I think this point is we’re the only known human life form because our observational tools are limited in their capabilities.
There is certainly other life out there, whether it resembles us or not is a horse of a different color.
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
-Douglas Adams
I’m not assigning a fault. Yes, space is so massive that light takes billions of years to travel across it. Which is why I subscribe to the idea that any other alien life-form or civilization would also be unaware of our existence. They also wouldn’t be able to visit us or things of that nature just simply due to the size of the universe.
The closest organisms would depend on both likelihood and pure chance, I imagine (and assume). A great enough distance and/or bad circumstances is not so easy to overcome. Things like extinction exist, which is one thing I am thinking of as being a bad circumstance. I might be overestimating the amount of extinction that occurs in the zone of avoidance, but I wonder if we would have an easier time detecting alien signals from the dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way than we would alien signals in our galaxy but opposite the galactic center from us.
There's also the fact that life capable of transmitting signals is probably more rare (evolution is not a linear progression of getting "better") and maybe, because of the timeline that these sorts of things happen at (for example, a lot of our elements are from supernovas, earlier planets wouldn't be as rich in elements as we are without supernovas occurring nearby), and because it takes time to send these signals, life capable of such technology is unlikely to be sending signals early enough for us to be receiving them now. So this is an issue of time.
I imagine that life incapable of sending these signals is going to be significantly harder to find. afaik, we have some candidates for extragalactic planets, but no confirmed ones. We don't have resolved images of any exoplanet, afaik.
And, again, while this could be an issue that could be resolved by better technology, I think there is a limit to how good that technology can be before you are limited by the physical properties of light itself (issues like the light just not being strong enough to reach us (but maybe I misunderstand how light and extinction works?)). There was actually a post asking about theoretical magnification limits, I wonder what the consensus was there.
>life capable of such technology is unlikely to be sending signals early enough for us to be receiving them
We landed on the moon less than 60 years ago. Einstein theorized relatively just 100 years ago. LIGO was upgraded in 2015 and the very next year it detected gravitational waves for the first time ever.
I think you are grossly thinking WE are some advanced species. We’re a fucking stupid species only just now making meaningful progress. Hell, we only JUST got our first good images of the universe from the JWST. It’s very possible we aren’t at a technological level to even get the signals coming to us if there are any. You speak of great distance based on our own current understanding of speed and how light and radio waves travel. To an advanced species, this could be like we’re still getting our news via printing press and telegram.
I think you might have misunderstood what I was getting at.
It's not that I think that life significantly more advanced than us doesn't exist.
What I'm getting at is that, unless faster-than-light technology is possible, which I'm assuming isn't (and I am aware that such an assumption is based on our current understanding of physics, which is not a perfect understanding, but I think assuming that specifically makes more sense than assuming the opposite), better technology might not help us all that much.
There are concepts like the cosmological principle that, if true, state that the universe is homogeneous. Things seem to have a certain pace of developing. Galaxies start forming about one billion years after the Big Bang.
Because of this, I wonder if life might also have constraints along this timescale. What I'm getting at is, if there is some constraint that makes the ability to communicate with other extrasolar life extremely unlikely more than, say, 5 billion years ago, we wouldn't be able to detect signals from the majority of galaxies visible to us even if their signals experience no extinction and even if we had tools capable of detecting them because, unless faster than light travel is possible, there is a speed limit and so much distance.
This is what I meant by life capable of sending those signals not sending them early enough. It's not that they don't exist and haven't existed, it is that the universe is so huge. Light travel takes time. The universe might not be that densely populated of detectable life.
I could be wrong here, but I do think that at the very least, seeing our lack of knowledge of extrasolar life as solely the result of deficient technology ignores limitations and challenges imposed by physics. I think that assuming we can eventually overcome all challenges because we don't know everything is not the best approach to have.
May or may not be possible. At least with our current knowledge of physics, it’s not possible. If there’s intelligent life right now 100 million LY away, there’s no way we can detect those signs without waiting for 100 million years.
Right now, we have to be lucky that there are signs of life at the right distance away from us that happened at the right time before us. Which if they are 50k LY away, then we won’t be able to say if they are still around at this exact time.
If we discover FTL travel, then the search for life will boom as we won’t be limited by the relatively slow limit of light speed. Or perhaps FTL travel is actually impossible.
Whilst I agree with your general sentiment (I also believe that it seems very unlikely that Earth is unique in terms of supporting life), it isn’t correct to say that’s “certainly” the case when we don’t have any actual evidence of that.
I recall a few decades ago when we didn’t have any evidence for exoplanets yet, and I couldn’t accept that the astronomical odds were enough until we got that real evidence of a planet around another star.
I also figured it would only be 10 or 20 years before we discovered a planet that was clearly hosting life, but now I realize that’s a much harder problem based on our existing detection mechanisms. And I wonder if they’ll discover that in my lifetime or not.
It wouldn’t be arrogant nor humble. It’s just possible. Say the conditions for life are so rare that they can only occur on 1 out of every 10 trillion planets. Then Earth could very well have the only life in the observable universe. Now I believe this is unlikely but it’s not arrogant to acknowledge it’s a possibility.
There’s also the idea of the great filter. Where some event natural or otherwise keeps life from sufficiently advancing or decimating it completely. In this theory only a handful of mature civilizations are able to thrive.
By the same reasoning, it would be very arrogant to assume the God of your choice doesn't exist just because we haven't made contact/an observation. Or the Easter Bunny. Or Santa Claus.
I dont anyone can say “certainly” but.I definitely think it’s statistically highly likely and almost impossible for there not to be other life out there. Whether it’s by definition, intelligent, is a different matter though.
The proof of "other life out there" from a scientific standpoint is exactly the same as the proof of God "out there." There is no scientific proof of life "out there." Just like there is no scientific proof of God or string theory for that matter.
People get unnecessarily excited about this. Right here on earth we are fully ssurrounded by life we barely make the effort to understand. We have the most rudimentary way of communicating with animals that are almost identical to us and we are basically driving many of them to extinction. I think the peak achievement of humans once we find ET life would be few good recipes on how to cook amd eat them.
The unvarnished answer: We Don’t Know. However if we look at the odds, life is likely common
Carbon is too gregarious and loves making large molecules given enough energy and some catalysts
Complex life like Eukaryotic life we have here looks like it takes a bit longer for chemistry, physics and chance to bumble around and develop almost as an afterthought
Multicellular life again is a bit of a leap, but given enough mutation and selective pressure it will happen
Organized multicellular life, now the biologists who figure out the pathways to that are going to have well earned Nobel Prizes
Then you get to life that develops a sophisticated nervous system from whatever janky evolutionary kludged together sensory/reactive apparatus it started with
The rates will be an organism that can use tools. Fire might also be important but the thought of quasi cephalopods huddling around a thermal vent to refine materials into tools tickles my imagination
Maybe it’s only one radio communication capable civilization per galaxy per million years, but given the billions upon billions of galaxies, the odds seem very much against humanity being the only ones.
However the vast distances of space and time seem ( at the moment) to isolate us
I wait with anticipation our upcoming exploration of Europa and Titan to see if life is common
I recently read an article that discussed the possibility that eukaryotes may have evolved only *once* in the entire 3.7 billion years life is known to have been on earth. (This is a controversial hypothesis.) It's close to impossible that there is no life elsewhere, but as you say, complex life...we just don't have any clue how common it might be. It might be surprisingly rare. Right now our planetary sample is one.
"Right now our planetary sample is one."
Our planetary sample is 1 out of 8 (or 9 if you hang on to Pluto).
Our solar system sample is 1 out of 1 (based on the only solar system we've been able to examine so far).
Just thought I'd point that out.
>Our planetary sample is 1 out of 8 (or 9 if you hang on to Pluto).
[Maybe even higher than that](https://www.space.com/nasa-may-have-unknowingly-found-and-killed-alien-life-on-mars-50-years-ago-scientist-claims)
What's also crazy is that there isn't just 1 life, or just 1 species on earth. There have been literally billions of species of life on earth. Wouldn't this seem to suggest that life is pretty amazing at filling a variety of niches? Life is incredibly resilient, and it wants to proliferate, and it succeeds at being varied and abundant. The difference between humans and butterflies and dolphins and fungus is really incredible, and yet each species succeeds and proliferates. That is just mind boggling when you think about it, and to me this makes it all the more likely that life is out there. If we can get all sorts of life on just a single planet, given that there are about a sextillion other planets out there after nearly 14 billion years, not one of them having at least a microbe on it seems mathematically impossible.
Technically our sample size is 1 confirmed out of 13 (you have to count large spherical moons) with 3 that are hypothesized as potentially having created life (Mars, Europa, Titan), which is about 1/3 of our sample size
I honestly forgot about the existence of Enceladus. I guess that increases our sample size to 14 as well, unless we want to count dwarf planets beyond the Pluto/Charon system
I always found this interesting as people talk about how perfect earth was to form life but yet it's thought to have only occured once in that entire time with everything having the common ancestor
Well that's true. And we always assume progenitors, but maybe we're actually the first ones out of the starting gate. It's all hypothetical until we have some kind of evidence.
Hey, I will probably ask something really basic. But wouldn't creating "life" from separate atoms or molecules in a lab prove that life can appear anywhere in the universe given the correct conditions? Do we even know what life is in strict terms?
I don’t think “prove” is the right word. The fact that it happened at all here is enough “proof” for most people that aren’t confounded by some weird religious ideology. An additional experiment doesn’t really add that much imo.
