life is all about. Intelligence has a few advantages in terms of survival - but it seems that homo sapians have always lived on the verge of extinction until we got very lucky with an ice age. It's a tough question - I'm inclined to say that intelligent life must exist outside of our solar system - but really it's all speculation - as somebody who "believes" in science - I find it very hard to make a guess at something we know so little about.

I apologise if this is too incorerrant - I should drink less

BainbridgeShred · Post by **BainbridgeShred** » 08 Dec 2004 07:56

Oh, as a pseudo-'edit': Dan: In response to your comment about Spain exploring, while I know it wasn't your point in referencing this, a lot of unfortunate shit came about as a result of Spain's exploration. While their personal wealth and knowledge increased, cultures were wiped out in the Americas. A rhetorical: is our culture's exploration potentially just another self-serving, destructive act? Don't be romantic about the idea of space exploration. I believe it will be capitalized - and hastily - once it becomes widespread. How exactly would it be our world's "saving grace"? Mind, I'm not really taking a side, I'm just curious at your thoughts. I don't exactly have an opinion on this issue.

Yea, it wasn't my point, but it is a good point that comes up out of it

First of all, I think their are some major differences between the late the 15 and 16 hundreds (And even later on) when native populations were beginning to see their decline. First of all, the explorers of those times came from countries that had a techonological advancement over the Native populations of North and South America, this made it very temptign to try to colonize these peoples. Intelligent life however on a distant planet we tend to assume would be more advanced than us. Wether or not this holds true doesn't matter, we would be much more apprehnesive about going in their and trying to take them over.

Second of all, we live in a globalized world where peace and harmony seem to be the main ideals we're striving for. If Earth countries got word of Humans mistreating extraterestrials in outter space, I would think that their would be some blowback to those responsible. I think if humans did come in contact with Aliens, we would be very, very cautious as to make sure we didn't fuck up our first encounter with another intelligent species in the first day.

Plus if you want to look at the good things that came out of the Eurpoean countries dominating the America's, we can sit here and speculate where the world would be with out these countries. I tend to believe we'd be worse off (Of course "we" probably wouldn't be alive at all). Would Democracy be the dominant system if America wouldn't have rose up, thus inspiring the French Revolution? Would we be living in a 1984 type world?

It's to much to speculate on, my brain hurts already. Either way, alot of good things come from bad things IE the depletion of the Native populations in America, WWII, and dare I say, possibly, Iraq?

peanutbuterboy · Post by **peanutbuterboy** » 08 Dec 2004 08:45

Man I toatally believe in aliens because if there arent any its a huge waste of space out there.

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 08 Dec 2004 09:11

Nagasake wrote: Don't be romantic about the idea of space exploration. I believe it will be capitalized - and hastily - once it becomes widespread.

www.xprize.org

The X Prize was a contest to see who could take two suborbital (suborbital is stil space) flights within two weeks. The winner got 10 million dollars.

This all happened in October I think after the contest had been running for years.

Here is the 'best' part, Virgin Atlantic already has a deal to start running regular space flights.

what do you think of that?