# Do You Believe In Aliens?



## LandsUnknown

I personally believe in them very much.  I think that they may even have acted as a sort of "mediator" between the source of consciousness and life itself and the physical plane of reality.  I think they are a type of gatekeepers.  You might all think I'm nuts, but I think I've actually had some encounters with them.  When I talk about aliens, I'm talking only about the classic gray, DMT machine elf type of entity.  Do you believe in them?


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## Bagseed

With the massive amount of galaxies in the observable universe, it would be pretty unrealistic that only this one here formed (intelligent) life. but since the stars are so far away from each other (and there is even much more space between the milky way and neighboring galaxies). The only way intelligent beings could have detected us is via our radio waves crossing interstellar space, but cosmologically speaking, even those haven't travelled that far since we invented radiotechnology.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to believe in extraterrestial life, but I highly doubt that intelligent aliens have arrived here. if you have had "encounters" why don't you tell us about them? and tbh something in context with a spiritual / drug experience doesn't really count. do you have any hard evidence?


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## nuttynutskin

As far as alien life form I believe in the possibility, but not the type that look like humans with big heads or that you see in the movies. I think if anything they'd more resemble the type of fish they've found in the deep seas or be microbial. Speaking of which didn't they find evidence on Mars of supposedly some worm type creature years ago?

As far as aliens that are going to come back to earth and bringing the enlightened ones to some other dimension, absolutely not. Also I wouldn't consider what someone sees during a DMT trip to be evidence of much of anything honestly. I sort of equate that as a stronger version of someone thinking they're gaining insight from an acid trip. Once the drugs wear off tho the insight tends to fade away and not really be applicable to the real world anyways IMO. I think it can be useful for introspection tho.


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## -=SS=-

Yes. Statistically speaking there has to be other life out there. And everywhere we thought there wouldn't be life, there has been.

And yes to aliens being here already. Maybe not in the classical bipedal alien sense, but some sort of interdimensional life. I've seen balls of light in the sky on more than one occasion, and pretty sure it wasn't ball lightning (seeing that once is rare in itself).. they phased in and phased out, and sometimes zigzaged a bit.. and these events happened on days when I was very heightened emotionally. I also got the sense that either I could feel when these things were about to appear, or perhaps they could sense my mood and thoughts and appeared at very 'coincidental' times in my train of thoughts. Very odd experiences. 

I also believe entities play a much more fundamental role in human psychology and humanity than we currently realize. Not in the sense of Icke's reptilian theory or any grand cosmic conspiracy, but more along the lines of they're another class of life/species, some of which is friendly to us and some of which treat us as we treat cattle.


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## placid space

Yea I agree with that they definitely are somewhere, I mean if there is(was) life on Mars, it statistically pretty much impossible for life not to exist elsewhere. 
I think they mightve even been here throughout history. But I dont think theyre as present as some of you think. And more so, and I completely agree, theyre almost definitely not bipedal movie like beings. I think we cannot even comprehend how they might appear and exist. Who knows what their biology is based on , how they move, even how the perceive time and space. Whether they even feel, see or hear. They probabily have completely different senses than us, communicate with each other in a completely different manner. If they even communicate, what if theyre all one organism or something. I think its beyond our comprehension at this time to imagine all the shapes and forms of existance could be possible for another sentient being to exist in. Or what types of consciousness are even possible. I just hope we get to see them soon and in a positive way  .


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## Dresden

Sure, why not.


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## Bazarov

Many people assume aliens would be visible to the human eye if they existed. Life is significantly more stable on a microscopic scale (More space, easier to conserve energy, hide from potential threats etc). It would be in the vested interests of any intelligent species to downsize itself as soon as physically possible for preservation. I assume that if there is life out there (which I believe there is), the life which is intelligent would potentially seek to make itself almost undetectable to humans at this point in history due to this logic.


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## Foreigner

I believe that non-physical life is common, even existing parallel to us. Physical, sentient beings like us are probably a lot more rare, and it'd be even more rare for us to be able to make contact with one another.


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## Kittycat5

-=SS=- said:


> Yes. Statistically speaking there has to be other life out there. And everywhere we thought there wouldn't be life, there has been.
> 
> And yes to aliens being here already. Maybe not in the classical bipedal alien sense, but some sort of interdimensional life. I've seen balls of light in the sky on more than one occasion, and pretty sure it wasn't ball lightning (seeing that once is rare in itself).. they phased in and phased out, and sometimes zigzaged a bit.. and these events happened on days when I was very heightened emotionally. I also got the sense that either I could feel when these things were about to appear, or perhaps they could sense my mood and thoughts and appeared at very 'coincidental' times in my train of thoughts. Very odd experiences.
> 
> I also believe entities play a much more fundamental role in human psychology and humanity than we currently realize. Not in the sense of Icke's reptilian theory or any grand cosmic conspiracy, but more along the lines of they're another class of life/species, some of which is friendly to us and some of which treat us as we treat cattle.



Can you define interdimensional? I am geninely curious as it comes up often in discussions like this but I never know if one is talking about actual spacial dimensions or using the word more broadly to mean perhaps a different time or parallel world/universe.


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## -=SS=-

Kittycat5 said:


> Can you define interdimensional? I am geninely curious as it comes up often in discussions like this but I never know if one is talking about actual spacial dimensions or using the word more broadly to mean perhaps a different time or parallel world/universe.



I don't know where they would be exactly..  anywhere but this physical dimension. For me I don't believe in the concept of extra spatial dimensions; the whole concept of spatial dimensions is ridiculous.. I don't see any cartesian grids hanging in space, do you? Other than that I can't say.. I really have no idea.


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## tantric

i'm talking about dr. lilly's coincidence control central, which i equate with bodhisattvas from another planet, and yes, i believe in them like most people believe in gravity. i see the grays as a metaphor for a race that has intelligence, but completely lacks altruism and thus cannot transcend. they literally look for love with anal probes. are they real? never met one, i hope not.

interdimensionality is a vague term. it is possible, within science, that there are higher dimensions and stuff that exists only there - like Flatland.  It can refer to heavens and hells - more like what we'd call 'parallel worlds'. But also, to states of transcendence, like Buddhanature. we need better language for this.


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## vortech

Alien Intelliegence is rife in hyperspace.


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## vortech

I coulnd begin to translate messages received through these intelligences in English using words already in our vocabulary. At times it may rannge from comphrehensible to abstract to completely incomrehensible but in a poetice fahshion. I channel some of the messages in my current book. My next book will focuse on th finer points of the mesages.

Or you can say I'm comppletely delusional, and I'm OK with that. I only wish for others to consider the words.


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## GolemGolem

I think life is fairly common in the universe as astronomers conceive of it. Likely a ton of places with critters of varying levels of intelligence. Some who even saw a need for technology and developed it to varying degrees should be around somewhere. Much less sure about them having FTL travel, and to find us through anything other than  us randomly showing up in some survey of the sky.  
Drug aliens/demons/angels are something I've experienced many times...not quite sure what to believe sober. They seem so real, but so do people in dreams. Could more easily be bits of my soul and mind doing something neat than a trans dimensional society that knows and cares about my dumb ass.


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## Kittycat5

-=SS=- said:


> I don't know where they would be exactly..  anywhere but this physical dimension. For me I don't believe in the concept of extra spatial dimensions; the whole concept of spatial dimensions is ridiculous.. I don't see any cartesian grids hanging in space, do you? Other than that I can't say.. I really have no idea.



No, no grid covering the sky. But that would mean coordinates are arbitrary (which they of course are) not actual space. Up-down, left-right, front-back exist. We of course can call them whatever we want too, but they are there regardless unlike something like 2x, 3y, 6z.

I do believe there is life elsewhere besides Earth and surely some of it is intelligent. I am not a believer in what some here are (spiritual life for lack of a better term) rather that the constraints of local physics, chemistry, and biology shaped other life just as it did our own. I am open minded about life merging with technology and becoming less biological and even perhaps completely forgoing a physical body that needs to eat, drink and die. This very well could be what those who believe in a spirit life form are actually perceiving. I just dont think at some point it was so different from us.


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## -=SS=-

Kittycat5 said:


> No, no grid covering the sky. But that would mean coordinates are arbitrary (which they of course are) not actual space. Up-down, left-right, front-back exist. We of course can call them whatever we want too, but they are there regardless unlike something like 2x, 3y, 6z.



Well coordinates are arbitrary.. they don't exist except on paper. Spatial dimensions are not real, they are abstractions that we project on to space. The idea of the 5th or 6th dimension is just science fiction, nothing more.


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## nygiants1313

I believe we have never been visited by aliens. But I do believe they exist as the universe is immense. It would be awesome, when a person dies, if they then discovered the answers to the universe. I guess it would be cool if a person could find everything out bout the universe when alive, but I highly doubt that will happen, just like I highly doubt we find the answers once dead. But a guy can dream right


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## antonomasia

Extraterrestrial life probably exists but I think it's silly to claim anything more than that. I think that saying aliens intervened is an insult against the struggles of our ancestors akin to believing that the French were too stupid to overthrow the monarchy and that it was all due to the Illuminati.


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## JessFR

Yes, I am certain alien life, including intelligent alien life, exists. If not something is profoundly wrong about out understanding of the universe.

I also think it is extremely unlikely intelligent alien life has ever been here. The idea that it has is ridiculous and unsupported by any good evidence.

Suggested aliens had a hand in our development is similar to saying god created us. If god made us, who made god? Only with god you have the luxury of proposing god is a constant. With aliens, who intervened in their development? Other aliens? And then it's turtles all the way down.

Its similarly ridiculous to propose they hide in other imaginary dimensions. Might as well be talking about god again. 

I suspect the intelligent alien life in the universe is probably all carbon based like us, and most likely does use radio signals to communicate. People get way too abstract when thinking about aliens. Alien or not, we all exist in the same universe with the same physical rules. These rules don't have a lot of room for variety in how life develops. Everything has to be exactly right. For that reason I believe almost all if not all alien life is significantly more like what we know than not.


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## Erikmen

I've heard once that it would be a waist of space if only us were to occupy this endless universe.

Yes, I believe they are there. Some say they don't exist because we can't see them but I don't buy that. 

The universe is infinite and I don't think we are not the most evolved species.


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## JessFR

We don't actually know the universe is infinite. Theres good evidence to suggest it may not be.

Its my personal belief that it is infinite,  but its just a guess. It may well not be.


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## Xorkoth

Well even if it's not infinite, the vastness of it and sheer staggering number of galaxies we have seen makes almost any minutely slim chance of a given type of event happening repeatedly nearly certain.


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## DeadElvis666

My girlfriend, her sister and her best friend saw a flying saucer when they were in high school. She said it was huge and hovered about 50 feet above them before flying away. She has no reason to lie about this. Strangely she doesn't seem very interested in discussing the existence of aliens. However I find the topic very interesting. My dad and some of his friends saw a "light in the sky" over the ocean when they were surfing. He said it would hover in place for a minute then dart across the sky, hover, perform 90 degree turns and other aeronautical maneuvers which are not possible with our current aircraft technology. Again, he is not the type of person to make up something like that...


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## DeadElvis666

I actually don't believe in "infinity". I think it's just a term humans use to describe something which is too large for us to comprehend.


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## Neithman

Actually it isnt infinite,its 7 billion lightyears big,but its growing in light speed,even if in the new territiory are no planets,they will form form over millions of years.I think its silly to think there is no life in outer space,i just think they are waay to far away,probably they are many folks which are alike to us,many more progressive ones,but that never "aliens" came to us or took our planet as a colony millions/billion years ago shows in my opinion theres nothing like over light speed and aswell no infinite life or actual usable wormholes because if thats the case folks that are way older would have invented it,but i think we can do insane shit with science we cant imagine now but apparently not this.
And its stupid to think we stem from alien,biology proves otherwise and it makes sense.


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## Kittycat5

Actually it is thought the universe is more like 90 billion light years in diameter with the observable part around 27 or 28 billion light years.


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## Neithman

Okay didnt know that


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## Xorkoth

Neithman said:


> Actually it isnt infinite,its 7 billion lightyears big,but its growing in light speed,even if in the new territiory are no planets,they will form form over millions of years.I think its silly to think there is no life in outer space,i just think they are waay to far away,probably they are many folks which are alike to us,many more progressive ones,but that never "aliens" came to us or took our planet as a colony millions/billion years ago shows in my opinion theres nothing like over light speed and aswell no infinite life or actual usable wormholes because if thats the case folks that are way older would have invented it,but i think we can do insane shit with science we cant imagine now but apparently not this.
> And its stupid to think we stem from alien,biology proves otherwise and it makes sense.



If other forms of life have invented wormhole travel or whatever to go faster than the speed of light, how would be know?  Even if we could wormhole anywhere we would still never be able to explore but the tiniest, barest fraction of all that's out there.  What would draw some race from another galaxy who developed these things to pick our galaxy, our star, our planet to visit?  And if they didn't visit, we'd never know they existed.


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## GolemGolem

Right, we are the tiniest of needles in the largest of haystacks. Even with James Webb, even the next generation the best we'll see is tiny smudges of faint light that we may be able to infer the atmospheric contents of extra solar planets, and only the closer ones in our bit of this galaxy. 
So finding our planet and that it has life should be possible for a technologically inclined alien society even if they are a bit further away, if their closer maybe they'll check out some of the fine radio we've be broadcasting. . .think it's neat and try to learn more....but, what if they still can't travel and communicate faster than light? They would have to be very patient and very free with their wealth to actually send a probe here, let alone themselves and wait thousands of years to start getting new data. 
 Then soon maybe we can do the same to them, and never communicate.


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## CalicoSam

I believe there is sort a probability of extraterrestrial life. I've liked considering explanations for Fermi's paradox Regarding explanations for the Fermi paradox I kind of like the zoo hypothesis

I have a hard time picturing that there are a lot of alien's playing peek-a-boo with humanity, especially with random people on road trips and folks in trailer parks. But many ideas I considered absurd have turned out to be true. If someone asserts they are in contact with aliens I'm going to need a ton of solid proof to take them seriously.


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## MajorBong

In a universe like this it is likely that if there are aliens they look very similar to us and our interactions are predestined playable situations (computer divined life).


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## GolemGolem

That's like ghosts. Almost every culture on earth has had ghosts and to this day people experience them. There is no scientific evidence for them, other than the fact many honest people swear on their lived experience. 
I believe at least a few of the abductees are being honest about what they experienced. However there is no compelling evidence left with these sorts of things, and there really should be. 

So...   I can't be sure that they just had a nutty or something more is in play, but all the evidence points to having a bit of an episode. . .

If aliens wanted biological samples though....why not find random low ranking folks to sample? Less disruption than taking them from the President at the Mayo Clinic live on CNN.


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## BobbyDick

Everyone interested in alien should read Z. Sitchin's books. He write about ancient aliens and their connections with ancient cultures.


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## zombywoof

Watching a doc the other night about the maya and only just found out they built everything without the use of a wheel as they hadnt invented it yet. That is a strong claim for aliens but then again how many times has this world almost wiped everthing out and started all over again


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## GolemGolem

Meh, simple wheels 'aint much use in the jungles and mountains. Break an axle or get stuck all the goddamn time. Mayans figured out somethings that worked  better for them. Dudes were smart, had a vision and worked hard, no need for aliens. . . .just their gods and priests...and blood..


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## zombywoof

Hadn,t seen it that way was just astounded at what they did and their knowledge of the stars the only thing is if it was aliens how did they cover the distance to get here as i really cant see us being all there is. The numbers tell me that.


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## GolemGolem

zombywoof;13427782 the only thing is if it was aliens how did they cover the distance to get here as i really cant see us being all there is. The numbers tell me that.[/QUOTE said:
			
		

> Same here. Faster than light travel should be impossible, if stable wormholes are even possible you'd still have to park that a fair bit away from your target if you didn't want to fuck it up...it's unsatisfying. That's why I think some alien society may be watching us from their home, and one day we might be able to watch them, but we'll likely never have communication with them that does not take lifetimes to transmit a single message....


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## swilow

^How would they watch us?


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## zombywoof

willow11 said:


> ^How would they watch us?



with disgust i would have to say


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## GolemGolem

kick-ass telescopes.


