Maybe its because I failed Earth Science in HS that I had no idea about any of this…but I found it pretty sweet.
In theory if the universe is infinitely large. That would also mean the Earth is infinitely small compaired to that. Kind of wierd to think about isn’t it.
Also for some reason the filters at work are crying “common nudity”. Silly filters.
creepy. and to think we are the only ones in this universe
haha i just saw that too as i loaded this page…
Well of course you did you are like 10 feet away. And still havn’t met you. 
EDIT: Are you Lavender Boy™?
:word: No way that their isn’t other life out there somewhere…
Lets take a road trip on jupiter. It would takes months or years to drive around that fucker.
I thought this was pretty common knowledge, but then again, I’m an uber nerd when it comes to astronomy :P. Only in the past year or so though.
No doubt.
Our sun is one of ~200 billion stars in our galaxy alone. Some scientist came up with an equation that figured out all the odds for planet formation, distance from the planets to the stars that they are orbiting, when our galaxy was formed and approximately how long it would take for intelligent life to evolve, and he came up with a mind blowing answer. It figured out that at the same rate of evolution of human life, there would be 1 intelligent species evolving every year in OUR galaxy alone. Now I know that sounds like a lot, and a lot of scientists say that it is a generous number, but think about it: Even if it were 1 life form a year for 1 billion years, that’s only 1 billion stars in our galaxy that has a system with intelligent life. That leaves about 199 BILLION others that don’t.
Now mulitply that by about another couple hundred billion, for all the galaxies out there.
yeah, were crazy small…I forgot how much smaller we are than the sun!
as far as “space” goes…i believe “the universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go in a straight line you’ll end up where you were”
I remember some space thing I went to at the science museum in NYC and it talked about how huge our galaxy is but that they thing there are many many more that are even larger than ours. It an amazing thing to consider.
and another fun thing to think about… if we ever do receive like a radio transmission from one of them… by the time we receive it … whom ever sent it, IS dead, and with the possibility that the rest of the community, or all life on the planet could be comepletely dead too.
so the odds of us meeting any other life form = 0%
and if you think about that in terms of intelligent beings…
say (for sake of easier numbers) humans have been around for 20,000 years (rough estimate) our planet is 4.5billion years old.
20000/4.5billion years = 4.4 x 10 ^6
so those 100billion other stars multiplied my the percentage in time of intelligent life forms … leaves us at about 44000ish chances that we could meet another intelligent lifeforms.
if you are more of a realist like me… I’m thinking us humans have about 1000 years on this planet before we completely destroy it, and we all die. so that takes the the number of intelligent lifeforms down to… 2200 stars…
then saying their solar system is just like ours… 1 out of 9 planets can maybe have life on them, and the chances of them havening a planet like ours positioned perfectly away from the star, with an atmosphere (i don’t know the odds) i’ll just say 1 in 100 (when its probably more like 1 in 1 million)
but anyway… through odds that takes us down to 22 stars with possible chances for life…
ANOTHER SIDE TANGENT.
If we do meet us with some other lifeform… would you want to meet them… they WILL be about 1000 years ahead of us in terms of technology and evolution, which may have turned them into a peaceful community (hopefully) or imperialists (which we’d stand noooo chance)
I think I’d rather believe the calculations of an actual scientist who used actual numbers instead of extremely rough estimates. 22 stars out 200 billion? How’d you get that number?
Anyway, the amount of planets in a solar system does not matter. (and technically we only have 8 in ours). It could have 1 planet orbiting a star and have life on it. It just has to be distanced perfectly in relation to the size and intensity of that star.
But I do agree that if we did pick up any sort of radio signal from another life form, they would be extinct already. But, they have found some planets orbiting some of the stars nearest us and they think they’re possibly the right distance to hold an atmosphere and living species. Further than 4.25 light years, but still close by relative to our galaxy.