Would you be disappointed if life on other planets were not up to your expectations

This should the right board for this thread. If not please move!
I chose the title since seeing all the Alien fanatics on ATS. You have Greys, Paladins and many others. If you hear about aliens you suspect that the alien life would be highly intelligent. What if it was the opposite? Small traces of microscopic life forms. I would like to see what would you say if scientist found life forms like these and only these.

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


first off, the thread title has a misspelling. You can fix it if you act quick. expectations not expatiation.

and secondly, any life would be awesome. From microscopic single celled organisms, to cave men and dinosaurs. Life is life. Ours started out as a small amount of nothing and look where we are today, on the brink of destroying ourselves with all our knowledge. Well that last part was a bit melodramatic. But all life has to start somewhere. In fact, there is the chance that our life started as a result of some living organism being attached to a chunk of ice that crashed to earth billions of years ago. So we might in fact be aliens on earth.

Good question.

An interesting question, and one I have never had the pleasure of contemplating before now. That may seem strange to some posters on the board, but I think its mostly because of my attitude toward the possibilities presented by the universe. I try not to assume, or expect anything .
I would be just as impressed by the discovery of moss on Mars, as I would be by a fully functioning complex lifeform with intelligence, language and culture. The discovery of moss on Mars would mean a thousand more discoveries around a corner, and improve the odds and the drive for finding more and more life, to expand our understanding, and to forge new paths through the heavens.
I think its interesting that one could ever consider being dissapointed by a discovery of life. Seems willfully ignorant to be unhappy that the universe was different than you thought.

Whatever lifeforms we found would only say something about the characteristics of lifeforms in whatever infinitesimally small sample of planets we were looking at (in relation to the Universe at large). In solar systems such as ours, the odds of intelligent life have turned out to be 1 to 1. That is pretty good odds. If we study other solar systems and find microscopic life, that would say to me that evolution just needs more time (or a helping hand, evil laugh).

Originally posted by Romantic_Rebel
You have Greys, Paladins and many others.

Paladins did exist and they were humans not aliens.

en.wikipedia.org...

Maybe you meant Pleiadians?

Anyways, I don't really have too many expectations aside of this major one.

I expect surprises.

How could my expectations be let down?

reply to post by muzzleflash


Do you have proof these Caucasian aliens exist?
If not then how could they?
Sorry I see now!

How could we from a few bit of microbial life, infer anything conclusive about life throughout the universe? Any samples we would obtain would be far too small to extrapolate to everything. No doubt, higher, spacefaring lifeforms will let us see them on their terms.

A measurement bias will exist for the forseeable future that skews our perception from the truth of the matter.

The only way it could disappoint me is if there was NO LIFE anywhere else. Even if we found bacteria, viruses, bugs, whatever, I'd be ecstatic.

"Disappointed" wouldn't even come close to how I would feel. I shudder to think that the human race might be the most highly advanced amongst all the life forms on other planets, and I'm sure there are many. War and killing each other, sickness and starvation, and a dependancy on fossil fuels are only a few things that cause me to believe mankind is still very primitive. Early humans killed only for food, which makes think that in some ways we've even taken a few steps backward.

reply to post by Crimelab


Any form of life would been Awesome,The chances of there not being some form of life else where? Remote! billions and billions of stars gotta be something living out there.

I'm sure I would end up disappointed ..
If there was inferior conscious life I imagine the humans exploiting them for obvious reasons.
If there was even vegetation and untapped "resources" I'd be disappointed that humans would just
Go there to desecrate another planet.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

ANY extraterrestrial life-form would be an amazing revelation. If that life-form were
proven to be ABSOLUTELY extra-terrestrial--with no relation to any terrestrial
DNA, it would be astounding!!


It would be a disaster of biblical proportions! Real wrath of God type stuff! Fire and brimstone
coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness, earthquakes,
and volcanoes.The dead rising from the grave...
...human sacrifices, dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

If one expects too much one may be setting oneself up for disappointment.

Life is life.

If one conjures up images of their preconceived notion of what alien life should be because of science fiction or fantasy speculation and only expect and accept that as life without disappointment, I think they're too narrow minded. Logically, considering the accepted age of the universe, abductee stories, UFO sightings, and the difficulty in imagining that we are the only intelligent beings of the universe, some are conditioned to assume that any life found in the universe must be life with greater intelligence than us and therefore anything less will be a disappointment. While I find it extremely unlikely that other intelligence does not exist, I wouldn't be disappointed in finding any form of life.

