Do you believe in Aliens? (Page 151)

Corwin: That's very true, Bobby... the universe IS a very hostile place.

But... the Earth seems to be a less-hostile place (an oasis, if you will) that has allowed for life to exist... which means it's possible. If it's possible here, it may be possible elsewhere.

But yes, I do accept the possibility that we might be "it"... I don't like the idea though.

duncan124:

It does not say " the existence of extraterrestrial life " in the title. And nor did I say I was against beliefs.

That was what I was criticising you for.

Don't dish it if you can't take it and that includes turning peoples words against them.

Corwin: Huh??

Blackshoes and I are having a very civil and friendly discussion as far as I can tell.

And what kind of "Aliens" do you think the OP was referring to? Illegal Aliens?
I was under the distinct impression that they were referring to extraterrestrial life.

But if you like, we can switch the discussion to foreigners slipping into the country without due process... I personally find the topic of extraterrestrial life more interesting though.

duncan124:

" Corwin: The government also has evidence of leprechauns, the tooth fairy, flying unicorns, Big Foot, and Elvis.... they have evidence of everything."

"Corwin But yes, I do accept the possibility that we might be "it"... I don't like the idea though."

Hmmm, can anyone really speak of anything they want on Wireclub?

duncan124:

"lori100: the govt has the evidence...have for several decades...
3 hours ago


ghostgeek: Some people believe in God, others believe the earth is hollow, and still others believe in fairies. Then there are those that believe in aliens. What unites these various groups of people is the fact that none of them seems able to produce evidence to support their contention. Are we to believe that the U.S. government has evidence that supports the existence of fairies locked away in a vault somewhere? I would say no, and neither do I believe that it has evidence of aliens. I may be wrong but that's what I think.
2 hours ago


duncan124:

That is what you believe... not " think ".

duncan124:
"Corwin: Unexplained = Must be space aliens."

Blackshoes: Corwin I believe many of those that believe in ET are very sincere about their belief .
I'm sure many are not and just playing the publics desire for drama and the unknown ?
I don't accept that ET exist at all for two reasons .One the Distance are far too great to travel even if they exist ? Two it's just not as likely as most believe . The Universe is a very dangerous place

duncan124:

Clearly you can not exclude "space aliens " from the unknown just as you can not exclude peoples belief in Aliens from any unknown event.

Corwin: I have to agree with you there, Bobby.

And you know me... I don't like to "believe" in things that don't have solid evidence to back it up. But I do "hope" we are not alone... I imagine that the majority of people share that hope... otherwise we wouldn't spend so much money and resources looking for it, what with NASA exploring places like Mars, and the SETI project.

Blackshoes: Corwin IMO I cannot see where Hope can change what we know about the Universe .I agree that It would be a wonderful Hope that there are Live forms outside of Our Galaxy far far away ', That haven't fallen to The human race need to destroy everyone and everything

Wonderbunny: It might just be that the distances between galaxies are so vast that it's impossible to traverse them, no matter how advanced a species you are.

LiptonCambell: Between galaxies? Absolutely. most people believe distances between solar systems are too great........

Blu_Crystal: I believe in aliens, NONE of which I can prove. That doesn't make it any less valid in my own mind. I think aliens are real because in this vast and varied universe, how can there be no other creatures somewhere? I hate the way movies portray aliens as air-breathing, thinking, manipulative, aggressive, huge, scary... the list goes on, when the truth is that we have NO IDEA what an alien might look like, OR how it might think about homo sapiens. They could come down in all their huge and ugly millions to use us for food JUST AS EASILY as they could come in a cute, fuzzy handful of frightened and child-like beings. The question is, why does it matter if there are NONE???

suchso: I think it doesn't make any difference to us if we believe there are aliens or not.
We can live without them. We do live without them.
The origins of life on Earth are explainable without the E.Ts.. Maybe we are the first and only life in the universe.
It doesn't matter. It's just wishful thinking.

We still have to deal with our human issues. The aliens are not coming to save us

LiptonCambell: >>> I think aliens are real because in this vast and varied universe, how can there be no other creatures somewhere?

That's flawed reasoning.

The oceans are huge, have had life in them longer, and have a greater diversity of life. But that doesn't mean there --must-- be mermaids....

