Of course it's all of the above. I'm not so sure we have any intelligent life on this planet...

;)

Life? Absolutely, though it's most likely in single-cell or very simplistic form, such as the life on Earth for the first couple billion years.

Intelligent life? Very, very unlikely. Of all the millions of organisms that have ever existed on Earth, we are the only ones to attain this level of sentience.

When you consider how many stars there are in the universe, it seems not only likely but almost inevitable that there either is or was another intelligent species. There have been attempts to quantify the odds, such as the Drake Equation, but such attempts are meaningless due to the amount of conjecture involved.

Look, you'll have to convince me that there is intelligent life on Earth first before we move on to lofty concepts like the universe.

Where's my "Wait, there is intelligent life anywhere in the universe?" option?

We've only recently realized we're not the only galaxy....stay tuned.

To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice.

It would probably be easiest to say that intelligent life likely exists. I can even go as far as to say I believe it exists elsewhere. However, when I say intelligent life exists elsewhere, the burden of proof is upon me to show it exists rather than on the naysayers to say it does not exist. Thanks to Bertrand Russell for the quote.

Take this episode of South Park (Lice Capades, S11 E3, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lice_Capades). Imagine we are the lice. This paragraph does not add anything to the discussion. I just wanted to watch South Park.

Harui wrote:Life? Absolutely, though it's most likely in single-cell or very simplistic form, such as the life on Earth for the first couple billion years.

Intelligent life? Very, very unlikely. Of all the millions of organisms that have ever existed on Earth, we are the only ones to attain this level of sentience.

Great points.


But when you say "universe", we're talking about everything in existence. The galaxies that we only see as a speck and the billions of galaxies we cannot see. Even if the odds are 1:10trillion for intelligent life to form, there's enough out there that it simply has to happen again.

Any intelligent life in a galaxy within 1,000 light years? Nope. Life? Probably.

firebirdude wrote:
Any intelligent life in a galaxy within 1,000 light years? Nope. Life? Probably.

This means if we had the means to travel such great distances at light speed and had unlimited fuel and unlimited food and all necessities (did I mention we would be traveling at the speed of light?) we would still take thirty to fifty generations to get somewhere and we would still not meet intelligent life.

Wow. I guess whatever I am doing right now is not nearly as futile as that. Thanks for the optimistic quote.

Also, imagining a sphere around the earth of radius 1000 light years, there are so many points that we'd need to go to that it would be impossible unless we made lots and lots of assumptions like intelligent life can only exist in places where the conditions are so and so... basically we would be saying the conditions are good enough for us to survive. That narrows down the places to look at by a lot. I am guessing we do not really care about intelligent life that can only exist at atmospheric pressures of 10k times the earth atmosphere at sea level and at 5000 degrees centigrade, right?

Definitely..........Do you think that God would be satisfied with these earthly creations?

There is not only life out there but intelligent life! I know because they are smart enough to stay clear of us..... if we kill, snuffleupagus, and murder people that just happen to be a different, or even the same color. Imagine what we will do to a green, purple, or fish-like being with three arms, and the telepathic ability to read your mind.

I've always thought that it is very vain for humans to assume that we are the only intelligent life in the universe. Of course there must be others out there. How close, how intelligent, and whether we will ever meet them are entirely different questions.

bmrbill wrote:Of course it's all of the above. I'm not so sure we have any intelligent life on this planet...

;)

Verbatim, this was what I was going to post. Haha.

D, which of course begs the question: is there intelligent life here?

There has to be intelligent life out there. The proof is in them not contacting us. We are still looking for intelligent life on this planet.

Of course, there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The very fact that they have not contacted us proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. They are waiting until our planet begins to show intelligence before contacting us. It is, after all, the Prime Directive.

There isn't any intelligent life on this planet let along anywhere else out there... LOL

Only two options? Screw this poll

...with a pinecone.

Harui wrote:Life? Intelligent life? Very, very unlikely. Of all the millions of organisms that have ever existed on Earth, we are the only ones to attain this level of sentience.

I can think of five other species just off the top of my head.

Don't confuse advanced technology with sentience.

Most of the time I'm not convinced there is intelligent life on Earth.

Harui wrote:Life? Absolutely, though it's most likely in single-cell or very simplistic form, such as the life on Earth for the first couple billion years.

Intelligent life? Very, very unlikely. Of all the millions of organisms that have ever existed on Earth, we are the only ones to attain this level of sentience.

A bit of an overreach there. After all, the intelligent dinosaurs might have perished with the rest in the meteor. Or they may have left.

C) somewhere at some time. Not necessarily "now."


/but I don't think much of the "intelligent life" HERE either. That's mostly because I pay too much attention to politics.

keaco wrote:We've only recently realized we're not the only galaxy....stay tuned.

Um, no. We've known about other galaxies for quite some time. William Herschel was one of the first astronomers to catalog them in 1786.

Why would there be intelligent life out there ? Even if there were, would we know it if we saw it ?

Discord wrote:Um, no. We've known about other galaxies for quite some time. William Herschel was one of the first astronomers to catalog them in 1786.

Sounds extremely recent to me considering the age of civilization not to mention the estimated age of the universe.

jdfox316 wrote:Most of the time I'm not convinced there is intelligent life on Earth.

Me too!

There is very little intelligent life on earth these days. However - God is out there somewhere and he's pretty smart! I hope this doesn't start that whole - Creation vs. Evolution thing people....Let it go...just let it go.....

None of these!

This is all dependent on your definition of intelligent species. As a longtime armchair scientists and amateur astronomer I've learned that if it exists here, it probably exists elsewhere. Everything observable that was once thought to be unique in the universe tends to be found quite commonly once we determine what to look for, consider neutron stars, lensing, brown dwarf stars, and in this case the foreign star planet discovery that has increased seemingly exponentially for the past two years. Given the immensity of the universe, the observation that the single star systems that literally always have planets/matter accreting comprise about 20% of the visible stars, and the fact that we dont find things that stay "unique" in the universe the very very high probability of intelligent life would be extremely hard to dispute.

I don't remember where I heard it, probably some movie I'll be embarrassed to have admitted to watching, but this has stuck with me for a long time:

Would it be more frightening to find out that we aren't the only intelligent life in our universe? Or to find out that we are?

Probability-wise, there's no doubt..out of billions of other galaxies were just a grain of sand on a beach. As far as proof goes, no one person can or has proven it yet..however the "misinformation" we're given by governments and whatnot only makes you question why they would go so far out of their way to try and coverup things of this nature. An example being, the Roswell incident of 1947. The first U.S. nuclear test which I believe was called Trinity occurred in 1945 (followed by more detonations). Two years later an apparent UFO was captured with beings and covered up by the government. Who is to say that, and it is theoretically possible, intelligent life relatively close by picked up on these detonations and came to investigate seeing that it could take them two earth years to travel here..just food for thought..

Duuuuu... No dought.

In all honesty the chance that Human beings are the ONLY intelligent society in the entire universe is astronomically low. I personally don't understand some peoples arrogance in saying there is no other intelligent life, be it more or less intelligent than us. How foolish is it to think that our planet is the only planet capable of supporting life when Nasa has recently found proof of micro-organisms on Mars or all places? If life can evolve here than it can certainly evolve elsewhere.

danielleroybrown wrote:Why would there be intelligent life out there ? Even if there were, would we know it if we saw it ?

Why wouldn't there be intelligent life out there I think is the better question.

Phoulmouth wrote:In all honesty the chance that Human beings are the ONLY intelligent society in the entire universe is astronomically low.

We're not even the only intelligent society on Earth.