Life on other planets

[Kablamo]

wow.

thats a good turnout

[scythe]

You'd also have to take time into consideration. We humans have only really been "civilized" for the last several thousand years, which is just a blink relative to how long the universe has been around. Even if by some crazy random happenstance there aren't any other forms of life in the universe in our same multi-millennial window, there damned well have been and will be.
Of course, in all practicality, no forms of life will ever actually encounter another in their civilized periods, either.

...and now I'm thinking how frickin' weird it is, given the tremendous amount of time humans spent effectively being about as evolved as we are now but before we were civilized, and working with the expectation that humans will last at least another good few thousand years, that I'm alive and about in this time. If you're working in ranges on the order of millions, you'd expect chance to deposit you in the order of the millions (there are 10 times as many numbers in the millions as there are in the hundreds of thousands, which themselves have 10 times the numbers of the tens of thousands, etc.), not near the maximum point of the range, give or take a few thousand.
I don't know whether to be thankful that I'm not hunting mammoth or to feel gypped because I'm alive before we've spread to other solar systems. :|

You mean something like this?

[Eiturlyf]

I do not think that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Or that the Big Bang happened.

I don't understand you.

[Condog]

I do not think that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Or that the Big Bang happened.

I don't understand you.

What's not to understand? He doesn't believe there is any intelligent life anywhere in the universe, nor that said universe was created by the Big Bang.

However, I would like to hear your alternative explanation for the creation of the universe.

[jean-luc]

Good point.
Could the Big Bang really create an infinite amount of matter?
Because all matter is conserved, so there might not be as much universe as we think...

The Big Bang doesn't need to. The Big Bang is responsible only for our universe, and thus only our little corner of space. There's no reason not to believe that there are an infinite number of other universes beyond ours.

[Eiturlyf]

I do not think that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Or that the Big Bang happened.

I don't understand you.

...
However, I would like to hear your alternative explanation for the creation of the universe.

Yes, please.

[Tanner]

He is allowed to be agnostic toward the creation of the universe, guys.

He's allowed to be agnostic toward the method of the creation of the universe. He should probably have an opinion on whether the place exists or not.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

You'd also have to take time into consideration. We humans have only really been "civilized" for the last several thousand years, which is just a blink relative to how long the universe has been around. Even if by some crazy random happenstance there aren't any other forms of life in the universe in our same multi-millennial window, there damned well have been and will be.
Of course, in all practicality, no forms of life will ever actually encounter another in their civilized periods, either.

...and now I'm thinking how frickin' weird it is, given the tremendous amount of time humans spent effectively being about as evolved as we are now but before we were civilized, and working with the expectation that humans will last at least another good few thousand years, that I'm alive and about in this time. If you're working in ranges on the order of millions, you'd expect chance to deposit you in the order of the millions (there are 10 times as many numbers in the millions as there are in the hundreds of thousands, which themselves have 10 times the numbers of the tens of thousands, etc.), not near the maximum point of the range, give or take a few thousand.
I don't know whether to be thankful that I'm not hunting mammoth or to feel gypped because I'm alive before we've spread to other solar systems. :|

You mean something like this?

o_O
Something like that, yeah. Can't believe I've never heard that idea.
Except that I'm not prepared to make any conclusions whatsoever from the results of what I think is essentially random. That'd be like running a random number generator and deciding that God exists if you get a number within a certain range. I'd need something far more conclusive.

[Darkandroid]

Good point.
Could the Big Bang really create an infinite amount of matter?
Because all matter is conserved, so there might not be as much universe as we think...

The Big Bang doesn't need to. The Big Bang is responsible only for our universe, and thus only our little corner of space. There's no reason not to believe that there are an infinite number of other universes beyond ours.

Hm.
What I thought of as the universe was the ever expanding 'pocket' of space.
Like a very strong balloon.

So, I believe that, if you DO go far enough you may just hit 'nothing' and that's just where the universe ends.
Keeping that in mind, I also believe that there are multiple universes, and these 'alternate' universes all are extremely difficult to get to.

