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Extra Terrestrial Life. Do you believe?


Mr_Dogg

Do you believe in Extra Terrestrial Life?  

80 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you believe in Extra Terrestrial Life?

    • Yes. It has to be out there.
      63
    • No way.
      5
    • I don't know.
      13

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Also remember that for us to detect a radio signal from another planet it has to have been sent a huge amount of time in the past. We're talking millions of years, even billions, so even if there are advanced civilisations out there we may not detect them for a huge amount of time due to the time it takes their radio signals to travel to us.

It is entirely possible that there is an advanced civilisation out there a billion years more advanced than us, but we wouldn't beable to detect it, and it wouldn't beable to detect us because it could be 10 billion light years away from us. You have to remember the universe is over 93billion light years wide, needle in a haystack just doesn't cut it.

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How about "a needle in a male student's flat"? :)

I should add to my previous post that I'm assuming that these hypotetical advanced races have the same tecnique and limititations as us for finding planets/life and that is probably a rather naive assumption.

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If you are looking for other humans then fine, we haven't found the right atmosphere yet, but I think it's far more close-minded to assume that every living thing in the universe has to live by our rules and parameters. In fact I'd say it's silly to assume so.

Because we are assuming life is the same carbon based life with a DNa blueprint allowing it to reproduce.

Of course such things may have different skin etc - but the environment is has to life isn probably has to have the same composition - ie oxygen at the right amounts, a sustainable source of energy and some form of food.

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And you ask why there is no stellar space craft? Maybe they're like us and don't have such things. You need to travel at phenomenal (impossible?) speed to get anywhere even beyond our solar system.

I am using the assumption that some people have used by saying given there are billions of stars/solar systems by probability there are a fair few similar to our own with a planet similar to our own, at the right distance from their 'sun' composed of the right materials to sustain life, and also be of a gravitational pull able to sustain an atmopshere and hence life. If there are indeed thousands of these - which you now use the laws of probablity to base this assumption on, you would also think that these life sustaining environments are at different stages of development. Given the age of the universe, some might have been extinct, some less advanced than us, and some more advanced. The other assumption is they believe like us, that there is life out there, and have attempted to make contact - yet there is no sig of this contact.

In fact, correct me if I am wrong, I don't think atronomers have found a planet like earth in the universe yet - at the right position to be able to sustain life.

What is unique about Earth is not only it's position from the sun, but it's size (and hence its gravitational pull) and its composition.

While it is not unfeasible that similar planets could exist, I think it is highly improbable

You think the chances of an earth like planet surrounding seventy sextillion stars is improbable? Isn't it the very opposite?

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What I can't get my head roun, is the 'finite nature of the Universe'. So it has a beginning and an end? What shape is it?

That one's easy, it's spherical. It originated from one point, and is constantly expanding outwards from that point in all directions, so it's gotta be spherical.

i'm sure i read somewhere that its assumed to be shaped like a squiggly oval (hard to explain what i mean without drawing it).

This is because different areas of the universe are expanding at different speeds at different times over the history of the universe.

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If you really are interested you should pick up some from Hawking cause some of his stuff is very good and more importantly easy to understand. Its easier to understand it then actually accept it.

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You are correct, the universe is finite and expanding.

But what is it expanding into?

If the universe is finite, then that implies you can (theoretically) reach the end of it, and what is past the universe when you do?

This is the part that alot of people struggle coming to grips with.

I asked my Physics teacher this, and his answer was "The stuff that was there before the big bang."

I answered "Which is?"

And he said "Nothing" No air, no space no nothing.

He couldn't explain if I could walk into nothing or touch it or see it or what. Basically he didn't **** know.

I want to know if I walk forwards, what happens when I reach "nothing". Do I stop, do I keep going, do I explode?

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He also couldn't explain to me how, when on eof the primary laws of physics is energy cannot be just "created", how the big bang happened. What created the energy for such a big bang to happen, and more importantly, where the stuff that eploded and is now infinitely expanding, came from. Surely at some point in time "something was created from nothing", which defies physics.

So many questions that I will never know the answer to!

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What I can't get my head roun, is the 'finite nature of the Universe'. So it has a beginning and an end? What shape is it?

That one's easy, it's spherical. It originated from one point, and is constantly expanding outwards from that point in all directions, so it's gotta be spherical.

i'm sure i read somewhere that its assumed to be shaped like a squiggly oval (hard to explain what i mean without drawing it).