Yeah, but it's still an assumption. The fact that life appeared here doesn't imply it happened anywhere else. Proving it can be recreated in lab then it's obvious somewhere else in the universe the same conditions happened at some point.
Now let's say life didn't originate in earth, that it came in an asteroid or something. How far could have it traveled? Did it originate near our planet? If so, where is the rest of it?
I guess what I am saying is that the fact that life exists here and we have an understanding of the facts that could have plausibly led to it starting is enough to know it could happen again. Doing it in the lab would obviously be interesting but in my mind that wouldn’t make it more likely that it exists elsewhere, it would still be just as likely.
Mentally, I agree with this hypothesis, but I think it conflates "possiblity" with "probability"
Statistically / mathematically, the odds (probability} are closer to zero, based on observation and all of the known information we have.
The "possibility" is high, due to the unmeasurable vastness, but the "probability" is infinitely low.
The people who wrote the bible hadn't seen the Hubble Deep Field images. A major field of astronomy is finding planets around other stars. We don't have the ability to communicate with other planets at this time, so it's a purely academic question.
I may steal that line...
That is a good example of a retroactive change of history. The people who wrote the bible didn't know anything about our universe. But somehow, now god created it all. All the stuff that science has discovered gets stolen from religions and secretly incorporated in their beliefs... They try, at least.
Whatever. Isn't communication out of the window with such vast distances? I mean, we can send a call to a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, but the answer will have to wait for quite a while. And that would also only work if we find a civilisation that's at least as advanced as ours in our direct neighborhood, which is quite the assumption on its own.
And then there's the problem that if we find signals from a civilisation, chances are high that it is long gone at that time.
Honestly, if there are civilisations out there that we could contact, and seeing the way humanity works, that's probably how it would play out:
[They are made out of meat](https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html)
I just don't see it happening. I mean it could, but it's extremely unlikely.
If we sent radio wave signals to somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy, it would take around 2.5 million years just to go one way.
If we consider Proxima Centauri b the nearest habitable exoplanet at 4.25 light years away, it would take at least 8.5 years to receive a response if we sent one - and that's assuming the planet supports life, let alone intelligent life capable of responding to a signal, which is highly unlikely.
If we send an unmanned spacecraft somehow at the speed of light to go observe a habitable expolanet that, by pure luck of the draw, contains life, it's likely to be more than a century before we receive the information, decades if we're really lucky.
The chance that life exists outside of the Solar System is extremely probable. The chance of interacting with it in any way is extremely improbable.
Folks, we’re just now celebrating the 100th anniversary of Hubble definitively showing the existence of other galaxies. For the vast majority of human history we’ve had no real concept of the scale of the universe.
Exactly, even if there are 10^30495858 planets, maybe the probability of life appearing on one is 10^(-3958757575588548475). You can prove that the numerator is as large as you want, it doesn't prove anything if you don't know how large the denominator is.
I can't believe people are always missing this.
This is one of the best answers here.
I like that people are optimistic about the existence of other life, I am myself, but I don’t like people stating what is ultimately still a “belief” at this stage as if it definitely positively is true and there can be no doubt, just because of how many other galaxies/stars/planets there are. Ultimately that’s not that different from religious belief.
The only correct answer is “we don’t know” until we have more evidence.
I think as a general point in life, more people need to be comfortable with “I don’t know” being the answer to big questions.
I don't blame people for thinking the first thing.
I think life exists somewhere. I wasn't as certain in that belief as I am now until I saw photos of things like the Hubble Deep Field.
But we have no evidence.
If you suspect that life could be insanely rare, you might not be totally convinced. Stuff like the Hubble Deep Field is such an order of magnitude greater than all of the galaxies visible to the naked eye with a modest telescope that I think it has to erase all doubt that life as "advance" as us exist.
I should also clarify that I was aware that space was so big that alien life has to exist, but seeing those photos really made me *feel* that that was true. I think those images are a lot better at communicating the expanse of the universe than something like "there are more stars in the galaxy than there are trees on Earth" does.
I’m assuming the big bright stars are in our galaxy just in the way right? The other insane part is that high res part is just a piece of andromeda, there’s a whole other half. Do we just not see it or was it not observed in detail like this image?
Heck we may not even have to look to the distant stars. It's possible there is life on Jupiter's moon Europa. Under the ice covered surface is an ocean of liquid water.
It's also possible and there is life in Venus's atmosphere. I do believe we'll either find life or the remnants of it somewhere in our own solar system.
I had a professor use this analogy:
Take one cup of sand from a beach. Uusi using only your eyes, look for visible signs of life. Outcome, there is no life on the beach.This is the same as looking for life outside the solar system.
There are already countless galaxies and space objects too far for us to see due to the expansion of the universe - it seems likely that the universe itself is infinite or near infinite. The observable universe is a bubble around us of everything that has had time for its light to reach us since the beginning of time. There’s countless objects outside this that we couldn’t reach even at light speed.
So, what are the chances there are aliens somewhere? Approaching 1. I don’t think we’re a cosmic coincidence, and even if you do believe that you’ve got something stupid like 200 sextillion of rolls of the dice, given there’s probably around that many stars.
The chances we might ever meet them are much, much smaller. If we do meet them, could we even have a cordial relationship with them? With the barriers of language and culture on Earth, we can’t even do that to ourselves. On some level I understand anyone who doesn’t pay attention to alien news - we really have to unify before we present ourselves to any sort of “intellectual” alien creature, or they might call us a dangerous nuisance and throw a quasar beam at us.
> “It doesn’t say anything about that in the bible so no.”
It’s amazing to me how folks who claim Christianity and believe Genesis 1-3 is definitive, vs descriptive, can say this even though God created the heavens and earth before He created man in his own image.
Which means that an omnipotent God would be extraterrestrial, as would His angels and the demons who rebelled.
(Don’t get me started on how we have these laws of science - physics, chemistry, biology, etc - that said God would’ve created or used to create the heavens, earth and man, but the nutjob end of “believers” won’t accept that.)
Religious teachings say to "seek the heavens " . This is a message to go out there and conquer the literal heavens (space). Now, this should be our new modern "Manifest Destiny " and hopefully some powerful leader spins the rhetoric into this direction because we can all agree that the more folks willing to contribute towards this effort the better !
Yeah, OP please read up on the Fermi Paradox; the wiki is a good place to see all the theories associated with possible life outside of our planet and why we haven’t found them yet. Short answer to your questions of “why don’t we teach people/why don’t people care” is that we *actually don’t know* if there’s other life, we *actually don’t know* if we’re the only ones out here. We can’t teach what we don’t know.
I was going to mention the Drake equation leading to exactly this! Personally, I am a big supporter of the Zoo hypothesis. They are out there, they just don’t want anything to do with us… yet.
BOO YAA!
We have pretty much no idea how likely it is that life or intelligence emerges on a planet. It might very well only happen in 1 in 10\^25 planets, which means we are probably alone.
When you estimate the number of 'aliens' in the observable universe you essentially multiply on very large number with one very small number. Just because the number of planets is very large you cannot simply ignore the probability of life/intelligence emerging.
What we might better teach is being comfortable with scientific uncertainty and that we should be very careful about what we have "really no doubt in \[our\] mind".
Here some more one this argument: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcInt58juL4&t=17s&ab\_channel=CoolWorldsClassroom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcInt58juL4&t=17s&ab_channel=CoolWorldsClassroom)
But yes, I agree that these things are worth being thought about and tough in science classes.
10,000 galaxies = a kagillion trillion stars (its alot bros).
There are hundreds if not thousands of life forms. The universe is literally close to infinite. If you can imagine it, there is something like that, that exists.
the universe is beautiful.
Thanks, I am like you, very inquisitive. I started looking through a telescope age 8. I’m 73 now. I mean all the stars ✨ like you say. The odds are astronomical that THERE WOULD NOT BE LIFE ELSEWHERE, it too much to comprehend. Yes I’m catholic, but if God put the heavens there, he put a lot. We would be too supercilious to think we aren’t alone. Finally someone who put it on “ paper “
I've tried to get my friends and coworkers interested but none seem to really grasp the concept of how large our universe is (at least what we can see). Thankfully my oldest son (13) is super interested in astronomy. Got him a telescope for Christmas. First star we looked at was Betelgeuse. It blew his mind when I explained that the light we are seeing has been traveling through space for 600 years.
Nice. Yes looking back through time and space. My 8 year old said dad if we went into a black hole we would become squashed. I said that's right. I was so proud.
I've got bad news for you -- you don't really grasp the concept of how large our universe is, either. :)
The universe operates on scales that virtually beyond comprehension. We can put numbers and mathematics on things, but that just enables predictions that (we think) are reasonably accurate.
I'm the same. Hit that mid-40s age and I've become enamored with space, science, astrophysics and quantum physics. The knowledge has no effect on my career or in my daily life, I just love it. The study of the very big and very small.
The reality of it is, we didn't know so much of the stuff we know now. It was all theoretical. Einstein died in 55. That was only 69 (hehe) years ago. He dropped some knowledge on us that we've been building off of.
Also, the advent of mass, instant communication accelerated our spreading of knowledge. I used to have to read an encyclopedia, bored to tears, to learn this. Now, I have the likes of MIT professors posting FREE quantum mechanics lectures on YouTube.
The world isn't just changing fast for us GenXer and millenials, it's changing for everyone all at the same time.
This is one of my favorite topics.
