Are we alone?

[LeedsRhinos]

I didn't know where to put this one but here goes anyway. What are the chances that we really are alone in the universe?

[florriebinn]

I would refer you to the excellent Bill Bryson book: A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bryson puts it in layman's terms by pointing out that each star (and there are bulti-billions) is like our Sun, and happy to provide energy, light and heat etc. Thus, the thought that we are alone - and a fluke - is seriously unlikely. I would say (who am I? )totally. Yet, the problem is space,distance and time. If you consider that the speed of light travels, then our planet is being watched by "Zorg 1" as we were in 1517 and they are probably thinking that the Reformation is just beginning. So - unless we can send up a spaceship that can travel for many generations with humans on board - together with an advanced sort of Sky satellite dish to let us know the outcome - then I would not worry and keep watching Big Brother.

[Headtime]

Fantastic answer florriebinn.

[David H]

The question that intrigues me is not 'whether', but if so, then how do they get here? Considering the distance just to the next star, let alone the next one with intelligent life, which in an infinite universe would make it a miracle if we were alone. So unless we are the luckiest planet in infinity (OK, it is possible but pretty unlikely) then if we are visited by our neighbours there has to be a scientific process that bends space or suchlike that would make all travel possible in hardly any time (relatively). This would be an amazing consequence as would all the other technology such a race ought to have learnt as well, such as medicine and telepathy.

[PaulB]

The universe is beyond anything we can think of. Our universe could be encased in a grain of sand on some planet's beach, and there could be a whole world inside one of our grains of sand, truth is, you'll probably never know. I think it would be ignorant of us to think that we are the only living organism out there (and yes Flirty, I did say organism lol).

[who_knows]

are we really alone?? i mean we can be the only planet that had things avole on it i mean what about venus its just like us. so we cant be alone, were never alone

[Laner]

Florriebinn's excellent answer could explain why any visiting Aliens never seem to find big cities and always abduct "slack jaw" locals. If they are viewing the Earth in 1517, they would not be aware of any real major cities and the average man in the 16th century would probably have a similar IQ!! I remember Carl Sagan answered a similar question on a TV program about the Cosmos once. He likened it to the �toss of a coin�. Most people think there are only two outcomes�. heads or tails. But coins can balance on their sides, so if you flip the coin an infinite number of times it will eventually land on its side. Why?... because it can. And any probability however small will always come true when expressed against infinity. So if you believe the universe is infinite � then life must exist out there somewhere!

[aceizace]

Yeah i think Laner is right. I heard it explained like this, if you had one monkey randomly pressing keys on a keyboard, the chances that s/he would type the first letter of the bible is pretty remote, let alone the entire thing. But if you had two monkeys, if the first one didn't type the first letter, move onto the second one. If you had infinate monkeys, then eventually you would have to come across one that types out the whole bible, simply because if the first second thrid or quadrillionth monkey didn't, then you could just move onto the next one. The same theroy can be applied to the universe, if it is infinate, then anything that can exist, must exist.

[lambsbell]

you might be but i am not, i have got my mates around me at this present time :)

[Azimov]

Are we alone in the Universe? I say "Why would anyone think we are?" Life is an emergent process and one which is almost inevitable once a relatively small (when weighed against infinity) set of circumstances are met. And I'm only referring to Carbon based life as we know it! I think it's entirely possible that other forms of life may occur under different conditions, but that's by the by. To believe that this planet is the only one in the Universe to have evolved living organisms seems to me, an extremely arrogant position to take. The question therefore, might be better put "Is there any reason to believe we are alone in the Universe?" Until a satisfactory answer can be found (and tested scientifically) then I think it is wiser to assume we are not!

[LeMarchand]

It has been postulated that we are alone in the universe. The reasoning being that we have yet to see any evidence of other life. Given the age of the universe, if there was other life at least some of it would have evolved to a level that would have become "intelligent", and then started expanding out from their homeworld as resources ran out. We have not received any radio/TV communications such civilisations would have used, nor have we seen any other evidence of advanced civilisations (Dyson spheres, unaccounted astronomical movements). The SETI site has a series of articles on this - it's known as the Fermi Paradox. This is the first: http://www.space.com/searchforlife/shostak_paradox_011024.ht ml . Personally speaking, I'm in the "we are alone camp. It would be comforting to believe we're not, but given the evidence I can't go for it.

