I don't "believe" in extra terrestrial intelligence, at least not that we will ever be able to meet.

If there were species more advanced than us, we would know. Image what humanity will be in just 100 years... now imagine another hundred thousand years of civilization. We would be a type three civilization at least - manipulating super massive black holes for energy.

There is no way any civilization within logistical distance is more advanced than us because there effects on time and space would have been discovered.

For the same reason, I believe that humans are probably the most advanced form of life in the universe... that humans will ever interact with. There might be intelligence across the universe, but we will never know of them and they will never know of us.

edit: I am confident that carbon-based life is not unique and I am sure that the processes that made this planet habitable are not unique. Comets and other spacial bodies contain carbon, aminio acids, and water. Plus, comet impact helped to soften the earths crust and create our continents, oceans, etc. There are potentially infinite different trees of biological life spread throughout the universe - but I presently have no evidence to show that any of them will ever be space-faring or intelligent.

What are you talking about humans are probably the least advanced in the universe. You can't even say that we are cause you have no clue of anything past Earth.

No, humans are probably the most advanced species that humans will ever meet. Due to the constraints of time and space, it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. Because of that, our inter-stellar neighborhood will never really get any bigger.

My larger argument is that WE are the most evolved and most intelligent species in our piece of the universe. Were any species to be more advanced than we were - they would have an impact on time and space that is measurable to us. If there was a species that was conscious and had intelligence which did not kill itself off and has been around longer than humans, they would be so far advanced that we would know about them (and if we didn't, it's because they are not space-fairing and we will never meet them).

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if we found extremophile (incredibly simple) aliens in our own solar system (and it's almost a certainty that we would find them amongst the cosmos if we chose to look).

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It's my understanding that the HIGHLY theoretical theory behind that does not hold up to scrutiny.

For instance, all of the matter within the warp bubble would be destroyed by heat (literally destroyed - it would get hotter enough to fling electrons and even protons off of atoms. Hell, it could even get hot enough to melt all matter down to planc length - and I am highly skeptical that it's possible to reconstruct anything after that point.

Why would we kno about them? They could blow up a star today and we wouldn't find out for years. Everything in space is time delay by years. Or why would they be interested with use. They could see us as insignificant. Also while it's true you can't go faster than light. You forget relativity. A 10 year journey on earth might be months to them. An your basing your premise on human anomaly. Who's to say they have the same physical limitations as us. Matter of fact the possible of them having the same physical makeup is improbable

That's what I'm saying, bro. There could be (more than likely are) other intelligent species in the universe, but humans will never come into contact with them.

I'm not basing my premise on the human anomaly, I'm basing my premise on the nature of sentience and intelligence and the all the important things you can learn by observing the universe. The key principle therin is that nature builds on previously established levels of complexity. This causes life, once it evolves to the point of intelligence, to begin growing exponentially. Conceptualize the advances made from 1950-today, then think of the advances from the beginning of recorded history to today. Now extrapolate that any significant amount of time into the future... it's not possible. The growth of technology and our knowledge of the universe grows faster than, and is more complex than, anything else in the universe. In many ways; intelligence is the next phase of the universe's existence - it's meta. Throughout time, change has been restricted to natural processes that are very slow and the only variable was time.

What I'm saying is that we are the most advanced things in the universe that we can observe - which means that we are probably the only species to have evolved intelligence in our observable neighborhood of space. As in if there were another species that is intelligent, it's almost inconceivable that they evolved at the exact same time as us - they will be so advanced that they would be literally farming stars, blowing things up, and generally shaking things up - yet we have only ever observed order and the logical conclusion of 14billion years of known laws.

I'll phrase it in another way cause this is some werid shit we are talking about: Everywhere we look in the universe, we see the result of natural processes. The universe is only so complex - there are natural laws and tendancies that govern everything. Were there another intelligent alien species in our neighborhood we would see sudden increases in complexity, or deviation from natural laws. I can say this because any intelligent species that managed to not kill itself off has been around for a lot longer than we have - and as such will be using technology and science that we cannot even comprehend. That technology and science would have the power to alter nature in a way that would be very obvious for anyone that knew the laws that something isn't right.

Ten thousand years from now, humanity will be engineering on a galactic scale - and ten thousand years is just the blink of an eye. We will be modifying space and time in such a way that any intelligence that observes the change we make will be able to infer the existence of a higher intelligence BECAUSE of the deviation from the established laws of nature that we did.

I don't know why I keep going but here's another edit:

Intelligence is capable of creating non-natural phenomena. All that we can observe is natural phenomena that can be proven using the scientific method. We are the most advanced species in our observable universe because all the phenomena that we see are natural phenomena. If humanity manages to not kill itself, we will be altering the fabric of spacetime in generations.