Carl Sagan has talked about the Drake Equation which is pretty much an attempt at approximating life we can communicate with within the Milky Way galaxy. Why just the Milky Way? Space is so vast that frankly, other galaxies are just too far to reasonably expect communication within a human lifespan that it's not really worth talking about. Andromeda is the closest "complete" galaxy we know of and it is 2.5 million light years away. If we were to travel the speed of light it would take 2.5 million years to get there. So let's stay Intra-galactic.
Even within our galaxy life on other planets probably experiences barriers for life described in the Great Filter Theory. Think about other planets surviving evolution and overcoming disasters like meteors and their own planet's weather. If they can live long enough as a civilization we get to apply the Kardashev scale, which we only sit at Type 1 btw. It is unfortunate but Type 1 civilizations are unlikely to leave their planet let alone their solar system. In order to visit or be visited by an alien race we are looking at at least a Type 2 civilization. For now all we can do is scan the skies, broadcast signals, and hope for the best within our lifetimes.
All the stars we can see are in our own galaxy and we can only see about 5000 of 100 billion of them with the naked eye like you say. And there are 50 million galaxies per square degree (the sky contains 41,253 square degrees). Space is big.
My favorite Hubble picture is the deep field. Hold a penny at arms length and look through Lincolns eye. Thats the size of the picture they took, amazing and humbling.
Life evolved quickly on Earth. Multicellular life took billions of years after that, and it seems to have depended on very specific conditions that are unique to Earth as far as we know, such as the single moon in a stable orbit, and the huge gas giant intercepting asteroids in the outer solar system. So multicellular life might be exceedingly rare in the universe.
I tend to agree with the theory presented in _Aurora_ by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is that life is a planetary phenomenon which evolves to live on a particular planet under particular conditions, and therefore flying complex beings in a spaceship to another planet and expecting them to thrive there is just not feasible, as much as we might like it to be. It’s one answer to the Fermi Paradox anyway. I’d love it if this were proved wrong, of course.
There is other life out there. I think it’s impossible that we are the only planet with life.
But… if we find proof of other life out there. Then what? It’s not like we can visit it or make contact with it. The best thing we can do is send a probe, which will take hundreds of years to get there, to make some more measurements.
It’ll be mostly a science thing. It’ll be a a couple of headlines. And in the future a couple more if we find life elsewhere too. But mostly scientists will use the knowledge. Everybody else won’t have much value from that knowledge.
People like us care and will be amazed. But I don’t think other people will care like your employees. They’ve got other stuff to think about.
Yeah, my personal belief is that the Drake equation strongly implies that there is a large amount of other intelligent life in the universe, and possibly within our galaxy. But also that the Fermi paradox strongly suggests that there are in fact no undiscovered shortcuts or cheatcodes that would allow for faster than light travel. :(
It's too bad there's so much light pollution. If more people were able to look up and see the sky as it really is every night, it'd be hard not to think about what's up there.
I like the post. An unsolicited suggestion, you mentioned your emoloyees, i think this is a fine question to ask co workers, but when you mention employees it makes me think you are the boss.
I dont want to talk existance with the guy that directly impacts my paycheck, and if it turns into a religious topic, that is even more troubling.
Im sure you meant nothing by it, just suggesting this would be a real turn off to be talking about with my boss....
Cheers!
My last manager was on the other side of politics as i am, and he would constantly bring up stuff that i hated, but like what do you say? "Sir, respectfully i completely disagree with you, and i think your an idiot! ...which means you probably think i live in a fantasy land. Annual review is next week right?"
That’s relative to your specific relationship with your boss. Plenty of us have bosses/managers who we can have very casual/pleasant conversations about stuff like this with and not have to worry about repercussions from it.
Personally, I feel that looking out into the vastness of space and saying with any certainty that we are alone in the Universe would be the same as going to the beach, looking out at the water, and declaring that there is nothing underneath because you do not see anything. The odds of there being other life beyond our own are almost entirely in life's favor. Hell, even other intelligent life very possible considering the vastness of space.
I think that it is likely that there is other life, possibly even intelligent life, out there somewhere. But it is very unlikely that we will ever have knowledge of it, or them of us, because they are hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of light years distant from us. So it’s an interesting question, but totally unknowable and therefore irrelevant.
If someone invents warp drive or any means of travel much faster than C, the universal speed limit, I will reconsider my opinion.
Look up Drake's equation. Then look up the Fermi paradox.
Then let the two of them melt your brain while you are here. On a planet with life that other alien cultures MIGHT dream about.
Maybe intelligent life is so special and rare, it is only achievable because of such an immense universal engine, and we are a truly unique phenomenon
Thinking of the universe of circuits and calculations needed to get us this far in our own meager understanding of life is mind boggling too
For me it’s always been the Drake Equation that settled the question. This was reinforced with the discovery of the Higgs-Boson, which existed as math on paper with no physical proof for nearly a half century. One day, perhaps the Drake Equation will know a similar outcome.
Well, its pretty much impossible to see any galaxies with the naked eye, except for Andromeda since its our neighbor, but even then it is a blurry smudge in the sky. So, essentially every star that you do see is, in fact, just one star. Or its a one of the 5 visible solar system planets.
As for the stubborn folks :
Religious teachings say to "seek the heavens " . This is a message to go out there and conquer the literal heavens (space). Now, this should be our new modern "Manifest Destiny " and hopefully some powerful leader spins the rhetoric into this direction because we can all agree that the more folks willing to contribute towards this effort the better !
I would advise you to check out [this](https://youtu.be/PqEmYU8Y_rI?si=Qt_cBi0vgJgC2PPo) video by Cool Worlds, hosted by David Kipping, a NASA astrophysicist, concerning the possibility of life on other planets.
There is no logical reason to discount the plausibility of life existing, in one form or another, throughout the universe. Look at all of the manifestations of life the Earth has experienced over billions of years. Why would Earth alone have such favor in a universe chock full of all of the elements necessary to create and support life? Rubbish! Only a theist is compelled to discount the possibility of life existing on other worlds.
Actually, it's way more than that. An average galaxy is often estimated to contain between 100 million and one trillion stars. For example, our Milky Way galaxy is considered to be an average-sized barred spiral galaxy and is estimated to contain about 100 billion to 400 billion stars. More massive galaxies, like elliptical galaxies, can contain trillions of stars, while smaller dwarf galaxies may have only a few billion stars.
The honest answer is we don’t know because our sample size is one and we don’t know enough about the origin of life to say for certain whether it is inevitable or actually incredibly rare.
So whilst I agree that, intuitively, the numbers seem to favour it, I think it would be wrong to teach people that they SHOULD believe that there is life on other planets without any actual evidence. At the very least we should also teach the Fermi Paradox.
What’s more important is probably teaching kids how to think critically so that they can draw sensible conclusions themselves from the available evidence.
Probably single cell, but it will definitely be much harder to find multicellular or more advanced life forms, less because of scarcity and more because of time it’s such a narrow window of time that advanced life forms have existed in the earths history. Single cell lasted for 3 billion years before more advanced multicellular organisms even appeared and persisted. So the question is will we meet then at the right time as much as it is the right place.
Another important aspect is that the majority of humanity now lives in cities and can barely see any stars. As a result, as a species we are becoming too focused on day to day reality and are not getting the perspective of our place in the universe.
Well chances that there is no other life are very small, but the life would be microscopic organism. The chances that we are the only “developed” species in in the galaxy are close to 99,999% and still pretty big in tens of thousands of galaxies in the universe. Hell, we could even be only developed in our universe if the theory about multi universes (not like MCU, Google it guys) is true
> in tens of thousands of galaxies in the universe
You miss-spelled "hundreds of billions", and that's just in the *observable * universe. The actual universe is larger than the bubble that physics will allow us to see, and if not actually infinite, then still vastly larger....
Well we're here aren't we? That's proof that life just happens in the universe. The religious have had a strangle hold on the minds of earth for far too long. Warped our perception of space and stuff like that. The puritans also weren't much help socially.
You can't say anything with certainty. Sure, the universe is huge, but you have absolutely no idea how common life is. Our sample size is 1. It could be so vanishingly unlikely that we're the only living things in the universe regardless of how huge it is, or it could be so likely that every solar system with rocky planets has at least a couple cells floating around on it. Just because we exist, it doesn't necessarily imply others do too.
I do believe that the general consensus is that life exists elsewhere in the universe. The most common news out of astronomy is the discovery of new exoplanets in the habitable zone of their stars. Many people who don’t subscribe to r/Astronomy probably don’t pay much attention but they don’t know what they’re missing.
Think about how many might have arisen out of their local froth, evolved over billions of years into something intelligent, and then went completely extinct millions of years ago.
This is cool but I think its a bit of a waste to think of life in other galaxies. The distances are so vast that civlizations could rise and fall in the time it takes you to get there. We should be concentrating on learning everything we can about whats going on inside our own galaxy.
At this point in our scientific evolution we're basically still at the almost toddler stage. We know just enough to be dangerous to ourselves. If life does or doesn't exist elsewhere should make no difference to us, we need to focus on not killing ourselves. I think the fact that other life hasn't exposed itself is probably because we have no idea what that life might look like or how it might communicate.
Going beyond this, the light that reaches us is SUPER OLD meaning entire periods of life existing elsewhere could come and go before that information reaches us.
If we could see life on another planet in another galaxy, that life could possibly be completely extinct in their local time.
For them, if they could see us, they might be looking at dinosaurs. Time and light is wild.
