What If It´s Just Us?
Forbes,
by
Ethan Siegel
Original Article
Posted By: MissMolly,
4/5/2019 5:25:25 AM
When it comes to the question of extraterrestrial life, humans optimistically assume the Universe is prolific. After all, there doesn´t appear to be anything particularly special about Earth, and life not only took hold here on our world, but evolved, thrived, became complex and differentiated, and then intelligent and technologically advanced. If the same ingredients are everywhere and the same rules are at play, wouldn´t it be an awful waste of space if we´re alone? But this is not a question that can be answered by appeals to either logic or emotion, but by data and observation alone.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
hershey 4/5/2019 6:38:11 AM (No. 23926)
Evolution is like climate change...
31 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
varkdriver 4/5/2019 6:43:12 AM (No. 23894)
Even if there were some civilization somewhere out there, the tyranny of distance and amount of time/energy it takes to travel say, one light year, let alone hundreds, makes it unlikely the aliens will ever visit.
Unless they´re already here; in the form of Democrats...
62 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
ByteGuru 4/5/2019 7:05:10 AM (No. 23922)
#2 - sorry but I must disagree with you about democrats being an advanced species in hiding.
Any truly advanced civilization will most likely have had to make some hard choices in order to achieve interstellar travel. Most of those choices could involve the subjugation of actions and concepts that the average liberal believes in and hence will never abandon.
23 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
chumley 4/5/2019 7:11:18 AM (No. 23928)
I have no knowledge one way or the other, but like to hope that we aint it. If we are the best the universe has to offer it is a sad place indeed.
Besides, I´d have to get rid of all my Roswell T-shirts and bar decorations.
25 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Highlander 4/5/2019 7:42:41 AM (No. 23939)
Sorry to disappoint, but this planet is it. A belief in evolution drives this Star Trek thinking. The chances of there being sentient life elsewhere is the same as that of a chimp typing Shakespeare. Also, the ultimate fate of earth is not in our hands. Relax.
43 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
StormCnter 4/5/2019 7:45:49 AM (No. 23895)
I´m with #5. I´ve never believed God sprinkled life all around the universe.
34 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Toledo 4/5/2019 8:00:14 AM (No. 23897)
I´ve always thought that God expects us to inhabit the rest of the universe at some time. That´s why I always laugh at those doomsday forecasts. Not gonna happen for some time.
20 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Nevadadad46 4/5/2019 8:27:19 AM (No. 23910)
I lived and worked in and out of Roswell, NM for 22 years. It is a small town. Most of the people involved in the Rowell incident were alive and well known to me over many of those years of living there. Let me say this; They were NOT lying. The same man who provided the coffins for the ETs buried my Mother- Glenn Dennis. If you ever met Glenn, you would know the man has no ability to tell a lie..I never met the rancher, "Mac" Brazel, who found the debris field of the UFO. But, I met his son, Vernon in Carrizoz by pure chance and bought him lunch. Alcohol had not done him any favors over his life. He was bitter about the whole experience and pointedly said his father did not deserve the abuse the government gave him. He related how he was still visited from time to time by government agents asking if he had found any more of the UFO on that land northwest of Roswell. It is funny that the government built a gigantic 6,000´ paved runway just two miles west of the UFO site. Few people know it even exists. I´ve landed on it. But, you will not find it on Google maps...why is that?
41 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Marjbaldwin 4/5/2019 8:29:55 AM (No. 23929)
I believe there is an unlimited number of advanced civilizations on planets similar to ours all throughout the universe. The thing people don´t understand is the unimaginable distances between even the closest stars and, even more unimaginable, between galaxies. The distances are, as far as we know, prohibitive to transporting life.
24 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Paperpuncher 4/5/2019 8:32:53 AM (No. 23899)
Up and until (if possible at all) we develop the ability to travel faster than light and I mean much faster than light, it just doesn´t matter if there is anything or anyone out there because we can not travel those distances.
This idea of finding another world to move the human species to is a pipe dream. Yes, it is likely in a few billion years the sun will go red giant and fry us all. Get over it kids.
