Despite what we think is it possible other life really doesn't exist?

Question

I'll try not to make this too long or anything but I've been thinking about this question a lot lately. Now right off the bat I will say that I would LIKE to believe extraterrestrial life forms exist, but do we have any concrete rock solid proof of this? Rock solid as in there is NO answer otherwise to show that the evidence given is 100%?

Look, I've seen all the YouTube videos and stuff online. Some of them can be quite convincing at first, but the more I look into a particular video or account of something that happened I always end up somewhere that can show that it's fake, a hoax, mind tricks, etc and generally do so quite convincingly. We all know there's CGI, models, camera tricks, etc so I understand most video is probably faked.

Then there is an issue with more credible sources like the Blue Book created by the USAF or the COMETA report. All of the accounts in these books either talk about a UFO (which by no means could be alien - many government the world over are always experimenting, testing, etc) or when they do mention actual beings they are ALWAYS very human like...two legs, two arms, eye, nose, mouth, ears, etc...

So this got me thinking about something I read that discussed the possibility that E.T.'s might actually be humans from the future. Now, if we consider for a moment that this is true, is it possible that humans, whether from the future or not really are the only intelligent life form outside of our current form? I mean look at the "grays" or you common alien. Very human like appearance and from what I've read a lot about their appearance makes sense if they are in fact humans from the future. They have big black eyes that actually act as a kind of sun glasses because the light on Earth is too bright due to the Sun or atmosphere having issues, skin is the color it is due to those same problems, etc. Not to mention as well, like I said, that they are humanoids. I mean, what are the chances that other life exists then comparing those chances that a civilization comes about that has all the same features we do? Again...this is all just speculation and I of course have no evidence for this...but aliens as we know them being future humans rings more plausible in my mind then them being aliens from a different planet that just happen to look like us.

Lets also look at Roswell for example. Supposedly something crashes and its from outer space. That right there alone makes me question Roswell. You mean to tell me a advanced civilization can travel from light years away, have technology WAY beyond what we could ever imagine let alone comprehend...but yet they can't make a ship that doesn't crash? All that technology, all that distance traveled just for the engine to give out and have them crash to the ground...hmmm...seems highly unlikely don't you think? Well, I guess if it was future humans that can time travel my point is hard to defend...anyways!

Either way, I've just been thinking about this. It seems every time I find something that makes me go "WOW!" it's soon crushed by being proven a hoax or scam (more often than not with the creators admitting it themselves).

So...what are your thoughts? The process for life coming about is very complex and some would so a 1 in infinity chance of happening...could it be true? I see arguments from both sides. Some say its impossible given the size of the universe for there not to be other intelligent life and some say its possible and probable that we are the only life in existence due to its complexity and chance of happening.

To me it really comes down to being 50/50...either they do or they don't exist...but do we have infallible proof for either side?

Thanks for reading! Hope we can get something intelligent from this! :-)

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As a disclaimer I would like to say as well than I am a non-believer in gods and religion, so none of this has anything to do with a god(s), the Bible, or any other religious stuff. I say this only because I'm sure it could possibly come up at some point and don't say this because of any other reason.

Answer 1

Okay... okay.

We have never ever ever EVER encountered any kind of alien intelligence. Never. Not once, not ever. On that count you are 100% right. No question whatsoever that any purported video or photographic evidence is either faked, a mistake, or otherwise false.



But....



Life is a chemical reaction, and it is made up from very very common chemicals. Forget whether a god or mechanical process created the first spark.. That's not important. What is important is that however it happened, it did happen, meaning the odds of it it happening are non-zero. So far so good, yes? Here we are, therefore it is possible for us to be here.



Now.... lets look at the universe as we understand it. It's made of hydrogen, and gravity and the stuff that gets made when those two things act on each other. Stars form, they do their thing, they burn, they explode and they die creating heavy elements and new stars. In the last 14 billion years a lot of that has happened, and so now we have countless billions of galaxies, and in each galaxy, countless billions of stars. We also see that water is everywhere. It's an easy reaction that occurs around young stars in a fog of heavy elements. We see it all over the place. The other elements that can be found around the same stars are basically the same stuff we find around ours. Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur, iron, good ol' hydrogen, etc. We find that life is made of this same stuff.



This reaction called life can occur, and the stuff it needs is all over the place. The logical conclusion is that life is also fairly common. The circumstance needed for it is pretty rare. You have to have a place where there's a planet that is "just-right' in a Goldilocks kind of way. It has to be close enough to it's home star to have liquid water, and not so close that the radiation boils everything away in to space. You need to have a liquid iron core that is moving inside a solid mantle so that you can get a magnetic shield. You need to have water on that planet, and you need to have other heavy elements in place. The odds of all that occurring at once are slim indeed. Lottery slim. Lets play with some numbers.



