Extraterrestrial Life

[fougere]

So, does ET life exist? Have we already been contacted? Are our imaginations going to far with the Wow! signal? Is the government passing up one of the greatest opportunities the world could ever have? Would ET life be hostile? Would they be so different that they couldn't communicate with us despite their intelligence?

Love to hear your thoughts.

[calcdude84se]

I maintain to be realistic. Also, asking "Does ET life exist in the universe?" is somewhat pointless, though I answered to that question. The better variant is: is there ET life w/in the visible universe. Like it or not, we can't see the entire universe.
Edit: added "ET" before life for clarification.

[calc84maniac]

[DrDnar]

Unless we find away around Relativity, the existence or non-existence of extraterrestrial life is largely a moot point.

[Galandros]

[Xeda112358]

I think we need to find a more accurate definition for life. Here is an accepted definition that is learned in basic (and advanced) biology classes:

Living organisms undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations.

(I found that on wikipedia and an old Bio textbook)

But now we must think of this: If we can make robots or androids to meet these conditions (and I see this as relatively easy), then we clearly do not require cells like our own to form life. An organism could very well be formed of a bunch of metals and liquids randomely coalescing as well as a bunch of proteins and water. We are very sure that in the visible universe there are plenty of metals, so it is not very difficult for me to imagine somethinig aken to a computer chip forming. Even here on Earth we have some very interesting creatures made of the most random materials. I have seen organisms with bodies that have properties similar to fiber optics (look up glass sponges-- I work in a glass museum, what can I say?) These actually do use electrical impulses so why cannot this method be used elsewhere in the universe? Just some thought food in case your brains are hungry.

[holmes221b]

Long post is long...but then I happen to have a lot to say. xD

"Like it or not, we can't see the entire universe."
Not directly, yes. However, we can, using indirect methods, see the entire universe.

"Unless we find a way around Relativity, the existence or non-existence of extraterrestrial life is largely a moot point."
What do you mean? I really don't see where you're coming from with this statement, could you please clarify?

"Finding bacteria will not be a surprise at all to me. It would be extremely curious to investigate and I would be surprised with the things we learn from them."
I think they have already found Martian fossils in meteors that fell to Earth from Mars (though these fossils could have been terrestrial in origin).

"Now moving on to intelligent life, I assume we are at least a little intelligent because of our capability to explain the inner workings of the universe at some extent, and from that knowledge intelligent life can produce enough advanced technology to attempt travels or communication."
That is what is meant by intelligent life, actually.

"It will be much less probable to happen but if happens I doubt many of them survived until our time or their messages will ever arrive to us."
Who is to say that their messages haven't already reached Earth? Or that they are just waiting for us to reach some technological milestone before revealing their existence to us?

"They are so advanced that we provide no interest nor resources."
I am highly doubtful that they could be so advanced as to make us of no interest to them, nor that we wouldn't possess some resource that they would want to have.

"If they decided for some obscure reason to me, I think we would get many difficulties in translating ideas, it is unlikely their intelligence works the same way of our. Exchange of experience would be probably through demonstration and observation."
This occurs within our own species, so it would be illogical to believe that this would not occur during a "First Contact" incident.

"I think all of our observation on evolution indicates life forms are simply greedy bastards or sometimes cooperate to strive. So other life forms could be very evil to us or as well friendly."
Greedy bastards!? What life forms do you have in mind that fall under that category (excluding humans)?

"If they were neutral, they would never come to us or observe us undetected."
Just because they are neutral does not mean that they will not observe us.

"Now about the Wow! signal, it can be caused of some unknown natural celestial event, from our atmosphere, and many other things. In my opinion if we received some signal of ETs it would last a lot of time (millenniums). But it can be something..."
One millennium is equal to one thousand terrestrial years. As for the Wow! signal itself, it could be anything, yes. Anything except for nothing. It clearly is something. What we don't know is what that something is.

"I like to point out that we humans made some cools attempts of sending messages with probes. The most interesting one for me is not those with our images and a vague map to our solar system (I doubt anything will understand and pinpoint us of that)..."
It's not a map to our solar system, but a diagram of our solar system.

"...but one that carries a radioactive matter that through decay can be used to date the probe. We will be located on time, not bad idea."
Which probe is that?

"I think we need to find a more accurate definition for life....If we can make robots or androids to meet these conditions (and I see this as relatively easy), then we clearly do not require cells like our own to form life."
There's nothing wrong with the definition of life as it is currently taught in biology classes, even if we manage to make robots (androids are a sub-type of robot) that actually met the qualifications for life. Cells are not even a requirement. That being said, I am highly doubtful that non-cellular life is plausible (at least, based on what I know of biologic law, which admittedly is currently limited to life as we know it to exist here on Earth).

