Is it a mathematical impossibility that we are alone in the universe?

Question

Someone told me it was mathematically impossible to suggest that we are alone in the universe. Is this true?

Answer 1

yes it is a mathematical impossibility that were alone in the universe. if the particles needed for life to start joined once in forming humans then its an almost certain bet it happened somewhere else in the universe. i think the answerer above was right. they took one look at us and hid lol

Answer 2

It's true. The Laws of Probability strongly suggest that life could evolve anywhere the basic conditions exist and the number of suitable planets in the Universe is greater than any mind can comprehend.
However, I fail to see why every time this topic comes up there are those that say we must be alone because no other civilization has contacted us
I would remind the Nay sayers that we have only been able to listen for others for less than 50 years.
Also there is nothing to suggest that any other society should be more advanced. We all have to work within the confines of the physical laws of the universe and to suggest that aliens could travel faster than light is ludicrous.
I am sure that there are others out there somewhere, they might only be 60 lightyears away but equally they may be 600,000 ly away.

Answer 3

Given certain assumptions, then yes, that is the case. Nobody knows if the assumptions are correct however.

There's another theory that suggests it's highly probable that we are living in a "fake" universe. Much like in the Matrix.

If you want to make your head hurt thinking about all this I suggest you read this book. The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the universe just right for life?

Answer 4

If you sit down and think about it, for any event whatever, the chances of it having occurred are as close to zero as its possible to concieve. Yet we exist and events are constantly happening everywhere. Consider a piece of litter on the street, say the lid from a McDonalds cup. The universe had to form in a particular way, The earth had to form in a habitable distance from the sun, the moon had to be created by a collision with a large planetoid, Life had to form, and evolve. The plants and animals that formed the oil that formed that plastic had to evolve, live and die... the number of events that led to that piece of trash are astronomically large.

Answer 5

Mathematics cannot prove or disprove whether we are alone. If you take as your model that life came about as a random event, then it's unlikely but not impossible that we are alone. The problem with this model is that there should then be life elsewhere that has developed sufficient technology that they can detect our presence and communicate with us. So far, this does not appear to have happened.

Answer 6

I suppose it is very unlikely we are the only life in the universe,
but it is impossible to tell for sure,as it will take thousands of years travelling at the speed of light to get to a planet that may have life,

Answer 7

This was resolved by the Drake equation

The Drake equation states that:

N=R x Fp x Ne x Fl x Fi x Fc x 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 average rate of star formation in our galaxy
Fp - is the fraction of those stars that have planets
Ne - is the 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 civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L - is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

Popularised by Carl Sagan

Put in your estimates and see what comes out!!!!

Answer 8

Nope, just mathematically improbable. There are seven factors outlined for which life akin to ours to develop must have a certain value.

So given the probability of these events occuring, and given that they have already occurred once (although that flows towards the anthropic principle), it seems improbable that as life forms on a wet rock, we are on our own.

Answer 9

It is definitely an improbability, due to the sheer number of planets in the universe. The chance of life evolving on any one planet is obviously minute, say, for argument's sake it is 0.0000000000000000000001%. But - there are googols of planets in space, and 0.0000000000000000000001% of a googol planets is a surprisingly large number!

If that didn't make any sense, please refer to "The God Dilusion" by Richard Dawkins for a much better explanation!

Answer 10

Assume universe is infinite. Highly unlikely we're only lifeform. (But not totally impossible). But assume intelligent life scattered across infinity, pretty unlikely too that there's any close enough to come visiting. So we may never know.