Life on other planets?

[vbasscustom]

so, what do you think. the way i see it, if were here, thne why not. no, maybe not in our solar system, but somewhere in the never ending reaches of deep space, there is something, or someone. and im not talking about micro organisms, im talking intellegent life. like i said, were here, so why cant another race have evolved into something similar somewhere else.

[RWP]

From what I understand our moon plays a huge roll in stabilizing our planets rotational properties. Scientists say without the moon being so close and so big Earth would do some crazy stuff like swapping poles from time to time making it very difficult for life to evolve. So how many planets have an unusual moon configuration like we have?

[vbasscustom]

i dont know, jeeze im not a rocket-moon scientist thing

[Relic]

Of course there's other life out there. I find it kind of silly to think that it absolutely has to be similar to life on earth. (ie - all life absolutely needs earth-like conditions to exist)
I just don't buy it.

[Chunk-O-Funk]

I like to think that just by the amount of other galaxies that are out there the odds that one other supports life is possible. But, like RWP touched on it's all by chance that we are even here and that we lasted long enough to evolve.

If you take into account all the things that make life possible on Earth it greatly reduces the odds of another planet like ours, but we are talking billions of other galaxies. I guess the odds are there is another planet like ours, but the odds of us ever fining it is a long shot. Getting there, impossible.

[T-Bird]

Hi.

Since the definition of life is rather vague and a source of constant debate among scientist, I'd say yes, there's definitely life on other planets.

Even when judged only by the diversity and adaptability of the life we have here on earth, it's entirely possible that we will find some kind of living organisms within our solar system.

Venus and Mars are good candidates as both lie in the "life belt" and we have organisms living on earth that could live in either planets. Then we have Europa and several other moons that supposedly have favourable conditions for life as we know it.

A Finnish sience author wrote an award winning book a while back, in which he came to a conclusion that life may not be such a rare thing after all.

He also explained quite thoroughly why it is highly improbable that any scentient or intellegent life forms would ever meet. At least with how we percieve space, time and distances .

Regards
Sam

[bassybill]

Somewhere in the inky black vastness of space, billions of years in the future, a highly advanced technology will report to its masters that it has intercepted the faint remnants of electromagnetic signals coming from our own long, long dead galaxy.

As they decipher the transmission, they will watch Jimmy Osmond's 1972 Top Of The Pops performance of "Long Haired Lover from Liverpool" with mild curiosity, before concluding that there was never intelligent life in our region of the Universe...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YriPIujLtsA

[T-Bird]

Hi.

Originally Posted by bassybill

Somewhere in the inky black vastness of space, billions of years in the future, a highly advanced technology will report to its masters that it has intercepted the faint remnants of electromagnetic signals coming from our own long, long dead galaxy.

As they decipher the transmission, they will watch Jimmy Osmond's 1972 Top Of The Pops performance of "Long Haired Lover from Liverpool" with mild curiosity, before concluding that there was never intelligent life in our region of the Universe...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YriPIujLtsA

And they'd be absolutely correct basing their study on that.

(No, I couldn't watch it through, but I got the point )

Regards
Sam

[Chunk-O-Funk]

Originally Posted by bassybill

Somewhere in the inky black vastness of space, billions of years in the future, a highly advanced technology will report to its masters that it has intercepted the faint remnants of electromagnetic signals coming from our own long, long dead galaxy.

As they decipher the transmission, they will watch Jimmy Osmond's 1972 Top Of The Pops performance of "Long Haired Lover from Liverpool" with mild curiosity, before concluding that there was never intelligent life in our region of the Universe...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YriPIujLtsA

If Klaatu and Gort only knew of the vile things to come they would have never let us off the hook back in 51.

[Steve]

I'm not so sure if the question is whether or not there is other "intelligent" life so much as if there is, can it evolve past the point where they begin to crap all over themselves, each other and their planet until it all implodes on itself and has to start over.

