Welcome to Gaia! ::

For ever you have heard all kinds of weird tales that go back as far as the egyptian times that there was something out there in space - some place other than earth that life existed on ...

Do you believe that there could possibly be another planet out there that is more advanced than us - a place that has life other than the life we have here on earth.

Just happened to cross my mind so I wanted to ask plus I wanted to get some talking going on and ..........hahahahaha .... this is all I could think of at the moment ... hahahahaha

SO what is your opinion and why ??

Each new scientific discovery stands upon the shoulders of the last scientific discovery and is just as obvious - or not obvious - as its predecessor.


Now then, as for Aliens... there is a very significant chance that somehow, somewhere in our universe, there is a another carbon-based-life-form-supporting planet. The chances of them being more technologically advanced than us questionable. On one hand, the Earth is relatively young compared to the universe - only about 1/4 the age of our galaxy. On the other hand, it took several billion years for life to evolve from amoebas to human beings capable of communicating beyond our planet. If life exists elsewhere, its rate of technological progression is likely on a similar timescale.

The main problem, though, are our chances of actually finding and communicating with said alien civilizations. The universe extends for billions of light years in every direction. We, as best we know, cannot communicate faster than the speed of light. Even the expanding shell of radio communications (a shell of radio waves emitted from Earth dating back to the first radio broadcast) is only about ~50-60 lightyears away. Optimistic estimates put a VERY slim chance of intelligent life existing less than a couple hundred lightyears away from Earth. that 50-60 lightyear expedition started somewhere around 1887..... you can see the problems inherent in trying to communicate with any other civilizations.

The "discovery" of gravitational theory wasn't as simple as you make it sound. Newton had to invent an entire new branch of mathematics (calculus) to describe gravity, inertia, momentum, etc. Those concepts were as obscure to the minds of the 17th century as modern discoveries are to us.

The fact that it seems simpler is, I think, just hindsight bias. Consider this, gravity is something that has existed since human beings came into this world...yet it was only in the 1600s that someone actually came up with a way to quantify and scientifically explain it.


And I disagree; there is no such thing as unimportant research - even a null result has meaning to it. The point at which furthering our knowledge becomes a bad thing is the point where the price we pay demands the sacrifice of some unwilling person.

Cloning is very important, sorry if being a bit rude in that. We are only cloning housepets because the religious people freak out when ever Science has a say. So if we cant even do stem cell research, do you think they are going to allow cloning of humans, or any part of such?

All sceience becomes important at some point in leading to the larger picture. If you look at it in terms of weapons, the chinese never would of thought fireworks would some day lead to missles and weapons of mass destruction.

Though, if I go back to the gernal topic of space and ET, we should be concentrating more science in way of finding out how to get large spacecraft that can be lived or travel faster so we don't spend 10-30 years just trying to get to planets here in our galaxy. If we start to learn how to expand out faster we can stand a better chance of finding inhabitable planets and mabey find other beings out there.. Though it is improbable the 'life' we are looking for will be what we think. Humans only ended up on this planet because of certain events, so unless the universe copied the same exact events somewhere else its going to be hard.

Heck, there could be 'aliens' already out there.. Do you think they trust sharing their secrets with humans? We are crazy and viloent creatures killing ourselves with just our own weapons. I think if they are there, they are waiting for us to stop being children. smile

I realize that cloning could have some positive effects. I've heard talk of cloning dogs that are very good at sniffing out drugs...and other such things.
I'm just saying...it's one of those things that could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Well see...that's the thing. No we cannot exactly photocopy anything right now, but with the path they are on...that's what they want. It frightens me. We don't want Star Wars: Clone Wars on our hands.

Which I don't ever see happening. As many of us who have woken up to our responsibilities...there aren't enough. And everyday there's another fool born. Like I said before...there's a point where I think science needs to be proud of what it's accomplished and leave it at that. Unfortunately, scientists are human too- they also want power and fame (not all).