Odds are Aliens are not here

There appears to be so many threads that are all too willing to promote that aliens are visiting us. The argument that there are billions of star systems, which probably have a solar system that can support some kind of life, is indeed compelling at a first glance.

Earlier this year science daily reported on the probability of finding another earth like planet with intelligent life. Is there anybody out there? Probably not, according to a scientist from the University of East Anglia. The mathematical model produced by Prof Andrew Watson suggests that the odds of finding new life on other Earth-like planets are low, given the time it has taken for beings such as humans to evolve and the remaining life span of Earth.

You can find the full article here

Link


Anyhow now there is a new piece of research by Harvard geochemist Charles Langmuir who said “Human degradation of the environment has the potential to stall an ongoing process of planetary evolution, and even rewind the evolutionary clock to leave the planet habitable only by the bacteria that dominated billions of years of Earth’s history.”

You can find the full article here

Link

Remember the original proposal is “Odds are Aliens are not here” I don't doubt that life exists just that they are unlikely to be here. I don't now if this has been put forward in a thread before (odds are yes but I couldn’t find it) certainly not lately so it’s worth a revisit if it has.

The main issues in regard to these two articles are:-
Will we survive our evolutionary steps to become aliens to others?
Would other civilisations survive there own evolutionary steps to become aliens to us?

There may be other issues not presented here….. Look forward to your thoughts for and against

reply to post by majestictwo

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as far as im concerned its odds on aliens have been here since the dawn of our history.

our universe..only one of what it appears is an infinite number..is so very old the idea that our planet has never been found and visited by entities who didnt develop here is to me simply ridiculous.

in whats basically an infinite amount of time and space almost anything and everything would seem to be possible....i honestly cant see how anyone can say..outright..that its almost impossible or at the least highly unlikely that we have been visited.

Saying that aliens arent visting Earth seems plausbible right now, given the utter lack of evidence, but to go out and state that humanity is alone in the universe is a LARGE stretch.

Next year NASA will launch the Kepler Mission the first telescope ever to be capable of finding Earth sized extra solar worlds.

I agree to a degree with you Majestictwo,

I personally do not doubt that there is intelligent life out there. However, I ALSO do not doubt that they have visited Earth.

What I DO doubt, though, is that they would be lingering here for so long. The distances involved are so immense (tens, hundreds and often THOUSANDS of light-years distant) that, in my opinion, they would at best just give us a cursory glance as they pass by on their way through the cosmos.

Why would they travel so very far just to shove some needles into various parts of 'ole Clem the cattle-rancher? And why stay here for hundreds of years, doing the same thing? Surely if they're advanced enough to perform feats like interstellar travel, then their medical and other sciences would be advanced to the point that they could learn all they need to know from anylizing a single specimen, instead of thousands?

It simply boggles me.

[edit on 4-12-2008 by Havoc40k]

reply to post by Havoc40k

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hello

well..maybe they are not examining us..maybe they are editing us.

I think that we are being visited and have been for as long as man has been here. I am sure in this vast universe we are far from the only civilization. Given the fact that this universe is so old, it seems to me that we could be very young compared to other races or species. The travel issue, well that one could be explained by their ability to travel great distances in a way that we have not yet come to understand.

I do believe they come to check on us, perhaps we are nearing our own undoing here on planet earth. I do believe that this will come out far sooner than later.

'utter lack of evidence'?

reply to post by alienesque

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But to what end are they "editing us"? Do they want to develop Earth into a space-side diner with 42 different flavours of human on the menu? Or perhaps as slaves to do all their dirty work, like cleaning space-flies off their Ships' Windows? Or maybe just to improve us for the greater good of the universe, with a benevolent tinge of travelling-pilgrim type goodwill?

It's a question I don't think we will ever have the answer to...

That said, I repead that I do NOT doubt that they visit us. I just do not see the point of traversing such distances, Faster-than-light travel or not, just to snatch hundreds of people each year and perform invasive experiments on them.

