TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Me too. I'm also quite sure we won't be encountering it.
And if we do, it would have the be in our own solar system.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has a wet dream about sending a probe to Europa (the moon, not the continent
), having it drill down the ice into the sub-ice ocean, stick a camera in and see if something comes up to lick the screen. I'm not holding my breath. We *might* indeed encounter life in such environments. I consider the probability rather "low". Assume there IS life there, I consider the probability of it being only rather primitive one-cellular to be also quite high. I don't expect multi-cellular "animals" (= aware of its environment, not the producer of its own food and capable of locomotion) to be found there at all.
If we regard earth as a test tube (which is a rather bad one, since it is our ONLY example), we can derive a few interesting facts from it concerning the development of life:
- Life formed relatively fast on this planet. Within a few dozen million years after earth was capable of sustaining it. Which is the blink of an eye in "cosmological" time. This tells me that whatever process originates life, it can't be that rare.
- for the vast majority of life's history on this planet (+3 billion years!) life was uni-cellular. In the great scheme of things, multi-cellular life is a relatively recent development. It's only been around an estimated 600-700 million years, while life itself is at least 3.8 billion years old on this planet.
- for the extreme vast majority of life's history, life wasn't "intelligent" (to human intelligence standards). It took some 3.8 billion years of evolution to eventually get to ONE species capable of this kind of intelligence, and that species turned up some 150.000 years ago. Make it 2 million of we wish to include those smart enough to create some primitive stone tools also.
- for the vast majority of 'intelligent' human history, we humans live in the "cosmological dark". It's only really in the last 100 years that we have begun setting baby steps outside of our atmosphere. Exploring our cosmological backyard, so to speak. For most of human history, we were fighting wars with sticks and stones.
So.... using earth's life as a representative sample of how life would develop on other planets as well (again: might be a long shot, since a sample of 1 is far to little for such conclusions....), we can make some predictions concerning alien planets:
- if the planet is capable of sustaining life (and most planets don't seem to be) and also holds the elements life requires, then chances are high that some form of life will exist.
- if some form of life exists, the probability of that life being microbial only (uni-cellular) is very very high.
- if complex (multi-cellular) life also exists, then it is even more unlikely that this life is "intelligent" (in the way we humans understand that term).
- if somehow intelligent life does exist, chances are that they are technologically primitive still.
With every extra step, probability goes WAY down.
Do I think there is human-like intelligent life out there? Yes. In fact, considering the vastness of the universe, I'ld say that even higher intelligent societies are almost a certainty.
Equally considering the vastness of the universe, it's safe to say that we'll never meet them.
Even if they are within range of radio for example ("within range" here is relative as we are talking about signals that would take multiple generations to travel back and forth), chances are high that they don't have the technological capability - or even interest - in sending signals into space or to listen for them. Just like we were for the vast majority of our history.
So....... while it sure would be fun and interesting to live an a reality like in Stargate or Star Trek, where the universe is crawling with intelligent, star-traveling, communicating aliens.... It's not really realistic.
Which might a good thing off course. I wouldn't like it very much to become a slave of the Goa'uld or to encounter the Borg. lol