[otters]

It sorta makes sense to me how you could assume it. I mean, sure, matter and energy are obviously not infinite, because a finite amount of energy was sent from the big bang in all directions, so the matter and energy in the universe is expanding at most at the speed of light.
But it has to be expanding into some kind of space that's already there, and that total void is what I think of when I hear people talking about an infinite universe. It's this region of absolute nothingness, I think, that people talk about, where any form of information whatsoever hasn't traveled. And I guess if you were to be floating out there and have that wave of expanding universe hit you, you'd see the big bang in all its glory.

In that case, what's with the "if the universe is infinite there MUST be life somewhere" argument? It should be true only if there's an infinite amount of inhabitable planets.

No one is saying that the number of planets is infinite (at the very least, I'm not). The argument relies on the fact that there is a stupidly large number of planets.
Let's say that any bunny has a 0.01% chance of being a vampire. In a room full of 20 bunnies, obviously you're not going to expect that any of them are vampires. But if you're talking about 48.3 quadrillion bunnies, it'd be silly to think that none of them are vampires, even though the number of bunnies is far from infinite.

I see. Still, though, the probability of an inhabitable world for intelligent life is somewhat lower than that, and there probably aren't as many planets either. :P

[Tanner]

Actually, an estimate of a couple quadrillion planets isn't that other-worldly, so to speak. The average of the estimates seems to hang out around that number depending on where you're looking.

[blue_tetris]

Are we certain that civilizations of humans go extinct? Like, do we know that there's an eventual doomsday that will befall us? It seems to me that we have no evidence to go on for this. I'd be just as likely to assume that civilizations can persist indefinitely after reaching a certain point. That makes the chances of encountering a civilized race at the same time that we're civilized much higher.

If you believe that the lifespan of an intelligent civilization is too short to allow for two meeting simultaneously, what are you reasons for thinking that an apocalypse befalls every intelligent civilization (or enough of them to prevent contact)?



Although I agree that our life at this time in civilization (having experienced a very short amount of it) is somewhat unlikely, I'm not prepared to say that I could not possibly have been born in early civilization (allowing for millions more years of it), nor would I be willing to say that other civilizations on different worlds capable of interacting with ours are at the same point in their civilizations. What applies to this world and its intelligent civilization can't hold true of others. And about our existence here, at all: It's pretty lucky. So, yeah, it's highly unlikely that our civilization will last too much longer. That says nothing about the other civilizations in the universe (who could live longer).



About luck:
We just happened to be born as humans (a rare species on this planet, compared to insects, bacteria, et cetera). Not to mention that we lucked out and got born at all--dunno how to measure the probablity of that. Not to mention that our planet lucked out and got life on it. Again, it's unlikely, but we'd not be here to discuss it if it didn't happen. I'm willing to think I'm lucky. It's either believing in providence or some deity who set me up with the perfect atoms belonging to the perfect species on the perfect planet.



It's easy to misjudge the mean when you're among the group that happened to roll 1000 on 500d2. There was a time when actual scientists figured we were in the middle of space because it made sense. And although it's a different case, it's important not to assume we're in the middle of time just because we're at a certain time talking to certain people who got the same draw that we did.



In short, I disagree with this sentence:

Of course, in all practicality, no forms of life will ever actually encounter another in their civilized periods, either.

...but I disagree with nothing else Suki said. I'm just unwilling to decide how long the civilized periods of non-humans (or at least non-earthlings) last. They could very well be supremely long, even if our civilization is probably very short. We don't have much to go on.

[otters]

It's either believing in providence or some deity who set me up with the perfect atoms belonging to the perfect species on the perfect planet.

