"The most concrete piece of evidence we have that intelligent life exist is that they haven't yet tried to contact us."

Sometimes i laugh at that but when you actually think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Not enough people have a sense of higher important things. They are too caught up in th rat race of life, trying to get that new acr or make a down payment on a bigger house.

Success is measured in dollars regardless of all the meaningful and higher intellect some possess about life outside their own little bubble.

The Op is right to suggest that there will be a a very serious soul searching period necessary when life is found, but i fear no one will take heed and ignore it more than anytyhing else. Ignorance is bliss. 

actually when dealing with statistics and probability, "sheer scale" is a very valid arguement. no fraction of a chance means anything without knowing where to stop. if the odds of finding life are 1/2 then you would expect to find 1 alien lifeform on every other planets or so, but if you are only counting 1 planet, then it doesnt realy mean anything. if the odds are 1/100 and you stopped at 10, then you arent likely to find much if anything. whereas if you searched 1000 you could find many different aliens.

lol 100% true. We aren't really considerd a Civilized race yet.

We don't even have a ballpark figure for the order of magnitude for the probability if life appearing, assuming there's even a chance at all that life could appear. So I'm not really seeing the validity.

But in any case, it appears that repetition is the order of the day and most people seem to be thinking that repeating themselves somehow makes them right, so I'm just gonna leave.

Well, that's the point -- nobody will ever be able to. Unless we kind of *instantaneously* hump along bazillions of galaxies, explore each for the absence of any life-forms and eliminate everything once the entire Universe has BEEN verified for evidence.

1) other Eath like planets will form. (similar atmospheres, water, metals, other elements, etc...)

2) Test have shown that using elements available in Earths early atmosphere basic organic compounds (amino acids) will form.

3) we dont know how life started on our planet but we know the type of conditions it does form in. we can asume it will form under similar conditions somewhere.

Also people throw out random probabilities of life not existing elsewhere, but you dont cite a link to the source or at least explain how the probability was formed. Or how old the estimate is for that matter.

Double post

From **our** perception of the Atomic principles.

Forget Quantum mechanics & String theory here for a moment and speculate along with us that the multi-dimensional Universe spreads around soooooo many different sub-atomic particules and, as a result, variable elements (as perceived by **their** Laws of physics) that the current stable situation has evolved at some point - or continues to do so.

Then, what if anything triggered the appearance of Life (not necessarily Intelligent by our standards, btw) here. Darwin's odds or lucky Rubik cube scrambling (as someone mentioned elsewhere)? God? Geophysic conditions? DNA? Comets slamming the surface? Amino acids? Carbon mutation?

Any other probabilities? Seriously, to be objective you HAVE to consider alternate situations & conditions.

If Life differs anywhere else - i'd say any of the hypothesis (for & against) have been multiplied by a factor of 2 or **more**.

Conclusion? The human made periodic table fits our own rational reality. I claim there's MUCH more than one.

Both need not be proven to contradict either precepts.

Why should we be sooooo arrogant as to claim the recipe for life is OF our own reasoning?

Ockham razor, once again.

Scale really isn't at stake, but rather lowest figure which has to be dropped into a stable model; Universal static space-time continuum **at the moment** of observation.

Right now, we are NOT alone -- in this galaxy.

Proved. Go ahead and try denying it.

ok first off, we aren't even able to detect earth-like planets and we won't be until sometime in the next decade (new telescope going up).  Second, without an example of non carbon based life, we have no idea what chemical signals to look for to be certain of life.  This problem has already arisen, as the chemicals predicted by certain theories have been found to be produced through non living mechanisms.  Likewise, even if we did find something we thought was evidence of life, it is quite possible we would not be able to recognize it.  A friend of mine studied martian rocks that had what appeared to be fossilized bacteria in them.  This hypothesis was discounted because there was no way to prove what they were looking at was not created through geological activity. 

So basically my point is, when it comes to detection of life, certain things need to happen for it to matter.  First, it has to be very very close to home.  If it is outside of our solar system it is virtually meaningless given current technology.  Second, it has to be in such abundance that life is undenyably present.  Third, it has to be similar to known life, otherwise people will debate whether or not it is really alive (viruses are one example, advanced AI and robotics are another).  Finally, it has to be extremely primitive compared to us. 