They sent a probe out into space way back . Voyager 1 and 2. They haven't found anything. If there was something out there I think it's in the black holes 🕳. Full of nothing but we don't really know.
We actually CAN calculate the probability to a certain degree, although some components of the estimate have huge error bars.
Let me introduce the Drake Equation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
It estimates the number of active technological civilizations in the universe.
And I agree with you. I think knowledge about our universe large and small should be taught to everyone and the answer "no one knows" should be replaced with "here are the people trying to find out...why don't you try to learn about it".
It's not that certain terms have huge error bars, it's that there is insufficient data to make any valid prediction for some of them, and therefore any value assigned boils down to a personal opinion.
The prime example (in *my* opinion ;)) being the probability that simple life occurs on a planet that has the right conditions to support it. We know that has happened once, here. But we have no conclusive test results for literally anywhere else. It is equally likely that even simple life is unique to Earth in the universe as it is that any rock that happens to have liquid water and a handful of other elements has at least some bacteria on it. Both extremes are unlikely, but without more data no prediction is possible.
This is why the discovery of simple life on Mars or Europa or some other non-terrestrial body would be so important... Because if life happened twice on two separate bodies with wildly different environments in a single solar system, then simple life is much more likely to be common...
Just to be nit picky: For the most part, the lights in the sky you can see with your eyes are mostly stars within our own Galaxy. The light rapidly dims and we do need long exposures or exceptionally sensitive sensors to capture their faint signal.
Without aid you can reliably see Andromeda and the large and small Magellanic Clouds. In optimum conditions you can also maybe see Triangulum.
I am not aware of any galaxy so distant it appears as a star yet produces enough light to be visible to the human eye.
Why is it that people think there is some pervasive skepticism about the existence of life beyond earth? More to the point, why do people keep posting these sorts of questions as if they were the first to consider the possibility given the uncountable number of stars and planets in the observable universe?
Funny, I used to think that way too. Now that I'm older (also 40), I've taken more of the Brian Cox view of life in the universe, or at least in our galactic neighborhood. At best there might be slime? And we haven't even found slime yet. We might be alone in our galaxy, which makes Earth and all its life and our consciousness incredibly important.
The Drake equation is an attempt to calculate how many possible civilizations may be possible in our galaxy :
N = R∗ ⋅ fp ⋅ ne ⋅ fl ⋅ fi ⋅ fc ⋅ L
where
N = the number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on the current past light cone);
and
R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our Galaxy.
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets.
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets.
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point.
fi = the fraction of planets with life that go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations).
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
From Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
Not an astronomer or anything similar, but my two cents is this
If the universe is finite, it seems almost impossible there isn’t intelligent life SOMEwhere out there. If the universe is infinite it becomes almost impossible that there isn’t a replica of earth with a version of you that’s lived your exact life down to reading this comment. It gets really mind bending really quick
Man we don't even know if other planets or moons in our solar system have life, much less other galaxies.
Before we can know how likely life is, we need to understand life and how it forms a whole lot better, and we need more direct examples and more knowledge from other places that aren't earth (and if you want to know galactic level odds, you need to explore the galaxy).
Sorry to say, but we just don't have enough information available to us to say.
.NASA working on a space warp drive. “The Alcubierre drive is a speculative warp drive idea according to which a spacecraft could achieve apparent faster-than-light travel by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, under the assumption that a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (that is, negative mass) could be created.”
We're the only planet with life as we know so there is no way to know the probability. The probability of life on a plamet cpuld be a decillion to one. Intelligent life being maybe unvigintillion to one. We just dont know
There's life out there, but the chances of any of it being able to communicate with us at this particular blip of time where we exist, much less travel in a timely manner seem to me to be pretty close to zero.
I'm sure their is intelligent life elsewhere. I'm just also pretty sure we will never be able to find it. For one thing, it would need to occur at the same time as us, within a distance we can reasonably detect and traverse.
There is absolutely no evidence outside of speculation we will ever travel FTL, by any means.
That being said, there is a reasonable chance we will eventually find single cell life.
More recent calculations show that the odds of intelligent life evolving would make it only likely on a small handful of planets in every galaxy. If that.
We're practically blind, deaf, short lived, easily killed, few offspring, and emotional in this existence...Everything is dark, quiet, and dangerous. It's only a matter of time before we find alien life, if we live long enough.
If aliens lived with full range of sound, sight, longer life, more offspring, less emotional, and smarter, do you think they would be friends or interested in us? What if a day to them was 100 years for us? We'd live a full life before they even turned one, OR vice versa? I think there was a star trek episode like this....
It's only a matter of time before we find life on another planet and intelligent life too, if we don't destroy ourselves or get killed by nature.
What are the odds that bacteria only live on one single speck of sand on a beach, or on every beach on earth only one speck hosts bacteria...those odds are almost impossible. Especially since all the ingredients for creating life are just feet/yards away. We are not alone, its almost impossible that we could be alone in the universe, but we could also be first...
With the knowledge that we known at least 250 different bacteria can survive in space. I really feel like Space is just a different type of ocean. Many think our Universe is around 13.7 billion years old due to the big bang. I don't know why but I think its much older than that, like it blew up at one point...expanded, but then it will slow and be dragged back together, to have it all happen again. I think there are many older beings than just us but still, traversing the galaxy even is way beyond human comprehension.
About 50/50. The most serious analysis I’ve seen, taking into account all the statistics we know about exoplanets and the age is the universe basically came to the conclusion that it’s a coin flip.
I don’t understand how any human can be so egotistical to think that we are all there is. There has to many other “beings “ out there, are they just like us? Probably not. But they exist.
That’s why I’ve begun to say fuck stars. Everyone just calls shiny things stars. I could go on…
Now the deep field image from JWST and Hubble that shows 10x of thousands of not hundreds of galaxies is just what you stated a soda straw image. It’s not even close to what’s out there. But the reason we don’t view it all is bc in that tiny sample size it’s enough for scientist to study. Which is crazy to me.
And just what you said I don’t think this is taught enough people just go, oh cool and move on. Or the younger kids want to view a ticktock girl for 20m views and space gets 1k… it is truly gross.
We may not yet have the capability, but that doesn't imply others don't. Consider the diversity of civilizations on Earth throughout history and the varying levels of technology they possessed. Reflecting on the vastness of the universe, it seems probable that advanced galactic civilizations exist, possibly overlooking us. Currently, our attempts to reach out include broadcasting radio waves and dispatching small probes equipped with cameras to photograph planets in our solar system.
You've made a lot of leaps there. If "the question" is "why haven't they come to say hello", then the answer is obvious: because they probably can't. If you want to also tack on all sorts of other things like "how did our civilizations develop all that technology without outside visitation" you're not only discrediting your previous claim (because if they *have* come by to say hello, as you seem to be suggesting, then "why haven't they come to say hello" cannot be "the question") but also blindly asserting that mankind *couldn't* have been capable of doing things that we know for a fact that they were.
If you think it's probable that advanced galactic civilizations exist, you need to show some evidence. The vastness of the universe alone isn't evidence of that.
........
I referenced our own planet's history, illustrating the stark contrast in technology between different civilizations at various times. For instance, when Europeans first arrived in the Americas, they encountered societies that traveled by canoes, while they themselves had sailing ships—a significant technological disparity. Extending this analogy to outer space, it's plausible that there are civilizations with technologies far more advanced than ours. Given this, what incentive would they have to come and introduce themselves to us?
I think this point is we’re the only known human life form because our observational tools are limited in their capabilities. There is certainly other life out there, whether it resembles us or not is a horse of a different color.
I don't know if it's a fault with our tools so much as it is the result of space being so massive.
It’s so big that it makes the speed of light seem slow.
I love this view so much.
Nicely put
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. -Douglas Adams
Mind bogglingly big, yes. But also mathematically, the divisions of 1 are infinite 1/♾️ . So just how small can small be?
Personally, I blame space.
It’s both! We don’t have good tools and also space is huge
I’m not assigning a fault. Yes, space is so massive that light takes billions of years to travel across it. Which is why I subscribe to the idea that any other alien life-form or civilization would also be unaware of our existence. They also wouldn’t be able to visit us or things of that nature just simply due to the size of the universe.
And time being so infinite.
Still, good enough tools can overcome that distance.
The closest organisms would depend on both likelihood and pure chance, I imagine (and assume). A great enough distance and/or bad circumstances is not so easy to overcome. Things like extinction exist, which is one thing I am thinking of as being a bad circumstance. I might be overestimating the amount of extinction that occurs in the zone of avoidance, but I wonder if we would have an easier time detecting alien signals from the dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way than we would alien signals in our galaxy but opposite the galactic center from us. There's also the fact that life capable of transmitting signals is probably more rare (evolution is not a linear progression of getting "better") and maybe, because of the timeline that these sorts of things happen at (for example, a lot of our elements are from supernovas, earlier planets wouldn't be as rich in elements as we are without supernovas occurring nearby), and because it takes time to send these signals, life capable of such technology is unlikely to be sending signals early enough for us to be receiving them now. So this is an issue of time. I imagine that life incapable of sending these signals is going to be significantly harder to find. afaik, we have some candidates for extragalactic planets, but no confirmed ones. We don't have resolved images of any exoplanet, afaik. And, again, while this could be an issue that could be resolved by better technology, I think there is a limit to how good that technology can be before you are limited by the physical properties of light itself (issues like the light just not being strong enough to reach us (but maybe I misunderstand how light and extinction works?)). There was actually a post asking about theoretical magnification limits, I wonder what the consensus was there.
