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This thread is to hear if others believe/don't believe that aliens exist, if we've already been visited by them, and to discuss the possibility/probability of them.

Personally I would say I'm a skeptic about anything relating to aliens. I don't think anyone has encountered them, they've never visited earth past (ancient aliens) or present (abductions, govt cover-ups) I don't even know for sure that any alien societies even exist because they might have destroyed themselves or it's possible life could just be a onetime thing on Earth, so unless they make contact with us I'm gonna be a skeptic.

(posted in general and not srs debate because I don't want people to get banned for saying ayy lmao)

Yes. I find it very unlikely we're the only sentient beings out there.

There are approximately 8.8 billion Earth-like planets within their stars' habitable zones in our Milky Way galaxy alone.
I like dem odds. Just saying.

I repeat this all the time but I just think what most reasonable people think and what people posted above me that just realistically considering the size of the universe there's got to be lifeforms somewhere even if it's just prokaryotes. And that's at the least there might even be sentient life somewhere since the universe is so friggin enormous. Like scream though I won't believe any of them have actually been to earth unless I see it myself concretely.

I really want humanity to go to space and meet aliens at some point. I really won't believe that aliens visited us unless I see them, or the top secret government files in area 51.

I think there is life in this solar system, let alone the rest off he universe. How could earth be the only one?

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying – Arthur C. Clarke

The chances that we are alone in the universe I would say are slim given how many plausible Earth-like planets there are in the Goldilocks zone or have some form of evidence that suggests they could house life.

Also I would totally fuck an alien given the option

Been to Earth? I don't think so. (probably a billion years ago but that wouldn't matter if it were actually true.) Sentient life out there? Very probable, especially if you're considering sentient life before humanity started walking on its own two feet. Some bacteria outside of Earth? Definitely. Like Decimals said, there are billions of planets similar to Earth that can sustain life. I'm sure if you give these bacteria billions of years, they'd evolve into sentient beings.

Well that assumes Earth-like conditions are required to create life, and that every single "ingredient" that was required to create the life on our planet is even still around in the universe.

Now, what I wonder most about aliens is their culture, society and social lives. Are they social creatures or asocial? What do they look like and what do they eat? How do they reproduce and how far have they made it through evolution? Any types of technology? How does their biology work? Do they have more if any emotions at all? I really hope to see alien life sometime during my lifetime. I'd really hate to miss it.

"Well that assumes Earth-like conditions are required to create life…"

Exactly.

"…and that every single 'ingredient' that was required to create the life on our planet is even still around in the universe."

You mean like… hydrogen? Nitrogen? Carbon? Oxygen? I'm pretty sure there's no issue there.

Which is why they're called "earth like".

lmao if all it took was hydrogen and nitrogen and all the other elements we already know of, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We also don't know that specifically Earth-like conditions are required for life. As you say, billions out there, no signs of life so far, so obviously something's missing. What if it's an element that no longer exists and we never discover it because it simply no longer exists to be discovered? What if it was an element that violently reacted with some extremely energetic event which simultaneously created life and destroyed itself at the same time?

None of these guesses are any better or worse than the others, but we have absolutely no reason to believe that "Earth-like conditions" are a requirement for life. You're writing off zillions of not-Earth-like conditions that could very well be capable of supporting not-Earth-like life based on….?

billions out there, no signs of life so far, so obviously something’s missing

A big enough telescope.

You are right though that there is a potential for life to form outside of the conditions we are used to though. We are basing all our knowledge of the origin of life on one sample.

@lisalombs

You are aware that we have only really checked out mars in terms of planets that could have life, right?

The planet doesn't have to provide Earth-like conditions to sustain life. What does this mean? The odds are even greater that there are other lifeforms!

In other news, my dad watches both Cosmos and Ancient Aliens at the front of his seat: he is an enigma.

With the way the speed of light works you would be looking at the planet as it was millions or even billions of years ago. Likewise, if an intelligence were to somehow have a telescope that was able to get a detailed view of earth they wouldn't see any notable intelligent life (unless it was less than 8000 light-years away, then it could see early civilization)

@Lisa
do you even understand chemistry? Elements are numbered by their number of protons, we've discovered 118 of them, so they would have to have more than that for us to not know about them, any less and they'd be one of the ones we know about, or an isotope of those elements. Elements above 100 are so unstable that they only exist for a fraction of a second and don't occur stably in nature.

