Why are we still searching for intelligent alien life?

[Admin]

Humans have scanned and searched the heavens for signs of other advanced civilizations in the universe. And we've found nothing. Absolutely nothing. Maybe we shouldn't focus on intelligent life.

Why are we still searching for intelligent alien life? : Read more

 

[rod]

It seems the question should be asked. How did life develop on Earth? The common answer is abiogenesis. Charles Darwin held this view (warm little pond and chemical evolution) in his private letters in the early 1880s. Charles Darwin also acknowledged there was essentially, no evidence observed in nature showing abiogenesis was true. So we have abiogenesis, panspermia, and special creation (rejected by all good science )

 

[sam85geo]

IMO. Earth and its humans are a unique, special planet with a unique, special, randomly evolved life form, us. This concept may change as the Andromeda Galaxy "plods" its way towards the Milky Way Galaxy.

 

[Catastrophe]

Why are we so anthropocentric to think that any alien civilisation might want to contact us?
Potential meeting is virtually impossible without FTLT. To postulate FTLT is going against all we know now - and probably confirmed impossible by the fact that no visitors have arrived.
Why should we think any civilisation is going to contact us using our present forms of em communication?
What language would they use? Morse code?
Why would any civilisation want to broadcast its existence?

To our knowledge, the existence of intelligent life is normal - we are here.
Consideration of our Solar System, to the contrary, suggests that intelligent life only occurs in one in 8 planets.

Those are the facts. Leaving aside 'intelligent', simple (micro) life should be much more abundant than intelligent life.

Anything else is speculation, imagination and/or guesswork.

Put our brains into action, and we will come to these conclusions.

Cat

 

[sam85geo]

I recommend "The Ends of the Earth" by Peter Brannen. The book's introduction nicely summarizes the existence of life on Earth, and documents the "Big Five" mass extinctions that Earth has endured. A sobering read for those of us maudlinly obsessed with extinction. Per Cat's post above, microbial life seems evolutionary preferable to and more logical than a biologically complex, narcissistic, violent, ruthless, self-destructive, "intelligent" species akin to ours.

 

[HobartStinsonian]

I liked Thomas Gold's book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere " as a plausible theory for life's origins on Earth. Life started deep under Earth's surface. Microbes migrated upwards to the ocean floors and the surface.

 

[Mergatroid]

It took decades to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson. It wasn't until we created a special piece of test equipment that were able to pull it off. Now we know it exists.

Same goes for a lot of other things.
Just because something is hard to prove, doesn't mean we should give up. I find it highly unbelievable that we are the only life in our galaxy.

And note, there is no guarantee aliens are as advanced as we are. They could be there waiting for us to discover them, and not have any technology at all.

Any speculation that there is no other life outside of Earth is just that, speculation.

It's impossible to prove there is no alien life.