The last point is based on an argument presented by Ray Kurzweil.  No doubt you have head somewhere about the "technological singularity."  Kurzweil summarized this as a double exponential growth curve reflected in almost all areas of advancement.  He argues that, given current advancement rates, humanity is due to achieve "singularity" somewhere around 2033.. that is, the amount of knowledge gained per period of time will approach infinity.  This is based on advancements in computer technology and human computer interaction.  We already augment ourselves with computers.. we do research, communicate, buy things, and are generally more efficient with computers than we would be otherwise.  We can "remember" more than ever simply by looking it up online.  The problem is we are limited to the clunky interface provided by our fingers, ears, and eyes.  Based on advancing brain scan techniques, living tissue to silicon interfaces, lab grown cells, and so on, Kurzweil believes that the way in which people interact with computers will advance to the point where we are able to interact directly with the machine.  In any case, developments that allow us to more efficiently use computers and software developments that make computers easier to use converge to offer true augmentation.  People may have memory chips embedded in their skulls, or perhaps wireless transmitters.

This matters because it will allow researchers to augment themselves to become better researchers.  This is where the true double exponential becomes most apparent.  Scientists working to create faster and better computer interfaces and faster and better software programs will benefit from their own developments, meaning that they have the potential to become much "smarter" and thus much more able to make breakthrough advances.  This cycle will continue until some kind of physical limitation prevents further development.  Until that point, however, advancement in all fields will occur at an amazing, breakneck speed. 

This will be the new race of humanity, the self augmented human.  This race will be to evolved, social humans as evolved humans are to non-social animals.  The advances introduced by the augmented humans will come so quickly and will be so influential that most people will be left behind, just as our social and cultural development has completely left behind the animal kingdom.  Modern humans will be as able to adapt and respond to augmented humans as an elephant can adapt and change to modern humans.  That is, basically not at all.  In the time it would take modern humans to reach a decision and take action on it, augmented humans will have made the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of years of advancement.

This is the singularity.  Once humans achieve true augmentation, we will very rapidly have access to all knowledge that can be gained from our vantage point in the universe.  It is absolutely impossible to know what this knowledge will be, or how much it will change us.  Kurzweil predicted this to happen by 2033, but even if you are not so optimistic, and it happened within 100, 200, 500.. even 1000 years, these periods of time are small beans on the universal scale.  In essence, life on earth will have evolved very slowly over millions and millions of years, only to suddenly change completely within an extremely small period of time. 

This discussion applies to the current argument because of the following:  Any sufficiently advanced alien society will rapidly approach a state of singularity.  Once such a state is reached, light speed or faster travel will or will not have been developed.  Likewise with time travel.  If such things are not developed, than interstellar travel remains a very long and difficult undertaking.  As modern humans, this would mean that even if we did detect such a society, we would be almost entirely unable to interact with them, and likewise they could hardly interact with us.  More likely, we would reach singularity ourselves before they could send a message across space to us.  The second option is that time travel and faster than light travel are discovered.  In such circumstances, an post singularity society would rapidly gain access to and use resources throughout its galaxy.  If a post singularity society existed anywhere in our galaxy or even possibly neighboring galaxies, we would know it.  Unless they didn't want us to know.  In that case, there is probably nothing we could do to detect the society, thus meaning the universe would look empty.  Because of the extremely short timespan between achieving society and achieving singularity (10,000 to 15,000 years from primitive man to knowing all there is to know), it is quite unlikely that we'll find another race anywhere within this brief window.  Life will either be undeveloped bacteria like organisms or masters of the universe..  If we're lucky we might find large animals..

So, possible realities: 

-we are the first race to achieve this level of advancement, and may be the first to achieve singularity. 

-we are not the most advanced race, therefore someone else has already achieved singularity.  Since we have not detected them, either they do not want to be detected, are too far away from us, or were not able to develop faster than light or time travel.

In the first scenario we have a unique advantage, truly unique and possibly worthy of religion.  The universe may well have been made for us.  In the second, we are more or less screwed.  Either there is already a massive post singularity society around us that doesn't want to be seen, or there is no easy way out of this solar system.  Our only hope would be that post singularity societies live in harmony.