I believe there's some type of extraterrestrial life in our galaxy. If not in our own galaxy, then somewhere in the universe. Maybe not intelligent, but something alive and surviving like the "rest of the animal kingdom.": https://knowyourmeme.com/forums/memeory-lane/topics/34884-riff-raff-lisa-the-edgelord
I don't know, and highly doubt, that we've been visited by extraterrestrials.

But, I sometimes wonder if we could get a long with another intellectual species if we met one. Would they be like us and have the same issues like we do? Have the same social structure?
Could the human race accept something as smart or even smarter than them. If they're smarter than us, have they gone past their primal instincts and able to accept everything and everyone?

A lot of questions there. But, we may never know or may never know in our life time. Food for thought, more or less.

When I said "exactly" what I was implying was "yeah, if you accept the possibility of a hypothetical bizarro (by our standards) kind of life, the chances are even greater by many orders of magnitude".

"As you say, billions out there, no signs of life so far, so obviously something’s missing."

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Whoa. Just what kind of "signs" were you hoping for?

Here, let me put this in perspective. This is the most detailed image we've been able to capture of Pluto, from only four days ago.

Credit goes to the New Horizons spacecraft, which was only able to accomplish this scientists-shitting-pants level achievement because it's gotten really damn close.

Pluto is about 6.088 × 10^-4 light years away from Earth. How about Alpha Centauri, the closest non-Sun star to us (which likely doesn't even have a planet orbiting it- it's a point of heated debate, which is certainly illuminating in itself)?

4.367 light years. That's more than seven thousand times farther.

And the fact is, "taking a look" is about the only method we currently have of determining the presence of life on an exoplanet.

As for the whole "element" business, I really don't think you know what that word means. It only refers to a type of atom with a certain number of protons in the neucleus, i.e. it's atomic number. And as you can see, we've got them categorized from 1 (hydrogen) to 118- the last few on the list only known from the results of extreme atom-bombarding in huge laboratories and only existing in that state for an unfathomably tiny fraction of a second due to intense instability.

Do aliens exist? Probably.

Will humanity ever get to meet them in person? Probably not.

Yes I do believe there are aliens, and I believe they watch or visit us in the form of UFOs.
I also believe earth has been visited in the past by alien life, though I don't think they had any influence on humanity besides perhaps a few passing glances of them. I don't think they gave humanity technology, religion, or anything like that.

An element that no longer exists would be very unlikely. Anything beyond uranium can't be found naturally. Anything heavier decays to fast or would kill life forms. So i doubt its an undiscovered element that caused it.

We do have reason to believe earth like conditions are necessary. From our observation of bio-organic and organic molecules he realize that things have to be very specific for things to work out properly. Right down the shape of the molecule. And this has been observed in the smallest forms of life. So from this we can accurately predict just what would be necessary for organisms to thrive.
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Do i think they exist? Maybe

Do i believe or know they exist? No

As a follower of empiricism and the scientific method i have to admit that until substantial peer reviewed evidence proves the existence of extraterrestrial life i say no, they don’t exist. Though i really want them to exist.

I'm not saying there's no chance "aliens" exist, I'm saying the chance that they exist and they chance that they don't are exactly the same based on what we know about life atm.

"Element" was a general example. You can replace it with anything, "what if they key to life is an element/specific speck of super specific space dust/thing that we don't even have a name for right now/variable X". We don't know what X is, we don't even have enough to make an educated guess, so how can you say that 8.5 billion+ bodies with "Earth-like conditions" are 8.5 billion+ chances for "alien" life?

It says a lot that whatever happened, whatever was needed, it effected exactly one planet in our solar system. There's potentially some microscopic bacteria swimming around on one of Jupiter's moons, but if you're assuming there was one specific source that created life, why did the life here evolve so much more quickly than the potential bacteria on Titan? If life is much more easy to spontaneously create from nothing then why can't we see it happening on our own planet?

The whole point is that we don't know, but you're all assuming that just because there's life here there has to be an enormous chance of life elsewhere just because of the sheer number of planets, but if the condition of the planet/the planet itself are totally irrelevant to creating life, then it doesn't matter how many are out there.

