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Aliens Are They Real?

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Post by AlexHuckerby Thu 01 Dec 2011, 11:12 pm

First topic message reminder :

Simple do you think Aliens exist? Do you think they have visited earth? Do you think that they have ever really got into contact with us? Have you ever seen a UFO? All things alien on this thread.

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Post by mystiroakey Sat 24 Mar 2012, 10:16 am

ReallyReal wrote:
mystiroakey wrote:wow i didnt realise we had sent a probe to 17 bill km away, the universe ends at 21 bill km.

How have we manged to send something that far in such a short space of relative time.

cheers for the pics dude.

some are abit mangled but most are good!
You've got that mixed up, the 21,000,000,000 km mark is where our suns influence ends, our own galaxy is approx 9,000,000,000,000,000,000 kms wide and the observable universe, as we can measure it, is 460,000 times that size, those figures are just too big for anyone to comprehend, so to put it another way, if we were at the centre of a tennis ball and the Voyager 1 probe was on its surface, the edge of the obsevable universe would be as far away as the sun...I think, though you'd have to ask an astronomer to be sure Aliens Are They Real? - Page 2 1230366233


that makes sense lol

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Post by eirebilly Sat 24 Mar 2012, 10:26 pm

BigPhil wrote:We are the Aliens!

The chip in my neck says that they will arrive on Feb 26 2014 Wink
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Post by Shifty Sat 06 Oct 2012, 9:35 pm

Yes they exist according to science it's almost impossible they they don't in fact judging by the size of the universe, and the likelihood of worlds being able to sustain life as we know it you would expect up to 10,000+ worlds in each galaxy to have civilizations.

The basic problem is were too far apart to meet them. Even if we did it wouldn't be good for us, can you imagine what an alien civilization would make of us?
Our galaxy alone contains 200 billion solar systems and even if Aliens were themselves looking for life in other worlds it's unlikely they'd look for us in the position we are as there are loads of better places and more likely places to find life.
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Post by tammywilson52 Mon 07 Jan 2013, 12:17 pm

It may be exist or may not be, we can’t say anything…

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Post by Galted Mon 07 Jan 2013, 1:50 pm

I asked my mate Doug if they're real and he had the following to say...

"No."

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Post by TinRibs Mon 08 Apr 2013, 6:02 pm

Galted wrote:I asked my mate Doug if they're real and he had the following to say...

"No."

laughing

In all seriousness though, I agree with what others have said. The universe is far too massive for there to be absolutely nothing at all.

I saw a smart-arse scientist on the telly once. He reckoned that the chances of the rate of evolution between us and any other organisms being so similar that they'd be exploring us right now are very small. More likely that they'd either be so under-evolved that they barely know of their own existence, or that they're so far advanced that they've known about us for thousands of years and they just don't care about our primitive ways any more.

I thought that made sense really and have gone by it ever since.
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Post by Il Gialloblu Tue 09 Apr 2013, 3:04 pm

TinRibs wrote:
Galted wrote:I asked my mate Doug if they're real and he had the following to say...

"No."

laughing

In all seriousness though, I agree with what others have said. The universe is far too massive for there to be absolutely nothing at all.

I saw a smart-arse scientist on the telly once. He reckoned that the chances of the rate of evolution between us and any other organisms being so similar that they'd be exploring us right now are very small. More likely that they'd either be so under-evolved that they barely know of their own existence, or that they're so far advanced that they've known about us for thousands of years and they just don't care about our primitive ways any more.

I thought that made sense really and have gone by it ever since.

There was a good article on Cracked along similar lines.

5 Insane Theories About Why We Haven't Discovered Alien Life

If you can't be bothered to read it, which is an attitude I don't recommend, here is the five. #2 agrees with you. #1 clearly doesn't.

5. If They Exist, They're Likely Too, Well, Alien
4. They Might Not Want to Screw Us Up
3. We Might Not Be Worth the Aliens' Time
2. We'd All Be Dead by the Time It Happens
1. Aliens May Not Exist at All
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Post by TinRibs Tue 09 Apr 2013, 8:27 pm

Good article.

I think 2 and 3 highlight my point. We're either too primitive for them (like goldfish are to us), or they're too primitive for us to notice them.

Even number one has a good theory behind it and does make a lot of sense.
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Post by dyrewolfe Wed 24 Jul 2013, 4:56 pm

eirebilly wrote:
BigPhil wrote:We are the Aliens!

