Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.” “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.
It would be an inconceivably-massive statistical anomaly if they didn’t. But I think a better question is will we ever make contact, and I think the answer to that is that it’s inconceivably improbable.
I’m not convinced statistics can be used like this on big questions where we know so little. Just because we believe the universe to be massively large and ever expanding doesn’t satisfy the basic premise that underlies the assumption that there is so much stuff that some of the stuff must be alive. I don’t think we know enough about the universe to make the assumption that because it is so big, it must be infinitely variable.
But what do I know, I’m just some idiot on the internet.
It’s really moot anyway, imo. Because of the vastness of the universe, the distances involved, and the timeframes involved for traveling those distances and that vastness, the rest of the universe could be teeming with alien life and we’ll likely never know it. Not in our lifetimes.
We absolutely can use statistics like that because we already know that the variables for life to exist MUST exist because we do. There are 100 billion planets in our galaxy, and 200 billion galaxies out there. The chance that our planet is the ONLY one that had the conditions for life to form would be infinitesimally small.
Yes. Will humans ever meet them? Probably not. The universe is a big place. Even if a civilization could travel the speed of light it would take them 200,000 years to cross just the milky way. Also, who is to say most civilizations haven’t gone extinct or don’t exist yet?
In my opinion, a definite yes. The only issue is that the Universe is so mind bogglingly huge that the statistical probability of finding one is very low.
Aliens very obviously exist. Life evolved on Earth. The idea that it has never done that elsewhere is ridiculous. The question is how spread out they are in both time and space. The fact that we see no clear evidence of them points to “very spread out”. But it could just be complex life, or intelligent life that is rare, which is why we look for much fainter signals that we’d only see when specifically looking, like with JWST. Either way, they exist. Whether that existence has any relevance to yours is up for debate.
No they don’t. And you genuinely do not understand the gulf that evidence would have to overcome for aliens to be more likely than literally any other explanation for any phenomena you’re talking about. Including explanations that require extremely unlikely coincidences. Because coincidences happen. But if aliens have visited Earth, that requires an unbelievable amount of observations about the universe to be explained. And truly, the evidence to overcome that would be MORE than a good video. And we don’t even fucking have that. It’s pathetic how people act about UFOs and aliens.
The fact that it’s always bad evidence, or indirect evidence, should tell you that it’s always the same bullshit. If you believe it, it’s because you want to, not because there’s the tiniest reason to.
Life evolved on Earth. The idea that it has never done that elsewhere is ridiculous.
I was going to question this, just because I think people often jump to conclusions based on the universe being very large, but as I did just a bit of research it does seem like nothing too unlikely happened to create Earth. You seem to need liquid water. Maybe that water is generated on the planet or maybe it’s delivered by impacts with icy meteorites or asteroids. We have yet to find another planet with liquid oceans, but it’s hard to imagine why it would be so unlikely for enough Earth-like planets to have sprung up to have a good chance of fostering life. The fact we haven’t found an ocean world would seem to speak more to the massive limitations of our knowledge of other planets. You need other things for life as well, but the same argument seems to follow, in that none of the requirements seem like they have a reason to be that rare. But as limited as our science is, and as limited as my understanding of the science is, I have to admit I really do not know what to think. I don’t think our statistical intuitions are useful when thinking about probabilities of planetary or astronomical phenomena.
Yes, it seems pretty untenable that rare earth is the explanation for the lack of evidence of any life outside of Earth. But even if it is true that we’re the only life in the observable universe, the universe is still much bigger, and in many physicists opinion, probably infinite.
The fact that life seems to have evolved on Earth as soon as it was possible to is some evidence that abiogenesis is not the bottleneck. But the usefulness of this observation depends on the distribution of other things we don’t know. For example, if on planets where life evolves later, life never makes it to human-level intelligence before the planet becomes uninhabitable, then our early abiogenesis is survivorship bias, rather than something we should expect to be in the center of the distribution of when abiogenesis happens on a planet where it is possible.
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Probably, but we have no actual evidence of them at the moment.
The Universe is a big place, so it almost certain.
But so far we don’t have compelling enough evidence to verify this.
Yes.
Are they visiting us? To be confirmed.
I like to think they cruise by every now and again, take a few to see what we’re up to, then immediately nope the fuck out
“Monitor Patrol Glark, how are the humans this decade?”
“Nope”
Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.” “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.
Lol good man
It would be an inconceivably-massive statistical anomaly if they didn’t. But I think a better question is will we ever make contact, and I think the answer to that is that it’s inconceivably improbable.