Yeah. That's...that's pretty much it.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I see. Still, though, the probability of an inhabitable world for intelligent life is somewhat lower than that, and there probably aren't as many planets either. :P

I wasn't just rambling -- I mean to say that the chance of life forming on a life-sustaining planet over some period of time isn't small enough to compete with the number of life-sustaining planets and the sheer amount of time that life has to form.
That is, [chance of life forming on a life-sustaining planet per million years] * [age of the universe in millions of years] * [number of life-sustaining planets that exist every million years] >> 1.

We just happened to be born as humans (a rare species on this planet, compared to insects, bacteria, et cetera). Not to mention that we lucked out and got born at all--dunno how to measure the probablity of that. Not to mention that our planet lucked out and got life on it. Again, it's unlikely, but we'd not be here to discuss it if it didn't happen. I'm willing to think I'm lucky. It's either believing in providence or some deity who set me up with the perfect atoms belonging to the perfect species on the perfect planet.

I disagree with the amount of credit you're giving luck. It's not "lucky" that we're on a life-sustaining planet -- we'd have to be. Otherwise you'd be implying that some unlucky bastards are born on lifeless planets every now and again. Similarly, it's not "luck" that we're not insects, because insects don't have complex enough brains to contain all the complexities of who you are; you'd be "stupid bug" Dave instead of "Dave" Dave, which is completely distinct from "Dave" Dave because it's not you. Besides which, this would also imply some view of consciousness that entails a collective of personalities that are assigned haphazardly to living things ("Damnit! I'm a pine tree! How am I going to satisfy my womanizing nature now?"). You could never have been an ant because an ant's brain wouldn't form the personality that is you. It's the same amount of "luck" that you weren't born a rock, or a daisy; it's not luck because it wouldn't ever happen.
It all only seems like luck if you think that some profoundly stupid arbiter is flinging your consciousness, existence, what have you, all about the universe with nary a care as to where you end up. What actually happens is that things develop only from things from which they possibly could develop. So it's not luck, it just is.
Hell, the fact that the universe is stable isn't even luck. We're here, so it must be. There could've been quadrillions of unstable universes before or ever concurrently with ours, and we'd have no idea because we couldn't possibly exist there. "Thank God I wasn't born in a universe without a strong gravitational force! How lucky!" No -- luck is receiving a beneficial outcome from a majority of detrimental outcomes; these other scenarios (e.g. being born on an inhospitable planet, being born as an insect) aren't even possibilities, so they don't weigh down the probability. The probability that a human will be born on a lifeless planet is 0, and the probability that a human will be born in a life-sustaining environment is 1 (I say "environment" in case some smartass mentions pilgrimage to a planet still being terraformed).

[Darkandroid]

Like, do we know that there's an eventual doomsday that will befall us?

Quite interestingly, I was watching a move about the Universe today.
They say that the universe is going to end in like a big rip, where the dark energy in the world will tear apart even atoms.

[blue_tetris]

I was already under that impression that having a conversation with someone else that got imbued with sentience is in no way providence. Otherwise, no conversation would exist at all. That's a given, since I am already sentient.

However, that doesn't mean that it was likely that my sentience was to exist. Sure, we wouldn't be talking if we didn't roll a 10,000 on the 5,000d2, right? But it's still an unlikely circumstance. Events were set into motion that put atoms into places that allowed for these events to occur and allowed for this conversation. And there's a 1:1 chance that, to be having this conversation, all of those wacky blocks had to fall into place. But that's a case of the effects making it seem like the cause was a certainty.

If you cast a die and it comes up 6, and you're living in a situation where the 6 on the die happened, you can't presume that there was a 1:1 chance that the 6 would come up. That's just silly. Of course, if the 6 causes you to exist, you're going to be damn certain that a 6 was always going to come up; this is equally silly.

I wasn't certain to have winded up alive. The probability that I'd live would not have been assessed by a sentience if it didn't come to pass, so it seems like a certainty.



We go on to assess the probability of "if our civilization is going to last a long time, why weren't we randomly born later in it?" I can't assess that probability either. We don't get born at a random place in time, do we? Like, our soul isn't waiting somewhere to get born; it's not randomly drawn into the universe at a certain place and time. There's a probability that we simply won't exist at all. (There's simply nothing to say or do about it in that circumstance.)

