Why do people think aliens can't exist?

Aelred said:
Similar conditions may have existed on Venus and/or Mars in the early solar system, but both are tectonically inert and have no magnetosphere to protect life from radiation. No other planet has a moon so large as to be almost a a doubl-planet that effects the tides on our oceans exposed to the sun. If life exuists elsewhere in the solar system that would a great discovery... but complex life capable of making astronomical instruments and sending out space-probes?

We have no idea how life began (speciation once life begins is a different issue), no idea how it moved from ocean to land and we don't seem to have reliable evidence of UFO's so far.

All life that we know of evolved to live on this planet and no other, and I expect the same would hold for other life forms and their homes.

I'm more interested in the problems in our current theories the James Webb Telescope discoveries are causing.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree with anything you wrote here. The point of my paragraph you quoted was to show life exists in places we thought it couldn't, and is almost certainly doing so right now in places not yet found. We've found life on the edge of volcanic vents, we've found worms that live in ice that melt when removed from the ice, etc etc.. I have no issue believing there are places in our own solar system that are supporting life or at least have supported life in the past. Will we find them? I hope so. Might not happen though.
 
When people are talking about Aliens they usually don’t mean microbes – which have yet to be found anywhere but Earth.

What makes life formation possible? We don’t know how life started here, so how can we say other places in the Solar System let alone elsewhere have sufficient conditions and stimulus?

For billions of years life on earth was bacteria and archaea with their formation a complete mystery, with the notion being that some archaea ate some bacteria and complex life began. The bacteria and the archaea were unique to Earth and took a couple of billion years to merge.

That some kind of life may be found in the Solar System is remotely possible, I guess. The way life thrives here almost everywhere makes it seem more likely than it is, at least IMHO. Volcanic vents are tectonic activity and cycling of material we don't see elsewhere. Without a Magnetosphere and the rest that shelters the worms in the ice from radiation I have my doubts.
 
fetishfrog said:
I don't disagree with anything you wrote here. The point of my paragraph you quoted was to show life exists in places we thought it couldn't, and is almost certainly doing so right now in places not yet found. We've found life on the edge of volcanic vents, we've found worms that live in ice that melt when removed from the ice, etc etc.. I have no issue believing there are places in our own solar system that are supporting life or at least have supported life in the past. Will we find them? I hope so. Might not happen though.
Click to expand...

I always liked the Carl Sagan quote, "Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence."
 
holoholo said:
This thread is cool to read. Origins of life and all that. Whatever sequence of events brought me to this point in time. All so I could post titty gifs in that other thread.
Click to expand...

Haha! Alien renderings suggest they do not breast feed. :unsure:
 
la szum said:
Haha! Alien renderings suggest they do not breast feed. :unsure:
Click to expand...
Then they're missing out!

Happy Hailee Steinfeld GIF by Pitch Perfect
 
"Aliens" are just adolescents who stole the keys to the Warp Drive in search of a good time
in Sector 8 where the Hairy and Thick-Chested reside.

the force awakens GIF by Star Wars
 
la szum said:
I always liked the Carl Sagan quote, "Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence."
Click to expand...
It is a fine quote from William Wright in 1888 when discussing the Hittite Empire and the evidence for it in Southern Palestine.

Still, a functioning Magnetosphere is one of the conditions we think necessary for life. Liquid water is another. Tectonic activity and mineral cycling is now considered necessary.

And all have to be “stable” for billions of years.

What objects in the Solar System have had tectonic activity and liquid water within a Magnetosphere for billions of years?

That’s just 3 we think necessary. There may be more.
 
Aelred said:
It is a fine quote from William Wright in 1888 when discussing the Hittite Empire and the evidence for it in Southern Palestine.

Still, a functioning Magnetosphere is one of the conditions we think necessary for life. Liquid water is another. Tectonic activity and mineral cycling is now considered necessary.

And all have to be “stable” for billions of years.

What objects in the Solar System have had tectonic activity and liquid water within a Magnetosphere for billions of years?

That’s just 3 we think necessary. There may be more.
Click to expand...
Well.. that's what the carbon based lifeforms have come up with anyway...

I wonder what the hydrogen based life forms have to say?
 
Aelred said:
It is a fine quote from William Wright in 1888 when discussing the Hittite Empire and the evidence for it in Southern Palestine.

Still, a functioning Magnetosphere is one of the conditions we think necessary for life. Liquid water is another. Tectonic activity and mineral cycling is now considered necessary.

And all have to be “stable” for billions of years.

What objects in the Solar System have had tectonic activity and liquid water within a Magnetosphere for billions of years?

That’s just 3 we think necessary. There may be more.
Click to expand...

Shame on Carl for not citing him. :horse

I originally saw it in Sagan's epic book, "The Demon Haunted World." :idk
 
la szum said:
Shame on Carl for not citing him. :horse

I originally saw it in Sagan's epic book, "The Demon Haunted World." :idk
Click to expand...
Sagan had a lot of critics, as does Tyson who did his version of Cosmos.

Scientific method and rational thought historically came from the rejection of Sophistry and the notion that we are the measure of all things, and that we can observe the logic that is already in the Cosmos everywhere we look by means of communally agreed testing, evidence, demonstration and theory, not certainty. The notion of Energy, potential and kinetic, crucial for science ever since, also comes from Aristotle's Metaphysics.

New evidence provokes new theories. Absense of evidence not so much. :idk

Oh well, that's enough ranting from me. Enjoy the hydrogen-based discussion that follows! Lots of complex hydrogen-based molecules... oh dear...
 
Last edited:
There are enough planets out there similar to ours, that there’s gotta be someone else out there. If not, that really sucks. Sure, it’ll take ages to find each other; and it may not ever happen. But I personally think they’re out there.
 
Considering the grand scope of the known 13,800,000,000 year old universe it’s absurd to disqualify the possibility of other life at this point. We’ve literally JUST started with space exploration and our own understanding of what and where life can be facilitated is still evolving.

It’s analogous to taking two steps outside your front door, looking around your yard, and professing that wal-mart doesn’t exist. Low and behold one day you figure out how to build a primitive car. All of the sudden the universe gets a lot smaller and…oh look…we have like 15 wal-marts in this town and why are aliens wearing pajamas to the fucking store?

It has always been and will always be dumb to put humanity on a pedestal at the center of anything other than our misguided efforts to inflate our own importance and egos.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top