Poor logical commenter is too logical for people who use words like 'believe' when talking about science.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if we found extremophile (incredibly simple) aliens in our own solar system (and it's almost a certainty that we would find them amongst the cosmos if we chose to look).

If we do find life on Mars, or elsewhere in the solar system, that's doesn't necessarily mean it exists elsewhere in the cosmos. It may have been seeded from early life on Earth, by asteroid impacts, which can throw off rocks at escape velocity. Let's say it seeded Mars, and then impacts on Mars seeded the moons of Jupiter, for example. Life on other planets in our solar system is not proof of life elsewhere in the galaxy.

i know its not possible to travel faster than the speed of light but thats what worm holes are for. Extra terrestrials are more intelligent and can manipulate the rules of space im done talking to you you're extremely ignorant.

Okay -- I'm really at my edge of playing nice. You're being incredibly close minded here. Let's humor you -- bending of time and space is possible and thus, Aliens can use this "Worm Hole" transportation method.

How do they spot us on the opposite side of the universe? It's like making a hole in one in china with a jet powered golf ball from the top of the empire state building. Do they randomly jump around to anywhere without consequence for power consumption? Again, this strays into pure conjecture where we CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT make assumptions like you are.

You have never heard of radiowaves? They continuous increase in a spherical shape they will probably venture several 1000 light lights before they are non detectible. Our Galaxy is only 100,000 light year in diameter. So if we were on the center ( I kno were on the edge) it could potentially cover 1% of the milkyway. That's million of stars

Wormholes are not a realistic means to travel. Wormholes are unstable and will collapse due to feedback if created in an unstable environment (like anywhere other than a black hole).

The only theoretical way of traveling using a worm hole would be to fly directly into a super-massive black hole - which is impossible. Even black hole worm holes are highly disputed as a likely means of "traveling" through time and space.

Besides, if a civilization were able engineer on the scale required to understand and circumvent the "spaghettification" of a black hole - they would probably have entirely better (and inconceivable) things to do with that energy.

Warp is still a possibility

How can you say that we aren't the most advanced? We could easily be the most advanced civilization just as easily be one of the least advanced.

open you're mind a little...

Actually what he's asserting is the exact thing you're telling him to do. You argued that "You can't even say that we are cause you have no clue of anything past Earth." -- which, by the way, he wasn't saying, he was saying that we were the most advanced species that we will ever interact with, read the rest of his sentence -- you can't make the assertion that we are the least advanced either.

Argument about the existence of aliens is literally exactly the same as arguing about the existence of God -- you can't say anything substantial because at the end of the day, it's all insubstantial because there's no hard proof, only conjecture.

That aside and back on the original topic, yes the odds are incredibly high that we are not the only form of intelligent life, not due to the proliferation of life, but due to the amount of habitable planets in our insanely large universe. However, to say they've pinpointed us on a map of the universe from however far away and have been visiting us is again, incredibly low given those odds that they're nearby enough to see the effects of our planet in space.

Exactly. There are no intelligent aliens visiting earth - to think there are is honestly kind of insane. What the fuck would a space-faring being with access to near infinite energy (the only way to realistically explore space) want to do with a race of immature, self-destructive apes?

someone with sense and yeah i didn't feel like reading after i realized where his dumb speech was going.

No, that's the opposite point I was trying to make. It's not a "dumb speech". As you can see by the upvote spread between his and your comment, there may be a disconnect between what he's saying and what you're understanding by not reading all of it. I'd recommend you read it all the way through to try and grok the point he's making since all I did in my post was reiterate what he said.

Honestly, don't listen to my stupid ass.

Go listen to a physicist explain this shit - Michio Kaku, Carl Sagan, hell you could even watch the discovery channel.

Everything you've said makes perfect sense. The universe is large enough that its more probable there is other intelligent life than not. However there is no evidence they are here. Eye witness accounts are fallible, and anything else presented is circumstantial.

Damn putting Kaku on the same level as Sagan, that hurts.

upvoted anyway

Oh my god, arrogance is so hilarious when it's this ignorant.

There may be other intelligent life. But keep in mind the vast differences in space and the huge variations in the time of evolution. To visit earth an ET would have to develop the technology to either travel at near FTL or perfect some form of cryogenics. These are both technologies probably far in our future. To have the ET's develop them at a time that is close enough in our development that we don't view them as gods wielding magic is probably mathematically unlikely. The problem is that even if the ET's had a culture or psychology that we could not understand in relation to ours, I find it impossible do believe that there is any logic in any ET culture that needs to engage in such lengthy periods of cattle mutilation or redneck anal probing. Therefore I do not believe we have yet encountered an ET. In the end do I believe there is other intelligent life int he universe? I do. Do I think there is any mathematically reasonable chance we will encounter them? No I do not, the universe is just to vast in distance and time.

