why are we alone in the universe.no other life can be found, even billions of light years away.just cant get my head around it.?
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answers:
roberto say: one as these days ronald will post those soes I can blow it up & read the damn thing,,maybe my machines fault
sonny we are froggies on our lilly pads,only a short time ago did some of us strike out & make the pilgrimage to the ocean shore,,vast,YUUUUGE,,,,froggies wonderng 'how do we get across the damn thing,,ribbit goddamn ribbit hownihell??????'
the universe is vast,,billions of years older n us
and other lily pads are sssoooooooooooooooo far off,we need a lot betetr than jetskis to visit on explore it,then go elsewhere to look again.
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Jeffrey K say: We don't know if we are alone or not. Most scientists think there is life on many planets. Its true that we haven't found proof of life. But it is very difficult to know what (or who) is on a planet so far away that we can't even see it.
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Ronald 7 say: Just because we have found no more life, the distances as well as the areas we have to search are so huge
there is no reason why a rocky planet around some distant star couldn't have went through the same stages
Bombardment by Asteroids, Comets and even Proto Planets, could have laid down a firm base for an alternative Evolution
with Plate Tectonics, Deep Sea Smokers etc.
Europa one of Jupiter's moons is thought to have the same kind of internal Make up underneath its subterranean Ocean beneath its Ice Shell
It has a lot of Tidal Heating from its Elliptical orbit
The Ingredients are there
What are the chances ??
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quantumclaustrophobe say: We've only just started looking... The universe may be *teeming* with life, or it may just be very rare - we have no idea as yet. We *might* be the only intelligence there is, but... I have a hard time accepting that as yet. We just have to wait for evidence, either way...
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MARK say: Your question assumes we are alone but we do not know this. What most of us struggle to get our heads around is just how enormously huge the universe is. It is unlikely our planet is the only one with life on it. It is also unlikely that the Earth is the only planet with intelligent life. There well be other planets with life but finding them in the vastness of the universe is not easy.
Some astronomers suspect there is another giant planet in our solar system that we have not yet found. If there is an undiscovered large planet in our backyard just imagine how difficult it is to find life in the rest of the universe.
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Sky say: Just because we haven't found other life, let alone intelligent life, doesn't mean this planet is alone in the universe as a location for life to exist. The vast distances between the stars and galaxies make it exceedingly difficult to communicate across long distances, resulting in any radio signals diminishing to the point that they would just blend in with the background noise of the universe, and making it exceedingly difficult to observe planets and their atmospheres around stars outside our solar system for spectral signatures of possible life.
The universe could be teeming with life, but several factors prevent us from knowing about it:
1. The distances I just mentioned.
2. Non-intelligent life would not have any ability to communicate through the radio methods we're looking for.
3. An intelligent civilization would have to be at a point in their development where they have technological advancement for detecting or transmitting some sort of radio or other electromagnetic communication. Just think: a century and a half ago we could have been getting bombarded with radio communications from aliens but never knew it because we didn't have that technology, so they stopped trying to communicate because they never received a response and never detected any transmissions from us.
4. There could already be a ton of communication being sent our way but radio, ie. light, travels at a set speed and may have just not gotten here yet.
5. When looking at other stars many thousands of light years away, or galaxies many millions or billions of light years away, we're seeing them as they were thousands, millions, or billions of years ago. Those galaxies may have thousands of intelligent, advanced civilizations, but as far as our telescopes are concerned we only see those galaxies as having, at best, single-celled life anywhere. Telescopes and detectors are windows into the past, not a view of right now.
The nearest star to us is the Alpha Centauri star system (2 or 3 stars orbiting each other with planets around them), and even that is 4 light years away. The distances are just too vast. It would be entirely premature to conclude that the ocean of the universe is devoid of life and that we're alone when we barely have the ability to get our feet wet in it.
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busterwasmycat say: well, mostly it is a case of we cannot look there because it is so far away, so we know nothing. Not knowing if there is, is not the same as knowing there is not.
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Lôn say: Out of the billions of stars ...if only a tenth of them had planets orbiting them and only a tenth of those planets had conditions suitable for life, then there would be millions and millions of habitable planets. The chances of other life are VERY VERY high. The problem is that they are so far away we are not able to come into contact with them. The fact that we can't find them doesn't mean they are not there.
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David say: How do you know there isn't?
As for example if you were an intelligent force out there in the Universe would you bother to make any contact with the people on Earth?
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Petter say: Because we can't detect life billions of lightyears away? Not even one lightyear away...
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Who say: we have NO idea if there is life outside the solar system cos we have NO way of finding out
We cant even find planets in our own galaxy
We can only infer their existence by changes in light from the stars they orbit, and even then they gotta be BIG planets
And our galaxy is only 1 out of many billions of galaxies
ALL we can see of any galaxy is a single source of light -
we have absolutely NO chance picking out individual stars in that galaxy to measure the light from it to see if its got planets.
(I think getting your head around the HUGE expanse of the universe is even more difficult)
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ReductioAdAstronomicus say: You have really put the source of the problem succinctly:"just can't get your head around it". Neither can a lot of other folks. They are apparently terrified of the idea of all those billions of light years of space without any "people" in it. It comes from being a member of a herd species.
To combat this terror, a whole lot of superstitious, fantasy, delusional and outright nutty excuses have been fabricated to explain the lack of detection of life "up there". Anything to avoid the dreaded prospect that we are alone.
Just learn to appreciate the magnificent emptiness of the universe. Try to accept it for it is, rather than fighting it. There are far better and more earthly issues to expend your mindpower on.
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Sharon say: our ability to find life outside Earth is severely limited, and outside the Solar System it is almost impossible
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someg say: Nobody else survived the big bang. We just got lucky.
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Acetek say: give us time. life is out there we will find it or it will find us
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