This is because different areas of the universe are expanding at different speeds at different times over the history of the universe.

I was told it was the shape of a balloon, i.e. round, but that as it expands, everything gets further away from everything else. If you draw four dots on a balloon and blow it up, they will each get further away from each other. For this to happen it must expand in all directions, so must be round, ish.

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He also couldn't explain to me how, when on eof the primary laws of physics is energy cannot be just "created", how the big bang happened. What created the energy for such a big bang to happen, and more importantly, where the stuff that eploded and is now infinitely expanding, came from. Surely at some point in time "something was created from nothing", which defies physics.

So many questions that I will never know the answer to!

You could start by reading some of the links in this thread :mrgreen:

From the Hawking video - asking what is outside the universe is like asking what is further south than the south pole - it's just meaningless.

If you read my earlier links, you will find that matter (which is energy) can be created out of "nothing". It is very rare, but you are dealing with enormous numbers.

I wouldn't expect a school science teacher to be able to talk knowledgeably about this stuff. If you want to, you have a lot of reading ahead of you.

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Until someone invents one of these we are unlikely to know for sure, but given that there are more stars in the sky than the human mind can possibly comprehend, and each of these stars has the possibility of having planets, and each of these planets has the possibility of hosting life i think it would be both stupid and arrogant for us to think that Earth is the only planet with life on.

Its impossible to travel the kinds of distances needed with current technology and understanding of the universe. But then once upon a time it was impossible to travel to the moon and we managed that. There needs to be a massive breakthrough in thinking before we can entertain the idea of proper space travel. Light speed aint fast enough.

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Re-reading that, it sounds a bit patronising. Buy the Hawking book I linked. It'll give you a decent background.

I did see "A brief history of time" in waterstones today and nearly bought it. I am genuinely interested in this stuff, and you didn't sound patronising at all (maybe a little but I forgive you).

He is "only" a science teacher, but he does have a phd or something in physics. He was Dr Tucker anyway.

I understand your point about asking what nothing is is meaningless, but I'm still baffled by it. What's more South than the south pole? well nothing, I presume if you walk south until you get to the south pole you'll then start going north again. Is that what happens in the universe, you get flip reversed somehow.

Argh my brain!

The book has officially gone on my xmas list!

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He also couldn't explain to me how, when on eof the primary laws of physics is energy cannot be just "created", how the big bang happened. What created the energy for such a big bang to happen, and more importantly, where the stuff that eploded and is now infinitely expanding, came from. Surely at some point in time "something was created from nothing", which defies physics.

So many questions that I will never know the answer to!

You could start by reading some of the links in this thread :mrgreen:

From the Hawking video - asking what is outside the universe is like asking what is further south than the south pole - it's just meaningless.

If you read my earlier links, you will find that matter (which is energy) can be created out of "nothing". It is very rare, but you are dealing with enormous numbers.

I wouldn't expect a school science teacher to be able to talk knowledgeably about this stuff. If you want to, you have a lot of reading ahead of you.

Have they backtracked on the laws of physics then, cause isnt one of the fundamental laws of energy the fact that, energy in a system is constant but can be transferred from one form to another.

Which link do you mean btw. cba looking through.

Hawking does take a stand that there is and was nothing. Meaningless to debate it like you said. BUT he is very vague on the questions surrounding the Big Bang and exactly how it did develop itself.

Fair enough that maybe he chooses his methods with a regard to his audience, and you need an above average idea of quantum mechanics to comprehend, but even then, to creative something from nothing.. good luck

That is and will be the major problem cause you cannot expect people to agree that something can be created out of nothing.

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The big bang theory doesn't say that something is created from nothing. It's says that all matter in the universe was at a singular, infinitely small point, and then expanded. What happened before that is a somewhat meaningless question as there is no answer. String theory have a rather neat explanation on the creation of the universe, but it's feels more like speculation than anything concrete. "The Elegant Universe" is a decent documentary in three parts if your interested in that, or the book the movie is based on. Some of it can be found on youtube.

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Thats fair enough and i think most people get that pretty fast. But what happend before it, or what actions did take place is hardly meaningless, in fact its probably the most interesting question in the world as we know it (for some atleast).

The creation of something from nothing is insane.

is no answer

Yet. Saying now what people have said the last 2 thousand years and constantly been proven wrong.

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