Thought this may be of interest to some. It seems that Earth-size planets, in the Goldilocks zone around their respective stars similar to ours may number around 8.8 billion in our galaxy, or orbiting an average of one in five stars. And this is just looking at stars similar to ours (and planets similar to ours). It seems the more we peer into the galaxy, the more the maths is stacking up in the favour of their being life of other kind out there. The next generation of telescopes we'll be putting up in the next few years will be able to peer into the atmospheres of some of these planets which will indicate chemistry and give hints about the possibilities of life existing there. The fact that some of these planets exist in our cosmic neighbourhood will make this research all the more tantalizing. Interesting times.

'Milky Way Teeming With Billions of Earth-Size Planets'

http://www.huffingtonpos...e-planets_n_4215873.html

I suspect the prerequisite for global contact from other intelligent life is (at a minimum) learning to care for the one planet we already have.

It takes a whole heck of a lot more than same size planet and type of star to generate life, but its a start. Even if single celled organisms were found in abundance, which I believe is a lot more common in space than were let to believe, there still lies the issue of evolving into multicelled organisms. Once that is achieved the drastic problem arises of sentience. Considering the fact that our planet, which is teeming with life, has only seen one animal achieve sentience in its multibilion year life span seems pretty bleak.

I kind of fear the discovery of alien sentience...

Even if only 1% of those 8.8 billion planets had life, that is still 88 million planets with life in our galaxy alone. And if only 1% of those 88 million planets with life happened to harbor intelligent life, that is still 880,000 planets with intelligence in our galaxy alone...

And remember: this is all under the assumption that the only planets we should consider are those 8.8 billion similar to our own. There is potentially over 300 billion planets in the milky way.

Not to mention hundreds of billions of other galaxies....We really can't even begin to comprehend numbers like this.

Life is probably all over this universe like white on rice IMO. But this notion is often hard to digest for those who are still mostly living within the old paradigm that assumes its all basically an unintelligent, random, meaningless accident.

As for the question of first contact? Well some think its crazy but it seems to me that consciousness most likely has non-local properties... and that this threshold was passed a long time ago. People often take dmt and see aliens, machines, unimaginably complex cities, planets, galaxies, other dimensional layers of reality, etc...even people coming from entirely different cultural frameworks....What could possibly be less ambiguous than that?



Sentience is usually described as the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectivity...I don't understand why people still think that humans are the only organisms with these qualities, but this is clearly not the case. Within the past few decades even the sciences have confirmed this, despite a lot of resistance to it.


Anyways, i guess my point with this post is that our theoretical models about how the universe works are constantly being pushed. This becomes immediately apparent if you study our history, and especially if you follow the data coming in about outer space this past decade. I don't see any reason to think that our theoretical constraints about extra-terrestrial life arising would be any different... Despite how much as we constantly trick ourselves into thinking that the universe more or less fits within our conceptual models...

It does indeed. But it is a good start. That's around 8.8 billion rolls of the cosmic dice, and it kicked off here. Yep it is a big leap to multicellular life, and a vast, vast leap to sentience. But even if we find extraterrestrial microbes that would be really amazing. I would also argue that a few other species have gained sentience, at least on some level. Our intelligence has got us so far in so little time. But we are living in a way that is out of balance with the planet, and this makes us distinct from all other species that exist or have ever existed. So these big ol' brains have been a curse as well as a blessing, to the biosphere at least.

Du57mi73, read this

There isn't any reason to even be skeptical anymore about the question of animal sentience.

By sentience I refer to the ability to produce thoughts unrelated to survival, the ability to wonder "why", the ability to create language, or even to produce music. Not just chirping birds and crickets in the night, but actual rythmic beats. That to me is sentience. I can understand the depth of emotion felt by animals. I do not deny that they feel. I actually have a pretty peculiar standing on animals(that shouldn't be that peculiar at all). If that isn't "sentience", what's it called?

Thanks for the read, univ.

One of the things I learned from my DiPT experience is that with the slightest chemical modulation in the brain (adding DiPT), music can easily not sound like music anymore. It can sound like jumbled, incoherent sounds at the extreme that bears little resemblance to music. Since animals inherently have different brains and brain chemistry from ours, it's easy to see how they could be listening to our music, while not perceiving it as musical. It should therefore stand to reason that likewise we are not in a position to judge the sounds of other species as musical or not. Sure, some animal sounds are simply sounds and nothing more...but you can't actually know how those bird chirps sound to another bird of the same species. You may hear a beautiful harmonic arrangement of tones that your human ears simply only register as a bit less meaningful. If the failure of behaviorism taught us anything, it's that we cannot presume to know what goes on in another (animal's) head, be it their thoughts, perceptions or otherwise.

Sentience is the ability to feel, you seem to be talking about intelligence.

Lol. I guess so.