The chip in my neck says that they will arrive on Feb 26 2014 Wink


Anyone who's ever watched Geordie Shore or The Only Way Is Essex will know that aliens already live among us! Shocked 


Getting serious, yes I do believe there is intelligent extraterrestrial life somewhere out there. Our (admittedly limited) knowledge of the way the universe works and extremely complicated mathematics, says the odds of there being other lifeforms on other worlds, is actually pretty good.

Better than the odds of God confirming his existence to mankind anyway...


*opens can and shakes out worms...then runs...*
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Post by Galted Wed 24 Jul 2013, 6:11 pm

dyrewolfe wrote:
Getting serious, yes I do believe there is intelligent extraterrestrial life somewhere out there. Our (admittedly limited) knowledge of the way the universe works and extremely complicated mathematics, says the odds of there being other lifeforms on other worlds, is actually pretty good.

Better than the odds of God confirming his existence to mankind anyway...


*opens can and shakes out worms...then runs...*
 
A POTENTIAL NON-BELIEVER!!!
 
BURN HIM!!!

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Post by Biltong Wed 24 Jul 2013, 7:44 pm

They are on their way, but are 100 million light years away, so it will take a while. Wink 
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Post by CaledonianCraig Wed 24 Jul 2013, 9:11 pm

Apparently, there as many galaxies in space as there are grains of sand on the planet Earth and in each of those galaxies there are millions of solar systems and so perhaps billions of planets. In short that is just too massive a number to presume Earth is the only planet in the trillions that exist that sustains life. I am pretty sure we have not yet been visited yet by aliens such is the vast chasm of space.
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Post by dummy_half Thu 25 Jul 2013, 9:02 am

CaledonianCraig wrote:Apparently, there as many galaxies in space as there are grains of sand on the planet Earth and in each of those galaxies there are millions of solar systems and so perhaps billions of planets. In short that is just too massive a number to presume Earth is the only planet in the trillions that exist that sustains life. I am pretty sure we have not yet been visited yet by aliens such is the vast chasm of space.

This from someone who has seen Emancipator's posts Wink 

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Post by ONETWOFOREVER Mon 29 Jul 2013, 11:13 am

We were visited many many years ago.

These beings were called the Annunaki.

They visited ancient Sumeria present day Iraq.

The Sumerians referred to them as ''those who from heavan to earth came''

They enhanced and advanced humanity

When they arrived they called the humans they saw the ''black headed people''?????

They established Kingship on earth

They are reffered to in the Torah, Bible and the Quran as the elohim or fallen angels. They taught manking various things.

They are termed angels by humans beacuse they had the ability to fly but ancient man had no refference for flying machines so used ''wings'' as a way to demonstrate that these beings had the ability to fly.

Terms like chariots of fire are used to illustrate that they flew in flying machines

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Post by LivinginItaly Mon 29 Jul 2013, 11:43 am

Somebody has been spending a bit too much time on the strange part of youtube...

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Post by Mind the windows Tino. Tue 06 Aug 2013, 10:26 am

Galted wrote:I asked my mate Doug if they're real and he had the following to say...

"No."

What does Wingrove think then, Galted?

Mind the windows Tino.
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Post by Galted Tue 06 Aug 2013, 10:38 am

Won't get much sense out of Wingrove when it comes to aliens, he still doesn't believe in things like wallpaper and swans so asking him about aliens would be a pushing the boat out a bit.

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Post by STC Wed 07 Aug 2013, 3:49 pm

200 000 000 000 planets in our galaxy.

500 000 000 000 + galaxies in the universe.

That's...................................a lot of planets out there.

Possibly an infinte number of parallel universes and other dimensions.

We know very little about this stuff. We have much more to discover and learn as an intelligent species.

Intelligent life in our galaxy/universe almost certainly evolved millions of years before we did.

Intelligent life given millions, if not billions of years head start to our own, will almost certainly be capable of extraordinary things scientifically and technologically. Things we cannot comprehend.

Highly advanced intelligent life is almost certainly aware of our existence, and all the other civilizations throughout the cosmos that are still evolving scientifically and technologically. They will have been monitoring us for millions of years. Perhaps the most logical method would be with mechanical probes, after all, that's what we do when monitoring other planets.

And with all that in mind......

Do UFOs exist?

You just have to look up those who were tasked to investigate them by the USAF and US Governmnet (Capt. Edward J Ruppelt, J. Allen Hynek and others), alarmed by the number of flying disks and other inexplicable phenomena reported by their elite fighter pilots in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A lot of this information can be found online now thanks to freedom of information acts.

