We are but one tiny planet on one tiny sun in a galaxy of 100 billion stars. We estimate that there are at least 100 billion other galaxies visible to us in the universe. 100 billion x 100 billion is a bloody lot of stars (of course I'm generalising, the actual figure is probably orders of magnitude higher). Given this evidence, I find it highly unlikely that we would be the only bastion of life in the universe. Quite the contrary, I am confident the universe is teeming with life.
I concur.
Now... why is it that laymen seem to think this means that I believe in UFOs? To my way of thinking, the idea that we, on this tiny speck of a world, would be visited by advanced extraterrestrial life, presumably for no purpose more nefarious than to watch our television and cuddle up to our politicians, is ludicrous.
I have yet to experience this since most all of the people I know either agree with me about it, or are crazy christians and I don't talk about it with them.
This may not warrant being a topic, but I'm just curious if anyone else has encountered this anomaly, and/or how you would respond to it. My standard response is that, short of some sort of warp-drive technology, the distances are simply too great to travel. To go one step further, even with some form of FTL travel, the immensity of our galaxy alone would make visitation astronomically (literally) unlikely.
Firstly, in my opinion, or at least what I would hope: is that there is a more advanced species out there that has learned the technology to do so.
Then, reality kicks in. The time man kind has been around to record this sort of information, or had the ability to view the outer reaches of space, is but a blink of an eye compared to how long the universe has been around. Therefor, IMO, a more advanced civilization possibly has come and gone, or is in the current stage of evolving to that point, or won't be around for eons to come.
I first got my "understanding", so to speak, of the immensity of the cosmos and how teeny tiny we are, from the opening sequence of the movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster. The view pulls back away from Earth, through the Milky Way, then past Andromeda, then by the Horsehead Nebula. It really puts things in perspective as to how minuscule and unimportant we are in the universe/s.
Sorry I really didn't exactly respond, but this is an interesting subject for me and I wanted to keep tabs on some of the others members experiences.
Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.
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