Alien life in our galaxy ‘far more likely than first thought’

[Eldorado]

Chances of alien life in our galaxy are far more likely that first thought after scientists found “significant amounts” of large organic molecules surrounding young stars.

Dr John Ilee, a research fellow at the University of Leeds, who led the study, said the findings suggest that the basic chemical conditions that resulted in life on Earth could exist more widely across the Milky Way.

MSN

[quiXilver]

"far more likely than first thought"

only for some

 

"suggest that the basic chemical conditions that resulted in life on Earth could exist more widely across the Milky Way"

better late than never...

Edited September 15, 2021 by quiXilver

[Tatetopa]

14 minutes ago, quiXilver said:

only for some

consider it supporting evidence for that thought.

[Trelane]

I wonder what the odds are that the exact events, processes, and external factors that lead to life and eventually intelligent life here could be replicated elsewhere in the galaxy.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Trelane

[khol]

10 hours ago, Trelane said:

I wonder what the odds are that the exact events, processes, and external factors that lead to life and eventually intelligent life here could be replicated elsewhere in the galaxy.

Probably crazy high I would expect. There should be a distinction recognized between life and intelligent life... with the latter emerging at a drastically lower rate

Edited September 16, 2021 by khol

[Piney]

11 hours ago, Trelane said:

I wonder what the odds are that the exact events, processes, and external factors that lead to life and eventually intelligent life here could be replicated elsewhere in the galaxy.

A system with metals and the perfect amount of O2 for fire (technology). 

The perfect amount of 02 part is the clincher.

Which makes the odds...... "astronomical".........sorry......sorry... 

[MissJatti]

Yes alien life.. possiably, and itelligent life with flying saucers that comes to our planet, I highly doubt it

[godnodog]

I keep hearing that Earth and the Solar system is average regarding its chemicals signatures. So why would life (at the very least on a cellular level) not be relatively common? 

Yeah, it's a belief of.mine, but I also think it's a reasonable assumption.

[Piney]

2 minutes ago, godnodog said:

I keep hearing that Earth and the Solar system is average regarding its chemicals signatures. So why would life (at the very least on a cellular level) not be relatively common? 

 

Life is probably very common. The technology part is probably very, very rare.

 

[Gumball]

There seems to be a bit of a bipolar attitude towards this. It's either really high or we're all alone. There's never a scientist who says

[Dejarma]

45 minutes ago, mesuma said:

There seems to be a bit of a bipolar attitude towards this. It's either really high or we're all alone. There's never a scientist who says

yep good words. 
Are aliens here on this planet? It's possible imo, why not.. But that's a different question with regards to the existence of life in the universe.. I'm sure you'll agree.

I can't get my head around the thought of the vastness of this universe & we are the only ones!

If this is the case then what's the point of everything else? One must ask

[Freez1]

We are not the only life in the universe and it�s stupid to think that we are. I think our own planet has been the birth place for more than one intelligent humanoid species in the distant past. One day I think we will find out many things like the moon or Mars was once inhabited by other forms of life. There is a certain point where everything that once was is no more. Billions of years from now do you think we will leave much evidence behind we were here? Everything is recycled and may show up as mineral deposits in certain areas but that�s about all that will be left behind. Nature has a way of turning everything back into soil. But this is just my thoughts on it.

[Trelane]

8 hours ago, godnodog said:

I keep hearing that Earth and the Solar system is average regarding its chemicals signatures. So why would life (at the very least on a cellular level) not be relatively common? 

Yeah, it's a belief of.mine, but I also think it's a reasonable assumption.

I'm thinking our type of star, our distance from that star, having a moon of ours' size, the "scrubbing" of species through extinction events Is what comes to mind for me. At least in the development for intelligent life.

Edited September 17, 2021 by Trelane

[pallidin]

My humble opinion is that I think life throughout the Universe is relatively common (given local circumstances of course)...

Perhaps even intelligent life; perhaps even super-advanced.

Who knows at this point?

But I think all of it is very, very real.

I applaud the brave efforts of the scientists... Carry on.

[Berwen]

This topic has been debated for years and although the odds are astronomical for creation of life the number of planets out there is more than astronomical. And.... if there is intelligent life out will they look at what we have and what we are doing here on earth and decide we are more like a virus and are destroying the planet on which we live. They would probably decide on not inviting us to their world. 

Edited September 17, 2021 by Berwen

[Myles]

22 hours ago, Piney said:

Life is probably very common. The technology part is probably very, very rare.

 

I agree.  Look at how much time it took Humans to rule on Earth.  It took extinction events to allow for mammals to evolve as much as they did.  For the timing to line up for Humans and another alien species to be ruling at the same time is long odds on it's own. 

[toast]

As per NASA estimation there are about 10B terrestrial planets across in our MilkyWay. Thats a good number of "petri dishes" and if combined with time there is a lot of room for trial and error I would say.

Edited September 17, 2021 by toast
jajaja!

[Gumball]

22 hours ago, Dejarma said:

yep good words. 
Are aliens here on this planet? It's possible imo, why not.. But that's a different question with regards to the existence of life in the universe.. I'm sure you'll agree.

I can't get my head around the thought of the vastness of this universe & we are the only ones!

If this is the case then what's the point of everything else? One must ask

Sorry.  For some reason my posts get deleted after the top line even though I can see the whole thing.  What it left out is there never seems to be a "maybe" scientist.  It seems to be one or the other or that's probably just the posts on here.

[docyabut2]

We don't want to know Brain Bug

Starship Troopers (film) - Wikipedia

[Phantom309]

4 hours ago, toast said:

As per NASA estimation there are about 10B terrestrial planets across in our MilkyWay. Thats a good number of "petri dishes" and if combined with time there is a lot of room for trial and error I would say.