It's a very deep subject. Most sightings can be explained rationally, but there remains a small percentage that defy explanation. There are many sightings from the 40s and 50s from military personnel, some with multiple witnesses and even radar confirmation.

Are UFOs alien craft? Who knows. There's certainly no concrete evidence and I believe world governments are just as baffled as everyone else by some of these sightings. There is plenty of very 'puzzling' evidence that could easily lead you to that conclusion though.

Best just to keep an open mind.
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Post by Mind the windows Tino. Wed 07 Aug 2013, 3:53 pm

So you're not Wingrove then.

Mind the windows Tino.
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Post by STC Wed 14 Aug 2013, 9:59 am

Biltong wrote:Interesting thread this.

you have to consider that there must be habitable planets in the universe that can sustain multicell organisms.

Hence they can evolve. If they can evolve it means that somewhere out there must be varied advanced forms of life.

Non of them advanced enough though to travel the vast distances of space with the sufficent technology to get here in their lifetimes.

So although I believe with an ablsolute certainty that there is alien life forms out there, they are not far enough advanced to visit us or communicate with us.

Otherwise they would have been here already and shown themselves
Would they intentionally show themselves? I'm not so sure.

Have they accidentally shown themselves already? Quite possibly, if you look at some of the UFO reports made by pilots since we have taken to the skies. Extremely puzzling sightings of objects displaying extraordinary flight capabilities, some even backed up by radar confirmation.

http://www.bluebookarchive.org/

There are stars in our own galaxy, and throughout the universe, similar to our own sun, that are millions of years older than our sun. Therefore, given the huge number of those stars, it is highly likely that life will have evolved on Earth-like planets millions of years before we did. So imagine a race, similar to our own, but millions of years more advanced than us. What will we be doing technologically in millions of years time? We are already searching the galaxy for Earth-like planets, and finding them, and we've only just began our search.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-62-kepler-69.html

How many planets will we have found in a couple of million years time?

I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibilty that in a million years time we will have found thousands and thousands of Earth-like planets in the galaxy and, like now in our solar system, we will be sending probes to monitor those planets. I also think it would be wise to conduct these expeditions covertly, as the implications of revealing ourselves to a less-developed species would be unknown.

Of course, these planets will most likely be hundreds, if not thousands of light years away. However, in a million years time I think it would be safe to say that we wil have developed much more powerful and efficient propulsion systems than we have now.

http://www.stantonfriedman.com/index.php?ptp=stans_bio
http://www.stantonfriedman.com/index.php?ptp=articles&fdt=2009.02.03

We may have made huge leaps forward in physics by then, and not be limited by the speed of light. It's possible. Even if we are limited by the speed of light, even if these unmanned probes take hundreds of years to make the round trip to distant planets, those journeys will still be made.

So I do think it is highly likely, all things considered, that we are being monitored, covertly, by the highest, most advanced intelligent species in the galaxy/universe. I think all planets capable of sustaining life will be too. I don't think we are that hard to find, given that we can find Earth-like planets now, with our limited capabilities.

Have they revealed themselves to us? It's hard to say with any certainty, given that the evidence is, at best, ambiguous. But it is certainly possible.


Last edited by STC on Wed 14 Aug 2013, 3:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Post by Il Gialloblu Wed 14 Aug 2013, 11:52 am

STC wrote:What will we be doing technologically in millions of years time?
 
I don't think we (as a race) will still be here...
 
Good post though, STC. The article I linked to earlier in the thread argues against your points.
 
First, the argument against so much time already passing that something must have developed and be watching us now:
 
Cracked wrote:

When we talk about the likelihood of aliens existing, we tend to think about how many millions and millions of planets there are and figure, well, Poopie, the odds are at least one of them nearby has green people on it we can talk to. But what we tend to totally discount is time.
 
Think about it; Earth was round for four billion years before humans appeared. Maybe there was a thriving alien civilization nearby, and maybe they mastered space travel and gave us a visit. And maybe all they found here were a bunch of big, dumb lizards. So it's not just that two intelligent, space-faring civilizations would have to arise physically close to one another, but they would have to overlap chronologically, too.

And without making this too depressing, the odds are overwhelming one or the other is going to go extinct before that happens. In keeping with their long-standing tradition of ruining everything for everyone, scientists came up with something called "The Doomsday argument," which is a statistical equation to determine the number of future members of the human race given a rough estimate of the total number of people born so far. Essentially, it is a formula that predicts the maximum number of human beings that can ever possibly be born. And according to the formula, humans will probably be dust long before we master interstellar travel, or by the time any aliens bother to roll up in their flying saucers and show their green faces.
 
