Can we really be the only inhabited planet in the Universe? I really can't see it. It's almost inconceivable that out of billions of planets Earth is the only one capable of sustaining life. Rudimentary forms of life have been found in almost all extreme environments across the World so it's surely possible that nature has developed extra-terrestrially.
I'm not saying that we are part of some cosmic community of advanced civilisations bristling with Galaxy-class technology. If that was the case how come we haven't heard from any, a question lying at the heart of the Fermi Paradox. I personally would be quite happy with evidence of more modest fauna like Martian daphnia, Titanic algae or Ioan plankton, although I'd think twice before bringing them back to Earth!
Isn't a yearning for some cosmic neighbours the very essence of Sci-Fi, a desire to refute the idea that we are alone in the Universe? What do other readers think?
I am totally certain there is life on other planets. I'm not so certain they will look at our planet and believe there's any intelligent life here! :-)
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I too believe the odds are in favor of there being life somewhere else but at our current level of technology we just haven't discovered it yet. And we should continue the search!
Carl Sagan shared your thoughts Woodsy. In a scene from his wonderful show COSMOS, while walking along a beach he pauses to pick up a handful of sand and explains that there are more planets and stars in the universe, than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth combined. His question was: how could there not be life out there?
ReplyDeleteHmmmm...I just read your link to Fermi Paradox, and I'm still with Carl Sagan on this...Fermi forgot to watch Star Trek ;). Our interstellar neighbors are waiting for us to grow up before we are invited to the party.
ReplyDeleteThe universe is so incredibly vast, it really does stretch credibility to believe that life is confined to one tiny part of it, but there is little evidence to the contrary so far. Then again we only discovered planets beyond the Solar System recently!
ReplyDeletefunnily enough we were discussing the Drake Equation down the pub the other night, and while it is quite well laid out, I've always felt it ignores the greater variables that lead to mass extinction - meteor strike, climate change, micro-organisms, over population/crop failure etc...
ReplyDeleteI've always felt life (as we have come to know it Jim!) is more of a miracle than a fact, and a civilization/species like ours is as rare as it appears.
I'd add as the arch cynic; nothing I see happening in the world at the moment gives me any hope we will survive this century, let alone 'get to the stars', a fate that seems to have befallen all those millions of alien civilizations we have yet to see (or hear) any sign of!