Intelegent life in the Universe, how common is it?

[smacksim]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
So far most of the planets discovered outside of our solar system have been huge, around Saturn sized, and having orbits as close in to their respective suns as Venus or Mercury. Based on that information alone I don't think that life is likely to be very common.

Please, rethink your argument.

I'm surprised that the poll shows 'relatively rare' as the main choice, yet most posts are optimistic about sentience within our own galaxy. I'd call that better than rare. Maybe well done and lightly seasoned.

And the post about 'It doesn't matter, we'll never meet them' has more meaning than that we, personally will never meet them. What with the speed of light barrier and expanding universe and dark energy and everything else, it's amazing we can reach up and touch our fingers to our noses.

I just read a great book on Cosmology and string theory. I have it right here....The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. O.k., it's not that great, but it's decent, and actually gets into some of the details, rather than the usual fru fru dross you find in 'popular literature'.

Me, I think we will meet other sentience. I think we will step beyond all the barriers, even lightspeed. And I agree that intelligence, once spawned, does increase the fitness of a species in many hypothetical situations. We are just on the edge (o.k., people in every generation say that about themselves) of that point in which our intelligence adds more and more to our fitness. I don't think we are fully there yet. Look at Pollution, the Cold War, and disease-by-overpopulation. No, we're not quite over the hump.

-Smack

[Blake]

Well, whats common?
Intelligent life on 1 in 10 systems?
1 in 1000?
1 in 1,000,000?
1 in 1,000,000,000?


The problem is with 100,000,000,000 stars in the milkyway, any of those could be considered "common", but to the average earthling, 1 in a million is not common.

Altough I would probably put it like this:
1 in 1,000,000 - Common
1 in 1,000,000,000 Rare
1 in 100,000,000,000 Very Rare
1 - Unique

[Agathon]

You should read this really excellent book

http://www.2think.org/aliens.shtml

(well - a mate of mine wrote it, but aside from my plugging it, it is a good read)

[Solly]

There was a point in our (euro-centric) history where we though people of different race were mindless beasts

They sure changed our opinion of that three Septembers ago.

[Kropotkin]

Originally posted by Odin
I am 75% sure there is life on Europa, but life there will never become intellegent.

Considering there's a number of posters here that don't even believe there's intelligent life in Europe, that seems very optimistic of you.

[Bosh]

So far most of the planets discovered outside of our solar system have been huge, around Saturn sized, and having orbits as close in to their respective suns as Venus or Mercury. Based on that information alone I don't think that life is likely to be very common.

But right now our technology is incapable of detecting planets smaller than gas giants IIRC.

[Kropotkin]

The real problem with these kind of spectulation is that we only got one confirmed lifebringing planet in the universe. It's quite impossible to make some decent statistical predictions with a sample of 1.

[Solly]

"The real problem with these kind of spectulation is that we only got one confirmed lifebringing planet in the universe. It's quite impossible to make some decent statistical predictions with a sample of 1."

We only have a sample of 1 universe to analyse too..

[Blake]

Which really makes it perfect for a poll. After all, if there were cold hard facts about the prevalence of life in the universe speculation wouldn't be half so fun...

[Last Conformist]

What's rare in context? Sentient life on one planet in a million? Sentient life in on galaxy in a million?

I believe the number of places with intelligent life represents a fairly low percentage of places with life. I base this primarily on the fact that one Earth, intelligent life* has arosen exactly once in several billion years of biological evolution.

* Intelligent life operationally defined as capable of interstellar communication; that's the only sort we can expect to contact for quite some time anyway.

[Solly]

I think you need to talk more philosophically in discussions like this.

[Last Conformist]

More philosophically? As in using more long dashes?

[Edan]

Originally posted by Darkstar

Remember, intelligence lets species overcome drastic situations in their environment that they aren't equipped by genetic programming to defeat. So intelligence will always be a pro evolutionary force anywhere there is significant variation in the ecology.

Ehh, what about when species are so "intelligent" that they are so succesful at"overcoming drastic situations" that they eventually become extinct due to permanent and devestating ecological destruction (possibly due to overpopulation and or trying to change the enviornment to suit their genetic programming) or nuclear war? Intelligence is overrated.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
I don't see what your link has to do with the point.

It was about the blind spot which occurs as a result of the image flipping done by our eyes. Such a blind spot does not occur in squid eyes, because they don't need to flip the images. I don't know how I could have been clearer about it, since I was talking specifically about the blind spot when I referenced the link...

[Skanky Burns]

Has anyone commented on the irony of the title yet?