How much intelligent life is there?

How many species of intelligent life in this galaxy?


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There is no way to try to make any sort of educated guess based on some formula. There is nothing to back up the formula. No stats, as perfy said. It is indeed just pulling numbers out of orifices.

That said, I don't think we're alone. I base this on absolutely nothing scientific, but rather just a belief that it is human arrogance taken to the extreme to presume that out of all his glorious creation, God chose this puny little rock alone to seed with life.
 
Every attempt to find life on another planet has been proven to be fruitless. There has not been one contact made even though we are sending out radio waves out to the farthest reaches of the universe
Excuse me? Farthest reaches of the universe???

You know we haven't even reached outside our galaxy yet? Our radiowaves have covered a miniscule region of our galaxy. Tiny.
Do not say that there is probability, since first you need to show that life first formed here, since we know that Life could not have come from out of space
Does this mean I can tell you to stop talking about this God character until you find some positive evidence the feller is around?
 
Every attempt to find life on another planet has been proven to be fruitless.

That doesn't surprise me. Look how primitive we are.

There has not been one contact made even though we are sending out radio waves out to the farthest reaches of the universe, s it is only the stuff of Sci Fi that we see such things,

Would you want to talk with ants if you could travel across star systems? That means you can exceed the speed of light by the way.
so start to accept reality for what it really is, that we are the only intelligent life form around.

No thanks.
 
Neither do you. You just hail back to some old myths and say: there it is, without a shred of evidence.

So ready to critique science when it poses hypothetical scenarios but not bringing anything to the table because, hey man, it's faith, it don't need no evidence. So far all I have heard is: that is too improbable, so it must be God.

And evolutionist don;t deal directly with abiogenesis, but don't let that slow you down.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0203_050203_deepest.html

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,894282,00.html?promoid=googlep

http://www.panspermia.org/bacteria.htm

Right conditions indeed.

Going on the evidence presented you would conclude that it is unknown whether life exist outside our planet. Not impossible.

By the way, not conclusive, and not evidence, but interesting still ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/277674.stm

So for life to have first evolved on earth, you have to overcome these problems for it come via natural methods.
http://www.icr.org/article/4118/
IF neo-Darwinian evolution, which is supposed to involve nature selecting whole organisms from within a population, applies to raw chemicals, and

IF the first cell membrane was not made with phospholipids like all modern living cells, but instead with fatty acids, and

IF there was a nutrient-filled ocean on an early earth, and

IF those nutrients contained just the right “precursor” chemicals,3 and

IF those nutrients were optically purified (which science shows cannot happen without machines),4 and

IF those precursors could eventually morph into the chemicals of real life: DNA, RNA, proteins, vitamins, cholesterols, and certain carbohydrates (although chemistry has shown this is not possible without machines),5 and

IF those nutrients were highly concentrated in a small area, despite forces that would lead to their diffusion, and

IF fatty acids could spontaneously generate in a watery soup, and

IF the nutrient concentration coincided with a floating fatty acid bubble, and

IF the ocean had the proper pH required to form “vesicles” (bubbles assembled from the fatty acids to serve as containers for the new cells), and

IF the temperature in that ocean fluctuated precisely to disrupt the bubble’s integrity, permitting nutrients into (but not out of!) itself, and

IF oxygen, free radicals, other harmful chemicals, ultraviolet light, electricity, or any physical motions were not there to disrupt the delicate concoction, and

IF the high temperatures required to induce the bubble to assimilate small RNA-like bits, did not also break the precursors down before they “figured out” how to replicate or at least maintain themselves,6 and

IF the small-sized oily vesicles that formed spontaneously were to somehow expand, providing adequate internal space to house biochemical precursors, yet without losing structural integrity,

THEN we would have a chemical-containing bubble that is as close to a living cell as a desktop globe is to planet earth.
Note how there are fourteen obstacles to overcome to show that life first form out of nothing but chemicals and some are impossible without outside interference, which of cosre is not how life first started, but I will eagerly like you to hsow how each of these problems cn be solved.
 
Every attempt to find life on another planet has been proven to be fruitless. There has not been one contact made even though we are sending out radio waves out to the farthest reaches of the universe, s it is only the stuff of Sci Fi that we see such things, so start to accept reality for what it really is, that we are the only intelligent life form around. Do not say that there is probability, since first you need to show that life first formed here, since we know that Life could not have come from out of space, since Panspermia has been dealt a massive blow. Meteorite experiment deals blow to 'bugs from space' theory

They haven't arrived yet
 
That's not statistics; that's pulling numbers out your ass.

It's a study of probabilities of probabilities.

There's no good reason to think that intelligent life isn't exceedingly rare.