"An organism could very well be formed of a bunch of metals and liquids randomely coalescing as well as a bunch of proteins and water."
Iron is a metal. It is the reason our blood is red, as well as the reason Mars is known as the "Red Planet". Copper is a metal as well, and it can be found in our blood as well. Calcium is an alkali Earth metal. I could go on for a bit more on the metals that exist naturally in terrestrial life, but I believe I've made my point here. Terrestrial life can be basically described as organisms formed out of a bunch of metals and liquids randomly coalescing...and since metals can exist in a liquid state at high enough temperatures.....

"Even here on Earth we have some very interesting creatures made of the most random materials."
All life on Earth is carbon-based (at least that I am currently aware of), so what are you talking about here, precisely?

"I have seen organisms with bodies that have properties similar to fiber optics (look up glass sponges--I work in a glass museum, what can I say?) These actually do use electrical impulses so why cannot this method be used elsewhere in the universe?"
In fact, I'm one of those organisms, as are you. All (multi-cellular) terrestrial life use electrical impulses.

[FloppusMaximus]

Are aliens among us... on the Internet? I stumbled across this several years ago while doing research on something unrelated. If you haven't read it, you should:

http://frombob.to/you/

Some seriously wild ideas in there.

[Xeda112358]

FloppusMaximus:
"I have seen organisms with bodies that have properties similar to fiber optics (look up glass sponges--I work in a glass museum, what can I say?) These actually do use electrical impulses so why cannot this method be used elsewhere in the universe?"
In fact, I'm one of those organisms, as are you. All (multi-cellular) terrestrial life use electrical impulses.

The point there was that these electrical impulses travel through silica fibers to communicate with many other sponges. The main neat thing is that these silica fibers are actually glass made at temperatures a few thousand degrees cooler than what we as humans can make with furnaces.
Plus, this is their method of relaying information so my point was that intelligent extraterrestrial life might use a similar method (instead of our cumbersome means of communication).
Take into account that those fibers were made naturally as opposed to man made methods (which only took over 3500 years of working with glass) and that was my point with metals. If nature can make silica fibers like that, who is to say something aken to a computer chip cannot be made naturally. Life does not need to be carbon based, it was simply ideal for Earth and the correct conditions were met.

On a side note, what if we made artificial intelligence combined with a robot/android body and sent it off toward a random, habitable planet. It could, after thousands of years evolve itself (you know, make new ones, modify themselves to adapt to changing climates, et cetera) and then they came back to Earth. Though the first was terrestrial, would these others be extra-terrestrial?

[holmes221b]

"Plus, this is their method of relaying information so my point was that intelligent extraterrestrial life might use a similar method (instead of our cumbersome means of communication)."
Sponges are one of the most primitive multicellular terrestrial organisms known to humanity. Perhaps there is a biological reason that our cumbersome means of communication is so cumbersome in comparison.

"Take into account that those fibers were made naturally as opposed to man made methods (which only took over 3500 years of working with glass) and that was my point with metals."
I was merely trying to point out that terrestrial life met your description, that is all.

"If nature can make silica fibers like that, who is to say something aken to a computer chip cannot be made naturally. Life does not need to be carbon based, it was simply ideal for Earth and the correct conditions were met."
Such as a silicon-based life-form, you mean? Not likely. For one thing, silicon’s analogous structures are comparatively unstable and sometimes highly reactive. Also, such analogous silicon compounds may never occur in nature. Silicon is also much less abundant in the universe (not just on Earth), compared to carbon.
Silicon also lacks chirality, or "handedness", a trait carbon does possess. That being said, life as we know it utilizes only the right-hand form of sugars, integral components in DNA structure, and the left-hand form of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Very few silicon compounds have handedness at all. The biochemical reactions of life are incredibly specific, and in fact, many larger biomolecules are so precise that a single conformational change (right to left) around one carbon atom would block the reaction. Without chirality, the ability of biomolecules to recognize specific substrates would be crippled, ultimately limiting the number of different reactions available and achievable by a silicon-based system.
That's not to say that silicon didn't play a role in the emergence of terrestrial life. One of the unsolved mysteries in the origin of life is why life came to employ one chiral version of a molecule (left vs. right) in its reactions and not the other. Some chemists believe that the chiral selection process in the pre-biotic "soup" might have been aided by a "handed" silica (SO2) surface. Both left- and right-handed molecules could have interacted with the chiral surface, and were aligned according to handedness. In this manner chiral molecules were separated and sorted in preparation for pre-biological selection. So even if silicon is an unlikely participant in the biological reactions of life, it could have certainly lent a helping hand to the origin of life.
Source

"On a side note, what if we made artificial intelligence combined with a robot/android body and sent it off toward a random, habitable planet. It could, after thousands of years evolve itself (you know, make new ones, modify themselves to adapt to changing climates, et cetera) and then they came back to Earth. Though the first was terrestrial, would these others be extra-terrestrial?"
After thousands of years? Absolutely, they would be considered extra-terrestrial. There's no reason that they wouldn't be.