>>>when the truth is that we have NO IDEA what an alien might look like

Well, we can make a few basic assumptions. They're likely carbon-based lifeforms, since carbon is one of the most reactive elements, interacting with other elements the easiest, and thus, more versatile...if we're talking intelligent life, then they're most likely to have wriggled their way through the 'survival of the fittest' hole, and thus likely have strong survival instincts, and are probably a predator such as ourselves- so aggression, while not guaranteed, is likely a factor to both their existence and our own...

Theres alot of assumptions we can make- for example, we can look at how our species developed, or how life on Earth separates amoungst themselves, and can make broad examples of what to expect- for example, the video below explains the theory that we are rather shorter than aliens, and have greater numbers...

LiptonCambell: Personally, i think it's humanities destiny to seed the universe, for selfish reasons(our colonization) or not. Even if we get wiped out, if we seed enough young worlds, we'd have ensured the survival of life....

Corwin: That's my standpoint as well... if Earth is the "first" life in the galaxy, I think it's not only our destiny, but our responsibility to do our best to seed it among the stars, even if only in microbial form.

Although according to certain Panspermia theories, this may have already happened all by itself. The Earth has been slammed so many countless times with asteroids, that it's almost certain that there are plenty of rocks out there with Earth microbes frozen inside them. And with our Sun making an orbit around the galactic center roughly every 250 million years, these rocks could be strewn all throughout the galaxy by now. If one lands on a primordial water bearing planet and survives the impact, that planet could be seeded.

Another train of thought is that this may have already happened on another planet in our galaxy long ago, and that's how Earth became seeded with the first life. But either way, according to this theory, life only has to happen ONCE in any given galaxy, and it's only a matter of time before it gets seeded elsewhere... and those planets seed other planets... and so on.
NASA did some experiments on the ISS and found that there were Earth microbes that can revive after long periods of time frozen in the hard radiation and vacuum of space. The reasoning is that this may be no accident, and these microbes may have "evolved" to survive these conditions. It's even possible that in Earth's early history, life was completely wiped out by cosmic impacts (maybe more than once), and Earth became re-seeded again with it's own life carried back to it in the form of meteors.

Pretty neat stuff to ponder, eh?

lori100:

airdrie50: WELL HMMM THINK ABOUT THAT ONE

lori100: remote viewer sees genetically cloned non-humans cutting the Giza pyramid with laser tech...goes further and sees the clones grown in containers with a giant praying mantis type of female alien in charge of the clones.......she told the remote viewer it was interesting that humans were able to view them but told him to get out ...it was none of his business......this info is near the end of the video....

LiptonCambell: So remote viewers can see the past now?

Hey Lori- I'm a remote viewer. I can view when people are making shit up- that's my magical power.....one sec.....yep....my viewing shows that they're full of shit.

lori100: they can see the past, present and future....the aliens they viewed were involved in past events and present events at the same time....as they have said time as we think of it doesn't exist...all time is simultaneous ....all is happening now in different dimensions.....

ghostgeek: The ancient Egyptians used copper chisels, not genetically cloned non-humans with laser technology. Seems somebody's remote viewing did a double somersault and impacted the ground.

XFixYourBrainX: LiptonCambell,

"I believe you are using flawed logic tiger.....the only evidence we have about outer space is it is entirely hostile to all known forms of life."

I don't believe! Believing is flawed logic by itself, believing without fact.

"You are using flawed logic."

This is how you should have said it.

Next, you were using flawed logic as well.

"the only evidence we have about outer space"

Can I say terrible wording?


"space is it is entirely hostile to all known forms of life."

Flawed!

This was really a great read, I enjoyed it.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160422-where-to-find-life-in-the-blackest-vacuum-of-outer-space

When we think about whether or not aliens exist, we generally imagine them on a vaguely Earth-like planet circling a distant star. We do not normally think of them living out in space itself.

But maybe that is not such a ridiculous idea. In April 2016, researchers reported that some of the key building blocks of life can be produced from simple substances under harsh conditions mimicking those of interstellar space.

Cornelia Meinert at the University of Nice, France and colleagues showed that a mixture of frozen water, methanol and ammonia – all compounds known to exist in the vast "molecular clouds" from which stars form – can be transformed into a wide range of sugar molecules when exposed to ultraviolet rays, which pervade space. The sugars included ribose, which is a part of the DNA-like molecule RNA.