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## Xorkoth

zombywoof said:


> with disgust i would have to say



Or perhaps a morbid sense of fascination


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## zombywoof

yes and then give us a very wide berth if they are that smart


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## GolemGolem

"
"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."
"


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## Kittycat5

Terry Bisson. Ive posted that somewhere before.


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## swilow

Haha. I liked that. Singing meat :D


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## FredPollok

Actually we have to believe in at least something%)


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## Foreigner

If there's other sentient life that can travel through interstellar space, then we'd be pretty primitive to them. They'd probably have the wisdom and respect to not interact with us. Conspiracy theorists say that aliens are taking over our government and manipulating society. Why would they though? If they can travel through space then our technology means nothing to them. If they wanted our planet for themselves they could just wipe us out. Chances are, if anything, Earth is just a pit stop for natural resources, or an interesting study in animal and plant life. That's assuming anyone knows we're here. 

The reason I think this is that any species that can evolve to the point of cooperation where they could achieve such feats would have to be a lot more enlightened that we are. Part of the reason why humanity is still a cultural backwater is because we're too busy fighting each other and destroying our own home. If we could cooperate and make the focus learning as much as we can about ourselves and our place in the universe, we could do amazing things. 

But... according to anthropology and archeology, we came into existence about 150,000 years ago, and our first major settlements were only around 5000-6000 BC. I personally don't believe in that time line but even so, we're pretty recent.


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## zombywoof

and if we had no religion holding us back for over a  thousand years just think how far we may have progressed


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## GolemGolem

Damn, I like to quibble with you Zomby. Who charted the stars for the Aztecs, Myans, Egyptians, Druids, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and for the first bit anyway Christians? If you would of said the last 150years or so I wouldn't have much of an argument other than "not all devout". 
Before religions could be proven full of shit so easily, and so free of consequences in most places, that was where the scholars and scientists were. Now the devout who would hold themselves high are reduced to shaking their fists at what should be valuable and useful knowledge, that our spiritual ancestors would of died for.  There has to be a way to bring them on board with investing in astronomy.


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## swilow

zombywoof said:


> and if we had no religion holding us back for over a  thousand years just think how far we may have progressed



Something of an impossible though. Religion has been responsible, at least partially, for heaps and heaps of sufferring but it has also achieved great things. Its played a huge role in advancing our species. So much science, mathematics, art, music, history can be traced back to religion. I'd actually say that without religion I doubt we would have progressed as far as we have. 

I say that as one that is unsure of whether progress, or the manner with which we undertake it, is such a positive. I also don't believe in the mystical parts of most religion, and see their role primarily as one of creating order, unity and shared values. 

But I don't think we actually need such organisations anymore and I feel like much religion is incompatible with modern life and I think it is declining. Something of a pity, but inevitable I think.


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## Foreigner

IMO humans would have suffered regardless. Before the Abrahamic faiths came along there were still warlords and tyrannical governments. They were the rule not the exception. The Romans and Greeks who are so revered in our modern western epistemology were pretty scientific and look at how many nations they conquered and killed. Religion was just the institution du jour during a time period when humans were generally pretty barbaric. In fact, not much has changed. The creative genius that advances humanity only comes to full fruition in a select few people while the general decorum of humanity remains relatively mundane. It's always been that way.

Most of the people who claim that today's institutions are far less violent tend to live in countries that are privileged enough to not see the kind of crap going on in the rest of the world. Arguably more of humanity is enslaved and oppressed now than ever before, it's just a lot more insidious. In other words, same shit, different pile. Our material accomplishments distract people from the fact that we're still living out our baser natures the vast majority of time. It's just that the face of the drama has changed. And no I'm not being cynical. Humanity is evolving. We degenerate and regenerate over and over again with marginal improvements each time, but it's not in leaps and bounds. Too many people think our level of technology is a sign of how much better we are now, but if you look at how 99% of humanity is using that technology - for the same old drama - we haven't shifted hugely.


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## Noodle

The speed of negative and aggressive group think has grown as individuals add to the stream.

Most of it is flotsam, IMO of course of course.


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## GolemGolem

Meh, mundane people are alright. I'm one. I don't think I've ever met anyone whose views, values, and morals are all carefully self-examined and their own, myself included. The world is too complex for us apes to grow up healthy and strong questioning everything, we need a certain level of assumptions to stay healthy and to get shit done. 
Maybe somewhere in the universe there is an alien species who is comprised of radical self thinkers who actually are capable of that....that would be a fun Star Trek


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## Bagseed

Foreigner said:


> IMO humans would have suffered regardless. Before the Abrahamic faiths came along there were still warlords and tyrannical governments. They were the rule not the exception. The Romans and Greeks who are so revered in our modern western epistemology were pretty scientific and look at how many nations they conquered and killed. Religion was just the institution du jour during a time period when humans were generally pretty barbaric. In fact, not much has changed. The creative genius that advances humanity only comes to full fruition in a select few people while the general decorum of humanity remains relatively mundane. It's always been that way.
> 
> Most of the people who claim that today's institutions are far less violent tend to live in countries that are privileged enough to not see the kind of crap going on in the rest of the world. Arguably more of humanity is enslaved and oppressed now than ever before, it's just a lot more insidious. In other words, same shit, different pile. Our material accomplishments distract people from the fact that we're still living out our baser natures the vast majority of time. It's just that the face of the drama has changed. And no I'm not being cynical. Humanity is evolving. We degenerate and regenerate over and over again with marginal improvements each time, but it's not in leaps and bounds. Too many people think our level of technology is a sign of how much better we are now, but if you look at how 99% of humanity is using that technology - for the same old drama - we haven't shifted hugely.


you make some good points, but at least I think you have to agree that there are at least some countries in this age, where people can live in _relative_ freedom. I'm not too good with history, but a couple hundred years ago, there was probably more poveryt and oppression than nowadays. We live in an age, where _human rights_ are at least a thing people recognize and talk about. of course far from all is done, but we are getting there eventually, I hope.


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## GolemGolem

Foreigner said:


> ... The creative genius that advances humanity only comes to full fruition in a select few people while the general decorum of humanity remains relatively mundane. It's always been that way.
> Arguably more of humanity is enslaved and oppressed now than ever before, it's just a lot more insidious. In other words, same shit, different pile. Our material accomplishments distract people from the fact that we're still living out our baser natures the vast majority of time. It's just that the face of the drama has changed. And no I'm not being cynical. Humanity is evolving. We degenerate and regenerate over and over again with marginal improvements each time, but it's not leaps and bounds. Too many people think our level of technology is a sign of how much better we are now, but if you look at how 99% of humanity is using that technology - for the same old drama - we haven't shifted hugely.


I agree.  We're still people, We still benefit from the ruthless, cruel, and oft stupid exploitation of people far and wide, even if I just sell produce for a living and hate seeing people get a shit deal. I don't think I've contributed much to the advancement of all humanity. Don't think I ever will. Bit of speaking up, and light volunteer work maybe. If I get lucky cook on a research station in some remote and terrible place like Antarctica. Still my mostly harmless life is all built on the corpses of the equally deserving.  When I get done with this, I'll probably smoke a bowl and watch someone play video games on Youtube with my wife while we gossip. 
What is pure, our scientific knowledge and engineering prowess is still increasing faster and faster, and that's pretty cool. 
But, if humanity is still a thing in two thousand years, I bet it'll still be ran by assholes, on human suffering, for the benefit of the oblivious.


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## swilow

Foreigner said:


> IMO humans would have suffered regardless. Before the Abrahamic faiths came along there were still warlords and tyrannical governments. They were the rule not the exception. The Romans and Greeks who are so revered in our modern western epistemology were pretty scientific and look at how many nations they conquered and killed. Religion was just the institution du jour during a time period when humans were generally pretty barbaric. In fact, not much has changed. The creative genius that advances humanity only comes to full fruition in a select few people while the general decorum of humanity remains relatively mundane. It's always been that way.



Its true, suffering existed independant of religion; still does. I do wonder though; when we look at the major world religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism) there is an emphasis on suffering as an inherent part of being a flawed human. I wonder if that almost sanctified suffering. Whilst I totally agree that religion did not cause or instigate human suffering I don't believe it really achieved what should be fundamantal to religion, that is making life better. For me, only buddhism comes close by saying that, yes, suffering is persistent and widespread, but there is a way to experience sorrow and pain and not suffer. Abrahamic religion almost see's suffering as our lot in life; I find that idea exceedingly unpleasant.

Good post foreigner 



GolemGolem said:


> I agree.  We're still people, We still benefit from the ruthless, cruel, and oft stupid exploitation of people far and wide, even if I just sell produce for a living and hate seeing people get a shit deal. I don't think I've contributed much to the advancement of all humanity. Don't think I ever will. Bit of speaking up, and light volunteer work maybe. If I get lucky cook on a research station in some remote and terrible place like Antarctica. Still my mostly harmless life is all built on the corpses of the equally deserving.  When I get done with this, I'll probably smoke a bowl and watch someone play video games on Youtube with my wife while we gossip.
> What is pure, our scientific knowledge and engineering prowess is still increasing faster and faster, and that's pretty cool.
> But, if humanity is still a thing in two thousand years, I bet it'll still be ran by assholes, on human suffering, for the benefit of the oblivious.



I think that our animal heritage will continue to be played out on global scales. I do not believe humanity, in this state, has much further to go before the fall. 

I do not believe the world is getting better and that we are more "free" in any meaningful sense. Materially, we have more; we have food-surplus, we have trust in the future. We have 'rights'. But, we are all living in the most bizarre and hypocritical world. We all know what we are doing to the environment and how the west is vampiring off the developing world, but we mitigate it by saying that we also seek to increase the standard of living in the developing world. But, the fact is, we simply cannot afford to do so. We literally do not have enough resources to allow all humans to live in the affluence we of the west do. In that sense, human rights are a problem. Every human think they are equal but the benchmark is the wealthiest. It is an economic fact that the entire global populace cannot live like that, but we do not ever talk about the west tightening our belts and living simpler lives. Far from being free, we are inculcated from birth to think that this is the only way, capitalism and the daily grind. Perhaps we need the perspective of aliens. 

I don't, I cannot express this very well. For most of my life I have been aware that this existence is fucking batshit. So many people are living shit lives that make them unhappy but because there doesn't seem to be an alternative, we just tolerate it and then die. There must be a better way. Is it too late to start again? I think we will soon enough be forced to concede that it is but we have no choice. The future is shadows to me.


----------



## turkalurk

I believe life on earth was alien to this planet before the first microbials hitched a ride on asteroids. I imagine the world is a being in itself.  Like an ovum fertilized by the seed of life from above.  This world's potential is being actualized from a planet into a biosphere.  Like all life it simply does the will of the cosmos.  its grows to its full maturity blossoms and dies. I think when this world goes, life will continue to survive in the debris and will eventually find a new planet to crash into.  thats its method of reproduction.  it will spread its seeds to a new planet and begin the process again, but this time the seeds will carry Earth's impression with it.  Life will have a whole range of new potentials with its new environment.  And the cycle will continue until a similar thing happens to the universe itself!  And, maybe from the rubble of this universe a new one will be reborn.  It just makes more sense that life came from somewhere else that would have a larger timescale for molecular evolution .


----------



## GodandLove

I don't just believe, I know for a FACT aliens are real. However, they don't exactly resemble the stereotypical grey humanoids we've all come to associate with the word 'alien'.

Meet the Water Bear,





The sexy cute and cuddly microscopic Alien.







He's just a water bear, with little feelings , surviving in space
Dancing and singing, with his cute bear face

Come on everybody sing it with me!

He's just a WATER BEAR, with little feelings, surviving in SPACE
Dancing and singing with his cute bear face

One for Time

He's just a water bear, with little feelings, surviving in space
Dancing and singing with his cute bear face


----------



## swilow

Well, you've sure convinced me.


----------



## Xorkoth

Godandlove - To be fair, these are Earth life creatures, not creatures from another planet.  So it's not proof of anything except that life is fucking crazy.   But for the record I believe it's basically impossible that life doesn't exist elsewhere in the universe.



turkalurk said:


> I believe life on earth was alien to this planet before the first microbials hitched a ride on asteroids. I imagine the world is a being in itself.  Like an ovum fertilized by the seed of life from above.  This world's potential is being actualized from a planet into a biosphere.  Like all life it simply does the will of the cosmos.  its grows to its full maturity blossoms and dies. I think when this world goes, life will continue to survive in the debris and will eventually find a new planet to crash into.  thats its method of reproduction.  it will spread its seeds to a new planet and begin the process again, but this time the seeds will carry Earth's impression with it.  Life will have a whole range of new potentials with its new environment.  And the cycle will continue until a similar thing happens to the universe itself!  And, maybe from the rubble of this universe a new one will be reborn.  It just makes more sense that life came from somewhere else that would have a larger timescale for molecular evolution .



I was reading about the life "seeding" theory a few months ago.  We know there are microbes on Earth that can survive the vaccuum of space for prolonged periods of time.  It really makes sense.  Imagine impacts throwing off pieces of a planet that contains such microbes, then those pieces floating around until they impact another planet.  Some scientists believe that in the early stages of Earth, during the period of time when catastrophic impacts were commonplace, life was destroyed and re-seeded multiple times in this manner.

Nice post.


----------



## Kittycat5

Tardigrades, the water bears, would be a consideration as an organism that arrived here via space (the panspermia hypothesis). They can survive nearly anything and even have been shown to survive the vacuum of space. They also are not single cellular so giving rise to high organisms would be easier.

But there are drawbacks. Much fewer of the tardigrades would be expected to arrive then bacteria. Some also feel that they would evolve into mostly insects but who can really say. Panspermia is an interesting idea but somewhere abiogenesis must have occurred. I find it more likely that this process of life from non-life repeating itself than the concept of panspermia. But just my personal belief.


----------



## Bagseed

well, according to wikipedia, these things could survive about 10 years without water and food, but you also have to consider that 10 years is a pretty short time if we are talking about interstellar travel times (or even travelling within the solar system). yes we can send a spacecraft to a target within short times within the solar system (months for the inner planets), but some debris flying around in space can't decide to land on a suitable planet. I think the chance for something like this to have come here from space is very small.

and anything coming from other solar systems will take much much longer than that.


----------



## Bagseed

what you don't have on asteroids though is oxygen.... plus it's probably too cold on a rock in outer space to form life. (average temp in the universe is very very low).


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## turkalurk

why are my posts being deleted?  oh well I can navigate back and paste it:


Kittycat5 said:


> Tardigrades, the water bears, would be a consideration as an organism that arrived here via space (the panspermia hypothesis). They can survive nearly anything and even have been shown to survive the vacuum of space. They also are not single cellular so giving rise to high organisms would be easier.
> 
> But there are drawbacks. Much fewer of the tardigrades would be expected to arrive then bacteria. Some also feel that they would evolve into mostly insects but who can really say. Panspermia is an interesting idea but somewhere abiogenesis must have occurred. I find it more likely that this process of life from non-life repeating itself than the concept of panspermia. But just my personal belief.



First off panspermia and abiogenesis are not exactly at odds.  Whether it occured on earth, on asteroids, on another planet, it would still be abiogenesis.  Also, you are incorrect by saying abiogenesis MUST have occurred somewhere.  Its perfectly logical to assume abiogenesis a likely scenario, but the mechanism for how life came do be is still unknown.  Furthermore, if abiogenesis was the mechanism, it would more likely have occured on a comet or asteroid which has been around far longer than Earth, as there would be billions more years for chemicasl to randomly interact in such a way for molecular evolution to lead to the first self replicating molecule.  

In addition, although the water bears are a beautiful and miraculous phylum of animal, it is unlikely they could survive in the harsh conditions of space longer than a week or so.  It would take a great deal longer than that to travel to a sustainable planet.
For those who don't believe in panspermia:

www.extremetech.com/extreme/150417-...te-fragments-confirming-extraterrestrial-life


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## GolemGolem

Anyone else ever get the Seed Trip on mushrooms? I'm going to woo out for a second, but many times mushrooms have told me that both them and I are spores blindly fertilizing creation. There was an old farmer in some other dimension who planted a seed that became our entire cosmos, but farmers plant a lot of seeds. He sings to all of his plants, We're not sure when, or what will happen at harvest time. 

