Watching all this sci-fi, lol - if there's life, ANY life out there,

[closeupready]

In another galaxy or wherever, in simple form, bacteriological or even just fossils, what would the likelihood be - in light of that discovery - that there is other intelligent life in the universe?

It's interesting to think about, since almost all earthly life forms have been observed to behave in ways that appear to reflect learning, i.e., intelligence of some kind.

[rug]

1. It's a push.

While the size of the universe and the number of planets appear to make life elsewhere inevitable, the likelihood of the precise alignment of conditions necessary for any life, let alone intelligent life, is equally astronomical.

[closeupready]

3. As I think about what you've posted, I recall an episode of

the TED lectures - I think they are available on youtube, but this was a topic of discussion - if I can find it, I'll post the link here.

[rug]

5. Thanks, I'll take a look too.

It's kind of a dour conclusion. Even if there is intelligent life there, the distances are so enormous contact is virtually impossible barring a major breakthrough in technology or physics.

Thanks for the thread, It's thought provoking.

[jakeXT]

12. Probably something with the drake formula

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/calculating-the-odds-of-intelligent-alien-life

[closeupready]

13. She's brilliant, but the episode I'm recalling involved

a brunette's discussion of the launch of a space probe, I think the one that went near either Jupiter or Saturn.

Gawd, now I HAVE to find it, lol.

[jakeXT]

14. Mainzer is brunette, but she is more an asteroid scientist

http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Mainzer/

[closeupready]

17. Found it! Carolyn Porco's discussion of Cassini

http://www.ted.com/talks/carolyn_porco_flies_us_to_saturn.html

She discusses - in part - Neptune's satellite, Titan, and the possibility of life there, and what that means.

[rug]

19. Thanks!

[Taverner]

24. But, if you throw a billion marbles at a wall, one or two might stick

[rug]

26. That would be an interesting experiment.

[onehandle]

2. It's a certainty that there is life elsewhere. It's a certainty that they've never been here. nt

[closeupready]

4. But what about the idea that life on Earth itself is an evolution

from simpler organic chemicals and perhaps simple life? I believe that there are insects or bacteria which have been found to be capable of surviving for a length of time even if exposed to deep space atmosphere.

If some hardy life form was able to hitch a ride on an asteroid, perhaps not only has extraterrestrial life been here, but we are ourselves extraterrestrial life...?

[Locut0s]

10. What you are referring to is called panspermia...

The seeding of life on earth from an extraterrestrial source. The problem with it is that unless that source is another planet in the solar system the idea starts to look very dubious. Interstellar distances are vast and asteroids move at very slow speeds on this scale. The odds of life being blasted off the surface of some another planet and surviving an interstellar trip to earth would be beyond astronomical, and the time it would take would also be astronomical. Even given many many billions of years I don't see it as likely compared to other hypothesis of life's beginnings on earth.

[Taverner]

25. The idea of an ancient, fertile Mars gives credence to this, however...

[hunter]

6. I speculate that any successful intelligent species rapidly drops out of the universe we can see.

They're probably everywhere. To us it all sounds like noise.

[olddots]

7. what if there is no life anywhere ?

we 're all just carpet samples

[Locut0s]

9. Haha lol. Don't know why but i love that. Carpet samples. I hope I'm not a shag carpet.

[lunatica]

16. Sometimes my face has carpet burn marks

from when life connects one of it's vicissitudes on my chin and I land on my face. Sometimes I do it to myself though.

[Locut0s]

8. Given what we've learned in the past decade I'd say the likelihood is very great, but...

Don't count on said life being close buy.

We now know that planets are everywhere. Just about every star likely has multiple planets and there are hundreds of billions of stars in most galaxies and at the very least hundreds of billions of galaxies, if the universe isn't infinite in size. But then given the likely astronomical odds of intelligent life forming that might mean something like one or two intelligent civilizations per galaxy or less. We are talking 100s of thousands to millions of light years away.

I'd like to think though that non intelligent life is abundant and from what we know now that may be true.

[closeupready]

21. Though it's from 2007, see above,

the TED lecture from Carolyn Porco, who was excited about the possibilty of some form of life on Neptune's moon, Titan.

[Orrex]

30. That would be especially cool, since Titan is one of Saturn's moons!

[closeupready]

32. Oops.

[GiveMeFreedom]

35. Orrex

when did you get the new sig? Does this mean I am not ignore anymore? Peace.

[hobbit709]

11. Any truly intelligent life probably won't have anything to do with us.

[lunatica]

15. Define intelligent life

'Cause I suspect there isn't much of it here either.

[closeupready]

18. Agreed.

[RILib]

20. 100%

The earth is not the center of the universe. We are not special.