I do believe God created the entire universe. If there is intelligent life elsewhere then his hand is in it as well. The point is, what God creates outside our little world is his business and not ours.
It just doesn´t matter.
34 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
NorthernDog 4/5/2019 8:38:19 AM (No. 23935)
If there is life elsewhere it may very well be malevolent. Think of the monster in Alien. I´m content not crossing paths with them.
25 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
BeatleJeff 4/5/2019 8:41:45 AM (No. 23907)
The Universe is a huge place, and I don´t discount the possibility that the conditions for life to develop exists somewhere out there. But it always amuses me that people always assume that if life does exist somewhere out there, it is so much more advanced than we are. I tend to believe that if life does exist elsewhere, it is more likely to be amoebas and protozoa,or maybe plant life, not some advanced form of homo sapiens.
19 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
a6bogie 4/5/2019 8:46:24 AM (No. 23890)
All you need for proof that there is intelligent life in the universe is the fact no alien has visited this planet.
23 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
LoneVoice 4/5/2019 8:46:32 AM (No. 23913)
If you believe life arose from nothing all by itself, spontaneously, then you also believe that when we die that´s it. Our lives will have been meaningless because we´re just a collection of molecules that somehow self organized. That seems like the most absurd of all possibilities, and the most depressing.
As for myself I believe God created all of this. Maybe that belief sounds crazy to the supposedly scientific crowd, but it´s the only non-nihilist belief possible.
The existence or non-existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe doesn´t change this basic truth. If we came from nothing, then we´re going back to nothing, and our lives are meaningless.
God is the least insane option.
32 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
h24015 4/5/2019 8:51:33 AM (No. 23902)
Why does anyone think life has to be anything like us? We probably wouldn´t recognize it due to our intellectual limitations, or our conceit.
23 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
Strike3 4/5/2019 8:53:56 AM (No. 23901)
"We know how big the Universe is, how many stars and galaxies are in it..."
Statements like the above are just plain silly but scientists like to preach to the commoners that they really know more than we do to keep the funding rolling in. They do not. What if all of the light outside of our sphere of view has not even reached the Earth yet? The Universe is probably our only real evidence of Infinity.
I believe that the Creator of the Universe spread life far apart to keep us separate and isolated forever like some grand set of experiments. I also believe that the Petri Dish known as Terra is about to go into the trash.
As far as proof of alien visitors goes, fifty years ago drones and the SR-71 were easily mistaken as UFOs. The government fed the UFO theory to keep us guessing and off the real trail. Currently underwater "UFOs" have been tracked. I suspect that things haven´t changed much and our contact with real alien life is still very unlikely.
13 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
rusino 4/5/2019 8:56:32 AM (No. 23915)
.....and then consider God!
17 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
Jeremiah29_11 4/5/2019 8:57:53 AM (No. 23927)
There HAS to be other life out there! Otherwise my theory that blondes are the result of some weird alien genetics experiment that went amuck doesn’t work!
22 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
msjena 4/5/2019 9:26:31 AM (No. 23904)
There is no evidence of extraterrestrial life— none. Yet supposedly thinking people believe in it. Many are the same people who believe life on earth came into being out of rocks.
14 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
kono 4/5/2019 9:32:13 AM (No. 23923)
Part of the problem is that researchers have tried to filter any notions of God out of the work. And many of these questions about life and existence collapse into nothing (or digress into complete nonsense) without the stabilizing frameworks of theology and revealed truth.
Maybe because the people working in this area of study realize we would have to resolve millennia of conflict between competing religious traditions to identify which is true (or closest to The Truth), and each generation in its turn eventually despairs in that effort.
I wonder if this and other seemingly unsolvable problems might not represent a tower of babel, conceptually speaking, that works as a ceiling to limit our ability to take for ourselves knowledge that we are meant to receive, in accord with God´s manner and time - a veil that obscures reality from our sight.
Metaphysical musings. A fun way to squander some time. Gotta get to work now, though; the sunrise is just about here.
21 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
MattMusson 4/5/2019 9:34:49 AM (No. 23891)
Because DNA is irreducibly complex, if we find life in other locations it will be based upon the same DNA we have here on Earch.