The equation basically says that human beings have a 95 percent chance of becoming extinct within the next 9,000 years, which in the grand cosmic scheme of things isn't a whole lot of time. If we want to meet some aliens, we need to hurry up and develop interstellar technology, because they sure aren't in any kind of hurry to contact us.

The Earth is relatively young compared to the rest of the universe, which has theoretically been spinning around in operatic blackness for billions of years. Statistically speaking, any number of the trillions of celestial bodies out there would have produced intelligent life millennia ago -- if they haven't mastered the science of awesome spaceships by now, they probably never will. And if our remaining 9,000-year estimate turns out to be correct, our window to do the same is equivalent to a tiny coiled butt hair on the epic universal timeline of existence.
 
Even if we do manage to achieve interstellar travel, the Doomsday argument has a "many worlds" application to account for the possibility of multiple advanced civilizations, meaning that any alien life with the presence of mind to build interplanetary flying machines is just as likely to have an equally finite lifespan. So there is a very real possibility that our historic first visit to another galaxy might yield nothing but a bunch of big-headed skeletons and about a zillion gallons of wasted rocket fuel.

Spoiler:
 
Second, the argument that there are so many planets that something must have developed on one of them.
 
Cracked wrote:

The Rare Earth hypothesis, put forth by two scientists named Peter Ward and Donald E. Brownlee, suggests that since the development of life as it is on Earth was the result of a laundry list of geological and astrophysical events so cosmically random yet so crucially specific down to the smallest detail, it is ball-smashingly unlikely for a comparable civilization to have come into being anywhere else in the universe. That is, while some kind of bacteria or algae or cosmic mushroom may exist underneath some rocks on some far distant planet, the chances of there being another race of intelligent and industrious living things are about the same as you winning the lottery every single day for the rest of your life and then dying on the morning of your 200th birthday after getting struck directly in the face by Doc Brown's time train.

First of all, the position of a solar system is vital -- if it's too close to the center of the galaxy, everything will get melted by supernova radiation, but if it's too far along the edge of the galaxy it won't be able to support life. Then, the star at the center of the solar system can't be too old, too bright, or too big, otherwise complex life won't develop (complex life is very fussy). Finally, the planet on which said life develops has to be in a perfect orbit. In Earth's case, if the orbit was 5 percent smaller or 15 percent larger we would all freeze or burn to death, respectively. The size and location of our moon keeps the planet on a stable axis, preventing rapid and cataclysmic climate changes -- if we didn't have exactly one moon of the exact shape and size orbiting at its exact distance, we would all be superdead (and likely would never have existed to begin with).

The sequence of geologic eras even plays a crucial part -- if the Mesozoic had occurred after the Cenozoic, for example, the exact conditions needed for human life to develop might never have been met, upsetting the evolutionary order and resulting in a race of dinosaur humans.

Even the other planets in the solar system can have an effect. For example, Jupiter plays a huge role in keeping us all alive because it acts like a giant defensive lineman, blocking us from cosmic debris and world-ending asteroids like a celestial Olin Kreutz. There are innumerable other variables, all of which played a part in intelligent life appearing on just one planet out of an entire galaxy. The odds of every one of those things falling into place in the exact configuration necessary to duplicate both the existence and success of human beings are virtually nonexistent. Therefore, the fact that we haven't made contact with any alien civilizations is probably because there isn't anything out there to contact.
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Post by STC Wed 14 Aug 2013, 1:30 pm

Il Gialloblu wrote:
STC wrote:What will we be doing technologically in millions of years time?
 
I don't think we (as a race) will still be here...
 
Good post though, STC. The article I linked to earlier in the thread argues against your points.
 
First, the argument against so much time already passing that something must have developed and be watching us now:
 
Cracked wrote:

When we talk about the likelihood of aliens existing, we tend to think about how many millions and millions of planets there are and figure, well, Poopie, the odds are at least one of them nearby has green people on it we can talk to. But what we tend to totally discount is time.
 
Think about it; Earth was round for four billion years before humans appeared. Maybe there was a thriving alien civilization nearby, and maybe they mastered space travel and gave us a visit. And maybe all they found here were a bunch of big, dumb lizards. So it's not just that two intelligent, space-faring civilizations would have to arise physically close to one another, but they would have to overlap chronologically, too.