[Spike89]

22. We can't really define the probabilities yet

In reality, we don't know if life is wildly prolific and fills every available niche or rather incredibly fragile and only found in one place. To date, we can't even say with certainty that life exists off Earth in this solar system.

As for intelligent life contacting us, obviously distance is a massive obstacle, but format is almost as big a deal. Although the "common wisdom" is that radio/TV waves go on for ever, they really don't in any practical sense. Those old episodes of I Love Lucy may be 60 light years away, but they aren't even close to coherent anymore. Our best guess is that the information in a radio signal beamed as powerfully and tightly as we can today will be pretty much randomized before it reaches 40 light years.

Even if somehow Lucy and Desi were able to hold together in a coherent enough format to indicate intelligent origin, the receivers would still need to be listening and they need to be almost exactly at our level of technology (well, the level we were at when the broadcast originally left Earth). We don't even broadcast analog TV anymore in the US--over the air is digital now, and mostly much lower-powered. Most of our communication has become tightly-focused. In 50 years we may be using a quantum signaling or other technology that is 100% point-to-point with virtually no "bleed" into surrounding space. No one would be able to eavesdrop.

In a nutshell, we have no idea if live is common or rare and we have almost no tools currently for answering that question, at least outside our solar system.

[Xithras]

23. The odds of intelligent life elsewhere are 100%, but that doesn't mean we'll ever see them.

The real problems are :

1. The odds of intelligent life existing on a remotely Earth-like planet are exceedingly low. If you look back at the geological history of our planet and solar system, you'll see that Earth has its current form because of a series of unlikely events (most notably the collision that created the moon, gave the planet its oversized iron core, and gave rise to our massive tides, but also the rise of cyanobacteria aided by the closed seas which led to the oxygenization of our atmosphere). Any intelligent alien life would probably have evolved on a planet unimaginably different from our own, greatly reducing the chances that we'd actually be able to interact with them.

2. Time is really the deal killer. The universe is 13,700 million years old. Our planet is 4,300 million years old. If an intelligent alien race had visited Earth even one million years ago, they would have concluded that it was a life-rich planet that contained nothing more "intelligent" than a small number of rock bashing apes. If they visited 5,000 million years ago, they may have paused a moment to admire the beauty of the collapsing nebula before moving on. Similarly, our universe is full of fading stars. We may one day visit some of them and find the dry husks of dead worlds that contain the remains of dead civilizations that went extinct 100 million years ago. The odds of us finding another advanced civilization that exists right now is fairly small.

3. And even if we did, it's questionable whether they would consider US intelligent enough to communicate with. We have been a technological society for a few hundred years...less than a blink of an eye compared to the age of our planet or universe. The odds that we would find a civilization equal in technology to our own is effectively zero. There could easily be intelligent species out in the universe that have societies dating back more than a billion years. If that civilization were to look at us, would they really consider us smarter than any other animal on this planet? Or would they see us as the equivalent of those horses that can do math by stamping their hooves. "Sure, there's some brains...but intelligent? Not really." Basic probabilities suggest that any intelligence we encounter will be far, FAR older than our own.

[Spike89]

36. Precisely, well stated

I'm not sure that we have a data set to make the assumption of your first point...it did take many millions of years for life to come here, but we really don't have a clue if all the events that happened here had to actually happen in the same way. For all we know, the moon crash may have made it harder for life to get going here. We can't even say that differing biologies would hinder understanding between sentient creatures.

Your second and third points are great. To put is into even stronger perspective...if aliens were to have bombarded us with radio transmissions for a 1000 years, ending in 1940, they'd have been sure we weren't technological. If they'd arrived 200 years ago there wouldn't have been much point in talking to us, we were barely aware of the rest of our own planet. In a few hundred years from now, we might not even bother with radio waves as a transmission source.

They might be covering the entire solar system in quantum messaging right now (or another sci-fi method like Star Trek's sub-space), but we'd never know. If they are, maybe we'll discover the technology in time, before they stop broadcasting, but it isn't likely!

[Neoma]

27. Some people don't even consider animals here on earth to be any sense of the word "intelligent."

I consider it laughable that one day we'll communicate with aliens when we can barely communicate with animals.

[closeupready]

28. You can communicate with Spot or Checkers, right?

You say no, and they know not to do something.

Obviously, you can't have a conversation in the sense that you have a human conversation with another human, but you can indeed communicate with animals.

If that wasn't what you meant, I apologize.

[Neoma]

29. Not what I meant, no.

I mean the flaw in Star Trek essentially.

[closeupready]

31. Oh, ok, right.

[RILib]

33. parrots are very smart

[closeupready]

34. Yes, I recall reading about the grey parrot -

Let me see if I can find the info

On edit, Alex:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)

(if link doesn't work correctly, copy and paste the above address into html bar)