Do You Believe In The Existence Of Aliens?
 

Hey all,

I thought I would put this in the science section since it's one important question with scientific impacts. I'm not the most intelligent person but I do try to learn as much as I possibly can so anyone who can enlighten me is greatly appreciated. I recently watched a programme on Discovery with Steven Hawkins and he gave us his perspective on life beyond our own planet. I was fascinated with what he said life could be like, and lots of it unknown to us as life. The possibilities of life under martian soil, and even life that moves through space itself rather than living on planets. He certainly got my imagination going!

I believe that alien life is possible, if not certain. With the size of the universe and the age it has existed there MUST be other life out there. Even creatures like the Na'vi could exist or have existed when you look at the numbers. There is such diversity on our Earth, so imagine what could be possible out there! Maybe life follows some sort of rules for the environment it is in, so for a planet like Earth, life would evolve in a similar way. Bipedial, tool using creatures. They could be reptilian or even rodent like but the general form of intelligent life would look somewhat familiar. Life could be based on silicon instead of carbon, so their planet could be uninhabitable to us but perfect for them.

I like to think that maybe some civilizations are out there observing us but leaving us to our own folly's. It's nice to think aliens could help us but I think the human race is still young, with a long way to go. One thing that would make my life is contact with intelligent alien beings, but I think we may destroy ourselves before we got to that point.

What is everyone else's thoughts on this subject?

I think anything is possible. Sometimes I even hope that there are aliens because I think it would make life so exciting. Unless aliens came to Earth to exterminate us...then I would be sad xD I've always loved Scifi/Fantasy movies and i've always been alittle jealous of all the different races.

It would be nice to know that the Earth is not only one place where is some intelligent life. Yeah some peacefull humanoids like na'vi ... would be amazing.
My personal opinion is that there is probably some life out there, but it can have many exotic forms and maybe forms that we can't imagine (even different chemical constitution or energy form ... who knows). There is also a big question about definition of life. What exactly is life? Are existing rules valid for all possible life forms?

I think the existence of extra-terrestrial life is highly probable.

Us ever coming into contact with said extra-terrestrial life? Significantly less probable.

I don't know if there is other life out there. Anything is possible though. I don't think it is very likely that we will contact any other life in the foreseeable future since the distances that separate us from the rest of the universe is very, very immense. Its an interesting thought though. Are there alien civilizations that are trying to contact us? Who knows? Its possible that if there are civilizations out there they would not necessarily be technologically advanced. They could be living like the Na'vi or in some other capacity. I'm not sure if we will ever find out.

Yeah I think there is life. I think the universe is too big just for us, though they may be only some microbes or something. Who knows, maybe we are a part of a bigger organism - think Men in Black ending. ;)

Oh and btw, I saw UFO. ;)

I think that there is a very high chance of there being life somewhere out there. Earth is the 3rd planet in an 8 planet solar sytem orbiting an ordinary star. There are hundreds of billions of similar stars in just our own galaxy, The Milky Way. 100,000 light years in diameter. Our neighbor galaxy, Andromeda, is twice as big as The Milky Way. Then there are billions of other unmapped galaxies out there.

Just by shear mathmatical probablity, the chances are astronomically high. (see what I did there?)

Seriously. Our solar system might take about 0.00.000.0001 of the space, and that's just in the Milky Way!
It's very probable that there is alien life, whether ugly like Tsu'tey or beautiful like Neytiri. ;)

With "Alien" you mean life that exists outside Earth?

In that case, yes. There is other life out there.

All in honesty, there has to be extraterrestrial life in outer space. The universe is filled with such incredible depth and it's incomprehensibly vast that there can't not be aliens. For those who think that they are completely 100% alone in the entire universe, I disagree with. It's pretty much unthinkable and impossible in my opinion. It just wouldn't make sense to me saying that there's no life outside of our own existence.

I'll give you an example...

Think of a fish swimming in water and a sea turtle that can walk on land. Do you think that a fish can understand what the land is like? It doesn't have the capacity to roam and move about freely within that realm we call land. It is aware of only the sea and doesn't know anything else but the sea itself. Whereas the turtle can traverse between both dimensions; land and water. So it knows that both of them exists while the fish knows only of one. You can't blame the fish for not knowing a certain place outside of it's own existence, yet the turtle will have trouble explaining it to them because they are unaware that such a land is possible. It's inconceivable in their mindsets because that reality doesn't exist for them. Of course, this doesn't change a thing as we can clearly see that the turtle has the ability to see both realms at any time. In other words, just because we don't think something exists, doesn't mean it's not there. Sometimes we have to stretch beyond our normal capacity in order to understand the meaning of certain things in life, such as the extraterrestrial phenomenon theories that we know of today. :)

Here's the source that I found to back up my theory: Parable of the fish and turtle

Hope this post helps! :)

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Here's the blogpost from the link above for those who can't click on it.

