Why I'm getting more and more pecimistic about 'little green men'...

[Neil]

First let me say that I have little doubt life exists else where in the universe. Infact I suspect simple life may even exist else where in out solar system, and probably complex life in small numbers else where in our universe. However, what I find myself getting more and more sceptical about is complex life (akin to ours) existing in the quantities we hoped for. Where once it seemed likely every other planetary system would be teeming with complex life, personally I'm getting more and more concerned this is not the case, and infact quite the opposite is likely. There seems to be so many strokes of luck that mean we exist, and continue to exist, I think this severely limits the chances of green men existing. Let us consider the number of things that mean complex life can safetly exist on planet earth:- * The earths magnetic field - Protects us from the harmful bombardments from the sun. * The moon - Not only sweeps up some objects that may hit us, but more importantly helps keeps the axis of the earth within a small range. Without it, the earth - under the effect of the other gravitational effects - could fluctuate from anything between virtical, or worse case horizontal with 6 months days and nights around the world. It also creates the tides, again which helps life exist. * Tectonic plates - This helps circulate the material in the upper crust of the earth. * Jupiter - Helps sweep up a lot of the bodies that could otherwise hit us. ...and the list goes on... Add then to the list, that even if a life form exists the chances that life is wiped out by a planetary impact, or it wipes itself out by nuclear war, or climatic polution, or simply running out of fossil fuels without getting beyond a low level of technology, and this reduces the odds even further... So rather the chances of Mr Green man existing maybe on the rolling of two sixes, maybe it's more like getting ten dice and needing tp throw ten sixes, with all the dice needing to land each on top of the other As a final note, if Mr Green man is so common, why is he not here? Why is the sky not alive with communication

[Kaos]

Everyone knows the little green men are humans from the future, duh.

[Mike70]

first off i agree that complex sentient life probably is rare in the galaxy - though when you consider the entire universe and the literally hundreds of billions of galaxies each with hundreds of billions of stars, i think that sentient life exists in quite a number of places in the universe as a whole. the reason that i think life is common in the galaxy (life in general not sentient) is that life on our world is based on the most common elements in the universe- hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, iron, etc. everywhere we look in the galaxy these elements exist in large abundance. over 200 exoplanets have been found so far - all large planets - the smallest is something like 8 earth masses. some have been found in orbits that would allow liquid water to exist and some like 55 cancri and 46 ursa majoris have 3 or more known planets (and counting). the exciting thing about the planets that are starting to be discovered is that they are not gas giants but rocky worlds like the inner 4 planets of our own system. as technology improves and the next generation of space telescopes goes up we will find more and more planets and they will be smaller planets at that. there have been so-called "good" jupiters found in other solar systems. large planets that sweep up all most of the inbound asteroids/comets and prevent them from impacting the smaller worlds that might exist closer to their parent star. as for radio - the galaxy is awash in radio noise. radio waves are one of the most common forms of radiation in the universe. we also must take into account that another advanced culture could be using another form of EM radiation for communication like light itself or might even be using atoms or sub-atomic particles as signal carriers. i do not feel that humans are in any way ready to meet an advanced alien culture. any civilization capable of warping space or opening a wormhole (either from the quantum foam or by using gravity) would look at us as children or pets. let's face it - the history of contact on this planet between advanced cultures and primitive ones has been disastrous to say the very least - and we were dealing with our own species. hopefully we are being allowed to grow on our own and to succeed or fail based on our own decisions. for all of the murder and pain humans are capable of i want to see our species live on- forever (at least until the galaxy itself dies). that is going to require us colonizing other worlds- not now, maybe not in 200 or 300 years (which is nothing in the grand scheme) but eventually if our race is to survive we will have to move beyond this system - somehow. this world will not be inhabitable forever - in fact the sun is going to burn hotter and brighter as it ages to a point several hundred million years from now when it will be over twice as hot and bright as it is now. we have to keep reaching for the stars or we must die as a species.

[DVW5150]

Dangit , the are GRAY !

[coma]

Dangit , the are GRAY ! Why would aliens be gay?

[Terran]

Everyone knows the little green men are humans from the future, duh. Heheh I always say that too..... That "UFOs" and "Aliens" are us from the future......

[deadpunk]

We'll never see it in our lifetime, of that I'm convinced. And, the further along we get as a species, the less another species would want to deal with us. Honestly, if a UFO actually hit the skyline...I think the odds are rather high one govt. or another would simply blast it from existence anyway...

[Danny]

i agree i dont think weve been visited by aliens, though that thing from russia in like the 1800's or whathave you is slightly suspicious , but yeah i hink there may like bacteriums and stuff on like titan and places like that but sentient life?, i dont doubt some may exist but nowere near us ,aybe not even soemthign we would consider life, and we wouldnt be "life" to them like....i dunno silicon based crystals or something with some kinda intelligence, not as eloquent as the first post but yeah thats my view, and as for the gay aliens, they come for the gay bars, why the hell would straight aliens come to our planet, "hi mr world leaders we were in the mood for a war and it just so happens we are different to you with our own culture, come on you know you wanna wipe us off the face of our home planet" theyd have to rethink the god idea a little, if i was christian i would think "oh so maybe he had like a few gardens or whatever and made more than one kind of "man" but you know theres those creationist types who would flip out calling em devils and the like. btu thatd mean a possible changing of the pledge of allegance so thatd be too much work. on that note how come at the end of the pledge in the u.s it has that "liberty and jutsice for all"?, why doesnt it mention equality for all? ....just a thought thats gonna bug me all day, that and "you think sega would have learned with sonic heroes".

