Scientists Urge a Search for Life Not as We Know It - New York Times

Is there life on other planets?

Life? That's statistically possible. The same way that Earth can be the only planet bearing life.
But we have to define life, and may be consciousness also.

I think there is life on other planets, there have been UFO sitings for years roswel was no weather baloon anybody that does not want to beleive in UFO's and ET's is an idiot hiding from the obvious truth and theres nothing unreligeous about them either no where in the bible it says that god did not create other planets so whats all the fuss.

Hmmmm... the "life on other planets" thread. I am kind of stuck on this one. I really want to believe that the earth isn't alone as regards to life, but i see it as highly unlikely that a life form will be found outside of our galaxy.

It's one of those hard to believe things in life. How can our little planet be the only home to intricate little creations such as bacteria up to elephants and blue whales?

the main issue is the distance to travel either way and why shouldn't there be life in other galaxys ?

I think that the way the universe is believed to have been created (big bang), has just brought into being a lot of unique objects which are relative to eachother, such as the temperature of planets close to, and distant from the sun, or even the size, shape and mass of different planets and stars.

I guess the earth just got lucky, it happened to contain the right ingredients to create life as we know it. From what I have read/seen so far, it isn't possible for this to happen on other planets due to certain gases, high/low/no gravity extreme temperatures both hot and cold etc.

If there is a galaxy that contains a planet with life on it, I don't think we will ever know about it in our life time.

well with the trillions of planets out there theres a chance of another

What is it, like 4 lightyears to the nearest star?
And resent discoveries found a planet with a surface temperature at an average of 30 degrees, just about 100 lightyears from here. And we haven't seen that many planets yet, so there are probably more planets in the 100 lightyear vicinity of our planet, with that temperature.
But even if there only where a planet every 100 lightyears, with a temperature that we know could hold life, there are about *estimating*

100000*\pi ~ 314159 ( circumference of the milky way )
314159/100 ~ 3142 ( the planets on the circumference )
50000/100 ~ 500 ( planets across the radius of the galaxy )
102 ~ 100 ( two layers of planets )
Finaly: 2 * 3142 * 500 ~ 3 000 000 ( assuming more planets in the center of the galaxy, since the star density is larger )

It's a shitty estimate, but you get the magnitude of the planets. And since all planets are made out of dead stars, they have similar composition, and a planet of that temperature should be so close to the star that it should have about the same magnitude of mass as the earth (astronomical fact/estimate). So, the likelihood that one of these planets should be able to sustain life, as we know it, is huge!
Then there are a lot more galaxies too, so there should be extremely many (~10^10) planets that should satisfy our needs.

planets are not made from dead stars whatever gave you that idea ? unless in the sense that debri from and exploded star

@simons-photography: That is probably what he meant. Dont think debri of stars consists as rocks in form of rocks, by the way.(Probably all gasseous at novas)
@Jesus: Not all planets have the same consistency, just look at our solar system for that. The various elements is not very uniform in the galaxy either. Older parts tend to have heavier elements.(of course)
The estimate of the plain number of planets the easier thing to guess, i think. It is damn hard to estimate the ammount of life there are shitloads of problems. Like, radiation levels, meteor strike levels, how many planetary systems are unstable.(Including planets coming by that are not bound to stars, messing with orbits.) Initiation of life chances, climate stability.
Given these, think heavier planets may actually have more life. They dont change orbit that easy, their shear size and thick atmospheres may protect life against radiation and impacts. Also attract them, but continuity of impacts might actually help evolution in adapting to them. Colisions with larger planets is unlikely, it is the sheer number of smaller bodies that make impact likely. (celestial body size versus counts is a log-log scale)
It is even harder to estimate chances of intelligent life, too.

But we have not seen alien cilivizations, and even with a very smal percentage population growth, the space they would need would fill a galaxy within a billion years.(I should check that)

yes, that what I meant.

Who knows? I think the likelihood of human-level intelligence elsewhere is really, really small. But it would be cool! The likelihood of some kind of life...

Oh jeeez !!! is that the best we can expect ?! We are doomed.

UFO sightings bring town to a standstill | the Daily Mail

I agree that it's hard to believe some people still deny the existence of UFOs. But I am still learning about human denial - its depth and methods. No amount of evidence can override willful denial - it doesn't work that way.

If you leave the culture of denial and mass media, and venture into the research done, the witness reports, the overall picture of contact, you are left with a very different field of view.

At any rate, it's important to move out of the 'are they real?' questions and arguments and get to the more interesting ones. What is their nature and purpose?

One thing is clear... they hover and show their lights deliberately. They put on shows to raise awareness of their presence. At the same time, they actively hide - generally discourage clear photographs (although some do exist), remove concrete evidence, etc. The govts cover it up too, but obviously if the UFOs wanted to provide more widespread evidence they could. To me, this is part of an engagement strategy that implies they do not seek to override denial. They don't want to force belief, but merely tickle the awareness. This alone is a sign of mastery.

It is also a great myth that UFOs merely remain in the skies and don't initiate contact with people. Literally millions of people have had such contact, and have reported it, written letters and books about it, and often these involve multiple witness encounters.

In short, they're here. And they always have been. In my view, they (at least one of the groups of them) are responsible for seeding life on this planet.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

That might explain the reports of anal probes

It might. Current humans analyze stools to determine much about a person's health.

That's why President Bush uses a port-o-potty when he goes overseas. The secret service doesn't want foreign govts analyzing his stools and discovering he's a boozer (and God knows what else).

That's not to say every group of 'aliens' uses this procedure. While it is convenient to think there is one homogeneous group of visitors to Earth, the truth of the situation is far more complicated.

@Voice: You do know that a verifiable flying saucer testing facility is in the vacinity of most UFO sightings, right? I think it much more likely that the U.S. government has done undisclosed flight experiments than that aliens are here. Ockham's razor.

I don't think Extraterrestrials would use UFOs to visit us if they did.

For me the probability of UFOs being devices for time travelling is exponential higher than that.

Agreed. How coincidental is it that these visiting aliens happen to appear in a form that fits quite closely with our own concept of what an alien spacecraft should look like? If there are aliens visiting earth, I think it's far more likely that they exist as protrusions of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings.

Conspiracy Theories

If you watched the "Universe" on A&E last night, there was an interesting comment made, somewhere along the lines of...

"There are more galaxies in the universe, than grains of sand on earth."

Wow.