I’m not convinced statistics can be used like this on big questions where we know so little. Just because we believe the universe to be massively large and ever expanding doesn’t satisfy the basic premise that underlies the assumption that there is so much stuff that some of the stuff must be alive. I don’t think we know enough about the universe to make the assumption that because it is so big, it must be infinitely variable.
But what do I know, I’m just some idiot on the internet.
It’s really moot anyway, imo. Because of the vastness of the universe, the distances involved, and the timeframes involved for traveling those distances and that vastness, the rest of the universe could be teeming with alien life and we’ll likely never know it. Not in our lifetimes.
We absolutely can use statistics like that because we already know that the variables for life to exist MUST exist because we do. There are 100 billion planets in our galaxy, and 200 billion galaxies out there. The chance that our planet is the ONLY one that had the conditions for life to form would be infinitesimally small.
I think they exist. Pic semi-related
X-Files was so great. A product of its time that holds up very well. Well, except the last season or two.
Definitely! Still one of my all time favorite shows.
Either fuck aliens, or fuck aliens. I hope those aliens choose their biology wisely before first contact.
Okay Captain Kirk, calm down
Yeah, are they intelligent? Idk there could be an alien plant out there, still an alien.
For sure
Universe would be a pretty big waste of space if humans were its only inhabitants.
Lol this is the best answer
There’s also zebras.
🍋
Oh, good point. Maybe the Zebras are aliens? Or, perhaps we are merely aliens to the other inhabitants of the universe?
Like those are a real thing.
Next they’ll be telling us there’s a North Carolina 🤣
Yes
Edited to delete later when API call goes through.
Probably.
Yes. Will humans ever meet them? Probably not. The universe is a big place. Even if a civilization could travel the speed of light it would take them 200,000 years to cross just the milky way. Also, who is to say most civilizations haven’t gone extinct or don’t exist yet?
But at the travelers point of view, they would arrive in an instance.
In my opinion, a definite yes. The only issue is that the Universe is so mind bogglingly huge that the statistical probability of finding one is very low.
Consider the flipped version of the same question: “Was Earth the only planet in the universe that was able to conceive life?”
If the answer to this question is “Yes”, then our universe would not be fit for life, and we wouldn’t exist either.
Aliens very obviously exist. Life evolved on Earth. The idea that it has never done that elsewhere is ridiculous. The question is how spread out they are in both time and space. The fact that we see no clear evidence of them points to “very spread out”. But it could just be complex life, or intelligent life that is rare, which is why we look for much fainter signals that we’d only see when specifically looking, like with JWST. Either way, they exist. Whether that existence has any relevance to yours is up for debate.
But they have definitely never visited Earth.
Never is a strong word. Some of those videos released show some crazy shit.
No they don’t. And you genuinely do not understand the gulf that evidence would have to overcome for aliens to be more likely than literally any other explanation for any phenomena you’re talking about. Including explanations that require extremely unlikely coincidences. Because coincidences happen. But if aliens have visited Earth, that requires an unbelievable amount of observations about the universe to be explained. And truly, the evidence to overcome that would be MORE than a good video. And we don’t even fucking have that. It’s pathetic how people act about UFOs and aliens.
The fact that it’s always bad evidence, or indirect evidence, should tell you that it’s always the same bullshit. If you believe it, it’s because you want to, not because there’s the tiniest reason to.
I was going to question this, just because I think people often jump to conclusions based on the universe being very large, but as I did just a bit of research it does seem like nothing too unlikely happened to create Earth. You seem to need liquid water. Maybe that water is generated on the planet or maybe it’s delivered by impacts with icy meteorites or asteroids. We have yet to find another planet with liquid oceans, but it’s hard to imagine why it would be so unlikely for enough Earth-like planets to have sprung up to have a good chance of fostering life. The fact we haven’t found an ocean world would seem to speak more to the massive limitations of our knowledge of other planets. You need other things for life as well, but the same argument seems to follow, in that none of the requirements seem like they have a reason to be that rare. But as limited as our science is, and as limited as my understanding of the science is, I have to admit I really do not know what to think. I don’t think our statistical intuitions are useful when thinking about probabilities of planetary or astronomical phenomena.
Yes, it seems pretty untenable that rare earth is the explanation for the lack of evidence of any life outside of Earth. But even if it is true that we’re the only life in the observable universe, the universe is still much bigger, and in many physicists opinion, probably infinite.
The fact that life seems to have evolved on Earth as soon as it was possible to is some evidence that abiogenesis is not the bottleneck. But the usefulness of this observation depends on the distribution of other things we don’t know. For example, if on planets where life evolves later, life never makes it to human-level intelligence before the planet becomes uninhabitable, then our early abiogenesis is survivorship bias, rather than something we should expect to be in the center of the distribution of when abiogenesis happens on a planet where it is possible.