13 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
Stencil 4/5/2019 10:00:54 AM (No. 23912)
Re: 17 - as we can only be aware of other objects in the Universe based on our receiving sensory evidence of them in the form of light and other ray information over space and time, we are limited to that information which has reached us since the instant of beginning. Those rays that have yet to reach us contain information that we cannot yet know. Your first statements are well supported.
11 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 4/5/2019 10:09:45 AM (No. 23930)
I get annoyed very quickly with coulda, shoulda, woulda stories like these. Aside from the pretty pictures and the chart shown, it is as good as YOUR opinion, or mine.
14 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
little guy 4/5/2019 10:11:36 AM (No. 23914)
Normally this type of evidence would make a person think that they were pretty special being the only Life in the entire universe and might even make you believe that Someone put you here for a purpose. Sadly, few people actually can think anymore and even fewer people ask the question: "Was I possibly put here as a test of some kind?"
Cut to the chase --- for those of us who still have faith --- Why would God create another world when only one would satisfy His needs? And if there really is life on another planet somewhere that He created, none of that "life" will contain an immortal soul ... or His Son would have to be Crucified a thousand times saving each and every world! If they don´t need to be saved, then they´d be in Heaven. Duh.
15 people like this.
Reply 25 - Posted by:
bigfatslob 4/5/2019 10:31:41 AM (No. 23893)
I live in Roswell New Mexico and the only aliens here are illegal ones and in our government in Santa Fe. You get to see many things when marijuana is legalized so believe what you want.
22 people like this.
Reply 26 - Posted by:
davew 4/5/2019 10:36:26 AM (No. 23908)
My problem with the theistic genesis of the Universe argument is the sheer excess of what was created. If we are supposedly the pinnacle of the divine creation why create 100 billion galaxies each with 100 billion stars and untold trillions of other planets? Why create billions of other beings that have lived and died and become extinct even before we even came into the picture? The scale of space and time in the Universe reduces the importance of our creation in any intelligent plan to that of random noise. If, however, the relationships of fundamental universal building blocks are based on simple patterns that evolve from the smallest to the galactic scale our existence can be understood as part of a continuum of complexification. This would suggest that life, which is the pattern of random molecules catalyzing copies of themselves using free energy from their environment, would be ubiquitous anywhere that provides a chemically favorable environment.
14 people like this.
Reply 27 - Posted by:
mc squared 4/5/2019 10:56:12 AM (No. 23925)
Who else but malicious aliens could have landed here in pods and invaded the bodies of Kevin McCarthy and all the Democrats?
15 people like this.
Reply 28 - Posted by:
49 Ford 4/5/2019 11:03:11 AM (No. 23936)
Interesting posts, I agree with # 25. While the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe may be theoretically possible, the poster´s question - Why would God create another world when only one would satisfy His needs? - is the clincher, IMO.
Perhaps He created such a vast physical universe to teach us a lesson in humility - a lesson arrogant man will continue to disregard.
15 people like this.
Reply 29 - Posted by:
JimJr 4/5/2019 11:25:18 AM (No. 23896)
1. To think we are alone in the universe (God´s or otherwise is the essence of hubris.
2. For all of it´s pronouncements, science cannot answer the fundamental question of life - How did/does it happen. Life is fundamentally different from simple chemistry.
Yet here is Earth, teeming with life, orbiting in a very benign orbit about our star, which itself is orbiting in a very quiet section of our galaxy which just happens to be in a very quiet area of the universe. Where is everyone else?
18 people like this.
Reply 30 - Posted by:
columba 4/5/2019 11:28:35 AM (No. 23911)
If you thin there is no God, I think you are mistaken.
17 people like this.
Reply 31 - Posted by:
JackBurton 4/5/2019 11:32:51 AM (No. 23932)
Read Darwin´s Doubt.
Design, not evolution.
17 people like this.
Reply 32 - Posted by:
Catfur27 4/5/2019 12:16:32 PM (No. 23905)
...Ancient Aliens is the most thought-provoking show on tv ( though the content has become "thin" the past couple of years).