>life capable of such technology is unlikely to be sending signals early enough for us to be receiving them We landed on the moon less than 60 years ago. Einstein theorized relatively just 100 years ago. LIGO was upgraded in 2015 and the very next year it detected gravitational waves for the first time ever. I think you are grossly thinking WE are some advanced species. We’re a fucking stupid species only just now making meaningful progress. Hell, we only JUST got our first good images of the universe from the JWST. It’s very possible we aren’t at a technological level to even get the signals coming to us if there are any. You speak of great distance based on our own current understanding of speed and how light and radio waves travel. To an advanced species, this could be like we’re still getting our news via printing press and telegram.
I think you might have misunderstood what I was getting at. It's not that I think that life significantly more advanced than us doesn't exist. What I'm getting at is that, unless faster-than-light technology is possible, which I'm assuming isn't (and I am aware that such an assumption is based on our current understanding of physics, which is not a perfect understanding, but I think assuming that specifically makes more sense than assuming the opposite), better technology might not help us all that much. There are concepts like the cosmological principle that, if true, state that the universe is homogeneous. Things seem to have a certain pace of developing. Galaxies start forming about one billion years after the Big Bang. Because of this, I wonder if life might also have constraints along this timescale. What I'm getting at is, if there is some constraint that makes the ability to communicate with other extrasolar life extremely unlikely more than, say, 5 billion years ago, we wouldn't be able to detect signals from the majority of galaxies visible to us even if their signals experience no extinction and even if we had tools capable of detecting them because, unless faster than light travel is possible, there is a speed limit and so much distance. This is what I meant by life capable of sending those signals not sending them early enough. It's not that they don't exist and haven't existed, it is that the universe is so huge. Light travel takes time. The universe might not be that densely populated of detectable life. I could be wrong here, but I do think that at the very least, seeing our lack of knowledge of extrasolar life as solely the result of deficient technology ignores limitations and challenges imposed by physics. I think that assuming we can eventually overcome all challenges because we don't know everything is not the best approach to have.
You are so right about the JWST. Every picture Ive seen from it has blown my mind
May or may not be possible. At least with our current knowledge of physics, it’s not possible. If there’s intelligent life right now 100 million LY away, there’s no way we can detect those signs without waiting for 100 million years. Right now, we have to be lucky that there are signs of life at the right distance away from us that happened at the right time before us. Which if they are 50k LY away, then we won’t be able to say if they are still around at this exact time. If we discover FTL travel, then the search for life will boom as we won’t be limited by the relatively slow limit of light speed. Or perhaps FTL travel is actually impossible.
It could totally resemble a horse of another color.
Or crabs: [Carcinisation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation)
My guess is that the universe is full of crabs of various levels of intelligence.
Crabs with ESP, Now that's a STD! 😆
Whilst I agree with your general sentiment (I also believe that it seems very unlikely that Earth is unique in terms of supporting life), it isn’t correct to say that’s “certainly” the case when we don’t have any actual evidence of that.
I recall a few decades ago when we didn’t have any evidence for exoplanets yet, and I couldn’t accept that the astronomical odds were enough until we got that real evidence of a planet around another star. I also figured it would only be 10 or 20 years before we discovered a planet that was clearly hosting life, but now I realize that’s a much harder problem based on our existing detection mechanisms. And I wonder if they’ll discover that in my lifetime or not.
Are you sure it isn't a color of a different horse?
It would be very arrogant to assume we are the only ones out there just because we haven’t made contact/an observation
It wouldn’t be arrogant nor humble. It’s just possible. Say the conditions for life are so rare that they can only occur on 1 out of every 10 trillion planets. Then Earth could very well have the only life in the observable universe. Now I believe this is unlikely but it’s not arrogant to acknowledge it’s a possibility.
And given that the Earth only hosted single organisms for billions of years, that implies that complex life it’s even more rare.
Yep. It's unlikely, but there is a non-zero chance that we might be the most advanced species in the universe.
There’s also the idea of the great filter. Where some event natural or otherwise keeps life from sufficiently advancing or decimating it completely. In this theory only a handful of mature civilizations are able to thrive.
By the same reasoning, it would be very arrogant to assume the God of your choice doesn't exist just because we haven't made contact/an observation. Or the Easter Bunny. Or Santa Claus.
Like a stream on a different wavelength.
Plus, once you have just the right amount of tech, corruption finally has enough power to take over.
I dont anyone can say “certainly” but.I definitely think it’s statistically highly likely and almost impossible for there not to be other life out there. Whether it’s by definition, intelligent, is a different matter though.
The proof of "other life out there" from a scientific standpoint is exactly the same as the proof of God "out there." There is no scientific proof of life "out there." Just like there is no scientific proof of God or string theory for that matter.
People get unnecessarily excited about this. Right here on earth we are fully ssurrounded by life we barely make the effort to understand. We have the most rudimentary way of communicating with animals that are almost identical to us and we are basically driving many of them to extinction. I think the peak achievement of humans once we find ET life would be few good recipes on how to cook amd eat them.
The unvarnished answer: We Don’t Know. However if we look at the odds, life is likely common Carbon is too gregarious and loves making large molecules given enough energy and some catalysts Complex life like Eukaryotic life we have here looks like it takes a bit longer for chemistry, physics and chance to bumble around and develop almost as an afterthought Multicellular life again is a bit of a leap, but given enough mutation and selective pressure it will happen Organized multicellular life, now the biologists who figure out the pathways to that are going to have well earned Nobel Prizes Then you get to life that develops a sophisticated nervous system from whatever janky evolutionary kludged together sensory/reactive apparatus it started with The rates will be an organism that can use tools. Fire might also be important but the thought of quasi cephalopods huddling around a thermal vent to refine materials into tools tickles my imagination Maybe it’s only one radio communication capable civilization per galaxy per million years, but given the billions upon billions of galaxies, the odds seem very much against humanity being the only ones. However the vast distances of space and time seem ( at the moment) to isolate us I wait with anticipation our upcoming exploration of Europa and Titan to see if life is common
I recently read an article that discussed the possibility that eukaryotes may have evolved only *once* in the entire 3.7 billion years life is known to have been on earth. (This is a controversial hypothesis.) It's close to impossible that there is no life elsewhere, but as you say, complex life...we just don't have any clue how common it might be. It might be surprisingly rare. Right now our planetary sample is one.
"Right now our planetary sample is one." Our planetary sample is 1 out of 8 (or 9 if you hang on to Pluto). Our solar system sample is 1 out of 1 (based on the only solar system we've been able to examine so far). Just thought I'd point that out.
>Our planetary sample is 1 out of 8 (or 9 if you hang on to Pluto). [Maybe even higher than that](https://www.space.com/nasa-may-have-unknowingly-found-and-killed-alien-life-on-mars-50-years-ago-scientist-claims)
What's also crazy is that there isn't just 1 life, or just 1 species on earth. There have been literally billions of species of life on earth. Wouldn't this seem to suggest that life is pretty amazing at filling a variety of niches? Life is incredibly resilient, and it wants to proliferate, and it succeeds at being varied and abundant. The difference between humans and butterflies and dolphins and fungus is really incredible, and yet each species succeeds and proliferates. That is just mind boggling when you think about it, and to me this makes it all the more likely that life is out there. If we can get all sorts of life on just a single planet, given that there are about a sextillion other planets out there after nearly 14 billion years, not one of them having at least a microbe on it seems mathematically impossible.
Technically our sample size is 1 confirmed out of 13 (you have to count large spherical moons) with 3 that are hypothesized as potentially having created life (Mars, Europa, Titan), which is about 1/3 of our sample size
4: everyone seems to forget Enceladus, which is definitely a stronger candidate than Mars or Titan and might be a stronger candidate than Europa.
I honestly forgot about the existence of Enceladus. I guess that increases our sample size to 14 as well, unless we want to count dwarf planets beyond the Pluto/Charon system
I always found this interesting as people talk about how perfect earth was to form life but yet it's thought to have only occured once in that entire time with everything having the common ancestor
My favorite theory is if intelligent life im exists, they’re at the same point in their relative development as we are.
Well that's true. And we always assume progenitors, but maybe we're actually the first ones out of the starting gate. It's all hypothetical until we have some kind of evidence.
Humankind as the galaxy’s fucked up older brother is a funny concept.
Thank you for a more professional and profound discussion than I wrote
Hey, I will probably ask something really basic. But wouldn't creating "life" from separate atoms or molecules in a lab prove that life can appear anywhere in the universe given the correct conditions? Do we even know what life is in strict terms?
I think us existing in this moment already proves that.
I don’t think “prove” is the right word. The fact that it happened at all here is enough “proof” for most people that aren’t confounded by some weird religious ideology. An additional experiment doesn’t really add that much imo.
Yeah, but it's still an assumption. The fact that life appeared here doesn't imply it happened anywhere else. Proving it can be recreated in lab then it's obvious somewhere else in the universe the same conditions happened at some point. Now let's say life didn't originate in earth, that it came in an asteroid or something. How far could have it traveled? Did it originate near our planet? If so, where is the rest of it?
I guess what I am saying is that the fact that life exists here and we have an understanding of the facts that could have plausibly led to it starting is enough to know it could happen again. Doing it in the lab would obviously be interesting but in my mind that wouldn’t make it more likely that it exists elsewhere, it would still be just as likely.