We don't get "born into a different body" if we get a different draw. Events passed which caused this brainmeat to exist and synapse some text onto an Internet forum; and if that didn't happen, I'd not be waiting to get more brainment. And, it's quite possible that a different phase in human civilization would render a person nothing like me with no capabilities of engaging in this medium of conversation nor this topic. So, to extrapolate as to why we're not born in the future if it's so likely is a moot point. We're here, having this conversation. We can't make any assumption about the probability of us coming to exist (omg, it must have been certain!) or the probability that we're at the dead center of human civilization.

To believe in the Doomsday argument is to believe that your birth is certain but its time and place is uncertain. And that's mystical thinking, in my book. That was the original argument. If you don't disagree with this, we're not arguing.



A different point altogether: I'm wondering why we should assume the human species won't last as long as the other species on earth. Is it because we got born too early and we figure that there can't be much more "civilization" left? Everything else that went extinct before us had a few million years on us before it went extinct. But, ooooh, humans come along and suddenly the earth is gonna have to explode real soon to make a neat show for the special apes. If anything, I should think that we'll last longer than those other extinct species, being that we're (technically) more evolved than any species that has already gone extinct.



(Final point: Luck doesn't require thanking God. "Lucky" is the vernacular you can use to say that something is "exceedingly unlikely, but has resulted desirably for you". Even in a deterministic universe, there are events which are very unlikely (or "rare", if you prefer the term) scientifically. If this lump of brainmeat hovering above this keyboard wasn't cultured through millions of years of evolution on this planet, I wouldn't exist. I count myself lucky--that is to say, I am glad for the circumstance. I should prefer to be a robot, incapable of feeling gladness and emotion, so I'd not attribute a subjective "good" and "bad" status to circumstances. Otherwise, I may be misconstrued as "religious".)

[Jiggerjaw]

I disagree with the amount of credit you're giving luck. It's not "lucky" that we're on a life-sustaining planet -- we'd have to be. Otherwise you'd be implying that some unlucky bastards are born on lifeless planets every now and again. Similarly, it's not "luck" that we're not insects, because insects don't have complex enough brains to contain all the complexities of who you are; you'd be "stupid bug" Dave instead of "Dave" Dave, which is completely distinct from "Dave" Dave because it's not you. Besides which, this would also imply some view of consciousness that entails a collective of personalities that are assigned haphazardly to living things ("Damnit! I'm a pine tree! How am I going to satisfy my womanizing nature now?"). You could never have been an ant because an ant's brain wouldn't form the personality that is you. It's the same amount of "luck" that you weren't born a rock, or a daisy; it's not luck because it wouldn't ever happen.
It all only seems like luck if you think that some profoundly stupid arbiter is flinging your consciousness, existence, what have you, all about the universe with nary a care as to where you end up. What actually happens is that things develop only from things from which they possibly could develop. So it's not luck, it just is.
Hell, the fact that the universe is stable isn't even luck. We're here, so it must be. There could've been quadrillions of unstable universes before or ever concurrently with ours, and we'd have no idea because we couldn't possibly exist there. "Thank God I wasn't born in a universe without a strong gravitational force! How lucky!" No -- luck is receiving a beneficial outcome from a majority of detrimental outcomes; these other scenarios (e.g. being born on an inhospitable planet, being born as an insect) aren't even possibilities, so they don't weigh down the probability. The probability that a human will be born on a lifeless planet is 0, and the probability that a human will be born in a life-sustaining environment is 1 (I say "environment" in case some smartass mentions pilgrimage to a planet still being terraformed).