{ And this has been observed in the smallest forms of life. }

been observed in the smallest forms of life on our planet.

This still holds the assumption that all possible life must look and act like life on our planet because that's the only life we currently know of, which is a pretty poor assumption.

This seems so obvious that maybe I'm mistaken in thinking that you don't realize it, but… you are aware that the fact there could be life very different from that on Earth as well as the life we know of makes it more likely that life exists elsewhere… right?

As for the rest, just read this to get a better understanding of what you're talking about.

Not necessarily quickly. For the the 5 billion years complex animal life has only existed for 500 million years. So it definitely takes time.

"If life is much more easy to spontaneously create from nothing then why can’t we see it happening on our own planet?"

The conditions of present earth are radically different from early earth, life would appear because any organic or bio-organic molecule would be consumed or destroyed by existing lifeforms.

Its not so much creating life as it is creating complex life. You see like i said above for basically the majority of earths existence the only forms of life were bacteria. But then animals and multi-cellular organism appeared. No one really knows how or why.

So all those planets probably do have life (it is believed titan has life, including europa). The question is whether or not they have multicellular life.
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Well when you observe life at its simplest form one can make an accurate assumption that the same rules apply to it as other forms of simple life

{ you are aware that the fact there could be life very different from that on Earth as well as the life we know of makes it more likely that life exists elsewhere… right? }

No, it doesn't. It only makes it more likely to exist if the "key" to creating life is something that can be individually reproduced. We don't know if it can be individually reproduced, that's the X variable, so it doesn't effect the chance that other life exists at all.

Your source says exactly what I'm saying. Every sentence starts with "many astrobiologists believe" and "water is another very likely requirement" because we don't know if life has to be found within the habitable zone of a star or that water is a requirement. We are guessing based on this planet's circumstance. These guesses assume that the creation of life was not unique, but that's just another guess.

Guesses on top of guesses on top of guesses that say "alien life has a good chance!!" are not any better or more likely than guesses on top of guesses on top of guesses that say "alien life has no chance!!"

{ The question is whether or not they have multicellular life. }

The question is whether or not they have life period. Unicellular life has not been confirmed. Your question assumes your first assumption must be correct, but you have no more evidence that unicellular life exists there than I have that it doesn't. You can't keep assuming off assumptions and expect to get anywhere, you've got to answer one question before you can confidently move on to the next. That's literally what science is.

That's assuming there is a specific 'key' besides the brute force of billions of years of random molecular interaction.
Is there a reason to think there was a 'key' besides randomness?

"Your source says exactly what I’m saying. Every sentence starts with “many astrobiologists believe” and “water is another very likely requirement” because we don’t know if life has to be found within the habitable zone of a star or that water is a requirement. We are guessing based on this planet’s circumstance. These guesses assume that the creation of life was not unique, but that’s just another guess."

Where in the nine circles of hell are you pulling this whole "guess" nonsense from? Just because many things in science are not declared with absolute certainty does not mean they are invalid- you're seriously starting to sound like a creationist.

And I suppose I'll quote the part of the piece you abruptly cut of so you can actually read it, as I assume if you had you'd understand that what you just said is meaningless.

Water is another very likely requirement for life to arise. Any life which is based on molecules almost certainly requires some kind of liquid solvent to be able to move them around. Although chemical reactions can take place in gases and solids these are much less ideal than liquid. Gas phase reactions happen only with molecules that are volatile enough to be present in large quantities in a gas. Reactions can take place in solids, but occur very slowly. Both of these limitations make it much more likely for life to develop in liquid, as indeed it seems to have on Earth.

Water has many unique physical and chemical properties that make it well suited to support the complex chemistry required for life. Expanding when it freezes keeps oceans and lakes on Earth from freezing solid. Water can dissolve many substances easily and it also has a high heat capacity, which means it takes a lot of energy to cause water to change temperature. This property of water gives Earth its relatively moderate climate.

Water is also the second most common molecule in the universe (after H2). Other liquids exist naturally in the universe, but not in the sort of abundance water does. Most of these liquids don’t have many of the other key properties of water that make it so suitable as the basis for life.