To reply to Overseer, you haven't yet proven your first claim.  Your second and third claims are flawed, since we don't really know what chemicals were present in the primordial soup (indeed, our guesses have been derived from what we think could have produced life (which, again, is mere speculation on our own parts), which is circular reasoning).  And to reply to your fourth, I HAVE cited my statistics, from The Privileged Planet, by Dr. Guillermo Gonzales, a professor of astronomy at the University of California at Berkely.

As for soasertsus, to begin with, the resilience of the cockroaches to radiation is inextricably linked to the simplicity of their nervous systems.  Any intelligent being could not be as they are.  The same is true of the bacteria of Domain Archaea, which I mentioned earlier: life forms such as these are, in my opinion, quite common in the universe.  Non-terran, complex life?  Are you kidding?  Once again, Domain Archaea probably exists in nebulae somewhere, but anything further could not survive in such near-vacuum environs.  As for my blind-man with a rubik's cube analogy, I realize that there is the possibility of it happening in a much shorter amount of time, but we are speaking hypothetically, of statistics, and not facts, since we have none of the latter.  My point is that life is statistically impossible.  It happened here, to be sure, but that only makes it all the less likely that it should happen elsewhere.

Silveus above stated that it is impossible that there should never be any other advanced life forms, since there is, literally, all the time in the world for it to appear.  Um, are you familiar with the Laws of Thermodynamics?  The Second Law of Thermodynamics states very clearly that all energy in the universe is rapidly becoming unusable.  The First Law of Thermodynamics states that no new energy or matter can ever be created or somehow be inputted into the system.  Therefore, the universe will eventually run out of usable energy.  Some scientists project that this will happen quite soon.

CobraA1, are you completely ignorant?!

Even with your huge numbers like 1/1000000000000000000000000000000000 or whatever and 10 to the -50 power that still leaves so much of the universe that would have alien life. You amaze me that you just cant comprehend the size of the universe. Where do you even get these numbers anyway. How do you know that its not 1/100000000 which is small compared to the universe.

And Overseer, I agree with you completely. If I can help prove your point I will.

"Problem is, we don't have a way to test any equation for validity. They're just wild guesses. The equation only hold up to logic insofar as it is valid. Unfortunately, there is no way to confirm its soundness."

If we can't test any equation on either side of this issue for its validity, why are we arguing about it?

I know this is (extremely) arrogant, but why are we debating theorys (sp?)  that can't be conclusively proven either way?

The universe IS huge. Unimaginably gigantic. Assuming that no intellegent life is out there based on an equation that is, as Cobra said himself, a wild guess, is BEYOND small-minded.

Likewise, saying that life MUST exsist because the universe is as big as it is equally useless.

I apologize for my arrogance.

Based on our knowledge of solar system formation we know how planets will form. When a supermassive star dies it is because it has begun to use Fe as fuel for fusion reactions. Basically they bern there way through the elements starting at H and work there way down. When the reach Fe they no longer gain energy as they do with H or He etc..

When a star goes supernova the rest of the elements down to Uranium will form as atom in the star ram into each other. the remnants of stars form the nebulas that are composed of all these elements. Most nebulas are composed of H, He, and O. And so The star will begin to form as gravity pulls it together. Around the star an ecretion disk will form composed of the same elemnets. Eventually globs in the ecretion disk begin to form and eventually planets begin to form.

In our solar system we had 2 planets that formed with water. (Yes Mars had and still does have water) Mars was a smaller planet and it is believed the iron core failed and its atmosphere was swept away by the Sun.

Now the planets are comprised of the every element in the ecretion disk. So planets will just vary based in their concentration of elements. Also H2O is composed of the 2 most abundant elements so water is by no means a rarity in this hole process. Now when you take into acount the size of the Univers it is illogical to think other planets will form the same way in other solar systems. (specially when you realize there are 2 planets in our solarr system.

Now carbon and other elements needed for life will eventuall form organic compounds due to electromagnetic forces present on planets. Eventually life forms (either because of God or blind forces... take your pick, this not the topic at hand)

EDIT:

Take it form NASA: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-027

Actually you are asuming the Universe has a closed geometry. It is still possible it has an open geometry, and is thus infinite. If it is infinite (though Unlikely) Then there is a 100% chance of life. If you had an infinite number of monkeys typing one of them would write hamlet, and any other text ever made. Infinite is a bign Number

Further more the probability you gave is working off of many asumptions about life. Life is very robust and does and doesn't even need light to exist.