So yea I dig that panspermia is a legitimate hypothesis.


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## swilow

Hey turkalurk from what I can see you deleted that post. Maybe when trying to edit?


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## Kittycat5

turkalurk said:


> why are my posts being deleted?  oh well I can navigate back and paste it:
> 
> 
> First off panspermia and abiogenesis are not exactly at odds.  Whether it occured on earth, on asteroids, on another planet, it would still be abiogenesis.  Also, you are incorrect by saying abiogenesis MUST have occurred somewhere.  Its perfectly logical to assume abiogenesis a likely scenario, but the mechanism for how life came do be is still unknown.  Furthermore, if abiogenesis was the mechanism, it would more likely have occured on a comet or asteroid which has been around far longer than Earth, as there would be billions more years for chemicasl to randomly interact in such a way for molecular evolution to lead to the first self replicating molecule.
> 
> In addition, although the water bears are a beautiful and miraculous phylum of animal, it is unlikely they could survive in the harsh conditions of space longer than a week or so.  It would take a great deal longer than that to travel to a sustainable planet.
> For those who don't believe in panspermia:
> 
> www.extremetech.com/extreme/150417-...te-fragments-confirming-extraterrestrial-life



I wasnt saying it was one or the other, just as you said, abiogenesis would likely to have occurred somewhere at some point and panspermia could have seeded life elsewhere. It could even have occurred multiple times. But, yes I admit abiogenesis is not exactly a proven idea and life may have risen in other ways.


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## GodandLove

Bagseed said:


> well, according to wikipedia, these things could survive about 10 years without water and food, but you also have to consider that 10 years is a pretty short time if we are talking about interstellar travel times (or even travelling within the solar system). yes we can send a spacecraft to a target within short times within the solar system (months for the inner planets), but some debris flying around in space can't decide to land on a suitable planet. I think the chance for something like this to have come here from space is very small.
> 
> and anything coming from other solar systems will take much much longer than that.what you don't have on asteroids though is oxygen.... plus it's probably too cold on a rock in outer space to form life. (average temp in the universe is very very low).



Actually, Tardigrades can withstand temperatures of -200 °C. The average temperature on the surface of a typical asteroid is -100 degrees F. When frozen, Tardigrades enter a state called cryptobiosis, in this state they can survive indefinitely. 

http://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/frozen-tardigrades-18012016/

There may not be oxygen on asteroids, but there is ice, and that is all that is needed to house a Water Bear. Though, comets would probably be a more suitable spaceship for tardigrades. 


https://www.rt.com/news/320007-rosetta-comet-oxygen-surprise/

YES, WATER BEARS ARE ALIENS!




turkalurk said:


> In addition, although the water bears are a beautiful and miraculous phylum of animal, it is unlikely they could survive in the harsh conditions of space longer than a week or so.



They actually did survive longer than a week in 'bare space'. 68 % of the tardigrades sent into bare space lasted a full 10 days. No one knows for sure how long they can actually survive in the vacuum of space. Could be just the ten days, could be longer, we'll never know for sure until more tests are done. But, this is just bare space. However, when it comes to a tardigrade surviving in an ice pocket on an asteroid or perhaps even a comet, I for one think it is MORE than plausible.


----------



## swilow

This is a short but interesting article I found when I searched for biological candidates for panspermia...

After discussing how any 'panpsermic' organisms would have to be incredibly hardy, durable, long-lived and tolerant it goes on:



			
				Scientific American said:
			
		

> But the problem, and the potential paradox, is that if evolved galactic panspermia is real it'll be capable of living just about everywhere. There should be stuff on the Moon, Mars, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, Enceladus, even minor planets and cometary nuclei. Every icy nook and cranny in our solar system should be a veritable paradise for these ultra-tough lifeforms, honed by natural selection to make the most of appalling conditions. So if galactic panspermia exists why haven't we noticed it yet?



Interesting perspective. I hadn't considered that. But, I think you could argue that we really haven't been able to search all that deeply into other planets, and that there is a difference between conditions on asteroids/comets and terrestrial conditions. Perhaps the very thing that enables microbes to tolerate the extremes of space makes them badly adapted for some/many planetary conditions. Further to that, the theories often surmise that water/ice is essential to outer space survival and water isn't always abundant on orbiting planets.

But you could also ask why we haven't found any organisms in the many comet/meteoroids that impact earth presently and have throughout history. Given the absence of such evidence that seems to suggest that the event leading to earth being seeded was rare and 'lucky' and that not much microbial life exists in the nearby universe. 

Its a fucking awesome theory though. Something compelling. I think that, at the very least, much of the building blocks were probably born in the asteroid belts and these would certainly have landed on young earth.


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## Bagseed

GodandLove said:
			
		

> Actually, Tardigrades can withstand temperatures of -200 °C. The average temperature on the surface of a typical asteroid is -100 degrees F. When frozen, Tardigrades enter a state called cryptobiosis, in this state they can survive indefinitely.


that may very well be, but these conditions are not suitable for the necessary compounds to form life (amino acids, nucleic acids, and other things) to be produced. and since asteroids are debris which hasn't been intrgrated into a bigger structure (planet), it's pretty impossible to get life there by chance. and if life can't form on such an object by itself, I don't see how this should be possible.


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## GodandLove

> But the problem, and the potential paradox, is that if evolved galactic panspermia is real it'll be capable of living just about everywhere. There should be stuff on the Moon, Mars, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, Enceladus, even minor planets and cometary nuclei. Every icy nook and cranny in our solar system should be a veritable paradise for these ultra-tough lifeforms, honed by natural selection to make the most of appalling conditions. So if galactic panspermia exists why haven't we noticed it yet?



I don't agree with this at all. That would be like saying, since Earth life organisms are real, then they should be capable of living just about everywhere on the planet. There should be stuff living in active volcanoes inside the molting hot magma. Derrrr duhhh, I like Turtles. 8(


Utter nonsense.


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## GolemGolem

http://news.discovery.com/earth/rocks-fossils/super-eruption-seeded-sky-diatoms-130923.htm
http://www.livescience.com/3544-life-thrives-active-underwater-volcano.html
Actually. . . . .there is stuff living in volcanoes,


----------



## GodandLove

GolemGolem said:


> http://news.discovery.com/earth/rocks-fossils/super-eruption-seeded-sky-diatoms-130923.htm
> http://www.livescience.com/3544-life-thrives-active-underwater-volcano.html
> Actually. . . . .there is stuff living in volcanoes,



None of those creatures live inside the 'molting hot magma'. Living on the outskirts of an underwater volcano is an entirely different story.


----------



## swilow

GodandLove said:


> I don't agree with this at all. That would be like saying, since Earth life organisms are real, then they should be capable of living just about everywhere on the planet. There should be stuff living in active volcanoes inside the molting hot magma. Derrrr duhhh, I like Turtles. 8(



I don't think that's a great analogy. The author is talking very specifically about ultra-tough lifeforms. You would have to concede that any organism that can tolerate the extremes of space would have to be exceptionally hardy. If that is so, you could conjecture that they would/should not be excluded from many similarly tough terrestrial habitats. But, I do think the author overlooked a few things.

Godandlove, what say you to the complete absence of organisms found in space debris colliding with earth? Its been happening for billions of years and we  haven't found a trace. I think this is probably the best argument against panpspermia.


----------



## GolemGolem

GodandLove said:


> None of those creatures live inside the 'molting hot magma'. Living on the outskirts of an underwater volcano is an entirely different story.



Fair enough, but the diatoms were blown up with a volcano high up into the atmosphere drifted around up in the jet stream and then proceeded to colonize new environments. 
The undersea volcanoes do have bacteria thriving in water far hotter than boiling even if the tubeworms and shrimp stay a bit further away.. I'm not convinced we won't find single celled life in magma one day - our knowledge of microbes is still in its infancy. Nothing can be proven yet though so here we are. 

Panspermia is still just an idea, but it has not been ruled out.


----------



## Foreigner

GolemGolem said:


> I agree.  We're still people, We still benefit from the ruthless, cruel, and oft stupid exploitation of people far and wide, even if I just sell produce for a living and hate seeing people get a shit deal. I don't think I've contributed much to the advancement of all humanity. Don't think I ever will. Bit of speaking up, and light volunteer work maybe. If I get lucky cook on a research station in some remote and terrible place like Antarctica. Still my mostly harmless life is all built on the corpses of the equally deserving.  When I get done with this, I'll probably smoke a bowl and watch someone play video games on Youtube with my wife while we gossip.
> What is pure, our scientific knowledge and engineering prowess is still increasing faster and faster, and that's pretty cool.
> But, if humanity is still a thing in two thousand years, I bet it'll still be ran by assholes, on human suffering, for the benefit of the oblivious.



I have to refer back to inner work and debunking stories, narratives, mind and consciousness. If you can live life from a firmly rooted present awareness and debunk all your own inner crap, even the narrative of your own existence, you eventually see that this whole system of humanity is just something that's happening of its own accord. People apply linear trajectories to our evolution, like we're "supposed" to do something or go somewhere. The truth is that this shit show could go on for another 2,000 years, or 10,000. We could evolve into a completely different species and still be doing pretty much the same things we're doing now. Or we could live a billion light years from here, or...

My point is, what are _you_ here to do? Why be so macroscopic about it? If you didn't have books, internet, education, and all these ideas floating around, then there'd just be you and your immediate environment. It's always going to come back to you. Aggregate evolution in the species is almost pointless to talk about. Even with all our micro-managing of our own biology and evolution, we have no idea where the road leads. So what it comes down to is this moment. 



Bagseed said:


> you make some good points, but at least I think you have to agree that there are at least some countries in this age, where people can live in _relative_ freedom. I'm not too good with history, but a couple hundred years ago, there was probably more poveryt and oppression than nowadays. We live in an age, where _human rights_ are at least a thing people recognize and talk about. of course far from all is done, but we are getting there eventually, I hope.



In a relative way, yes. But every time I hear the word "freedom" used in this constitutional, legalistic way I cringe a little bit. There are many humans on this planet who have legal freedoms, but there are very few humans who behave as though they really understand freedom. As far as I can tell, freedom is something that people aspire to, but not many have. They just assume they're free without interrogating the concept. Everyone on this planet is already free. How many realize it? 

So yeah, I can walk down the street at night and not need four men surrounding me with torches and swords in case bandits try to attack me. I'm literate, have access to some interesting technological tools, the world is more connected, etc... but what are we doing with it? Are we really that much more free? The human condition chases us into every century. 

I am almost certainly convinced that if sentient, advanced life exists out there and knows about us, the reason they haven't made contact is because of our state of consciousness. Nobody cares what fancy tools you have if the better part of you is still just an instinctual animal. Barely any time has passed since our nuclear awakening. Experimental bombs have been dropped all over the world, and one was used on Japan. The jury is still out and whether we stop ourselves from blowing each other up, so why would aliens come visit such a trigger happy species?



willow11 said:


> Godandlove, what say you to the complete absence of organisms found in space debris colliding with earth? Its been happening for billions of years and we  haven't found a trace. I think this is probably the best argument against panpspermia.



There are many spatial bodies out there that are rich in hydrocarbons which may provide the substrate for organic life to coalesce upon, gradually forming complex molecules over time. So panspermia can also be about the components of life and not life itself.

The problem is that modern science cannot create a living cell from its separate components, so the jury's out. 

Even if another form of sentient life created us, who created them? The question is never ending. 

I was reading an ancient text about Daoist embryology recently... what some of the old Daoist schools think about the formation of life. This was back before they knew about DNA, but had some awareness of physical structure building upon itself. They believe that sperm and egg coming together attracted a higher, non-material life form (the human soul, so to speak). This spirit then coordinated all of the biological activities necessary to produce a physical body for itself. Matter is preceded by spirit. 

That got me thinking. What if the universe is filled with non-material life, and some of it looks for compatible planets with the ingredients necessary to organize material life? We know that matter and energy are essentially the same thing, just at differing densities. That would mean, hypothetically, that non-material life is abundant in the universe, and the only confine to taking physical form is finding a place where matter can be appropriately structured.


----------



## turkalurk

Nothing in any of the material you provided suggests waterbears are an alien species.  I will grant you they might survive long enough to colonize mars or somewhere in this solar system.

Some pretty weak arguments so far considering that we have only analyzed the smallest fraction of asteroids in the smallest timescale in comparison to the billions of years of asteroids.   How much of outspace has been analyzed exactly?  So how would we know?  Futhermore we are finding life out there.  Just waiting for the results of credible studies to be replicated.  Wow, humanity can be so shortsighted.


----------



## GolemGolem

Foreigner;13441281

My point is said:
			
		

> you[/I] here to do? Why be so macroscopic about it? If you didn't have books, internet, education, and all these ideas floating around, then there'd just be you and your immediate environment. It's always going to come back to you. Aggregate evolution in the species is almost pointless to talk about. Even with all our micro-managing of our own biology and evolution, we have no idea where the road leads. So what it comes down to is this moment.


Well it does always come back to me because I'm unbelievably self centered, but I'm just here, I didn't ask to be born and as amazing and terrible as this world is if I'd have been asked I prolly would of declined the invitation, it hurts, a lot, and all signs point to it only hurting worse as I age. I am here though, and I got some people I don't want to let down and some dogs that need fed, I like music, drugs, and pop-sci articles on astronomy. 
The best things in life happen in the moment, dancing, singing, riding a bike fast though the woods, sex, cooking...but, I can't live there, we can't live there, it's exhausting after it's done being exhilarating. It's also not where I make my most responsible choices. The macroscopic veiw is just trying to get outta my own head to think up something new, other than the stories I've grown sick of telling myself.


----------



## swilow

turkalurk said:


> Nothing in any of the material you provided suggests waterbears are an alien species.  I will grant you they might survive long enough to colonize mars or somewhere in this solar system.
> 
> Some pretty weak arguments so far considering that we have only analyzed the smallest fraction of asteroids in the smallest timescale in comparison to the billions of years of asteroids.   How much of outspace has been analyzed exactly?  So how would we know?  Futhermore we are finding life out there.  Just waiting for the results of credible studies to be replicated.  Wow, humanity can be so shortsighted.



We haven't found any life in the universe... Besides us :D


----------



## turkalurk

willow11 said:


> We haven't found any life in the universe... Besides us :D


they have found fossils of alien algae.

they also found what they believe is evidence that life can be on a comet.

http://news.discovery.com/space/aste...ers-150706.htm

here is what a NASA scientist thinks:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-find-signs-of-alien-life-in-the-next-decade/

If you think earth is the only place that has life in the whole universe, then you are amazingly shortsighted and narrow-minded.


----------



## swilow

The finding of alien algae is disputed.

I think there is life beyond earth. However there is no evidence. I don't know who you referred to with your non-sequitir .


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## swilow

Thread is visible again. Please continue


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## GenericMind

Some form of life has to exist or at least have existed sometime in the past on other planets. There's just been too much time since the big bang and way too many combinations of changing conditions in countless solar systems for Earth to be the only one to have life to spring up. Especially considering the apparent determination of "life," whatever that really is, to proliferate. The inherent drive of even the most basic forms to grow is remarkable. Even just the life on Earth overcame infinite obstacles and improbabilities to exist. And when you think about what it's evolved from; single-celled organisms and what it is now; super complex thinking organisms whose bodies constantly perform countless self-regulatory functions to stay alive, it's completely mind-boggling. And we continue to find forms of life growing in the most unlikely or downright impossible places. Since we know the chemicals and elements that made life possible on Earth exist everywhere else in the Universe, I'm sure life has been putting up just as hard a fight to replicate elsewhere.

But like I said there's been a lot of time between the big bang and now. Enough time for life on Earth to have started from scratch and evolved to where we are now several times over. There have probably been countless instances of life springing up on a planet only to be snuffed out in its infancy. And probably some that evolved further, maybe even beyond us, that are long gone now. Even if there are intelligent civilizations somewhere out there they're probably too far for any contact to occur. The massive size of space and distances of even the galaxies closest to ours are so beyond our knowledge and technology it seems pointless to even speculate about travelling those kinds of distances. The best we've managed to send a human is to the moon. That's like 300,000 miles. The nearest major galaxy is about 6 Trillion times 2.5 million miles away. I have no idea what that number even is. Add the fact that the Universe seems to be expanding faster than the speed of light and making galaxies become further and further away from each other, and the prospects of us ever making contact with life outside of out solar systems becomes pretty slim.