And one more thing- when you know that something happened once, the default is to assume that thing can happen multiple times. This is basic logical reality.

I think a scarier possibility would be "We are alone now", just saying.

The universe is so big, so why not?
There is a chance of another life form in universe.

There's gotta be at least some bacteria out there that isn't terran, around here

The factors that build life are pretty common around the universe for simple lifeforms. We know bacteria can form in even extremely hostile environments. The probability is astronomically high. We just gotta look real close on a lot more planets. Nearby Moons in Sol like Europa and Titan with their nitrogen oceans might yield something and those are our nearest candidates

What about flaura and fauna? That's also a high probability but I doubt well find anything like that soon, There's uncountable amounts of habitable planets out there but they're pretty spread far apart across the galaxy. None of our nearest exoplanets are viable candidates so far and I doubt that will change. Planets that yield vegetation are pretty lucky to happen. They require the planet being the right size, place, velocity, composition, density, orbit, star and more. The're more than probably out there, but we gotta look far.

But are we talking intelligent civilized life visiting us in dish plates? Okay that's a flat out no. Planets just like earth that yield developed lifeforms are the rarest of the rare. We wont find a planet like Earth any time soon with its absolute perfect life conditions. The coincidences required to make a perfectly habitable planet just like earth are astronomical. Even if we do; civilizations forming on them require another astronomical amount of coincidences to let that happen too. And for those civilizations be advanced and near enough to visit other exosolar civilizations…Infinitesimally low chances. Extremely improbable.

But hey if we find bacteria, I'll be plenty excited just for that

{ Where in the nine circles of hell are you pulling this whole “guess” nonsense from? }

For it to be a hypothesis it has to be testable. We don't have the technology to test or investigate these guesses about the universe, so for now they're all guesses based on assumptions based on what we know about the life on our planet.

{ And one more thing- when you know that something happened once, the default is to assume that thing can happen multiple times. }

That is definitely not the "default assumption" in any branch of science, and our own planet infers that's not the case in the context of this discussion, as it has stopped spontaneously creating new life out of nothing. Unicellular life is not bursting into existence on Earth, where such a thing has obviously had to happen once before. Why? We don't know why. We have water. We have habitable conditions. We have all the things we think we need to see life created on the planet where life was created, yet we don't see it being created.

Your quote still doesn't help anything. It's just explaining why "water = requirement" is a good educated guess, but still does not imply it's anything but a guess. We don't know that water is a requirement of life, we think the odds are good that water is probably a requirement for life because it's so important to life here. Again, the only point for comparison being life on Earth, and we have no reason to assume all life must be like life on Earth. Maybe whatever "X" was is totally unique depending on the universe and another lifeform depends on gases how we depend on liquids. Based on the knowledge we have, that guess is equally as plausible as guessing that all life must require water.

{ Is there a reason to think there was a ‘key’ besides randomness? }

A once-in-a-zillion years random molecular clusterfuck of chance could very well be the "key". It's just another word for "X" that's easier to incorporate into a sentence. They "key" or "X factor" could literally be anything, or a specific combination of anythings, that's further testament of exactly how much we don't know.

I like what Akatsuki brought up about what they will even be like. What I always wonder is how different will their nervous systems be if they are better or worse than our own. For example they could be like the "aliens" (not exactly aliens in the context of the story) in the book Time Machine to where they are complicated enough to allow communication but it is difficult and they are very simple minded, closer to apes than people in terms of intelligence. Then there's the possibility that they have much more advanced nervous systems to the point where we are the simpletons and we have a hard time understanding them. Finally there's the issue of vocal chords. They might not be able to communicate verbally at all due to their anatomy or even with signs. We have the same problem even on Earth to where dolphins and other creatures in their family could be as smart or smarter even than people but just lack an efficient method of communicating with us and for all we know if they had hands wirh thumbs instead of fllipers they could be building advanced underwater civilizations. These are things that kind of wander into my mind about aliens sometimes.

Probably, considering how vast the universe is, there ought to be at least a few different life forms out there. Couldn't care much about them though.

"For it to be a hypothesis it has to be testable. We don’t have the technology to test or investigate these guesses about the universe, so for now they’re all guesses based on assumptions based on what we know about the life on our planet."