I was having a discourse about a semi-related topic a while ago (I believe it stemmed from a discussion about what happens after a person dies, and whether we are meant to comprehend this or not), when my friend brought up the theory that, no matter how unlikely our existence, we -had- to exist. The way he put it, "There was a 100% chance that humans would exist at some point in the timeline of the universe." We danced about the topic for a bit, and I don't think I really understood his claim until I read this post by Tsukatu. And I agree with it. In fourteen billion years, on multiple quadrillion planets, at some point in the history of this vast universe, intelligent life -had- to form. Something was bound to come into existence that was aware of itself and could think, create, perceive the universe around it. Part of what makes this so interesting is that we, the intelligent life of the universe, have an innate curiosity about our existence, and how we came to be, and how the universe came to be, etc. There are rhetors and zealots in some bipartisan argument God v. Big Bang, but I don't know if we were really -meant- to understand. Perhaps, when our lives run their courses, and we come full circle to our deaths, it will all be put into perspective for the brief moment before our minds indefinitely shut off.

My friend and I slowly steered our discussion toward the Large Hadron Collision experiment. I, from the very beginning, have been firmly against any form of this experiment, because we are tampering with something that is inherently unknowable. We weren't created with the Big Bang; all that was created was the minute chance of our existence, which, over billions of years, approached the 100% likelihood I mentioned before. So, trying to recreate this or what have you is unsanctionable, and to be frank, a little silly. No, I don't think it's going to destroy the world, and no, I don't think it's going to yield any results that bring us closer to understanding our most primordial origins. It's just a stupid experiment that will fail once again to disprove the existence of God and leave us in the same bipartisan quandary, billions of dollars poorer.

I seem to have gone off on a tangent.

With regards to the question posed in the first post: Of course. It goes along the same vein as the "100% chance of our existence." There is no possibility that, at some point (and most likely now), no other civilized group of beings inhabited a distant planet. If humans developed, say, 150,000 years ago, and still have not found a way to explore this in more depth, then who's to say it won't take us a million years, and who's to say if any other civilization -has- reached this point of technology, that they didn't gloss over our planet hundreds of centuries before we came to exist on it? It's just impossible that there isn't life in other galaxies; I'd go a step farther and say intelligent life. It just has to be out there somewhere, looking for us just as we look for it.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I was already under that impression that having a conversation with someone else that got imbued with sentience is in no way providence. Otherwise, no conversation would exist at all. That's a given, since I am already sentient.

However, that doesn't mean that it was likely that my sentience was to exist. Sure, we wouldn't be talking if we didn't roll a 10,000 on the 5,000d2, right? But it's still an unlikely circumstance. Events were set into motion that put atoms into places that allowed for these events to occur and allowed for this conversation. And there's a 1:1 chance that, to be having this conversation, all of those wacky blocks had to fall into place. But that's a case of the effects making it seem like the cause was a certainty.

If you cast a die and it comes up 6, and you're living in a situation where the 6 on the die happened, you can't presume that there was a 1:1 chance that the 6 would come up. That's just silly. Of course, if the 6 causes you to exist, you're going to be damn certain that a 6 was always going to come up; this is equally silly.

I wasn't certain to have winded up alive. The probability that I'd live would not have been assessed by a sentience if it didn't come to pass, so it seems like a certainty.

Determining a probability of something happening requires that you set boundaries on the total number of things that might happen, otherwise it's an invalid and misleading number. "Not existing" is perfect example of an inappropriate alternative if you're figuring the probability that you'd exist, because it's so ambiguous that it includes any non-possibility you could think of. For example, the correct way to figure if a coin would end up heads or tails is to measure angular momentum, initial velocity, and air resistance of the coin flip, and elasticity of the coin and asphalt, to find the outcome with a probability of 1 is to only include known alternatives, or "tails" in this case. Getting one out of two equally-weighted potential cases is 50%. But if you include any other bullshit you can come up with, such as the coin incinerating before it lands or turning into the Death Star at the height of the throw, each of them will have tiny probability, but it's a problem when that probability is finite and the number of these other events is infinite. Then the coin would have practically 0 chance of landing on heads, and you should bow down and worship the coin just like incluye does.
So what specifically would you include in the list of alternatives? Because it can't just be "well, y'know, like... not existing." Death of ancestors, childhood accidents, etc., would all be valid, as well as the fact that you're just one combination of combining gametes... but this raises a different point entirely: how do you know that the other alternatives, much less most of them, would be worse? You could have been more attractive, less prone to disease, have a greater propensity for success, been born to a wealthy family, been born in a better society... and every little fluctuation in human culture ever since we started using tools could have led to a better outcome for you, not to mention life forming on a different planet that was more resilient to damage humans might do to it. How could you possibly feel lucky when you don't know the alternatives? That's practically blind faith, and you know how I feel about blind faith.
I'd give it a "yeah, it's pretty cool, I guess," but I wouldn't call any of it luck.

