Aliens Are Almost Definitely Out There & Will Be Found In Next 20 yrs -Astronomers Tell Congress.

[kpete]

Aliens Are Almost Definitely Out There, SETI Astronomers Tell Congress.

According to ABC News, Dan Werthimer, director of the SETI Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, told the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Wednesday that the possibility of extraterrestrial microbial life is "close to 100 percent."

"In the last 50 years, evidence has steadily mounted that the components and conditions we believe necessary for life are common and perhaps ubiquitous in our galaxy," said Werthimer in his written testimony, adding: "The possibility that life has arisen elsewhere, and perhaps evolved intelligence, is plausible and warrants scientific inquiry."

“The chances of finding it I think are good and if that happens it will happen in the next 20 years depending on the financing,” Shostak told the committee.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/22/aliens-congress-seti-astronomers_n_5370315.html

[randys1]

1. Life elsewhere is a certainty, finding it might be tough

and said life may be in the form of what we would have looked like in the very beginning of evolution

[seveneyes]

3. Or it may find us

Perhaps a life that has a few million years head start on us. They could be watching us now.

[jberryhill]

6. ...or went extinct a million years ago

[Glorfindel]

25. Of course they're watching now. They don't want the killer apes to escape

and contaminate the rest of the galaxy. Would you?

[gordianot]

2. Given the state of life on Earth intelligent life would be refreshing.

That is if we would be able to recognize intelligent life.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

4. Alien life forms have already been discovered right here on Earth....WARNING! GRAPHIC!

[Lochloosa]

19. That needs a 'GRAPHIC" warning....

[ChisolmTrailDem]

20. Done! =) nt

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

39. Is that a turtle

or a sphincter? Could be either.

[MohRokTah]

5. The earth has been hear for 4.6 billion years, and basic life has been here for 3.6 billion years.

We've only been transmitting radio waves for about 120 years.

If we ever detect radio transmissions from another life form, it will tell us that the universe is teeming with life.

[wandy]

23. The question is that if someone out there has been monitoring our transmissions....

for the last 120 years...
Would they want to have anything to do with us.

They would know we were reasonably well armed.
They would know about 'Lucie Ricardo'.
They would know about 'Dingbats'.
They would also know that the nation having the most armament almost put a Dingbat with less common sense than Lucie Ricardo one heartbeat away from controlling that armament.

By the time transmissions from Operation American Spring reached them I suspect they would already have put up warning signs.

[d_r]

28. the first signals are only 70ish

Light years out. They haven't caught up yet.

[randome]

7. 'Almost definitely'.

Keep looking!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Yet.[/center][/font][hr]

[NightWatcher]

8. And Pat Robertson will tell us Jesus rode a dino and hung out with aliens

[onehandle]

9. I wish, but unlikely 'depending on the financing.' Also space is big.

And although I am positive that life exists out there, this ain't Star Wars/Trek. Every other star system doesn't have a thriving ecosystem. It could be more like one in tens of thousands or a million or billion.

Many scientists say we only formed because of the exact placement of Earth, with the exact placement of the Moon, with the exact type of Star.

Most planets are burning/freezing orbs or poisonous gas giants.

[FreakinDJ]

10. "Chicken or the Egg" argument

Life formed here to fit this planet or more correctly we formed to fit better in this planet.

Why wouldn't life form else where to fit other planets?

Personally I don't see direct contact ever possible

[onehandle]

15. There could be other types of ecosystems, but still rare.

And I think the possibility of 'direct contact' is highly unlikely. For one thing, Man will die out within a century or two.

That's a small target of time in a universe that has existed for billions of years.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

21. Actually, planets around other stars is ubiquitous in our local stellar neighborhood. nt

[maindawg]

26. There could be other types of life

That thrive in what would be a hostile environment to us.
There are an infinite number of possibilities. You should watch Cosmos. Apparently our universe is like a single cell in a person,among an infinite number of people. Think about that for a minute.
Our universe started like 100 billion years ago. But the other universes, of which there are infinite of, started well, infinite ago.
pretty arrogant to suppose we are alone. More likely there are many trillions of planets that hold life.
Just think 'infinite' when you wish to define space.

[edbermac]

11. "It's a cookbook!"