And astronomers have determined all the key components to life as we know it like oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen etc are all out there scattered through the universe, so thats got to be a big plus.

 

[ChrLzs]

So, you get your chemical soup and apply various environmental conditions, bombard it with various levels and types of radiation..

You don't think many, many scientists have been and are trying that?  And how many times has life begun in their test tubes to date?

In fact, how many times has it happened successfully here on earth, where those processes on a wider scale have been happening over the billions of years?

I'm glad you asked.  Only once, at one instant and in one place.  Look up 'Last Universal Common Ancestor' - LUCA.

[Grim Reaper 6]

On 9/16/2021 at 11:30 AM, Trelane said:

I wonder what the odds are that the exact events, processes, and external factors that lead to life and eventually intelligent life here could be replicated elsewhere in the galaxy.

You make some great points, but here is some thing to consider. Our Universe is approximately 13.5 Billion Years old, our Solar System is Approximately 4.5 Billion years old. Our Solar system, our Star and the Earth are young in the scheme of things and intelligent life developed here, and according to Fossil record the first Biogenesis allowed life to begin approximately 3.7 Billion Years ago. Now consider that in the span of approximately 8 Hundred Thousand Years from the Earths creation the surface of the Earth had cooled enough from its fiery bombarded volcanic state, for water to pool in places and not evaporate so that the first life forms could survive. 

Now consider that the Universe is approximately 9 Billion years older than the Earth. Each light speck In the nights sky is a Galaxy or stars within Galaxies, some of which are as old as 13.2 billion years. ""The observable universe is estimated to contain 200 billion galaxies, and assuming an average of 100 billion stars per galaxy means that there are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion trillion) stars in the observable universe."" Star in the observable Universe http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=3775  Galaxies in the observable Universe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy

How many planets are in the observable Universe? "" For those of you who like to see gigantic numbers written out in full, around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in our observable Universe, and that's only counting planets that are orbiting stars.""  https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-many-planets-in-the-universe-9153a05bd0d5 How many Earth like habitable planes are in the our Galaxy. ""Astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_analog 

The Kepler Space Telescope found the oldest solar system in the galaxy. While digging through backlogged data from the Kepler telescope, scientists found Kepler-444, an 11.2 billion year-old star in the Milky Way orbited by at least five Earth-sized planets. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/kepler-finds-oldest-solar-system-galaxy

Now honestly when you consider that the Universe is approximately 13.5 Billion years old and the oldest Solar System in our Galaxy formed approximately 11.2 Billion Years ago. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/kepler-finds-oldest-solar-system-galaxy

That could easily mean life in the Universe could have started approximately 6 Billion Years Before the first life began to grow on the Earth. My point is actually pretty simple, while it is only theoretical there could be species that have had Billions of years to advance for beyond our current level of evolution and technology. A species that is that old could easily have technology that could keep them completely hidden from us. Now I don't believe there are Allien Species visiting Earth, because honestly we would have nothing that an advanced species would even want. As far as a Allien Species having the technology to Warp Space Time and create wormholes or other advanced methods of travel it is all theoretically possible. 

You may laugh at me and that's ok, however what i have stated above I do think based upon the information above that we are not the most intelligent life in the Universe by a long shot.

Peace

 

 

 

[bison]

I don't believe that much more advanced extraterrestrial civilizations would necessarily find us uninteresting. Humans study all manner of more 'primitive' forms of life found on our own planet-- insects, amphibians, microbes, etc.

 If we could, we'd study these if we found them on other planets, too. For example- the search for even very basic forms of life on Mars is one of the most serious goals of the exploration of that planet. 

I strongly suspect that the exploration activities of civilizations not too much more advanced than ourselves, say a few centuries or millennia ahead of us, would be more obvious than where the difference was in the millions to billions of years range. 

Of course if they wanted to study our reactions to their presence, or prepare us before contacting us openly, they might allow themselves to be seen fairly often, if only in a somewhat fleeting and ambiguous way. 

[Mr Walker]

On 9/19/2021 at 6:58 PM, ChrLzs said:

So, you get your chemical soup and apply various environmental conditions, bombard it with various levels and types of radiation..

You don't think many, many scientists have been and are trying that?  And how many times has life begun in their test tubes to date?

In fact, how many times has it happened successfully here on earth, where those processes on a wider scale have been happening over the billions of years?

I'm glad you asked.  Only once, at one instant and in one place.  Look up 'Last Universal Common Ancestor' - LUCA.

Two points it only has to happen once (given that the process is able to continue) 

 

Second, it happened here,  thus it CAN happen anywhere with similar conditions (and indeed it might happen in a different way under different conditions producing non- carbon based life forms )

Ps while LUCA is the ancestor of all life NOW existing on earth does this mean that  all life which has ever existed on earth came from  one ancestor? 

Not necessarily.

Other life may have begun and died out.  

This is the LAST universal common ancestor of life on earth, not necessarily the first  

first universal common ancestor makes an interesting acronym  

 

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-30363-1_3

and yep, I understand that FUCA is the same lineage as LUCA,  but there may have been previous  lineages which no longer exist 

Edited September 21, 2021 by Mr Walker

[Mr Walker]

An alien species doesn't have to be much older or more technologically advanced than us to make it almost incomprehensible to us 

eg Take a human from 10000 years ago and bring him to the middle of a modern city and watch what happens.  Heck take one from 500 years ago and observe 

Take a human from  today, and place him/her 500 years in the future.

They would be lost   and  unable to function, just as a  person from  500 years ago could not function in a modern society  until they learned how to do things.