[madhat]

I feel most everyone is missing a key element to this whole debate. We must not forget the precarious nature of planet formation and its causal evolution of life. When dealing with stellar formations of stars, planets, galaxys, etc. you are dealing with statistical chances of certain causal links of events occurring. There is no guarentee of anything happening in a certain period of time...just the liklihood of something happening in that period of time. So even if our galaxy is however many years old does not make neccessary the formation of a planet in that same number of years. True - our 6 million year old planet is "most likely" not the first planet in our thousand million year old galaxy or however old. But for us to assume that planets which have formed before our time have far surpassed us in evolutionary terms is quite pretentious. It is also pretentious for us to think that life on another planet, one far older than our own, will have been able to survive nature's destructive catastrophic capability - one that may finish homosapiens reign of life relatively soon. It is because of this very real possibility that there is no guarentee that extraterrestrial life forms are able to space travel, let alone even being that much more advanced than humans. For better or for worse, the human race has got quite a history for which to be proud. Our "thousand million year old" galaxy does not render the existence of a "thousand million year old" planet as a natural corrollary. For a planet to harbor life (unicellular, multicellular organisms, etc) requires the stage of accretion to occur. This needs to happen in order for a planetary mass to form into a planet, able to condone life. It is this deterministic stage that a planetary mass revolving around a star could wait for for millions and millions of years alone.

[sprogglin]

To think we are alone in the universe or universes is arrogant and short sighted in the extreme. the vastness and randomnous of the known universe does not allow for there only being one civilisation. the depth of space and the construction of matter, antimatter, particles and energy are only beginning to be understood. The odds of there not being more life somewhere are so long that noone would ever bet on them. don't believe in the idea of spacemen visiting earth. even if they could travel this far, hy would they resemble ourselves when the part of space they may from is ikely to be very different to our own.

[tomdabomb]

we are definetely not alone! MY MATE IS TO MY RIGHT! lol nah but seriously i think its highly unlikely to turn out that we are the only forms of life in the whole of space...cuz our galaxy or woteva is not the only one!

[florriebinn]

Hello - this is Florriebinn - I refer you to the 1st answer on this subject which I provided about a month ago. Since then I have been abducted by aliens from Zorg 1 - who in fact had set up a colony just outside Belfast, Ireland. I would appeal to you to refrain from answering this question as they are poking me with sharp sticks each time an answer is posted. The only reason I am on this computer now is because they have discovered alcohol and are unfit to continue in their quest to conquer the world. So, if you want to save the world, leave lots of beer and Jack Daniels on your doorstep each night and you can sleep sound. Spread this message!

[Tha-Flash]

We're less than a grain of sand.

[saffstar]

of course we're not alone.... havn't you seen 'Close encounters of the third kind' and 'X-Files'.......

[xxamyxx]

Nobody knows..........

[stumigs]

The answer should be are you really here at all! The number of planets in the universe infinite the number of planets capable of supporting life finite. Divide a infinite number by a finite number, it is so close to zero as who gives a dam. So you all must be a figment of my demented imagination!

[PeanutsUK]

It always makes me laugh when people try to explain that the insurmountable distance would prohibit visitors reaching us for light years etc. etc. Our current knowledge of physics and the science of the universe is just that - our current knowledge. We should never assume that if there is other life out there that we are the most intelligent, and even if we don't, we should not assume that our current scientific knowledge is the limit that other intelligent life has. I have no doubt that we are not alone, just as I have no doubt that our current scientific knowledge is not only lacking, but flawed in many ways. There are still many basic things we can not explain, nor diseminate in a measured way, yet we arogantly apply our limits of knowledge as if it were the be-all and end-all of the universe. Who knows what propulsion systems intelligent life may possess? It could be trans-dimensional? It could bend the fabric of space and time and 'jump' across the gap? We just don't know. Maybe we should gauge our answer by the number of UFO sightings across the years, and apply our statistics to them - at least some have got to be probable.