[edit on 4-12-2008 by Havoc40k]

why do aliens have to live on an earth like planet?

We have animals that live in desert regions as well as polar regions, we have marine life that breath surface air and others with gills.
there ar eorganisms that live on the ocean floor vents as well as microbes that live in the thin layer between desiel fuel and water.

a plant based animal that photosynthasizes solar energy may be an option.

just because we have biodiversity on a planet like earth does not mean that other beings with a completely different genetic makeup cannot exsist on another planet we may consider uninhabitable.

Given the possibility of an infinite universe, or even a multi-verse, your "odds" are pretty much impossible to calculate.

reply to post by Havoc40k

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hi..ive go no idea...i just dont like to think we have the slightest idea what they are doing here..they could be doing any number of things..

It seems people affiliated with religious groups or the government seem to always want to say that Aliens and UFO's don't exist.
Or come up with some pathetic argument to try and prove they don't exist out of the fear of losing control over others.
But there is just far to much evidence that they do exist.
Although no immediate evidence on what they are or where they are from.
But that is largely due to evil selfish ego's, religion and shadow governments.
I see far more than enough evidence in this movie alone that they do exist.
/6hxoj5

reply to post by majestictwo

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You know I'm starting to have this change in me. Lately I'm just starting to become more of a dis-believer. I think it's honestly made me much more grounded. Enjoyed reading the article.

I a not trying to change any minds one way or the other. The articles make some valid points and if you think about it the odds are extremely high they are not here. I’m not saying they are not here, just the odds are against it - big time

Both points are pretty much baseless speculation. So since we're speculating...

Firstly, just because it took human level intelligence this long to evolve on Earth, doesn't mean that similar levels of intelligence could not develop sooner on other planets - or later, but on planets that orbit around stars which much greater lifespans than Earth's. Indeed, while there's absolutely nothing to support this claim - there's really nothing to indicate that human-level intelligence could not even have evolved long ago in Earth's history.

Note: Human level intelligence does not mean human level of technology or society - only intelligence levels. Of which we have several species of currently extinct hominid which suggest that a roughly human level of intelligence was around long before modern humans.

Also note: Our sun is only half-way through it's estimated life cycle, and has about a billion years left before it starts to exhaust it's fuel supply and burn hotter - slowly making this planet uninhabitable to life as we know it. Humans have only been around for an estimated 200,000 years and most of our technological progress has been made in only the last few hundred years. In a few hundred more years, and certainly within the next few millenia, we'll have the capability for extra-planetary travel into space reliably. If this happens, then when the sun does die, it will not mean the end of our species. Only the end of our original homeworld. (However, by then, I would suspect that our continual merger with technology will have advanced us beyond merely "human" by that point)

Secondly: I don't think humanity has the capability of rendering this planet uninhabitable to all but bacterial live via climate change. That's a silly supposition. This Earth has seen many cataclysms far more devastating than humanity. For instance, the 10-mile wide asteroid impact which heralded the extinction of the dinosaurs did more damage to this planet than all of the damage humanity has dealt it in our 200,000 year history combined - and thensome. Not to mention it happened in a much, much shorter time frame. Even all of our nuclear stockpiles combined could not even come close to matching the destructive power of that asteroid. Yet here we are a paltry 65 million years later.

This extinction level event wasn't even the worst or most cataclysmic in Earth's history. There have been extinction level events so catastrophic that it destroyed nearly 80% (or more) known life on the planet at the time. While I have no doubt that humanity is ushering in a new era of extinction level events - I can't really see it being as devastating as what the Earth has already undergone. Indeed, extinction level events seem to occur in fairly regular cycles on this Earth. I could speculate that such events happen on other planets which harbor life as well. To what regularity or severity, I don't know. If life can bounce back and create us, I see no reason why it would could not be so on other planets.

