What do YOU think?
I have often thought about our place in the universe, with all its vastness, and this thinking led me long ago to surmise that we as a species are more than likely unimportant in the scheme of things. Even our solar system, our star Sol, and our galaxy seem rather mundane, considering the discoveries made in the past thirty years.
As a teenager I was mesmerized with science fiction shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Star Trek and the Invaders, and to a lesser degree, Lost in Space, or should I say the first season of the show.
I had my own telescope and would gaze at the night sky, wondering what was out there, and even took time to fill in the blanks of the "Drake Equation", in a dubious attempt to guess how many relatively advanced civilizations there may be that could possibly communicate with us and vice versa.
My best guess was perhaps three at most in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way at any given time in history, and concluded that the nearest possible civilization was at least 33,000 light years away. I still tend to lean toward that figure, which could explain why we have never found any evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations, as they are much too far away for us to ever detect them.
Our own self-destructive nature is another factor, it is possible that most alien civilizations don't make it very far past the discovery of atomic fission, and probably annihilate themselves before they could ever become space-faring, if such is even possible. Carl Sagan thought along the same lines.
Do I think extraterrestrial life exists? Probably. Do I think that intelligent extraterrestrial creatures exist? Probably, but they are rather rare. Will we ever discover intelligent alien life? Doubtful.
That said, do you think that life in the universe exists?
Do you think that extraterrestrial intelligent life exists?
Further, if such creatures do in fact exist - do you think their societies parallel ours - are they mammalian, marsupial, avian, or some bizarre combination of the former, or are they even more bizarre than we could imagine?
Are they driven by the same evolutionary frailties that we have, with too much animal emotion and too little intellect, prone to dogmatic thinking and violent confrontational actions rather than rationality?
I think all of the above exists in the universe and perhaps much more, and I would like to know what my readers think.
We can expound on these ideas and exchange observations and opinions as the thread unfolds. All viewpoints are welcomed... within reason, of course!
