Discussion Why are we the only life in the universe ?

[donwhitman]

Think about it.. why is Earth the only planet that has life /existence ??

Before you say, there are trillions of planets so we can't be sure there isn't life elsewhere … the fact we can NEVER know since distances are so large , this for all intents and purposes, means we are alone .

Surely if the Universe was conducive of life , our nearby planets would have life too?

The fact that life and our existence is a totally anomaly , meaningless , irrelevant and in the cosmic time scale , eventually obsolete.

 

[violetforever]

is ur username a mad men reference?

 

[Captive_Mind515]

Personally, I think there's a chance other civilisations figured out the futility of being a sentient conscious being, and simply decided to go extinct on purpose. I think we may choose the same fate, if/when conditions get bad enough here too.

To use an analogy... We may very well just be that last house in the neighbourhood, who stubbornly refuses to leave... like you see in wildfire evacuations etc. lol

But of course, I could be wrong. It's not like I have evidence to back this notion up.

 

[caotic_realm]

The notion that we are the only living—or "intelligent"—beings in the universe seems to me to align with religious ideas in which god created man and woman on this planet through the sheer force of His will. From that perspective, there is no mention of other beings or other men and women elsewhere in the universe; it is, therefore, a biased idea—perhaps rooted in culture and the realization that, for the average person, it will be impossible to discover whether life (even if not complex) exists elsewhere in the universe.

Sometimes I think about the analogy of some remote place on this planet—Fiji, for instance; I don't think anyone on this forum has been there, right? Yet it exists, because somehow people have managed to reach it; if that hadn't happened, we wouldn't know the place existed. In fact, we would assume that the known places on Earth were the only ones—that there was nothing left to discover. I feel the universe is much the same: so vast, so silent, and terrifyingly absurd. No one has visited or spotted a place with intelligent life, yet it may or may not exist...

 

[FF777]

life is rare, which is all the more reason why humans need to stop playing king of the hill and start working together to try to become multiplanetary and focus much more on technologically advancing space travel and exploration..

but even while we are earth-bound here in the dark ages (i still consider us in a type of dark age), it doesn't necessarily make our individual lives pointless.. How long would human consciousness have to survive in order to be deemed as not having been pointless?.. Yeah on a long enough timeline you won't have humans any more because nothing can truly last for eternity, but where ever humans came from, even if it was an extremely rare anomaly, it is possible for it to happen again at some point in the future, maybe in a different galaxy or nebula..

and if you are wondering about the point of any intelligent life in general, then we should include the possible other planets that might be harboring life right now even if we can't see them or travel to them, because that still means that the anomaly happens often enough that there are some planets with life on them, and i'm sure they must be living some type of weird lives too even if we are not aware of them..

as for me though, i believe in spirit world and i don't think our conscious energy just blips straight out of existence once the physical body is dead, but that's just me..

and then there is the whole subject of if extraterrestrial aliens from outer space are already visiting our planet already..

 

[LastNite]

Think about it.. why is Earth the only planet that has life /existence ??

Before you say, there are trillions of planets so we can't be sure there isn't life elsewhere … the fact we can NEVER know since distances are so large , this for all intents and purposes, means we are alone .

Surely if the Universe was conducive of life , our nearby planets would have life too?

The fact that life and our existence is a totally anomaly , meaningless , irrelevant and in the cosmic time scale , eventually obsolete.

Just because the distance is enormous doesn't equal no life elsewhere. It might mean that we'll stay alone for a while, but who knows. In a hundred or thousand years we might invent something to travel fast enough to discover life or someone else outside of planet Earth could come visit us lol.

Surely if the Universe was conducive of life , our nearby planets would have life too?

That comes down to probability. There are many things that a planet needs in order to harbor life. Just because the universe can support life doesn't mean every nearby planet has the right combination of conditions.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I'm guessing it comes down to probability. Presumably the emergence of life requires a number of very specific conditions and elements, which these other planets we've managed to get to so far- don't have as yet.

That said- scientists can apparently tell that some planets very far away could well be similar to earth's terrain- with the presence of water so- who really knows what is going on, on them?

As for 'why' life exists- that hinges more on personal believe really. Whether you believe it was created by some being or, whether conditions were just right for it to develop here and nowhere in our close vicinity- as yet.

It doesn't seem all that strange to me though. Imagine certain chemical reactions. Take epoxy glues or resins. They'll stay liquid in their bottles forever. They'll pass an expiry date and possibly turn gungy but, they won't properly cure unless you mix the two components together. I imagine the emergence of life is kind of like that but needing multiple factors/ conditions to align. Elements, temperature, moisture etc. It does seem bizarre that life could spring up from nowhere certainly but then, I suppose it started off very small. Bacteria etc.