[Neil]

Scipi70 - If our galaxy was teaming with other civilizations some would be tens or hundreds of millions of years old, have capabilities beyond our comprehension, and be without a doubt space fairing. They would have spread across the galaxy... Why are they not here? I have a gut feeling that the odd are not in little green mans favour. As I said before maybe the odds are not just throwing a pair of sixes, but infact akin to throwing ten sixes with ALL the dice needing to land one piled on top of the other... So even if handful of species do exist in our galaxy, maybe space travel is so difficult they've stayed at home...

[OddDNA]

But in the vastness of the universe even if aliens landed on Earth how long have we been keeping "good" records of what happens here? 1000 years? 10,000 years at the most. IN the vastness of the universe Aliens could have came and went 100s of times and we would have never known....just like you said the odds we very low of there being life it would be even lower for that life to visit at the small window where we are civilized and have not killed each other yet I do believe in intelligent live in the universe...a lot of it...I however, think it is unlikey that we have been visited recently.

[Neil]

But in the vastness of the universe even if aliens landed on Earth how long have we been keeping "good" records of what happens here? 1000 years? 10,000 years at the most. IN the vastness of the universe Aliens could have came and went 100s of times and we would have never known....just like you said the odds we very low of there being life it would be even lower for that life to visit at the small window where we are civilized and have not killed each other yet I do believe in intelligent live in the universe...a lot of it...I however, think it is unlikey that we have been visited recently. Given any visit in the last 100,000,000 years would show Earth had a clear chance of developing intelligent life, Arthur C Clarke probably hit the nail on the head... A nice "we woz ere" sign/symbol on the moon should be expected... I wouldn't be surprised with all the odds (I suspect) are against intelligent life popping up, instead of thousands or millions of intelligent species in the galaxy, perhaps its just dozens or less... Then add to this the rediculous complixities in space travel, maybe it's like a dozen people floating around on rafts in the pacific ocean, just hoping to bump into each other

[Danny]

aye good analagy, thuogh thing is, no matter how small a chance is, as long as one exists you never know maybe they did millions of years ago and didnt want to screw with a planet 'prime directive style. i myself would have beena jerk and written "YOU SUCK" on the moon

[OddDNA]

either we are the only ones left or there is noone within range of our puny WWII singal. No I think we are such a babies in the way of civiliztion how can we expect to know if another being would leave information that they were here. Have we left any infromation taht would last any amount of time on any planet we have visited through man or machine....aliens could have sent a prob through this area long ago pre human....saw no life worth visiting and kept going knowing they would come around again in a few billion years to check up on us again. That is another thing 1 millinon years seems long to us because we live a short life, what if another being lives 3-4 millions years per life cycle....stopping by every billion years would seem adequet.

[Danny]

reminds of a bit from an incredible hulk one shot were bruce banner was the only human to survive a world wide nuclear war and he is discovered by an alien robot and he says "did you come to help?", and the robot says "no, just to record many aliens wanted me to make sure" "of what?", "that you were all dead".

[Terran]

Written on the moon in big letters for all to see ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US If our galaxy was teaming with other civilizations some would be tens or hundreds of millions of years old, have capabilities beyond our comprehension, and be without a doubt space fairing. They would have spread across the galaxy... Why are they not here? Thats not necessarily true... The age of of a galaxy and a solar system doesnt really have anything to do with wether life exists on it.... Like lets say a given solar system is a hundred million years older than ours.... What if the sun was to hot or to cold for a couple hundred million years.... Like maybe when our sun becomes a red giant the moon Europa might be able to support some more complex life ... (Though it could already have pretty complex life network based on chemoautotrophs) What if the planet needed a large meteor impact to start off the process and that didnt happen for a couple hundred million years.... Or life could have been developing and maybe even an Evoluionary process begining that would produce intelligent life but then a mass extinction for a large meteor impact siliences it...and the whole process has to start over... Or conditions may never even develope intelligent life because an Evolutionary process never arises that favors "cognizance".... Like the Earth will not be able to sustain life anymore after the next two thousand million years or so, because of natural chemical and geological processes in the Earth and the atmosphere. The inside of the Earth is still cooling down from its formation, and eventually it will cool down so much that volcanoes stop working and the molten material inside the Earth stops moving around . So all Im saying is just because places in the universe are older than our section that doesnt really have anything to do with producing life....Its not like theres some sort of cosmic schedule that says if a system is capable of making life it has to do so within its first billion years.... Also a lot of our predicting of life is very biased in that we only expect life coming from processes we see on/in earth... So a lot of our life searching is done looking for life similiar to types of life on earth... Theres a possibility that we cannot really predict what things make up life... What if the other intelligent life out there is based on an entirely different chemical process... No Lipids, Proteins, polypeptides.... Even the mode of inheritance... what if they do not even have stuff we would call DNA... So theres a strong possibility that if we found intelligent beings or even non intelligent beings that they would not even be classified as life according to earth's biology....