Do you believe there's extraterrestrial life out there?

[negative-speedforce]

Personally, I'm open to the idea, but skeptical. I'd put myself as "Does not believe in UFOs, but is open to the possibility of simple life forms on other planets, i.e. bacteria, plants, fungi or small animals".

What about you? What do you think about aliens and such?

 

[Aspychata]

I had an extremely weird encounter with a female who asked if l ate food, and she sorted floated instead of walking, her cat was like a hologram, and the room she was going tto rent to us, had a very strange ceiling like you see in those medical schools, where the students look down at the operating table. My friend and l sailed pretty fast out of there. He said she was playing the piano but her fingers didn't touch the keys. I still don't know what to think of that to this very day.

 

[tlc]

I'm sure there are plenty. Most likely a simple life form such as bacteria, or possibly something else that our brains cannot imagine. Also they could be at any stage of intelligence and ability. Like we are just a blink of an eye in the earth's lifespan, and it's only been maybe the last hundred years that we would have the technology to send/receive signals.

Also the distances are just too great. How would anyone know we even exist? And if they did, how would they even get to us? From what I've read, even the most powerful telescope on Earth can't see the moon landing equipment still there. That's basically the house next door. If we can't even see that, I say all bets are off for anything else.

Also in regards to the galaxy, we are basically in Siberia. We aren't near the bustling center which is more akin to a very large city. It's less likely that any life forms would come looking our way for other life.

 

[Metalhead]

I believe that lizard people have taken over the world’s governments, to snort all the cocaine this planet has to offer, and to use money they grift from the common man to buy all of that cocaine.

 

[Judge]

Sure.

If space is truly infinite on this single dimension, it would seem more likely to me that there is intelligent life elsewhere, but at a distance that is technologically impossible for us to communicate with them.

Then again if the reciprocal was different with an advanced civilization that has interstellar travel, that it would also seem prudent for them not to make their presence known to us given how poorly we relate to our own species.

You can't judge our isolation of other worlds based only on our lack of technical ability to communicate and travel on an interstellar basis. That's our problem- but not necessarily theirs.

 

[AuAL]

Also the distances are just too great. How would anyone know we even exist? And if they did, how would they even get to us? From what I've read, even the most powerful telescope on Earth can't see the moon landing equipment still there. That's basically the house next door. If we can't even see that, I say all bets are off for anything else.

Six retroreflectors were left at six sites on the moon by three crews of the Apollo program, two by remote landers of the Lunokhod program, one by the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and one by the Chandrayaan program. Lunar reflectors have enabled precise measurement of the Earth-Moon distance since 1969 using lunar laser ranging.

 

[vergil96]

I don't think the answer to the question has any impact on our lives, it doesn't matter.

But I think it's very probable that there is alien life, because the universe is so huge. The aliens problably can't travel across it yet just like us, otherwise we'd know them. This or they keep us in a National Park But looking at what forms life has had for how long, there were single cell organisms for most of Earth's history and evolution of complex life forms took off only recently, hence bacteria-like organisms are the most likely aliens to encounter.

 

[SusanLR]

It doesn't seem logical that in an infinite universe full of diverse planetary systems to think this little speck of dust we call home is the only place with intelligent life.
The time differences for evolutions are great.
We are still in the infancy stage of space exploration playing around with hunks of metal creations that can't get anywhere fast. Traversing the distances hasn't even begun to be understood by us humans. That doesn't mean that other places couldn't have biological entities advanced enough to do so.

It doesn't have to be planets in the Goldilocks zones either, that only foster life.
Even on our planet life evolved to live in many extremes.
So, yes, I believe in what you call aliens. We started as bacteria and simple cells.
We can't even explain how. Why not other places? It has an unfathomable universe of places to do so. Maybe even multiverses.

 

[Outdated]

I certainly don't believe in UFOs or any similar nonsense, but I do have a rudimentary understanding of basic physics and how life forms. It's statistically impossible for there not to be intelligent life out there, but also statistically impossible that we will ever meet any of them.

What people struggle to understand is geological timescales. At roughly 6 billion years our star system is relatively new, it's just a baby. Further in towards the centre of the universe star systems have been born, evolved and died out long before ours was even possible, and towards the outer edges of the universe more stars are being born where there might possibly be intelligent life in another 6 billion years time. Will we still be around then? Not likely.

In the northern hemisphere when you look up at the stars you're looking towards the outer edges of the universe, in the southern hemisphere you're looking back towards the centre. That's why there's so many more stars in the sky in the southern hemisphere.

 

[Rodafina]

Do you believe there's extraterrestrial life out there?

Without a doubt.

We (all life on Earth) are not so special to be the only life in the universe. I think we are just a drop in the puddle of what exists.

