http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1811


Aliens MUST exist, says Stephen Hawking - but they probably won't be intelligent
Hawking: Odds are stacked against intelligent life like Stephen Spielberg's E.T., below, the British scientist told an audience on Nasa's birthday

The universe may well be teeming with life but the chances of alien intelligence developing are extremely low, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believes.

The British cosmologist said the universe was so vast that man was almost certainly not alone.

But there has to be a reason why we have not detected traces of alien civilisations in other star systems, he added.

Speaking through a speech synthesiser at a university in Washington DC in a lecture to mark the 50th anniversary of space agency Nasa, Professor Hawking said yesterday there were several possible views on whether extraterrestrial life exists.





One is that there probably is no life elsewhere. Another is that there is intelligent life on other worlds, but when it gets sophisticated enough to send signals into space it is also smart enough to make destructive nuclear weapons.

Professor Hawking said he took the third view, that the odds are for the creation of life but against the development of intelligence.

"Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare," he told the audience at George Washington University, near the White House.

He added drily: "Some would say it has yet to occur on earth."

He dismissed claims of alien abduction as a fantasy of "weirdos" and said it was highly unlikely.

However, because alien life might not have DNA as earthlings do, Hawking warned: "Watch out if you would meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease with which you have no resistance."

The 66-year-old scientist, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, said the long-term survival of man depended on finding other worlds to colonise.

"If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before," he said.

Professor Hawking compared people who do not want to spend money on human space exploration to those who opposed the voyages of discovery which brought Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492.

"The discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the old," he said, adding: "Just think, we wouldn't have had a Big Mac or KFC."

Carl Sagan said it perfectly, the reason we haven't encountered an intelligent species is because most probably destroy themselves.

We could be heading that way as well.

too many assumptions steve, but interesting opinions.

Steve is just saying what logic says, but no intelligent life in the universe as a whole. That is illogical to comprehend.

Probably said on thousands of planets in their own languages.

I don't know about this one. I like Stephen but I think this is more opinion than math. For example he says other intellegent life would be sending signals out. Well they may have never invented radio or t.v. most likely that is going to be an earth only thing. Nuclear bombs again just because we invented them means nothing really. I'm sticking with the thought of hundreds/thousands/millions of intellegent life forms out there.

Does anyone else think that the excitement that greets every pronouncement like this from a scientist is kind of strange? After all, saying that somewhere in the huge huge universe life must exist is sort of a "Well Duh!" type of thing...

Ya but I think what the main point he's trying to convay is that there is little chance of the life out there being intellegent ? A bit of an ego trip to think we could be the smartest thing to hit the universe. Kinda scary actually, naaaa theres things out there smarter than us, there just has to be LOL

I love that quote and it fits so well.

no no he said an intelligent species

Interesting thought, especially coming from Hawking.

Personally, I always quite liked the 'Great Sterilisation' hypothesis to explain why we haven't yet detected intelligent life elsewhere: that gamma ray bursts (GRBs) occur periodically within galaxies, and that when they do that galaxy is effectively made sterile, all life wiped out within it. Since all detected GRBs originate outside of our galaxy, it may well be that in the 3.7 billion years that ours has supported life, there hasn't been one. If the last intragalactic GRB was not much more than 3.7 billion years ago, then life may have developed elsewhere in our galaxy but may not yet be as far developed as we; we may be precocious. This would probably put us to one end of the intergalactic and intragalactic bell-curve, meaning that we're simply a statistical anomaly - we've lucked out with the GRBs so far. But the longer we luck out, the greater the chances that our luck will run out - there'll be a nearby GRB any second!

Where did you get the info for GRBs?

Would wearing lead boxers reduce the effects? lol

Heh, yes lead boxers and a tinfoil hat will see you right

I can't remember where I first came across the Great Sterilisation hypothesis (it is, after all, highly speculative, just scary!), but GRBs are real enough - you can read about them here. They're so amazingly powerful that no-one really knows what would happen if I set one off in here - we detect them coming from billions of light years away, and they're still disturbingly bright.

well i dont agree with he part about aliens wiping themselves out once they get to intelligent i mean whos to say that they would even possess wmds i mean cmon also if there advanced enough then they should be peaceful

Thats wishful speculation. They could just as easily be war like.

If they're also the product of natural selection (which they presumably would be) I'd think it would be highly likely that they'd be every bit as aggressive, selfish and amoral as we are, probably more so.

