Asklemmy

I'm 100% sure they exist and I'm 99.9% sure there won't be any contact over the next 10 years. It's entirely possible there will never be, though I do hope otherwise.

I believe that it is very likely that life exists elsewhere it the universe, but it ist very statistically unlikely for us to meet during the timeframe of our species existence. Even more so in the next 10 years. Tho an analysis of Europa might prove me wrong.

The universe is so unimaginable large and there are so many stars and planets that there are good chances of the existence of extra terrestrial life, but at same time there is a very small chance that they can find us, even if they are advanced enough to search for life in the universe. If they are much more advanced than us they probably don't care, in the same way we don't care to try to make contact with all the ants of the earth.

1. They are to far away to reach us
2. If they have technology which would make it possible for them to travel faster than light, they have such high intelligence that they don't recognize us as intelligent beings like we don't recognize viruses as having any intelligence, so they would never think of visiting us and communicating with us.

So I believe in aliens only in a statistical sense. There is a lot of space out there so SOMETHING has to be elsewhere. But those same stats tell me that the odds of it being intelligent is low, intelligent enough to contact us very low, existing at the same time as us (since we are a blip in the history of the universe) astronomically low and having the ability, or desire, to travel to us hilariously, laughably, insanely low.

I don't think people who say aliens have been to earth are serious people. Sorry.

Dunno but if I were an alien the stupidest thing I could do would be contact "humans".

If they're looking to build a relationship with Hunanese people, I hope these aliens are ready for spicy food.

All of this is layman with some basic understanding only.

So, on the one hand in our galaxy alone there are between 100 and 400 billion stars (wikipedia), now a lot of those have no planets, but of course a lot have many more than our system does. So at least the same number in planets. There's a good chance there's more than one planet capable to supporting life among that number.

In fact as we improve our ability to observe our galaxy we are able to verify more and more viable planets and even a reasonable number that are similar to our own planet.

This means that there's definitely going to be a reasonable chance that somewhere, life has evolved to similar or beyond our level already.

But, this for sure doesn't mean there's any reason to expect visitors. That's because even if they can travel at the speed of light, it's still going to be thousands of years for the majority of them to reach us, provided they even choose to come to us. Because, from where they are they wouldn't be able to make out our radio signals, nor likely any other signs of life. So we'd be one of many "potentially live bearing" planets.

So, just my opinion. I think the chance of life being out there is reasonably high, the chance of actually being visited (assuming it holds true that we cannot travel faster than light) is probably very very low.

My opinion is that the probability of life developing on another planet, advancing to interstellar travel, and being physically close enough to us to visit us during the last few million years is so implausibly tiny that anyone seriously asking about their relations with human beings can be safely dismissed as a complete rube.

I fucking wish. Why would they come though? We demonstrably suck. Project cats to the universe and maybe we can attract some nice folks.

Human aren't worth their time

They're already here- is no one following the UAP situation?

Grey aliens are us in the future

Earth is the neighborhood you roll your windows up when you drive through at max speed.

If there is life out there, it would be rather unspectular. It would exist in the form of microbes, probably not even visible by the human eye. There are theories that suggest that there is a high chance of life on Enceladus.

One of the reasons that life could develop into complexity on Earth is that it could develop over the course of millions of years relatively undisturbed. There were no outside events like supernovae that swept Earth out of exsistence. The Primordial Soup could be cooked long enough to result in complex and intelligent life forms. Other places in the universe probaply have not that advantage, so that the development of life didn't come that far yet.

I suspect that there is a higher chance that life in other places of the universe will be tainted by humanity than the other way round.

I love Greg Bear's take in the War Dogs trilogy.

They show up but slowly introduce themselves, give us trinkets, coerce & exploit us , then after much happenings, leave and the world goes on like nothing ever happened.

Maybe we are part of an extra terrestrial being. Like the things on our eyelids or blood cells or anyother microscopic lifeforms that are part of our organism.

In that case we are already in contact. So maybe an autoimmune response will be the next step.

Same as it always has been. They secretly control our world and we fight over whether there are any aliens out there or not

i'd like to think life exists on every single rocky planet. i remember reading about the discovery of single celled organisms deep in the earth's crust. they exist in a very low-energy environment and therefore have slow metabolisms. some of these are theorized to be able to live for over a million years. they literally extract energy from inorganic compounds in metabolic pathways we don't understand.

the question is: did life originate on the surface (deep sea hydrothermal vents are still surface in this context) or deep in the earth?

if life originated in the earth, then I think there's a very high probability every single rocky planet is essentially a seed. inside of it's core it has life and whenever the surface environment grants some long term stability, the life slowly emerges and evolves into different forms.

so how would extra terrestrial beings and humans interact in the next 10 years?

basically, I think there's a chance (although low on such a short time scale as 10 years) that we will discover life on another planet. or at least some very significant signs of life. either on Mars or Venus or some Galilean moon, etc.

There are so many pessimistic comments.

To those who are saying, something along the lines of, aliens wouldn't come because they wouldn't recognise us as intelligent.

That is a really stupid augment, even if they were significantly more intelligent than us, we still standout from all other minds on this planet.

We literally study everything, just for the sake of knowledge.

A high intelligence civilisation that has the ability to reach us, would also have to a high level of curiosity to archive that ability.

To answer question posed. There are two ways to look at this:

• if we assume that, at some point an alien civilisation will contact us, the next 10 years is as statistically likely as another ten year timeframe.
• from a background rate, of the actual likelihood of being contacted at all. I have to say, it is exceptionally unlikely. The travel distances/times, and the time a civilisation exists for, all count against contact especially physical contact.

there wont be