This suggests that the fundamental molecules of life might be formed in outer space, and then delivered to planets like Earth by icy comets and meteorites.

The finding is actually not surprising. We have known for decades that other building blocks of life can be formed from chemical reactions like this, before being incorporated into comets, asteroids and planets.

However, there is a more intriguing possibility. Life itself might not have needed a warm and comfortable planet bathed in sunlight to get going. If the raw ingredients were already out there in interplanetary limbo, might life have started there too?

Ideas about the origins of life do not often consider this scenario. It is hard enough to figure out how life could have begun on the early Earth, let alone at temperatures close to absolute zero and the near vacuum of interstellar space.


Making the basic building blocks of life, like sugars and amino acids, is the easy part. There are lots of chemically-

plausible ways to do that, starting with the simple molecules found in young solar systems.

The hard bit is persuading these complicated molecules to assemble into something capable of life-sustaining processes like replication and metabolism. Nobody has ever done this, or come up with a completely plausible way it might happen, in the nurturing environment of a warm, rocky planet – let alone in space.

Still, there is no fundamental reason why life might not arise far from any star, in what is often regarded as the barren desert of interstellar space. Here is how it might happen.

First, we had better agree on what counts as "life". It does not necessarily have to look like anything familiar.

As an extreme case, we can imagine something like the Black Cloud in astronomer Fred Hoyle's classic 1959 science-fiction novel of that name: a kind of sentient gas that floats around in interstellar space, and is surprised to discover life on a planet.

But Hoyle could not offer a plausible explanation for how a gas, with an unspecified chemical make-up, could become intelligent. We probably need to imagine something literally a bit more solid.

While we cannot be sure that all life is carbon-based, as it is on Earth, there are good reasons to think that it is likely. Carbon is much more versatile as a building block for complex molecules than, say, silicon, the favourite element for speculations about alternative alien biochemistries.

Astrobiologist Charles Cockell at the University of Edinburgh in the UK thinks that the broad basis of life on Earth – that it is carbon-based and requires water – "reflects a universal norm". He concedes that "I have a quite conservative view, which science generally proves is misguided." But still, for now let's stick with carbon-based life. How could it be generated in outer space?

The basic chemistry is not a problem. As well as sugars, life on Earth needed amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. But we know that these can be formed in outer space too, because they have been found in "primitive" meteorites that have never seen a planetary surface.

They might be made on icy grains from some variation of a chemical reaction called the Strecker synthesis, after the 19th-Century German chemist who discovered it. The reaction involves simple organic molecules called ketones or aldehydes, which combine with hydrogen cyanide and ammonia. Alternatively, light-driven chemistry triggered by ultraviolet light will do the job.

It looks at first as though these reactions should not take place in deepest space, without a source of heat or light to drive them. Molecules encountering one another in frigid, dark conditions do not have enough energy to get a chemical reaction started. It is as if they run into a barrier that is too high for them to jump over.

However, in the 1970s the Soviet chemist Vitali Goldanski showed otherwise. Some chemicals could react even when chilled to just four degrees above absolute zero, which is about as cold as space gets. They just needed a bit of help from high-energy radiation such as gamma-rays or electron beams – like the cosmic rays that whizz through all of space.

Under these conditions, Goldanski found that the carbon-based molecule formaldehyde, which is common in molecular clouds, could link up into polymer chains several hundred molecules long.

Goldanski believed that such space-based reactions might have helped the molecular building blocks of life assemble from simple ingredients like hydrogen cyanide, ammonia and water.


But it is far more difficult to coax such molecules to combine into more complex forms. The high-energy radiation that might help get the first reactions started then becomes a problem.

Ultraviolet and other forms of radiation can induce reactions like those Meinert demonstrated. But Cockell says they are just as likely to smash molecules as they are to form them. Potential biomolecules – progenitors of proteins and RNA, say – would be broken apart faster than they were being produced.

"Ultimately the question is whether other completely alien environments would give rise to self-replicating chemical systems that can evolve," says Cockell. "I don't see why that wouldn't happen in very cold environments or on the surfaces of ice grains, but generally I think these environments aren't very conducive to very complex molecules."


Planets offer two much gentler energy sources: heat and light. Life on Earth is largely powered by sunlight, and it is a fair bet that life on "exoplanets" around other stars would draw on the energy reserves of their own suns.

