Who here believes life exists on other worlds?

LOL, that's hilarious.

at anyrate of course theres life out there, what a silly question.

whooot whoot *raises the roof* to the seti crowd.

 

I agree...

I believe that there is far more left undiscovered....

 

god damn,
this thread took right the fuck off.

 

i do



f*ck messages longer than 10 chars.

 

I agree. There is something that exists out there. I've seen ghosts before and it isn't pretty.

 

if by worlds you mean planets then hell yeah, theres way too many other solar sytems just like ours with planets at just right distance from the sun like ours for there to not be life.

ghosts arent supposed to exist in other world it suppossed to be on a different plane, or spectrum, and that it isn't really a spirit but a tear in time that causes a certain event in history that happned when the tear did to repeat itself, and because its on the other plane, that gives it the ability to walk through walls and appear translucent. Thats my dig on ghosts

 

Running Drake's famous approach (google the phrase "drake equation", here's one result...

If you assume there are 300,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy; that 70% of those have planets; a third of which are capable of supporting life (already getting very very unlikely, since many stars are binaries etc. which could not have planets in a stable orbit, or a Jupiter acting as shield); and assume that life does develop on one percent of them; and that .0001% of those develop to intelligence (I think that's probably overly-optimistic, given how much time passed without development of intelligent life on earth, though conditions were good and life has existed through nearly all of earth's long history); that there's a 100% likelihood they'll develop a means of communicating to other stars; and that they're almost utopian and survive a hundred thousand years before they are wiped out...

There should be about .69 civilizations in existence right now in our galaxy- a big area! That is, even we, ourselves, if those numbers are right, are only 69% likely to be in existence (given our current American president, I think that's a bit optimistic also!)

Of course, adjust those numbers and you get different results, and you can control the results by adjusting your level of optimism or pessimism so in a sense it's all meaningless.

The authors of The Rare Earth Hypothesis identified a lot of other factors that underscore just how rare the Earth's conditions probably are. I've still not read it, but have read a little bit of discussion of it, and they seem to have made some convincing arguments, one summary at

http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw102.html

It's all but certain that other life is out there somewhere; it might be a bit too optimistic to think that there's other intelligent life close enough that we will ever know of it, the distances are just too great. I think we're basically it. That we're truly on our own. Intelligent life could be the absolute rarest of the universe's phenomena, and my gut feeling is that it's exactly that. All that just my opinion!

 

When questioned as to whether he believed in extraterrestrials, Edward Teller said; "Of course they exist. They are among us today. They are called Hungarians."

LOL, that explains a lot! One of the people that best influenced my life and attitude towards learning was from Hungary.

Are you the same Sam that I discussed fossils with a year or two ago here? If so, we're still into that heavily. At one point you mentioned wanting to travel to examine a particular rock unit somewhere... if that was you... where was that again? Burgess Shale, I'm guessing?

 

Interesting discussion!

I take it all here are currently running the SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) @ Home screensaver on your PC's of course right?

If not, visit here:

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

"[size=-1]SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data."



[/size]It's pretty cool to watch... and it's a screensaver which actually does something useful too! SETI@Home runs in the background utilizing "spare" CPU cycles which would otherwise go to waste to analyze pre-recorded radio telescope data looking for any "patterns".

Everyone intersted in this thread outta be contributing to SETI! ~Seven

 

Nearly 40,000 CPU hours donated and more than 1,500 work units completed here...

 

i would but i have bad cpu usage problems as it is

 

It is the Green River Formation, in Utah I think I remember talking about. And yes, I'm still heavily into geology and physics too... although we haven't done much traveling lately, but I have invested in some interesting fossils. One that I carry in my pocket of late is: a meteorite. 4.5 billion years old. When I close my eyes and hold it my hand, I am taken on a trip through the Galaxy. But now-a-days I'm here on the farm, doing the dairy goat thing, and I have a couple of horses and I'm just enjoying the piss out of myself.

