Do you believe in aliens or other intelligent life?

Hi @vade66, welcome to Fluther!

Yes, I believe they are out there, simply because the odds we are unique are very, very low.

But I do not believe they have visited. Because I’ve never seen any evidence.

There are an estimate 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe. Our sun is only one.

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM75BS1VED_index_0.html

No, I do not. Simply because there is no real evidence for them existing. However, I strongly suspect that they exist. I suspect they exist so much that you could almost say I believe.

The reason I suspect they exist is because the universe is just so massive. even just our galaxy is too big to comprehend. Then you have things like the Drake equation that strongly suggest they are out there.

Personally, I think intelligent life is probably very very rare. We are the only intelligent life form on this entire planet, and there are millions of species. so intelligent life is probably quite rare.

Have i ever contacted them, no, do i think the government is hiding them from us, no. If aliens capable of traveling to our planet wanted to reveal them selves, there is nothing the government could do to stop them.

I believe it would be extremely closed minded to not believe in the possibility of life/intelligent life somewhere else in this infinite cosmos

I need to follow my fellow skeptics. @jaytkay @poisonedantidote fluther touchdowns for you guys!

However; I’d like to say I don’t think they are out there, but I’m obviously not sure. When I get evidence I’ll believe one way or another.

What @jaytkay said.

Yes and no. Do I believe that somewhere out there, there are aliens? Yes. Do I believe that we’ve made contact with them? Doubtful, but possible. Do I believe that what you saw/what murdered that girl/what the government is covering up is aliens? Not without a shitload of evidence. For matters here on Earth, I think it’s within the realm of possibilities, but pretty much the least probable possibility except for magic.

However, especially given my love of Star Trek and Star Wars, life just seems so much crappier if there aren’t aliens somewhere out there, and since it doesn’t really matter which way I believe, I choose to believe that there are.

yes. i definitely believe in life on other planets. as far as intelligent life yes i believe in that too but i think it will be way harder to find proof of. I’m not sure if aliens have been here or not, all i know is that if they have, there are a few people in the government and probably some military personnel who know about it and that is IT.

ok but also i’m obsessed with x files right now so…

I’m agnostic on the issue, but logically I think that because of the sheer number of galaxies, solar systems and planets in the universe, it would be totally remarkable if only one of them had life on it.

I think it’s impossible for there not to be life on other planets. I’m uncertain about there being “intelligent life”, but I think it is highly probable. I do not think that they have made contact with us or vice versa.

Yes, there’s other life out there. We’re just not that special to be the only ones.
I honestly can’t see it as anything but… of course, I was raised on the movie Contact, literally… so sick of it now… But anyway, think about it: if we’re the only life out there? Really? To think that, we’re incredibly stuck-up; and to actually be that, if we’re really the only planet out of the practically infinite number?—then our tiny little planet is more like a mistake, or a fluke, than anything, isn’t it? We’d then be a stuck-up fluke in the universe. ... There’s other life out there

As for whether they’ve visited here? I know my mom believes they have and decided to run as fast as they could from us. : ) I don’t know. I love to think about government cover-ups, but really, if alien life forms went through the trouble to visit us, they’d probably but who knows? maybe not… want us to know about it

What I do know is it’s impossible for us to even try to imagine what life would be like anywhere but here. Because just on Earth, most of the life we find, and keep finding, defies everthing we thought we knew. So trying to imagine another planet? Good luck! But you weren’t really asking anything about that…

As for why do I believe… I guess it’s part me not wanting to close my eyes to possibilities, and part me hating the thought that we’re it. We just can’t be.

For every human on earth, there are 10,300,000,000,000 stars. I think it’s downright arrogant to think that out of the trillions and trillions of stars out there, there is a single star which has a single planet that has spawned life. That’s just laughing in the face of any logical thought ever made.
Our universe has been around for 14 billion years. Earth for 5(?) billion. Humans for 300,000. Telescopes for 400.

I fully expect that, in my lifetime, we will not encounter extraterrestrial lifeforms.

But I absolutely accept the idea that they are out there.

Absolutely I do, what’s not to believe? Although they’re not going to come visit anytime soon.

I think Eric Idle put it well

I find it very difficult to believe that there isn’t intelligent life out there in the universe. I don’t really believe they have visited earth though, I think they are probably asking themselves this very question just like we are!

Not in our galaxy. I believe that at this point in time there are only a maximum of 100 galaxies hosting intelligent life. About 100,000 complex life and perhaps 10,000,000 simple life, like the extremophiles we find on Earth.

@meiosis this question made me think of that song too. :)

I always consider that something else is out there, whatever it is. It could be fungi or bacteria, or an entire civilization of beings. I try not to let the media influence my ideas of what else may be alive in the universe though.
I don’t think the government is hiding anything though. I’m of the mind that politicians, the government and tyrants are too busy with gain and control, that if anything like any sci fi invasion movie happened, they wouldn’t know how to deal with it. If there isn’t anything else out there but us, we should probably be grateful.

There are uncountable trillions of worlds out there and it is not at all unreasonable to suppose that many contain life. Many will contain life far more advanced than human civilization which has only existed for a few thousand years. There may be societies in our galaxy and certainly in other galaxies which are infinitely more advanced than ours with millions of years of recorded history.

How we would love to walk across the marble floors of their beautiful cities. Would our invincible pride be viewed with amusement or contempt by those we had come to see? We will never know as the physical distance separating us is too great and nothing can travel faster than light. Before we can visit or even know they exist it will all be consumed in the light of a distant supernova.

@flutherother – Take a look at this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

The book is great!

@mattbrowne Interesting link. It is very difficult to calculate the odds of life forming spontaneously on other worlds though some people have tried. Planets however seem to be very common and as there are so many many stars in the universe there must be vast numbers of planets and some of these will have alien life.

I think we might have heard from other civilizations by now if space were not so mind bogglingly big and the fastest travel possible so terribly slow. Even light takes 2 million years to reach us from the nearest galaxy. Communication with alien life forms just doesn’t seem feasible.

@flutherother – Yes, the Rare Earth hypothesis predicts that simply alien life as it had existed on Earth for far more than a billion years is quite common. Beyond that it gets very tricky.

Maybe they’re thinking the exact same thing we are…

@papayalily Thank you for introducing that website. I have never seen it before but I just know that it is going to be a new addiction of mine!

@Leanne1986 Make sure to check out the sister sites, which are just more of the same awesome!

@papayalily Will do although, I really don’t need more obsessions!!!