Anyone Out There?

The species list is expected to show 1.75 million species on this planet. Only one has the ability to communicate far beyond all others. To think we are the only habitable planet in the universe is beyond reason. I don't know how many species are out there, but there are 1.75 million proven ways for intelligence to experience physical existance on this planet alone.

badleeroy:"the odds of life on any one planet are so remote," Actually it is mathmatically impossible for there NOT to be life out there. Just in our galaxy we have BILLIONS of stars and probably 75% or more have some planets orbiting them. Given that we all came from the same star dust then it is extremely likely that that same mixture of "dust" and conditions to promote it are not only out there but in abundance.That's just our galaxy....there are millions if not billions of galaxies. The distance means nothing......our simple race has moved from animal driven vehicles to space flight in less than 100 years with new technologies emerging daily and new theories coming to light. There is so much out there to learn and so much we have no concept of as of yet.We have come so far in just the last 100 years.....what of a civilization that is out there that is 1000 years more advanced than us.......we would be as odd looking as Amish in NYC.

My home computers are busy 24/7 analyzing data for SETI@home...It may take years...It may happen tomorrow...I believe the search for extraterrestrial intelligence will someday result in the affirmative answer to the question "Is there anyone out there"...That answer will result in enough questions and dreams to last a thousand lifetimes...

Do you think any intelligent life-form that may exist out there in UniverseLand would want anything to do with a culture that has sent "I Love Lucy" hurtling around the galaxy? Come on, folks, let's clean up our act and maybe then we might drum up some interest.

Maybe we are thinking too small. We won't get there with present day technology. It will basically be the technology the aliens who are visiting us now are using. Think big, Einstein is not the final answer. Several scientists have been working on how to reduce the mass of an object to zero. No mass, no inertia, no limit on speed or distance. I believe that is what the aliens do. Think about it.

Hmmmmm.... it is hard to find intelligent life here on earth, let alone in the vast universe!

I can find no reason why a alien species would want to visit our planet except to know what Not to do. As for us traveling to other places outside our solar system we would need to achieve speeds faster than we could imagine which would put our ship in peril even hitting a grain of sand. Therefore a different mode of transportation would be required that is only written in SciFi stories.

James M. Essig's comment is quite interesting. However, propulsion of a vessel does not address the problem of crafting a self-sustaining environment for the humans on-board the vessel. A pair of attempts to create such an environment in the desert show how far we have to go in this area.

The fact that people are even arguing whether interstellar travel could potentially be possible, is grounds alone for any intelligent species other than our own to keep their distance. If you can't even accept that there 'might' be things beyond yourselves and comprehension, your candidacy for having any involvement in such things is null and void. Let alone accomplishing such things. Besides, even if the most simplistic of problems facing society can't be solved (let alone poverty, war, etc..), how can one even begin to suspect that they have a passing chance of interacting with a more sophisticated intelligence and society. The true absurdity is not interstellar travel or extraterrestrial existence. The true absurdity is the presumptions of those who might deign what is and what isn't, without actually knowing what is and what isn't.

If God wanted us to find et, He would have created et.

. . . Contact shall be achieved within our lifetimes . . . watCh & see!!!

Well i started seti before a few days (i am 18 years old,i live in greece) and i think that we cant be the only inteligent life form in all these million planets out there that we havent seen or we dont know.
"The is always hope" (king Elesar, The Lord of the Rings the Return of The king)and i will believe it to the end...

Even before I saw the film, "Contact," I believed in the idea that if we were the only intelligent beings in the entire universe, it would be a heckuva waste of space. However, it is also possible that we are the first (somebody has to be "first") species to attempt communication with alien civilizations.

But, I also admit to being a bit conspiratorial about SETI. Even though I've heard Seth Shostak deny the possibility, I'm convinced that any REAL evidence of intelligent life elsewhere would be (A) classified as quickly as it was discovered, and (B) that a cover story debunking the find would be disseminated with equal speed.

In short, I doubt if the human population will ever hear of a SETI "success" ... even if it does come about. Proof of an alien intelligence would have to be so dramatic that it could not be debunked or ignored - like an alien spacecraft landing in front of hundreds or thousands of witnesses ... and an alien actually coming out of it and saying "Hello there" (in their own language, of course).

Still, this does not prevent me from participating in the SETI@home project (grin). But I am skeptical over the possibility of any REAL success being made public.

Remember in text books when the general rule was that no one could exceed 60 MPH and then later the sound barrier? The same thing applies today with light speed. What is the difference between 286,000 miles per sec and say 287,000 miles per sec and so on ? I say it's just another number.

I'm also crunching for Seti@home, and of course I believe that intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is possible. But intelligent life which has developed technology is likely to be extremely rare.
Therefore, any signal from an intelligent civilization is unlikely, but that doesn't mean it is impossible.
The universe is so huge it would really be like hitting the jackpot on the lottery.
However, if we don't try, I don't think we stand any chance at all.

Maybe I'm a little paranoid, but the lack of any sign of recognizable intelligence is beginning to worry me. Intelligence in organic life forms may not only be rare, but also short lived. Machine intelligence, once established, is likely to evolve more quickly than organic intelligence and may already be dominant in much of the universe. Consider how quickly digital viruses appeared and evolved (of coarse driven by human intelligence)following the introduction of digital computing. An advanced machine intelligence could make use of similar but highly advanced algorithms transmitted by light to co-opt and exploit the resources of noisy newcomers.

Its amazing that we judge all other possable civalizations by our own very limited scientific intelligence!! 100 or 500 light years to us might be nothing to anyone else who may exist somewhere out there!
Look how long it took us to invent electricity!!