You presume, as do a lot of people, that aliens have to travel across the galaxy to get here. What if they were already here? What if they were here before we were? They could live here and go about their business the same way we do as we look at ants. We notice them from time to time but we just don't care about them. Maybe aliens are the same way with us.

People also presume frequently that extra terrestrials must travel within the confines of our limited scope/understanding of the universe. Wormholes, interdimensional travel, teleportation, faster than light travel, or even the use of robots are all possibilities of how an extra terrestrial from hundreds(or hundreds of thousands)of light years away may be able to have influence/interaction over our pale blue dot.

These are the reasons that I am sure alien visitation has never occurred on Earth(and by "alien" I mean "intelligence from another star system", not, say, Bolivians) :

One. There is no reason for an alien to be humanoid, yet they always are. As if they would go through the trouble of genetic engineering and extensive plastic surgery just to be able to sit in a chair.

Two. The air on our own planet one million years ago would kill you or I, as would the air one million years from now. You can't just land on some strange planet, no matter how lush and green, and expect to be able to breathe. But aliens never wear a suit.

Three. Gravity on our Earth is going to be different than the aliens' home planet. Plus, if they came here in a generation ship, they would be acclimated to low gravity, and tripping and falling on Earth means broken bones for the aliens.

Four. They have nothing to eat other than what they bring with them because they evolved completely independent of Earth biology. Earth food would be at best under-nutrative and at worst poisonous.

Five. If they ever even made it here, it would be a one-way trip. Therefore, if aliens land on Earth, we will all know about it, because they would beg for our help.

One. There is no reason for an alien to be humanoid, yet they always are. As if they would go through the trouble of genetic engineering and extensive plastic surgery just to be able to sit in a chair.

This is just false. There's a common scientific belief that no matter where life would develop, it would take nearly identical evolutionary paths to what we have on earth. I got into a large argument a few weeks ago with someone on this and you have to understand chemistry to understand why nearly all life would A) be carbon based and B) follow specific evolutionary paths to intelligence.

Two. The air on our own planet one million years ago would kill you or I, as would the air one million years from now. You can't just land on some strange planet, no matter how lush and green, and expect to be able to breathe. But aliens never wear a suit.

So....what is it then? Do extra terrestrials not exist or do they never wear space suits? Numerous ET contact reports actually involve the ETs wearing environment suits, Indrid Cold, Betty and Barney, Travis Walton's story, etc. Also, again, because life would follow similar evolutionary paths to what we have, ET life would likely be dependent on oxygen to survive(or possibly be extremely adaptable).

Three. Gravity on our Earth is going to be different than the aliens' home planet. Plus, if they came here in a generation ship, they would be acclimated to low gravity, and tripping and falling on Earth means broken bones for the aliens.

Well first of all, we don't know whether or not their ships would have a way to simulate gravity(though numerous ships in our science fictions simulate gravity well within the laws of physics), and you're assuming the ETs would come from a planet that has drastically different gravity than earth - another assumption you make that is absolutely bonkers compared to what we know about how organic systems are formed. When people say conditions for life on earth are perfect, it's not because life somehow magically adapted to all conditions on earth: there are chemical reasons that life developed the way it did. Too much gravity would make it just as impossible for life to form as too little gravity would.

Four. They have nothing to eat other than what they bring with them because they evolved completely independent of Earth biology. Earth food would be at best under-nutrative and at worst poisonous.

I don't believe you know how nutrition works at all. Living creatures take potential energy out of food in the form of chemicals like various proteins and carbohydrates. As long as the body can extract materials from the food, it can usually use them. There's no magic property of chicken or carrots that make them only digestible by one form of life.

Five. If they ever even made it here, it would be a one-way trip. Therefore, if aliens land on Earth, we will all know about it, because they would beg for our help.

Another bullshit assumption. You're assuming that it takes them a massive amount of time to traverse the cosmos when you have no idea what level their technology is on or what their methods of travel are.

I agree with your sentiment (I'm a believer), but I have a few other things to point out that many people tend to assume, based off of zero knowledge on the subject (We ALL have zero knowledge on the subject because we have yet to encounter and study them)

The things I'd like to add are:

1.Regarding Air Quality: Who's to say these beings even have lungs or even need to consume oxygen to sustain life?

2.Regarding Gravity: I'm pretty sure if they have figured out a way to travel the cosmos, they've figured out gravity too.

3.Regarding Food: Same thing as needing air. Why assume that they even need to eat at all? They may get their sustenance from the light of a start, or some other method.

4.Regarding the One Way Trip: If they've figured out how to get here, don't you think they would have figured out how to get back too?

