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[Psaw]

A group of scientists have stated that the chances of advanced life being present in the Universe are vanishingly small, even impossible. The first problem is the vast expanse of time it takes, and secondly it needs a sequential process of procedural events that are miraculous, as the chances of all those things happening are impossible.

One measure is the life of suns, or the suns ability to create healthy radiation, compared to the possibility of life on a nearby planet developing in the time before a sun gets too hot.

It also mentioned the word autobiogenesis or something like that, anyway there is a fancy word for life springing from inorganic matter, and how long that takes.

Do they really think that a human being springs from rock, heat, steam and water etc. That humour, love, creativity, compassion, hate, evil, good, boredom comes from dead material?

That 4 billion years ago at 1-00 pm on a wednesday afternoon, stuff that isnt alive, is alive at 1-30?

Life is a miracle. How it came about was not from inanimate material, it came from other life, and was breathed into this dog hole of a world.

[cocopops61]

That 4 billion years ago at 1-00 pm on a wednesday afternoon, stuff that isnt alive, is alive at 1-30?

Life is a miracle. How it came about was not from inanimate material, it came from other life, and was breathed into this dog hole of a world.

You are absolutely right Frank and just confirms that there is a God

[griff]

...or aliens.

[Psaw]

I know your being sarcastic. The other possibility is that everything is alive, to some degree. Human beings are just more alive than anything else, that the Universe is a living organism. Vanishingly small in an existence that has no end.

[Piglet_Phoenix]

There's also the possibility we're aren't real, but just part of a giant computer simulation in a lab somewhere. If you're into that type of thing.

I don't believe "everything is alive", I've worked in Blackpool and Doncaster before, so know there are parts of the universe which are extremely dead.

You're close however, Psaw, it's kind of clear to me life will exist everywhere it possibly can in the universe (everywhere the conditions are condusive, some sort of organic life will be present). We're likely to find evidence of life in our own solar system in the very near future (next fifty years I'd reckon) and as we grow into the galaxy we're going to find life everywhere.

I'd even hazard a guess there are at least a handful of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy (if you truly understand the odds). We've barely been able to search a fraction of the night sky. Taken the current "silence" as evidence we are alone is like searching through a tea cup of ocean water and using it to support the assertion dolphins do not exist.

I don't really subscribe to "zoo theory", being kept in the dark to protect ourselves. I think it's likely there are several civilizations at least as mature as ours which have the potential to colonize our galaxy who are expanding (or have the potential to expand) just as quickly and ultimately our survival as a species depends on us being out there first. If we're visited by our neighbours and they are technologically / biologically superior to us we'll be right royally f_cked. It doesn't tend to go to well when savages encounter a more advanced civilization.

[Psaw]

Couple the statistical impossibility of advanced life with the statistics of the Universe being as it is today. Apparently it is vanishingly small, a tiny fraction of one per cent, an impossibility.

If it was not just so, it would be a completely different place, and the people computing such odds came to the conclusion it must have been made. There was a documentary about it in the 1970s, its old stuff.

So crash those two stats together, not pretty is it.?

I made a bowl of porridge today, very nice it was too. It wasnt going to come together on its own. In fact, it needed a lot of growing and planning on many peoples part to get the constituents together, so i could buy it and create porridge. There was no chance otherwise, non.

Just like a Universe. Just like a simulation, if you want to call it that.

As for bumping into an advanced race, Hawking did us a disservice, in fact hes a bit of a D head. One of the things that sets us apart from animals is that we have empathy and compassion. Animals do, but not to our extent. Indeed if they were hungry, that would not come into play.

Advanced races would not destroy us mindlessly. Only very stupid or evil ness would do that, and evilness eats itself.

I spent a wonderful time in Sheffield not far from Doncaster. Stoke is my Doncaster. Fascinating stuff.

[griff]

Enter Goldilocks, stage left, chased by a bear.

[Psaw]

Always snapping at my heel you snidey git.

[Piglet_Phoenix]

I lived in Sheffield for well over a decade, Psaw. What were you doing there?

Anyway, can you explain why you think the odds of intelligent life existing anywhere else in the universe are so small?

I'll take great pleasure in debunking this theory.

[6EQUJ5]

I believe it is highly likely that intelligent and technologically sophisticated life exists elsewhere in the universe, but our chances of detecting such existence are small because the distance between Earth and it could be so great as to defy the capabilities of any technology that we may have for possibly hundreds of thousands of years.

We will not detect intelligent life that is less technologically sophisticated than us. I.e. Anyone way out there pointing a radio telescope at Earth more than 120 years ago would not have detected any signals. But nowadays such a civilisation with a very powerful radio telescope pointed at Earth could detect all kinds of stuff in the radio spectrum such as radio and television signals, airport radars etc.

So there may be life out there that is intelligent but not yet technologically sophisticated. We would not be able to detect it.

Of course an intelligent and technologically sophisticated civilisation out there may not use anything which creates signals in the radio spectrum. SETI (California) does have several other searching methods, i.e. a facility to seek out communications by laser technology.

The main would-be detection method is to use radio telescopes to try to pick up anything in the radio spectrum. SETI could detect a signal deliberately transmitted from way out there and pinpoint the source location. But that is all. It could detect only the meta data and not the actual message content. To get the content of the actual message would take equipment 1,000 times more powerful. SETI has no transmitting capability. A radio telescope that could transmit a reply to way out there was the one at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, but it has repeatedly suffered the consequences of the worst weather conditions and the latest such event recently led to the decision to decommission it.

Am intelligent and technologically sophisticated civilisation is not likely to be close to our own technological level. It is likely to be at least hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us. So if it did not wish to be detected it could easily succeed in that aim.