Vital heat can also come from elsewhere. Some scientists believe that the first life on Earth was not powered by sunlight, but by volcanic energy released from the planet's interior at hot vents in the deep sea. Even today, these vents still spew out a warm, mineral-rich brew.

There is also heat in Jupiter's major moons. This comes from the huge tidal forces exerted by the giant planet, which squeeze the interiors of the moons and heat them up through friction. This tidal energy keeps the sub-surfaces of the icy moons Europa and Ganymede melted into oceans, and makes Io's surface fiery and volcanic.

It is hard to see how molecules clinging to icy grains in interstellar space could find any such nurturing energy. But that might not be the only option out there.

In 1999, planetary scientist David Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology proposed that galaxies might be full of "rogue planets" floating beyond the outermost reaches of a stellar neighbourhood, too far from their "parent" star to feel its gravity, heat or light.

These worlds, Stevenson said, could have formed like any other regular planet, close to a nascent star and within its surrounding nebula of gas and dust.

But then the gravitational tug of large planets, like our own Jupiter and Saturn, could sling some planets on "escape trajectories", propelling them off beyond their solar system into the empty space between stars.

That might seem to consign them to a cold and barren future. Yet Stevenson argued that, on the contrary, these rogue planets might be "the most common sites of life in the Universe" – because they might stay warm enough to support liquid water under, as it were, their own steam.


All of the rocky planets in the inner solar system come with two internal heat sources.

First, each planet has a fiery core still hot from the primordial fury of its formation. On top of that, they contain radioactive elements. These warm up the interior of the planet with their decay, just as a lump of uranium is warm to the touch. On Earth, radioactive decay inside the mantle contributes about half of the total heating.

Primordial heat and radioactive decay inside rocky rogue planets could warm them for billions of years – perhaps enough to keep the planets volcanically active and provide the energy for life to start.

Rogue planets could also have dense, heat-retaining atmospheres. Compared with gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, Earth's atmosphere is thin and tenuous, because the Sun's heat and light have stripped away lighter gases like hydrogen. Mercury is so close to the Sun that it barely has any atmosphere at all.

Yet on an Earth-sized rogue planet, far beyond its parent star's influence, much of the original atmosphere might remain in place. Stevenson estimated that the resulting temperature and pressure could be enough to sustain liquid water at the surface, even without any sunlight.

What's more, rogue planets would not be plagued by giant meteorite impacts, as Earth has been. They might even be ejected from their native solar system with moons in tow, giving them the benefit of some heating by tidal forces.


Even if a rogue planet did not have a thick atmosphere, it could still be habitable

In 2011, planetary scientist Dorian Abbot and astrophysicist Eric Switzer at the University of Chicago calculated that planets about three and a half times the size of the Earth could become covered over with a thick layer of ice. This would insulate an ocean of liquid water many kilometres below the surface, heated by its interior.

"The total biological activity would be lower than on a planet like Earth, but you should still be able to have something," says Abbot.

He hopes that when space probes investigate the subsurface oceans of Jupiter's icy moons in the coming decades, we will learn more about the possibilities of life on iced-over rogue planets.

Abbot and Switzer called these orphaned worlds "Steppenwolf planets", because, they say, "any life in this strange habitat would exist like a lone wolf wandering the galactic steppe". The habitable lifetime of such a planet could be up to ten billion years or so, similar to that of Earth, says Abbot.

If these ideas are right, then outside our solar system rogue planets in interstellar space could be the closest places where extraterrestrial life exists.

They would be very hard to spot at such a distance, being dark and relatively tiny.

But with luck, say Abbot and Switzer, such a planet passing within about a thousand times the Earth-Sun distance could just about be discerned from the small amount of sunlight it would reflect and the infrared radiation of its own warmth. We might hope to see it with the telescopes currently used to look for exoplanets around other stars.

If life can originate and survive on an interstellar Steppenwolf planet, say Abbot and Switzer, there is a profound implication: life "must be truly ubiquitous in the Universe".

It would be a strange kind of life on these interstellar worlds. Imagine bathing in warm volcanic springs under perpetual night, like a winter vacation in Iceland. But if that is all you had ever known, it would seem like home.

Follow BBC Earth on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter.

XFixYourBrainX: LiptonCambell,

Whoa! I mean that third paragraph really says a lot. Sarcasm intended.