10,000 Galaxies: A Hubble Telescope Image

[Sephus]

we may never have a reliable guess as to the probabilities of intelligent life arising given certain environments. not to say that people won't be confident of their own guesses.

[billygrippo]

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2) If we are the only life in the universe, given it's size, that would be an almost impossibly unlikely event, or something supernatural.

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i dont agree with this. this is circular logic.

[Sephus]

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1) We are here.

2) If we are the only life in the universe, given it's size, that would be an almost impossibly unlikely event, or something supernatural.

The *most likely* scenario from a science and probability POV is that there is other life out there.

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maybe intelligence is so improbable that it would be expected to arise in 10% of universes like ours. then one instance of intelligence isn't too unlikely. maybe it's probable enough that 1,000,000 instances of intelligence would be expected. my point is that no one knows. i'm not going to argue this, it's stupid.

[WackityWhiz]

I think our only chance of discovering life out there is to have some 'aliens' find us (in our lifetime at least).

HURRY UP ALIENS!!!! WE WANT TO BE YOUR FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!

oh ya... AND DON'T KILL US!!!!

[andyfox]

The universe apparently contains about 100,000,000,000 galaxies. And each one contains an average of about 100,000,000,000 stars. By my fuzzy math, that would be 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

And yet, if you put three grains of sand inside a cathedral, the cathedral would be more densely packed with sand than the universe is with stars.

I guess this helps explain why, if there is indeed other life somewhere in the universe, we haven't as yet located it, nor it us.

[suzzer99]

Guys - 500 billion galaxies each with several trillion stars. That's 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Think about it for a second. It's not circular logic to think that if anything that has happened once, it's almost infinitely more likely to have happened many other times, than only once. Barring some sort of divine setup to the universe as a kind-of giant Truman Show for our amusement of course.

Seriously, just mull that over for a while, ask any scientist or statistician, etc. No one is saying it's impossible that we are the only life out there, but it's so much less likely than the alternative as to be "virtually" impossible.

I can't remember the details off the top of my head. But there are events in quantum mechanics which are technically possible, just so statistically unlikely that they would never happen in the lifetimes of a googleplex of universes. IE - there may be a possibility, from a quantum mechanics POV, that your dog suddenly morphs into a cat. But it's not gonna happen. From a sheer probability POV, us being the only life in the universe is somewhere in the same ballpark.

[diebitter]

Plus, given a soup of carbon, nitrogen, and water, amino acids tend to arise under any conditions where there's strong bursts of energy available - like lightning, volcanic activity, high UV. Amino acids being the building blocks of proteins and DNA.

Some of these amino acids have been detected in meteorites -to illustrate how easily they generate.

[billygrippo]

the problem with your logic is that the "probabilty" is being used in speculation and hindsight.

also there are many factors other than the sheer size of the universe.

however, i do agree that there is a very high chance of life somehwere esle in the universe.

[suzzer99]

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however, i do agree that there is a very high chance of life somehwere esle in the universe.

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Right, and if you do any kind of statistical modeling you will find that chance to be 99.99999999999999999999% or something.

Put it this way: I don't believe in Heaven, Hell or an active God. I believe in some serious divine mystery that spawned the universe. But no "Sky God" watching my every move and tracking my soul for inclusion into Heaven. If I somehow found out for sure tomorrow that there was no other life in the universe, I would run to the nearest church and start confessing all my sins.

[shemp]

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...this image taken by the Hubble Telescope.... taken- more than 13 billion light years from Earth.

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I'm ignorant. Does this imply the Hubble Telescope is 13 billion light years from Earth? If so, how?