do aliens exist and how smart they are?

Answer 1

They would be autotrophs.

Answer 2

So far we've seen no verifiable evidence of other sentient species. That said, I believe with some certainty that somewhere in our galaxy at some past, present, or future time, a sentient species did/does/will exist.

Why haven't we heard from them?

Perhaps they are not technologically advanced enough to be heard. They may be mastering stone knives right now, or experiencing their own Rennaisance.

Perhaps they are here right now. Any species sufficiently advanced to travel interstellar distances would be able to hide or masquerade with ease. That Boeing 737 that just flew by may be a surveillance craft.

Perhaps they are so far away they will never notice us and vice versa.

Perhaps they existed a million years ago and died out.

Perhaps they will exist a million years from now.

It is really impossible to know for sure.

The Drake Equation suggests that there is sentient life out there. The Fermi Paradox casts doubt. Play around with the calculation form at the second link and see what you think.

Answer 3

That's a great question. Basically the answer to whether there is life in the universe is always a good one.

To answer your question, It's VERY likely that there other civilizations in this galaxy. How smart they are is anyone's guess. The reasons is simple but you have to put up with some math and some history.

Back in the 60's some scientists asked the very same question, and came out with a basic formula that figures that out.

The main idea was fleshed out by a scientist named Frank Drake, he basically put some of the parts of the question together differently and assigned a likelyhood/probability to each.

Drake asked the question this way, what was the likelyhood of us communicating with another technically advanced civilization. Since that question breaks down, into parts that we can discover by looking around the universe, over time , we will be able to make a very good guestimate of how many civilizations are out there.

For instance one "factor" in his equasion was "the likelyhood of a sunlike star"

Another "factor" was "The likelyhood of a sunlike star with planets like Earth" - this gives you the basic idea.

The link here, takes you to a PBS special from some time ago which allows you to plug different numbers in and guess how many other civilizations there might be!

But this is where you can keep an eye on the headlines,

The French have recently launched a space-telescope which should be able to find "Earthlike" planets.

Corot Launched : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6203161.stm,
when "Corot" finds some planets, we can then do math to figure out how common they are ,and basically "know" one of the numbers Drake only could guess at in the 1960's.

In a few years the US/NASA will - funding allowed - be able to launch an satelite in 2008 called "Kepler" which will search for "Earthlike" finding space-telescope of our own.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/tpf_techwed_040526.html

Drake Equation : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/drake.html

Another question similar to yours is whether we will contact or ever be contacted by an alien civilization.

The SETI program in the 1990's and presently is designed to discovery signals from alien civilizations, and it is regularly if not constantly listening towards the stars for the faintest of signals.

But this question actually has a suprising answer, the answer may ALREADY be yes. The transmission is called the "Wow" signal and was detected on August 15,1977.

IF we asume the "Wow signal" is genuine, we would have been able to detect an alien civilization's message without it being specifically "for" us, which is a rare find, but after only 80 or 90 years could potentially mean the universe is crawling with life!

However, because it's just a fluke since we have not since found another "Wow" type signal,we shouldn't get too excited.

In the movie Contact (based on the Carl Sagan novel), the first 1/2 of the movie shows what a "first contact" situation might actually be like. It's unlikely that the signal would be able to be interpreted in the first couple of years or maybe even decades.

An open and interesting socioloigcal question is what would the immediate aftermath (on Earth) be of a first contact situation, the movie points out some of the "popular" disruptions to society.

Corot : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6203161.stm
Kepler and Corot : http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/tpf_techwed_040526.html
Drake Equation : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/drake.html
The WOW signal : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow%21_signal
Contact : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/

A good set of speculations about life in the galaxy and aliens a way is in the universe of Orion's Arm, it's much more realistic than something like Star Trek which sometimes makes up fictional technologies http://www.orionsarm.com/

Orions arm is different in that it makes up NO technology that can't exist, it just is technology that we don't know how to make , but that we speculate could be made with the rules of physics that we know.

Answer 4

Some aliens could have been around for billions of years. We are a very young life-form, they might be so technologically advanced, that things they can do would seem magical too us. Instant teleportation anywhere that can be programed properly. Who knows just what we might be able to do, if we survive our nuclear and high tech period, and approach a billion or two years, conquer the stars, and populate other planets by the millions, are just little things we might accomplish.

Answer 5

Though we have no proof aliens no doubt exist.
Life probably proliferates throughout the universe.
There may be millions or billions of other societies like ours.
Life would be based on some sort of DNA not much different than ours.
They would probably parallel us in intelligence and technology.
They could look like anything you could imagine and they probably theorize about us as we do about them.

Answer 6

well there are millions of stars and some having planets. heard of drake equation. if not here it is. But we still thing they are smarter then us.

The Drake equation states that:

N = R* × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L
where:

N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy, with which we might hope to be able to communicate;
and

R* is the rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of the above that are willing and able to communicate
L is the expected lifetime of such a civilization for the period that it can communicate across interstellar space.

Answer 7

you know, the universe is about trillions of trillions of light years of diameter, so aliens are plausible. and if there are, their technology are far more advance than ours. there are 3 types of galactic technology, type 1, type 2, and type 3
TYPE 1: their technology can possess natural phenomenons like storms and volcanic activities
TYPE 2: their technology can create wormholes and travel through time and space
TYPE 3: their technology can create impossible things beyond our universe, they can likely control the universe or in other means rip up the fabric of time and space.

our technology is just so primitive that our rating is TYPE 0.

Answer 8

I do exist and I am very intelligent.

No one can answer this question, you just lost yourself 5 point.

Answer 9

There are probably other life forms in the universe but since we've never made contact with them, we have no idea about their intelligence.

Answer 10

if they are flying UFOs around here, then they got to be smart. if they are stuck on their own planet, then they must be as dumb as us.