The Fish and the Turtle

Once upon a time there was a fish. And just because it was a fish, it had lived all its life in the water and knew nothing whatever about anything else but water. And one day as it swam about in the lake where all its days had been spent, it happened to meet a turtle of its acquaintance who had just come back from a little excursion on the land.

"Good day, Mr. Turtle!" said the fish. "I have not seen you for a long time. Where have you been?"

"Oh", said the turtle, "I have just been for a trip on dry land."

"On dry land!" exclaimed the fish. "What do you mean by on dry land? There is no dry land. I had never seen such a thing. Dry land is nothing."

"Well," said the turtle good-naturedly. "If you want to think so, of course you may; there is no one who can hinder you. But that's where I've been, all the same."

"Oh, come," said the fish. "Try to talk sense. Just tell me now what is this land of yours like? Is it all wet?"

"No, it is not wet," said the turtle.

"Is it nice and fresh and cool?" asked the fish.

"No, it is not nice and fresh and cool," the trutle replied.

"Is it clear so that light can come through it?"

"No, it is not clear. Light cannot come through it."

"Is it soft and yielding, so that I can move my fins about in it and push my nose through it?"

"No, it is not soft and yielding. You could not swim in it."

"Does it move or flow in streams?"

"No, it neither moves nor flows in streams."

"Does it ever rise up into waves then, with white foams in them?" asked the fish, impatient at this string of Noes.

"No!" replied the turtle, truthfully. "It never rises up into waves that I have seen."

"There now," exclaimed the fish triumphantly. "Didn't I tell you that this land of yours was just nothing? I have just asked, and you have answered me that it is neither wet nor cool, not clear nor soft and that it does not flow in streams nor rise up into waves. And if it isn't a single one of these things what else is it but nothing? Don't tell me."

"Well, well", said the turtle, "If you are determined to think that dry land is nothing, I suppose you must just go on thinking so. But any one who knows what is water and what is land would say you were just a silly fish, for you think that anything you have never known is nothing just because you have never known it."

And with that the turtle turned away and, leaving the fish behind in its little pond of water, set out on another excursion over the dry land that was nothing.

~ Source: "The Buddha and His Teachings" by Maha thera Narada.

Used to be sure there wasn't any life other than us.

...Not so sure anymore, the more I think about it.

I saw that Documentary too, it was like a good 2 hours long too which was awesome. :)
I believe that it's more improbably for life not to exist elsewhere than it is existing at all. Think about it: we are proof that life is possible and there is no reason why it isnt possible elsewhere. Sure, the circumstances resulting in life on Earth are delicate and rare, but it just proves that if the possibilities are numerous, then chances are that life could've happened a billion times before life on Earth. There are 100 billion galaxies in the documented universe alone each with more than a trillion stars with many planets orbiting them; what are the chances of life being elsewhere? I dont think I need to say. ;)

I too have seen things in the sky that were unexplainable. A couple of instances, but the first was the most convincing. A very fast, maneuverable object that acted as though it knew we were watching. I watched it for a while with a group of friends and then started to get scared and ran home! I was about 14 at the time but had an interest in things paranormal so had an idea of how to tell if it was man made or not (read lots of magazines and books on the subject).

How did it look like? (I knew I should have made the paranormal thread here instead of general forum, but whatever lol) The ones I saw were more like lights, just appearing and disappearing on a clear evening sky, flying around in groups, changing speed and direction very randomly, later when it was almost gone, I saw some of them like "taking off" from behind the woods in front of us, ascending with massive speed and disappearing. Not sure if it was manned though, I mean it was really just a big light source with very strange behaviour, might as well be some sort of physical phenomena. There's a vid on youtube where is it captured, it looks exactly the same. Wait...







Those at 0:45 are exactly the same, we just saw more of them, much higher and farther than this. After the show, we rolled up a big joint and got totally wasted. :D But not before the show lol! I must emphasize this every time I tell this. xD

Nah, general forums is better.

Paranormal activities doesn't have to do with anything science related - it can be other things as well.