The moral of the story is that we don't know ANYTHING about them, so how can we assume anything about them using Earth-related reasoning? They obviously have been playing by a different set of rules in order to get here, so why apply our rules to them?

EDIT: Formatting

Wow, dude. Science is one thing. Science fiction is another. There is a difference.

To be technical, if they live on this planet, they are not extra-terrestrials.

What if alien was phone!

You said what I was trying to put into words perfectly. Thanks!

I might as well quote Feynman here:

From my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

To clarify: nobody is saying that life outside the earth is impossible or even unlikely. We try very hard to find evidence that supports it. And so far, we've come up empty handed.

It is funny, considering how we're their attempt at making a biological android. Deny your creator, classic themes :).

TPTB, the MSM, and societal indoctrination is very, very strong and hard to break on this planet. They (TPTB/MSMS) have done a good job of keeping the minds of many on this planet closed.

When someone has been raised from birth by unquestioning people to also not question, then it becomes very difficult to be sufficiently critical.

Maybe we're on an extra terrestrial? Intelligent life doesn't come from an unintelligent planet.

I don't understand how some folks don't believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster

If we're talking physical space aliens, there are all kinds of reasons why we should not expect them to be on our planet.

Our Earth is 4.54 billion years old, give or take. Our industrial-technological civilization is, to be generous, 500 years old. We don't know how long this technological civilization will endure. It may last a million years and may keep progressing ... or it may end 200 years from now. We have no way to know. So, 4.54 billion years versus 500 years. If we assume space aliens may evolve their societies in a way analogous to our own, that means there could have been millions of alien space-faring civilizations in near space over the lifetime of our Earth, but we would have no awareness of them as they arose, and then eventually failed and perished. A space civilization that arises a thousand years from now may be unaware that we ever existed, if our technology has failed by then and we no longer broadcast radio waves into space.

Another factor, besides the time factor, is distance. Those who talk about aliens visiting the Earth have utterly no conception of how far apart the stars are, or now difficult it is to cross those distances. At present, we can't even come close to sending any kind of a robotic probe to the nearest star. With out best propulsion systems it would still take five thousand years. Sure, maybe space aliens will have better space craft than we can build ... or maybe not. Maybe we're the smartest species in the galaxy. Who knows? There's no way to know.

So, if we set aside the time factor and the distance factor, there's the question of whether there is another intelligent species in the galaxy, or even life of any kind. We have no evidence that life exists outside our solar system. None. We have guesses, we have theories, but we have no facts. Everyone tends to assume that life is all over the galaxy, but we don't know that.

But let's say there is alien life in other star systems. Why should we assume (a) that it will ever be technological, (b) that it will ever desire to go into space, or (c) that it will have any interest in us? We tend to make these assumptions because we anthropomorphize alien life, just as we do with our dogs and cats. We tend to assume that they will think and act as we do, that they will respond in a human way. We don't know that to be the case. Star Trek is a lot of fun to watch, but if aliens exist, they may have less interest in us than we have in any random strain of bacteria. It may be impossible for us to even communicate with them. After all, we can't even talk to elephants or dolphins, so why do we assume we will be able to communicate with space aliens?

After a thorough analysis of the phenomena known as crop circles, I don't see how anyone can discount the idea of extraterrestrial intelligent life. I know people who talk about crop circles are some of the most ridiculed people in all conspiracies, but if you actually look at the size, scope, accuracy and widespread prevalence of crop circles it is pretty hard to explain. Just do some research with an open mind and see if you still think we are alone.

not sure if troll

You, sir

I agree

I don't discount the fact of intelligent life on other planets. The mathematical odds are too great. What I discount is ET's coming here.

I could go on a several page diatribe why I don't believe they visited here, but I'll keep it short to save headaches.

First Alien abductions. You hare supposedly having a race of beings that kidnap people by beaming them up. Yet they need to insert probes in their body? Come on! We are talking about advanced interstellar beings that travel light years in a blink of an eye. They have the ability to break down every atom of your body to bean. Essentially killing you and reassembling you with your memories intact. Then they have the need to insert primitive tools after breaking you body pattern up, and can't read it with a scanner? We as primitive humans have MRI and CAT's that can look inside the body and give data. Primitive by alien standards. Alien Abductions are false.

Then we have the Aliens gave knowledge to ancient man, and stay up and study us for 5000 plus years. Come on man! What are they waiting for? They helped primitive man, but not us primitives now clean up and help ourselves? Are we to say that we are just lab rats to an advance culture for just study for 5000 years. You would think after the first millennium they would have enough data and push on somewhere else.

That's just a few of may reasons. Until I see one dismount and say high to me. Then It will be hard to swallow about visitors here.