And without making this too depressing, the odds are overwhelming one or the other is going to go extinct before that happens. In keeping with their long-standing tradition of ruining everything for everyone, scientists came up with something called "The Doomsday argument," which is a statistical equation to determine the number of future members of the human race given a rough estimate of the total number of people born so far. Essentially, it is a formula that predicts the maximum number of human beings that can ever possibly be born. And according to the formula, humans will probably be dust long before we master interstellar travel, or by the time any aliens bother to roll up in their flying saucers and show their green faces.
 
The equation basically says that human beings have a 95 percent chance of becoming extinct within the next 9,000 years, which in the grand cosmic scheme of things isn't a whole lot of time. If we want to meet some aliens, we need to hurry up and develop interstellar technology, because they sure aren't in any kind of hurry to contact us.

The Earth is relatively young compared to the rest of the universe, which has theoretically been spinning around in operatic blackness for billions of years. Statistically speaking, any number of the trillions of celestial bodies out there would have produced intelligent life millennia ago -- if they haven't mastered the science of awesome spaceships by now, they probably never will. And if our remaining 9,000-year estimate turns out to be correct, our window to do the same is equivalent to a tiny coiled butt hair on the epic universal timeline of existence.
 
Even if we do manage to achieve interstellar travel, the Doomsday argument has a "many worlds" application to account for the possibility of multiple advanced civilizations, meaning that any alien life with the presence of mind to build interplanetary flying machines is just as likely to have an equally finite lifespan. So there is a very real possibility that our historic first visit to another galaxy might yield nothing but a bunch of big-headed skeletons and about a zillion gallons of wasted rocket fuel.

Spoiler:
 
Second, the argument that there are so many planets that something must have developed on one of them.
 
Cracked wrote:

The Rare Earth hypothesis, put forth by two scientists named Peter Ward and Donald E. Brownlee, suggests that since the development of life as it is on Earth was the result of a laundry list of geological and astrophysical events so cosmically random yet so crucially specific down to the smallest detail, it is ball-smashingly unlikely for a comparable civilization to have come into being anywhere else in the universe. That is, while some kind of bacteria or algae or cosmic mushroom may exist underneath some rocks on some far distant planet, the chances of there being another race of intelligent and industrious living things are about the same as you winning the lottery every single day for the rest of your life and then dying on the morning of your 200th birthday after getting struck directly in the face by Doc Brown's time train.

First of all, the position of a solar system is vital -- if it's too close to the center of the galaxy, everything will get melted by supernova radiation, but if it's too far along the edge of the galaxy it won't be able to support life. Then, the star at the center of the solar system can't be too old, too bright, or too big, otherwise complex life won't develop (complex life is very fussy). Finally, the planet on which said life develops has to be in a perfect orbit. In Earth's case, if the orbit was 5 percent smaller or 15 percent larger we would all freeze or burn to death, respectively. The size and location of our moon keeps the planet on a stable axis, preventing rapid and cataclysmic climate changes -- if we didn't have exactly one moon of the exact shape and size orbiting at its exact distance, we would all be superdead (and likely would never have existed to begin with).

The sequence of geologic eras even plays a crucial part -- if the Mesozoic had occurred after the Cenozoic, for example, the exact conditions needed for human life to develop might never have been met, upsetting the evolutionary order and resulting in a race of dinosaur humans.

Even the other planets in the solar system can have an effect. For example, Jupiter plays a huge role in keeping us all alive because it acts like a giant defensive lineman, blocking us from cosmic debris and world-ending asteroids like a celestial Olin Kreutz. There are innumerable other variables, all of which played a part in intelligent life appearing on just one planet out of an entire galaxy. The odds of every one of those things falling into place in the exact configuration necessary to duplicate both the existence and success of human beings are virtually nonexistent. Therefore, the fact that we haven't made contact with any alien civilizations is probably because there isn't anything out there to contact.
Thanks for the response, Il Gialloblu.

Two very valid points.

The idea that we will destroy ourselves before we develop interstellar travel is a good one. It's quite possible. We nearly came close during the Cold War. However, we didn't destroy ourselves and we are still here. I suppose we could run dry of natural resources, but would that destroy us? We don't know. Maybe our power would be coming from other sources by then. That too is a possibility. Perhaps our population could keep on growing to the level that their would be mass starvation, but would that destroy our civilisation? Unlikely. It would more likely just reduce it to a more managable level. Disease? Again, possible, although no disease so far has come close to wiping us out.

We don't accurately know how long we will survive as a species. It's all guess work. It may come to a point where world population will be tightly controlled, kept at a managable level, to ensure our survival.