----------



## GolemGolem

GenericMind said:


> And when you think about what it's evolved from; single-celled organisms and what it is now; super complex thinking organisms whose bodies constantly perform countless self-regulatory functions to stay alive, it's completely mind-boggling.



The simplest forms can be pretty neat looking and complex in their own way. Some protists look like they have hands. 



I hope the icy moons have protists in their oceans, I want to watch them.


----------



## Xorkoth

Foreigner said:


> That got me thinking. What if the universe is filled with non-material life, and some of it looks for compatible planets with the ingredients necessary to organize material life? We know that matter and energy are essentially the same thing, just at differing densities. That would mean, hypothetically, that non-material life is abundant in the universe, and the only confine to taking physical form is finding a place where matter can be appropriately structured.



That's a really interesting idea.  I've certainly pondered on the idea of energy-based, non-material life.  I've never thought of it as something that would start the process of life though, it's a cool thought.


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## GenericMind

GolemGolem said:


> The simplest forms can be pretty neat looking and complex in their own way. Some protists look like they have hands.
> 
> 
> 
> I hope the icy moons have protists in their oceans, I want to watch them.



If we don't eventually find microbial life on moons like Titan, I think we'll definitely find at least evidence of some form of life having existed on either a planet or a moon in our solar system. If Tardigrades can do what they do here on Earth, I'm sure something even more adaptable/resilient could have made a go for it in the extreme atmospheres of our nearby planets and moons


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## Xorkoth

Europa (one of Jupiter's moons) seems like a very plausible candidate because it consists of a shell of ice miles thick containing a vast ocean underneath, and they found that the lines crossing it appear to be water escaping through cracks that appears to contain organic materials.  It seems like just the kind of place that could potentially support life, particularly since life on Earth started in the ocean.  I believe they're planning on sending something there to land and explore.


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## GolemGolem

Yeah, a surface probe. Might find neat things and corpses on the surface, but...
 Folks are working on building a robot capable of getting down into the ocean, and then send back data....but it'll be awhile before the tech is ready, prolly decades away. Though it does not have to decades and decades if NASA and Congress can get a bit more ambitious and committed.


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## Xorkoth

Yeah I wish NASA would get funded better too.  I mean there are more important things at this point, really big problems we have here on Earth, but we spend most of our money on far less important things right now.


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## Kittycat5

Xorkoth said:


> Yeah I wish NASA would get funded better too.  I mean there are more important things at this point, really big problems we have here on Earth, but we spend most of our money on far less important things right now.



I never like the more important things argument. While I understand why people say it, they really miss out on the bigger picture. One of these big problems would be education. I doubt most would say otherwise. Here in America, the STEM education is woefully lacking with many actually being proud of their ignorance in math and science. NASA is the one organization that has a history of inspiring and fascinating children about science (most boys at one point want to be an astronaut  ) and to continuously strip money and programs from it is taking away this hope. I mean they get only 0.6% of the budget which is basically Uncle Sam's pocket change. If the politicians really had any balls, they could find billions of waste in the budgets of the military, medicare, healthcare ans SS. We could eliminate Homeland Security completely. Give this money to NASA (there are others I would give some to as well) and in a generation, we could reverse this trend of science illiteracy and again be the envy of the worlds space agencies.

We are also on the precipice of perhaps a new golden age of space exploration. Just think of the things that have occurred in the recent past or are planned for the near future. We have sent to rover to Mars. We have sent a mission to Pluto and now exploring the Kuiper belt where new dwarf planets and other objects are being discovered quicker than anyone has imagined. We have the ability to orbit and possibly land on comets. A man-made craft has actually left our solar system for the first time in history. The list goes on and on.

And NASA also is a leader in climate science, geophysics, planetary science and propulsion systems. Imagine what we could have already done or may do in the future if we actually put the money and support behind NASA.


----------



## ark9

DeadElvis666 said:


> My girlfriend, her sister and her best friend saw a flying saucer when they were in high school. She said it was huge and hovered about 50 feet above them before flying away. She has no reason to lie about this. Strangely she doesn't seem very interested in discussing the existence of aliens. However I find the topic very interesting. My dad and some of his friends saw a "light in the sky" over the ocean when they were surfing. He said it would hover in place for a minute then dart across the sky, hover, perform 90 degree turns and other aeronautical maneuvers which are not possible with our current aircraft technology. Again, he is not the type of person to make up something like that...



A few months ago I was driving at night and saw 4 beams of light in the sky that kept maneuvering around and around in the same pattern, like a rhythm. Could not have been an aircraft... Trippy. I felt crazy! Wished someone was with me to confirm what I was seeing. What you said your dad saw reminded me of this, but you said he only saw one. What you described, though, is like exactly how the lights I saw moved.


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## jasonx11

I believe in aliens , we just cannot see them because the our physical selves are meant to see things in the physical realm unless you have the 6th sense. DDid you ever try astral projecting? This might answer your questions.


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## Xorkoth

I've removed the last couple of posts because it was getting too personal and unrelated to the topic.  Let's do our best to keep things civil, please.


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## Xorkoth

I've removed the last couple of posts because it was getting too personal and unrelated to the topic.  Let's do our best to keep things civil, please.


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## swilow

Yeah Xorkoth, apologies for that. He actually aggravated the shit out of me I let it get the better of me. I'll go back to ignoring and talking over him :D


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## Xorkoth

No worries.


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## turkalurk

willow11 said:


> Yeah Xorkoth, apologies for that. He actually aggravated the shit out of me I let it get the better of me. I'll go back to ignoring and talking over him :D



how does one talk over another on an internet forum?  

I think if intelligent aliens exist they'd probably stay clear of us!


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## cyberius

The conditions needed to sustain life have been found in other places, it's very shortsighted to assume our little rock is the only source of sentience in the universe. What makes us any different than any other planet?


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## MyDoorsAreOpen

Yes, I believe that there are sentient beings who don't call our planet home. I'm not sure that we'd recognize them as such if we met them, though, or necessarily even notice their presence. %)


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## swilow

^Hey MDAO. Nice to see your name again


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## belligerent drunk

cyberius said:


> The conditions needed to sustain life have been found in other places, it's very shortsighted to assume our little rock is the only source of sentience in the universe. What makes us any different than any other planet?



Given the immense number of other planets, and yeah it indeed is mind-boggling how large our universe is, I think it is rather unlikely that Earth has been the only planet to harbor life. However, I also believe it is rather unlikely that there is more than one intelligent life in our universe at the same time, or if there is, that we'll ever have the ability to interact with eachother.


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## MyDoorsAreOpen

willow11 said:


> ^Hey MDAO. Nice to see your name again



Thanks willow! It's good to be back.


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## Nixiam

I believe in possibilities.


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## babyangel_

most people dont beleive me when i tell them what happened to me when i was 3 years old. 
i was staying with my family at a rented mobile home temporary while this house was being built. 
i woke up in the wee hours of the morning around 2 or 3 am i need to use the toilet , when i came back i was standing at the doorway of the bedroom and i saw an alien standing next to my bed around 12 feet from me . it wasnt dark the hallway light was left on , we stared at each other for over an hour i saw it move occasionally under the bed or try to hop on the bed.  my mom would sleep in the same bed as me since dad was working nights at the time as a trucker . my mom woke up eventually told me to come to bed , i said " no mom , the bear , the bear" , i had no idea what the word alien or exterrestrial was so thats what i called it a bear. so i went around to the other side of the bed to get in . and i went to sleep . 

i really know what i saw that night i woiuld swear to you on my grandmother's grave for you to beleive me . 

another unexplained event happened to me when i was 11 or 12 , i was with a friend outside late late at night like midnight or 1am , we were sitting near the ditch on driveway talking / hanging out . down the road like 250 feet away at the time it was wooded on both sides of the road i saw a fast moving being about the size of a human move back and forth to each side of the wooded area very fast ,  too fast for a person to move . my friend had to go that direction to go home she had to go another way to avoid this area


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## polymath

belligerent drunk said:


> However, I also believe it is rather unlikely that there is more than one intelligent life in our universe at the same time



Remember that there are about 1023 stars in the observable universe. A number with an order of magnitude similar to Avogadro's number. I don't see it as unlikely at all that there could be overlap between the time intervals of existence of different intelligent species in the universe.


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## Nixiam

infinitelov said:


> There are no forms of higher intelligence or parallel 'dimensions' / 'realities'. That's as silly as saying that we're being grown. Consciousness is rooted in physical matter. Now everyone get back to work evolutionarily chasing the concept of infinity by reproducing and developing consciousness. I wonder if there's a reason we experience the emotion of hate when we reproduce



We cannot necessarily say that.


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## neurotic

It bugs me how immensely anthropocentric and short-sighted the notion of 'intelligent life outside of Earth' is. What is 'life', what is 'intelligent'? Those are but *human* concepts, and when we ask 'is there intelligent life outside of Earth's we are actually asking 'is there something like us out there'. For some reason, matter has arranged itself in this fashion, here on this 'planet'. Why would it have to be arranged in any similar way, or even, in any way that could be 'interesting' to us or that we could grasp, anywhere else? Given the vastness of the universe and the limitations of our minds, I'd expect most things out there on sideral space to be pretty fucking crazy in ways we probably cannot even conceive, very possibly not reassembling anything with which we're familiar. [Of course, this does not exclude the possibility of there actually being something anthropomorphic out there]

Given how human-like, or at least, carbon-based-lifeform-like aliens seem to be in popular culture, I think that as such they are more elements of collective imagination, like ghosts or spirits, than anything else - no wonder that aliens attract exactly the same type of people that are attracted to other supernatural ideas already.


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## polymath

neurotic said:


> It bugs me how immensely anthropocentric and short-sighted the notion of 'intelligent life outside of Earth' is. What is 'life', what is 'intelligent'? Those are but *human* concepts, and when we ask 'is there intelligent life outside of Earth's we are actually asking 'is there something like us out there'. For some reason, matter has arranged itself in this fashion, here on this 'planet'. Why would it have to be arranged in any similar way, or even, in any way that could be 'interesting' to us or that we could grasp, anywhere else? Given the vastness of the universe and the limitations of our minds, I'd expect most things out there on sideral space to be pretty fucking crazy in ways we probably cannot even conceive, very possibly not reassembling anything with which we're familiar. [Of course, this does not exclude the possibility of there actually being something anthropomorphic out there]



Creation of any kind of life (abiogenesis) probably begins with some amphiphilic compounds forming membranes that enclose a space, because a living organism must be able to contain itself (I don't think there will ever be a living creature that can be dissolved in a liquid solution and then precipitated again, retaining its identity in the process) and that kind of membranes are the physically easiest way to do it. Genetic code will probably not always be in the form of nucleic acids, because it's easy to imagine alternative compounds for information storage, the same applies to the storage of energy in the form of carbohydrates and ATP. Most living creatures that can perceive light will probably have two "eyes" because that's the only way to get an effective stereoscopic vision.


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## No one

Belief has nothing to do with it.  The sheer size of the universe dictates there is no way we are it.


----------



## Profit Prophet

The only reason we question if we are anomalous, is because we hate ourselves?
Society and intelligence: not the result of alien intervention.
There is no missing link. We were supposed to build machines.
This is not something to detach from nature.

Nature builds man. Man builds machine. Therefore, nature builds machine.
From everything we understand of evolution, there is no reason to assume technology (so, intelligent life) is not widespread.


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## vortech

I like the idea of a higher intelligence, we can call it God or Aliens but they are one and the same, I call them the engineers. This Universe is their simulation, and Earth is basically just a big science experiment for them. The more humanity comes to realize this and understand the engineering behind it, the closer we get to making this world as we see it in our dreams.


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## polymath

vortech said:


> I like the idea of a higher intelligence, we can call it God or Aliens but they are one and the same, I call them the engineers. This Universe is their simulation, and Earth is basically just a big science experiment for them. The more humanity comes to realize this and understand the engineering behind it, the closer we get to making this world as we see it in our dreams.



You might like the ideas presented here: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-real-physicists-method-universe-simulation.html . Looks like it's possible to test experimentally whether our universe is really a simulation, like prof. Nick Bostrom from Oxford suggested. Not that I'd take this very seriously myself, though.


----------



## belligerent drunk

polymath said:


> Remember that there are about 1023 stars in the observable universe. A number with an order of magnitude similar to Avogadro's number. I don't see it as unlikely at all that there could be overlap between the time intervals of existence of different intelligent species in the universe.



Yes, and also consider how short of a time period our intelligent life has existed for (for about 10^-7 of the lifetime of our universe). And I don't mean just any kind of life, but intelligent life comparable to the level of intelligence of ours, it would require not just any conditions, so only a small portion of the stars would potentially qualify as harbors for such life. I just think the chances of us existing at the same extremely short time-frame is very small (although obviously not nonexistant). But these are just my speculations, that's all.


----------



## belligerent drunk

polymath said:


> Creation of any kind of life (abiogenesis) probably begins with some amphiphilic compounds forming membranes that enclose a space, because a living organism must be able to contain itself (I don't think there will ever be a living creature that can be dissolved in a liquid solution and then precipitated again, retaining its identity in the process) and that kind of membranes are the physically easiest way to do it. Genetic code will probably not always be in the form of nucleic acids, because it's easy to imagine alternative compounds for information storage, the same applies to the storage of energy in the form of carbohydrates and ATP. Most living creatures that can perceive light will probably have two "eyes" because that's the only way to get an effective stereoscopic vision.



This might be a very far-fetched idea, but it occurred to some at some point. The life on Earth is basically a cascade of physicochemical processes reproducing themselves into similar collections of molecules, ions etc (basically chemistry based life). Would it be possible that there could exist some other form of self-replicating process resembling life? Something dependent on nuclear processes, or some form of radiation? Probably sounds ridiculously stupid, but seems interesting to me nonetheless. The interesting thing about it is we would probably be unable to detect such form of life because the fundamental processes would be so different from ours.


----------



## polymath

belligerent drunk said:


> This might be a very far-fetched idea, but it occurred to some at some point. The life on Earth is basically a cascade of physicochemical processes reproducing themselves into similar collections of molecules, ions etc (basically chemistry based life). Would it be possible that there could exist some other form of self-replicating process resembling life? Something dependent on nuclear processes, or some form of radiation? Probably sounds ridiculously stupid, but seems interesting to me nonetheless. The interesting thing about it is we would probably be unable to detect such form of life because the fundamental processes would be so different from ours.



In the Scifi novel "Dragon's egg" written by the physicist Robert L Forward there is a nuclear matter based life form that lives on the surface of a neutron star. I've seen one Finnish professor write that he thinks this is a really good book, but I haven't read it yet. I think the problem with life occurring in such conditions is that as you know, in high-temperature conditions the Gibbs energy change of processes (which dictates what kind of processes are thermodynamically possible) mostly depends on the entropy change and very little on the enthalpy change. Therefore processes that occur in the nuclear matter of a neutron star would probably tend to higher entropy (disorder) and that would exclude the formation of complex low-entropy structures that are typical of life.

Most radiation fields, including the electromagnetic field, have linear field equations and therefore there can't occur a formation of complex patterns in them. Sufficiently strong gravitational fields are an exception to this, and there are so called "Mixmaster" theories of cosmological geometry where the spacetime curvature behaves chaotically. Maybe there exists some cosmological scale life-form that is "made of" spacetime curvature patterns and spans an area of millions of light years, who knows? (just kidding)


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## Xorkoth

I've often ruminated on the idea that life could exist in drastically different forms.  I mean, here on Earth, due to early factors in the planet's history, life evolved the way it did, carbon-based, with DNA proteins to carry forward information.  But it seems entirely likely to me that in some different set of circumstances it could have evolved in a very different way.  I mean we barely understand consciousness as it is, who's to say what requirement there is for some collection of matter to become self-replicating, let alone conscious.  Ultimately, all we know about is our own planet's life system, so all we can base our knowledge off of is that.  One planet around one star among one galaxy among hundreds of billions of observed galaxies.