This is a common misconception of people who aren't fully scientifically literate- empirical evidence, while of course extremely crucial, is not absolutely necessary at every single step. Sometimes, when you've proven a group of things, you can reach a conclusion (anywhere from pretty decently well-informed to iron-clad) about something that relates to a combination of them through pure logical reasoning, which is often all we have when a true experiment is out of our current abilities. Go take a look at quantum mechanics for pretty much the definitive example of this. And again, very little (if anything) in science is known with absolute certainty. That doesn't mean you can just write it off. Go read this and tell me all of this still sounds like an "educated guess" to you.

"That is definitely not the “default assumption” in any branch of science, and our own planet infers that’s not the case in the context of this discussion, as it has stopped spontaneously creating new life out of nothing."

Actually, we don't know that at all. As I believe somebody mentioned before, it could very well be formed and exist for a brief amount of time before being destroyed by the current dominant life or other conditions on the planet. In fact, we can't even go as far as to say that species created by a relatively recent abiogenesis event haven't existed for a long amount of time- humanity isn't omnipresent on Earth by any stretch of the imagination, as the piece here very clearly demonstrates.

The diversity of life is one of the most striking aspects of our planet; hence knowing how many species inhabit Earth is among the most fundamental questions in science. Yet the answer to this question remains enigmatic, as efforts to sample the world's biodiversity to date have been limited and thus have precluded direct quantification of global species richness, and because indirect estimates rely on assumptions that have proven highly controversial. Here we show that the higher taxonomic classification of species (i.e., the assignment of species to phylum, class, order, family, and genus) follows a consistent and predictable pattern from which the total number of species in a taxonomic group can be estimated. This approach was validated against well-known taxa, and when applied to all domains of life, it predicts ~8.7 million (± 1.3 million SE) eukaryotic species globally, of which ~2.2 million (± 0.18 million SE) are marine. In spite of 250 years of taxonomic classification and over 1.2 million species already catalogued in a central database, our results suggest that some 86% of existing species on Earth and 91% of species in the ocean still await description. Renewed interest in further exploration and taxonomy is required if this significant gap in our knowledge of life on Earth is to be closed.

But even if we somehow proved that abiogenesis has never happened since at least the Cambrian Explosion, all that would mean is that the necessary conditions haven't existed here. It's hard, if not impossible, for the human brain to even fathom how huge a number 8.8 billion is.

I figure there is likely life on other planets, but I don't believe in advanced interstellar civilizations.

I want to believe there are other life forms out there. I mean, being the only planet in the universe with life would seem lonely… and depressing.

Who knows? Maybe there's another civilization many billions of lights years away with their own unique meme site in which the users in a forum's thread are wondering about life on other planets right this very instant. Sounds cool, don't you think?

There is absolutely no chance we are the only intelligent life forms that exist. Not with how big the universe is.

As immense the universe is, it's unthinkable the idea that there couldn't be any kind of life form out there. Even the tiniest of cells, bacteria or microorganisms in general would be excellent news.

Statistically, they really have to. Now, whether or not we'll ever actually be able to contact them is a different question. We need to start pumping out that exotic matter so we can get those wormhole drives going.

And if you widen the definition from "intelligent life" to just plain "life," there's probably some swimming around in Titan right now.

Logically, given the immense size of the universe, it wouldn't make any damn sense for there not to be other life out there.
Do I know they exist? Not at all.
Do I pray that there is other sentient life out there? Hell yes.
I don't know if the known universe follows a little thing called "logic", but I pray it is likely and hopefully I may see some evidence in my lifetime.
And even if not, we can just start focusing on parallel universes then. If we can't find aliens, we might as well find R63 Earth.

Possibly. After all, the universe is massive.

@Lisalombs:

"Guesses on top of guesses on top of guesses that say “alien life has a good chance!!” are not any better or more likely than guesses on top of guesses on top of guesses that say “alien life has no chance"

Sweetheart, "Alien life has no chance" == 0%. Saying "there is a chance that aliens exist" can be anywhere from >0% to <100%. Saying that aliens do not exist is a flat-out absolute 0, while "can" or "likely" implies a chance, which grants it a probability higher than 0.

This is the fundamental flaw in your reasoning. It is better to try than to not try at all.