Life as we know it is another issue that fits this discussion. Who's to say how similar, different or even recognizable life on another planet will be? Space is a vast place where pretty much anything is possible in my mind.

"Would you be disappointed if life on other planets were not up to your expectations"

life on this planet does not live up to my expectations. so....

nope. i'm conditioned to not be dissipointed by my expectations.

and i try to not practice speciesism. it's like racism on steriods.

I'm already disappointed! First, we went to the moon - great! I remember watching with excitement those grainy black and white images on TV when I was about 6. What did we find there on the moon? Dirt and rocks...
So, we went to the moon several more times (I guess to see if we missed anything). Nope... Still dirt and rocks.

Then we went to MARS! (or rather robots went to Mars). Wow! I thought, hey - this is gonna be cool, right? There's got to be something totally crazy on Mars, for sure! But alas, no... nothing there but (you guessed it) DIRT AND ROCKS.

Dang! So we sent robots back to Mars because we're optimists - maybe we still missed something... WAIT!!! OMG!!! We found some ICE CRUMBS!!!

So, here we are. five decades and bazillions of dollars later. We've discovered dirt, rocks and ice crumbs.

All that money could have solved a lot of problems here on Earth.

I don't understand why we are so obsessed with what's "out there". There's just too much to do here at home!

I don't know if I would be disappointed to find that alien life forms are just microbial.

Humans have the capacity to disapointment me every day. Why should alien life forms be any different?

reply to post by Rockerchic4God

I have to agree that the money could've been better spent on problems here on Earth but I also think we need to explore our outer surroundings. I don't know what the happy medium is between the two but I think we should explore. Yeah, it has been five decades but we've learned a lot since then. Should we have never built boats to explore the oceans or developed vehicles to travel land faster? How long did those developments take? I obviously could give more examples but I'm sure you get the point regardless of if you agree or not.

Unbelievable the Moon is only "dirt and rocks". I'm shocked there isn't more to be found.

The main theory about the formation of the Moon says, a Mars-sized object hit Earth, and shot out a Moon, basically. So I say the Moon should have a lot more "Earth stuff".

But honestly maybe NASA is actually scared to look in the right places. It is a dangerous mission. If you send over astronauts to explore so-called Pyramids on Mars, I hope everyone realizes how terrifying of a mission that would be. Imagine being on Mars in your space suit in Martian atmosphere, the Earth being being 141 million miles away, imagine actually discovering cave writing, I mean that would be insane.

Also so many asteroids have hit the Moon, I bet under the surface are all kinds of treasures. The Moon has an impact crater about 1/2 the size of the US, and is 5 miles deep, that occurred right when the moon was formed. I bet the Moon has many secrets, it's just so dangerous for Humans to go there, regularly, and stay there.

But once NASA or anyone creates jobs in space, I'll take one!

Source: nasa.gov

reply to post by Bkrmn


I have to agree with you 100%, I personally think that with the limited knowledge we have and as much as we know we still don't have a clue!! we don't even know whats at the bottom or in our own ocean, or on our moon just a stone away from us.

There are creatures right here on our own planet that eat and live in conditions that would kill us instantly or make us gag, yet they live just fine among each other including animals!

Yet we as evolved beings (really funny) can't seem to live with each other without trying to kill each other off not for food but for wealth or power. So for other beings, I have no doubt there are millions if not billions in our solar system, and if they are more evolved than us which I believe just based on simple mathematical probability, They aren't coming anywhere close to us until we have matured as a species.

As for the UFO's I think its a way to keep track of our progress, because if they could travel from wherever to come here, I'm pretty sure our technologies are just a nuisance to them.

Well based on a sample of one, the most likely outcome is that we will fine a planet around another star that is covered in slime. Thats what the Earth was like for most of its existence.

The chance of finding intelligent life that we can relate to is very small I think. We can hardly communicate with our nearest relatives eg. Chimps, Gorillas.

Imagine time travelling forward 1 million years, would our descendents, if any, be able to have any sensible conversation with you, would they bother?

To answer that original question, no I will be ecstatic if we find any extra-solar planet that is able to support life, and/or does have life of any kind. (Then I will have a sample size of two).