Are we alone in the galaxy?

Question

"The authors of the new [Oxford] study offer two insights, one pessimistic and the other more cheery. The first is that Fermi’s paradox is easy to resolve. The reason we have not had any messages from ET is because, well, there is no ET out there. They calculate the probability we are alone in the universe to be in the range of 39%–85% and the probability that we are alone in our own galaxy to be between 53% and 99.6%."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/27/aliens-exist-survival-universe-jim-alkhalili

Answer 1

Some people think that aliens are monsters from movies but they could be insects, humans, cats... It is possible that they exist but they are not seen. 

Comments

Some may be vegetables that can move. 

Answer 2

Well Tink I hate to tell you like this, but do you realize how ethnocentric is your Q, opening the door to political highly incorrectedness PC stuff, not to mention the potential offensiveness of Fermi et alia?

BECAUSE, we humankind have these bizarre five senses covering only three dimensions + squeak over into time 4th, from which we assume that if WE cannot detect stuff with that, then the stuff must not exist! 

But how 'bout all the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum, not to mention the fifth dimension on up, maybe somebody out there is formed along those lines so we cannot even find 'em...and they prolly have very hurt feelings about now at yur insinuation they might not even have the right of existence in their very own (sniff) vibrations...

The SJW's clearly need to take up this cause!

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N'kay think I need some Earl Grey tea now, better make it Double Bergamot, melt some snowflakes...

Comments

Well, gawrsh, Virginia, it wasn't me, it was those bigoted alienophobes at Oxford University that made those estimates.

But you are right, the SJWs should send an Antifa contingent to Oxford to set those ethnocentrists straight with a good clubbing, or at the very least, get them shouted out of restaurants.

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Shout 'em out of restaurants...that'll show 'em...

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That indeed is the lunatic left's current modus operandi.

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Oh Tink btw, and just to back up a bit, before I got into 'social indignation' mode there, I really did intend to suggest that maybe the intelligent life is already around us, but indeed they do exist on other dimensions, resonances, they we cannot detect.

That does seem fairly plausible to me, one of those ideas I just think 'maybe,' and hold in abeyance for more information...see Rooster's comments...

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Hi Virginia.  Sure, these higher-dimensional speculations are possible, but I think the Oxford people are talking about intelligent life forms that operate on our mundane plane (hey, I feel a limerick coming on ), and creatures that we could in principle communicate with in some fashion, if they were out there. 

Later Addition:

Fermi wondered, aright, at the dearth

Of creatures, star-aliens by birth,

Who live on a plane,

Familiar, mundane

To us mortals who live here on Earth.

Answer 3

Sorry but I believe they've been visiting us for hundreds if not more years. I cannot believe that with the planets in just our galaxy alone, that there isn't other life form. Either very advanced or really backward. If they monitored this world the way it is now? Would you want to come visit this mess? I think not.

Of course I have my own ideas also. LOL

Comments

Rooster, as I think of it wasn't there a book some decades back exploring all that, I think the title was CHARIOT OF THE GODS, maybe? I read it...did not totally dismiss it, and many folks found it quite compelling!

Answer 4

What is the size of the smallest known virus? Rous sarcoma virus with genomes of 3.5 kilobase pairs (kb) and particle diameters of 80 nanometers (nm). We are over 10 million times bigger than an average virus.

What is the size of the largest known planet in our solar system? Jupiter. Its volume is over 1,300 times the volume of the Earth.

How many planets are there? There are 60 billion planets in our galaxy that could support life. The universe has a lot more.

Another thing to consider - If Earth is only 24 hours old - Then humans appear on Earth only at 11:58:43 PM. So the aliens that lived on Mars (or some other planet) might have died long before we appear. Also, aliens might appear on a planet billion light years from Earth after the destruction of the Earth.

Comments

Some interesting speculations, Dan!

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Dan, the longevity of intelligent life is perhaps the biggest imponderable factor in the Drake equation, after the probability of life developing at all, even on an Earth-like planet. If the latter probability is, say, only one in a trillion, then we probably are the only life form in the galaxy. The trouble is, we don't know what that probability is, with only one sample to work with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

And if intelligent life, capable of interstellar communication, destroys itself after, say, 1000 years, then again the odds of finding another intelligent life form in our galaxy become very small.

Answer 5

I seriously doubt it, but maybe I am just being hopeful.

Answer 6

Humans are considered to be the intelligent species. If there are humans like creators in one of the planets in those galleries (check the video below), is it really possible to contact them with today's technology?

We have not even seen all of the galaxies! The view from the most advanced telescope is limited. NASA plans to lanch James Webb Space Telescope in 2019 and we can see a lot more galaxies from it but still, its view will also be limited to a certain point. So the question is, we even didn't see them all, we have to send a message to each one of them. It has to reach them successfully, they have to decode it successfully.

Comments

@ Dan:

It would be possible to communicate with them only if they were fairly close, and in our own galaxy, say within 100 light-years with present technology, and even then, the round-trip time for a message and answer would be as long as 200 years, not very practical.