We go on to assess the probability of "if our civilization is going to last a long time, why weren't we randomly born later in it?" I can't assess that probability either. We don't get born at a random place in time, do we? Like, our soul isn't waiting somewhere to get born; it's not randomly drawn into the universe at a certain place and time. There's a probability that we simply won't exist at all. (There's simply nothing to say or do about it in that circumstance.)

We don't get "born into a different body" if we get a different draw. Events passed which caused this brainmeat to exist and synapse some text onto an Internet forum; and if that didn't happen, I'd not be waiting to get more brainment. And, it's quite possible that a different phase in human civilization would render a person nothing like me with no capabilities of engaging in this medium of conversation nor this topic. So, to extrapolate as to why we're not born in the future if it's so likely is a moot point. We're here, having this conversation. We can't make any assumption about the probability of us coming to exist (omg, it must have been certain!) or the probability that we're at the dead center of human civilization.

To believe in the Doomsday argument is to believe that your birth is certain but its time and place is uncertain. And that's mystical thinking, in my book. That was the original argument. If you don't disagree with this, we're not arguing.

I'm off the Doomsday thing entirely. I have zero disagreement with you on this right now.

(Final point: Luck doesn't require thanking God. "Lucky" is the vernacular you can use to say that something is "exceedingly unlikely, but has resulted desirably for you". Even in a deterministic universe, there are events which are very unlikely (or "rare", if you prefer the term) scientifically. If this lump of brainmeat hovering above this keyboard wasn't cultured through millions of years of evolution on this planet, I wouldn't exist. I count myself lucky--that is to say, I am glad for the circumstance. I should prefer to be a robot, incapable of feeling gladness and emotion, so I'd not attribute a subjective "good" and "bad" status to circumstances. Otherwise, I may be misconstrued as "religious".)

In a deterministic universe, the probability of every outcome that will happen is 1 and the probability of anything else happening is 0. Luck goes out the window entirely, regardless of complexity. You'd only experience chance and imagine other potential outcomes because you're a mere human and have no practical means of determining future outcomes with 100% certainty. But in the objective sense, luck wouldn't exist; it would be a human delusion. And that's a delusion you'd have to cast aside if you're talking about something so metaphysical as "the likelihood that you would exist."


---

In fourteen billion years, on multiple quadrillion planets, at some point in the history of this vast universe, intelligent life -had- to form. Something was bound to come into existence that was aware of itself and could think, create, perceive the universe around it.

o_O
That's not what I'm saying at all. I disagree with you on this.
I don't think that intelligent life must form somewhere; all I'm saying is that there's an overwhelming likelihood that it will happen. To say the former would require either an enlightened view of the fabric of reality, or a tremendous egotism for humankind that not even I can claim.

My friend and I slowly steered our discussion toward the Large Hadron Collision experiment. I, from the very beginning, have been firmly against any form of this experiment, because we are tampering with something that is inherently unknowable. We weren't created with the Big Bang; all that was created was the minute chance of our existence, which, over billions of years, approached the 100% likelihood I mentioned before. So, trying to recreate this or what have you is unsanctionable, and to be frank, a little silly. No, I don't think it's going to destroy the world, and no, I don't think it's going to yield any results that bring us closer to understanding our most primordial origins. It's just a stupid experiment that will fail once again to disprove the existence of God and leave us in the same bipartisan quandary, billions of dollars poorer.

