Are we alone in the Galaxy?

3 - Life is not rare, and the events that trigger self-destruction doesn't happen to most species. So, in this case, there are life-forms visiting earth. But they choose somehow to remain silent.

Although there are no signs and no proofs of alien life, it's an intriguing possibility, and a plausible one, that an intelligent specie, or several of them, agree to not show up or reveal themselves, for multiple reasons, including:

• They don't need to do that.
• We can't offer any benefits
• We are being hostile to the planet, to weaker species, and to ourselves.

Haim Eshed, considered the "father of Israeli space program", has told that number 3 is where resides the truth.

Maybe there are intelligent lifeforms outside earth, maybe smarter than us. And they might just be waiting for us to become better, to communicate with us!

Thanks for every answer and considerations... :)

@celinofj said in #1:

Which are the odds of finding smartest life-forms than humans inside the Milky Way?

I hope we find smarter life forms in the galaxy . . . these humans are kind of boring.

@Phil224 said in #10:

If I work as a security guard at Samsung, does that make me the Guardian of the Galaxy?

Guess so.

@sushetass for humor, try dolphins. They might be better than us on that!!!

I have met aliens and I can lead you to them if you'd like

Yeah. Dolphins are better.

The Universe is 13.8 billion years old, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and life on Earth is 3.5 billion years old.
Thus life emerged relatively quickly.
Life on Earth survived 5 big mass extinctions due to asteroid impact or volcanic eruptions.
Humans have exploded 2,000 nuclear bombs.
It is unlikely that humans eradicate the human species, or all life on Earth.

@KhrivenilSSP said in #13:

This is an extremely grand and thought-provoking question, and it is also one of the core questions that human beings have been asking for thousands of years.

At the moment, the scientific consensus is: we don't know.

We have neither conclusive evidence that alien civilizations exist, nor that we are the only ones. However, we can delve into this issue from several perspectives:

1. Support the "we may be the only ones" argument (loneliness hypothesis)

· The Great Silence: This is the most famous problem - the Fermi paradox. To put it simply, the Milky Way has hundreds of billions of stars, many billions of years older than the Sun. If civilizations were common, there should have been a civilization that had expanded throughout the galaxy long ago, and we should have detected their signs long ago. But why didn't we see or hear anything? This "silence" suggests that civilization may be extremely rare.
· Rare Earth Hypothesis: This hypothesis holds that the emergence of complex life requires a series of extremely rare and demanding conditions to be met simultaneously. For example:
· Located in the habitable zone: not far from the star, there can be liquid water.
· A huge satellite (moon): stabilizes the tilt of the Earth's axis and thus the climate.
· Jupiter: Use its huge gravity to clear asteroid threats in the inner solar system.
· Suitable star: A stable, long-lived G-type star (such as the Sun) that is in the "habitable ring" of the Milky Way, away from the radiation-filled center of the Milky Way.
· Plate tectonics: Regulating the carbon cycle and climate.
· The contingency of the explosion of life itself: from inorganic matter to life, from simple life to complex multicellular life, and then to intelligent civilization, it may be a combination of a series of low-probability events.
· The Great Filter: This theory attempts to explain the Fermi paradox, which holds that there are one or more nearly insurmountable obstacles ("filters") on the evolutionary path from inanimate to interstellar colonization. If this filter is after us, then our future will be very bleak; If before us, that explains why we cannot find other civilizations.
· Hopefully, the filter is ahead of us: for example, the evolution from prokaryotes to eukaryotes took billions of years, which could be an extremely difficult step. If so, the Milky Way may be full of microbes, but there is almost no intelligent civilization.
· The fear filter is after us: for example, all civilizations that have developed to a certain level of technology will self-destruct (like nuclear war, ecological collapse, runaway artificial intelligence, etc.). If so, the future of humanity is worrying.

2. Support the "we are unlikely to be the only one" argument

· The vastness and abundance of the universe:
· Number of stars: The Milky Way is estimated to have between 100 billion and 400 billion stars.
· Number of planets: Data from the Kepler Space Telescope suggests that almost every star has at least one planet. The number of planets in the Milky Way can be as high as trillions.
· Habitable planets: A significant portion of them are terrestrial planets located in the habitable zone. In the Milky Way alone, conservative estimates could be billions.
· Universality of chemical elements: The basic elements that make up life (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc.) are products of the Big Bang and stellar nucleosynthesis, and are found throughout the universe. The raw materials of life are everywhere.
· The tenacity of life: traces of life have been found in the most extreme and unsuitable environments on Earth (deep-sea hydrothermal vents, high-radiation zones, acidic environments, etc.). This shows that once life appears, it is extremely resilient.
· The Principle of Mediocrity: This is a philosophical view of science that holds that the Earth, the solar system, and humans do not have a special place in the universe. If life could evolve on Earth, there is no reason why it would not evolve in countless similar environments in the universe.

Conclusions and current situation

Taken together, in terms of probability and scale, the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy seems plausible. However, the "great silence" of Fermi's paradox is like an icy reality, reminding us that things may not be so simple.

We are currently in an era of unprecedented exploration:

· SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations): Listen for artificial signals from the universe through radio telescopes and other equipment.
· Exoplanet Research: Space telescopes such as James Webb are analyzing the atmospheric composition of exoplanets for "biological signals" such as oxygen and methane that may be generated by life activities.
· Exploration within the solar system: search for simple microbial life on Mars, Europa, Enceladus and other celestial bodies.

What is the final answer?

Any absolute assertion ("there must be" or "must not be") is unscientific until conclusive evidence is available. This question still belongs to the junction of philosophy, speculation and scientific exploration.

Perhaps, there are two most shocking answers to the question of whether we are alone in the universe:

1. The answer is "yes": if it turns out that human civilization is the only one in the galaxy, then this will give human life and consciousness an indescribable sense of preciousness and responsibility - we are the crystallization of billions of years of cosmic evolution, the only carrier of the universe's understanding of itself.
2. The answer is "no": if we eventually discover another civilization, it will be the greatest discovery in human history that will revolutionize our science, philosophy, religion and our understanding of our place in the universe.

In any case, the very process of finding this answer is the highest embodiment of human wisdom and curiosity.

huh

what about horseys living in chamland?