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It is statistically impossible for life to exist on exactly one planet in the universe. Earth just isn't that fucking special!
Edit:
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2049714/can-something-be-statistically-impossible#2049722
If I'm wrong about the definition, at least I'm not wrong alone.
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:
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.
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Arthur C. Clarke
I think it is pretty heavily implied in the question.
We don't fit that description either though. We're barely reaching for the stars. In terms of travel we've explored the equivelant of our front porch.
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.
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.
I would be very surprised if it was that far away to be honest. They estimate there are likely trillions of planets in our own galaxy now. For us to be the only one would be absurdly unlikely.
I didn't say life but civilization. I'm sure life is in the Milky Way and not that far.
Nobody expects the Glorgon inquisition.
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?
Sounds well done to me.
LOL, I was hoping somebody would pick up on that!
As far as the history of the universe is concerned we are actually super early on in its lifespan. So in some ways it's actually more likely that we will be one of the early civilizations that perish before the others show up.
You mean an entire empire could have existed a long time ago in a galaxy far far away?
The problem is the human mind cannot understand the concept of how far one single light year is. Even Fermi struggled.
This has always been my suspicion, we are not (intelligently) alone in the universe, but in time.
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 do have an idea actually! We've run experiments where we put all the ingredients in a box and zap it, and we've found that it's possible for them to start forming the compounds that form the base of life on earth.
That was the Urey-Miller experiment in 1953, but more possibilities have been explored more recently: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adt8979
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
That one was successful. A million others could easily have arisen before it but been unsuccessful. A million others could have arisen afterwards but failed to compete with that single ancestor. And it's nearly impossible for them to leave any evidence of their existence.
You're substituting "statistically impossible" for "emotionally impossible."
It's not impossible but it's extremely unlikely.
I don't think we have enough data to determine the likelihood.
You must construct additional priors!
Are "statistically impossible" and "extremely unlikely" not synonyms?
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.
No.
No. Statistically impossible means that according to statistics it canNOT occur. Extremely unlikely means that in a given percentage of cases, it CAN occur.
Statistically *improbable
It's also seemingly impossible for aliens to traverse dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of light years. Unless it's in the solar system, which it's not, it's not actually possible. They could send a machine perhaps. Unless you believe in some type of warp speed, which I don't.
I personally don’t believe aliens have come to earth as I don’t have evidence. But I also don’t discount what can be done or us being able to figure out something warp-like.
A lot of what we know about the universe now would have been impossible to fathom just 2/3 centuries ago. Do humans know how to get close to or exceed the speed of light right now? No.
But there have been billions of years and probably countless possible civilizations that maybe could.
Those that claim to have all the answers to the universe are certainly mistaken and there is a lot more than we know I totally agree on that. At every point in human history experts have claimed to have all the answers, and have always been wrong, but we are to believe they are right this time?
Not the least on the cosmos, we only see an infinitesimal part of a greater whole too, just a bacteria on a speck of dust in something we have no way of understanding. Part of wisdom is realizing what you do not, and cannot know, I have always thought.
That said, I just don't see warp speed as possible, maybe there is something that travels faster than the speed of light, and if that is the case, maybe that could be used. But I don't think there are portals or bends in space time or whatever theories they are putting forward, any more than I believe time travel is possible.
Also statistically most likely that no life form has ever been able to leave its solar system, huge limited the opportunity to have detected each other