Who belives in life on other planets..if not or if you do, why?

Answer 1

It seems unlikely we are alone in the galaxy.

Chemistry seems quite capable of creating the basic substances for life and as it is likely that there are billions of moons and planets to work with it seems likely SOME kind of life is out there.

However, the odds of intelligent life happening to be both currently alive (an not extinct by some means) and anywhere close enough for us to detect with even future technology seems pretty remote.

By some basic numbers

300 billion stars in our Galaxy
Assume half are old enough to have formed in the metal rich clouds to have life sustaining chemical reactions 150 billion
Assume half of these may have planets capable of supporting life 75 billion
Assume further that half of these worlds actually have life on them currently (it is relatively easy to generate mass extinction scenarios) 37.5 billion
Assume these life forms live on land and not in water (most life on earth is aquatic, and will never develop beyond most rudimentary technology without fire) Say 10% of previous number or 3.7 billion planets

Sounds promising so far?

Assume the collosal odds of evolution, chance, mass extinction survival, sufficient material wealth, species adaption to develop
technology. 1% of 3.7 billion or 37 million civilizations

Assume life expectancy of an average technological society at 1 million years? Why? just because. Humans have managed about 10 000 years, call me an optimist and we last for 1 million

Now how many technological civilizations are currently in the galaxy? If they have existed on and off for roughly half the age of the galaxy (7 billion years) 7 billion years divided by 37 million civilizations or 189 currently existing technological societies

Now what is the average distance between them?

Imagine the galaxy is a circle (it is not) approximately 300 000 light years across and sprinkle our 189 technological civilizations more or less evenly around it.

I come up with a ball park estimate of 1 civilization per 375 million "square" light years, or put another way, each technological alien civilization is no closer than 20 000 light years.

These numbers are far from scientific, but give an indication how rare extraterrestrial life is even to optimists like me.

If humanity survives a million years, we would be lucky to meet one!

Bottom line: relatively abundant life in the galaxy, buut unlikely there is anything close enough to us to communicate with until we go to where they are.

Answer 2

Possibly 10 to 100 million Earth like planets in the observable Universe - (conservative estimate.)

If this is true then the possibility of life on some other planets seems high, But maybe the smartest things on then are about as clever as sheep. Or yeast cells.

Answer 3

They are thousand of solar system in the universe that have planets just like Earth; so it is possible that there is life in another planets also.
Maybe they are more developed than us or less developed, they can be life as was on Earth at the beginning, or maybe with some sort of animals.
Everything is possible in this vast universe!

Answer 4

We would all have to be very inferior to think that we're superior in this vast universe. If we've been here for thousands of years, who's to say that there aren't other life supporting planets out there that have been around for millions of years ? Ours is not the only advanced technology in the universe. UFO's ARE real and are from other life supporting planets, if they've been around for millions of years I'm pretty sure they've got the technology to bridge the gap of many light years away to accomplish space travel. Ever hear of worm holes ? they are real.

Answer 5

I believe theres other forms of life, such as different types of animals and creatures as there are just sooo many planets out there and galaxys.
But sentiant beings? I admit, it is a possiblity but I highly doubt it. Maybe it is me just wanting to think that humans are special, but I just don't see it happening. There are millions of species on our planet and we are the only ones with this form of intelligence and emotional understanding. Just seems that if there was going to be another intelligent being it would happen right here on earth.

Answer 6

Of cause there is life on other planets. There are a lot of eathlike planets in the Milky way galaxy.

Answer 7

Definitely. We know that our sun is a fairly average kind of star, there are at least an estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and at least an estimated 100 billion other galaxies in the universe, it would plainly (to me) be ridiculous to think that our planet is the one place in the universe on which life as we know it has evolved. I suspect life is quite common, to the extent of at least billions of other planets. In fact, we know that many stars were born and ran their full lifespan before our sun was even formed (because the elements of which our world and we ourselves are made were themselves made in such stars), to me it is quite possible that the seeds of life arrived on earth from elsewhere, having developed in earlier star systems, and that these seeds have taken life very widely across the universe, which would make it possible that life elsewhere might in some ways be quite familiar, although highly evolved to its own environment of course. If I am right, we might one day possibly detect these "seeds", either on earth or in space, but I think they would be very sparse and detection very unlikely. I don't think we are likely ever to encounter any more highly evolved extra-terrestrial life.

Answer 8

DarthDad - very interesting!

However, there are a LOT of assumptions (that could go either way).

One big one to me though is if civilizations exist on the order of 1 million years, the technology associated with those civilizations is probably capable of prolonging their existence. Shoot, I think (optimistically) that in millennia or two, we will have the capability to greatly enhance our survival. That to me means of those 189 civilizations, most of them (being beyond 10,000 years) would have the means to communicate and explore beyond our present comprehension.

I do agree that we could be below the norm, but not rare.

Also, if we open this up to all galaxies in the universe, clearly we are not alone. We just may not have the evidence to prove it.

Answer 9

I believe there is life on other planets. I think the universe is way too large for us to be the only life. There may not be life as we know it in our solar system but there is life somewhere.

Answer 10

I believe there should be life somehwere in the galaxy, maybe not in the way we have known or researched soo far. There definitely could be dimentions that we don't even know about yet! sounds scary but we are yet to un-ravel the secrets of our own planet, leave alone the entire galaxy.