[FromBeyond]

Not a doubt about it. Most of it won't be life as we know it here on earth, but i'm sure there's a bunch of other organisms scattered through the endless vacuum that is space.

[XtreO]

Originally Posted by RWP

From what I understand our moon plays a huge roll in stabilizing our planets rotational properties. Scientists say without the moon being so close and so big Earth would do some crazy stuff like swapping poles from time to time making it very difficult for life to evolve. So how many planets have an unusual moon configuration like we have?

We already "swap poles" from time to time. It has as far as I know little to do with evolution. Animals don't care where the poles are, they just stay away from it if their fur isn't think enough.

I think it unimaginable that life does not exist somewhere out there. I even think intelligent life exists, probably far more advanced than our civilisation. Billions upon billions unpon billions of stars, with everything between 0 and 20 planets around it, again with zero to more commonly a lot of moons around them again... I can of course not grasp the immensity and awesome hugeness of the entire universe however I might try, but watching stars too many to count in the complete darkness on our winter cabin to the north gives me some idea.

If someone says or have said "why haven't they found us yet then?", my answer would be simple. It takes about five lightyears for us to reach our nearest star apart from the sun, our galaxy is 100 000 lightyears wide and perhaps around 1000 lightyears high. And the Milky Way is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies. Assuming they all are equal in size to the Milky Way, which they are not (usually bigger), our universe would be, without any spacing at all between the galaxies, which of course too is a wrong assumption, 10.000.000.000.000.000 lighyears wide, which is, I think ten thousand measures of hundred billion lightyears. Given that one lightyear takes like 20 years to travel with nuclear propulsion, which we are hundreds of years from invention functionally, it's no wonder we feel alone

Some of these numbers probably are wrong, because I'm no good at math and can't be arsed to crosscheck references when posting here. But you get my point.

[Buslady7803]

I believe we are not the only inhabited planet in existence. Might not be in our system but there's something out there somewhere I'm sure. Who knows what they are, what they look like, their planet's features, but that's what SciFi is for, to imagine what it might be like.

If we can exist, why can't others? So yes, there's more out there.

[RWP]

Originally Posted by XtreO

We already "swap poles" from time to time. It has as far as I know little to do with evolution. Animals don't care where the poles are, they just stay away from it if their fur isn't think enough....

Agree, but from the theories I have read, without a large close moon the planet undergoes massive radical climate change that would wipe out all life. Not enough fur for that.

[WyrmDL]

We have a perfectly sized planet, with a perfect star at the perfect distance. We have Jupiter as a sacrifice to take all the blows from asteroids/comets. We also got the moon.

There are a lot of factors a planet needs to be able to harbor life. Then again, some forms of life can live in very harsh conditions.

If we take in consideration the size of the universe though, there is NO chance in my eyes that there CANNOT be any life besides us.

Here are two videos that demonstrate our minuscule existence in the universe:

I like this one the best (great visual picture)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jym...eature=related

This one explains it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0lxbzgwW7I

[shadowtippy]

It would be astounding if there were not other intellighent life somewhere in the vastness of space. Out of all the billions of stars we can see and the billions that we can't, how can there not have been the "right conditions" for life to have developed? From the "creationist" standpoint, I don't recall ever reading that God only created life "in His image" in this one spot.

[Pilgrim]

There's life but not beer.

Q.E.D.: Life is better here.

[Mark Wilson]

Originally Posted by Pilgrim

There's life but not beer.

Q.E.D.: Life is better here.

Maybe they have 50% beer, which tastes like pizza.

Anyway, I think it's a little ignorant to believe there isn't other life out there. We're NOTHING in the gigantic universe. What makes us so special?

[scrunks11]

i find it hard to believe that our planet is the only one in the whole universe with life on it...

[jmattbassplaya]

Originally Posted by T-Bird

Venus and Mars are good candidates as both lie in the "life belt"

That`s not true. Venus is far too close to the sun and Mars is just outside the 'belt' as you described it.