----------



## belligerent drunk

polymath said:


> In the Scifi novel "Dragon's egg" written by the physicist Robert L Forward there is a nuclear matter based life form that lives on the surface of a neutron star. I've seen one Finnish professor write that he thinks this is a really good book, but I haven't read it yet. I think the problem with life occurring in such conditions is that as you know, in high-temperature conditions the Gibbs energy change of processes (which dictates what kind of processes are thermodynamically possible) mostly depends on the entropy change and very little on the enthalpy change. Therefore processes that occur in the nuclear matter of a neutron star would probably tend to higher entropy (disorder) and that would exclude the formation of complex low-entropy structures that are typical of life.
> 
> Most radiation fields, including the electromagnetic field, have linear field equations and therefore there can't occur a formation of complex patterns in them. Sufficiently strong gravitational fields are an exception to this, and there are so called "Mixmaster" theories of cosmological geometry where the spacetime curvature behaves chaotically. Maybe there exists some cosmological scale life-form that is "made of" spacetime curvature patterns and spans an area of millions of light years, who knows? (just kidding)



Well, this is what I'm talking about. To us, the fundamental principles of life (such as maintaining low entropy) are necessary, but what if it's only one of the possible configurations? I mean, how much do we really know about the universe?

Of course, this is purely non-scientific speculation, but it's just one of those mindfuck things that have occurred to me when on psychedelics. The main problem is that we may not be able to recognize the life even if its right in front of us. Dark matter anyone? Again, I'm not being serious, just putting a few out-there thoughts out... there (that pun).



Xorkoth said:


> I've often ruminated on the idea that life could  exist in drastically different forms.  I mean, here on Earth, due to  early factors in the planet's history, life evolved the way it did,  carbon-based, with DNA proteins to carry forward information.  But it  seems entirely likely to me that in some different set of circumstances  it could have evolved in a very different way.  I mean we barely  understand consciousness as it is, who's to say what requirement there  is for some collection of matter to become self-replicating, let alone  conscious.  Ultimately, all we know about is our own planet's life  system, so all we can base our knowledge off of is that.  One planet  around one star among one galaxy among hundreds of billions of observed  galaxies.



Yes, our understanding of life is limited to what we have learned about life on Earth. As far as life based on chemistry, I think it's safe to assume that it would _most likely_ have to be carbon-based, because that's the most flexible element in terms of compound formation. But you never know...


----------



## vortech

In related news, I feel like the Earth Coincidence Control Office has been very busy recently...anyone else feel what I'm saying?


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## Kittycat5

No.


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## Xorkoth

belligerent drunk said:


> Yes, our understanding of life is limited to what we have learned about life on Earth. As far as life based on chemistry, I think it's safe to assume that it would _most likely_ have to be carbon-based, because that's the most flexible element in terms of compound formation. But you never know...



Yeah I was going to mention this but decided not to because I think it's a bit colored by our only frame of reference for what life can be.   But you're right, carbon is the perfect molecule to base life on, at least from our perspective, because of how good it is at forming bonds with other molecules.  I wouldn't be surprised if carbon-based would be the most common way for life to form in the universe, but when considering how else life may exist in the universe, unfortunately all we can really do is speculate, at this point.

I hope the earth really has been visited by extraterrestrial intelligent life, because that would mean that some method of travel that circumvents the speed of light limitation must exist, and that would mean that one day it could become feasible for us to actually travel to other places and truly discover things that we can only speculate about.  If it's not possible to travel faster than the speed of light, then I don't see how it's at all feasible that we or any other form of life could ever actually visit another.  The time scales required to travel such overwhelmingly vast distances are too prohibitive.  And once gone, even communication of any kind back and forth would be limited by the speed of light.


----------



## polymath

vortech said:


> In related news, I feel like the Earth Coincidence Control Office has been very busy recently...anyone else feel what I'm saying?



You mean that the Nice terror attack and Turkey coup attempt are a plot by the aliens to change world politics?


----------



## polymath

belligerent drunk said:


> Of course, this is purely non-scientific speculation, but it's just one of those mindfuck things that have occurred to me when on psychedelics. The main problem is that we may not be able to recognize the life even if its right in front of us. Dark matter anyone? Again, I'm not being serious, just putting a few out-there thoughts out... there (that pun).



Here's one of Shulgin's trip reports, about a 64 mg dose of 2C-B:



> (with 64 mg) I found only mild visual and emotional effects at the 20 milligram dose, so I took the remaining 44 milligrams. I was propelled into something not of my choosing. Everything that was alive was completely fearsome. I could look at a picture of a bush, and it was just that, a picture, and it posed no threat to me. Then my gaze moved to the right, and caught a bush growing outside the window, and I was petrified. A life-form I could not understand, and thus could not control. And I felt that my own life-form was not a bit more controllable. This was from the comments of a physician who assured me that he saw no neurological concerns during this dramatic and frightening experience.



It's strange that he saw an ordinary plant as if it were some terrifying alien life form...


----------



## belligerent drunk

Xorkoth said:


> I hope the earth really has been visited by extraterrestrial intelligent life, because that would mean that some method of travel that circumvents the speed of light limitation must exist, and that would mean that one day it could become feasible for us to actually travel to other places and truly discover things that we can only speculate about.  If it's not possible to travel faster than the speed of light, then I don't see how it's at all feasible that we or any other form of life could ever actually visit another.  The time scales required to travel such overwhelmingly vast distances are too prohibitive.  And once gone, even communication of any kind back and forth would be limited by the speed of light.



Even traveling at the speed of light, it would take immense amounts of time to get from one distant object to another (hence the term light year - a distance light travels in a year, and many objects are many-many-many light years away). I know polymath can expand on the subject a little more, but using some type of special spacetime curvature, it may be able to "connect" very distant points in spacetime so that you could travel between them within reasonable timeframe. Again, this sounds like nonsense coming from me, because I know little of the subject, but I've read of something like this being theorized.


----------



## Xorkoth

Yeah that's what I'm thinking, if it's possible to bend spacetime somehow, by employing "wormholes" or whatever, that would be the only way I could imagine to actually travel those distances.  I mean the nearest star to us is 4 years away at the speed of light... billions of stars in our galaxy alone, and it seems likely that most stars wouldn't have life.  To travel across our galaxy, which is far from the largest, is around 100,000 years at the speed of light, and to travel between galaxies... it's utterly unfeasible to do so due to the distances unless some sort of "warping" via folding is possible.  Like I said, I do hope it's possible.  If it is, then it's possible alien life forms have visited Earth, if it's not, then I think it's not possible they have ever done so nor will ever do so.  Nor that we will ever do so.


----------



## polymath

If you were to travel to the nearest star with speed 0.99c (99% of speed of light), you would not experience the travel to take 4 years, your perception of the time would be shorter because of the time dilation effect of special relativity. Once you'd come back to Earth, you would find out that at least 8 years have passed, though. By moving at a speed close enough to the speed of light, you could travel any distance in your lifetime. This effect explains why high-energy muons formed in the upper atmosphere can reach the earth's surface even though muon's t1/2 is so short that they should decay on their way down.

A good mental image of this is that because time and space coordinates are treated equally in relativity, you can not only use kinetic energy to travel faster through space, you can also use it to travel faster forward in time without aging in the process yourself.

The idea of bending the spacetime around a spaceship to be able to travel faster than light is the subject of NASA scientist Harold White's research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_G._White 

Making that "warp drive" would require exotic matter with negative mass energy density, though, which is highly speculative.


----------



## belligerent drunk

Considering the possibility of attaining close-to-light-speed speeds, wouldn't the ever-increasing mass be a problem?

Again, my quasi-scientific gut-feeling tells me that the making of spacetime "wormholes" or some sort of connections between distant regions in which to travel is a more realistic possibility than going for light speed travel.


----------



## polymath

belligerent drunk said:


> Considering the possibility of attaining close-to-light-speed speeds, wouldn't the ever-increasing mass be a problem?
> 
> Again, my quasi-scientific gut-feeling tells me that the making of spacetime "wormholes" or some sort of connections between distant regions in which to travel is a more realistic possibility than going for light speed travel.



The actual mass of an object is really a velocity-independent constant. The concept of relativistic mass that increases at high speeds is just an informal way to make some equations of special relativity simpler. http://sasuke.econ.hc.keio.ac.jp/~ken/physics-faq/mass.html

The easiest way to attain speeds close to the speed of light would probably be to use photon propulsion.


----------



## belligerent drunk

Yes, rest mass is velocity-independent, but wouldn't the "apparent" mass increase still be a problem? Photons travel at light speed because they lack rest mass, but particles that do have rest mass can't really attain light speed or otherwise their mass would approach infinity. That's the problem I'm talking about.


----------



## polymath

^ Yes, the energy needed to accelerate a substantial amount of mass to 0.99c would be very large,


----------



## Kittycat5

Have you two heard of Breakthrough Starshot?


----------



## polymath

Kittycat5 said:


> Have you two heard of Breakthrough Starshot?



I've heard of something like that but I didn't know the name of the project.


----------



## MocCozmiK

I definitely believe in aliens. I do not however believe that they are visiting earth, abducting people. at least I have never had any alien visitations. Science has discovered that majority of stars in the sky have planets orbiting around them. Like our own sun has planets. I don't know if alien life would be anything like human beings. I think those looking for life on other planets are looking for something similar to what we humans are like, which I think that is looking in the wrong direction. 

However if aliens were to come here and ask me if I would go with them and leave earth forever. I would probably say ABSOLUTLEY!


----------



## neurotic

polymath said:


> Creation of any kind of life (abiogenesis) probably begins with some amphiphilic compounds forming membranes that enclose a space, because a living organism must be able to contain itself (I don't think there will ever be a living creature that can be dissolved in a liquid solution and then precipitated again, retaining its identity in the process) and that kind of membranes are the physically easiest way to do it. Genetic code will probably not always be in the form of nucleic acids, because it's easy to imagine alternative compounds for information storage, the same applies to the storage of energy in the form of carbohydrates and ATP. Most living creatures that can perceive light will probably have two "eyes" because that's the only way to get an effective stereoscopic vision.



Even lifeforms built on those, the same from which we are built, can be very different from us. I mean: plants. And vision is just one possibility. Aren't there blind fishes in the depths of the ocean? In their environment, which is not so far from ours, vision is irrelevant - hell, plants share their environment with us and they too don't have vision. Think how different the environments out there can be.

Anyway, even though now that I reread my post it kinda looks like so, my original intent wasn't to conjecture how aliens _should[\i] look like - i.e. "they are very certainly not carbon-based!" -, but rather that given how little we know - something which Xorkoth went on about later, and I agree - and how such a big of a mindfuck everything just is, it seems unlikely that we can conjecture at all how they look like, and that in the popular conception of aliens, it is implicit that they must be similar to us.

What b_drunk and Xorkoth talked about is exactly the kind of stuff that I had in mind. Surely sounds far fetched, but, I mean (even though this argument is very cliché...), computers or man having stepped on the moon definitely would've sounded far fetched too, or at least esoteric, to someone living in past times. So, yeah..._


----------



## arcturiansaremyfam

Absolutely. In my experience i know There are several deifferent species, many of them related to us. We are actually direct offshoots of what might be known as the elohim or the seeders of this  planet. Many of them exist at a higher vibrational frequency, in different dimensions, although they can travel between them with ease. Keep in mind when i talk about dimensions they are neither time spaces nor places, but states of being, as mainstream science is begining to realize. There is no time or space constrictions in the 5th dimension, and they are beyond gender here as well, representing beings of pure light often projecting themselves as previous physicalized incarnations.
Look up bashar, a first contact specialist channeled by daryl anka with love and light.


----------



## LandsUnknown

polymath said:


> If you were to travel to the nearest star with speed 0.99c (99% of speed of light), you would not experience the travel to take 4 years, your perception of the time would be shorter because of the time dilation effect of special relativity. Once you'd come back to Earth, you would find out that at least 8 years have passed, though. By moving at a speed close enough to the speed of light, you could travel any distance in your lifetime. This effect explains why high-energy muons formed in the upper atmosphere can reach the earth's surface even though muon's t1/2 is so short that they should decay on their way down.
> 
> A good mental image of this is that because time and space coordinates are treated equally in relativity, you can not only use kinetic energy to travel faster through space, you can also use it to travel faster forward in time without aging in the process yourself.
> 
> The idea of bending the spacetime around a spaceship to be able to travel faster than light is the subject of NASA scientist Harold White's research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_G._White
> 
> Making that "warp drive" would require exotic matter with negative mass energy density, though, which is highly speculative.



It would indeed by very difficult to travel all that distance, but as you said near the speed of light one wouldn't age very much while on all these journeys.  So, I suppose it's possible that to aliens visiting Earth, to us it would seem like it took them tens of thousands of years to get here while to them it was a mere minutes or hours if they were close enough to the speed of light.  The warp drive idea could completely circumvent time, space, and even reality altogether.  With artificially created wormholes, it could even be possible to travel into dimensions other than our own.  So, it would even open up the possibility that aliens may not even be from "space" as we know it but from another dimension entirely.  With wormholes, the possibilities literally become infinite and beyond what our consciousness is able to comprehend.


----------



## JessFR

I believe you're perhaps mistaken. Wormholes are not quite that extraordinary. Although definitely fascinating. Using them for transport (traversable wormholes) and time travel are plausible. But further than that and we're getting very speculative.

Other dimensions would still involve space, just unusual movement through it. You may be thinking of other realities, based on context.
We are not in one dimension, we're residing in 4, 4 dimensions of movement in spacetime. There may be more according to some theories, but they're not separate from us, we just don't use them as macrobeings, but small particles may.

Without beating the speed of light issue one way or another, be it by actually going faster somehow, or cheating it by getting somewhere faster than light without actually going faster at any point in any frame of reference, you're screwed. Your limits to how far you can go are highly limited. Just a tiny portion of just our galaxy.


As for aliens existing. Absolutely I'm sure they do, the math's and odds speak for themselves. Alien life likely sprinkles the galaxy and the universe, and intelligent life sprinkles that.


----------



## Cosmic Trigger

OP,  I've come to believe that the idea of aliens is very plausible. I've done lot of research on the early technology of man and they could do things in cutting and moving hugely heavy stone etc. that we don't have a clue about.  The Sumerians left stories of how aliens actually created modern man to mine minerals for them and they seem to describe some modern technologies and astronomical knowledge that should have been impossible. Also stories of what sound like nuclear warfare which also might be in some Indian texts. So yeah I'm up on the fence at least.


----------



## bomber

Well, people consider the possibility of a planet being able to form life, so they get sure that there are aliens. But I think when we talk about alliens we mean a civilization out of earth. I think there is no something like that,
because it's so much of a long road from germs to a creature that can form a civilatiation, that the possibilities say no.


----------



## Xorkoth

But the sheer size of the universe suggests that nearly anything is not only possible, but likely.  However, given the extremely narrow time window that is likely for such a civilization, and the different times that a planet would have begun to develop life, I think civilization is probably sparsely peppered throughout the known universe.  But given there are at least *1 hundred billion* galaxies in the observable universe, and billions to hundreds of billions of stars in EVERY SINGLE ONE... well, the math is staggering.  It renders nearly any probability almost certain.


----------



## crazybollweevil

Aliens=demons=angels=nephilim


----------



## belligerent drunk

Xorkoth said:


> But the sheer size of the universe suggests that nearly anything is not only possible, but likely.  However, given the extremely narrow time window that is likely for such a civilization, and the different times that a planet would have begun to develop life, I think civilization is probably sparsely peppered throughout the known universe.  But given there are at least *1 hundred billion* galaxies in the observable universe, and billions to hundreds of billions of stars in EVERY SINGLE ONE... well, the math is staggering.  It renders nearly any probability almost certain.



I imagine it on a spacetime plot. If you use a space plot (XYZ) and consider today (this moment), then we may be the only life in the universe, or one of the few. But if you use a spacetime plot (which includes time), then I think there are a lot of lives in this universe. We may not cross each other either on the temporal scale, or the space ones.


----------



## Xorkoth

I think honestly given the numbers of stars (in the order of a hundred billion squared, I don't even know how to describe that number), we're probably not even the only intelligent life right now.  I mean the size is absolutely staggering.  But I do think we're incredibly unlikely to ever come across any other intelligent life because it's likely still extremely rare at any given point in time in any given location.