Gotta have a star that can have planets. Only about a third of them can. Big bite out of the potential there. If it has a planet (or several), that planet has to be in the Goldilocks zone. Our star has three planets in the GLZ. Venus, Earth and Mars, but as we know, we are a rare circumstance, so lets make it crazy rare and say that one in 10,000 stars that has planets has one where it is possible for liquid water to exist. As stated, our star has 3 such planets, and you couldn't live on two of them, so we add the magnetosphere to the mix, and a nice initial atmosphere of not too much CO2, and plenty of nitrogen, Now we have a situation where maybe only one in 1,000,000 planets that could have liquid water actually do have liquid water. Let's make all but 1 in a million of those toxic for any reason you care to name. Those are long odds. call it 1 in 10,000,000,000,000. One in 10 quadrillion. Crazy small. In reality probably far smaller by factors of millions than the real odds in the real Universe.



Let's say that there are 300,000,000,000 galaxies that we can observe That's pretty close to right. Knock out a third of them at this level to make the math easy and account for the 1/3 stars to planets ratio. one hundred billion is the number. 100,000,000,000. Let's give each of those galaxies an average of one hundred billion (100,000,000,000) stars. That's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Ten sextillion stars. If you start lopping off zeros you get:

100,000,000,000. It is likely that there are one hundred trillion instances of planets that can sustain life under this scenario. As for the odds of life occurring in a place where it can. I put the probability at nearly 100%, but certainly higher than 1 in a hundred trillion.



They are out there. But out there is a long way from here.

Answer 2

You're confusing the idea of extraterrestrial life with the popular culture concept of aliens which visit Earth.



From a probability standpoint, it is likely that there is life out there besides us. Yes, it is a complex and improbable process that leads to life. Improbable doesn't mean impossible, it happened here, and given the number of stars in the galaxy (and the whole universe for that matter), it is possible for it to have happened elsewhere.



There is absolutely no evidence that extraterrestrials have visited Earth at any point in the history of our species. None. Youtube is not a source for anything. UFOs are not really a related topic, out inability to identify something has less to do with it being something uncommon and more to do with the limitations of our ability to identify things in poor conditions (low lighting, for example).



There is nothing to indicate that time travel is possible. The reason so many "aliens" resemble humans is that they are fictional, and even at our most imaginative, our minds have limitation.



Your understanding of probability is flawed, 50/50 is not a correct way of looking at it. That's like rolling a die and saying there is a 50/50 chance of rolling a 6, either you do or you don't, even though it is well known that there is a 1/6 chance of that outcome.



You are right that we have no proof. Until we actually have evidence, we are speculating. But in science, speculation tends to be much more than just kicking around ideas, it is still heavily based on well established scientific principals.

Answer 3

I don't have rock-solid 100% proof that YOU exist. Science rarely has infallible proof of anything. If we did, it would just be a commonly-accepted fact



The evidence for UFOs and super-intelligent aliens visiting Earth is mostly crap.



But given what we know about the number of extrasolar planets and the huge variety of extreme environments that life can survive on Earth, it's extremely probable that life exists elsewhere. It may only be bacteria or mold, not little green men. Even if it's a 1 in a billion chance, that would mean anywhere from 10-400 planets in our galaxy have life on them.



You need to learn to separate paranoid Youtube conspiracy theories from real science.

Answer 4

The point in this whole debate is that we have no evidence either way. Like almost all scientists, I keep an open mind regarding the possible existence of alien life. In a Universe as vast as ours, it is quite possible it is out there somewhere. However, if you are asking has it ever visited us, the answer is no. That same vastness that increases the odds in it's favor also militates against any ability to cross those distances. Consider this. Simple radio communication with our nearest stellar neighbor would entail sending a message (in either direction) and waiting at least 81/2 years for a reply. Even if life is commonplace, we may never know it.

Answer 5

We are proof life happens. We are the only yard stick we have at the moment and we got here with a lot of nearly got wiped out along the way. The Universe is a violent place, we may be the only ones, we may not be the only ones, until there is evidence either way we will not know.

Answer 6

Of course it exists.With billion's of galaxies, it's extremely unlikely that we are the only life forms in the entire UNIVERSE.



It need not be proven, you can do the math to find that the probability is close to 99.99%.

Answer 7

Why would there be just humans in this big universe? Humans were created. We didn't evolve from apes or fish and we weren't created by an old man floating on a cloud.

Answer 8

Possible yes. Likely? Hell no. Its almost impossible for there to not be life elsewhere, but only almost. There is still a tiny tiny possibility.