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It's quite simple. If the US had evidence that aliens existed, do you think Donald Trump would gave kept it a secret? He would make a big show of insisting to be the guy who they talk to when they say "Take me to your leader", and he wouldn't be able to resist telling us all about it.
It is statistically impossible for life to exist on exactly one planet in the universe. Earth just isn't that fucking special!
You're substituting "statistically impossible" for "emotionally impossible."
Life is certain to exist, but multicellular life is less likely and intelligent multicellular who reaches for the stars is even less likely
Who said anything about multicellularity, intelligence, or space travel?
Point is, Obama's answer was vacuously true, and the only answer a non-idiot could reasonably could have given.
...Okay, I admit he could have quoted Contact for extra style points:
"The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space."
But aside from that, the answer he gave was the only one he could reasonably have given.
Okay wait, listen to yourself. You expected Obama to give a reasonable answer, and of course he did. Gosh, wasn't that nice? You might agree or disagree with his choices and priorities, but even his worst policies had SOME sort of reason behind them. And were stated in complete grammatical sentences that stayed in topic.
However, in the universe's life of billions of years, many civilizations may have risen and fallen, just not at the same time. Maybe life is such a rare confluence of events, that it only springs up occasionally, and never at the same time.
Again, who said anything about "civilization?" Even just on Earth, life has existed for 4 billion years. That's 4 billion of the 14 billion years the universe as a whole has existed, or 28% of the time, which I wouldn't call "rare" at all!
Life on Earth started damn near immediately (in geologic terms) as soon as the crust cooled enough to not ~~set it on fire~~ cook its proteins (it wouldn't have caught fire because the atmosphere didn't have oxygen yet). Does that sound "rare" to you?
Life on Earth started damn near immediately (in geologic terms) as soon as the crust cooled enough to not set it on fire cook its proteins (it wouldn’t have caught fire because the atmosphere didn’t have oxygen yet). Does that sound “rare” to you?
Sounds well done to me.
LOL, I was hoping somebody would pick up on that!
If we presume a functionally infinite universe sure life pretty much has to exist in multiple spots. That's a big presumption by itself though.
After that, is said civilization on some dinosaur shit? Are they so far beyond us we look like cavemen in comparison? Are they looking around the universe and just missed us? Do we want them to find us? Historically humanity finds less advanced groups and kills, enslaves, or just robs them blind. No reason to think the alien conquistadors would be better then the Spanish ones.
You are missing something: maybe the next "neighbor" civilization is in Andromeda or even farther. There is A LOT of space in the universe.
Earth is special. More special than most of the other planets that exist. But it's not the only special one.
More special than ones we've detected, but our detection methods have a very biased available dataset.
It's not impossible but it's extremely unlikely.
Are "statistically impossible" and "extremely unlikely" not synonyms?
No.
No. "Impossible" is an absolute statement, whereas "extremely unlikely" leaves a non-zero chance for the unlikely thing to actually happen.
I didn't say "impossible," though. I said "statistically impossible."
Exactly. That's why I corrected that it's statistically extremely unlikely but not impossible.
It isn’t. Check out this talk by Dr. Kipping. If you role 1000 x D6, you might say it is statistically impossible to role that number. And you’d be close to right; it was very unlikely. But you did role it.
eta: The number of people supporting the phrase “statistically impossible” is troubling. This is why it is a problem that prominent scientists have made similar statements based on intuition. It isn’t based on statistics. We do not have sufficient data to make binary statements about Drake’s equation, nor even really to make any quantitative statements about the outcome, but certainly not binary ones.
Also, we just have literally no idea what it actually takes for life to come together. We have a sample size of one. Trying to come up with stats based on that is ridiculous, and until we actually come up with more evidence, saying either "oh there are definitely aliens" or "no there definitely aren't" just proves to me a person's willingness to make concrete statements on things they know nothing about.
We are in a common planet, made with the most common elements in the universe, floating around a star of the most common type. I don't think life is that special.
i didn't say earth was special. do you know what it takes for those elements to come together in a way that even begins to approach life? do we ever get brand new single celled organisms that have no relation to anything that currently exists? why does every organism we've studied seem to descend from a single ancestor if it's so easy for life to arise from a barren soup?
we don't even know if we arose from that soup. maybe we're actually the aliens, delivered as a single frozen cell from some asteroid that crashed into earth. maybe! who knows! if people wanna write fanfic about the universe that's their business, but it's wildly frustrating how so many people pretend that fic has any scientific basis
OK sure "they're real" but said in a tongue-in-cheek manner and no follow-up from the 'journalist', LOL... Right on cue, another nothingburger that will keep the Art-Bell-Coast-to-Coast crowd occupied for another few decades while the billionaire class continues to build their empires.
That's exactly what someone would say who has knowledge of aliens being kept in area 51
Go storm area 51 part two Thanks Obama they can shoot all of you.
These days it's probably full of a different kind of "alien." Perhaps even a concentration of them.