>>"That's ridiculous," I argued.  "I'm a member of the dominant species on this planet!  Of course we would know!"
 
"Right," drawled a mitochondrion sarcastically.  "Of course you are!"<<
 
 
Once again the nail is hit squarely on the head. If only buggers cud tawk.
 
"Is there anybody out there?" The entire premise of the Star Trek franchise was to fulfill that notion through fantasy. Without an actual field test (warp speed & transporter rooms), the world may never know...

Let's face it.  We're not sitting here at the apex of our intellectual development peering into the dark, trying to see if we can spot anyone else of equal intelligence.  Instead, we're looking around to see if we happened to be seated next to one of the smart kids in the hope that we can copy off of their test.  Unfortunately, they appear to be aware of our intentions and have cleverly blocked our view.
 
 

Oh, here's another thing.  Is it possible that aliens are using mirrors to make the universe seem larger than it really is?  Why does that thought still make me feel smaller?

mike_mccue
I heard a presentation recently that pointed out that, when you consider the age of the universe and our planet, the amount of time it took for life to appear and learn to send signals and space craft out into the universe was an incredibly short span of time.

Off the top of my head...

• The Universe is estimated to be around 13.8 billions years old
• The Earth is estimated to be around 4.6 billion years old
• Life on Earth is believed to have started around 3.6 billion years ago
• Life on Earth has existed for approximately 26% of the age of the Universe

 
 

A billion years is hard to fathom. Everything we really know about the Universe we've learned in the last 100 yrs. The Fermi paradox posits that since life seems to have originated on earth so easily, where is everyone? You shouldn't be able to turn around without bumping in to an alien.
 
Max Tegmark ponders that maybe we're the only life in the Universe. There may be a roadblock to life. Either behind us and we got lucky or ahead of us  and we're not going to be so lucky. Anyway, interesting speculation if you're into that stuff.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GctnYAYcMhI
 
Steve

the smartest aliens travel across the light years of space to stick stuff up your butt.
 

SteveStrummerUK

mike_mccue
I heard a presentation recently that pointed out that, when you consider the age of the universe and our planet, the amount of time it took for life to appear and learn to send signals and space craft out into the universe was an incredibly short span of time.

Off the top of my head...

• The Universe is estimated to be around 13.8 billions years old
• The Earth is estimated to be around 4.6 billion years old
• Life on Earth is believed to have started around 3.6 billion years ago
• Life on Earth has existed for approximately 26% of the age of the Universe

I think the presentation was designed to show why "we're special".
 
Perhaps we're special because for supposedly intelligent life forms, we don't much care about, you know, facts and stuff - at least if it doesn't suit our purposes. 
 
Or perhaps the ability to create one's own facts is a special sign of a higher intelligence? 

SteveStrummerUK

mike_mccue
I heard a presentation recently that pointed out that, when you consider the age of the universe and our planet, the amount of time it took for life to appear and learn to send signals and space craft out into the universe was an incredibly short span of time.

Off the top of my head...

• The Universe is estimated to be around 13.8 billions years old
• The Earth is estimated to be around 4.6 billion years old
• Life on Earth is believed to have started around 3.6 billion years ago
• Life on Earth has existed for approximately 26% of the age of the Universe

 
 

Yes. Actually we should decide whether we are now talking about life or intelligent life, something we can communicate with. It's not that big of a comfort if (as likely) there's some algae somewhere that can live in a temperature of 200 C. :o/
 
If we talk about, say, the early primates, that 3.6 billion years of life is cut to about 20 million years, which is only about 0,15 % of the age of our universe.

drewfx1

SteveStrummerUK

mike_mccue
I heard a presentation recently that pointed out that, when you consider the age of the universe and our planet, the amount of time it took for life to appear and learn to send signals and space craft out into the universe was an incredibly short span of time.

Off the top of my head...

• The Universe is estimated to be around 13.8 billions years old
• The Earth is estimated to be around 4.6 billion years old
• Life on Earth is believed to have started around 3.6 billion years ago
• Life on Earth has existed for approximately 26% of the age of the Universe

I think the presentation was designed to show why "we're special".
 
Perhaps we're special because for supposedly intelligent life forms, we don't much care about, you know, facts and stuff - at least if it doesn't suit our purposes. 
 
Or perhaps the ability to create one's own facts is a special sign of a higher intelligence? 

You should probably see the presentation for yourself instead of deriving the meaning of it from hearsay promoted on the part of someone who has relayed what impressions they took from it. I think the idea was more about an acceleration of evolution rather than total span of time and I did a bad job of explaining that. 
 
 
 
While I was checking the 3.7 billion figure I noticed that many of the same scientists that have determined that life on earth is 3.5-3.7 billions years old also feel that it is possible that life in the universe might be 10 billion years old... a possible 6.5 billion year head start isn't trivial. Imagine what kind of iPhones we'll be using 3 billion years from now.
 