I hope to know more about the details before I die.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

All of those stars, all of those planets, and we are the 1 and only planet with "intelligent" life? The thought of that is ridiculous.

What more likely is the scenario that physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson described at one time. He said (paraphrasing), "The difference between a chimpanzee and a human being is roughly 2% of our DNA. Now, imagine some other humanoid-like extraterrestrial that is another 2% different than us, but just as much advanced beyond us as we are to chimpanzees. Do you think they would be able to have the intellect, the understanding, the advancements that would allow them to be interstellar travelers? Would they look at us, in comparison, as we do to chimpanzees? Things that our brains would suggest that are "incomprehensible" would be "simple concepts" to them."

There are too many "origin" stories passed down though the ages, in nearly every culture around the world that, at one time, there were "Gods", "kings", and "leaders" that came from the skies and flew in vehicles. These go back several thousand years and are consistent across the worlds cultures. Too many consistencies to be ignored.

There are too many military and commercial pilots that have documented their sitings of "unexplained aerial phenomena" to be ignored.

Personally, it would be ridiculous to suggest that we are alone. It would be equally ridiculous to suggest that none of those planets in the vast universe could have produced "advanced" intelligences and solved the "impossibilities" of interstellar travel. Now, whether we were colonized, whether we were visited, whether they walk amongst us, we may or may not answer those questions, at least for not a long time. I don't think we, as a species, have the intellect and personality traits, in general, to accept the realities of extraterrestrial visitors even if the "mother ship" was orbiting the Earth right now. Our primate "monkey brain" and fear centers would throw many of us into a panic. It's safer, in our minds, to just say "NO" and not think about it.

 

[Dagan]

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” - Carl Sagan

 

[IXxTchxXI]

I believe there's life out there in the universe, although, I think I saw somewhere that the possibility of life happening is EXTREMELY rare

Do I believe aliens come and snatch people? No, I think it was Neil Degrasse Tyson (dunno how to spell his name) who said something along the lines of "if you were abducted how come you didn't bring back anything?"

So, yeah, there's probably life out there but I don't think they'd invent space traveling vessels just to come to earth and abduct people

I am bias on the whole situation with them visiting us silently (UFO sightings) maybe they are, maybe they aren't... Who knows

 

[Judge]

Personally I'm inclined to lean towards the possibility of persons being abducted by aliens. Particularly given cross-examined testimony of personalities like Betty and Barney Hill, Whitley Strieber and Travis Walton.

As for military and scientific eye-witnesses of unidentified flying objects and unidentified aerial phenomena, most seem quite credible. Though without any clear understanding of what it was that they really observed in real time. Even President Jimmy Carter claimed to have seen a UFO. And then consider everything that revolved around Major Jesse Marcel in the 1947 Roswell coverup as well as whatever occurred in the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident in Britain. Lots of unanswered questions and continual speculation to this very day.

I've always been amused by the number of Russian accounts of such things, given both politically and culturally they tend to emphasize secrecy and anonymity on a much greater scale than the west. Making for an amusing dichotomy of circumstances. What compelled them to be more transparent ?

The only thing that I have seen that might remotely meet the description of a UFO was something I witnessed with many others at night along the horizon in Northern California. Where the official explanation was some kind of launching from Vandenberg AFB along the coast of Southern California. One which is now officially a "Space Force Base", well known for sub-orbital launches over several decades.

 

[AuAL]

I believe there's life out there in the universe, although, I think I saw somewhere that the possibility of life happening is EXTREMELY rare.

There has been recent, interesting research that has, perhaps, recalibrated these probabilities. In 2024, Moody et al. estimated the date of the LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) to be  about 4.2 Ga (billion years ago). This dating is interesting because it leaves very little time for the LUCA to emerge. The moon-forming impact likely occurred around 4.5 Ga (Fu et al. 2023), and the first habitable environments likely formed around 4.3 or 4.4 Ga (Wilde et al. 2001, Miyazaki and Korenaga 2022). Therefore, the 4.2 Ga dating, if correct, suggests that early evolution, from the origin of life to the LUCA, may have occurred within only 100–200 million years. This finding is particularly surprising given that the LUCA also appears to represent an evolutionary stage in which organisms were already as complex as some modern prokaryotes (Becerra et al. 2007.) Numerous studies have attempted to reconstruct the genome or proteome of the LUCA, and most depict it as possessing a DNA genome, a complete translation system, a cell membrane, and a complex metabolism. As a consequence, it could be concluded that life can arise in more primitive conditions and develop more rapidly - “advanced” lifeforms are, perhaps, less of a “Goldilocks” event than previously thought.

(Note: I am not an expert in these fields - I just had a recollection of stumbling across this a little while ago and dug the details out of Wikipedia.)