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Originally Posted by willravel
I think I need someone to explain this one to me. I've always heard from the optimistic scientist "it make sense that there is intelligent life out there". How could that conclusion be made? Just because there are billions of stars and millions of planets? Well, there are hundreds of billions or trillions of variables that are necessary in the creation of life, let alone intelligent life. I see no basis for guessing if there is or is not intelligent life, personally. Until ET comes down from his ship, there is no basis.
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Alright, I'll throw my logic out there.
Situation #1: The universe is, in fact, infinite...
If this universe is actually inifinite, as some still propose, then there is infinite probability that intelligent life exists elsewhere. Though, one could also make the argument that there is infinite probability that there is NO intelligent life elsewhere. It's murkier than it seems on the surface.
Situation #2: The universe is not, in fact, infinite... just really, really big
In this case it's a crap shoot. However, "billions of stars and millions of planets" may be short sighted. First, though there are MANY stars, especially is star-birth clusters, that have no orbiting matter, stars that DO often have as many or more planets than our own solar system. Regardless, see my above post about the absolute size of the universe. If it IS even measurable, humans cannot possibly even really grasp it's complete size and encompassment... and this assume only the four dimensions that we as humans can perceive in a natural environment. Hell, we've known about gravity for how many millenia? We still don't understand how IT works. There are many, much larger things at play. Who's to say that our laws of physics even apply in other solar systems or other galaxies? Who's to say that a universe isn't jsut the next biggest alotment of star groups, and ours in only one of billions of universes? Since we DON'T have answers to those, reason would have it that we just don't really get all the forces at work here. Right now, the creation of life seems amazing... but not as amazing as it did 2000 years ago. Hell, we can BUILD new life in ways never before thought humanly possible. How long before we just manufacture new breeds of animals as we see fit? Who knows for sure we weren't just some genetic experiment by aliens from somewhere far away? I guess my answer is... I don't know... but neither do you...