Additionally, Many of the folks that have determined that the universe is only 13.8 billion years old haven't figured out what the universe was 13.9 billion years ago... while other folks figure that it was probably some kind of universe.
 
best regards,
mike

 
I know the odds stack up pretty favourably that life, and even intelligent life, exist elsewhere.
 
But my personal feeling is that it might be not quite as common as the statistics suggest.
 
As far as we can tell, and given what must have been pretty conducive environmental conditions, life has only actually begun once on Earth. Every organism on this planet (including the 98% of all species that have become extinct) can be traced (or at least, logically deduced) back to a single origin. The proof is there in the basic genetic makeup common to all organisms.
 
If the conditions for life were/are abundant throughout the Universe - in other words the very conditions in which life got going here - then it might reasonably be argued that life might have started discretely in more than one form on Earth.
 
Unless, of course, the uniqueness on Earth of the life we find here (i.e. with a biochemistry based on RNA/DNA) might actually be the only way life can exist. Again, if this is the case, that might also bring down the probability of it starting elsewhere.
 
 
 
Edit - Spelling
 
 
 
 
 

mike_mccue

drewfx1

SteveStrummerUK

mike_mccue
I heard a presentation recently that pointed out that, when you consider the age of the universe and our planet, the amount of time it took for life to appear and learn to send signals and space craft out into the universe was an incredibly short span of time.

Off the top of my head...

• The Universe is estimated to be around 13.8 billions years old
• The Earth is estimated to be around 4.6 billion years old
• Life on Earth is believed to have started around 3.6 billion years ago
• Life on Earth has existed for approximately 26% of the age of the Universe

I think the presentation was designed to show why "we're special".
 
Perhaps we're special because for supposedly intelligent life forms, we don't much care about, you know, facts and stuff - at least if it doesn't suit our purposes. 
 
Or perhaps the ability to create one's own facts is a special sign of a higher intelligence? 

You should probably see the presentation for yourself instead of deriving the meaning of it from hearsay promoted on the part of someone who has relayed what impressions they took from it. I think the idea was more about an acceleration of evolution rather than total span of time and I did a bad job of explaining that. 
 
 
 
While I was checking the 3.7 billion figure I noticed that many of the same scientists that have determined that life on earth is 3.5-3.7 billions years old also feel that it is possible that life in the universe might be 10 billion years old... a possible 6.5 billion year head start isn't trivial. Imagine what kind of iPhones we'll be using 3 billion years from now.
 
Additionally, Many of the folks that have determined that the universe is only 13.8 billion years old haven't figured out what the universe was 13.9 billion years ago... while other folks figure that it was probably some kind of universe.
 
best regards,
mike

Well, I'm sorry Mike, but I still don't understand what you meant
 
You must understand it though, because you obviously attempted to make some sort of point by posting it.
 
I don't get why you'd just make that statement in isolation, without adding some explanation of why you posted it. Or if it was directly in response to some other post in this thread.
 
It seems a bit like the 'old' McQ, who'd say something vague and ambiguous and then sit back to see what reaction it garnered before coming down on one side of the fence.
 
So, in the interest of the continuance of an intellectual discussion, what point were you trying to make by saying:
 

mike_mccue
I heard a presentation recently that pointed out that, when you consider the age of the universe and our planet, [<font]the amount of time it took for life to appear and learn to send signals and space craft out into the universe was an incredibly short span of time.

 
Or was it just some uninteresting trivia based on some half-random googling and then hoping that someone like me, for example, who has actually studied evolutionary biology and taken a long and deep interest in cosmology, might be fooled into thinking you had an intelligent or relevant point to make.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

UbiquitousBubba
Oh, here's another thing.  Is it possible that aliens are using mirrors to make the universe seem larger than it really is?  Why does that thought still make me feel smaller?

Smoke and mirrors, mind you! ....

 
Well, maybe.
 
I just watched the YouTube clip Mike posted, and I still have absolutely no idea whatsoever why it's relevant, nor why the comments he made because he watched it are anything other than a piece of interesting trivia (even though I still argue that what he said is fundamentally incorrect).
 
In fact, I'm a little more feckin' confused than I was before I watched it.
 
All it appears to be is a (very well presented) compact history of the Universe and life on earth, and specifically how the processes of life work to temporarily reverse the overall flow of entropy in nature.
 
How it's relevant to "Life Elsewhere" is still very much beyond my feeble mental capacity.

Just remembered why I don't much come here.

You may have seen this, interesting thoughts on how we are made of the most common elements in the universe which makes life elsewhere highly probable.
 
Also, we share 98% of our DNA with chimps and look how much more intelligent we are.
 
Now imagine an alien having totally different DNA and how much more intelligent ( or indeed less ) that may make them to the extent that they don't really recognise us 'chimps' as something worth communicating to.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LGQrVSxPvg