Outer-life

[Savant 231-A]

I've thinking for day, months and what if there is outer-earth life

1st thing. I am not talking about some hi-tech aliens.

The univrse is huge, with ulimited numbers of galaxies, stars and planets. Most of people think that life outside Earth is not possible, but i think they are wrong. With the unlimited nuber of planets and stars, are the chances for life somwhere else unlimited? Not some civilization that has technology, just life. Bacterias of any kind, or possible some animals. Deep space exploration gives us almost no answers. Why? We, Humans are just exploring a very, very tiny part of the galaxy. There could be life somewhere else, that i asure you. Earth has become a planet like every other planet: nebula -> piece of rock -> small object -> big object -> planet. And all of events on Earth ( Thunderstorm: Energy for living cells, Lava: Heat, Oceans; the first place where organizms could live, becuse the land was radiated by the Sun...) happend, and i think they should happen on every planet that has the same charachteristics, But all things depends on how the life on that planet, evolvs to adapt the planet. Was it hot, or cold, small or big, with water or without water.

Take an example
Giraffes neck is big to eat from a high tree. But the tree adapted and it was growing, by generation, to generation higher and higher. So did giraffe, her neck  has grown bigger and bigger.

Now you get it?

Now i have a big question:
What if we weren't created? What if our life is really a dream? Damn.... I made myself  to think about it again....
Imagine... you are not dead or alive, you are just not..... there... spending your whole  eternity in black.
comments:

Hope i won't have nightmares out of this.....

 

[TH300]

Yea, its likely that there is life somewhere else in the universe, but its also likely that we'll never find it. So, whats the point in thinking about it?

To your question:
None of us knows what this world is made of. And I'm pretty sure that the answer cannot be found. Scientists make a lot of suppositions, but in fact they can't even proove that such things like electrons exist. Every attempt to find the ultimate truth must be futile.

Now, what if our life is a dream? - Nothing. It wouldn't change anything. And if you think further into this direction, you will worry about more than just nightmares. (I did it already)

[Hooman]

You know, the Big Bang theory seems to imply that the universe is finite, just expanding very rapidly. Also, I've heard many times that certain large numbers are larger than the number of atoms in the universe (usually in regards to the feasibility of computing something in cryptography), which would suggest people have at least a rought estimate as to how many atoms there are in the universe. Also implying the universe is finite. In which case there are a finite number of galaxies and planets, and thus a finite number of possibilities.

Also, I don't think many people believe life outside of Earth is not possible. We do have astronauts after all. (Unless you're one of the weird people with conspiracy theories that we've never actually gotten a shuttle into space). A lot of people do believe that life just doesn't happen to exist out there.


Then you have to consider what exactly is life? People would generally agree that animals, plants, and bacteria are living. But what about crystals? They can grow and reproduce. Are they really that different from bacteria or plants? What about mules? They can't reproduce. You can only get them by breeding a horse and a donkey.


Now I would certainly expect simple crystal like structures to be found out there somewhere, but I don't expect to find bacteria, plants, or animals quite so easily. It seems even more unlikely to find something like a mule that isn't capable of reproducing. Think about the chances of life forming. Does anyone know what the chances are of life forming in a system that didn't previously contain it? I have no idea what the chances are, but I'm not aware of anywhere else that has anything remotely like what we call life here, so I would guess the probability is pretty small. Take that finite universe into account with some likely very small probability of life forming. It might not turn out to be so likely after all. Not that we would know without having some idea as to how big that probability is in comparision with the number of suitable places for life to form, like some planets.

Also keep in mind that all the theories about how life was formed are just theories. We don't really know for sure. Maybe it didn't happen in a way that many people think it did.

I noticed you mentioned lightning, and I've heard a theory before about a lightning strike being capable of forming certain chemicals we've found in many living organisms. But I've also heard of lightning killing many people. Likewise, lava is quite capable of killing. It seems like if lightning or lava had any chance of helping life to form, it could also very easily kill whatever it was before it really got started forming anything lifelike.


I like TH300's comment about us being unlikely to find life too. After all, how many planets have we explored? And even if we've "explored" it, what does it take to examine a planet and determine if it has life or not? Now what are the chances of life forming on any given random planet? How long will it takes us before we can really explore any other planets farther away in a way close enough to determine if it has life or not? And if it's done by a probe, how long before we even learn about the results? I have to agree with TH300 that it's unlikely we'll ever find life in the universe. Especially since it's quite uncertain to most people how to even properly define life in a clear way. And without a clear definition as to what exactly life is, it's pretty hard to scan for it.

[White Claw]

I'll have to look. There's a forumula (in a loose sense) that a scientist created to lend some quantifiable number to the probability of life existing elsewhere in this universe. Some of the variables in the forumla are fairly well known quantities, while others are mere guesses. In either case, the end result is actually a surprisingly significant number of "life forms" that might exist in the universe.

What if we weren't created? What if our life is really a dream?

Either way, someone must be around to have the dream. Wether it's some ethereal form of me having an "inner body" experience, or some other being dreaming about my life, it has to come from somewhere...

Thunderstorm: Energy for living cells,

Not energy for cells, it is theorized that electrical energy prodded complex amino acids into form that linked together and created cells.

Lava: Heat

Yes heat, but more likely the heat came simply from the warm infant crust.

Oceans; the first place where organizms could live, becuse the land was radiated by the Sun

I don't think it was so much the sun as the fact that the oceans more readily supplied nutrients than did the new surface envrionment. Not than any of this is proven anyway...

Hooman is right though, life is a very hard thing to define. Other examples are fire and viruses. Both of which consume material to grow and reproduce. (A step beyond crystals as they don't really consume.)
 

[dm-horus]

the fact is, theorizing about something that is so far impossible to know is sort of a trap. since nobody has the answer, all opinions are equally valid and invalid at once. personally i try not to talk about it, although i do think it is pretty much impossible to say there is no other life if the universe is infinite. if it is finite, it is certainly large enough to harbor life other than us.  

[Betaray]

it is the drake equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

personally I feel that if we are searching for aliens, we should start with our own solar system, there are many places in our solar system that have similar conditions to those on earth where extremeophiles flourish, Europa, Titan, Mars, Io, and others, if we find life on those planets and moons we will know that we are not alone and life is pretty common throughout the universe.

of course the life found else ware could just be the decedents of bacteria blasted from Earth by asteroid impacts, (panspermia with the source being the Earth) but if it worked for other planets and moons in our solar system, it could also work for other solar systems.

[White Claw]

You have to start theorizing some time or you'll never get there. But I think I tend to align with Horus in that I think it's narrow minded to say it's not ever possible, but at this point it seems very unlikely that we'll ever meet "aliens" probably even in the next several centuries.

The other thing to think about is what if the universe is teeming with life, but we're the first to reach sentience? It might be a very long time before we meet "someone else" because the next being might be millions of years from evolving. In which case, it would be very difficult to detect microbes from tens or hundreds of light-years away.

At that, it's hard enough just to explore our own solar system. All of the lunar excursions we've done only covers a very small portion. I think if you expand the comparison to Earth, it's like making assumptions about the entire Earth after having visited about 2/3 of California.