Define 'life.' I mean: are we talking naked apes that drive carbon-burners to work to earn money to shop for carbohydrate sheets covered with animal protein and fat to take home and eat while lounging in front of a LCD panel and then spend two hours on a Stair-Master, because their torso resembles a plastic bag crammed-full of whatever they just ingested...
Given the forms that life can take, and the number of planets in the universe, I believe the odds of life existing on other planets is tremendously high.
Will we find evidence of that life in my lifetime? That I wouldn't bet on. But it'd be nice to find it.
Was that posted from your solar powered computer that was made in a United States wind powered factory by vegan workers paid $30/hour and delivered to your door by an electric truck?
No, it was powered by facetiousness. However... Buried beneath the facetiousness was a serious question. Would we be able to recognize life? Honestly- some humans cannot recognize life within the same species when confronted with racial, linguistic, gender and/or religious differences!
I can help put things into scale for people if they're wondering why we haven't "recognized" any other life yet. Personally, I have no doubt that there's other life in the universe. The spiral galaxy we live in has hundreds of billions of stars and hundreds of billions of planets. Our galaxy is 100,000 to 120,000 light years wide. We have been broadcasting radio signals for a bit over 100 years so the broadcast sphere in any direction is 200 light years in diameter. That means our radio signals have reached 1/500th the diameter of the galaxy. The size of the universe is staggeringly huge, so to think that we are the only life living in it is absurd.
This picture shows a tiny blue dot representing how far into our own galaxy broadcast signals from earth have reached. Compare it to our galaxy and then realize that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. The distances between galaxies is far greater than the size of each galaxy. Check out this site for the scale of distances I'm talking about. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/3390.html
Jeff - where in the bloody hell did THAT response come from?
The question was "do you believe there is life on other planets", and my reply was "probably - just haven't seen evidence of it yet", and you repond with a dick-ish "oh look at the granola guy"?
Quite frankly, it would not have been dick-ish had my response been "yes, and I hope we can all be brothers in this wonderful world we call our universe{yada yada yada}". But if that is how you read my response I'm sure GCC offers a Reading Comprehension 101 course you're more than (less than?) qualified for.... :-P
Define 'life.' I mean: are we
Define 'life.' I mean: are we talking naked apes that drive carbon-burners to work to earn money to shop for carbohydrate sheets covered with animal protein and fat to take home and eat while lounging in front of a LCD panel and then spend two hours on a Stair-Master, because their torso resembles a plastic bag crammed-full of whatever they just ingested...
Given the forms that life can
Given the forms that life can take, and the number of planets in the universe, I believe the odds of life existing on other planets is tremendously high.
Will we find evidence of that life in my lifetime? That I wouldn't bet on. But it'd be nice to find it.
Was that posted from your
Was that posted from your solar powered computer that was made in a United States wind powered factory by vegan workers paid $30/hour and delivered to your door by an electric truck?
No, it was powered by
No, it was powered by facetiousness. However... Buried beneath the facetiousness was a serious question. Would we be able to recognize life? Honestly- some humans cannot recognize life within the same species when confronted with racial, linguistic, gender and/or religious differences!
I can help put things into
I can help put things into scale for people if they're wondering why we haven't "recognized" any other life yet. Personally, I have no doubt that there's other life in the universe. The spiral galaxy we live in has hundreds of billions of stars and hundreds of billions of planets. Our galaxy is 100,000 to 120,000 light years wide. We have been broadcasting radio signals for a bit over 100 years so the broadcast sphere in any direction is 200 light years in diameter. That means our radio signals have reached 1/500th the diameter of the galaxy. The size of the universe is staggeringly huge, so to think that we are the only life living in it is absurd.
This picture shows a tiny blue dot representing how far into our own galaxy broadcast signals from earth have reached. Compare it to our galaxy and then realize that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. The distances between galaxies is far greater than the size of each galaxy. Check out this site for the scale of distances I'm talking about. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/3390.html
And if there is life on
And if there is life on another planet, they might not find us very interesting and decline to answer.
Or we look pretty tasty ...
Or we look pretty tasty ...
Just waiting for the
Just waiting for the encrypted broadcast of Hitler opening the Olympic Games to get back here
Howard, I remember seeing
Howard, I remember seeing that episode on The Twilight Zone.......cookbook indeed.
Jeff - where in the bloody
Jeff - where in the bloody hell did THAT response come from?
The question was "do you believe there is life on other planets", and my reply was "probably - just haven't seen evidence of it yet", and you repond with a dick-ish "oh look at the granola guy"?
Quite frankly, it would not have been dick-ish had my response been "yes, and I hope we can all be brothers in this wonderful world we call our universe{yada yada yada}". But if that is how you read my response I'm sure GCC offers a Reading Comprehension 101 course you're more than (less than?) qualified for.... :-P
Perhaps you should take the
Perhaps you should take the class. Jeff's response was directed at CM Baron, as he clearly indicated; "reply to #2" - which is shown to be CM Baron.
Kevin, you are correct, my
Kevin, you are correct, my response was to C.M., not Tim. It could still be put in the category Tim described, but just wasn't directed at his.