Are we alone? Bets are we're not.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

4000 Exoplanets.

[Brian37]

4000 Exoplanets.

The fact that the elements that make up carbon and acids have been proven to come from stars, alone, in a universe of trillions of galaxies each with hundreds of billions of stars bares this out mathematically as far as likelihood. 

But the crap about Area 51 or ancient aliens is just that. I have no problem with life existing elsewhere. But considering how huge the universe is, anything that remotely thinks like us is most likely stuck in it's own remote space like we are. 

The best humans can hope for on this planet, if we stop focusing on religion, and we solve pollution problems, and we don't murder each other. I think IF, and that is a HUGE IF, we do that, I think verbal communication we might stumble across. But, currently with all our religious political beliefs, and bullshit fighting, I find it far more likely we will kill ourselves off before we meet life at our level.

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One thing about scientists I don't like currently. If our attitude is to prove life exists elsewhere, which I agree with, why would it not make sense to send bacteria to other celestial bodies, even if they originated here? If life is possible elsewhere, then life here, even if only bacteria, we should use to prove it is possible to survive elsewhere.

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RationalPoet.... Why send humans to the moon to prove we can survive there, even if only for hours. Why plot to put humans on Mars if we cant prove bacteria can survive there first?

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I think we should send cockroaches to Mars first. Those fuckers are masters at adaptation.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Yeah, it's a big motherfucker, and civilizations would be few and far between, and space faring civilizations even rarer, and ones that would be interested in us would be rara avis.

[onlinebiker]

Any being intelligent enough to cross the vast distances between solar systems is smart enough t o avoid a smelly little planet where the carnivorous inhabitants have been in a state of war for over 1000 years - including the use of nuclear weapons......

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Ed Zachery

[Fireball]

Any being intelligent enough to cross the vast distances between solar systems is smart enough t o avoid a smelly little planet where the carnivorous inhabitants have been in a state of war for over 1000 years their entire existence- including the use of nuclear weapons......

FTFY

[onlinebiker]

Any being intelligent enough to cross the vast distances between solar systems is smart enough t o avoid a smelly little planet where the carnivorous inhabitants have been in a state of war for over 1000 years their entire existence- including the use of nuclear weapons......

FTFY

We took some time off during the dark ages to fully enjoy some of the plagues and pestilence.....

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

One thing about scientists I don't like currently. If our attitude is to prove life exists elsewhere, which I agree with, why would it not make sense to send bacteria to other celestial bodies, even if they originated here? If life is possible elsewhere, then life here, even if only bacteria, we should use to prove it is possible to survive elsewhere.

But that wouldn't prove that life exists elsewhere, only that it could exist elsewhere.  We already know that it could.

Why send humans to the moon to prove we can survive there, even if only for hours. Why plot to put humans on Mars if we cant prove bacteria can survive there first?

If you send Terran bacteria to Mars (or anywhere else), how will you know if they survive, unless you send humans to monitor them?  Also, which bacteria would you send?

I think we should send cockroaches to Mars first. Those fuckers are masters at adaptation.

Actually, individual cockroach species require a fairly narrow set of parameters of temperature and humidity to thrive - they aren't really adaptable at all. Also, cockroaches wouldn't survive the g forces at liftoff. Even if they did, the bugs couldn't survive more than one day of Martian temperatures - cockroaches die at 0 degrees F, and it gets a LOT colder than that on Mars.

All in all, these are pretty stupid ideas.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

Because we know exactly how the way with which we detect these exoplanets work, we can be very confident in estimating how many more planets similar to those 4000 must exist in the same volume of space, but which because of some factors known to be largely random did not align with us, our current technical abilities would have failed to detect.

I think it is very fair estimate that in the same volume of space where these 4000 planets exist, for every one of those 4000 plants we detected because of correct alignment of orbital planes, correct alignment with background stars, etc , there must be >>100 similar planets that we can not detect because of wrong alignement of orbital planes, incorrect alignment with back ground stars, etc.


Those are just planets similar to the ones we have already detected.  We know there are types of planets that must exist which we can not yet detect at all, such as planets with longer orbital periods, planets in orbital planes perpendicular to our line of sight,  planets gravitationally ejected from their home systems, etc, and these likely far outnumber the types we can detect.

It's probably safe to say in the very same overall volume of space occupied by most of those 4000 planets we detected, there are probably millions to tens of millions of planets we have not yet detected.

And the overall volume of space occupied by most of these 4000 planets we've found so far is a tiny fraction of the volume of the milky way.

[The Valkyrie]

Any being intelligent enough to cross the vast distances between solar systems is smart enough t o avoid a smelly little planet where the carnivorous inhabitants have been in a state of war for over 1000 years - including the use of nuclear weapons......

Zebollon Prime?