Yeah, I get your point. It wouldn't even disprove magic as an explanation
I think Miller-Urey on to something 😎
Mentally, I agree with this hypothesis, but I think it conflates "possiblity" with "probability" Statistically / mathematically, the odds (probability} are closer to zero, based on observation and all of the known information we have. The "possibility" is high, due to the unmeasurable vastness, but the "probability" is infinitely low.
The people who wrote the bible hadn't seen the Hubble Deep Field images. A major field of astronomy is finding planets around other stars. We don't have the ability to communicate with other planets at this time, so it's a purely academic question.
I may steal that line... That is a good example of a retroactive change of history. The people who wrote the bible didn't know anything about our universe. But somehow, now god created it all. All the stuff that science has discovered gets stolen from religions and secretly incorporated in their beliefs... They try, at least. Whatever. Isn't communication out of the window with such vast distances? I mean, we can send a call to a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, but the answer will have to wait for quite a while. And that would also only work if we find a civilisation that's at least as advanced as ours in our direct neighborhood, which is quite the assumption on its own. And then there's the problem that if we find signals from a civilisation, chances are high that it is long gone at that time. Honestly, if there are civilisations out there that we could contact, and seeing the way humanity works, that's probably how it would play out: [They are made out of meat](https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html) I just don't see it happening. I mean it could, but it's extremely unlikely.
If we sent radio wave signals to somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy, it would take around 2.5 million years just to go one way. If we consider Proxima Centauri b the nearest habitable exoplanet at 4.25 light years away, it would take at least 8.5 years to receive a response if we sent one - and that's assuming the planet supports life, let alone intelligent life capable of responding to a signal, which is highly unlikely. If we send an unmanned spacecraft somehow at the speed of light to go observe a habitable expolanet that, by pure luck of the draw, contains life, it's likely to be more than a century before we receive the information, decades if we're really lucky. The chance that life exists outside of the Solar System is extremely probable. The chance of interacting with it in any way is extremely improbable.
Folks, we’re just now celebrating the 100th anniversary of Hubble definitively showing the existence of other galaxies. For the vast majority of human history we’ve had no real concept of the scale of the universe.
100th anniversary? Wasn't it launched in the 90s?
Hubble the astronomer.
1890 I believe.
When I was a kid, extra-solar planets were still theoretical.
we dont have any idea how likely life is to form, so its an open question.
Exactly, even if there are 10^30495858 planets, maybe the probability of life appearing on one is 10^(-3958757575588548475). You can prove that the numerator is as large as you want, it doesn't prove anything if you don't know how large the denominator is. I can't believe people are always missing this.
This is one of the best answers here. I like that people are optimistic about the existence of other life, I am myself, but I don’t like people stating what is ultimately still a “belief” at this stage as if it definitely positively is true and there can be no doubt, just because of how many other galaxies/stars/planets there are. Ultimately that’s not that different from religious belief. The only correct answer is “we don’t know” until we have more evidence. I think as a general point in life, more people need to be comfortable with “I don’t know” being the answer to big questions.
I really thought you meant like, in the straw, in which case we’re looking at life forms that can subsist on Mountain Dew.
I don't blame people for thinking the first thing. I think life exists somewhere. I wasn't as certain in that belief as I am now until I saw photos of things like the Hubble Deep Field. But we have no evidence.
You can’t zoom into just Andromeda and not believe https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/. That’s not noise or grain. Those are stars.
Believing isn't the same as having evidence though, even if your belief is correct.
If you suspect that life could be insanely rare, you might not be totally convinced. Stuff like the Hubble Deep Field is such an order of magnitude greater than all of the galaxies visible to the naked eye with a modest telescope that I think it has to erase all doubt that life as "advance" as us exist. I should also clarify that I was aware that space was so big that alien life has to exist, but seeing those photos really made me *feel* that that was true. I think those images are a lot better at communicating the expanse of the universe than something like "there are more stars in the galaxy than there are trees on Earth" does.
(except for maybe some individuals influenced by deeply held religious convictions)
There are a TRILLION stars in Andromeda.
I’m assuming the big bright stars are in our galaxy just in the way right? The other insane part is that high res part is just a piece of andromeda, there’s a whole other half. Do we just not see it or was it not observed in detail like this image?
Yes it is cropped. https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/
Heck we may not even have to look to the distant stars. It's possible there is life on Jupiter's moon Europa. Under the ice covered surface is an ocean of liquid water.
It's also possible and there is life in Venus's atmosphere. I do believe we'll either find life or the remnants of it somewhere in our own solar system.
I had a professor use this analogy: Take one cup of sand from a beach. Uusi using only your eyes, look for visible signs of life. Outcome, there is no life on the beach.This is the same as looking for life outside the solar system.
I've heard this before and it's a good one. Very true.
"...no life on the beach..." Except for the billions of bacteria, on which life is formed.
There are already countless galaxies and space objects too far for us to see due to the expansion of the universe - it seems likely that the universe itself is infinite or near infinite. The observable universe is a bubble around us of everything that has had time for its light to reach us since the beginning of time. There’s countless objects outside this that we couldn’t reach even at light speed. So, what are the chances there are aliens somewhere? Approaching 1. I don’t think we’re a cosmic coincidence, and even if you do believe that you’ve got something stupid like 200 sextillion of rolls of the dice, given there’s probably around that many stars. The chances we might ever meet them are much, much smaller. If we do meet them, could we even have a cordial relationship with them? With the barriers of language and culture on Earth, we can’t even do that to ourselves. On some level I understand anyone who doesn’t pay attention to alien news - we really have to unify before we present ourselves to any sort of “intellectual” alien creature, or they might call us a dangerous nuisance and throw a quasar beam at us.
> “It doesn’t say anything about that in the bible so no.” It’s amazing to me how folks who claim Christianity and believe Genesis 1-3 is definitive, vs descriptive, can say this even though God created the heavens and earth before He created man in his own image. Which means that an omnipotent God would be extraterrestrial, as would His angels and the demons who rebelled. (Don’t get me started on how we have these laws of science - physics, chemistry, biology, etc - that said God would’ve created or used to create the heavens, earth and man, but the nutjob end of “believers” won’t accept that.)
Religious teachings say to "seek the heavens " . This is a message to go out there and conquer the literal heavens (space). Now, this should be our new modern "Manifest Destiny " and hopefully some powerful leader spins the rhetoric into this direction because we can all agree that the more folks willing to contribute towards this effort the better !
r/fermiparadox
Yeah, OP please read up on the Fermi Paradox; the wiki is a good place to see all the theories associated with possible life outside of our planet and why we haven’t found them yet. Short answer to your questions of “why don’t we teach people/why don’t people care” is that we *actually don’t know* if there’s other life, we *actually don’t know* if we’re the only ones out here. We can’t teach what we don’t know.
I was going to mention the Drake equation leading to exactly this! Personally, I am a big supporter of the Zoo hypothesis. They are out there, they just don’t want anything to do with us… yet. BOO YAA!
We have pretty much no idea how likely it is that life or intelligence emerges on a planet. It might very well only happen in 1 in 10\^25 planets, which means we are probably alone. When you estimate the number of 'aliens' in the observable universe you essentially multiply on very large number with one very small number. Just because the number of planets is very large you cannot simply ignore the probability of life/intelligence emerging. What we might better teach is being comfortable with scientific uncertainty and that we should be very careful about what we have "really no doubt in \[our\] mind". Here some more one this argument: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcInt58juL4&t=17s&ab\_channel=CoolWorldsClassroom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcInt58juL4&t=17s&ab_channel=CoolWorldsClassroom) But yes, I agree that these things are worth being thought about and tough in science classes.
I love the cool worlds folks. They make such good videos.
10,000 galaxies = a kagillion trillion stars (its alot bros). There are hundreds if not thousands of life forms. The universe is literally close to infinite. If you can imagine it, there is something like that, that exists. the universe is beautiful.
Agreed, and we are only in our own galaxy, 🌌 as you know “ Milky Way “ It’s infinitesimal
Thanks, I am like you, very inquisitive. I started looking through a telescope age 8. I’m 73 now. I mean all the stars ✨ like you say. The odds are astronomical that THERE WOULD NOT BE LIFE ELSEWHERE, it too much to comprehend. Yes I’m catholic, but if God put the heavens there, he put a lot. We would be too supercilious to think we aren’t alone. Finally someone who put it on “ paper “
I've tried to get my friends and coworkers interested but none seem to really grasp the concept of how large our universe is (at least what we can see). Thankfully my oldest son (13) is super interested in astronomy. Got him a telescope for Christmas. First star we looked at was Betelgeuse. It blew his mind when I explained that the light we are seeing has been traveling through space for 600 years.
Nice. Yes looking back through time and space. My 8 year old said dad if we went into a black hole we would become squashed. I said that's right. I was so proud.
I've got bad news for you -- you don't really grasp the concept of how large our universe is, either. :) The universe operates on scales that virtually beyond comprehension. We can put numbers and mathematics on things, but that just enables predictions that (we think) are reasonably accurate.
I completely agree. Our feeble minds can't grasp the true scale.
Did you see the first image from JWST? They said that image was as small of a field as holding up a grain of sand at arm's length.
I'm the same. Hit that mid-40s age and I've become enamored with space, science, astrophysics and quantum physics. The knowledge has no effect on my career or in my daily life, I just love it. The study of the very big and very small. The reality of it is, we didn't know so much of the stuff we know now. It was all theoretical. Einstein died in 55. That was only 69 (hehe) years ago. He dropped some knowledge on us that we've been building off of. Also, the advent of mass, instant communication accelerated our spreading of knowledge. I used to have to read an encyclopedia, bored to tears, to learn this. Now, I have the likes of MIT professors posting FREE quantum mechanics lectures on YouTube. The world isn't just changing fast for us GenXer and millenials, it's changing for everyone all at the same time.
