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Alternative_Leek_182 t1_iztc74h wrote

Personally I think we have a better chance finding alien life in our oceans, which are mostly unexplored still!

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oalfonso t1_iztdiva wrote

Maybe just never because the space is so big and vast that we won't be able to reach other alien life forms. Unless we find a way to bend spacetime and make interstellar travels possible. But most likely we won´t contact anyone during the time the humanity exists.

It is possible we can find some bacteria-fungus like life forms in our solar system ( Europa, Enceladus, ... )

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The_odd__todd OP t1_izte9rl wrote

Replying to oalfonso (#907,870)

Right I hear you. I mean it takes a certain amount of intelligence just to appreciate how long it takes to reach the nearest galaxy. Space is pretty big. Even at light speed it would be 25,000 years until we reach the nearest galaxy. And its 25,000 light years to the center of the milky way let alone to the other side of the milky way.

I am hopeful though. It would be pretty neat to see how other intelligent life plays out. And just to have a conversation with them.

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ThrowawayAl2018 t1_izthj67 wrote

Well there is a lot of (dark) matter we can't see, and don't know what it is, that limits our observation. Intelligence may be so big and vast that we won't know that we are actually living inside it, like a bacteria inside a human gut.

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AnswersQuestioned t1_iztitac wrote

I think our best hope is finding “life” on mars or a giants moon in the solar system. On mars, maybe a fossil of a basic organism, or a basic organism on said moon. That’s my hope for my lifetime. All else seems too hopeful. But like you I’d love us to discover something meaningful before I die!

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Joe30174 t1_izu7zs3 wrote

Replying to The_odd__todd (#907,889)

A conversation with them? Communicating at that distance means it would take 10s of thousands of years minimum for the message to be received. And more likely millions or billions of years. And then for them to return the message would add that much time again. This is ignoring all the other complications too.

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youkmowwhatyouarefor t1_izvc7fl wrote

Distances are too vast and too great. Proxima Centauri is what, 40+ trillion KM’s? And that’s the closest star. Voyageur would need another 80,000+ years to get there. We will probably have cave manned ourselves by then via nuclear war. I’m not optimistic to be honest.

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DNathanHilliard t1_izvila4 wrote

Considering the vast distances involved, I think the greatest likelyhood is eventually intercepting a signal from some long dead civilization

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Maleficent_Toe_8359 t1_izvokgc wrote

The only hope is that some sort of life has been heading in our direction for a lonnnnnng time

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songsofadistantsun t1_izw081s wrote

My guess is that JWST or a similarly powerful telescope might find biosignatures in the atmosphere of a nearby exoplanet in the next decade or so, if there is indeed life on them. But don't hold your breath for what we think "intelligence" will be. I personally feel like the combination of interstellar colonization making little economic and biological sense, and the risk (or even potential violence) of misunderstanding between different intelligences over interstellar differences, leads me to idea that our universe is full of shut-ins who never leave their home systems or attempt to communicate beyond them. I love Contact too - it's my favorite movie of all time actually - but I have to admit that Sagan's vision of a cosmos full of enlightened technological beings is kind of naïve.

So with that, I'll just be content if we can answer the question of LIFE itself existing beyond Earth in my lifetime. To me, that'll be confirmation enough that non-human "intelligence" is somewhere out there, just as it is still here on Earth too.

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wgp3 t1_izx8gkq wrote

Replying to AnswersQuestioned (#908,055)

I like to imagine we'll find technosignatures or biosignatures in at least one earth like exoplanet that also sits around a stable star in the habitable zone. We'll never be able to know for sure what's there but it would really hint at us likely not being alone.

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AnswersQuestioned t1_izxxv9w wrote

Replying to wgp3 (#912,859)

Yeh agreed, I think we’ve massively underestimated how many habitable planets there are. There aren’t many compared to normal planets, but there are still many many habitable planets. And one of them will have some life! Will we find it in our life times though?

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wgp3 t1_izye6ct wrote

Replying to AnswersQuestioned (#914,055)

One thing to note is that our current methods for finding exoplanets are biased towards inhospitable worlds. We basically need either very large, very hot, or very quick orbiting in order to see them.

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