Top Scientists: Alien Life Will Be Found In 10-20 Years

[Lightknight]

If it's just life in general then I'd expect it within just a few years since that opens things up to even just bacteria.

Sentient life though? That's what I think really matters to us. Non-sentient life might as well be just another strange species we found in the rain forest.

I'd be open to us finding nothing except alien bacteria for a while. Baby steps, y'know?

As far as sentience goes, isn't that a subjective concept? If we find a group of beings that are actually sapient but that don't fit our observable criteria for it, we're liable to miss 'em entirely.

Sentience isn't a subjective concept, it's merely the ability to feel or perceive. Sapient is more subjective in that it requires a high level of intelligence.

However, I wouldn't consider it subjective enough to allow something to fall through the cracks. We really just want to see complex forms of communication and tool use or construction beyond the basics that our animals can accomplish. There is some gray area between animals and sapience where we would dismiss them as non-sapient albeit very smart animals but anything with that little sapience would have very little to teach us that we didn't already learn from our animals and ourselves when we crossed that threshold.

What we really want are people we can collaborate with and learn from. Not a species we recognize as the equivalent of a 13 year old.

 

[Pyrian]

Basically what we're talking about is finding a high percentage of oxygen in an exoplanet atmosphere. We will soon have the capability to do this (by examining starlight passing through). That would tell us that there's a biosphere. It wouldn't really tell us much about what's in that biosphere; intelligent higher life, cyanobacteria, chirality, none of that would be evident (although we might be able to pick up signs of industrial pollution, but probably not, or at least not that could be confirmed as such).

 

[Valkyrie1981]

Fermi paradox I think will hold for a long long time to come. We are possibly hundreds of years from even attempting to answer this question.

 

[frizzlebyte]

Sentient life though? That's what I think really matters to us. Non-sentient life might as well be just another strange species we found in the rain forest.

Actually, I disagree with this. Finding life on another planet would, in my view, be one of, if not THE most world-view shattering discoveries in human history. Particularly for a lot of religious groups' more fundamentalist factions, the difficulty in denying life as an exclusively Earthly development would be very, very interesting to watch.

 

[Pyrian]

Particularly for a lot of religious groups' more fundamentalist factions, the difficulty in denying life as an exclusively Earthly development would be very, very interesting to watch.

The Sparrow had an interesting premise: while the great nations of the world hemmed and hawed about what to do when intelligent life was detected on a relatively nearby planet, the Catholic church sent a frikken mission - as in missionaries - as soon as they could cobble it together. XD

 

[Alar]

Perhaps in twenty years or so we'll find microbial life, but I don't have any beliefs that we'll find something much sooner (or more advanced) any time soon.

 

[frizzlebyte]

Particularly for a lot of religious groups' more fundamentalist factions, the difficulty in denying life as an exclusively Earthly development would be very, very interesting to watch.

The Sparrow had an interesting premise: while the great nations of the world hemmed and hawed about what to do when intelligent life was detected on a relatively nearby planet, the Catholic church sent a frikken mission - as in missionaries - as soon as they could cobble it together. XD

Ooh, that looks like my kind of book. I'll be Amazoning that ASAP (yep, just coined a new super awkward verb right there, folks).

OT: To be fair, I was talking more about Protestant fundies rather than Catholics. That whole worldview (one that I have a LOT of experience with, mind you) is based on biblical literalism and the Sola Scriptura doctrine, the latter of which is something that the Catholic church pretty much lacks.

That's why I say it would be interesting to watch fundamentalists deal with the discovery of even fossilized, single-cell life-forms. Some of them just couldn't deal with it.

 

[Pyrian]

OT: To be fair, I was talking more about Protestant fundies rather than Catholics. That whole worldview (one that I have a LOT of experience with, mind you) is based on biblical literalism and the Sola Scriptura doctrine, the latter of which is something that the Catholic church pretty much lacks.