Who's to know how long alien species will live? We don't know. They may have taken measures to ensure their own survival. We just don't know these things. Any of the answers could be possible, including the ability to maintain the survival of a species indefinitely, on it's host planet or elsewhere.



The Rare Earth Hypothesis is also a very valid point.

Our planet is very rare, that would appear obvious. But just how rare is unknown. Until we have more data on this it's hard to make an accurate estimation. So we have to make a guess really. How rare is our planet, a rocky planet, the right distance away from it's parent star, with liquid water and a breathable atmosphere?????

I certainly don't know but we are told by Cosmologists and Astro Physicists that there are billions and billions of planets in our galaxy, and that there are billions, if not trillions of galaxies. That means that there are an almost incomprehensible amount of planets in the universe. Numbers almost too large to imagine. And that is just in the visible universe. The entire universe could be many, many times larger than what we can physically see. So even if a planet such as Earth is as rare as 1 in a trillion (which seems a bit ridiculous), there would still be billions of Earths, at various stages of evolution, in the universe.

http://www.universetoday.com/102630/how-many-stars-are-there-in-the-universe/

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pr201301.html

Latest estimations are actually quite staggering.....

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/152573-astronomers-estimate-100-billion-habitable-earth-like-planets-in-the-milky-way-50-sextillion-in-the-universe
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Post by Luckless Pedestrian Wed 21 Aug 2013, 2:33 pm

What I've never been able to understand is why people focus on the probability of there being other 'Earth-like' planets in the universe, and talk about the need to find liquid water on a planet - the implication being that extra-terrestrial life could only evolve as terrestrial life has evolved. But why should that be? It seems stupid - or staggeringly self-regarding - to assume that if conditions on any given planet aren't right for life as we know it to evolve, then there couldn't possibly be any life whatsoever on it. I'm no scientist, but that would be my biggest criticism of the whole Rare Earth thing. We need to stop thinking about our chances of finding another planet like ours, or capable of sustaining life like ours.

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Post by STC Wed 21 Aug 2013, 3:27 pm

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:What I've never been able to understand is why people talk about the probability of there being other 'Earth-like' planets in the universe, and talk about the need to find liquid water on a planet - the implication being that extra-terrestrial life could only evolve as terrestrial life has evolved. But why should that be? It seems stupid - or staggeringly self-regarding - to assume that if conditions on any given planet aren't right for life as we know it to evolve, then there couldn't possibly be any life whatsoever on it. I'm no scientist, but that would be my biggest criticism of the whole Rare Earth thing. We need to stop thinking about our chances of finding another planet like ours, or capable of sustaining life like ours.
Yeah that's a good point. But, as we know that live evolved on our planet, it is sensible to start the search for extraterrestrial life on planets similar to our own.

Life may well evolve in different environments. Simple life exists in the most extreme environments on Earth, so it might be fair to assume that it could evolve and exist on equally harsh environmnets on other planets.

Another thing to bear in mind is that we have no way of knowing if life has evolved on any of the planets we discover. The only way for us to really know is to send a probe to investigate. If and when we send a probe to Kepler 22b, which is 600 light years away, we might as well instruct to to analyse the other planets in kepler 22b's solar system. So as we look for other Earth-like planets we will also be looking at other places too. Also, we are looking for life in other places in our own solar system.

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/litu/10_3.shtml

Titan and Europa have very different habitats to that of our own. If we find any kind of life on either of those two moons then it opens up a whole new area of investigation.
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Post by Luckless Pedestrian Wed 21 Aug 2013, 3:39 pm

But the problem is that we're looking for ourselves. If we're looking for extra-terrestrial life that has evolved as terrestrial life has evolved, we're limiting our already-slim chances of finding anything. It's potentially a bit wood-for-the-trees.

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Post by STC Wed 21 Aug 2013, 3:52 pm

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:But the problem is that we're looking for ourselves. If we're looking for extra-terrestrial life that has evolved as terrestrial life has evolved, we're limiting our already-slim chances of finding anything. It's potentially a bit wood-for-the-trees.
We haven't even got close to looking at the first tree yet though. Did that make sense? Probably not.

I see your point but this is all a very long way off. Kepler has been searching for Earth-like planets and found some, already. We've only looked a tiny fraction of our neighbouring stars and we're already finding planets that are more than likely capable of supporting life similar to our own. We couldn't make that assumption about other planets because we yet don't know if live evolves on other types of planets/moons.
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