Friday Question - Is There Life on Other Planets?
Friday May 9, 2008
Is life unique to Earth? Could life have developed anywhere else in the universe? We're not asking about UFOs. Do you believe that it's possible that life exists on another planet?
Comments
As space is so vast and galaxies are so numerous, and time so long, then statistically life should be everywhere. However the question should be how easy is it for life to get started in the first place, and how long can it maintain it’s existence once started. Even though it may reach an evolved intelligence the vast distances involved may keep us insulated from each other, assuming our understanding of physics is correct. However their undertsanding of physics may be greater and the distances involved or the timescales may be completely irrelevant. They may be here already with a universal agreement to keep discrete from us and not interfere in our development. Perhaps some of them may be among us already, who knows? As Carl Sagan said: ‘It would be a pretty big waste of space’
ps Nick, love many of your articles.
As space is so vast and galaxies are so numerous, and time so long, then statistically life should be everywhere. However the question should be how easy is it for life to get started in the first place, and how long can it maintain it’s existence once started. Even though it may reach an evolved intelligence the vast distances involved may keep us insulated from each other, assuming our understanding of physics is correct. However their undertsanding of physics may be greater and the distances involved or the timescales may be completely irrelevant. They may be here already with a universal agreement to keep discrete from us and not interfere in our development. Perhaps some of them may be among us already, who knows? As Carl Sagan said: ‘It would be a pretty big waste of space’
ps Nick, love many of your articles.
How could we be so arrogant as not think that WE are the only inteligent, advanced creatures in the universe ?
We only have one example of an inhabited planet as yet, but we can still draw some deductions.
The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old; life has been present for at least the last 3 billion of those years, and possibly got started even earlier.
Complex, multicelled plants and animals go back about 600 million years - so for half the Earth’s history or more, bacteria had the place to themselves.
What most people mean by ‘Intelligent’ life - i.e. technological, machine building civilisation able to send and recieve radio signals, launch space probes, et.c - has been in existence for less than a century.
Note that ‘intelligence’ in the sense of abstract language and reasoning has been around much longer than that - but whales, dolphins, cuttlefish and australopithecines won’t show up over interplanetary distances, pace Star Trek IV.
So…for every ‘intelligent civilisation’ out there, there are going to be a heck of a lot of other worlds where the top predator’s an amoeba.
I suspect that *life* isn’t uncommon in the galaxy, but that *civilisation* is vanishingly rare - in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if we were it.
There are simply too many variables required to be in perfect balance in order for life to survive on earth. Anyone who takes time to research the ingredients necessary to sustain life knows this. The odds against life elsewhere in the universe are in reality astronomical. The evidence points to intelligent design for those who view it objectively.
Imagine that the occurence of life was a million to one, ten million to one even a hundred million to one, with these immense odds life would have to occur in this galaxy many times. That is just in this galaxy. The universe is too big for life to occur only on this tiny insignificant planet. Once it was thought that Earth was the center of the cosmos. This belief was inspired by the attempt to make people more important than they are. This argument that life only took place here is also an attempt to make humanity seem important through making life unique to Earth. If we do not destroy ourselves first, we will find that life is a fairly common occurence throughout the universe.
So, what does God say?
Exactly @Dick. Me personally, I think that all this talk about out of space and lifeforms of any type. Its hard to believe in such things based on the bible. Some ppl dont like to have the bible as reference. They would rather believe in science. But my thing is, how can you not? The bible is the first book ever created. It speaks of God and how he created the Earth and everything that is here and beyond. There was never any mention of aliens or other life on any other planet. Now I know someone might say, the other planets came later and blah blah blah. Which may or may not be true. But to think there’s life on them is kind of far fetched. Thats just my opinion. Heck, I dont even believe that dinosaurs ever existed.
Z, dinosaur fossils are everywhere! How could you not believe they existed? I live in Oklahoma and there is a creek 4 blocks from my house that has an ancient coral bed exposed. Fossilized in it are small weird looking crustaceans from eons ago when Oklahoma was part of a giant inland sea. I have seen chunks of sandrock with fossils in them of half squid, half crayfish looking creatures.
I can tell you truthfully that there was no one there to write down the creation story as it happened. I do believe the Bible but I’m also wise enough to know that creation happened over a long period of time and is in fact still happening. As for other life in the universe, I had an out of body experience due to being told I had 3 to 6 months to live after I was diagnosed with kidney cancer in Oct. ‘06. I was praying to God fervently when I was suddenenly enveloped in a grey mist and my spirit lifted up out of my body. The mist cleared and I was laying on my back in deep space with the edge of a galaxy in front of me. I was very close to the galaxy, I’d say just a couple of light years away, and I could see other galaxies out and beyond the one that lay before me. A mental video went through my mind of these galaxies being populated and with commerce going on between planets and galaxies. The universe was shown to me to be a very busy place!
