Aliens! (Or, for the more semantically inclined, Extraterrestrial Life)

[nano]

well, in an attempt to revive this from the pits of characteristically
unsolvable problems, a new topic!

Aliens: do they exist? now, by alien, i mean extraterrestrials- life
forms from other worlds. if so, what resemblance to they bear to us?
any at all? if not, why is there no more?
consider things like the Drake Equation or Fermi Paradox, for
example.

just discuss!

[Andrew Towle]

Possibly.

--
Andy T.

[Quoc-Thuy Vuong]

Well, to start off, I believe in alien existence. There's bound to be at least one other planet with life, even bacteria. They may bear no resemblance whatsoever to us due to different environmental factors in their planets.

Cheers(C)

[Andrew Towle]

I agree.

--
Andy T.

[David Reich]

I'd agree that, probabilistically, they'd have to exist somewhere.  Actually, I would say that the chance of them being anything like what we know as life is very small.  A lot of what we assume in life - round eyes, brain in the head, etc, is due to it having randomly evolved to be like that a long time ago.  On other planets, the randomness could have gone the other way.  In fact, if there were other bipedal, ~2m tall intelligent creatures, it would make us question a lot biology. 

[Paul Gully]

yeah. im interested, actually, as to weather their basic biochemical structure would be similar to ours as well. would they have cells? would they be carbon-based? feasibly you could have silicon based organisms that were just as complex as carbon based ones, under the right circumstances. 

whats interesting is to consider life as simply an incredibly complex chemical reaction (we're exothermic, btw)- theres no reason couldnt happen any other way. 

[Quoc-Thuy Vuong]

I'm finding two things interesting about this topic.

1) Paul used the wrong whether/weather

2) How would we communicate?

Cheers

[Michael Oppenheimer]

If the universe is infinitely expanding, there should be an infinite amount of life, therefore one should be bound to have a life form almost exactly like us.
Alos, what do you mean we are exothermic?

[Quoc-Thuy Vuong]

What do you mean by alos? And by almost exactly like us, do you mean in body structure, language, or anything like that? Can this relate to the multiverse theory?

Cheers

[Michael Oppenheimer]

Well Thuy, first of all, I mistyped also but I liked the way it looked, so I kept it. And by almost exactly like us I mean anything. I was also thinking about this relating to the multiverse theory.

[David Reich]

NO.  This is incorrect.  the universe is not infintely big.  it's infinitely expanding, but no extra matter is being added - it's just that all matter in the universe is getting further apart, constantly.  Remember the expanding chocolate chip cookie analogy?  There's a finite amount of chips, they're just getting further apart.

And aliens wouldn't be anything special to consider in the multiverse, as far as I see.

[Paul Gully]

also, even if the universe had infinite mass, (which is rather absurd when you think about it...)  you have to understand the nature of infinity- just because its infinite doesn't mean that all possibilities are encompassed. the number of even integers is infinite, but nowhere is the number '3' on that list.

[Michael Oppenheimer]

Ah, yes, my mistake. Thank you for correcting me, David. But the reason they would be affected by the multiverse theory is because if something happened on Earth, it could affect something somewhere else in the galaxy, or another, like the Betelgeuse galaxy.

[Paul Gully]

betelgeuse galaxy? and all galaxies we are aware of are in our universe, not some other part of the multiverse where other physics may apply.

[Quoc-Thuy Vuong]

What is at the center of the universe? I believe that it's a black hole if I'm correct. Now with the galaxies being sucked into the black hole, more galaxies are being created at the edge where these old galaxy atoms are being rearranged. Equivalent Exchange.

Cheers

[Quoc-Thuy Vuong]

And as a stem off of that is the idea of infinite galaxies-aru.

[Michael Oppenheimer]

I know that it is in our universe, Paul. And my mistake, I forgot Betelgeuse was a star system.

[David Reich]

No, that really doesn't make sense.  The universe really has no center.  There ARE black holes at the center of every galaxy though - but there are indications that they actually remove information from the universe without putting it back - but that's where the multiverse theory comes in.  No new galaxies are being created, that's for sure.

And yes, michael, things on earth could effect other galaxies (or star systems), but that could also happen easily enough in the standard, one-universe theory.