Kevin's Watch

Yes, but at the same time such reasonings are flawed. If you argue that life may have evolved, and reached high technological level, then they most likely will have developed means of contacting us beyong beaming messages. Logically, they'd develop probes that don't have to reach the speed of light, and instead travel between systems, and scan for life. If they don't find any life, or at intelligent life, then the probe replicates itself tenfold and each probe then launches off to different stars. If life is so probably, then why haven't we encountered it yet in this way? Of course, the odds of this happening are against us, but then again (as I have detailed in a previous post) the odds for intelligent life are astronomically (pardon the pun) small.

Astronomically small, and yet here we are.

There's three problems with probing the universe, anyway: there's billions of galaxies and billions of stars and billions of light-years to travel. And we're like an atom or dust particle amidst the sea of it all. And if there is intelligent enough life, they probably have no clue where we are, or that we exist. The most advanced probes with light-speed capabilities wouldn't even scratch the surface. I cannot discount the possibility of life, simply because we are here, and there is so, so much more.

This is an interesting discussion but here is one hard fact: There is presently no way to prove or disprove the existence of extraterrestrial life. We are truly discussing this subject in a vacuum. (no pun intended)

Here is a thought: Wouldn't an advanced race of beings capable of interstellar travel be intelligent enough to choose to avoid a violent child race bent on self-destruction?

Hoover or Kirby?

danlo wrote:Hoover or Kirby?

Come on, danlo. Everyone knows the Oreck is the top of the line.

TOM C wrote:Here is a thought: Wouldn't an advanced race of beings capable of interstellar travel be intelligent enough to choose to avoid a violent child race bent on self-destruction?

How would they know? The only ones who'd be able to detect that we are violent would be within 60 light years (the farthest distance for a transmission from Earth to travel). Further, who's to say they wouldn't be violent as well?

I'd have to assume that a race able to travel the distance would also most likely be able to scan our planet in ways we could only imagine. There is no evidence to suggest an advanced race would be violent or peaceful, just advanced. Its possible our entire sector is quarantined because of us.

TOM C wrote:Its possible our entire sector is quarantined because of us.

I would not be at all surprised!

It's also possible that no species would survive the use of the energies that allow ftl travel if they haven't put aside the insane savagery that we have here.

I am of the opinion that if there is no life within our solar system, we will never make contact with life on other planets.

Darth Revan wrote:What do you think? Is there other life forms out there?

You think about what it takes to create life, for life to exist, and then you look at how small and insignificant our planet is among the grand cosmos, and I can't help but think that maybe there is something out there.

I won't believe it until I see it, and I usually laugh at the whole UFO theory that people see in farms and crap, but at the same time I'm not ruling out the existance of a higher form. Whose to say that God hasn't populated many different worlds and places, afterall its kind of selfish to think that we're God's greatest creation. Cheers.

edinburghemma wrote:I had an interesting chat with my father about this topic at Christmas, and he says no (he's a specialist in such things), but he is too clever and erudite for me to repeat his argument here in the wrong terms, just now. I shall consult him further. Until I spoke with him I was convinced that there had to be. Now I definitely don't believe there to be.

*cough cough*

edinburghemma, I am your father.
No. That's not true. That's impossible.
Search your feelings you know it to be true.

Nooooo. Nooooo.