Advanced ≠ peaceful

I don't either think that advanced civilizations are a common occurrence, I even think that we might be alone in this Universe but that's another story

You know, that's the first time I've seen someone write that we may be alone.
Everyone seems to think that it's a hellfire certainty that life exists elsewhere in the universe.Why? just because there are millions of galaxies and trillions of stars?
Well, maybe it can be argued that there is a high probability of extraterrestial life,but a high probability doesn't mean a certainty.
I am quite at ease in thinking that we may be totally unique in the universe.
That last comment was refreshing to me......nice one!

Its just one theory amongst others, I knew someone would give me a respond like this because words can be misleading if you dont know the whole story. I did write "but that's another story" but it was obviously not enough for you, so you mix up my words with our ordinary understanding of the universe theory.

I didnt really appreciate your words, but they where probably just for you own ego so, whatever. I guess you find pleasure in laughing at things that you dont understand.

[quote name='chemical-licker' date='Apr 22 2008, 03:55 PM' post='2259821']
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1811


Aliens MUST exist, says Stephen Hawking - but they probably won't be intelligent
Hawking: Odds are stacked against intelligent life like Stephen Spielberg's E.T., below, the British scientist told an audience on Nasa's birthday

The universe may well be teeming with life but the chances of alien intelligence developing are extremely low, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believes.


Stephen might be intelligent about math and other various feilds, but he doesn't know jack sh** about other life in outer space. he, like us, have not been to other planet, so therefore , cannot say there is no intelligent life out there. galaxies upon galaxies, upon and infinite amount of universes, there is no intelligent life out there, that is a bunch of hog wash. Back in egyptian times, they have markings on the walls of flying saucers, before we even had technolgy, there is so much proof out there of intelligent life, you would have to be ignorant to say there is no intelligent life out there. We are just a tiny planet on the edge of our active galaxy, there are so many galxies out there, how could there not be life. Even in our own galaxy, there are hundreds of solar systems spinning with the flow of the supermassive black whole in the center of our galaxy, each planet teaming with its own various forms of life, not all intelligent, but there is some out there. and i bet the aliens that are visiting our planet, are from our own galaxy. We've only scratched the surface of our edge of the galaxy.

Ummm, mate - I don't think he was laughing at you, I think he was agreeing with you

Omg, I read hes post again and I can see it now... Lol Im so sorry protostar I dont know how I got it so wrong, I was expecting dissagrement, laughter and someone throwing a joke on me, so I fired my ready weapons and it backfired, it was like a completely different post, Im screwed now, how do i delete my account? "blushing"

I think there must be life somewhere out there, I mean...it would be a shameful waste of space to have all these planets and galaxies et al and no people to live there!

What I do find interesting is that there is more evidence to suggest a possibility of extra terrestrial life than there was suggesting Saddam had WMD lol

What a clever man that Stephen Hawking guy is, he's come to the exactly same conclusion as me.

uosha1

Stephen might be intelligent about math and other various feilds, but he doesn't know jack sh** about other life in outer space. he, like us, have not been to other planet, so therefore , cannot say there is no intelligent life out there. galaxies upon galaxies, upon and infinite amount of universes, there is no intelligent life out there, that is a bunch of hog wash. Back in egyptian times, they have markings on the walls of flying saucers, before we even had technolgy, there is so much proof out there of intelligent life, you would have to be ignorant to say there is no intelligent life out there. We are just a tiny planet on the edge of our active galaxy, there are so many galxies out there, how could there not be life. Even in our own galaxy, there are hundreds of solar systems spinning with the flow of the supermassive black whole in the center of our galaxy, each planet teaming with its own various forms of life, not all intelligent, but there is some out there. and i bet the aliens that are visiting our planet, are from our own galaxy. We've only scratched the surface of our edge of the galaxy.
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ROLF. ....Yea that Stephen guy don't know 'jack sh** about life in outer space'. Lucky we got you to put us staight. LMAO.

aa heelo. has stephen or yourself been to space. Lol, i didn't thik so, wise ass

I would assume that most life (whatever form it may be in) would be around the same point as Earth around our galaxy - since the further inside you go, the newer the stars and planets.

Hey,.. I've not been to the Pyramids, but I know they're there. But thanks anyway for pointing out what a dipstick Stephen Hawking is.

