The chances of finding life beyond Earth are excellent. The chances of that life being anything more than the simplest of organisms are practically nil.
Space is pretty unbelievable, it goes from understandable scale to not comprehendable really quick. If the sun was the size of a blood cell, the milky way would be the size of the USA. There are some 250billion stars like our sun in each gallaxy, give or take 50 billion. And there are some 250billion galaxy's, So there are say, 200billion x 200billion chances for this earth set up type of situation, factor in longer periods of time, possiblity of life like humans leaving locals and seeding life or helping? At least a few times. Its a funny thing isnt it? that no matter what man does (on earth) ulimately he knows the true challenge which will never go away or leave him, to go out and master space, to find out wtf is going on. Space, its numerical values, its beauty, its promose, its danger, age, awe. Space is humbling, i guess there is sone way out there a compression wave creating space from the big bang but as far as we are concerned as we can comprehend distance it might as well be truely infinate, is that easier to understand than the dimension with in dimension perl with in a perl idea theory even buddha spoke on.
There is also the possibility that life is very common, even within our own solar system, but that it is in a form so different that we cannot perceive it. We're pretty locked into the carbon based, water solvent paradigm and that may well not be the only form life can take. I'm also not sure that intelligence is beneficial to the survival of a species. Humans have mostly used their intelligence to develop new ways to kill themselves and everything around them. Put another way, by the time a species develops the ability to communicate beyond their planet they have also developed ways to annihilate themselves and will probably do so.
Not that i can think of a better way but searching for intelligent life via radio waves has always seemed peculiar to me, I mean radio, TV, and afaik everything else that emits radio waves is just our way of overcoming the limitations of the human body, our inability to communicate over great distances.
I don't think that really follows, unless you think there is a significant barrier for simple life evolving into more complicated forms. The only other factor that might suggest the above is the notion that if there was a more avanced species we'd have already made contact.
I think it makes perfect sense, unless you think existence of a microbial organism on a planet makes intelligent life a foregone conclusion?
Given sufficient length of time, it seems more likely than not. Not that any of this is any more than speclation though.
How can anyone calculate the probabillty of life on other planets, surely its so random its rediculous. Nobody really knows what the universe holds.
Not saying you're wrong, but we've only known about radio waves for a little over a hundred years. There may be lots of other things out there we don't know about.
A recent twist to the hunt for aliens theorizes that we are first to arrive for the party. If we ARE the "Galactic Elders", the galaxy is doomed!
My view on this 'aliens' situation is still that it's merely an academic question unless we can either get our Star Trek-style technology going (FTL, particularly), or said aliens are nice enough to drop by for a pleasant visit (First Contact-style). Frankly, the most realistic and likely outcome is that humanity stays grounded on this planet for another 5,000 years or so while being watched over aliens with this funky 'Prime Directive' nonsense until humanity reaches a certain level of enlightenment, stops killing each other and invents FTL instead. Might take a few thousands of years longer, though. Never know when humanity destroys all its technology again and readies for another Middle Ages
To me there is Life on other planets out there but what stage that life is at will take a quite a while to find out due to limits of current technology for us. I honestly believe that it's stupid to think we are the only living creatures in universe. If "Aliens" did make contact in my lifetime, I honestly think that they would leave again pretty quickly if they are not hostile since as a "race" we are kind of destructive and still have not sorted out a way to get along, get rid of hunger, money etc which probably any race of "Aliens" would have gotten rid of for the greater good. ***Tin Foil Hat Section (sort off)*** I honestly believe that we have been visited already and that the governments of the countries have been keeping it quiet. The issue is that what information comes from Space is controlled and manipulated by government funded companies which, means they can edit that information to keep the general public in the dark as much as possible. Until we either get a clear image not manipulated by anyone, or they actually appear in a large scale and make there presence known globally at the same time, I think we are just going to have to keep wondering about it since I cannot see any government confirming anything until they have no choice.