The rest of my OBE doesn’t have anything to do with the subject of this thread so I will end it here. But I will tell you that our body doesn’t end at the outer lining of skin. The whole universe is part of your body. Could you live without the universe anymore than you could live without your heart? Could you live without the sun anymore than you could live without blood circulating throughout your body. No you couldn’t, so everything is a part of you and you a part of everything.
I don’t like the question because it is so wide open. It seems to me that as big as the universe is, microbes (at least) *must* have evolved somewhere else. A civilization that supports science is a much more rare occurrence. Carl Sagan said that Science requires Democracy, and, on Earth, only the Greek civilization has developed democracy.
[BTW, when I was a believer, I saw no conflict between Genesis and Evolution. I had already come to the conclusion that God prefers to use energy-efficient means to accomplish its ends.]
My best to you all,
tomS
Yes, I will be brief. Not only are other worlds, but if the vivrating springs theory is correct, there are many dimentions,(9 I think) there can be another world next to ours in a difereny dimention. And I´m sure that our big bang whas de product of a gargantuan black hole that transported all it absoved from another dimention to the one we live on.
This is a fascinating topic and there have been some interesting responses. For those who believe life is possible, how would you define intelligence? Some believe that dolphins are intelligent. Some gorillas use sign language while other apes use tools.
And if we ever come across another intelligent and civilized race, I would hope there weren’t any religions in their society and thus little or no history of warfare. The result would no doubt be peaceful aliens.
We all begin from a place of not knowing. So, my best guess is that it’s much more likely that life exists elsewhere in in the universe than some mythological god.
Hi, great question my comments are three fold:
A. People dismiss UFO’s generally out of hand as some sort of insane science, however it should be noted that we have been dropping them on other planets for years!
B. I would consider the Drake Equation to be missing a vital element, as its benchmark for intelligent life is the ability to transmit in radio waves. What I think is missing is religion. 90% of the planet is Religious, and in some extreme cases it can effect the evolution of technology i.e the Taliban. It could be that secular evolution (i.e the pursuit of technology) may be the exception rather than the rule, this may account for the apparent silence. But just to add to that, when I was at school, we made a very basic radio device, however five thousand years ago a fairly primitive society built the pyramids, something we can’t duplicate today. So according to the SETI benchmark I’m intelligent and they are not.
C. I think that you have to use mathematics, the universe is vast, and old, I think that therefore life and evolution are not a probability but a mathematical certainty.
And on a personal note: If ET ever landed here on earth, I think it would be a great day and a very sad day too. Great because we would then know we are not alone, but sad because if they’ve come here then they don’t know all the answers also.
Since we all begin from a place of “not knowing,” there can be no certainty that life exists anywhere else.
Well, we certainly begin life as a “clean slate.” But, we were created with the ability to learn and I think it’s a sin to not use the abilities we have been given.
I believe there can be certainties on many issues, and perhaps some day on the question of life elsewhere in the universe.
Still, even though we do not “know” about life on other planets, it is still possible to speculate.
I always think of the line from the film Contact based on Carl Sagan’s novel. The main character’s father says to her regarding the possibility of life on other planets: “I don’t know, Sparks. But I guess I’d say if it is just us… seems like an awful waste of space.”
Carl Sagan put that question into perspective very well when he talked about the billions of galaxies and billions of stars, and even more billions of stars with planets and even billions of planets that could support life. And if only a few of those billions of planets could support life, and if only a few of those billions of planets could generate intelligent life forms, we would still see billions of planets with potential intelligent life.
Are we so egotistical to believe we are the only intelligent life forms in the universe? I don’t think that God created the vast universe for just one planet with intelligent life. Fortunately, he created such vast distances between such possibilities that it is not likely that we will ever come into contact with such remote chances of intelligent life on other planets at least until we are ready to deal with such an event. Even with the fictional “warp” speeds of our science fiction stories, it is not likely we would encounter other intelligent life forms.
And if we were able to achieve that technology, perhaps we would be ready to welcome our far neighbors with the peaceful grace that God has intended for use to act here on earth. I think that God has created other intelligent life forms on other planets, and I don’t believe that contradicts the Christian belief that Jesus was only on earth. I believe that Jesus appeared on each planet that needed salvation from sins against God.
When one looks at the immensity of the universe, how can anyone say it was an accident with a big bang? If anything, God was the big bang.
The bible tells only of our world none others.But then again it was written by man,so this makes it more of a history book leaving a lot of unanswered questions.Humans are to self centered and to believe that we are the only life in all these galaxies is very arogant.
All the elements for life are in the atmpsphere around Titan the Moon of Satrurn. Follow the space probe cassini as it orbits saturn as we speak.