I wouldn't say he's a dipstick. He might know as much as we do about ET and UFOs but he's provided vast amounts of research into the field of cosmology...most of the info we have about black holes is down to him.

No, I wouldn't dare to presume that Stephen Hawkings was a dipstick (sarcasm) but It seems others on here think his theories rather less credible than their own wild imaginings.
Possibly people who before starting their new job spent a day practicing the phrase ''would you like fries with that?''

You've lost me now...are you saying Stephen Hawking is a dipstick for not knowing much about something no one knows much about?

No I'm saying that the previous poster who used the phrase ''but he (Stephen Hawking) doesn't know jack sh** about other life in outer space'' obviously swims in the shallow end of the gene pool, & by typing such comments only serves to make himself look a complete bonehead.

For somebody on a 'Unexplained Mysteries' forum to effectively say ''he doesn't know what he's talking about'' with regard to Stephen Hawking is comedy of the highest order.

Because we are here! To me it is like going to a lake in Africa and catching a fish, then going to Canada and saying. It was a fluke (pun intended) there will never be another lake with a fish in it.

Personally I think there is intelligent life, atleast one per galaxy. And the black holes are the giant toilets in the sky. LOL

Ah right, less confused now (I should stop just scanning posts!) Well I suggest said poster visits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking.

Ah but there's a difference. We're talking about intelligent life. How many life forms are there on earth?..... millions. How many are intelligent?.....one. (& for god sake don't say dolphins or chimps, neither as far as i know have mastered algabraic equations)

Don't sweat it MD.....no hard feelings.....

You said he was a dipstick, not me. I said he couldn't possibily know that there isn't any intelligent out there, because nobody knows, because none of us have been to all of the universes. I said that nobody should make an assumption, claiming they know for a fact that there isn't any intelligent life out there. I'm a fan of stephen Hawking, all i'm saying is that nobody should say that there is no intelligent life out there, if they haven't even been out there.

The chances of intelligent life developing are extremely low to Dr. Hawking because of the fact that the chances are low here on Earth. Human life is a microcosm compared to the vastness of life on the planet...life that has been, and life that is at the moment. It seems a natural extension to extrapolate the odds of intelligent life on other worlds as being somewhat low, when the advent of intelligent life on this planet was relatively improbable.






This is based again upon what has occurred on Earth.
There is no empirical evidence to support this hypothesis as pertains to the myriad other worlds that must exist...only observations of the only world we know of where intelligent life exists.

When one says, "Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare," what is the basis for that statement?
The only observable platform we have: life on Earth.




Which is an agreeable proposition!

However, this statement rather supports my conclusions...inasmuch as we have no data on any other world to look at.



I would be inclined not to argue this point with him.





I would have to question the relationship between disease as we understand it and DNA. DNA is the same everywhere on Earth, and it is not a pathogen...it is an instruction manual, essentially, a set of complex instructions. If alien "DNA" poses a threat, it is not DNA, but something else altogether.





It's an opinion, certainly....





Obviosuly, the good Dr. has a sense of humor. But he's right...those who oppose the expenditure to expand human consciousness, and resist the human need to explore are alot like those who opposed the voyages of Columbus...whoever they were and why ever they opposed it!

Man must explore (it's part of his DNA instruction book!).


itsnotoutthere said:




Well, Dr. Hawking is a genius, and he knows a little bit about mathematics and cosmology, and other fields of intellectual endeavor, however...

itsnotoutthere absolutely right. No scientist knows anything about life on other planets...intelligent or otherwise. We have no data! Thus, the good Dr.'s opinions are his opinions and are based on his own musings on the subject, but nothing else, save empirical observations concerning the relative rarity of intelligent life on this planet, which is a very small fraction of all life that does, or has existed on this planet.

It's a somewhat logical conclusion to reach, but again, it has no empirical basis, save the observation of the known here on Earth, and whether or not that is a typical scenario is completely an matter of speculation.

Just as the drake equation is so! That too is logical extrapolation based on the known size of the universe.

So which is it? There probably isn't intelligent life in the universe based on what we've seen on Earth---or, there is likely a teeming amount of intelligent life in the universe based on the known expanse of the cosmos?


Personally, I prefer the latter.
Dr. Hawking seems to prefer the former.