----------



## Cosmic Trigger

This is one of the better videos IMO on the subject of aliens and why they were likely here a long time ago actually.  It's long but you'll be convinced there is something very wrong with what they've been telling us about human history in the first 15 minutes.  If you're not you can skip the rest. It's pretty interesting IMO.


----------



## belligerent drunk

Xorkoth said:


> I think honestly given the numbers of stars (in the order of a hundred billion squared, I don't even know how to describe that number), we're probably not even the only intelligent life right now.  I mean the size is absolutely staggering.  But I do think we're incredibly unlikely to ever come across any other intelligent life because it's likely still extremely rare at any given point in time in any given location.



Yes, as I said in my previous post, there may be more than this life at this point in time. But information travels slowly, at the speed of light. If that other life is in another galaxy, say 10 million lightyears (Mly) apart, they will only find out about us in 10 million years from now - chances are, humans will not be the same, if existing at all. And that's IF the electromagnetic radiation typical to our intelligent life even makes it there, and they're able to receive it, decypher it and whatnot.


----------



## Xorkoth

Ah yes, good point.  I think it's only remotely likely aliens have visited us if faster than light travel is possible somehow, say, via black holes or something.


----------



## Nixiam

On some very remote chance. Matter doesn't go faster than light speed iirc.


----------



## Xorkoth

Well like if it's somehow possible to fold spacetime a la wormholes, or something we haven't even imagined.  It's possible something like that is real.


----------



## Nixiam

Agreed.


----------



## Bagseed

belligerent drunk said:


> Yes, as I said in my previous post, there may be more than this life at this point in time. But information travels slowly, at the speed of life. If that other life is in another galaxy, say 10 million lightyears (Mly) apart, they will only find out about us in 10 million years from now - chances are, humans will not be the same, if existing at all. And that's IF the electromagnetic radiation typical to our intelligent life even makes it there, and they're able to receive it, decypher it and whatnot.


well to send information per EM radiation, the signal has to have some ordered structure (pulses) in any case, it cannot be a truly random signal (like the CMBR), so even if they won't be able to decypher it, it will be obvious that it is artificial and not a natural phenomenon. (if their scientific knowledge is advanced enough)

but yeah, regarding the timescales information needs to overcome, you are completely right.

ad wormholes: apparantly the equations for an einstein-rosen-bridge (wormholes are theoretically two entangled black holes) suggest that, while theoretically being a bridge between two different points in space, you'd be still trapped inside a black hole (or rather between two black holes), so if wormholes exist, you might be able to go inside, but never be able to exit the other side. at best you could meet somebody in the middle who enters te other black hole, of course if you don't get killed while entering the black hole.

but I am no expert on this, just saw this in a stanford physics lecture (see youtube: leonard susskind EPR)


----------



## swilow

Wouldnt energy also travel through a wormhole causing a feedback loop?


----------



## belligerent drunk

Bagseed said:


> well to send information per EM radiation, the signal has to have some  ordered structure (pulses) in any case, it cannot be a truly random  signal (like the CMBR), so even if they won't be able to decypher it, it  will be obvious that it is artificial and not a natural phenomenon. (if  their scientific knowledge is advanced enough)



Yeah, I didn't really mean they have to translate the EM radiation they're receiving into a South Park episode. What I meant is that they'd need to somehow make sure it isn't just cosmic noise coming from whatever source. I'm not much of a physicist. What would happen to all sorts of EM radiation being currently emitted from Earth if it were to travel such distances? Would the intensity be enough to even detect it?


----------



## swilow

I imagine the and repetitive nature of the signal may be what would make human radio transmissions obviously artificial as bagseed said (though the whole idea of pulsars somewhat tests that idea). I guess if a lifeform had been monitoring the skies for at least, what, 100 years they would have noticed the sudden change in signals emerging from our universal address. Amongst randomness, order really jumps out. 

Isn't that essentially what SETI are looking for? 

As a love of sci-fi, I desperately want to believe that, when I gaze upon the endless heavens, I am potentially processing photons emitted by a massive galactic empire somewhere far, far away. In fact, I think that the size of the universe means that some kind of sort of sprawling civilisation probably dominates a tiny corner somewhere. I bet the think they are gods chosen too


----------



## belligerent drunk

My thought was that there are a lot of sources of different long-wave EM radiation on Earth, that maybe from the outside it looks like complete random garbage. But maybe not, right?


----------



## Cloudie

I don't believe or simply conceive that there could be any other intelligent life outside of Earth.

We're all just a really beautiful one-off aberration IMO.


----------



## Nixiam

I'd be conceded of I thought there weren't a possibility that in the entire universe and one hundred billion galaxies, the only life that exists is on a tilted rock in a small solar system.


----------



## Xorkoth

Yeah probability-wise I think it's ludicrous to think that life only exists on one planet around one star in one galaxy out of a hundred billion galaxies (that we've detected).  Strikes me as similar to the religious idea that we're so special that we're god's chosen people, the center of the universe.

We know for sure that intelligent life arose here... so the possibilities are either that it would arise occasionally elsewhere too in the effectively infinite universe (a hundred billion galaxies?  The scale is staggering, incomprehensibly vast), through the process of incremental evolution, or that there is some intelligent creator who decided for some reason to wave its hand and create us here on this planet, and nowhere else.


----------



## Cloudie

I'd like to believe that intelligent life exists elsewhere too. However if everyone thought this planet, our home called Earth, was indeed the only planet ever capable of producing such an amazing 'thing' called Life, would everyone start treating it a little better?


----------



## Xorkoth

Hmmm... maybe.  I kinda doubt that.  I mean we don't currently have the capacity to move elsewhere, given a lot of time and effort we could probably colonize Mars but we're not there yet.  And yet, we're steadily fucking the place up.

I wouldn't want to go live somewhere else anyway.  I feel like I'm part of the Earth.  I'd love to be able to visit other planets, but I feel like I'd feel unimaginably homesick.


----------



## Nixiam

Humans have been faced with many other incentives and the majority fail.


----------



## bomber

Cosmic Trigger said:


> This is one of the better videos IMO on the subject of aliens and why they were likely here a long time ago actually.  It's long but you'll be convinced there is something very wrong with what they've been telling us about human history in the first 15 minutes.  If you're not you can skip the rest. It's pretty interesting IMO.



Evolution therory realy is a myth. It comes against the dna facts.


----------



## Nixiam

How so?

Evolution theory has been modified in few areas slightly to conform with genetic code.

What you said doesn't make any sense.


----------



## bomber

Nixiam said:


> How so?
> 
> Evolution theory has been modified in few areas slightly to conform with genetic code.
> 
> What you said doesn't make any sense.



The area of a spiece will not change it's dna no matter how many generations will come. The variety of spieces has to do with genetic recombinations.The fact that alive creatures tend to have characteristics which alow them to survive in the area they live is because the creatures that don't have those caracteristics won't survive.


----------



## Nixiam

Yes. Thank you for explaining adaptation to me.

I understand basic prinicples like genetic variability and geneitic diversity.

You still didn't defend your earlier statement.

And yes, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) does change with generations.

I could change mine right this moment with some kind of mutagen.


----------



## swilow

I think the fact that DNA mutates is a good argument against the selfish gene theory.


----------



## Bagseed

swilow said:


> Wouldnt energy also travel through a wormhole causing a feedback loop?


I am not really sure what you mean by that... energy is a concept used in science to talk about physical processes (work, heat, radiation....), it is not an entity ( at least in my understanding). "Energy is the potential of a system to do work".



belligerent drunk said:


> Yeah, I didn't really mean they have to translate the EM radiation they're receiving into a South Park episode. What I meant is that they'd need to somehow make sure it isn't just cosmic noise coming from whatever source. I'm not much of a physicist. What would happen to all sorts of EM radiation being currently emitted from Earth if it were to travel such distances? Would the intensity be enough to even detect it?


well there are techniques to remove noise from the signal you actually want to monitor; otherwise we couldn't have done a precise "map" of the temperature of the CMBR. and yeah, signals get redshifted and weaker in intensity the farther they travel; but as far as I know, our current radiotelescopes are capable of detecting the tiniest signals coming from space.

ad the signals coming from pulsars: I am not sure, but isn't that a smoothly oscillating signal at a certain frequency? to send actual information, you need to use a linear combination of a lot of frequencies which corresponds to a certain "language". I don't believe that any scientifically capable society in the universe would mistake a natural signal for an artificial one.


----------



## Nixiam

Perhaps he's referring to EM radiation, which is also described as light energy.

The terms are quite blurred, but the most common definition and scientifically accepted one is that energy is the ability of ___ to do work.


----------



## xbandit07x

There are some form of aliens, why else would the Government have people hired to come online to spread false information. Hilary Clinton even said if she wins this election she will reveal what we know about our interactions with extraterrestrial life. We do not know what these aliens are. deceptions maybe.


----------



## JessFR

swilow said:


> I imagine the and repetitive nature of the signal may be what would make human radio transmissions obviously artificial as bagseed said (though the whole idea of pulsars somewhat tests that idea). I guess if a lifeform had been monitoring the skies for at least, what, 100 years they would have noticed the sudden change in signals emerging from our universal address. Amongst randomness, order really jumps out.
> 
> Isn't that essentially what SETI are looking for?
> 
> As a love of sci-fi, I desperately want to believe that, when I gaze upon the endless heavens, I am potentially processing photons emitted by a massive galactic empire somewhere far, far away. In fact, I think that the size of the universe means that some kind of sort of sprawling civilisation probably dominates a tiny corner somewhere. I bet the think they are gods chosen too



I'm sure there are many many intelligent alien species out there. But no, they won't hear us any time soon.

Yes the signals from our planet are obviously artificial, but it's not going to be heard anytime soon. The speed of light is way too slow.

By the time the aliens version of seti detect us will be looooong after all of us, our children, our children children, all long dead.

It's only a hundred years if the aliens are in our solar system already. Odds are they are ffaaaaaar further away and it'll take a long time before our artificial signals reach them. Right now somewhere out there if they find out planet they're looking at it from likely at least millions of years in the past. As we are doing for them.

In other words, if seti found alien signals from a planet a hundred million lightyears from us, that means those aliens first broadcast those signals a hundred million years ago. And unfortunately the universe is only getting bigger, we're all getting further away from each other. And it's happening faster and faster.


----------



## Xorkoth

To be totally accurate, light takes about 5 hours to get from the sun to Pluto, so about 10 hours from one end to the other (well I guess if you count the oort cloud, it become much longer, almost halfway to the next star so about 2 years, maybe you were counting that).  But yeah I agree with you, the distances are prohibitive for any communication that relies on energy/waves to reach anything around other stars, let alone another galaxy.


----------



## snazzy_sn

strictly speaking no.
i do believe there is life on other planets but i don't think we have the ability to travel that far therefore culture/information is transmitted through radio waves.
or some shit.

don't joke about aliens.


----------



## CFC

swilow said:


> I think the fact that DNA mutates is a good argument against the selfish gene theory.



What do you mean mate? How so?


----------



## JessFR

Xorkoth said:


> To be totally accurate, light takes about 5 hours to get from the sun to Pluto, so about 10 hours from one end to the other (well I guess if you count the oort cloud, it become much longer, almost halfway to the next star so about 2 years, maybe you were counting that).  But yeah I agree with you, the distances are prohibitive for any communication that relies on energy/waves to reach anything around other stars, let alone another galaxy.



I don't have the numbers on hand, but my recollection is the odds of life, even intelligent life, is still very high for elsewhere in the milky way. That considerably reduces the distance from absurdly ridiculously infeasible to just laughably ridiculously infeasible.


----------



## swilow

CFC said:


> What do you mean mate? How so?



Well, if the ultimate 'point' behind life on earth is to disperse and retain specific genes, the fact that we live in a highly mutagenic environment makes it statistically improbable that any single gene will persist unaltered for any long period of time. They will change according to the environment and the proclivities of the organisms housing them. So, rather than being the actual gene that is being preserved, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the 'point' of life on earth is the persistence of DNA as a molecule. Unaltered, unbound, non-coding, just a 'simple' protein found in every living thing. The information that is 'written' by DNA using genes changes over time but the actual language of this writing does not. If a gene is a word, and DNA is the letters, we see that words can change but the letters do not. I would imagine that the unchanging element here, DNA itself, is of primacy rather than the words it creates. 

Bear in mind, I have very limited understanding of biology but find it interesting.


----------



## Jabberwocky

swilow said:


> Bear in mind



That's exactly what you should have in mind. water bears (aka tardigrades). they have been in the news the last couple days. 



> Japanese researchers just published eight years of work isolating a particular tardigrade-unique protein that stops their DNA from mutating when bombarded with radiation. The team was even able to use the protein to protect human DNA from radiation when the gene was inserted into human cells.



how-water-bears-can-survive-massive-amounts-of-radiation/

sorry for the opportunistic segue swilow but I thought it was funny. l was just reading about these weird guys today and the whole panspermia hypothesis mentioned earlier in this thread. Certain genes do seem to offer remarkable protection against mutations from x-rays and even cosmic rays, but I have no idea if this has any bearing on the selfish gene theory. They've sequenced the entire genetic code of one species of tardigrade called _Ramazzottius varieornatus_, so guess that puts us one step closer to understanding what makes these weird creatures so unusual.


----------



## Bagseed

swilow said:


> Well, if the ultimate 'point' behind life on earth is to disperse and retain specific genes, the fact that we live in a highly mutagenic environment makes it statistically improbable that any single gene will persist unaltered for any long period of time. They will change according to the environment and the proclivities of the organisms housing them. So, rather than being the actual gene that is being preserved, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the 'point' of life on earth is the persistence of DNA as a molecule. Unaltered, unbound, non-coding, just a 'simple' protein found in every living thing. The information that is 'written' by DNA using genes changes over time but the actual language of this writing does not. If a gene is a word, and DNA is the letters, we see that words can change but the letters do not. I would imagine that the unchanging element here, DNA itself, is of primacy rather than the words it creates.
> 
> Bear in mind, I have very limited understanding of biology but find it interesting.


just because I'm a smartass and cannot help it: DNA is not a protein, it is a nucleic acid . proteins are macromolecules made from amino acids.


----------



## Nixiam

And in this, nucleic acids are formed by necleotides, which are monomers like amino acids (which are the monomers of  proteins/enzymes)

DNA and RNA are the primary examples of nucleic acids.


----------



## LandsUnknown

JessFR said:


> I'm sure there are many many intelligent alien species out there. But no, they won't hear us any time soon.
> 
> Yes the signals from our planet are obviously artificial, but it's not going to be heard anytime soon. The speed of light is way too slow.
> 
> By the time the aliens version of seti detect us will be looooong after all of us, our children, our children children, all long dead.
> 
> It's only a hundred years if the aliens are in our solar system already. Odds are they are ffaaaaaar further away and it'll take a long time before our artificial signals reach them. Right now somewhere out there if they find out planet they're looking at it from likely at least millions of years in the past. As we are doing for them.
> 
> In other words, if seti found alien signals from a planet a hundred million lightyears from us, that means those aliens first broadcast those signals a hundred million years ago. And unfortunately the universe is only getting bigger, we're all getting further away from each other. And it's happening faster and faster.



A lot of people fail to consider what you mentioned, light doesn't travel instantly through the universe.  It travels at a speed that frankly doesn't cover much distance very quickly.  It literally takes billions of years for light to make it's way through a lot of the universe.  So, I definitely agree that broadcasts probably haven't reached any intelligent life inhabited planets.  There are several hundred planets within the right distance (e.g. 80 light years or so) that could be theoretically habitable (e.g. the right distance from their star).  However, life is likely statistically rare in on planets in the universe...... intelligent life at least.  When you think of the fact that there are millions of types of other animals and only one species of 'intelligent' life, it seems unlikely that among these particular stars there would be intelligent life with the ability to detect an unimaginably faint radio signal and listen in on it.

Although, I would imagine ones that are visiting Earth have likely listened to radio/television signals, as if they were visiting Earth they'd be able to simply turn on the local radio stations like everybody else ..... kidding in a way, yet also probably true if they are indeed visiting us, which I would be inclined to think is the case.


----------



## Yourbaker

I have a question from way back in this thread but anyone could answer it. 

If a planet has a debris cloud of dust gas etc will it always pull into a ring structure on the planets equator?