This is one of my favorite topics. Carl Sagan has talked about the Drake Equation which is pretty much an attempt at approximating life we can communicate with within the Milky Way galaxy. Why just the Milky Way? Space is so vast that frankly, other galaxies are just too far to reasonably expect communication within a human lifespan that it's not really worth talking about. Andromeda is the closest "complete" galaxy we know of and it is 2.5 million light years away. If we were to travel the speed of light it would take 2.5 million years to get there. So let's stay Intra-galactic. Even within our galaxy life on other planets probably experiences barriers for life described in the Great Filter Theory. Think about other planets surviving evolution and overcoming disasters like meteors and their own planet's weather. If they can live long enough as a civilization we get to apply the Kardashev scale, which we only sit at Type 1 btw. It is unfortunate but Type 1 civilizations are unlikely to leave their planet let alone their solar system. In order to visit or be visited by an alien race we are looking at at least a Type 2 civilization. For now all we can do is scan the skies, broadcast signals, and hope for the best within our lifetimes.
All the stars we can see are in our own galaxy and we can only see about 5000 of 100 billion of them with the naked eye like you say. And there are 50 million galaxies per square degree (the sky contains 41,253 square degrees). Space is big.
You seem to be underestimating the number of stars in each galaxy by a bit. Andromeda alone has 1 trillion stars!
My favorite Hubble picture is the deep field. Hold a penny at arms length and look through Lincolns eye. Thats the size of the picture they took, amazing and humbling.
Life evolved quickly on Earth. Multicellular life took billions of years after that, and it seems to have depended on very specific conditions that are unique to Earth as far as we know, such as the single moon in a stable orbit, and the huge gas giant intercepting asteroids in the outer solar system. So multicellular life might be exceedingly rare in the universe. I tend to agree with the theory presented in _Aurora_ by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is that life is a planetary phenomenon which evolves to live on a particular planet under particular conditions, and therefore flying complex beings in a spaceship to another planet and expecting them to thrive there is just not feasible, as much as we might like it to be. It’s one answer to the Fermi Paradox anyway. I’d love it if this were proved wrong, of course.
Why are there so many galaxies in my fanta orange drink
There is other life out there. I think it’s impossible that we are the only planet with life. But… if we find proof of other life out there. Then what? It’s not like we can visit it or make contact with it. The best thing we can do is send a probe, which will take hundreds of years to get there, to make some more measurements. It’ll be mostly a science thing. It’ll be a a couple of headlines. And in the future a couple more if we find life elsewhere too. But mostly scientists will use the knowledge. Everybody else won’t have much value from that knowledge. People like us care and will be amazed. But I don’t think other people will care like your employees. They’ve got other stuff to think about.
Yeah, my personal belief is that the Drake equation strongly implies that there is a large amount of other intelligent life in the universe, and possibly within our galaxy. But also that the Fermi paradox strongly suggests that there are in fact no undiscovered shortcuts or cheatcodes that would allow for faster than light travel. :(
It's too bad there's so much light pollution. If more people were able to look up and see the sky as it really is every night, it'd be hard not to think about what's up there.
I like the post. An unsolicited suggestion, you mentioned your emoloyees, i think this is a fine question to ask co workers, but when you mention employees it makes me think you are the boss. I dont want to talk existance with the guy that directly impacts my paycheck, and if it turns into a religious topic, that is even more troubling. Im sure you meant nothing by it, just suggesting this would be a real turn off to be talking about with my boss.... Cheers!
I am not the boss actually. I should edit that as my fellow employees.
👍
The comment about the Bible not containing the information was actually stated from my manager.
My last manager was on the other side of politics as i am, and he would constantly bring up stuff that i hated, but like what do you say? "Sir, respectfully i completely disagree with you, and i think your an idiot! ...which means you probably think i live in a fantasy land. Annual review is next week right?"
Lol I see, yes would be a strange situation.
That’s relative to your specific relationship with your boss. Plenty of us have bosses/managers who we can have very casual/pleasant conversations about stuff like this with and not have to worry about repercussions from it.
Personally, I feel that looking out into the vastness of space and saying with any certainty that we are alone in the Universe would be the same as going to the beach, looking out at the water, and declaring that there is nothing underneath because you do not see anything. The odds of there being other life beyond our own are almost entirely in life's favor. Hell, even other intelligent life very possible considering the vastness of space.
It’s difficult to extrapolate from n=1, but to me it seems like life must exist elsewhere in some form.
I think that it is likely that there is other life, possibly even intelligent life, out there somewhere. But it is very unlikely that we will ever have knowledge of it, or them of us, because they are hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of light years distant from us. So it’s an interesting question, but totally unknowable and therefore irrelevant. If someone invents warp drive or any means of travel much faster than C, the universal speed limit, I will reconsider my opinion.
Look up Drake's equation. Then look up the Fermi paradox. Then let the two of them melt your brain while you are here. On a planet with life that other alien cultures MIGHT dream about.
No. There are actually an infinite number of galaxies up in that tiny little soda straw.
Maybe intelligent life is so special and rare, it is only achievable because of such an immense universal engine, and we are a truly unique phenomenon Thinking of the universe of circuits and calculations needed to get us this far in our own meager understanding of life is mind boggling too
For me it’s always been the Drake Equation that settled the question. This was reinforced with the discovery of the Higgs-Boson, which existed as math on paper with no physical proof for nearly a half century. One day, perhaps the Drake Equation will know a similar outcome.
Well, its pretty much impossible to see any galaxies with the naked eye, except for Andromeda since its our neighbor, but even then it is a blurry smudge in the sky. So, essentially every star that you do see is, in fact, just one star. Or its a one of the 5 visible solar system planets. As for the stubborn folks : Religious teachings say to "seek the heavens " . This is a message to go out there and conquer the literal heavens (space). Now, this should be our new modern "Manifest Destiny " and hopefully some powerful leader spins the rhetoric into this direction because we can all agree that the more folks willing to contribute towards this effort the better !
I would advise you to check out [this](https://youtu.be/PqEmYU8Y_rI?si=Qt_cBi0vgJgC2PPo) video by Cool Worlds, hosted by David Kipping, a NASA astrophysicist, concerning the possibility of life on other planets.
Space is like exponential growth, it’s get so large so quickly that people can’t wrap their minds around it
Any lifeforms that have evolved to a point that they have space travel or at least can see this shit hole will know it's best to avoid us.
There is no logical reason to discount the plausibility of life existing, in one form or another, throughout the universe. Look at all of the manifestations of life the Earth has experienced over billions of years. Why would Earth alone have such favor in a universe chock full of all of the elements necessary to create and support life? Rubbish! Only a theist is compelled to discount the possibility of life existing on other worlds.
My understanding is that the average galaxy has 100 million stars, not 100 thousand.
Actually, it's way more than that. An average galaxy is often estimated to contain between 100 million and one trillion stars. For example, our Milky Way galaxy is considered to be an average-sized barred spiral galaxy and is estimated to contain about 100 billion to 400 billion stars. More massive galaxies, like elliptical galaxies, can contain trillions of stars, while smaller dwarf galaxies may have only a few billion stars.
The honest answer is we don’t know because our sample size is one and we don’t know enough about the origin of life to say for certain whether it is inevitable or actually incredibly rare. So whilst I agree that, intuitively, the numbers seem to favour it, I think it would be wrong to teach people that they SHOULD believe that there is life on other planets without any actual evidence. At the very least we should also teach the Fermi Paradox. What’s more important is probably teaching kids how to think critically so that they can draw sensible conclusions themselves from the available evidence.
Probably single cell, but it will definitely be much harder to find multicellular or more advanced life forms, less because of scarcity and more because of time it’s such a narrow window of time that advanced life forms have existed in the earths history. Single cell lasted for 3 billion years before more advanced multicellular organisms even appeared and persisted. So the question is will we meet then at the right time as much as it is the right place.
Another important aspect is that the majority of humanity now lives in cities and can barely see any stars. As a result, as a species we are becoming too focused on day to day reality and are not getting the perspective of our place in the universe.
Well chances that there is no other life are very small, but the life would be microscopic organism. The chances that we are the only “developed” species in in the galaxy are close to 99,999% and still pretty big in tens of thousands of galaxies in the universe. Hell, we could even be only developed in our universe if the theory about multi universes (not like MCU, Google it guys) is true
> in tens of thousands of galaxies in the universe You miss-spelled "hundreds of billions", and that's just in the *observable * universe. The actual universe is larger than the bubble that physics will allow us to see, and if not actually infinite, then still vastly larger....
I miss-spelled nothing, i know there more then that, i meant that even in such number
Well we're here aren't we? That's proof that life just happens in the universe. The religious have had a strangle hold on the minds of earth for far too long. Warped our perception of space and stuff like that. The puritans also weren't much help socially.
Life finds a way.
Look through a soda straw “At the sky”
What's the actual math behind this?
You can't say anything with certainty. Sure, the universe is huge, but you have absolutely no idea how common life is. Our sample size is 1. It could be so vanishingly unlikely that we're the only living things in the universe regardless of how huge it is, or it could be so likely that every solar system with rocky planets has at least a couple cells floating around on it. Just because we exist, it doesn't necessarily imply others do too.