Although I have no definitive proof, I do find the idea of Earth being the only spark of life in the universe preposterous. I find the idea of humans being the only intelligent life in the universe highly unlikely. I find the idea of aliens visiting Earth to be somewhat plausible - albeit I don't necessarily think that they are, or that they are behind the UFO phenomena. To accept the stories and conspiracy theories surrounding aliens found on this site seems to me to be too far of a stretch of logic based on far far too scant few amounts of reliable evidence.

I will say this however - that I believe our first definitive contact with alien life will happen within this century, and I believe that our first contact will alien life will be in the form of discovering microscopic organisms within our solar system. It will not be intelligent life. There's enough evidence for the diversity of life in hostile environments on Earth to support the supposition that life may have adapted to thrive in the upper atmosphere and even space. There's plenty of tests which show that certain bacteria, yeast, molds, etc, can at least survive conditions in space. Some have even demonstrated their survivability of reentry.

Its quite interesting to see the level of belief in extra-terrestrial intelligence, depending on established trends. A few years ago most people were against the idea of there possibly being any form of intelligence other than our own. Recently, it was that people believed the idea of microbial life (to a certain extent, most people still believe this). This is done through social manipulation, and I believe it is a form of slow but inevitable disclosure to the ignorant, small brained masses who literally cannot think for themselves.

The most fashionable thing to believe now is that there might be some form of intelligence but they most certainly have not visited Earth because faster than light travel is impossible (disregarding the fact that our technology is extremely basic, compared to the fact that some civilizations might have possibly survived for tens of millions of years) What we believed was true back when the Earth was the centre of the Universe is not true today, just as the likelihood of Alien life being improbable will be proven to be utterly ridiculous.

Our knowledge of the Solar System, let alone the Galaxy is extremely basic, so its laughable to suggest we're the only lifeforms out there. Life is probably as common as water (which also was believed to be a rarity)


[edit on 4-12-2008 by dodgygeeza]

reply to post by majestictwo

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I disagree! Odds are completely reliant on our limited understanding of the Universe, and of the spectrum of life itself. Also most of these other-world models are based on ours (one single planet) in conjunction with human activity and it's repercussions.

We must allow room for all the variables mentioned above to be completely different.. and therefore their outcomes equally different. The studies you cite are every bit as ambiguous as the Drake Equation. We know stuff all and these studies reinforce that notion.

This is dartboard science, nothing more!

IRM

I don't disagree with any of your posts.

There have been some great replies to this – some lengthy input. I Presume everyone who has posted is remembering “Odds are Aliens are not here” means right now.

I just think there would have to be 1000s of civilisation capable of galactic travel to get just one to transverse the distance and arrive here right now. That means there would have to many times this of intelligent life assuming many don't have space travel. On top of that there would have to be millions of habitable planets.

Naturally the odds reduce if you allow for alien visitation during the life time of planet earth because the time window is longer.

I know it is a possibility and the articles don't allow for travel that we haven’t discovered at this time. Alian life may also be much closer without us knowing.

So assuming we have kicked the articles out the door – What could reduce those odds so that we can say “Odds are Aliens are here”
Its one or the other !

It seems to me these things saying odds are against it are only looking at things from our own technological understandings, and not much further ahead in the future.

Given the large amount of time in the universe - that we know of, and how technology increases at an increasing rate, I think the odds are we have been visited at least once, if not many more times.

If we spent our efforts towards space instead of wars, then who knows where we would be right now in them.

But that in itself does not in anyway validate any personal claims.

reply to post by NavalFC

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Evidence is only lacking for those not fortunate enough to have seen a UFO firsthand. Those who have seen one or many have all the evidence they need that more is going on than we are being told.
I have honestly lost count of the things I have seen but there are a few that just defy any possible earthly origin. I have no doubts. I think it is a shame that many people will never know that for themselves, but it is just the way it is. I can't explain why some people will have multiple sightings while others will never see anything in their lifetime. It may be a simple question of awareness and an ability to accept what you are seeing. I think some people have seen them and tell themselves some excuse to dismiss it out of fear.

But thats just my opinion.