Could be, but if the last couple hundred years have taught us anything, it's that we're not special at all:

- not at the centre of the solar system
- not at the centre of the universe
- not created by a supreme deity

Amino acids, the building blocks of life, are all over the Universe. There is no reason to believe that life is so rare that it only came about on one planet.

I suppose there might be a huge stumbling block between life and intelligent life, but that would again make us special.

And again, this stumbling block would have to be SO INSANELY HUGE that it would have made OUR appearance a miracle of insane proportions.

So yeah, I think that going with one probability (ie. there is only 1 intelligent life in this universe) is far less probable than all the other ones (ie. there are 2 intelligent species, 3, 4 5, etc.)

Not sure if this probability of probabilities stuff makes sense to you, but I could elaborate if you have any specific questions. It does not even involve my ass.
 
So for life to have first evolved on earth, you have to overcome these problems for it come via natural methods.

[article Institution for Creation Research :rolleyes:]

Note how there are fourteen obstacles to overcome to show that life first form out of nothing but chemicals and some are impossible without outside interference, which of cosre is not how life first started, but I will eagerly like you to hsow how each of these problems cn be solved.
O yes, because I claimed I knew how abiogenesis started. Why don't you reply to what I write instead?

You were talking about the "Right conditions". I showed you that those conditions have a very large area which is "right".
 
I feel like playing SimEarth now.

Spoiler :
simearth_1.jpg
 
Could be, but if the last couple hundred years have taught us anything, it's that we're not special at all:

- not at the centre of the solar system
- not at the centre of the universe
- not created by a supreme deity

Amino acids, the building blocks of life, are all over the Universe. There is no reason to believe that life is so rare that it only came about on one planet.

I suppose there might be a huge stumbling block between life and intelligent life, but that would again make us special.

It seems we've now moved from bad statistics to bad intuition. There is no contradiction between us being not unique in general and us being rare in a specific area.

And again, this stumbling block would have to be SO INSANELY HUGE that it would have made OUR appearance a miracle of insane proportions.
Anthropic principle, bro, if our chance was nonzero, in infinite universe (making the fair assumption that the universe continues beyond the observability limit here) we must exist.

And really, what methodology do you have to ballpark the probabilities of life forming in a given astronomical body and intelligent life evolving from that?
 
I refuse to accept the Drake Fake theory but you can all go ahead.

El Mach, I do think 10 is a ridiculously low number, I think 10,000 is a ridiculous low number. And I removed trillions about 5 seconds after that post. If there are 400 billion star systems, 10 is impossible unless you're the most ignorant of all the species that do exist in our galaxy.
Okay. What's your view on the Fermi Paradox, then?
My theory is that intelligence does not evolve commonly. I'm not convinced that there was more than one 'intelligence' event in our history, though I could change my mind.
Excuse me? Farthest reaches of the universe???

Exactly. Our signals have only reached (roughly) one millionth of the stars in our own galaxy
 
I see there is a discussion about the Drake equation going on. Since I can't see anyone else have brought this up, then I will:

the_drake_equation.png
 
billions of stars per galaxy
billions of galaxies

I figure average .01 per

We are not alone. Stop pretending to have no understanding of statistics. Get us to pluto and I'll prove it.
 
Last thing we need is more 'intellectuals'.

Would you consider a planet of sidhes as intelligent life?

I would. But not necessarily 'intellectual' life.

How about a planet full of monkeys that use sign language? Intelligent or no?
 
It seems we've now moved from bad statistics to bad intuition. There is no contradiction between us being not unique in general and us being rare in a specific area.

We have yet to encounter a phenomenon in the Universe that does not repeat elsewhere, in great numbers.

Having said that, I do not doubt that intelligent life is rare. I wouldn't be surprised if it was incredibly rare. To claim that it is so incredibly rare that it only popped up in one place, in the entire Universe, would be bad intuition, though.

Perfection said:
Anthropic principle, bro, if our chance was nonzero, in infinite universe (making the fair assumption that the universe continues beyond the observability limit here) we must exist.

Obviously the chance of us arising was non-zero. My point is that it would be highly improbable for this probability to be so low as to only happen once, ever, in the entire Universe.

Why? Well, let's call this probability P(X). We have no idea what it is. What you are saying is that P(X) is so close to zero it might as well be zero. I'm saying that it might lie somewhere else, maybe somewhere between your 0.000000000....00000000000000000....0000000001 and 0.000000001

Mathematically alone, your value is a single point, while mine is a huge range (compared to that point). We have no idea what P(X) is, but my guess covers a much much larger area and thus has a larger probability of being right.

Perfection said:
And really, what methodology do you have to ballpark the probabilities of life forming in a given astronomical body and intelligent life evolving from that?

You don't need one, if you're talking about the probability of something having a specific probability.
 
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