Alien life in Universe: Scientists say finding it is 'only a matter of time'
Alien life in Universe: Scientists say finding it is 'only a matter of time'
www.bbc.com
Alien life in Universe: Scientists say finding it is 'only a matter of time'
21 comments
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Well yeah… but it is quite expensive to find them so it’s hard to tell people who only want to make money that it’s worth it
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It's really not all that expensive. One of the mars rover programs cost about as much as Mitt Romney spent on his presidential campaign.
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And his presidential campaign was definitely not a worthwhile investment
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I think it's like exoplanets. They were hypothesized on the basis that based on observation at that time they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of planets outside the solar system, and that the sun having planets couldn't have been that unique. It's just that it was believed that we wouldn't be able to observe these exoplanets directly.
The same thing goes with alien life. We have no conclusive evidence to deny extraterrestrial life, nor (to the best of my knowledge) conclusive evidence to confirm it, and it's highly unlikely that the Earth is that unique. The question is whether we will be able to confirm the existence of alien life, and while that enough is thrilling, will humanity be able to interact with them within our lifetime. My guess is that sometime in the future we will have a breakthrough and we will be able to at least confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life beyond doubt.
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this:
lim t → ∞
Does not equal this:
"Within your lifetime"
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Maybe they have found us and we're being prepared to hear that officially. There's been a lot of unprompted announcements like this lately from various governments and organizations.
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This is a story about possible scientific evidence for signs of life (probably simple) on nearby planets, still many light years away. It is not a story about pseudoscientific claims that aliens are visiting us already, for which there is no, and never has been any, scientific evidence at all.
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I don't think there's anything pseudoscientific. It's pure speculation (as far as I know). I just it fascinating how often "aliens" comes up lately. Chuck Schumer is introducing legislation to compel private business and individual who have artifacts of non-human intelligences to release them to the government under eminent domain.
He was a protege of Harry Reid, known fan of disclosure. Hillary Clinton famously is fascinated by UFOs as is John Podesta, her confidante.
I just find it very interesting. Why is this even being discussed.
We don't have congressional hearings about Bigfoot or the financial impact of Leprechaun gold, etc.
Why do you think there's so much attention paid to this? I have no idea but I do find it interesting.
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This isn't an announcement.
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21 comments
It's really a question of whether we manage to collapse modern civilization before the job is done. If we're busy killing each other for water there might not be much opportunity for astronomy.