I can't argue with him. Nor he with me. It's just opinions.
The fact is, we have absolutely no idea, since we've never seen one jot of evidence one way or the other!

We haven't discovered any other intelligent life yet, of course. However, that may merely be a reflection of the vastness of the cosmos, and our relatively rudimentary attempts to do so.

We simply have no idea yet, one way or the other.

This is Stephen's OPINION, nothing more nothing less. Given the drake equation and the updated version of it (can't remember what it's called) there should be lots of intellegent life out there. To say one per galaxy or 10000 per galaxy is silly as we don't know. I see the odds are in favor or intellegent life out there and lots of it. I think what happened is Stephen was asked a question and he answered it on the spot with out really thinking befor he answered. Until he can say the drake equation and it's counter part are flawed, I'm going with the math, not opinion. As Stephen should have done

LOL Stephen a dip stick LOL to funny, ok who said that kidding that was funny though

Perfectly written. Your interputation of hawking's work is superb. Hawking is after all, so far, the most intelligent man on earth. and i agree, everyone has there own opinions.

it is not easy for him to make such an idea. basicaly he is 50% right: "While there may be primitive life in our region of the galaxy"
may be he only study those videos from NASA. if he got more information. he would not say: "there don't seem to be any advanced intelligent beings,"

I think that he is braver than many others.
about the primitive life, read this: http://ufo-spacelife.blogspot.com/2007/11/...orm-aliens.html

do you think, if at all possible, that there is life surviving in space, without the need to breath, such as sub or deep space Beings? Maybe not intelligent, just existing, and moving through space like a bird would, but through space?

I would not think about if they breath or what they breath? I just found it out from my encounter, there 20%humanoids & 80% other type
of life. for all detail. visit my blog: http://ufo-spacelife.blogspot.com/ , http://ufo-spacelife.blogspot.com/2007/10/...-encounter.html

those two pictures with the airplane, on the top where it showed the time frame, it took exactly 2 seconds for a flying saucer to pass the airplane. wher did you get those pictures, they raise alot of questions

it is not a flying saucer , in the old days people call them "foo fighter". actually they are primitive life forms.
for the shape of UFO, read this: http://ufo-spacelife.blogspot.com/2007/09/shape-of-ufo.html

all photos are captured by me . there many picutres on my blog. if you can understand them,
you are better than many researcher.

I read what you wrote on your blog about these energies, or foo fighters. but why do they exist, and whats their purpose. i'm surprised i've never seen any of these blackspot or blurrs in the sky. if they're not a craft of any kind, besides energies what exactly are they, have they ever come closer to the earth. you said something about them having a face, that would be kind of spooky

read through all the documents of my blog. They may anwser all your questions.
don't panic about their looks, our ancestors know them well.
read this: http://ufo-spacelife.blogspot.com/2007/11/...-mythology.html

http://ufo-spacelife.blogspot.com/2007/11/...mythology2.html

In many ways his assumption is rather anthrocentric. For many of the reasons you state and more. While it is very likely radio signals would be inadvertently sent out by an intelligent species that's assuming many things. One, distance. Our galaxy alone is 100,000 light years across it's plane. We have been sending out and receiving strong radio signals for about 70 years. Even assuming another intelligent civilization has existed for 50,000 years (a hugely optimistic assumption) if they weren't closer to us than 50,000 light years we wouldn't know it. The younger the civilization the more time it would take. Imagine even a technological society a thousand years beyond our own. For one, they'd have to be within a two thousand light years or so of us for us to detect them (a piddling distance in galactic terms) and they'd have to be emitting a spectrum we'd be looking for and recognize as intelligent. Something not likely given our current technological rate of advancement.

Now add to this billions of galaxies, with hundreds of millions of stars in each, at distances that place any type of contact far out of reach. Remeber a civilization that we recieved signals from would have to be twice as old as the distance they are from us when they were sent. The universe is old, but not that old. For most of it's existance it would not be fit for any type of life. In the end I think SETI is overly optimistic and detractors are overly pessimistic. The simple fact of the matter is it's likely impossible to make contact even if there were millions of intelligent civilizations out there. They'd have to be almost impossibly old or ridiculously close.

This is a great response. Thanks for putting it out there so well...

Well, if the evolution of intelligence follows the same path it does on Earth, they'll probably be very competitive, and when they reach intelligence they would still have a lot of the left over stuff that makes them aggressive, just like we have.