Quote:
Originally posted by LadyMischief
With the immense size of our universe, to think that we are alone in it would be EXTREMELY naive. That would be like planting an entire field of corn and only having one ear grow. The odds AGAINST that are absolutely astronomical. Whether or not we've seen them, they've come here, that kind of thing, I won't comment because frankly, I don't know.
|
In the case of corn, the likelihood of any one seed resulting in a plant is quite high. So far we've found plenty of planets (including extra-solar ones) but no indications of extra-terrestial life. We have no data that indicate that there is a high chance of life occuring at any point in the universe.
If you could look at another universe and NO life existed there, would you consider it astonishing, or would you just assume that no life existed there because it was inhospitable to life?
Your argument is based on an assumption that life is likely enough under the prevailing conditions in the universe that the size of the universe makes it unlikely that life exists only once. But we don't know what range of conditions life can exist in, which means we can't know what kinds of stars would be able to sustain livable planets, or even what would constitute a livable planet. Which means we can't even begin to get a proper estimate of how many livable planets exist.
And we have no data to tell us what percentage of livable planets may end up with life, or how likely it is that such life survives for an extended period of time, so we have even less chance of estimating the chance of life existing on another planet NOW as opposed to having existed or coming into existence at a point where the human species no longer exists.
Remember that because we can only observe from "within", that is, we can only see the universe we're in at a limited time period and observe from a specific location, our existence says nothing about the likelihood of life starting at any one location, or even the likelihood of life occurring at all. It could be ridiculously unlikely.
Or it could be so likely we'll find life almost wherever we go...
Thing is, we can't know.