----------



## LandsUnknown

Yourbaker said:


> I have a question from way back in this thread but anyone could answer it.
> 
> If a planet has a debris cloud of dust gas etc will it always pull into a ring structure on the planets equator?



No, not always.  There are different ways the ring structure can form.  Sometimes, the ring structure can have a different orbital pattern.  Sometimes, this pattern causes the ring structure to form from pole to pole rather than around the equator, or follow a different orbital path altogether.  Uranus is an example of a planet that has a ring structure that is not an equatorial orbit.  Additionally, as planets are forming, they always have dust around them.  Sometimes, this dust ultimately makes it's way to the planet's surface.  Earth had a temporary ring structure while it was forming, but the material within it's thin 'ring structure' has made it's way to the surface.  There are many different factors that go into what orbital path a planet's rings will follow, along with whether or not the rings are temporary or permanent.  It is very difficult to predict how rings will orbit a planet, if at all, without the use of computer modeling.


----------



## belligerent drunk

swilow said:


> Well, if the ultimate 'point' behind life on earth is to disperse and retain specific genes, the fact that we live in a highly mutagenic environment makes it statistically improbable that any single gene will persist unaltered for any long period of time. They will change according to the environment and the proclivities of the organisms housing them. So, rather than being the actual gene that is being preserved, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the 'point' of life on earth is the persistence of DNA as a molecule. Unaltered, unbound, non-coding, just a 'simple' protein found in every living thing. The information that is 'written' by DNA using genes changes over time but the actual language of this writing does not. If a gene is a word, and DNA is the letters, we see that words can change but the letters do not. I would imagine that the unchanging element here, DNA itself, is of primacy rather than the words it creates.
> 
> Bear in mind, I have very limited understanding of biology but find it interesting.



If the genome (/DNA) of organisms was left unchanged, then evolution couldn't take place. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, mutations actually aid survival in the long term. You have to remember that sexual reproduction produces an organism with different genome than its parents. Miosis (the cell devision mechanism which produces sperm and eggs) purposefully produces cells with different genetic makeup than its parent cells - as opposed to mitosis, the usual cell division in an organism, which produces cells with identical genome.

Mutations over time change the genome of an organism, but that only harms that particular organism, and it usually manifests later in life, after it's reproduced - in the form of cancer for example. Mutations and miosis allow for daughter organisms to have different genetic makeups, and as such (on the big scale) allow for natural selection to take place.

What you say about gene survival is debatable. If there was _random_ selection, then individual genes would have little likelihood of survival (assuming mutations etc). However, the mechanism for evolution is natural selection: organisms with appropriate genetic makeups can survive and reproduce (again, on the big scale). That means if a particular gene is beneficial for said organism in its environment, then organisms with that gene will be more likely to survive and give offsprings. While less beneficial genes will be slowly eliminated because of mutations etc (because organisms carrying it will reproduce less likely).

Evolution is a fascinating subject IMO.

E: I may have misunderstood you. Your understanding of the DNA structure and its purpose is correct: the basepairs and whatnot is like letters, and the sequence is the "words". Obviously the structure doesn't change, only the sequence (similarly to proteins). However, gene is a sequence of basepairs, and that sequence is what is responsible for the properties of that gene. That is what changes.

In that sense, the structure of DNA and RNA is universal on Earth - every known organism has the same structure of their DNA and/or RNA (albeit different sequences) - but that also holds true to some degree in the case of proteins. There are a little over 20 proteinogenic amino acids, and it's pretty universal throughout life on Earth.


----------



## jammin83

So if aliens start showing up, how would they have gotten here? 

presumably from a galaxy far away, they would have to have a really fast ship that could travel really really far and support life or...open a portal/wormhole or something? 

seems eventually you have to start talking the same kind of crazy when discussing these things. 

I watched that documentary on netflix on SETI recently and it talked about how meditating helped them to make contact, there was a whole scene where it looked like they were all tripping balls and meditating and ufos started popping up lol. plenty of bs but worth a spin. 

IMO aliens are not going to be a good thing for us. I think this whole idea of aliens is something that has been put into our heads for most of our lives. I think 'aliens' have been sharing secret knowledge with us for a long time. I think the ancient cultures that have been involved with 'aliens' destroyed themselves. I think they are a lot smarter than us and know things about us that we will never understand. Throughout history I think they have been sharing things with certain folks and have had significant influence. Aliens are bad news lol. 

I am of the unpopular opinion that 'aliens' are the offspring of fallen angels and man. soul-less detestable beasts. i know that sounds ridiculous, but i think its the reality of the situation. i think the abduction scenarios illustrate how benevolent these beings are. plenty of abductees are beyond horrified. only one name stops it from happening. I think in the next few years, 'first contact' will be revealed to the public. this will be way past the beginning of the end.The vatican being involved with 'aliens' should make you concerned. something to keep an eye on. 

I see UFOs where I live pretty regularly. it kinda creeps me out tbh. other people I know have seen them too so im not just making that up. when I start talking about them my ears start ringing in a distinctly different way then from loud music or something. happening right now. don't know what to think about it really. 

so if the greys are real...whats next? reptilians? usually seen in the same visions and talked about in the same breadth. reptilians and greys can also be linked to the occult. teenage mutant ninja turtles (note what their names are), bowser, and other seemingly benign pop culture fads. plenty of artwork by certain artists that have reptile paintings and statues, etc. seems to be some weird references is all. cant help but feel 'aliens' are part of a much larger picture with some pretty dark intentions.


----------



## LandsUnknown

jammin83 said:


> when I start talking about them my ears start ringing in a distinctly different way then from loud music or something. happening right now. don't know what to think about it really.



I believe in aliens as well, and I have also seen UFOs.  However, I honestly think the ears ringing thing is just your own fears talking.  Your ears ring because you are expecting your ears to ring when you talk about them.  It sounds different because you expect it to sound different.  I'm not saying your crazy or anything, because honestly I can understand where you'd get paranoid like that and I have too on occasion about similar sorts of things.  Aliens are scary and very mysterious, and when something is scary sometimes people imagine things and/or jump to an even scarier conclusion.


----------



## vortech

I've actually had very similar experience and conclusions as jammin regarding the ear ringing. Its just for a few seconds when it happens, and its not like tinnitus, my hearing is damn good. But when it happens it seems to be like a signal I interpret using intuition based on the circumstances around it. 
Or its just a glitch in my head, a resonance from a feedback loop, divide by zero etc.

The question for me anymore is not whether I believe aliens exist, the question is in what form do they take (I suspect it could be weirder than we think of humanoid aliens in 3d form) , what is their role and intentions for humanity and/or Earth, and their greater significance in the Universe.


----------



## Xorkoth

That's weird, because when I was a kid, I became convinced that we were being invaded by aliens.  They were invisible but I could see them as sort of heat-distortion outlines, and they could be killed with loud noise.  I could tell they were around when my ears would suddenly start ringing.

I don't believe I was really experiencing aliens, I was a kid with a wild imagination.  But strange that the ear-ringing thing has been mentioned.


----------



## LSD-Magic

I've seen tons of UFO's. Unfortunately I never had a camera to capture them.


----------



## LandsUnknown

LSD-Magic said:


> I've seen tons of UFO's. Unfortunately I never had a camera to capture them.



I've seen them too.  I saw one in Sedona, Arizona while on vacation.  I saw others where I grew up in upstate New York.  I haven't had a camera either, but they were there


----------



## swilow

You'd think there would me a huge amount of UFO footage given the prevalence of camera-phones these days...


----------



## JessFR

And youd think wed finally have something more than grainy unidentified lights.

UFO= unidentified.

Unidentified doesn't mean its aliens, it means we don't know what it is. Not the same.

I think many people are way way too imaginative when they imagine aliens. And it's because of an ignorance of physics. If you have no understand of physics, the chemistry of life, etc, every insane notion seems equally plausible even if it's not.

Here's where I'm placing my money.

1. Aliens exist.
2. They haven't ever visited us. It's a logical fallacy to say we advanced too quickly, we have no basis for comparison with other intelligent species and it has the same problem god has. If the aliens gave is knowledge, who gave them it? More aliens? Or perhaps they discovered it on their own like I think we did.
3. They are almost certainly carbon based. And if they are intelligent macro organisms like us they're definitely carbon based.
4. They are not interdimensional, because most people who suggest that can't articulate what the word dimension means either in a scientific sense or even what it means to them. Of if they can vaguely say what it means to them, again it is so wildly out of the box speculative as to be like discussing what came before the big bang. So speculative with no evidence and this a waste of brain time.
5. There are probably intelligent aliens throughout our galaxy and substantially more microbial and similar life. You got any idea how freaken big the milky way is? Or how far away other galaxies are? Although on the other hand once you beat the speed of light in a practical way, I suppose there's no immediately obvious reason you need consider distance as much a factor as we conventionally would.
6. They are probably a lot more like us than most people would expect. I just hope that in order to become advanced enough to travel to other planets assuming it can be feasibly done. That by that point most intelligent races will have either worked out their violent impulses by that point in their technological development or blown themselves up before they got there. And so hopefully they aren't a threat to us. Apart from that though they'll be a lot like what we see in animals on our planet.


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## belligerent drunk

^ good post, Jess. A few things I don't necessarily agree with. 



JessFR said:


> 6. They are probably a lot more like us than most people would expect.



Why so? I'm not saying you should open your mind so that your brains fall out, but sometimes we're very limited in our imagination of what _could_ be because of the environment we live in - we try to base it off things we know/see. If another life were to start on another Earth, then, small fluctuations in environment conditions aside, it would probably evolve to be similar or even identical to us (I mean our whole ecosystem). However, the problem is, we don't really know for sure what environments are conducive to life. Yes, we look for Earth-like planets, but even then, do we really know how much of an impact on evolution small differences in environment would have?

I guess a strong point in your favor is that for a species to be intelligent, it has to have the ability to alter its environment, and the better it can - well, the better. The reason is simple: the thing we call intelligence in us is in essence our ability to use our brain to predict future physical events, and use our limbs to construct/orchestrate such events to our advantage (which are among the most advanced for this purpose among life). A simple example is to take seeds/whatever of a plant, and place them into the ground with certain intervals - our brain knows that that will result in the plants growing and producing food. Basically everything we do is just re-arrange our environment. Cooking: place an object on a hot plate for a period of time, then remove it, to have it cooked. Anyway, point being, without the physical ability to alter one's environment, there is not much use for "intelligence", so the two have to go hand-in-hand. And having an organism with limbs like us seems to be pretty top-notch, so it's likely that another intelligent species would have to look similar.

Still, I don't know.



> 3. They are almost certainly carbon based. And if they are intelligent macro organisms like us they're definitely carbon based.



Again, I'm just playing devil's advocate, but this may not be true either. I'm not talking about ridiculous concepts such as silicon-based humanoid life. Silicon chemistry is wildly different from carbon, especially its compounds with itself, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. However, the reason I'm not certain your statement is true is because, first, how do we define life? Again, to us the easiest, and pretty much onliest, possibility is something similar to what we have on Earth. A self-replicating chemical chain reaction, to put it simply. Are there not any other possibilities, though? As long as it self-replicates imperfectly (so as to allow evolution), then it could work, and there's no telling what kind of "contraptions", be they simple chemical systems, or something even more far out, are actually able to do it.

So yeah, if I were a betting man, I would bet on carbon, but I'm also interested in other possibilities. Chemistry is carbon's domain, so to speak, at least in earthly conditions, but our universe has all kinds of environments...



> 4. They are not interdimensional,



I'm interdimensional. I can traverse the x dimension, but also the y and the z. I'm special like that.


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## JessFR

Surely you knew what I meant by number 4. I mean they aren't interdimensional in the sense of that vaguely if whatsoever defined term some people use to speak of aliens that seem to defy any understanding of physics because they exist in another layer of reality on top of our but not entirely the same as ours. All I'm saying is that the alien life will exist in the same 4 regular dimensions we talk about.

As for what is life? Well that's a good question. In my opinion, life is as you said, self replicating chemistry akin to rna and dna. My opinion is that viruses are not life, they are more like a protolife which can infect and hijack the components of life, but not replicate on it's own without life. Life based on other elements like silicon, sulfer, etc, might be possible but only in a very primitive sense. This is simply because of the characteristics of carbon and what it can do as opposed to other elements, even ones that come close in the requisite characteristics.

The only other conceivable life I can think of that might qualify as life, at least in some ways, is virtual life. An emulation of sufficient physics of the universe to replicate the behavior of life but in the form of a digital replication in a virtual universe contained in a computer. I probably still wouldn't call that 'life' in the way we usually think of it. But it may be similar enough to be entitled to the rights we consider living entities to possess.

As for why life will be like us? Simply because the characteristics of the universe push it in that direction. Only just the right characteristics permit anything weve conceived of as being alive to come into existence and multiply. Those characteristics ate relatively rare and no accident. It's a bit like asking how can I be sure life couldn't exist in 0 kelvin temperatures. Because the physics simply says it can't.

Note I didn't say life would require oxygen. I'm sure intelligent need not rely on O2 like we do, and perhaps not CO2 either. So life can certainly be different to us. Just not quite so radically different as some people suggest. To the point that some suggest it is literally inconceivable. Or when people ask how do we know aliens use radio waves like we do and this can hear us? Simply, that's what the universe provides for us to use. If there is something better as yet undiscovered, no doubt such sufficiently advanced aliens would still monitor photon based communication.


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## belligerent drunk

JessFR said:


> Surely you knew what I meant by number 4. I mean they aren't interdimensional in the sense of that vaguely if whatsoever defined term some people use to speak of aliens that seem to defy any understanding of physics because they exist in another layer of reality on top of our but not entirely the same as ours. All I'm saying is that the alien life will exist in the same 4 regular dimensions we talk about.



Yes, I know. My response was a lighthearted joke.



> As for what is life? Well that's a good question. In my opinion, life is  as you said, self replicating chemistry akin to rna and dna. My opinion  is that viruses are not life, they are more like a protolife which can  infect and hijack the components of life, but not replicate on it's own  without life. Life based on other elements like silicon, sulfer, etc,  might be possible but only in a very primitive sense. This is simply  because of the characteristics of carbon and what it can do as opposed  to other elements, even ones that come close in the requisite  characteristics.
> 
> The only other conceivable life I can think of that might qualify as  life, at least in some ways, is virtual life. An emulation of sufficient  physics of the universe to replicate the behavior of life but in the  form of a digital replication in a virtual universe contained in a  computer. I probably still wouldn't call that 'life' in the way we  usually think of it. But it may be similar enough to be entitled to the  rights we consider living entities to possess.



Viruses are definitely life in my opinion. They're a chemical system which reacts (chemically) with its environment, and in certain conditions (such as in proximity to certain living cells), it can react with it so as to replicate itself - it even has genetic information. The fact that a virus can't reproduce using not-alive environment is just a special case of (chemical) environmental requirements for that particular organism. Animals require other forms of life to perform photosynthesis for them (to collect EM energy into chemical energy to be harvested), viruses require live cells to do their business for them. Same difference in my opinion.

As for virtual life, I'm of the same opinion that a "contraption" using mainly physics, not chemistry, to live and replicate, would be considered life. 



> As for why life will be like us? Simply because the characteristics of  the universe push it in that direction. Only just the right  characteristics permit anything weve conceived of as being alive to come  into existence and multiply. Those characteristics ate relatively rare  and no accident. It's a bit like asking how can I be sure life couldn't  exist in 0 kelvin temperatures. Because the physics simply says it  can't.



Yes, life can only exist if it's in line with laws of physics, but we simply cannot exclude unknown possibilities. We have probed, for all we know, only a portion of the universe for its behaviour. As time goes by, we discover more and more new possibilities, some of which were thought impossible before. The fact that we haven't observed something yet doesn't really mean it can't exist. We can make predictions about something if we have sufficient existing information about similar systems. You can say with certainty that regular carbon life can't exist at 1000 K because organic compounds aren't stable at that temperature, that's because we know a lot about carbon's behaviour at that temperature range. There are things we don't really know much about though, still. That's why I think there may be other possibilities. Or maybe I'm a little too optimistic.


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## swilow

I suspect most aliens are actually helium-based.