First off, the LHC is completely irrelevant to God. Only a paranoid evangelical will tell you otherwise.
And secondly, plumbing the depths of the unknown is exactly what science is, and you're insane if you don't think science has done anything meaningful for humans. You're using a computer -- just building one of these things requires extensive knowledge about a fundamental force of the universe. It's a balls-to-the-wall incredible accomplishment. We are actually manipulating the laws of nature, so strongly and so consistently, that reality starts doing exactly what the hell we tell it to. That is what we're doing.

[blue_tetris]

I feel like we're shying into the "determinism" conversation, which I'd want to avoid at all costs. But, I'd like to think that the term "luck" still maintains fair usage in a deterministic universe. It just comes to refer to a different aspect of the universe--the set of events which are assessed as being less probable, that is to say, those which occur less frequently given a large number of iterations.

The roundabout point is: Should we not encounter another civilization, it's less likely that they don't exist and less likely that they don't happen to exist at the same time and is instead more likely that technologies allowing us to meet simply cannot exist.

[EdoI]

This discussion went off the topic and you started disscusing about space dimensions and doomsday, so I'll write this:

I watched once a very interesting Star Trek DS9 episode where their runabout accidentally ran onto a small unknow thing that kept growing. After it turned out to be a small universe. They said that in it probably passed so much time, that if it was as big as our universe it would be billions and billions of years. It died quickly, anyway. But what if something like that happens? it's really interesting, I mean, what if our universe is being studied in a laboratory, and if it dies in couple of days (proportional to dimesions).

If time really is proportional to the size of the universe, it could never be infinite, because that would make one time unit would have an infinite length, and we would somehow stuck in time. I believe the theory that there are a lot of other universes floating around.

I don't know how does this what I just wrote has to do with life on other planets anyway :)

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

But to say something about the alien life:

I believe that there are bacteries in our solar system. I have heard couple of days ago that life on Earth possibly came from Mars, transported by a piece of Mars ripped off by a meteor. Weak Mars' gravity couldn't hold it. Then again, maybe there are some animals in some systems, or possibly cavemans. Or even some race closely intelligent to ours. I don't think there are some super intelligent beings in the Milky Way, because they could come to Earth that way. It's completely possible that there are some super intelligent races out of Milky Way, maybe even in our neighbour, Andromeda. That civilisation could never contact us. It's because it's not possible to travel faster than light. Even Andromeda's light needs thousands of years to reach us. If there is a way to travel faster than light, actually it wouldn't be faster, they would go back in time as they race the light. So if they start now, they probably wouldn't wouldn't find us here. Then again, even if they go in this crazy mission, going back home with that speed would get back more in time, so they might even lose their own civilisation, depends how old it is. So we're possibly the most intelligent race that we'll ever meet.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I believe that there are bacteries in our solar system. I have heard couple of days ago that life on Earth possibly came from Mars, transported by a piece of Mars ripped off by a meteor. Weak Mars' gravity couldn't hold it. Then again, maybe there are some animals in some systems, or possibly cavemans. Or even some race closely intelligent to ours. I don't think there are some super intelligent beings in the Milky Way, because they could come to Earth that way. It's completely possible that there are some super intelligent races out of Milky Way, maybe even in our neighbour, Andromeda. That civilisation could never contact us. It's because it's not possible to travel faster than light. Even Andromeda's light needs thousands of years to reach us. If there is a way to travel faster than light, actually it wouldn't be faster, they would go back in time as they race the light. So if they start now, they probably wouldn't wouldn't find us here. Then again, even if they go in this crazy mission, going back home with that speed would get back more in time, so they might even lose their own civilisation, depends how old it is. So we're possibly the most intelligent race that we'll ever meet.

You are my new hero.
(Damnit LV, why did you have to correct him?)