[Orrex]

12. Darrell Issa has already subpoenaed them.

[iandhr]

13. You beat me to it.

They must know something about Benghazi.

[NCTraveler]

14. While I somewhat agree.

"Aliens Are Almost Definitely Out There & Will Be Found In Next 20 yrs"

I would think that sentence would never cross the lips of a scientist.

“The chances of finding it I think are good and if that happens it will happen in the next 20 years depending on the financing,”

Now that sentence clears up the first sentence. Sales pitch. One that I can get behind.

[exboyfil]

16. I think it is an irresponsible sentence

We actually don't have a clue about the likelihood of technological life. Given it took 4 billion years to reach that state on earth that does not inspire much confidence. Also we are very uncertain as to the stability of a technological civilization given internal and external threats. We used up about half the life of our sun getting to this point. One thing about technological life is that we can see clearly that it could spread very fast in the galaxy (think self replicating machines). Such machines are well within our technological capability within the next hundred years. Even at 1% of the speed of light we could cross the galaxy in 10,000,000 years with such machines.

[Distant Quasar]

27. Which sentence do you mean?

The headline is irresponsible, but I thought it was clear that the scientists only think microbial life is extremely likely. That seems very plausible given recent discoveries. The first scientist quoted merely raised "evolved intelligence" as a possibility, without placing odds on it.

That aside, I agree with your view on the likelihood of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations or human-style intelligence. It's very difficult to dissuade people from the idea that evolution has been leading inevitably to beings like us all along, but there's no evidence to support that.

[1000words]

17. Do we really need egghead scientists, when we have this guy?:

[ProfessorGAC]

32. That Guy Is Not An Egghead

He's a meathead.
GAC

[oneofthe99]

18. If it's in the bible maybe it's true , I'm going to check

[Uncle Joe]

22. Aliens are most definitely out there, with the pace that planet discovery technology is increasing,

20 years seems reasonable, should a dedicated effort be made.


Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[Enthusiast]

24. Tell us something we didn't already know, Astronomers.

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. They are tallking to Congress

and some of our esteemed leaders do not believe the world is round... let alone there is life out there.

[Enthusiast]

37. So true.

[hobbit709]

29. When they come here does that mean that there will finally be intelligent life in the solar system?

[Kalidurga]

30. Some one beat me to the alien expert guy

[polynomial]

31. That state of being,

other life forms that exist out there always crossed my mind. Life as we know it is so fine-tuned, and loaded with detail many could wager including physicist, mathematicians, or chemist say human life might be a singularity that is a unique paradox.

However, maybe a life form advanced with courtesy decides to visit human chaos to inform us that earth resources are going to be depleted eventually, the climate will change all the time, and right now as perceived by an advanced civilization earth is hurling through space time continuum like a run-away train that is unstoppable.

It would be nice to know where life is headed to. Many would think of all this talk about leaving our grandchildren with something good seems very empty, considering the direction politics is going nowhere.

Think about it the earth is flying through space at all most five hundred thousand miles per hour. We twirl around in something called a milky way with other suns. But all those suns are not as unique as our sun.

One time in conversation a scientist said a very interesting comment about our sun in a way that made me proud to be part of existence. We as human are all made of this star dust. All those invisible fields or those light rays that we do see are part of us. It’s an incredible exchange and transformation of energy to be such a life form. For man, to be so independent capable of travel in a different dimension, in space the next frontier. That maybe man kinds responsibility besides survival.

[lumberjack_jeff]

33. "it will happen in the next 20 years depending on the financing" Riiight.

If we don't find life it was because congress is cheap.

Clap harder, Peter!

http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Tinkerbell_fallacy

It is of course worth looking, because NOT finding any extraterrestrial life, especially planets with an O2 atmosphere, would be revealing and important too.

[redgreenandblue]

35. "Due to the financing", telling people what they want to hear is unfortunately necessary.

[fujiyama]

38. Given there are probably a few septillion stars out there

There are probably decillions of planets out there. And that's probably just our universe. There are probably more. Or it's infinite. At some point, this feels more like cosmological philosophy or metaphysics.

The odds are pretty high that we'd find another planet out there with "life". The life on those planets may not function similar to anything we are familiar with and their communication medium is likely not going to be compatible with anything we have. The odds of these other species developing even remotely similar to us strikes me as very small.