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## JessFR

belligerent drunk said:


> Yes, I know. My response was a lighthearted joke.
> 
> 
> 
> Viruses are definitely life in my opinion. They're a chemical system which reacts (chemically) with its environment, and in certain conditions (such as in proximity to certain living cells), it can react with it so as to replicate itself - it even has genetic information. The fact that a virus can't reproduce using not-alive environment is just a special case of (chemical) environmental requirements for that particular organism. Animals require other forms of life to perform photosynthesis for them (to collect EM energy into chemical energy to be harvested), viruses require live cells to do their business for them. Same difference in my opinion.
> 
> As for virtual life, I'm of the same opinion that a "contraption" using mainly physics, not chemistry, to live and replicate, would be considered life.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, life can only exist if it's in line with laws of physics, but we simply cannot exclude unknown possibilities. We have probed, for all we know, only a portion of the universe for its behaviour. As time goes by, we discover more and more new possibilities, some of which were thought impossible before. The fact that we haven't observed something yet doesn't really mean it can't exist. We can make predictions about something if we have sufficient existing information about similar systems. You can say with certainty that regular carbon life can't exist at 1000 K because organic compounds aren't stable at that temperature, that's because we know a lot about carbon's behaviour at that temperature range. There are things we don't really know much about though, still. That's why I think there may be other possibilities. Or maybe I'm a little too optimistic.



No I said they can't exist at 0 kelvin. Because there is no thermal activity. Nothing. And ergo no life. Some things are just absolutes unless were wildly off on our understanding of countless accurate observations. I doubt life can exist at extremely high temperature's either, but I'm not sure enough to stake a claim at any particular temperature.

You're right that we can't know for sure, there is much we may not know yet. But all we can do is predict based on what we do know, and fairly reasonably exclude some ideas people propose for violating well established understanding of the universe. That's all I'm getting at really.

It's fine if you consider viruses life. This is not a question that has a solid Yes or no answer yet. We can define life for the purposes of specific discussions or experiments or data analysis, etc. But it's not a clear answer one way or the other. I don't consider them life, you do. Both are valid assertions with valid arguments that can be made for them. All that really matters is that in the function or communication everyone has a common accepted definition so there is not confusion. In the end that's the main thing that matters.

Regardless of if it is single celled organisms or viruses, even if they are both life they are both simple, primitive life. Thankfully removed from more serious arguments about ethics and morality and contained within the realm of hard science. I don't agree that viruses are life, but I agree that believing they are life is a legitimate viewpoint.


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## belligerent drunk

^ it is true that what one considers life depends on the definition, there is no universal rule for what is and isn't. However, in the grand scheme of things, I think we both agree on the same definition for life, but maybe apply it somehow differently - I don't know. What is a more puzzling thing to answer the same question about are prions. It is, in essence, a chemical system, which forces its specific environment (certain proteins) to replicate itself (induces geometric structure change to imitate itself). It has no genetic material, it's just protein, and yet it can replicate and transport itself around. I guess this case is more of a criticism against this simple definition for life, because according to it peculiar things like prions would also be life. Or maybe it's fair to call them that? Seems like more of a matter of taste at this point to me. 

But I think considering that our world behaves according to quantum world principles, it's fair to try to define things as close to the microworld as possible - it allows for simple definitions as well.

(I know you were talking about 0 K, I was talking about an analogy at 1000 K)


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## JessFR

I see, but my point was very intentionally 0K because that solidly precludes life. Whereas high temperatures are iffier in terms of where life can no longer exist. My point simply was that, in relation to people having extremely broad, virtually inexplicable ideas of what aliens might be, that people with those views often have them born from ignorance of physics and certain physical absolutes thay we can safely use to presume what kind of alien life might exist and what most certainly doesn't.


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## belligerent drunk

Fair point. It is somewhat frustrating that a lot of people tend to think that because we don't know much about something, that anything goes, even the most ridiculous concepts, which are clearly against known laws of nature.


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## JessFR

Like I said before. If you don't know much about how the universe works, you don't have much of a way to tell apart the crazy and fantastical from the logical and consistent. It's all equally valid because they don't have the education to know why one is very likely and the other nonsense.


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## LandsUnknown

belligerent drunk said:


> I'm not talking about ridiculous concepts such as silicon-based humanoid life.
> Chemistry is carbon's domain, so to speak, at least in earthly conditions, but our universe has all kinds of environments...



Silicon based humanoid life may be absurd, but the idea of non-carbon based life is actually somewhat plausible.  To find non-carbon based life, you need not look further than Mono Lake in California.  Bacteria based in arsenic can be found, and this was a very revolutionary discovery as it had never been found on Earth.  It's entirely possible that non-carbon based life could become something intelligent in some fashion.  We just have no idea what it would look like or if it is even possible.  It wouldn't use the same DNA as us, but it may have something else just as advanced.


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## belligerent drunk

^ the "arsenic life form*" is not what people mean by non-carbon based lifeforms. Carbon-based means that almost all of the molecules, including polymers like proteins and DNA/RNA, are formed from compounds containing carbon skeletons (carbon-carbon bonds). DNA monomer (or link) is itself composed of different parts, but 2/3 of them are derivatives of carbon compounds: 

-modified sugar (which itself is a polyalcohol, meaning that it's a carbon skeleton, of for example 5 carbon atoms, with many hydroxyl groups) like ribose (RNA) or desoxyribose (DNA)
-nitrogenous base - a cyclic molecule containing many nitrogen atoms, but still based on carbon - cycles containing only nitrogen are not stable
-phosphate linker, the only part not containing carbon, but its only purpose is as a linker and the "outer" side of the double helix

The "arsenic life form" means just that the phosphate linker is replaced with an arsenate linker (phosphorus replaced with arsenic). The other 2 components of the polymer are still carbon-based sugars and bases. Besides, that goes only for the genetic information, the rest of the compounds that the bacterium is made of (the phospholipid layer, the proteins, the signal molecules etc) are still based on carbon skeletons. If we talk about a silicon-based life form, then it must mean that the "skeleton" of compounds comprising the organism must be made of silicon atoms.

_*the arsenic life form claim has been disproven. _


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## JessFR

Couldn't be more correct ^^

And the thing is there are properties unique to carbon as an element that make it the most suitable, perhaps the only suitable element for life as we define it.


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## Jabberwocky

There was a paper published in the journal Science that suggested there are indeed ars arsenic-based life forms in the sense that they built their DNA using arsenic. I remember reading that paper and thinking wow.

That story turned out to have some faulty conclusions in it, though the organisms showed a remarkable ability to work with arsenic compounds selectively. Not to mention organoarsenic compounds are known and used by life.

http://www.nature.com/news/arsenic-life-bacterium-prefers-phosphorus-after-all-1.11520

Just want to point that out because the lake mono study has some controversy behind it. It has lead to some really interesting science though.

As for silicon-based life  (if I can speculate a bit) what I've seen about silicon chemistry is it is remarkably rich, more so than carbon based chemistry under conditions we associate with life (aqueous environments and room temperature). Of course carbon based chemistry has been studied a lot more, so maybe that is merely the impression one gets. The chemistry of silicates in aqueous environments is basically a wide open frontier in science because of the polymerization and complicate polyanion structures that form. I studied this stuff in the literature for a time because I worked with silicon etching reactions. I didn't get very far because the chemistry is so complicated and there are so many types of players in solution that you can't really tease out any workable hypothesis. The people that study this stuff talk in generalities and statistics, not refined chemical pathways like organic chemists. Basically, you can't even give a concise answer to the question: "what is the etching byproduct of crystalline silicon in aqueous alkaline solution"

so if aqueous, silicon-based life were feasible, I'm inclined to say it would require even more selectivity and control than carbon-based life. Silicon-based chemistry certainly seems rich enough to satisfy the complexity required for life. The fundamental building blocks of this life might gain an advantage as far as the versatility of its components (ex like an enzyme that catalyzes multiple chemical reactions). Complexity would have to be higher.

Edit:B_D beat me to it


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## belligerent drunk

Yes, it's definitely unique in its versatility as a building block for all kinds of chemical structures. If we look at the 2nd period, then lithium and and beryllium are useless (as building blocks) metals, nitrogen and oxygen can't form stable skeletons* due to their repulsive electron pairs. Boron can form compounds similar to hydrocarbons (called boranes), but due to its one empty orbital, it's quite reactive as a Lewis acid, which in general precludes the existence of such stable compounds containing any reactive Lewis bases (such as oxygen or nitrogen containing groups).

Silicon is the next candidate. It has the same regular number of bonds as carbon, and is able to form quite stable Si-Si skeletons, but due to its extra electron shell, its radius is too big to form sufficiently stable double bonds, its hydrogen compounds are very reactive, and it also has empty electron shells, making it pretty reactive towards Lewis bases. Besides, it reacts with oxygen to form the very stable and tough material quartz - which is a continuous network of the atoms, unlike the volatile separate molecules that CO2 forms - which means that oxidizing silicon-based chemical fuel (analogously to carbon) would produce quartz crystals within the cells or whatever the organism has; not ideal!

Phosphorus I haven't thought about much, and right now I can't think of major problems with it being a building block, but it's quite late and I'm probably missing something; in any case, I've never heard of it being suggested as a possibility. Sulfur has, again, too many electron pairs to easily form stable continuous structures with itself *and* other elements. The rest of the elements have even bigger radii, which makes for some unsuitable properties, but this post has already turned out to be way too long and probably extremely boring.

_*there are some compounds containing only nitrogen or high atom percentage of it, but on the whole continuous nitrogen-nitrogen skeletons are not stable.

_E: I'm off to bed right now, but maybe levels you can expand on what aspects of silicon chemistry are suitable for life? I actually haven't really heard much about aqueous silicate possibilities.


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## JessFR

Not boring for the other chemistry nerds, and there are a few of us on BL.

Indeed there are other elements like silicon which are 'close'. Which is of course where the idea that aliens might be silicon based in popular culture comes from. 

I'm certainly not saying that I believe it to be impossible for there to be life based on a different element. I don't know one way or the other. All I was suggesting in my initial post is that because of its unique suitability. Most, and 'possibly' all life is probably carbon based. I'm certainly not willing to go so far as to say that non-carbon based life is impossible. And especially not for simple life. I don't know for sure one way or the other. All I was saying is that I suspect aliens are more like us than many suggest. And one of those ways in which they are likely like us is that they are likely mostly or exclusively carbon based too.


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## Jabberwocky

I was careful to take no position on the feasibility of silicon-based life. Just don't think it is fair for people to dismiss it either based on the current state of our understanding, which is still pretty primitive. Silica easily forms polymers, is rich with polymorphism, chemical versatility, and a long library of known interactions with other chemical species like metals and organic compounds. I am unaware of any arguements that conclusively rule silicon out. I've limited my discussion to aqueous silicates because those are the ones I studied and those are the ones that have interesting life-like chemical properties under familiar temperatures and environments.

The polymers formed are pretty fragile, so that's a problem, but that depends in a way on the level of control required and the ability to regulate the environment or stabilize the polymers with other types of chemistry. My conclusion is that if silicon based life were feasible it would require more complexity and some new paradigms then we are used to when considering life. Right now it is mearly an exercise in imagination.


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## belligerent drunk

Jess, I was just continuing the discussion, not criticizing your points  if asked seriously, I would answer the same way as you, but for the sake of discussion, I'm willing to entertain other ideas as well.


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## JessFR

Fair enough, all good man


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## neurotic

@Jess

I have no knowledge whatsoever of physics - nor pretend nor intend to, too, by the way - but I am not in any way buying that we are at a point in time where we can affirm with any certainty how aliens should or should not be, or anything else of this calibre. Thinking that we do, in fact looks to me exactly like those prophets of the apocalypse, who thought that it was *their* pont in time that was the chosen one. Why particularly *now* it is that we are grown up enough to say how things happen in the farest corners of the universe? Yeah, we do know a lot, but do we know *that* much?

How many times haven't people been completely certain that something was or was not possible only to be proven wrong later? That's basically the whole history of science, one prejudice broken after the other. It reminds ne of the attitude that b_d mentioned - or rather what I interpreted - in the "What is science to you?" thread; as if science dictated reality, and not the other way around. You grab domeone with this type of attitude from a time of the past and tell them about this crazy things that we have that are computers, or those microcannons that fire nanobullets that recently came out (that shit is insane), or about that monkey that moved an arm on the other side of the globe with his mind and they'll tell you it's impossible!

I guess my point is: other people in the past have been as sure about what could and what could not be, and they were wrong. Why aren't we subject to be wrong?

Finally, I think you're directing your post at the types you referred to in that "aliens exist only in four dimensions" thing. I am not in their side either. But not because they don't know anything about science, rather because as you have remarked their arguments tend to be incoherent or just plain nonsense. Personally I'd favour a sound argument from someone with no *knowledge* than an incoherent one citing all sorts of studies or coming from a Nobel laureate...

BTW, life right here on Earth is rather diverse. There are carbon based lifeforms that although are all about guanine cytosine and stuff are quite different from us humans. Meanwhile it is my impression that most people view aliens as humanoid. I was criticising that when I made my post [which you might not have seen, but it was of the "how can we know what aliens look like?" genre] but I ramble..


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## Cosmic Trigger

Great post. I would like to add that science as it's structured is not to provide absolutes but only to follow what we think is the evidence and make a guess at reality based on that knowing that we are on a long journey and we don't have it all down.  That's what a real scientist does. Unfortunately due to human frailties it's hard to not let our  personal aspirations infect and distort it. If we could get that bullshit and ego out of it we'd be so much further along it would truly amaze us.

Personally I think there is some evidence that aliens have been on earth in the  past. I don't know about now. There's not really great evidence that I have seen.


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## Markman21

I think it is more likely that there are aliens in the universe than not. Obviously you can't know for sure until you see them, but the universe is so big that there has to be other lifes.


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## Psychedstoner

My girlfriend and I both saw 3 UFO's. I've always believed in aliens even before this experience. We were laying in the grass staring at the stars completely sober and 3 triangle shaped aircrafts zoomed by. It was pretty amazing we both assumed aliens and talked about extraterrestrial life for the rest of the night. The way I see it, the universe is far too big to not have other life forms in it.


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## Jabberwocky

@psychedstoner cool. The triangular pattern of flight seems to be a common theme in sightings and videos on YouTube. People often see these things flying in formations of three. In this case you say the craft was actually close enough that you could ascertain it was triangular in shape? Also heard about triangular-shaped craft sightings reported. Where they flying in a consistent formation across the sky? Were the flight trajectories pretty consistent or did they move in an unusual trajectory (I.e. stop and go, zig-zag, etc)? Were they moving unusually fast across the sky? Anyways, all things to pay attention to and if you can remember the details there are sighting databases out there you might consider recording it. Definitely helps people to check their sightings against other peoples sightings if they are reported. If you live in a densely enough populated area chances are good someone else saw it and reported it.

I myself haven't seen anything entirely unusual in the sky that I would qualify as a sighting. I'd like to honestly. I look up at the sky often enough. A few months ago I saw a long streak of cloud in the sky in the shape of musical bars with notes like the kind in sheet music. It was fading by the time I saw it but I got pretty excited. Was one of the stranger things I'd seen. Looked it up online and found out that there are these cloud printing aircraft that now have the capacity to write fairly complicated things with high resolution in the sky like music bars (weather permitting). What I saw was still up and coming technology wise from the things I read. I experienced annoyance tbh. Guess the sky is a great untapped frontier in advertising.


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## swilow




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## MocCozmiK

It's hard for me believe that in this huge infinite universe that we are the only life. To believe we are the only life in this super massive space, knowing now that basically every star we can see has planets orbiting it seems somewhat small minded.


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## CNSninja

I don't so much "believe in" aliens as much as I understand that it's exceptionally unlikely, even inconceivable, for us to be the only intelligent life form out here.  According to the new, updated Drake's Equation, with correct figures, the chances of us being the only intelligent life form in the universe is at least 1 in 10 billion-trillion.  The chances of us being the only intelligent life form just in our galaxy is 1 in 60 billion.  According to statistics, it's more likely that I'll be struck by lightning, get a hole-in-one in golf, AND win the lotto jackpot, all in one single day, than it is for humans to be the only intelligent life form in the universe, and I don't even play golf.


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