How soon till we find alien life? | Hacker News Reader

How soon till we find alien life?

bbc.com

13 pointssourabh03agr15 comments

I think people vastly overestimate the probability of abiogenesis and underestimate the power of various filters after that. We are naturally biased to see it as something that happens inevitably, but I think it's not a crazy idea that we are the first life to make it to the point of wondering about others. 14 billion years isn't that much compared to how long it seems things will stick around.

I think humans overestimate their importance/uniqueness in the universe. History shows we first believed Earth was at the center of the universe and the sun revolving around it. Once heliocentrism was accepted, we believed it was the center of the universe, then we proved ourselves wrong again, and then the galaxy. Now we merely can see/conceptualize the bounds of the universe.

Life on Earth litterally already survived a few filters.

Rough estimation of the number of planets in the habitable zone in the universe is 10^20 planets. Of course not all of them have life.

Maybe we're the first ones able to wonder about the others in the whole universe. Or not. Impossible to tell.

Scroll down a bit. The good part is the graphic that shows the history of searching for life.

Yes, I am particularly excited about Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO)

Aliens live among us.

I highly doubt that :P. It doesn't make sense right -

1. The nearest habitable planet is atleast 100s of light years away. No way they can travel this far.

2. Even if an alien reaches Earth, don't see any reason on why they would want to transform and live amongst us.

> The nearest habitable planet is atleast 100s of light years away. No way they can travel this far.

Bet someone in the 14th century would have said about a hypersonic aircraft traveling from Europe to the Americas

What a silly comment.

1. Birds that travel between continents exist and people in the 14th century definitely knew about them.

2. Faster than light travel violates all known laws of nature.

Let me fix it:

2. Faster than light travel violates all laws of nature known to humans

Okay, but when your idea of extraterrestrial life requires a "...and then magic suddenly happens" step, maybe you should rethink your premises.

Basic laws of nature never changed in humankind's history.

Agreed, in humankind's history

Your points are always saying the same thing. It’s impossible because humanity hasn’t discovered how it could be possible today

It’s impossible because our physics today has a limit on how fast something can travel in line

And the relies are saying well maybe we don’t know everything, just like we didnt know everything 500 years ago or 1000 years ago or 10000 years ago but thought we did

Whatever we will learn in 500 or 1000 or 10000 years will not undo what we have already learned. You're basically hoping that some "magic" science will eventually free us from the laws of conservation of mass and energy. That won't happen, sorry.

We thought germs were "magic" at one point and that bloodletting cured people.

1. ? Did I miss something?

(Time is a-plenty.)

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