Poll: Do you believe in aliens?

[Clive Howlitzer]

Do I believe there is ailen life out there somewhere? Yes.
Intelligent life? Less likely.
Have they been coming here and messing with cows and hill billies? No.

 

[MorsePacific]

Mathematically, it's quite unlikely that we are the only intelligent life - let alone the only life - in this universe. So I can say that yes, I am convinced that "we are not alone".
Our galaxy, the milky way, alone has up to 300 billion stars. That's 300,000,000,000. Now if only every tenth star has planets, that's still 30,000,000,000 (30 billion). Now if one in every thousand solar systems would have life, that would still be 30,000,000 (30 million) systems. Now if one of every thousand systems with a planet with life sports intelligent life, that would still be 30,000 (30 thousand) systems and thus civilizations.

And that's in our galaxy alone. At the moment 50 billion (50,000,000,000) galaxies are observable from earth, each with several billions of stars in them...
Heck, even if only every millionth galaxy had one single planet bearing intelligent life, it would still amount to 50 thousand civilizations.

End of topic. But seriously, yes I do believe there are alien life forms out in the universe. They may not be similar to us, but it's ridiculously unlikely that some form of life doesn't exist elsewhere.

 

[LooK iTz Jinjo]

Look at the size of the our Galaxy alone, then look at how many galaxies are in our universe and how big it is. How can you not see the possibility that there is some other form of life (whether it be, intelligent or just bacteria form).

 

[XIGBARx13]

Bacteria and so on, within relatively easy reach on astronomical terms, I can believe that that's possible.

As it is, interstellar travel reuires such a preposterous amount of time and energy that it's extremely unlikely that anything vaguely intelligent, let alone anthropomorphic, with which we could conceivably communicate, will encounter our area of space until long after our solar systems planets have been destroyed (or made completely uninhabitable) by the procession of our sun's life cycle.

Basically this. I believe there's definitely various forms of "alien" bacteria to be found, but I doubt we'll ever find a sentient or anthropomorphic alien lifeform out there.

 

[Nouw]

They certainly exist whether they be bacteria or an intelligent civilization.

 

[zombieeater6000]

possible doubt they'd ever come visit us if they existed thought

 

[Seabear]

Not too sure about greys in saucers doing the unmentionable to our cows, but in terms of the literally astronomical figures of galaxies, which contain incredible amounts of star systems... Just by numbers alone, I think it would be rather arrogant to assume we're alone.

 

[Rems]

Given the sheer size of the Universe i belive it is monstrously arrogent to believe that we are the only life out there. Now there may not be any aliens in the sense of sentient species like us but some form of life- certainly.

 

[TheAceTheOne]

I believe that there is aliens. I really don't know if we'll ever meet 'em, but hey, I'd rather think of Earth as being more of a "one of many" than "one in a million".

 

[DarthFennec]

They most probably exist. However, we most probably would not ever know for sure, and neither will they.

 

[Warlord211]

The probability is just too large for there not to be aliens. Maybe not little green men but micro bacteria and such is a definite possibility.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

No because there isn't any reason to believe in them as it has been proven that life can exist outside of the Planet Earth. Didn't we recently discover fossilized bacterial life forms on Mars?

Besides, the Milky Way Galaxy alone is too massive for Earth to be the only life-bearing planet. It's only a matter of time before we discover other worlds and other worldly inhabitants of said other-worlds. I'm not sure if it'll happen in my lifetime but I would be greatly disappointed if we as humans weren't well on our way to making that discovery. Or at least colonizing Mars and the Moon because at least then we can read in the news about illegal Lunar, Martian and, Earthly aliens.

 

[Agayek]

Pretty self-explanatory, do you think that aliens (non-human/non earthlings) exist? if so what do you think they will be like? and do you think that we will discover them or they discover us?

Personally...I'm not really sure. I never used to but recently after playing through Mass Effect I want to believe in them haha.

It's not really a matter of "belief" so much as probability and statistics.

In the whole, infinite universe, there is some sort of alien life form. The odds of that not being true are so ridiculously small that it can be safely dismissed as a viable option.

Beyond that, there's really no way to say. It's highly likely there's at least one race out there with technology way beyond ours, but it's also almost probable that we are the most advanced species in the universe. We simply do not have the information to say, one way or the other.

As for making contact: I doubt homo sapiens will ever make contact with an extraterrestrial race. The universe is simply too big. The odds of an alien race stumbling across us are virtually nil, and the same is true of the reverse. They're out there somewhere, but we'll probably never meet them.

 

[mikespoff]

The incredible improbability of life on Earth dwarfs the number of stars in the universe.

I'd assume that such a wildly unlikely event has not happened again.

 

[Goofguy]

Planet Earth would have to be quite the messed up statistical anomaly to be the ONLY planet with life in the immensely massive universe. I do believe there are aliens out there. If not, there just HAVE to be foreign micro-organisms that exist on an other planet somewhere.

Now whether we will encounter them in our lifetime (or in the next few lifetimes) is kind of a crap shoot.

 

[Ashtovo]

in the universe? yes, its stupid to say otherwise. Have visited earth? no, it doesn't seem likely.

 

[Yoh3333]

Yes, and i think it's foolish to think otherwise. That may sound harsh but i mean it.
The universe is enourmous and we know that species don't need to follow our specific fomular for life (I'm refering to the bacteria Nasa found which included Arsonic i think?)
What should stop somewhere else to have life on it?
I think that the second we find another life form we will have to change the ways we think of life.

 

[roostuf]

oh course, but not in any way people normally depict them as.

 

[Laser Priest]

Of course I do. I work with some.

I can tell you, Martians are pricks.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

It isn't so much an issue of "do other things exist" as it is an issue of what we consider to be "life".

We have a very myopic view (note: I don't mean to say that the view is irrational, it works very well for an earth-bound species) that makes it extremely unlikely that we'd ever run across something that we'd be willing to consider "life".