Aliens: Yes Or No?

[Stalker0]

If you believe in the scale of physics and the universe, its completely illogical to pick option 1.

The best way a physicist once put it. The universe is so insanely incredibly vast, that its actually a nigh probabilistic certainty that at some other point in the universe at some point in time a creature that is chemically exactly you will live your exact same life. THAT's how much stuff is out there.

Now other intelligent life on earth, or in the galaxy right now.... ok maybe maybe not. But in the entirety of the universe....100%.

 

[Parmandur]

If you believe in the scale of physics and the universe, its completely illogical to pick option 1.

The best way a physicist once put it. The universe is so insanely incredibly vast, that its actually a nigh probabilistic certainty that at some other point in the universe at some point in time a creature that is chemically exactly you will live your exact same life. THAT's how much stuff is out there.

Now other intelligent life on earth, or in the galaxy right now.... ok maybe maybe not. But in the entirety of the universe....100%.

That's...not accurate. The universe is big, but finite.

 

[Stalker0]

At near-light speeds, the mass of the particle becomes the limiting factor. Light travels faster than all other known particles (or energy waves, depending on which equation is examining it) because it has the lowest mass of all other observable forms of matter (or energy, depending.) If it had less mass, it would travel faster.

This isn't quite right.

Mass-less particles always travel at the speed of light, and light itself (the photon) is mass-less. Now photons do have momentum and mass equivalence through the energy it carries, but it does not have an actual mass.

As soon as something has mass, its speed must be lower than light speed, that is what all current theories of physics require.

The only thing we currently know of that can travel faster than light is space itself, for based on current theories space expands apart much faster than light speed currently in the universe. That theory has actually just recently been brought under scrutiny through the james webb space telescope though, as some preliminary results suggest we are not expanding faster and faster as was once believed but may be relatively static. This is however very early results, and it will take a lot more investigation to see if it holds up.

 

[Stalker0]

That's...not accurate. The universe is big, but finite.

We actually don't know for certain that the universe is finite (we can only get echoes of the far universe from the cosmic microwave background, but we can only detect a small portion of the universe using light). But even if it is, the vastness of it can literally not be overstated.

To give it some context, based on our current estimates of the universe, there are 1 million stars for every grain of sand on earth.

For every speck of dirt.... a MILLION STARS.

 

[Parmandur]

We actually don't know for certain that the universe is finite (we can only get echoes of the far universe from the cosmic microwave background, but we can only detect a small portion of the universe using light). But even if it is, the vastness of it can literally not be overstated.

To give it some context, based on our current estimates of the universe, there are 1 million stars for every grain of sand on earth.

For every speck of dirt.... a MILLION STARS.

Yes, it is big. But not so big as to make it probable that there is a creature with your exact chemical makeup out there somewhere, let alone certain.

 

[Stalker0]

Yes, it is big. But not so big as to make it probable that there is a creature with your exact chemical makeup out there somewhere, let alone certain.

well keep in mind, I am not talking now, or even in the past. I am talking about considering the entire timeframe of the universe's existence, from its beginning till heat death.

 

[Parmandur]

well keep in mind, I am not talking now, or even in the past. I am talking about considering the entire timeframe of the universe's existence, from its beginning till heat death.

Even so, it not even that big, and there is that much time. There is a lot of both, for sure. But the requires a few leaps past anybevidence last I checked on the latest.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Intelligent life in our galaxy, other than us, which is also capable of interstellar travel? Probably not. This is evident from the fact that we haven't already been colonized by a machine intelligence which replaced its original creators.

Elsewhere in the Universe - yes. Lots of other galaxies have been colonized by machine intelligences. We're lucky they're so far away, and can't get to us.

 

[briggart]

This isn't quite right.

Mass-less particles always travel at the speed of light, and light itself (the photon) is mass-less. Now photons do have momentum and mass equivalence through the energy it carries, but it does not have an actual mass.

As soon as something has mass, its speed must be lower than light speed, that is what all current theories of physics require.

The only thing we currently know of that can travel faster than light is space itself, for based on current theories space expands apart much faster than light speed currently in the universe. That theory has actually just recently been brought under scrutiny through the james webb space telescope though, as some preliminary results suggest we are not expanding faster and faster as was once believed but may be relatively static. This is however very early results, and it will take a lot more investigation to see if it holds up.

Do you have any link for that? Only thing I've heard is that JWST found a much larger number of early galaxies, that was hyped as a JWST contradicting the Big Bang*, but that most likely points to the fact that we don't fully understand galaxy formation, especially in the very early Universe environment.

* Technically, that would just be in conflict with what we believe the Universe is made of (what we call the Lambda-CDM model) and not the Big Bang (which is how we believe the Universe came to be).

 

[UngainlyTitan]

That's...not accurate. The universe is big, but finite.

Is this true, I though that it is still an open question. we do know it is bigger than we can observe.