...watch it an try to explain how people barely out of caves, with no concept of mathematics, no written language, no concept of the solar system, no iron or steel, no wheel... were somehow able to design and construct hundreds of incredibly complex (and similar) engineering structures all over the world...??
...HOW did they do this without "help" ??? ...and WHY...??
...watch the show...especially the early ones...it will make you wonder
19 people like this.
Reply 33 - Posted by:
Dino Sayer 4/5/2019 12:22:43 PM (No. 23934)
This article fails to note that we have no way at present to determine the existence of life on the planets around other stars.
I’ll offer mine: the existence of elemental oxygen in the atmosphere of exoplanets would strongly suggest the existence of photosynthesizing life on that planet.
Meanwhile to answer his questions.
1. There is nothing spectacular or unusual about the genesis of life on the early earth. Take chemical soup, add billions of years of ionizing radiation and electric storms, and you will get life.
2. The self-organizing of life over billions of years is implicit in the Infornation storage and manipulation capabilities of dna and rna.
3. Intelligence is not so rare. Besides all of our hominid ancestors, chimps, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas could all develop over millions of years into something like man.
What may be rare about our solar system is the stability of the Earth’s orbit in a habitable zone. That is what has given us time to evolve as far as we have so far.
It may be that life evolved on Mars and then infected Earth. That gives us an even longer time period to work with, since Mars most likely cooled first.
But the basis of physical life is just chemistry and natural processes. That chemistry is the same in all of those 2 trillion galaxies.
It is far more likely that life is everywhere than that we are its unique manifestation.
11 people like this.
Reply 34 - Posted by:
HisHandmaiden 4/5/2019 12:31:05 PM (No. 23900)
“In the beginning God...”
16 people like this.
Reply 35 - Posted by:
hershey 4/5/2019 12:33:32 PM (No. 23917)
I think #33 has something going with Ancient
Aliens...I´ve watched some of the shows and the thing that makes me wonder is the abundance of carvings/art that have included in them apparent carvings of space ships, people with helmets and depictions of ships in the air.
Given that people in those days were not into ´abstract´ art, but only copied what they saw, how does that fit in? One of the pics showed what appeared to be a bluetooth earpiece in a carved head...somewhere else I saw a movie of a lady walking in a crowd in 1928 talking on a cellphone.....makes you wonder...but we won´t know for sure until they land or we meet our maker what is the truth of it all..
13 people like this.
Reply 36 - Posted by:
OhMy 4/5/2019 1:03:49 PM (No. 23938)
Just compare the odds of life happening by chance with the number of planets. It is unlikely that any other planet than earth has life on it let alone intelligent civilization.
11 people like this.
Reply 37 - Posted by:
NYbob 4/5/2019 1:09:05 PM (No. 23903)
It is the eternal question with so many factors mixed in. The answer has to be found in each of us and for us to decide what we really believe in our head and heart.
My answer is to count your blessings and drink in the gifts you have been given. Consider the facts we know and realize being able to ponder the question is a miracle. Look at all the factors that enabled dinosaurs to evolve. Iron core with magnetic shield, right distances from the right sized sun, etc. That should have been the end. Dinos doing what they did for 200+ million years and getting nowhere closer to technology. Then another impossible event at just the right time to the right degree to start our climb out of the mud. Appreciate it. Do your best while others do their worst and stand in awe of the entire magnificent universe. Do that long enough and you humble yourself before a beautiful higher power. Bless all of it and all of the potential.
14 people like this.
Reply 38 - Posted by:
Luandir 4/5/2019 1:12:28 PM (No. 23924)
Maybe all the other civilizations rose to a certain point, elected socialists, and then it was all over.
19 people like this.
Reply 39 - Posted by:
winnie1 4/5/2019 1:15:37 PM (No. 23933)
Contact with aliens has been going on for years. All of the advances made in the US came from aliens. Proof is how Hitler was way ahead of the time, there were questions if he was in contact with foreign power (aliens)
12 people like this.
Reply 40 - Posted by:
gone2pot 4/5/2019 1:25:12 PM (No. 23921)
It doesn´t matter. They can´t get here from there anyway.