Glad that you remember me, Sunlion. And happy to see you here on the forums again. Oh! And it was Enrico Fermi that made the above quoted statement. Szilard and Teller, Hungarians both, worked on the so-called Manhatten Project together, and prompted that observation from Fermi.

 

I think life outside of earth exists, why wouldn't it. The universe is massive, the odds seem good that other life exists.

 

It is the Green River Formation, in Utah

I wasn't familiar with that rock unit, and just googled it. Amazing the level of preservation! I'll have to read up on it, though I'm trying really hard to only stay focused on Ordovician fossils since they're local. I wonder if anyone's ever found a pot plant fossil... that strata might be recent enough!

We've finally gotten a decent collection of upper Ordovician (Edenian, Maysvillian, and Richmondian stages of the Cincinnatian Series) fossils. They're not worth anything other than that they're kewl to look at to me, but if you want a care package of some of our extras (and we have more extras of many of these than we know what to do with), and it would be no problem to mail one to you. We have lots of extra good-condition specimens of brachiopod genera like Platystrophia (several species), Strophomena, Rafinesquina, Dalmanella, Rhynchotrema, Hiscobeccus, Leptaena, Zygospira, Glyptorthis, Hebertella, Plaesiomys, Holtedahlina, Sowerbyella and its look-alike Thaerodonta, and I'm sure some others too. It's amazing how drastically the brach diversity increases as you work your way up the formations.

One that I carry in my pocket of late is: a meteorite. 4.5 billion years old.

I know exactly what you mean! For a while I was dying to buy a piece of a meteorite, and finally did just over a year ago. It's just a really tiny fragment of the Nan Tan meteorite that landed in China in 1516. You sure won't touch anything on earth as old as a meteorite no matter where you go or how you dig!

Well it's time to wake up my wife, we're going fossil hunting again. Today we'll probably go to some boring Edenian (Kope Formation of Northern Kentucky) site and look for trilobites. We find broken pieces nearly every time we're out, sometimes tons of them. But between us we've only found a few small complete ones.

Next weekend we're going to explore a bit of Silurian rock north of here, which is pretty alien to us, though we did find some gastropods at Cedarville Gorge in Silurian rock a month or so ago.

I really didn't think there was ANY hobby that could come along and snag me like this. But there's so many elements: short little road trips to the country, collecting, picnicking, washing, sorting, identifying/labeling, reading papers the 16 times or so it takes me to understand them, scanning the specimens... it's FUN!!!!!!!

We're doing a very minor "beginner ordovician invertebrates" page, but it's not really ready yet. I'll pass it along later if you wanna take a look. I still find it so odd to get this heavily into a subject that didn't interest me much at the beginning. The time scales involved are sure a fun mindstretch too. But you know all that. I'm rambling on and on. It's good seein' you back!

 

I think the Universe is living itself.

 

I did the SETI project for a while but i suspect its on a jouney to nowhere. Take our scoiety were getting much better at controlling where our signals go so its quite possible that in the not to distant future we could be letting very little out. This means that assuming civillisations move at a similar speed as us we'd have a window of a century or so, where they were giving out substatial amounts of radiation.
Im not saying there are no other civilaisations out there, I have no way of knowing but I do not believe we are in a position to find them, and i certainly do not believe we are in a position to meet them.

 

All things have a consciousness

 

It's one of the best preserved fossiliferic sites around, SunLion. I think that the plants represented there are mostly of large fern type though... cannabis didn't evolve 'til millions of years later.

I'd Love to take a look see when you have it ready! Ah yes... the time scales... blows my mind, yeah it does. And it's good talking with you again too.

 

I think it is kinda selfish to think we are alone when space spans forever.

 

I thinks theres gotta be life elsewhere. Universe being so old... Humans being so young. Its just kinda hard for me to believe that were on the only place where life is suitable. Im sure, I dare to say even 100% thats theres life elsewhere, whether its carbon or silicon based.