Do you think we are alone in the Milky Way?

originally posted by: JourneymanWelder
If we are alone then its a big waste of space. There could be a planet made our of diamond out there

sure..

Heck, forget the galaxy(ies), evidence shouts we aren't alone here, on ol' Earth!

Whether they came from out there or are homegrown, there's something sentient and other here.

Heck, maybe IT is the native and we're the galactic traveler who had a breakdown and got stranded, or something.

We know very little.

Also, Drake's eq was a joke... literally, but at least it gets egocentric humans to think a bit.

a reply to: alfa015

At some point when we have FTL drives or move around by folding space we will find out. I think it's more than 50. It's probably close to a function of the number of stars having planets with water in liquid state or some other life base liquid.

Given that extraterrestrial life can be based on many different chemistries, you might find this video interesting:

www.ted.com...

I think the galaxy is teaming with life. And we are being observed. It's just their cloaking technologies are much better than any of our detecting technologies.

a reply to: neo96

if we had the same insites into other civilisations - as you are using to ask " who would dare contact us ?" - would we contact them ?

I find it ironic that a planet so full of life has a species so audacious to ask if it's alone.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

I wouldn't even attempt it.

Until we built ships,Colonised Mars,and created mining colonies and a plantarey, and orbital defence network

And a solar system surveillance system.

The great unknown is truly great.

Hope for the best prepare for the worst.

Well done on the video. Always appreciate people going the extra step to share and explain their input.

Does the number matter? I mean realistically there just aren't enough variables in those equations to get an actual number, and if so... how does it affect us?

It seems to me that even humans aren't as advanced as they once were. There have been millions of years for advanced civilizations to rise and fall and disappear without off planet species even realizing.

Since we're all here projecting personal opinions; we've probably been visited many times, most shooting stars are probably ETVs, and there are more than likely off-planet species here on earth at this very moment. Totally agree with whoever pointed out humanity wouldn't exactly be a species to do well in an intergalactic community considering we still haven't gotten over our own ego's and pick fights with anyone different from us.


PS, there's lots of information about secret space branches of the military out there, highly recommend giving it a read. It's a fun trip at the very least. Quite possible we've already established relations with other species in space through high class operations well beyond public knowledge. Just saying.

Probably not alone as in, not the only life in the Milky Way, but I don't know what those other life forms are. More advanced? Less advanced? Older than the human race? Younger? IS there a planet of elephant creatures?

If one is to believe in a God in the form of a master creator of everything, one must assume he/she did not make the Earth, make human life, and then say, "Nailed it! My work is done."

I think there are other intelligent technological civilizations -- definitely in the universe and probably in our own galaxy. However, they might be so rare that there are none anywhere near us.

That is, I think the closest ones might be so far from us -- halfway across the galaxy or farther -- that (a) they don't know our technological civilization exists, since the light from Earth might take 25,000 or 50,000 years or longer to reach them, and (b) they don't have the ability to travel the interstellar distances needed to visit us.

I think life in general is much more common, even complex life. I even think there's a decent chance of other life in general in our own solar system (maybe on Enceladus, Titan, Europa, etc). However, intelligence might be very rare, and technological civilizations might be rarer still.

We have no idea what the value of the factor in the Drake Equation for "intelligence" might be, nor the value for technological civilizations. Those factors might end up making the result of Drake's equation very small indeed.

Let's say hypothetically that Drake's equation ends up telling us "10" civilizations existing at the present time in our galaxy. With a galaxy 100,000 LY across, they could be very spread out -- each being very far from one another.

By the way, that idea that maybe only 10 exist at the current moment, that still allows thousands of technological civilizations to have existed in our galaxy over, say, the past 5 billion years, with those civilizations coming and going with time.

I'm pretty sure there is some milk chocolate and caramel in the milky way with us.

a reply to: DoctorX11

Good point of view..there's thousands of clues in our past, there's even talk about crashed UFO craft in area 51, what do you think they've been doing with them for the last 70 years ? putting turtle wax ?

Far from alone.

In the whole of the Earths history, to our best knowledge, we are the only species that has come close to exploring past our own planet.

Their could be a whole solar system of dinosaur planets out there, we ain't getting to them and they ain't thinking about us.

The odds of finding other intelligent life forms in our Galaxy that are more advanced than us? My head and heart have different answers.

its a mathematical certainty ...
that we are NOT alone.

Would you spare the universe for one civilization?

a reply to: alfa015

No.

And to think otherwise is either sheer arrogance or religious conditioning.

Think about it this way as well, we are only just beginning to understand what constitutes life on our own world.

So any possible scale or metrics we devise where the rest of the universe is concerned is probably off by rather a large order of magnitude.

The truth of the matter is we really don't understand the variables we are plugging into these formulas.

I’ll venture to imagine an infinite universe with us at the center. It is one in which there is no lasting evidence that we even exist.

originally posted by: alfa015
Do you think 50 is a more realistic number?

I haven't seen evidence of a single one.

originally posted by: rigel4
its a mathematical certainty ...
that we are NOT alone.

Except its not.

originally posted by: SeeItReddit

originally posted by: rigel4
its a mathematical certainty ...
that we are NOT alone.

Except its not.

Yeah, the only mathematical certainty is that there is life on Earth. It happened once, and we don't even know how. Everything else is just conjecture based on our existence and our ignorance.

So much obsession over the space that separates us.

Some should wonder about the time.

Space-time, it's one thing.