The cosmological constant is many more times exponentially precise to be anything other than a number designed by intelligence. Creating the theory out of whole cloth that there are 10^500 to an infinite number of universes (a theory NOT based on science and is impossible to ever prove) to wave aside the one-off uniqueness, complexity and ridiculously precise universe is dishonest and NOT science. This place WAS designed. The math and the quantum physics prove it was designed BY intelligence. Abiogenesis is another thing that can never be demonstrated and the amount of genetic changes required to go from single cell to any organism using sex to reproduce, we would see evolutionary changes taking place every few minutes...but we don´t. We say the changes take millions of years. The universe would have to be trillions of trillions years old if that were the case but it´s not. It´s simple and scientific and provable probability mathematics that evolutionary "scientists" ignore.
15 people like this.
ET phone home!
12 people like this.
The Strong Anthropic Principle demands that the universe needs an observer to give it reality. Just has to be one. No reason for other conscious life to exist, that would be redundant.
12 people like this.
Reply 43 - Posted by:
DVC 4/5/2019 2:46:30 PM (No. 23931)
Men in Black....
10 people like this.
Reply 44 - Posted by:
snakeoil 4/5/2019 3:54:56 PM (No. 23909)
Excellent article. Thanks OP. Problem with estimating life outside of Earth is no one understands how life on Earth began. Unless you believe in God. The Drake equation is a product. So if one of the terms is zero so is the product.
10 people like this.
Reply 45 - Posted by:
Bohallx 4/5/2019 4:16:12 PM (No. 23916)
There are trillions of stars with planets in the "currently" visible universe.
There are hundreds thousands of different Archaeobacteria, millions of different bacteria, and billions of different viruses.
We are getting close to where we can CREATE more of them at will for low costs.
11 people like this.
Reply 46 - Posted by:
dman 4/5/2019 5:17:50 PM (No. 23919)
Eaither we are alone in this vast universe/multiverse, or we are not.
Either prospect is mind-boggling.
Regardless, my take is that God does not only make miracles: God is the miracle!
11 people like this.
Reply 47 - Posted by:
LC Chihuahua 4/5/2019 5:52:03 PM (No. 23920)
Look at humanity, the Earth, and the universe. Do any of them look to be the product of random chance or is there is a design behind them. If there is a design, there must be a designer, a creator. By definition, that designer and creator is God. Btw, God and evolution are not mutually exclusive.
If there is a God, why would it create the universe and humanity? Why are we here? Why does the universe exist?
Is there other life in the universe? Stop and consider the resources required to expand out into the universe, and explore other planets and stars. Consider the resources required to colonize other planets. Consider how disruptive such an undertaking could be. You would be taking away resources from your home planet.
What if you discover evidence that there is alien life, and some of it is generally hostile. What would you do? You would hide. You wouldn´t glibly give away your location. Just because we haven´t found any alien life wouldn´t mean none exists. If other life does exist in the universe, why isn´t it reaching out to contact others?
11 people like this.
Reply 48 - Posted by:
Ebuilder 4/5/2019 7:28:00 PM (No. 23892)
Woody Allen once said, "The Universe is a passing thought in the mind of God." Which at least challenges the evolutionists who insist [by faith] there must be billions of galaxies with billions of life forms. And by the way, there are other life forms. They were on the earth before the flood, and they survived the flood. Nephilim and Anakin were products of these life forms. They are fallen angels, who took human women. Now, as we return to the prophesied [by Christ] "as it was in the Days of Noah" [cold love, treason, DNA editing, black magic, chaos], these cloaked devils will deceive everyone but the Elect into believing they must be surrogate gods. From other planets. Helpers. Call them EBENs, greys, mists, oblivious time travelers, cloud-eaters, reptiloids, nordics -- all here to help make us perfect. It will all make sense until the devil gets bored with it.
9 people like this.
Reply 49 - Posted by:
Oliver 4/5/2019 9:10:20 PM (No. 23937)
Do an internet search for “The Privileged Planet”. It discusses the likelihood of life occurring elsewhere in the universe. Very thought provoking.
10 people like this.