Global, you bring up an interesting point about music. While reading it I also got to thinking about how even within our own species we consider some things as music while others don't. Take for instance Dubstep. When I first heard it I just thought it was a random jumbled mess of noise. No music whatsoever, as many people still do hear it this way. But I dunno, something clicked one day and I started to hear it as music. Its syncopated beats and variable sounds turned into beautiful music to me.

Good post global, I was going to attempt to say something similar. And its pretty well known that several species sing sometimes for the enjoyment of it, and not just for communicating or attracting mates.




You seem to be talking more about your own unique definition of intelligence than any commonly used definition of either intelligence, or sentience.

All of those qualities you listed above have basically been confirmed to occur in several animals, imo. The question of their ability to produce thoughts unrelated to survival is a quick no brainer if you look at the actual studies on the cognitive abilities of chimps, and even animals like parrots. Baby chimps have even been found to be more intelligent and aware than baby humans up until about 1 year, and full grown chimps are definitely smarter than young children in some ways, from what we've seen in the studies. They do have languages, even if it seems rudimentary compared to ours; which has just fanned out into a number of more complex expressions and new associated symbol systems. Chimps can even learn sign language.

Whether or not they pose the big "why" question of life is something that is probably impossible to document...If you mean "why" in a more general sense though, I think they can definitely experience that state of mind. It will undoubtedly be a bit different from our experience, especially since we overlay it with linguistic symbols which are arbitrary to them, but if i tell my dog we're going running and then don't follow through and take her she will be heart broken and act as if she is trying to figure out why in the world we aren't going... in the same exact way as if she were a my little cousin and i lied about taking him to the park.

I remember about 2 years ago reading some awesome stuff about how stars are pumping out organic molecules. Right? You remember.

So cosmic dust is full of pre-biotic, stuff. And our galaxy has billions of earth sized planets. Oh and many of us have had seeming encounters with non-human intelligent entities of all sorts.

I am feeling less and less lonely, these days.

star spewing water into space

HKU researchers say the substances generating these signatures are actually complex organic compounds that are made naturally by stars and ejected into interstellar space.

NASA Researchers: DNA Building Blocks Can Be Made in Space

here is some other related ones i see after running a search through my bookmarks

physicists discover inorganic dust with lifelike qualities

rare type of meteorite packed with amino acids





amazing stuff, but keep in mind the tabloids tendency to exaggerate. But even so, this just makes the idea of a universe filled with life all the more plausible.

also i'd change the title of this thread...since its much more important that they're in the supposed "goldi-locks zone" and around similar stars than it is that they're similar to the size of earth

this is good news considering we'll need a new planet if pollution , population and global warming keeps on growing

hubble finds signs of water on 5 distant planets

http://www.independent.c...ant-planets-8982628.html

This is all interesting as far as the human destiny is concerned. That is I think the it is the destiny of the human race to reach out to the cosmos, and it would be nice to do in a way that pays homage to our gaian roots.

As far as life in the universe though, lets think about this. If the universe is ~14 billion years old, this gives plenty of time to for life to possibly evolve longer then life on earth. Even if a life form is 1 million years more evolved then us who knows what how intelligent that could be? Imagine life in one million years assuming we survive and progress. Now imagine life that may have gotten a billion year head start!

My point is that life in the universe is thriving and highly evolved, at least imo.

If life happened here, it can happen elsewhere. I of course do not have direct evidence of this, just logical supposition.

Regarding animal sentience/intelligence, any pet owner would be able to describe instances of extreme creativity, problem solving and emotional expression in animals. I have two chihuahuas, and they constantly amaze me with their depth of experiences. One of my dogs will never eat carrots for example, hates them… but will eat them to deprive the other one from having them. This isn't a survival behavior - he isn't hungry - its a competitive behavior related to pecking order, social standing, etc. Not all that dissimilar to humans. If we are sentient, so are they. More obvious examples abound with dolphins, primates… extreme problem solving. We all share most of our DNA anyway.

I would go a step further and say that plants demonstrate some intelligent activity. An intelligence very foreign to human intelligence, but an intelligent behavior none the less.

i would go a step furtherer and say that plants and mushrooms are smarter than the furless apes.

I always thought star trek was ridiculous--what are the odds that when we develop warp-drive that we will run into dozens of advanced life-forms which all seem to look and act remarkably similar to us. Then Again:

If cosmic dust contains organic materials...

and if there are billions of M-class planets...

Then the possibility of the cosmos being teeming with life looks a bit more realistic. If all of these planets are in the same sweet spot as us, and seeded by the same star-dust, then this hypothetical life shares origins with us, meaning that life on other planets might not be 100 percent bizzar stuff. Humanoids, is what I'm getting at. recognizable forms, appearing elsewhere, Romulans, Klingons, Reptilians, Greys.

Also, DMT being ubiquitous on earth suggests that perhaps the Klingons and the Annunaki have plenty of available sources for there own extractions. DMT, ubiquitous in the Universe. Damn.