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.
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I don't think it's naive at all. The classical argument is basically the Drake equation. Since there are billions of galaxies with billions of stars then even a very small probability of life multiplied
by an immense number will lead one to conclude that there are a number of planets with life in the universe.
But Drake didn't know anything about what numbers to plug into his equation. For some yes, but not the important one; the probability of life appearing on a planet with particular qualities.
What if the probability of life appearing on a planet is very nearly
the same as the number of planets in the Universe? Since they are not related, that may very well be true or not true. If it is, the chances of life are nowhere near certain. Further it may even be that the odds are much less than that.
Since we know very little about how abiogenesis occurs and what has been speculated on leaves vanishingly small probabilities of it happening it may be that we are unique.
We have no information to even give us a clue. Our own appearance should not be viewed as necessarily normal because if there were life on only one planet capable of asking such questions it would be wondering just that (anthropic principle of some sort).