That's why I say it would be interesting to watch fundamentalists deal with the discovery of even fossilized, single-cell life-forms. Some of them just couldn't deal with it.

I've seen no evidence that they let any scientific evidence of any kind interfere with their deeply held beliefs. If they can rationalize away dinosaurs, plate tectonics, astronomy, and, let's face it, the bulk of Jesus' teachings (dirty commie hippy that he was), how is exo-slime going to challenge them?

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Ok so im a little confused, they say water is more common then they think so then there is more places for them to look, but at the same time they are saying its gonna be faster for them to find it because they have to look at more places?
So how does having to look at more places = faster find that one special place that has a trace of life?

Well water is made up of two very common elements: Hydrogen(probably the most common in the universe) and Oxygen. So duh there's gonna be a lot of water.

As for finding life? It's possible, perhaps complex life.

As for finding sentient life? That's a tricky question as there are probably civilization far older than our own. It might be that we discover them, or it could be that they find us first.

It's also quite possible that we start finding life so alien to us that we'll have a hard time classifying. Like what if we find people that are living stone and anaerobic? Or life that can literally survive with no atmosphere, lay half under a sun, and half in the shade most of the time using the heat exchange to drive their bodies.

I'd be really hesitant with new microbes though. They could be very dangerous to us.

 

[Piorn]

There are really only two alternatives.
Either earth is unique, which would be pretty sad and scary.
Or it is not, in which case the universe should be littered with extinct civilizations.

Either way, I highly doubt we'll actually meet anything.

 

[TallanKhan]

These predictions seem to come about so often that I am quickly getting to the "yeah yeah, wake me up when you have actually found this evidence" stage. It'll be neat when they do and I fully intend to throw a massive "we aren't alone in the universe" party, but until then it isn't really news.

 

[Phil the Nervous]

Faiiirly certain that when we do make contact with alien life, it will be in the form of a satellite broadcasting about their abuse of limited resources, consumerism, and a call for other races to not repeat their mistakes.

And to appease the laws of dramatic irony, that satellite will be found during our frantic space rush to escape that smog cloud over China.

 

[blackrave]

There are really only two alternatives.
Either earth is unique, which would be pretty sad and scary.
Or it is not, in which case the universe should be littered with extinct civilizations.

Either way, I highly doubt we'll actually meet anything.

My guess is that they already have found us.
Then observed all our bullshit for few decades and decided that they do not wan't participate in this.
Most probably there are several beacons floating around our solar warning any possible visitor to avoid humans at all cost.

 

[Veylon]

I've seen no evidence that they let any scientific evidence of any kind interfere with their deeply held beliefs. If they can rationalize away dinosaurs, plate tectonics, astronomy, and, let's face it, the bulk of Jesus' teachings (dirty commie hippy that he was), how is exo-slime going to challenge them?

Exactly. And we aren't likely to have pictures of exo-slime to talk about anyway. It'll be a spectroscopy chart showing a spike at the oxygen frequency or something. They'll just say that scientists faked it or that it's caused by natural forces and that either way it's a test from God, so we'd better believe the right way or else.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I want to believe alien life will be found in my lifetime, but I take all of these predictions with massive piles of salt. Oh, and before people ask, a few squiggly bacteria on another planet is still enough to interest me with its implications, but I'm still not certain we will even be finding that. Not that it's unbelievable or anything, but people make amazing predictions all the time, so excuse me if I reserve my hype until we have more than speculation and hopes.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

... How do you know this? You can't know this, you can't even really guess it. I believe alien life exists... do I know when we'll find it, hell, if we'll every find it? Hell no! No one can guess that. This just screams "we mentioned aliens, so give us money!"

The NASA budgetting time must be near in the US.

In other news, I believe that in 10 to 20 years genetic mutations will allow a real life talking dog to travel around America with a group of hippies solving low level crime. All I need is for you not to cut my budget until then and it'll totally happen!