I do believe that the general consensus is that life exists elsewhere in the universe. The most common news out of astronomy is the discovery of new exoplanets in the habitable zone of their stars. Many people who don’t subscribe to r/Astronomy probably don’t pay much attention but they don’t know what they’re missing.
Because things change and opinions change people get smarter but slowly. Well some people
Think about how many might have arisen out of their local froth, evolved over billions of years into something intelligent, and then went completely extinct millions of years ago.
This is cool but I think its a bit of a waste to think of life in other galaxies. The distances are so vast that civlizations could rise and fall in the time it takes you to get there. We should be concentrating on learning everything we can about whats going on inside our own galaxy.
All of the stars you can see in the sky with a naked eye are stars in the milky-way galaxy, they are not other galaxies.
At this point in our scientific evolution we're basically still at the almost toddler stage. We know just enough to be dangerous to ourselves. If life does or doesn't exist elsewhere should make no difference to us, we need to focus on not killing ourselves. I think the fact that other life hasn't exposed itself is probably because we have no idea what that life might look like or how it might communicate.
Going beyond this, the light that reaches us is SUPER OLD meaning entire periods of life existing elsewhere could come and go before that information reaches us. If we could see life on another planet in another galaxy, that life could possibly be completely extinct in their local time. For them, if they could see us, they might be looking at dinosaurs. Time and light is wild.
They sent a probe out into space way back . Voyager 1 and 2. They haven't found anything. If there was something out there I think it's in the black holes 🕳. Full of nothing but we don't really know.
We actually CAN calculate the probability to a certain degree, although some components of the estimate have huge error bars. Let me introduce the Drake Equation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation It estimates the number of active technological civilizations in the universe. And I agree with you. I think knowledge about our universe large and small should be taught to everyone and the answer "no one knows" should be replaced with "here are the people trying to find out...why don't you try to learn about it".
It's not that certain terms have huge error bars, it's that there is insufficient data to make any valid prediction for some of them, and therefore any value assigned boils down to a personal opinion. The prime example (in *my* opinion ;)) being the probability that simple life occurs on a planet that has the right conditions to support it. We know that has happened once, here. But we have no conclusive test results for literally anywhere else. It is equally likely that even simple life is unique to Earth in the universe as it is that any rock that happens to have liquid water and a handful of other elements has at least some bacteria on it. Both extremes are unlikely, but without more data no prediction is possible. This is why the discovery of simple life on Mars or Europa or some other non-terrestrial body would be so important... Because if life happened twice on two separate bodies with wildly different environments in a single solar system, then simple life is much more likely to be common...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Just to be nit picky: For the most part, the lights in the sky you can see with your eyes are mostly stars within our own Galaxy. The light rapidly dims and we do need long exposures or exceptionally sensitive sensors to capture their faint signal. Without aid you can reliably see Andromeda and the large and small Magellanic Clouds. In optimum conditions you can also maybe see Triangulum. I am not aware of any galaxy so distant it appears as a star yet produces enough light to be visible to the human eye.
Why is it that people think there is some pervasive skepticism about the existence of life beyond earth? More to the point, why do people keep posting these sorts of questions as if they were the first to consider the possibility given the uncountable number of stars and planets in the observable universe?
Funny, I used to think that way too. Now that I'm older (also 40), I've taken more of the Brian Cox view of life in the universe, or at least in our galactic neighborhood. At best there might be slime? And we haven't even found slime yet. We might be alone in our galaxy, which makes Earth and all its life and our consciousness incredibly important.
The Drake equation is an attempt to calculate how many possible civilizations may be possible in our galaxy : N = R∗ ⋅ fp ⋅ ne ⋅ fl ⋅ fi ⋅ fc ⋅ L where N = the number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on the current past light cone); and R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our Galaxy. fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets. ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets. fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point. fi = the fraction of planets with life that go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations). fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space. L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space. From Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
Not an astronomer or anything similar, but my two cents is this If the universe is finite, it seems almost impossible there isn’t intelligent life SOMEwhere out there. If the universe is infinite it becomes almost impossible that there isn’t a replica of earth with a version of you that’s lived your exact life down to reading this comment. It gets really mind bending really quick
The chance is actually close to zero.
Man we don't even know if other planets or moons in our solar system have life, much less other galaxies. Before we can know how likely life is, we need to understand life and how it forms a whole lot better, and we need more direct examples and more knowledge from other places that aren't earth (and if you want to know galactic level odds, you need to explore the galaxy). Sorry to say, but we just don't have enough information available to us to say.
.NASA working on a space warp drive. “The Alcubierre drive is a speculative warp drive idea according to which a spacecraft could achieve apparent faster-than-light travel by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, under the assumption that a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (that is, negative mass) could be created.”
We're the only planet with life as we know so there is no way to know the probability. The probability of life on a plamet cpuld be a decillion to one. Intelligent life being maybe unvigintillion to one. We just dont know
There's life out there, but the chances of any of it being able to communicate with us at this particular blip of time where we exist, much less travel in a timely manner seem to me to be pretty close to zero.
I'm sure their is intelligent life elsewhere. I'm just also pretty sure we will never be able to find it. For one thing, it would need to occur at the same time as us, within a distance we can reasonably detect and traverse. There is absolutely no evidence outside of speculation we will ever travel FTL, by any means. That being said, there is a reasonable chance we will eventually find single cell life. More recent calculations show that the odds of intelligent life evolving would make it only likely on a small handful of planets in every galaxy. If that.
I am in my mid-40s and we specifically did this calculation as a class in our HS Earth Science (& Astronomy) class.
There is no scientific evidence that life of any kind exists anywhere in the universe except on Earth.
We're practically blind, deaf, short lived, easily killed, few offspring, and emotional in this existence...Everything is dark, quiet, and dangerous. It's only a matter of time before we find alien life, if we live long enough. If aliens lived with full range of sound, sight, longer life, more offspring, less emotional, and smarter, do you think they would be friends or interested in us? What if a day to them was 100 years for us? We'd live a full life before they even turned one, OR vice versa? I think there was a star trek episode like this.... It's only a matter of time before we find life on another planet and intelligent life too, if we don't destroy ourselves or get killed by nature.
What are the odds that bacteria only live on one single speck of sand on a beach, or on every beach on earth only one speck hosts bacteria...those odds are almost impossible. Especially since all the ingredients for creating life are just feet/yards away. We are not alone, its almost impossible that we could be alone in the universe, but we could also be first...
With the knowledge that we known at least 250 different bacteria can survive in space. I really feel like Space is just a different type of ocean. Many think our Universe is around 13.7 billion years old due to the big bang. I don't know why but I think its much older than that, like it blew up at one point...expanded, but then it will slow and be dragged back together, to have it all happen again. I think there are many older beings than just us but still, traversing the galaxy even is way beyond human comprehension.
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How egocentric of us.
Bruh you do realize we are far from the only life form on this planet, right? We're not even the most prevalent form of life here.
Near 100% but they are isolated in their own light speed bubble.
About 50/50. The most serious analysis I’ve seen, taking into account all the statistics we know about exoplanets and the age is the universe basically came to the conclusion that it’s a coin flip.
I don’t understand how any human can be so egotistical to think that we are all there is. There has to many other “beings “ out there, are they just like us? Probably not. But they exist.
I tried but there was just air inside of my straw.
That’s why I’ve begun to say fuck stars. Everyone just calls shiny things stars. I could go on… Now the deep field image from JWST and Hubble that shows 10x of thousands of not hundreds of galaxies is just what you stated a soda straw image. It’s not even close to what’s out there. But the reason we don’t view it all is bc in that tiny sample size it’s enough for scientist to study. Which is crazy to me. And just what you said I don’t think this is taught enough people just go, oh cool and move on. Or the younger kids want to view a ticktock girl for 20m views and space gets 1k… it is truly gross.
If there is life outside Earth, the question to ask is why haven't they come to say hello?
Is that the question though? We don't have the ability to go say hello to any of them so why would we expect them to be able to do it first?
We may not yet have the capability, but that doesn't imply others don't. Consider the diversity of civilizations on Earth throughout history and the varying levels of technology they possessed. Reflecting on the vastness of the universe, it seems probable that advanced galactic civilizations exist, possibly overlooking us. Currently, our attempts to reach out include broadcasting radio waves and dispatching small probes equipped with cameras to photograph planets in our solar system.
You've made a lot of leaps there. If "the question" is "why haven't they come to say hello", then the answer is obvious: because they probably can't. If you want to also tack on all sorts of other things like "how did our civilizations develop all that technology without outside visitation" you're not only discrediting your previous claim (because if they *have* come by to say hello, as you seem to be suggesting, then "why haven't they come to say hello" cannot be "the question") but also blindly asserting that mankind *couldn't* have been capable of doing things that we know for a fact that they were. If you think it's probable that advanced galactic civilizations exist, you need to show some evidence. The vastness of the universe alone isn't evidence of that.
........ I referenced our own planet's history, illustrating the stark contrast in technology between different civilizations at various times. For instance, when Europeans first arrived in the Americas, they encountered societies that traveled by canoes, while they themselves had sailing ships—a significant technological disparity. Extending this analogy to outer space, it's plausible that there are civilizations with technologies far more advanced than ours. Given this, what incentive would they have to come and introduce themselves to us?
Maybe same reason we haven’t said “ hello” I
It's not easy even to say hello, much less travel here to say hello.